CHAPTER 20
LIFE EXTENSION
MORE AFFORDABLE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK
Police have a knock louder than anyone else in the world, and there’s no mistaking it. Aiah stares at the door while fear grips her throat. Then she walks to the door and tries to calm herself.
There are at least three different kinds of police outside: the two in suits and subdued lace are plainclothes Authority creepers, big men who threaten to fill the doorway. Behind them are a pair of district police in their brown uniforms, and a blue-uniformed Loeno security woman who seems bewildered by the whole thing.
Aiah suspects there may also be a mage floating invisibly overhead on a plasm sourceline, there to guard the cops in case Aiah dares to smite them with magework.
“May we come in?” the first creeper says, brandishing his ID. He has fatty eyelids that fall like curtains over his pebble eyes.
“No,” Aiah says.
Something else she learned at her granny’s knee. Once you let the cops in, you can’t get rid of them.
“We can go to a pross judge and get a warrant,” the creeper offers.
Aiah shrugs. “I’m sure I can’t stop you.” There’s a tremor behind her left knee that threatens to capsize her at any moment. More for support than anything else, Aiah leans a shoulder against the door jamb, though she tries to turn the movement into a confident gesture.
She looks up into the creeper’s eyes.
“What’s this about, exactly?”
The man looks at his partner, and it’s the partner who speaks, a man in a worn green suit. “Your name is Aiah, right?”
“Yes.”
“Where is your place of employment?”
Aiah smiles. “I work at the Plasm Control Authority headquarters on the Avenue of the Exchange.”
The cops look at each other again. Apparently they hadn’t known this.
“What do you do there?” says Green Suit.
Aiah’s smile broadens. Somewhere in the back of her brain is a nasty little imp who’s enjoying this more than she should.
“I’m a Grade Six. Right at the moment I’m assigned to Mr. Rohder, the head of the Research Division, engaged in a special project solving major plasm thefts.”
The creepers seem to sag, the big shoulders crumpling inside the worn suits, and Aiah knows she’s won, at least for the present. She knows just what’s going through their minds: some hopeless bungle, one division of the Authority chasing another, lots of reports to file and probably someone’s ass on the hot seat.
Aiah’s imp tells her to follow up while she still has the advantage.
“Does this have to do with the arrests at Kremag and Associates?” she asks.
Her interrogators give her blank looks. “Where?”
“An Operation plasm house down on 1193rd Street, near Garakh Station. The Authority took it down late Friday. I provided the information that secured the warrants.”
“1193rd?” Fat Lids makes an effort to retrieve the situation. “How about 1190th? Were you at the factory that exploded first shift today?”
Aiah narrows her eyes and opens her arms, inviting them to feast their eyes. “Do I look like I’ve been through an explosion?”
“Were you there,” patiently, “before the explosion?”
“Possibly. Late Friday. I went down to look at the Kremag raid, but there was a lot of pepper gas and not much to look at, so I wandered around the neigborhood for awhile and then came home.”
Aiah considers herself lucky that the creepers are Jaspeeris who probably wouldn’t consider how implausible it is that any Barkazil would wander around Terminal by herself at an odd hour of the sleep shift.
The creeper starts again. “This factory—”
“I don’t really remember a factory,” Aiah says. “Although it’s possible that your factory might be one of the plasm houses I reported to Mr. Rohder. I don’t remember all the addresses, and I never actually saw any of them — except for Kremag, I mean.”
“Our plasm hound,” the creeper says, “led us from the factory straight to your door.”
Aiah shrugs. “Well,” she says, “I was in the neighborhood.”
“And you had nothing to do with the plasm station in the factory on 1190th that was used to assist in the overthrow of a foreign government?”
Aiah tries to look impressed. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Not unless it was on the list I gave to Mr. Rohder.”
The creeper circles back to the beginning. “And you won’t let us in?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Aiah folds her arms. “Because there’s obviously been a fuckup at the Authority,” she says, “and whichever of our superiors is responsible will be looking to foist the blame on someone else. Why should I cooperate in cutting my own throat?”
The creeper gives up. “We may have more questions later.”
“I’ll be at work tomorrow. You can talk to me then.”
The creeper nods. “Till next time,” he says.
GRADE B EARTHQUAKE IN QELHORN MOUNTAIN DISTRICT
100,000 FEARED DEAD
DETAILS ON THE WIRE.
Just act normally.
It isn’t hard. Nothing remaining in Aiah’s life is abnormal.
While brewing coffee early Monday she listens to the early newscasts. The casualties in the Caraqui coup are in the 50,000 range, divided about fifty-fifty between the firestorm victims on the Martyrs’ Canal and the Metropolitan Guard, who died almost to the last man. By now the authorities have connected the crashed plane in Makdar and the deflated airship in Liri-Domei with the coup, and some of the airship’s crew are being held pending charges.
There’s plenty on the news about the factory — neighboring buildings went up in smoke, and hundreds are homeless — but the reporters, as opposed to the police, haven’t as yet connected the building with Constantine or his coup. At least there’s no mention of Constantine’s mystery lover. It seems clear to the reporters that, whoever he was meeting with in the Landmark, it was to plan his attack.
On the pneuma, she reads Rohder’s Proceedings. At the kiosk on the Avenue of the Exchange, Aiah buys a lottery ticket, then heads for work. She stops by her office to pick up messages, and finds the office empty: no Telia, no Jayme. The message tube in her wire tray, from Mengene, informs her of an emergency meeting at 09:00.
She takes the elevator to Rohder’s office on the 106th floor. Rohder’s sitting at his desk, his pink face in his hands. It’s the first time Aiah’s ever seen him without a lit cigaret. When Aiah walks in, he straightens and looks at her with his head cocked to one side.
“The Investigative Division’s been onto me about you.”
“Yes. The creepers showed up at my apartment yesterday.” She walks up to his desk. “What’s it about? They asked a lot of questions but they didn’t tell me much.”
“That plasm well in Terminal we were looking for, the one that probably caused the Bursary Street flamer —” His pale blue eyes gaze up at her expressionlessly from behind his thick spectacles. “Well,” he continues, “someone used it to kill fifty thousand people yesterday.”
The shock that clamps a cold hand on Aiah’s throat isn’t feigned. She hadn’t considered the facts in quite this brutal light before.
She clears her throat. “Was it one of the addresses I gave you?”
“No.”
