City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I’ll look at it later. Can I see the other reports?”

  Rohder closes the folder and pushes it across the polished table surface. The soft plastic cover and the flimsies inside flutter in the brief breeze. Aiah picks up the article by Constantine and slips it into the folder. She feels the throb of her heart, its acceleration to a higher state of alertness, a touch of the Adrenaline Monster upon her nerves.... It is as if she is responding to the notion that the file itself is a threat, and she wonders if she will ever have the courage to make use of this information, to somehow put an end to Taikoen, or even to read the article, of historic and personal interest, that Rohder has given her.

  She looks up at Rohder, forces a polite smile onto her lips. “Would you like some coffee?” she asks.

  Talk turns to other matters, particularly to Rohder’s teams, who are busy increasing Caraqui’s plasm supply, and then the old man takes his leave. Aiah turns up the ventilation to clear the cloud of cigaret smoke and looks at the closed folder waiting for her on the table.

  Her nerves hum louder than the ventilation fans.

  She opens the green folder, slips out Constantine’s article, and composes herself to read it: sitting straight in the straight chair, feet flat on the floor, hands framing the pages on the table. As if she were a schoolgirl at her desk.

  Constantine’s style, she notices, is informed but not quite at ease. She can tell he’s been to college: he uses words like noetic and mensuration. The later Constantine, with less need to impress, would adopt a less specialized vocabulary, and a more accessible style.

  He discusses at some length the legendary attributes of the ice man and discusses theories of how such creatures may be created. The tone is speculative— he endeavors to make it seem that he knows less about this matter than, in fact, he does. And then he addresses the primary contradiction of the ice man legends.

  Why would the ice man, he asks, who exists in the core of creation, in the plasm itself, the great transformational substance, the heart of contingent reality that underlies our whole postmetropolitan world, wish to inhabit the body of a human being?

  Constantine finds the answer in the hanged man’s lost body itself.

  The attractions of plasm are many, but the most intense are those based on sensation. It is these appeals to the sensual, to enhanced and extended sight and hearing, to the stimulus of nerves and groin, that most often impel those who habituate themselves to plasm as an addict to morphia; and this sensual attraction, in subtler form, is a factor in the attraction of plasm to many of its other users, who experience sense gratification alongside plasm’s other enjoyments....

  For the ice man there are no longer nerves to stimulate, no sensory organs to enhance, no sexual impulse to satisfy. The vital element of sensory feedback is missing: no longer is the sensual body able to bring pleasure to its now detached, and oddly diminished, mind.

  But, Aiah thinks, a protest half-formed in her mind; but Constantine answers her objection before she can properly form it.

  It is true that when mages project themselves through telepresence they use plasm to build a sensorium, an array of ectomorphic sense-artifacts used to bring sense-stimulation to the receptive centers of the mind. But the sensorium, however enhanced it may be, is built in imitation of the body’s own natural sense organs, and furthermore upon a series of sense-memories contained within the mind. Without a material body and its sense-organs to apprehend the world, and without a sensual memory, reinforced at every moment by a thousand natural stimuli, how is a detached, immaterial mentality to apprehend the world?

  ...The ice man must apprehend the world only through a created sensorium. For a human mage, a sensorium will be based on the mage’s own sense-organs and on sense-experience and memory. For an ice man, a sensorium will be based on organs that no longer exist and memories that grow ever more distant. Without an anchor planted in the body’s own sensual experience and memory, the ice man’s perceptions will become ever more distorted.

  Aiah knits her brows and contemplates Constantine’s argument. It must be true, she thinks; Constantine knew Taikoen when he wrote this, and must have based all this on observation.

  The hanged man lives in a world of erratic, distorted sense impressions. And Taikoen, the real man, died centuries ago. How, Aiah wonders, does he see the world now?

  Presumably it takes the ice man a period of time to realize that the old pleasures are no longer there. The ice man at first may be gratified at being rid of the irritations and demands of the body. He can create an artificial sensorium and stimulate it as he wishes. The distortion of perception may not be at first apparent.

