City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  The timeless moment ends, and reality falls into place again, stone by slow stone.

  “Wahhh,” Alfeg breathes in awe.

  Order of Eternity stands, removes the contact from her mouth, and walks around the screen to where Aiah, the Golden Lady, waits. She seems to move with unnatural lithe movements, and her face is distorted, all eyes and forehead, the mouth and chin tiny. Taikoen’s perceptions have left their imprint on Aiah’s mind.

  “The creature is dead,” says the sister. “We have abolished it.”

  “How?” The question spills from Aiah’s mind.

  “It existed as a modulation in plasm. Once the creature ceased its movement and was contained in one place, and we had the leisure to do so, we modulated the same plasm in a way as to reduce the creature’s modulation to zero— we canceled the creature out, like one wave precisely canceling another and leaving the sea smooth.”

  “Ask her if she’s sure.” Aratha’s skeptical voice sounds in Aiah’s ear. “I don’t want to have to go through this again.”

  “I didn’t know such a thing could be done,” Aiah tells the sister.

  Order of Eternity walks on bare feet to the control panel, reaches out to touch, in a familiar gesture of tenderness, Inaction’s short black hair. “To understand plasm is to control reality,” she says. “Through our understanding, we made the thing unreal.”

  And then Aiah feels fingers on her throat and she is torn from the dome room, from the calm gaze of the dreaming sister, and finds herself in the Operations Room, with one of Constantine’s huge hands about her neck. He pulls her from her chair, the t-grip flying from her hand as it reaches the end of its cable. His face is distorted, all anger and teeth. Behind him Aiah sees his guards, Martinus included, yanking t-grip cables from their sockets, disarming Aiah’s team.

  “What are you doing?” Constantine cries. “What is this treason?” He bends her backward over the desk, claw on her windpipe. Aiah seizes his thick wrist in both hands, tries to tear him off her, finds him immovable as iron. Tears come to her eyes as she tries to drag air into her lungs. “Have you gone mad?” Constantine roars.

  Then plasm sizzles the air and Constantine flies backward with a grunt, as if he’s been hit in the stomach. He tangles with Aiah’s chair and goes down. The world seems to lean in, as if about to crush them all. Aiah clutches her throat. Heat flashes on Aiah’s skin. The bodyguards, with their portable plasm packs, are dueling with the mages they haven’t yet disarmed.

  “Stop this!” Aiah shouts. Constantine rises from the floor, murder in his eyes, and lunges for Aiah again. She gets her feet between them, drives at him with her legs, keeps him off. Out of the corner of her eye Aiah sees a guard with a gun, and her cry of warning occurs simultaneously with the gun’s exploding at the touch of plasm, all its ammunition detonating. The guard, face blackened, hand mangled, gives a cry and falls. Constantine lunges again, throws aside Aiah’s legs, and dives atop her. He seizes her hair, beats her head against the desk. “What is the matter with you?” he demands. “What is this spirit of treachery?” Red explosions fill Aiah’s head as he pounds her against the desk.

  And then Constantine is torn off her again, and she hears him give a cry of rage, a cry abruptly choked off. Aiah sits up, clutching her throat, blinking furiously as she tries to bring her vision back. The room is filled with an ominous silence.

  The red splashes fade, from Aiah’s sight but waves of distortion flood her vision. Dr. Romus has wrapped his thick body about Constantine, has pinned his arms and brought him down, a loop around his throat. Martinus has been thrown against the wall, his arms held there, obviously by plasm. Another guard is unconscious, and the guard whose gun exploded rolls on the floor, clutching his maimed hand. The military mages— Aratha, Kari, and Melko— stand erect in their uniforms, transference grips in their hands, shields buzzing before them. In command. The room seems to bend toward them as if in homage.

  Alfeg touches a split lip, a black eye. Khorsa, businesslike, plugs in her t-grip and arms herself.

  Alarmed faces— PED employees— blink at the scene from the doorway.

  Constantine gives Aiah a stricken look. “What are you doing?” he whispers, using the little air Romus has left him. “What is this madness?”

  Aiah massages her throat. “It’s finished,” she says. “The thing is dead.”