“Well — at least we were looking for it. If those others had backed us, maybe we’d have found it before this, ah, disaster happened.”
Rohder nods slowly, his eyes fixed on her. “Since I last saw you I’ve procured two more warrants, by the way. There was another big arrest late yesterday.”
“Well,” Aiah restrains an impulse to wave her arms. “What more do they want from us? We were looking — and that’s more than the creepers ever did!”
“Ah. Yes.” Rohder frowns and looks at his hands. “As it happens I had a call from the Intendant earlier today. He congratulated me on the way I — we — had managed to discover so many plasm houses in such a short time. But he pointed out — nicely, I thought — that it wasn’t really my job to find criminals, and that we should really share our methods with the Investigative Division, who could then finish the work for us.”
Anger buzzes through Aiah’s brain. It’s all going to waste, she thinks.
“Did you point out that one of the plasm cheats we found was in the Investigative Division?” she asks.
“Well. No. Not as yet.”
“If we give the creepers our method — my method — any investigation in the district plasm stations will likely be carried out by the same corrupt officials who were paid off in the first place. And if word of the method gets out, the crooks will know that all they have to do is program a little more efficiently, and then we won’t catch them.”
Rohder frowns, then reaches for a pack on the table and thoughtfully draws out a cigaret. “I know,” he says. “And I’m sure the lesson’s been learned before, over the decades. Someone like you comes along, the thieves get cautious for a while, and then they get careless again and a few get caught and the rest learn again to be more cautious.” He sighs, looks at the cigaret for a moment, then puts it in his mouth and lights it.
His eyes shift restlessly; he won’t look at her. The cigaret bobs up and down in his mouth as he speaks. “What I’m saying is, well, fine, we caught a few. And the creepers will catch a few more with the information we gave them. But as far as developing any more leads goes, well, the Intendant doesn’t want it.”
“We make the Investigative Division look bad.”
“That’s a part of it, yes.”
Anger and frustration crackle through Aiah’s nerves. She doesn’t have to act this part, she knows, all her anger is perfectly genuine. The truth is bitter on her tongue as she lashes out.
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I find a plasm thief in the Investigative Division, and within two days the creepers are trying to pin some kind of major crime on me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone of your discovery. I was going to approach the Intendant properly when the moment suited. Did you tell anyone?”
“No.”
“Your office mate? Anyone?”
“No one at all.”
Rohder stares uneasily out the window. “Do you think someone crept in and read the notes on my desk? Most odd, if true — no one’s expressed an interest in my work in years.”
“How many years has it been since you uncovered a major crime being committed in our own headquarters building?”
“Oh, thirty years or thereabouts.” He waves a hand airily while Aiah stares at him in surprise. “I had forgotten, till this business reminded me.” Rohder draws in smoke, his watery eyes fixed on the distant horizon.
His glance lifts and, finally, he looks at her. “I have exerted myself on your behalf already,” he says. “I spoke rather forcefully to the creepers, and I will also speak to Mengene and the Intendant.”
Aiah tries to conceal her glee. Like every other division of government, the police are stacked heavy with layers of officialdom anxious to protect their jobs and their privileges. If Aiah can win the bureaucratic war on the top floors of the Authority building, she can stifle the investigation below before it properly starts. Unless they get more physical evidence, Aiah thinks, the creepers are out of luck.
“Thank you, Mr Rohder,” she says.
He cocks his head again, blue eyes blinking, and Aiah feels as if she’s being regarded by some strange, hunched waterfowl. “I am sorry to have to return you to your job. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly rewarding one. I looked at your record — you’ve never had any education in live plasm use?”
“No. I couldn’t afford it.”
“Your advancement here would go faster with a degree in plasm engineering.”
“Perhaps you know a millionaire I could marry.”
“Ah.” Cigaret ash falls on Rohder’s lace. He brushes at it absently, “I have occasionally taken leaves of absence from the Authority to teach,” he says, “and some of my students have kept in touch. One is now chancellor of Margai University, and there are scholarships that are within his prerogative. If I were to recommend you, you would almost certainly be accepted, and the Authority would be more than pleased to grant you a leave of absence. When you returned with the degree, your career prospects would be enhanced.”
The offer takes Aiah’s breath away. She stares at Rohder for a long moment and makes an effort to compose herself before answering. “Ah,” she says. “Yes. Yes, I’d be grateful for the recommendation.”
“Well then.” Rohder swabs at his lace again as he stands, and then he offers his hand. “It was a pleasure working with you. If you have any more of these little projects in mind, do call me.”
Aiah takes his hand. “Thank you again. I learned a great deal.”
Rohder looks puzzled. “I can’t see how, Miss Aiah. Good day.”
Obedience is the Greatest Gift
— a thought-message from His Perfection, the Prophet of Ajas
“Creepers!” Telia reports. She’s nursing Jayme, and for once the office is quiet. “I just spent half an hour with them! What the hell is this about?”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing!” Telia’s eyes are guileless, “I don’t tell people things, you know that.” She leans closer and lowers her voice, and Aiah hopes there isn’t some mage hovering in the room, overhearing every word. “I didn’t mention your little after-hours thing,” Telia whispers. Or course she’d told maybe a hundred other people in the building, but maybe the creepers wouldn’t know to ask any of them.
Aiah wonders how many people had seen her driving off in Constantine’s limousine.
“The folks upstairs are covering their asses,” Aiah says. “They’re trying to lay blame on me because they wrote off the Bursary Street flamer without a proper investigation.” She drops into her gray metal chair and it sags about twenty degrees to the right. Anger flares in Aiah’s heart. She swivels the chair left and right, but the list remains.
“Shit!” she shouts, stands and kicks the chair across the room, where it crashes into the other two disabled chairs. All three chairs tumble onto the cracked tile floor. Fury flares in her veins. “I don’t know how many reports we’ve filed with Maintenance in the last year!”
Urgency enters Telia’s voice again. “But the investigation . . . what are you going to do?”
Aiah restrains herself from giving the chair another kick. “Tell me,” she demands, “if I should be afraid of an organization that can’t even fix a chair.”
TRACKLINE INTENDANT RESIGNS!
MAINTAINS INNOCENCE
SCANDAL CLAIMS ITS GREATEST VICTIM
Aiah walks into the 09:00 emergency meeting pushing her broken chair in front of her. While the others watch, she places the chair against the wall and then sits in one of the comfortably padded chairs at the long boardroom table. The others observe but do not comment.