  But when the realization comes, it must be devastating. The body, the center of perception, no longer exists. Perceptions are growing distorted, even deranged. Even self-stimulation may prove futile, as the ice man, lost in the transphysical plasm well, begins to forget even the nature of pleasure. The ice man may well grow desperate.

  Constantine goes on to discuss the phenomenon of possession in some detail, explaining it, after numerous scholarly digressions, as a desperate attempt by the ice man to regain the sense perceptions that had once made him human.

  Aiah turns the page, reads Constantine’s conclusion. A metallic taste tingles along her tongue.

  What are we, then, to say of the psyche of the ice man, a murderous creature of deranged perception, forever isolated from the humanity that nurtured him, so desperate for a return to a world of sensible appearances and pleasures that it will accept temporary humanity at the cost of a human life?

  We now know which taxonomy is appropriate for this phenomenon. This creature that is at once powerful and diminished, ubiquitous and isolated, desperate and raging, deadly but impotent, possessed of being but not truly alive. Hanged man is not the appropriate name, nor ice man. The only appropriate name for this creature is our third choice— the damned.

  The conditions in which the ice man exists are, in almost literal terms, hellish. Uncertain as to its own perceptions, its spirit isolated, all pleasures artificial and fading, its only companions either victims or exploiters, the situation of the ice man is a compound of desperation and exile. Although its victims deserve our sorrow, the creature itself— damned— deserves more than a share of our compassion. Given the horrifying conditions under which the ice man must exist, an end to its existence must be looked on not as a death, not even as justice, but as a release, an act of mercy.

  Aiah looks down at the last plastic flimsy, at the bottom crowded with endnotes in tiny print, at the slight smear on one corner caused by an error in copying. Her nerves sing with the document’s strangeness.

  Why, she wonders, did Constantine write this thing? Even though it is in a speculative style, it still betrays too much knowledge. Anyone who had ever had dealings with an actual ice man would look at this and know without doubt that Constantine was a secret brother....

  Perhaps when Constantine wrote this he simply didn’t care— his first encounter with Taikoen had not come at an edifying point of his life— but Aiah senses there’s something else at work here. She looks again over the last paragraph.

  ... the creature itself deserves more than a share of our compassion.

  She wonders if Constantine is trying to make her feel sympathy for the ice man— pity my friend, he only kills because he’s a lonely perceptual cripple! But it doesn’t work, Aiah has actually met the thing. And then she wonders if Constantine wants the reader to feel sorry for Constantine himself, for the person who, out of compassion and at the risk of his life and soul, associates with the damned, with something that others would view as a demon....

  That, Aiah considers, seems more plausible. It isn’t as if Constantine has not been known to turn his life into drama.

  She scans the words again.... an end to its existence must be looked on not as a death, not even as justice, but as a release, an act of mercy.

  A crystal comprehension forms in Aiah’s mind, and suddenl
y she knows.

  Constantine was trying to justify an attempt to end Taikoen’s existence. To kill it.

  But he didn’t. He never tried. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, or he found a reason to keep Taikoen alive.

  The columns of print swim before Aiah’s eyes. She takes a deep breath, tips her head back, and lets what she knows of Constantine’s biography enter her mind. Constantine would have encountered Taikoen in his early twenties, before he met Aldemar and went into the School of Radritha. Constantine had been a member of a kind of cult, and then his cousin and all the other cult members were killed, and Constantine wrote his article and went to university for an advanced degree, and from there, and from Aldemar, to the monkish order of the School of Radritha, where he was taught an extreme self-discipline, a philosophy based on the denial of the world and of passion, a retreat from action and power.

  He was fleeing, Aiah realizes. Running from Taikoen, from what with this essay he had promised to do.... But the university had not been far enough, nor had Aldemar’s arms; he needed something more radical, like Radritha, a school which maintained that nothing mattered outside the perfectly balanced, passionless mind. If nothing outside the mind mattered, it didn’t signify whether Taikoen existed or not.