  A convulsion crosses Constantine’s face. “You had no right!” he says. “He had more than a measure of greatness! My oldest”— he blinks— “oldest friend. Greatest advisor. The one to whom I owe....” His voice fails.

  Friend, Constantine had called the monster. Advisor. New words for such a thing.

  Aiah carefully puts her feet on the floor, lets her weight rest on them, looks down at Constantine.

  “I had every right,” she says. “I finished the job you couldn’t, thirty-odd years ago. The job you ran from.”

  An ardent look comes to Constantine’s face. “He was useful. He was necessary. My plans—” His voice chokes off again as Dr. Romus shifts his coils, shuts his wind.

  Romus’s reedy voice buzzes in the sudden silence.

  “So this is the creature’s protector,” he says. His irony sizzles in the air. “This... great man... permitted so many to die. And he would have handed one of the Dreaming Sisters to such a thing.”

  “Gangsters,” Constantine whispers. “I thought they were gangsters.”

  Romus’s coils shift again, tightening on chest and throat, and Aiah can see fear enter Constantine’s eyes. Aiah sees death settle onto his face, a smiling skull behind the purpling flesh. Romus turns his little face to Aiah.

  “Shall I kill him, miss?” Romus asks. “It would be easy.... His usefulness to the world is over.”

  A great weariness falls on Aiah. She shakes her head.

  “He may try to kill us all,” Romus reminds.

  “He can’t,” Aiah says. She looks at her people standing in the doorway, the people she has hired personally, made loyal to her, her PED, intended as an instrument of Constantine’s will, now her own. And through the small crowd hurry members of Aiah’s own guard— she normally does not use guards unless she leaves the building, but here they are now, summoned by calls from people in her division.

  She looks down at Constantine. “It’s gone too far,” she says. “Too many people know now, or could put it together if they wished. Enough to destroy you if you press this. PED, Barkazils, the army.” She passes a hand across her forehead, looks at her own guards taking up position in the room. “Your only hope,” Aiah tells Constantine, “is if those who know remain silent— no, wrong,” shaking her head. “You are safe only if we deny certain things ever happened at all. And for that, we will need to feel safe.”

  Constantine mouths words that cannot be heard. Aiah looks up at Martinus, pinned by plasm against the wall. “You understand this, don’t you?”

  In Martinus’s eyes she reads understanding. He gives a little nod, as much as the plasm bonds will let him. Aiah looks at Romus.

  “Let him go,” she says.

  A touch of petulance enters the reedy voice. “I do not think,” Romus says, “you will find him grateful.”

  “That’s up to him,” Aiah says.

  Dr. Romus loosens his coils. Constantine gasps for air, blinking dumbly at the world. His hand tugs at the lace at his throat.

  “I want your resignation,” he says. “I want it tomorrow.”

  “As the triumvir wishes,” Aiah says, too tired to care.

  Aiah and her team leave the room before Constantine, her guards a wall between her and his party. The crowd, the couple of dozen people working third shift, parts in silence. Aiah’s deranged perception sees them as stick figures with huge, staring eyes. Aiah sees that Rohder is among them, cigaret dangling from his lips, his blue eyes observing with keen interest.

  “Kari and I will return directly to the division by aerocar,” Aratha says. “Melko will take a different route. We’re going to s
tay shielded until we hear from you.”

  Aiah nods. “Of course. But we’ll be safe enough, once Constantine has time to think.”

  “His right thoughts are best assured by our thorough preparation,” Aratha says.

  “Exactly,” Khorsa adds. “I’m going to lock myself in the secure room and write up a full report.”

  “And so will I,” Aratha says.

  “Make sure you know where those reports are,” Aiah says. “If the wrong people get ahold of them....”

  “Not that I particularly give a damn,” Khorsa says, “but if all works out as planned, no one will see my report at all.” Her face turns hard. “The bastard,” she adds.

  Alfeg holds a handkerchief to his bleeding lip. “Miss Aiah,” he says, “let me stay with you till tomorrow.”

  Aiah shakes her head. “Staying with me won’t make you safer.”

  “That wasn’t my point.”