Oeneme is present in person, testifying to the seriousness of the meeting, “I’m not interested in facts,” he says. “I’m interested in impressions.”
Oeneme’s subordinates duly supply him with their impressions, relieved of the duty of mentioning the fact that it was Oeneme himself who ignored Rohder’s report that the flamer’s sourceline was eastward and instead ordered Emergency Response to Old Parade.
The meeting drags on for three hours and, as no one is willing to say anything pertinent, accomplishes nothing.
In the New City, Aiah thinks darkly, all these people would be thrown out onto the street to beg for their bread.
When Aiah leaves the meeting, she drags her plush chair behind her and takes it to her office. Everyone sees, but no one says a word.
Her office smells of urine and baby stool. Two creepers wait for her there, small, polite men in neat suits, a different style from the street bruisers she met yesterday. “We’d like you to come with us,” one says, speaking over the wails of the baby.
“Are you going to buy me lunch?” Aiah asks.
They look at each other. “No.”
“Then you can wait till after midbreak.”
She plants the stolen chair in front of her desk and leaves. Outside, she buys a bowl of savory broth with rice noodles from a vendor and eats it while sitting on a bench on the Avenue of the Exchange. She reads Proceedings, making notes, for the rest of the lunch hour, then collects the deposit on her soup bowl and heads back to her office.
The creepers are waiting when she returns. Telia leaves for her own lunch, taking the baby with her. For the next hour Aiah answers the creepers’ patient questions. When they start to ask the same questions all over again, hoping to catch her in some contradiction, she calls an end to it.
“Unless you have anything new to ask, I have a job to do.”
Somewhat to her surprise, the creepers put away their notes, thank her pleasantly, and leave.
NEW CITY STUDY GROUP FORMING
CONTACT BOX 1205
“15.31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114m. Ne?”
“Da. 15:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Confirmed.”
“15:31, Horn Six transmit at 800 mm. 30 minutes. Ne?”
“Da. 15:31, Horn Six transmit at 800 mm. 30 minutes. Confirmed.”
IS ALDEMAR CONSTANTINE’S NEW LOVER?
SPECULATION SWEEPS MEDIA!
Her yellow message light blinks furiously in her apartment. All the messages are from relatives approached by the creepers: they all want to know what they should say, if anything, and simultaneously demand to know what she’s really up to.
No messages from her mother; maybe the creepers haven’t located her as yet.
Aiah goes out to buy supplies for supper, and while at the grocer’s uses a pay phone to call her grandmother.
“What’s happening?” Galaiah demands. “Did you do something stupid? Did that passu of yours get you in trouble?”
“I haven’t done anything stupid. I haven’t done anything at all. It’s some people above me who are trying to cover up their idiocy — too complicated to explain, really.”
“You’re a Barkazil. They’ll sell you out without even thinking about it.”
“I know.” Aiah looks at the grocery customers standing in lines with their sacks of food and wonders if she’s being followed. There are some Jaspeeri men loitering by the exit, but then on the other hand there are always people loitering there, and they don’t have to be creepers.
And of course if some mage is following her on an invisible plasm tether, she’d never know.
“Nana,” she says, “I’d appreciate it if you could just ask everyone in the family to tell the police they don’t know anything, and they think I’m an honest person. I don’t know if it would help, but at least it wouldn’t put anybody in jeopardy.”
“Your mother,” Galaiah says darkly.
“Yes,” Aiah says, heart sinking. Gurrah would tell the creepers anything that came into her head and worry about incriminating her daughter later.
“I’ll tell her to throw them out and say nothing,” Galaiah says. “That way she can play a scene.”
Aiah is relieved. “Do that, please. If I suggest that, she’ll just do the opposite.”
“True.”
“And tell people that I... well, someone may be listening on my phone, so they should be careful about the messages they leave me.”
“Yes. I’ll tell them.”
“Thank you, Nana.”
“You be careful. You can’t trust longnoses.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you talk to them, either.”
“I don’t have anything to tell them, anyway.”
On the way home Aiah buys a few pieces of fruit from a street vendor — a battered orange and a pair of plums. At home she washes the plums carefully with water and chlorine bleach — that’s what you do with street fruit — and eats one. The pulp is strangely tasteless, full of juice but without savor.
Constantine’s arboretum, she thinks, has spoiled her for the ordinary stuff.
HYDROGEN LEAK KILLS 50 IN FIFTEENTH WARD!
Aiah makes a sauce for vat curd out of freeze-dried vegetables and some spring onions from her pocket garden, then watches the video news. Disaster teams from other areas are pouring into Caraqui. Drumbeth, on behalf of the new triumvirate, speaks about the need for aid and compassion, his voice firm, his tone a bit fierce. A member of the Keremath family, who as ambassador to another metropolis escaped the coup, denounces the new government as murderers and proclaims a government in exile. The few surviving Mondray’s Regulars, having surrendered, are being air-shuttled back to the Timocracy.
Considerable air time is devoted to speculation about Constantine, even though he hasn’t appeared in public since yesterday. There’s much more interest in Constantine than in Drumbeth or any other member of the actual government.
Aiah swallows a mouthful of pasta and curd. In Caraqui, she thinks, things are happening.
GARGELIUS ENCHUK ON TOUR
TICKETS AVAILABLE ON THE WIRE!
“09:00 hours, Horn Two reorientation to degrees 040. Ne?”
“Da. 09:00 hours, Horn Two reorientation to degrees 040. Confirmed.”
“09:00, Horn Two transmit at 1400 mm. 10 minutes. Ne?”
“Da. 09:00, Horn Two transmit at 1400 mm. 10 minutes. Confirmed.”
COUP SURVIVOR DENOUNCES CONSTANTINE
CALLS FOR WORLD COUNCIL INTERVENTION
By midbreak the Wire has found out about the burned factory’s connection to the coup in Caraqui and a pack of reporters sits in the Authority lobby demanding information. Another emergency meeting is called.
“Simple,” Mengene says. “We blame everything on Constantine. The factory fire, the Bursary Street flamer, everything.”
“There’s no evidence connecting him to either,” Oeneme points out.
“Who else could it be? And even if it wasn’t, who cares? We’re not judges, we don’t need evidence just to smear him in the media. It gets us completely off the hook.”
Oeneme smiles. “All I have to say is that our investigation is aimed at making a connection between Constantine and the factory.”