  Aiah glances out the window, sees splashes of brightness in the sky where disembodied clothing dances in ecstasy over Colorsafe Soap. A cold hand brushes her spine. The thought of Constantine afraid is in itself frightening: he has never seemed afraid of anything.

  Of course, she thinks immediately, he was young. Later he left the school and returned to Cheloki to begin his New City campaign, and there were no hesitations there.

  But when he reestablished contact with Taikoen, it was an alliance that Constantine offered, a bargain. Two lives per month, two bodies, and then, when he needed Taikoen again, more lives, more bodies.

  Color bleeds across the sky. Aiah closes her eyes and wonders if she will have the courage to face the thing that Constantine did not.

  GARGELIUS ENCHUK WEARS GULMAN SHOES

  WHY DON’T YOU?

  Aiah strolls into the antechamber to the secure room, and smiles at the clerk, a huge stoneface who could probably keep the files safe simply through her intimidating presence.

  “Hello,” the clerk says. “I thought you were on vacation.”

  “Officially. But there was something I need to look at. I need to check the logs and see which files I had out last week.”

  The clerk obligingly turns the logbook around to face Aiah, who pages back through the book until she finds Constantine’s signature. Only four days ago. Her nerves hum as she jots the file numbers down— no names are used in the logs, nothing that might reveal their contents to an outsider— and then she turns the book around again and thanks the clerk. “Let me just look one of those up,” she says, and heads for the secure room’s barred gate.

  Refiq, Tollan, Brandrag. The names attached to the files that Constantine had read. Cousins— not Handmen, but bad enough for all that. One of these, Aiah assumes, will be Taikoen’s next victim.

  She checks the files out just long enough to copy the pages and the cousins’ chromographs, and then returns them to the strong room.

  And wonders about the next step.

  COLONELS’ COUNCIL DEMANDS EXTRADITION OF FORMER OFFICIALS

  NESCA DECLINES TO REVOKE ASYLUM

  “Did you have a good time?” Aiah asks.

  Khorsa nods. “Very fine, yes. Lost a few too many dinars in the casinos, though.”

  “And the airship?”

  Khorsa smiles. “The Dharku was lovely. The smoothest, most comfortable trip imaginable. And the views! We spent half our time in the observation lounge.”

  “I’m glad. Would you like some coffee before you sit down?”

  Khorsa, just back from her honeymoon, helps herself to some. Alfeg is already present, his notebook ready.

  “By the way,” he says, “you have a request from the Sector Gazette for an interview.”

  Sector was a euphemism for Barkazi, as the latter did not, officially, exist. The evasion permitted the magazine’s distribution in Jabzi, where the word Barkazi did not officially exist either.

  “When?” Aiah asks. She is sick of interviews.

  “Deadline’s in three days.” Alfeg offers a modest smile. “They must have noticed how much that profile in Corona boosted circulation.”

  “I’ll think about it. Next time they should give more warning.”

  Khorsa stirs sugar in her coffee and drops into a chair. Aiah pushes files toward them.

  Refiq, Tollan, Brandrag.

  “I need the two of you to set up a rotating surveillance on these three,” she says. “This surveillance involves the highest possible security. Only the three of us know about this assignment. I want the surveillance to be run with extreme caution, from a distance. Configure your sensorium so that you can perceive plasm. Assume that the subjects are wired to plasm at all times, and are aware they might be surveilled. No one else must be permitted to know what the two of you are up to.”

  Alfeg picks up a file, looks through it, then glances up at Aiah.

  “This is a copy of the original file,” he says.

  Aiah nods. “Yes.”

  “These files aren’t supposed to be copied.”

  Aiah looks coldly into Alfeg’s eyes. “Yes,” she says.

  Alfeg glances nervously down at the file. “Ah,” he says.

  Khorsa pages through another file. “I don’t see anything unusual about this Mr. Brandrag,” she says. “A typical cousin, so far as I can see. Why does the surveillance have to be so secret?”