  An exhausted smile touches Aiah’s lips. “Yes. I know.” She takes him in her arms, kisses his cheek. “Go to the infirmary. That eye looks nasty. And you might be concussed.”

  “So might you.”

  Aiah fingers the tender place at the back of her head, winces. “Possibly,” she admits.

  In the end it is agreed that Dr. Romus and her guards will accompany Aiah to her apartment.

  Which they find filled with Constantine’s flowers, hundreds of them, and a written apology, a model of its kind, still unread on the table.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Romus and one of the guards enter the plasm well and stand sentry, ready to repel an attack.

  It’s a nice gesture, but Aiah knows it’s futile. If Constantine wanted to attack her here, he would first shut off her plasm with a call to the control room deep in the bowels of the Palace, and then do whatever he wanted.

  Rohder arrives an hour later, and the guards, after asking Aiah’s permission, allow him in. Aiah and Rohder sit, Barkazil style, at the kitchen table, sip tea and munch biscuits Aiah has found in a cupboard. Aiah holds her aching head in her hands. The apartment is oppressive, the walls looming like angry giants in her deranged perception. Rohder lights a cigaret.

  “It’s been settled,” he says. “Your resignation, if you’ve written it, will not be accepted.”

  “I did not think you were going to involve yourself in this,” Aiah says.

  He looks at her levelly. “As a loyal civil servant,” he says, “I felt obliged to bring certain things to the triumvir’s attention. That the PED is his idea, his brainchild, and that disaffection in its ranks would not help him. That disaffection in the military would not work to his benefit, either. That if my entire transformation team, as an example, found itself unhappy with the current administration, we could all resign and sell our valuable services elsewhere, and his much-publicized attempts to build housing out of nothing would be set back by months. That if any stories concerning hanged men or the Party Sickness reached the ears of our now uncensored press, his reputation would be severely compromised, perhaps damaged irrevocably. I pointed out that evidence already exists, evidence which he can neither suppress nor deny. I suggested to his imagination what might happen if a polemical genius like Hilthi obtained the evidence in question.” He taps ash from the cigaret into a saucer. “I believe the triumvir saw reason.”

  Aiah looks at him, winces at the effort it costs her to keep him in focus. “Thank you,” she says. Then, thinking aloud, “Should I be thanking you?”

  “I don’t know.” Rohder sips tobacco smoke. “I did it entirely for my own benefit. I want an ally sitting between me and the administration.”

  Aiah looks at Rohder and thinks, He really is The Mage.... He who reorders nature according to his will.... He is the only one of all of them who has got exactly what he wanted. His transformation teams, his theory put into practice, his autonomy, and his presence indispensable to everyone concerned.

  After Rohder leaves, Aiah sends her guards home— she embarrasses them by giving them baskets of flowers, all they can carry— and then turns to Dr. Romus.

  “I want to thank you,” she says. “Things could have gone badly there.”

  There is a fierce glint in Romus’s yellow eyes. “Where I come from,” he says, “we fight for our friends.”

  And that is all I was doing, Aiah thinks. Fighting for Constantine.

  If only Constantine knew it.

  She kisses Romus’s wrinkled cheek— it is dry, like ancient bone— and lets him out.

  And is alone with her apartment, her flowers, and her weariness.

  YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SEE

  LORDS OF THE NEW CITY

  She wakes with the Adrenaline Monster pounding in her chest and the knowledge that she will die, that Constantine or Sorya lurk outside the door, waiting to finish her off, or that Taikoen— not dead after all— dwells next to her in the plasm main, ready to tear the life from her.... The walls loom in, threaten her with their silent solidity, with the knowledge that her very sight is contaminated by Taikoen’s perceptions.

  The terror fades. The heavy scent of Constantine’s flowers fills her chest, makes it hard to breathe. She looks at the clock: 04:11.

  She calls up a pair of her guards, apologizes for the hour, and asks them to meet her in the boat pool. Then she dresses, goes to the PED offices, and leaves a note on Khorsa’s desk telling her where she plans to go. People stare at her as she goes about her errand. They are a different lot than were on duty last shift, but they’ve obviously heard what happened, and doubtless the story has not got any smaller in the interval.