“Exactly. Let the reporters do our work for us.”
Aiah glances up from the spilled-coffee circles she’s drawing on the glass tabletop, looks at the broken office chair leaning against the wall’s gold-plated chrysanthemum pattern, and smiles.
If the official blame is laid on Constantine, she thinks, that means they can’t lay it on her.
DOLPHIN APPOINTED TO MINISTRY
PAYOFF FOR SUPPORT IN COUP
No one has explained this line of reasoning to the creepers, however, who show up after Aiah’s lunch break for another round of questions. They’ve got ahold of her finances and have discovered that a few weeks ago she paid off debts totaling over six hundred dalders.
“I paid them,” Aiah says, “because my lover phoned to tell me that he was sending a cashgram for eight hundred. And if you’ve got my bank accounts, you’ll see that he did just that.”
“Where did you get the six hundred? Your bank balance had only forty-some dalders in it.”
“From the emergency fund under my mattress,” Aiah says. She leans back onto the plush cushions of her stolen chair and forges ahead with the story she’s readied ahead of time.
“I play the lottery. Every so often I win — not much, never more than twenty — and I put the winnings away.” She reaches into her pocketbook and picks up the ticket she’d bought before work.
“Why don’t you put the money in a bank?”
“Twenty isn’t worth a trip to the bank.” She shrugs. “Besides, it’s a Barkazil thing. We don’t trust banks much. My family lost everything when the banks failed in the Barkazi war.”
The creepers gaze down at her with perfect skepticism. “But when the eight hundred came,” one says, “you left it in the bank. You didn’t put it under your mattress.”
Aiah shrugs. “It wasn’t my money. It was Gil’s. I still have a hundred-and-some stashed in a bag under the mattress, though.”
Which is perfectly true. If they’ve got a mage with a warrant, he’ll find it there.
They try to shake this story for some time, but Aiah digs in her heels and insists on the truth of her story. They can’t prove she never had cash stashed in her apartment.
After the questions circle back to this point for a third time, she tells them she needs to get to work.
Again, they leave when she tells them to. Perhaps, she thinks, she’s getting the upper hand.
LOTTERY SCANDAL WIDENS
INTENDANT PROMISES FULL INVESTIGATION
“14:20 hours, Horn One reorientation to degrees 357. Ne?”
“Da. 14:20 hours, Horn One reorientation to degrees 357. Confirmed.”
“14:2.0, Horn One transmit at 1850 mm. 20 minutes. Ne?”
“Da. 14:20, Horn One transmit at 1850 mm. 20 minutes. Confirmed.”
The office rings with Jayme’s screams and smells of dirty diapers and warm milk. There’s a numbing series of calls for plasm. Her ears and skull ache with the weight of the heavy headset.
In Caraqui, she thinks, things are happening.
CONSTANTINE LINKED TO FACTORY DISASTER IN JASPEER
DETAILS ON THE WIRE!
As she leaves the Authority building, Aiah looks up to see the gold letters unfolding across the sky, and her heart gives a leap.
Try and blame it on me now, she thinks.
CONSTANTINE IN HIDING
NO WORD FROM COUP MASTERMIND
The news is all about Constantine, even though no one’s seen him since Sunday. He’s been appointed Minister of Resources in the new government, a job that will put him in charge of plasm. Weekend business for Lords of the New City makes it the largest-opening chromoplay of all time, despite the fact that twenty percent of the planet’s population weren’t allowed to see it by their governments.
And authorities in Jaspeer have now officially linked him with the factory disaster. Much air time is absorbed by the government’s indignation.
Aiah’s communication rig chimes as she’s halfway through her leftover vat curd. She turns down the audio, leaving on video the image of Constantine overlaid with a red banner screaming Under Investigation, and then she picks up the headset. “Yes?”
“Hi. This is Gil. Good news.”
“I —”
“I’m coming back. In ten days or so. We’re wrapping everything up in Gerad. And I’m getting a promotion to assistant vice-president, which will bring us another five thousand a year.”
“I—” The message sinks in, and Aiah finds her heart hammering, her eyes darting wildly from one corner of the apartment to the next, as if an iron cage had just dropped over her. She swallows hard.
“At last,” she says.
“Don’t jump up and down with joy or anything.”
“Oh.” She swallows again. “I’m sorry. But there’s a problem here. I’m under investigation because some people think I helped Constantine launch this coup against the government of Caraqui.”
“Malakas! Did they find out about—”
Aiah shouts over Gil’s inconvenient question. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do anything!”
“Well.” Taken aback. “Of course you didn’t.”
“I’ve told them I don’t know Constantine, I’ve never met him, I’ve never helped him.”
“Ah.” Aiah can almost hear the wheels click over in his mind. “Okay.”
“It’ll turn out all right,” she reassures. “Their investigation doesn’t make any sense and they’ll have to drop it. The only problem is,” she tries to soften her voice, “I can’t tell you over the phone how much I want you, and what I’d do to you if you were here, because somebody might be listening.”
There’s a moment’s pause. Then, “Really? They’re on your phone? It’s that serious?”
“It’s not serious because nothing will come of it. But the Investigative Division can be very thorough when they want to be, and Constantine made us all look pretty foolish, so they may feel they’ve got to try to pin it on me if they can.”
There was a long, thoughtful pause, “I’m going to try to come home sooner. They don’t need me for the wrap-up as badly as they think.”
“You won’t be able to help.”
Gil’s voice is firm. “I can be with you. That’s what matters. Let me talk to Havell.”
Aiah knows she should receive comfort at this, but all she can feel is a bleak hollow where the comfort should be. “I’ve got other news — good news,” she says. “I’ve been doing some work for a man named Rohder — kind of a detective job, locating plasm thieves — and it’s gone well, and Rohder thinks he can see a way to my getting a degree.”
“You already have a degree.”
“But this will be a degree in plasm engineering. I’ll be qualified for much better jobs once I get back to the Authority.”
Let any eavesdroppers know of her long-range plans, she thinks. Let them know she plans to be with the Authority for a long time. Let them know her life is just fine.
TWISTED DEMAND CIVIL RIGHTS IN THEOCRACY OF CHANDRAB
300 KILLED BY ZEALOUS POLICE
“12:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Ne?”
“Da. 12:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Confirmed.”
“12:34, Horn Six transmit at 1200 mm. 30 minutes. Ne?”
“Da. 12:31, Horn Six transmit at 200 mm. 30 minutes. Confirmed.”