  Aiah looks at them both. “Because,” she says, “one of these three men is scheduled to come down with the Party Sickness.”

  COLONELS’ COUNCIL DEMANDS EXTRADITION, MOBILIZES FORCES

  NESCA “WILL NOT BOW TO INTIMIDATION”

  Aiah arrives breathless in Constantine’s anteroom, briefcase full of the latest plasm figures, and finds others waiting outside the office door: the other triumvirs clustered with Belckon, Sorya smoking a cigaret in the corner, Geymard and Arviro, both in undress uniform, and Personal Secretary Drusus pretending to look busy behind his desk....

  Martinus, the bodyguard, stands quietly in front of Constantine’s door, his callused hands folded quietly. His attitude is polite, but clearly nothing is getting past him right now.

  Aiah pauses at the door, catches her breath. The message had said, Come at once.

  Come yesterday is what its tone had implied.

  And now Constantine is keeping even the other triumvirs waiting outside his door. Aiah can tell from their expressions that they aren’t happy about it.

  Aiah walks up to the guard, lifts her brows in a silent query, receives in return a minute shake of Martinus’s armored head. She turns back toward the room and drifts toward Drusus’s desk.

  “Mr. Drusus? Is the president—?”

  “The triumvir is on the phone,” softly. “It’s urgent.”

  Aiah glances down at Drusus’s communications array and sees that no lights shine to mark that any of the phone lines are being used. She bends down and whispers into his ear.

  “If the triumvir were on the phone,” she says, “there would be something lit, ne?”

  A look of horror crosses Drusus’s face. He picks up a headset from the cradle and presses buttons. Lights begin to flash. Aiah straightens, moves away from the desk, and wonders if anyone else has observed this discrepancy.

  Plasm buzzes in her nerves. Before the panic started, she’d given herself a dose to clear her head and burn off the fatigue toxins. Now she finds plasm-energy twitching at her, making her want to do anything rather than sit in a waiting room.

  “I fear this will end any funds for compensated demobilization,” Belckon says in a low voice to the two triumvirs. “And we may lose other Polar League funds as well, for rebuilding and refugee work.”

  “These military upstarts ar
e jeopardizing everything,” Faltheg murmurs. “They don’t have the slightest idea how to behave.”

  “Or to run a country,” says Adaveth. “If our policy is shackled to them, they’ll bring us down.”

  “But they’re New City. Constantine can’t disavow them, and....”

  Faltheg falls silent, then gives a sharp look over his shoulder at Aiah. Aiah feels herself flush— she had not meant to overhear— she gives him an apologetic smile and backs away, toward Martinus and the door.

  Without warning ice water floods Aiah’s spine, and she manages to bottle up her cry of terror at the last instant. Blood hammers at her ears.

  Now she knows why Constantine is keeping his own administration locked out.

  Taikoen is inside. Making demands, refusing to be sent away, forcing Constantine to deal with him now. Aiah’s plasm-charged nerves are just sensitive enough to detect his presence.

  Aiah whirls, gives an alarmed look to Martinus. The man’s face is expressionless, but Aiah sees a knowing look in his deep-set eyes.

  And then it occurs to Aiah that if she can detect Taikoen, Taikoen might be able to detect her. The thought sends a pulse of terror through her heart. She wills herself not to flee and, hoping she is not too conspicuous in her haste, backs away from the door.

  Aiah gives a start as Sorya’s voice comes low in her ear. “I have received some intriguing news. A religious leader in Charna— a wandering priestess I believe, has just proclaimed that I am an emanation of a god.” A lazy, amused tone enters her voice. “I hope I may have your congratulations, one celestial sister to another.”

  Aiah clenches her teeth, tries to control her flailing nerves. The presence of Taikoen doesn’t seem so strong here, and perhaps wouldn’t be detectable at all if Aiah didn’t already know he was just beyond the door.

  “Congratulations,” she tells Sorya. “I remember when you predicted the appearance of this, ah, priestess.”