  At the water gate, Aiah meets her guards, signs out a motorboat, and leaves the Palace. Bright cloudless Shieldlight beats down on her aching head. The surrounding buildings threaten her like a hedge of spears. She wishes she had thought to bring shieldglasses.

  She is still, officially, on vacation. No reason not to take advantage of it.

  The gray stone home of the Dreaming Sisters squats beneath its gleaming copper dome like an intricately carved puzzle, its outward complexity— the carved, entangled faces and vines— only an intimation of the subtle convolutions within. On the doorstep she sends her guards back to the Palace.

  “You’ll be safe here?” one of them asks. “Are you sure, miss?”

  “If I’m not safe here,” Aiah tells him, “I won’t be safe anywhere.”

  The cool twilight of the sanctuary is a glorious relief after the unrelieved brightness of the Shield. The sister on duty— Aiah does not recognize her— takes her without a word to Order of Eternity, who greets her with her usual dreamy composure.

  “I’m sorry,” Aiah says, “for the deaths.”

  “We know the risks,” calmly, “when imagoes war with one another. We put ourselves in the center of the battle willingly.” Sadness crosses her features. “Though that is now over, and two of our order lie dead, I cannot help but feel in my heart that our action was wrong.”

  “It was the right thing,” Aiah says. “It was perhaps the only right thing done in all this affair.”

  The dreaming sister looks up at Aiah, weariness in her eyes. “I hope you are correct,” she says. “Time will tell.” She reaches out a gentle hand, touches Aiah’s throat. “You are bruised.”

  “There was violence afterward. I am all right.”

  “You don’t look all right.”

  “I haven’t slept. Not in months.”

  Order of Eternity tilts her head, speaks in her girlish voice. “Do you wish to sleep here?”

  “Yes.” Weariness falls on Aiah like a shower of cooling rain. “Yes, I’d like to sleep here.”

  A smile ghosts across the sister’s face. “I think we can promise you good dreams.”

  Order of Eternity takes her arm, draws her down the corridor.

  “It’s supposed to be organic,” Aiah says. “Something about the adrenal gland.”

  “We will repair it,” says the dreaming sister, “and anything else we may find.”

  I
f anyone else had said this, Aiah would have fled at the very idea of this kind of plasm intrusion into her body. But if anyone had earned the right to float through Aiah’s mind, the Dreaming Sisters had.

  Besides, Aiah is too weary to resist. A hammer batters her skull with every beat of her heart.

  They pass a carving of Death, and there is Taikoen, still with that eerie shimmer. Aiah gives a shudder and shrinks from the image.

  “It’s still there,” she says. “Shouldn’t it have changed by now?”

  “These things come in time.”

  “I was afraid that it was still alive.”

  “No.” On this point the sister is firm. “That being no longer exists.”

  “I feel him in my head, in the way I see things. I keep thinking he’s alive.”

  “We will correct that as well.”

  She finds Aiah an empty alcove, helps Aiah lie down. The plasm contact is already there, and Order of Eternity uncoils it and hands the curved copper tip to Aiah.

  “What do I do?” Aiah asks.

  “Take the contact into your mouth,” the sister says. “Close your eyes. Breathe deep. You need do nothing else— our meditations will find their way to you.”

  Aiah takes the cool metal into her mouth and feels at once the touch of plasm— not plasm fire, not the raging primal essence, but a soft tingling warmth, a glow. She had expected the copper to taste bitter, but it seems to have no taste at all. She closes her eyes.

  “Thank you,” she mumbles around the contact.

  Order of Eternity does not answer, and instead Aiah hears the slap of the sister’s feet on the flags as she withdraws.

  The tingling warmth of plasm seems to steal into Aiah’s frame. Like sleep, she thinks, but more than that, a kind of strange awareness of something other…

  Images seem to pulse on the backs of Aiah’s eyelids, mere phosphor glow at first, then things more concrete, images of airships and dolphins, children and trees, sky-topping buildings and birds in flight, all processing through her thoughts, dissolving one into the other... like the sisters’ aerial displays, but far more stately, each image lingering, impressing itself on Aiah’s mind, like figures in an eternal dance. And with them there is a sound, like a primal wind keening across the sharp corners of the world.