“Incorrect. Incorrect. 1200 mm. Not 200.”
“1200 mm. Confirmed.”
WHERE IS CONSTANTINE?
RUMORS FLY OF IMPENDING COUP IN CHELOKI
The news is filled with images from Caraqui. The thousands of dead are being loaded onto barges and will then be towed to a deep part of the Sea of Caraqui and sunk.
Aiah makes herself watch the video, watch the rescue crews in their gauze masks, the stretchers with the blackened bodies curled in the prayer position, wailing relatives hoping for a miracle, icons of Dhoran of the Dead raised high, clergymen in their robes and masks muttering blessings and splashing each body with holy aloe. So many clergymen they could form an assembly line.
That plasm well, Rohder had said. Someone used it to kill fifty thousand people.
Rohder, Aiah’s friend and benefactor.
A tug tows the first barge down the wide Martyrs’ Canal, past a vista of hollow building shells and survivors sobbing their last farewells.
My fault, she thinks.
And then Constantine appears and Aiah’s heart leaps. He’s prowling along the waterfront, dressed somberly in black velvet and dark mourning lace, face etched in a scowl. The reporters surge toward their target, scattering mourners. Constantine looks at the cameras, and Aiah recognizes at once the brooding intelligence in his eyes.
When his mind is working, she thinks, you can see it.
There is a chime from Aiah’s communications array. Clenching her teeth, she ignores it and fixes her attention on the video.
“No one intended this tragedy,” Constantine says. “Neither our forces nor those of the previous government. It is the task of the new government to make certain that all these lives . . .” Constantine’s eyes lift slightly and scan towards the canal, towards the barges piled with their dead. Good dramatics, Aiah thinks. In her apartment, the chime continues.
Constantine’s gaze returns to his audience. “That all these lives,” he continues, “will not be written off as an unfortunate accident. These, no less than those who died to capture the Aerial Palace, are the honored dead of the revolution. Their survivors deserve no less than the soldiers who died in the fight against the Keremaths — they deserve a better Caraqui, prosperous, free and just. They deserve the New City. And I am here to pledge on behalf of the government that they will get it.”
Nicely done, Aiah thinks. If Constantine had simply made a speech in the normal way, it would have been ignored or cut into snippets by news editors. But by hiding out for a couple days, then showing up on the quay and pretending his appearance was spontaneous, he got his message across to the world without it being filtered.
There is an art to this, she thinks. Because he enhances his words with art doesn’t mean they aren’t sincere, it just gives them more force.
Fifty thousand dead, Aiah thinks, and Aiah is at least partly responsible, and Constantine has promised to do what he can to give meaning to all that, and meanwhile Aiah is in Jaspeer preparing for her college career.
The commo rig stops chiming and begins to speak in Gurrah’s voice. “The police were here,” she says to the recorder, “asking about you.”
Aiah drags her eyes from the oval eye of the video and jumps to grab the headset and punch the answer button.
“Mama?” she says. “I just came in the door. What happened?”
“The police were here. They asked me about you, but I just told ’em to clear off.”
“Good for you!” Aiah encourages. With Gurrah, it’s usually a good idea to reinforce good behavior as often as possible.
Aiah steps back from the commo rig so that she can see the video screen. Constantine’s appearance is over, and the program has cut to newly appointed members of the new Caraqui government arriving at the Aerial Palace for a meeting. Aiah recognizes Adaveth, the twisted man, his huge liquid eyes gazing at the reporters while he marches past battle-damaged doors carrying his briefcase.
“There were two cops,” Gurrah says. “One of them had a white leather jacket, like he got it from some streetwalker. What kind of cops wear white leather jackets?”
“The kind you shouldn’t talk to,” Aiah says.
Gurrah’s voice rises in pitch, a tone Aiah knows all too well, and Aiah’s heart sinks. “I knew you were going to get in trouble,” Gurrah says. “I knew ever since Senko’s Day.”
“Ma—” Aiah warns.
“After you made that scene and called me all kinds of names—”
“I didn’t call you names.” The words burst out before Aiah can stop them.
“In front of your grandmother and everything,” Gurrah says. “Why are my children so disrespectful?”
Gurrah’s tones are sulky, but Aiah thinks she recognizes a tone of triumph.
Her mother, Aiah thinks, knows her too well, knows exactly how to get the reaction she wants.
“Ma,” Aiah says, “we probably shouldn’t talk about family matters over the phone. The creepers might be listening.”
“You are in trouble if they’re tapping your phone!” Gurrah says. “I knew it!”
On the video, members of the Keremath administration are being hustled off to jail by Geymard’s mercenaries. Police officials, members of the Specials, high-ranking military men, being shoved into their own dungeons.
“I’m not in trouble, not really, because I haven’t done anything,” Aiah says. “The administration is trying to cover up its own idiocy.”
“They always blame the Barkazil,” Gurrah says. “You know that.”
“It makes it convenient for them,” Aiah says, “but it won’t work.”
“You should talk to your mother more. I can help you.”
Aiah makes an effort to change the topic. “Hey,” she says brightly, “I have some news! I may be going back to college for a degree!”
“More longnose education,” Gurrah says darkly. “What good is it?”
“Education is education,” Aiah says. “What university in Barkazi is going to give me a full scholarship?”
Aiah tries to disguise her satisfaction at the argument being channeled into such familiar paths. She lets Gurrah score a few points, then says she has to get supper ready and brings the conversation to an end.
Aiah shifts to another station. More images from Caraqui, more Special Police being dragged off to the subaquatic basements of their own prisons.
And more dead, presumably.
Later that shift, while buying bread at the local bakery, she sees a man in a white leather jacket hanging in the doorway drinking a soda. Later she sees the same man, without the trademark jacket, following her home. Interesting, she thinks.
CORRUPTION ALLEGED IN POLICE
“MILLIONAIRE COMMISSIONER” DENIES KNOWING OWN WORTH
“15:31, Horn Six transmit at 430 mm. 6 minutes. Ne?”
“Da. 15:31, Horn Six transmit at 430 mm. 6 minutes. Confirmed.” Aiah thinks of fifty thousand dead, the barges nosing out to deep water with the cargo of ash. Their survivors, she remembers, deserve no less. She thinks of Constantine, his big hands stroking her skin.
She looks at the picture of Gil in its wetsilver frame, and sees the face of a stranger.
STRIFE ALLEGED IN OPERATION
TWO STREET COLONELS ASSASSINATED
Another creeper turns up in her office and asks her a lot of familiar questions. Aiah answers patiently, her answers consistent with everything she’s said before, and she looks up into the scowling face of her interrogator and thinks: You may have a new boss soon, courtesy of me.
She settles into her stolen chair. “I thought the government was officially blaming Constantine for this one,” she says. “Why are you bothering to question me at all?”
“Constantine may have had accomplices.”
“Constantine’s accomplices aren’t lousy Grade Sixes in Jaspeer,” Aiah says. “Constantine’s accomplices are being appointed to run whole departments in Caraqui. Do you really think if I knew Constantine, I’d be stupid enough to stay here when I could be in Caraqui living like a queen?”
Asking the question leaves a bitter taste in Aiah’s mouth. Sometimes, she thinks, a question implies its own answer, its own perfect truth.
“Maybe you don’t want to leave Jaspeer,” the creeper says. “You were born here and have lived here all your life, and you have a lover here. Jaspeer is your metropolis.”
“My metropolis,” Aiah says, suddenly in passionate love with the truth, “was destroyed before I was born.”
After the creeper leaves, Aiah puts on her headset, logs in, and, between calls on her computer, begins to plan her escape.
If the ID is really going to follow her everywhere, she thinks, that’s going to complicate everything.
LODAQ III OVERTHROWN!
IS CONSTANTINE’S INFLUENCE SPREADING?
DETAILS ON THE WIRE!
Aiah gives it three more days. The creepers are still following her at least part of the time; sometimes they’re easy to spot, particularly after she starts recognizing faces, but sometimes she just can’t be sure. Any plan she develops has to deal with the possibility that she might be tailed without knowing it.
Aiah calls the Wisdom Fortune Temple and finds out the times of their services.
The easiest way to follow her, she knows, is through telepresence. From the back of one kitchen cabinet she takes one of the plasm batteries that, all those weeks ago, she carried in her tote bag to and from Terminal. She takes it to her plasm meter and fixes the battery’s alligator clip to the live well wire.
Dials click over as the battery fills. It’s the first time Aiah has ever used the plasm connection in her building.
She puts a finger on the contact and feels her nerves cry at the touch of plasm. The sensation takes her breath away.
She had tried very hard to forget what this was like.
Aiah recalls how plasm turned gold in the sky when she was feeding it to Red Bolt. She takes a breath and expands her sensorium, tries to attune it to the presence of plasm. Carefully she scours her apartment.
Nothing other than the glow she’s generating herself.
But any hypothetical mage following her might have guessed what she was attempting and flown his anima somewhere else. So she pops her own anima out into the hallway outside — nothing there — and then looks in the apartment across the hall, above, below and to either side.
Still nothing, saving the knowledge that the lady next door is cutting her toenails.
Aiah takes the finger off the contact, makes certain the battery is full, and detaches the alligator clip. She looks at the meter and realizes she now owes six hundred dalders to the Authority.
She puts the battery in her tote along with a dark blue jacket, her ivory necklace, Volume Fourteen of the Proceedings, a floppy hat and her passport. She takes the money from under her mattress, hesitates for a moment, then adds the portrait of Karlo. Then she dons a light beige jacket, picks up a pillow and leaves the apartment.
In one of Loeno’s basements she uses her Authority passkey to open a metal door leading into the utility tunnel. Once inside she puts her finger on the battery contact again, checks for watchers, then takes her checktube from its hiding place behind the plasm main, wipes off the gritty dust and stows it in her tote.
She leaves Loeno Towers by her usual door and almost at once sees the creepers’ car drifting down the street after her. When she drops into the New Central Line Station, two creepers have to exit in a hurry and follow her.
New Central Line to Red Line to Circle Line. The last car jolts so badly it nearly puts her back out of joint. She leaves the trackline at Old Shorings and almost dances to the surface.
Childhood memories rise along with the scent of food and the sound of music rolling out of open windows. The buildings lean on their scaffolds like old friends bending over her to wish her well. Chardug the Hermit greets her cheerfully from his pillar, and she drops a little change in his basket.
The last time, she thinks, she’ll see any of this.
For good luck she buys a bowl of hot noodles flavored with onions and chiles, her favorite. Above her head, plasm Lynxoid Brothers battle the Blue Titan in an advertisement for the new chromoplay. Glancing down the street she can see the unhappy pale faces of the Jaspeeri cops standing out like neon displays amid the brown Barkazil population, and Aiah has to turn away to hide her smile.
Aiah climbs the worn metal stair to the Wisdom Fortune Temple, passing two elderly women in white-and-blue temple garb who have stopped on the landing to catch their breath. The steel door is open and Aiah enters, breathing in the scent of the packaged herbs behind the store counter. Behind the counter is Dhival, Khorsa’s sister, dressed in red-and-gold velvet robes, her face dramatic with heavy cosmetics.
Dhival looks surprised, but comes out from behind the counter to give Aiah an embrace and a kiss on each cheek. “Have you come for services?”
“Is Khorsa here?”
“In her office. I’ll get her.”
“I need to speak to her privately, if I might.”
Dhival looks surprised. “Fine. Just go back, then.”
Aiah finds the office and knocks on the open door, and Khorsa looks up from a thick ledger. Splendid in her scarlet temple robes, she rises to give Aiah a hug. At the touch of Khorsa’s cool cheek on her own, Aiah feels a degree of tension ebbing from her.
Khorsa looks at the pillow Aiah carries and says, “Can I loan you a robe?”
“The pillow’s camouflage. Actually I was hoping for some help.”
Khorsa draws back, looks at Aiah, and shows no surprise at all. “Of course, after everything we owe you. What do you need?”
“There are two Jaspeeri men following me. I want to evade them for a few hours.”
Khorsa tilts her head and considers the problem. “Evade how? I can send a message to the Vampire clubhouse and have those two sent to a hospital, if that’s what you want.”
“No. That would only get people in trouble. All I’d like is to get out the back way, if there is one, and for you to make certain I’m not being followed till I get to the pneuma station.” Aiah reaches into her tote, pulls out the full plasm battery. “Can you or Dhival use telepresence technique?”
“I’m better at it than she is,” Khorsa said. “But you don’t have to give me plasm. I can dip my own well.”
Finger-cymbals begin chiming from the temple. Aiah holds the battery out.
“Take it. It’s too heavy to carry with me.”
Khorsa looks at the battery, reluctance on her face, then takes it in her many-ringed hands. She looks back at Aiah. “Dare I ask what this is about?”
“It’s very complicated,” Aiah says, hoping she won’t have to make a passu out of Khorsa, but the tiny woman keeps looking at her, and finally Aiah gives in. “Those two are police,” Aiah says, “I found out some things about their department — it involves corruption — and now I want to get away from them for a while.”
Khorsa absorbs this and shifts at once to practical matters. “Do you need shelter?”
“Oh no. Thank you. If I can get a few hours away from them, things will settle themselves. I just need to know that no one is following me — neither those two, nor a mage.”
Khorsa nods, “I’d best go into the temple and let them know that someone else will have to beat the drum during the service. Wait here. I’ll be back.”
Khorsa puts the plasm battery on her desk and bustles out. Aiah takes off her beige jacket and puts it into her tote, then takes out the blue jacket and puts it on. She pins up her long hair, then pulls the floppy hat out of her tote and tugs it over her head.
A drum beats tentatively in the temple and Khorsa returns. She looks at Aiah, reaches up to pull the hat brim more firmly into place, and then nods. “If I see anyone following,” she says, “I’ll give a signal. A red glow right in front of your face. I’ll try to make certain you’re not blinded, but I want you to see it.”
Aiah nods.
“If they follow you, what will you do then? Will you need protection?”
“I’ll come back and attend the service. Then I’ll go home, and I’ll know that they’re better than I had reason to suspect.”
Khorsa purses her lips and looks thoughtful, “I wish I could give you more help.” The drum beats steadily now and Aiah can hear Dhival calling for everyone to enter the temple. The worshipers begin clapping and chiming finger cymbals as they file in.
“Might as well get started,” Khorsa says. She reaches behind the desk, opens a small door, reveals a plasm connection and contacts. Khorsa produces a t-grip from her robe pocket, jacks it into the connection, and then settles herself into her chair.
The battery remains on her desk. Perhaps she means to return it to Aiah later, or maybe she just wants the city’s well because it gives her more flexibility.
“I’ll scout the outside of the building first,” she says. “If someone’s watching the back alley we may have to rethink everything.”
Khorsa closes her eyes in concentration, and Aiah uneasily shifts her tote from one shoulder to the other. She can feel perspiration gathering under her hat brim.
Music rises and falls, an invocation of Dhoran of the Dead. Aiah pictures it spilling out into the street through the open windows, the Jaspeeri cops looking up and wondering.
A laugh bubbles up from Khorsa’s lips. “They’re both out front,” she says. “They are looking very uncomfortable. What kind of cops are these? You’d think they’d be more at home on the street.”
“Authority cops.”
“Oh.” Dismissively. “No wonder.” There is another moment of silence. “No one in the alley,” she says. “No one watching that I can see.”
Jump to it, girl, Aiah thinks. But her feet don’t move, she stands in place and looks at Khorsa and suddenly wants never to leave, to shelter here forever amid the sweet smell of herbs, the music and chanting...
It is Dhoran of the Dead they are invoking, she remembers, and thinks of the barges trailing little wisps of ash as they move down the Martyrs’ Canal.
Her legs jerk as if hit by an electric shock, and take her out of the room faster than the speed of thought.
Down the stair, out the back hall. The tote bangs against her hip. She hits the back door, pushes it open against resistance. Something clatters as the door opens, and she steps out into an alley that smells of urine and rotting food.
The alley is filled with broken glass, old furniture and piles of human feces. Whoever lives here doesn’t seem to be around at the moment, and Aiah darts around the worst of the mess. The sound of chanting follows her like a friendly memory. Once out of the alley she heads east in order to put several streets between her and the Authority cops, and then turns north to the pneuma station. The pneuma isn’t really in this neighborhood, being almost a radius away, but with brisk walking she thinks she can probably make it in ten or twelve minutes.
She crosses a street and marches halfway down the block before she recognizes the big building coming up on her left, the old temple covered with stone carvings, the vines and monsters that loom at her out of her childhood. The porch before the steel doors is dusted with rice and other offerings.
Aiah slows as she passes, then dips a hand into her pocket, pulls out some coins, and flings them at the steel door. They splash like the silver drops of a fountain as they strike, a series of clean ringing sounds; and Aiah turns her back on the place, laughs and runs onward.
She hopes Khorsa is amused.
No red lights appear in front of her face.
There is a long, anxious wait on a cold, empty pneuma station. A stray sad thought of Gil sticks like a lump in her throat: he will return home to an empty apartment, to bills his salary won’t cover. She will have to send him money from her bank account, twenty or thirty thousand, something that will pay for half the apartment.
She climbs aboard the pneuma once it arrives, and it takes her straight to Gold Town InterMet, where she buys a ticket for Karapoor. Anxiety tingles through her thoughts as she has to show her passport to the sleepy-eyed ticket clerk to prove she can get into Karapoor — there might be a watch out on her. But the clerk doesn’t even glance at the picture, punches the button on her console, and Aiah’s token spins down a gray metal slide into her hand.
From Karapoor she can get on a high-speed pneuma that will take her halfway to Caraqui by noon tomorrow.
She steps into the InterMetropolitan and looks at her fellow travelers, mostly glassy-eyed commuters heading for home, and finds a seat by herself. The doors close. The wind whistles across the smooth surface of the car as the system inhales, and then there’s a kick to her spine as compressed air spits her out into the world.
Constantine has a way of being fatal to his friends. Sorya’s words flash through Aiah’s mind.
Well, she thinks, she’ll just have to take her chances.
She takes out the fourteenth volume of Proceedings and opens it. Rohder’s research will be her gift to Constantine when she arrives.
There’s no sign at the border to let her know she’s left Jaspeer, that she’s made her escape — there’s only the hiss of pneumatics as the car slows, as it drops out of the system and glides to a halt at the Karapoor InterMet station.
And then, as the weary passengers gather their belongings, the car is filled with sudden light, little glowing flecks of plasm fire that drop from the ceiling, that fall like particolored snow on the wondering, uplifted faces of the passengers. A gift from Khorsa, who has followed Aiah all this way.
The magical snowfall, Aiah notes, is every color in the world but red.
THE END
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Read a Series of Essays Walter wrote about Metropolitan
The following is an excerpt from City on Fire,
The second book in the saga of Aiah and Constantine
Hydrogen engines cough into life, and their barking roar echoes off the buildings. Winches roll; the huge cables straighten, then grow taut. Engineers peer at the bridges as the structures begin to creak— they are built to expand and contract as needed, at least within limits, but nothing has moved these structures in the centuries since the buildings were erected, and though everything has been cleaned and greased there is nevertheless anxiety that the bridges may not behave. Other engineers peer into bulky brass viewfinders set atop portable tripods: they are determining the distance between the buildings.
The wind moans around the cables, a baritone hum that rises occasionally to a shriek. Nothing anchors these buildings on their pontoons, nothing but the hugeness of their own inert mass and the mass of the other structures to which they are moored. Although the winches are slowly drawing in cable, it’s impossible to estimate by eye whether the buildings are moving closer or not. Elsewhere, out of sight, other cables are being slacked as these are drawn in.
The men at the viewfinders shout into their radios, and the winches grind to a stop; there is the sound of banging from the bridges, and then Rohder is waving his arms and the engines rumble to a stop. The sound of helicopters beats surprisingly loud in the sky.
Aiah walks out of the alcove and looks up— no copters, but letters flaming red against the dull gray clouds: The Provisional Government orders the public to behave in an orderly manner.
Provisional? Ridiculous. And what has there been but calm? Who is wasting government plasm on this? Above, the hermit twists in the wind. Below, Constantine is amid a clump of engineers, but he’s clearly visible, a head taller than any of them. His presence seems expanded by a wide grin. In the crowd, Rohder is distinguished only by the puffs of his cigaret smoke that are whipped away by the wind. The camera circles the group of men, patiently waiting for a revelation. Aiah approaches, reaches the fringes of the group, then hesitates. She really isn’t a part of this.
Rohder is shouting into a handheld radio, pink face flushing. “What did you say? Say again!” Its curved antenna dances with every word. Constantine, grin broadening, reaches for the radio, takes it, turns a little plastic knob, and hands it back. “That should work,” he says.
Rohder shouts again. When he gets his answer, he looks up at Constantine and speaks in a soft voice. “Six percent.” Aiah can barely hear him.
Constantine tilts his head back, and his laugh booms out above the sound of helicopters. He is playing, Aiah knows, to the camera, but his joy must be genuine enough. “Congratulations,” he says.
Rohder frowns. “We’ll do better next time. These buildings are two or three hundred years old, and the plans are lost. Our mass estimates were approximations.”
“Six percent is very good!” Projecting his voice to the man with the microphone.
That frown again. “I had hoped for better.” In a mumble that the soundman almost certainly did not catch. Apparently Rohder is not interested in securing his place in history.
Rohder has people monitoring the plasm outflow from the two buildings in order to get instant readings on any increase. The data is preliminary, since it might be skewed by any plasm use in the buildings, and only averages over the next several weeks will produce a final figure.
Still. Six percent. Worth millions a year, and all it took was some winches and cable.
Aiah approaches Rohder, who is now holding the heavy black radio in his hand and looking at it with a puzzled expression. “Here,” Constantine says, and switches it off for him.
“Congratulations,” Aiah says. “Are you glad you came to Caraqui?”
Cigaret ash drops onto Rohder’s windbreaker as he speaks. “I suppose. Too early to tell.”
“Mr. Rohder,” Constantine says formally, “I authorize you to proceed with further work.”
“Thank you,” Rohder says. “I can start tomorrow, if I can get the cooperation of the police.”
“Very good. I will speak to Mr. Gentri on your behalf.” He glances over his shoulder at where his boat is moored to the jetty. “Would you care to join me aboard my boat? I can offer you some wine and other refreshment.”
“In a moment. I need to, ah, deal with a few things. Send people home, and so forth.” He looks at the radio again, then— having learned where the switch is— turns it on. Little yellow dials begin to glow.
Constantine turns and heads for his boat. The camera follows him with the obsessiveness of a jealous lover. A seraphic smile graces Constantine’s face, as if all the problems in his world had just been solved. Behind, traffic begins to flow once more across the bridge.
He approaches Aiah and a cloud crosses his face, suggesting the recollection of a minor problem he’d forgotten about, and then the smile brightens again and he takes Aiah’s arm.
“Never mind ... that individual we mentioned,” he says. “He is not worth—” Then with utter suddenness and purest design, as if he had intended this all along, his powerful arms clasp her shoulders and fling her along the pavement. She is too bewildered even to cry out. Falling, she sees Constantine throwing himself in another direction, the camera still following him, the bright windbreakers of the engineers whirling like a pinwheel, the hermit swaying overhead in his sack. Aiah hits the ground and feels pavement bite her knees, her hands, her cheek. There is the sudden shock of a blast and then a breath of hot wind. Flying fragments cut Aiah’s flesh. Tears are startled into her eyes.
There is a crackling in the air above, flashes so bright they penetrate Aiah’s closed lids. The overwhelming sensation of plasm lifts hairs on her neck. Somewhere police sirens are crying out. Aiah rolls over, sees Constantine rise from amid a cloud of dust or smoke, then sprint, with astonishing speed for such a big man, toward his launch. Guards circle, the black outlines of evil little guns in their hands, guns with curled magazines.
Unsteadily, Aiah rises to her feet. Coughing sends a bolt of pain through her chest. “Help!” someone screams. “She’s hurt!” Part of the pavement where she and Constantine had been walking is shattered, as if struck with a giant hammer. The woman with the camera, Aiah sees, is sprawled on her back, arms outflung, flesh blackened: it is her soundman who is calling. Some distance away, the engineers in their colorful jackets are scattering like a flock of frightened birds.
Aiah’s only impulse is to follow Constantine. She gains her feet, sways, staggers after the darting, leather-clad figure. A police car rockets around the corner, lights flashing, siren calling out. Bangs and flashes continue overhead; she hears windows shatter. The sensation of plasm is so strong Aiah can almost taste it. There is a shocking rattle of gunfire, rapid percussion striking hard at Aiah’s ears, and the window of the police car turns opaque; the car slews sideways and, tires shot out, seems to slump. The gunfire goes on, striking sparks from the car’s flank. No! Aiah wants to shout, they’re on our side!
Constantine reaches the top of the metal stair that leads to the jetty and flings himself down it. His chief guard Martinus follows, wicked little gun held high in one big paw. Other guards pelt after. More police sirens cry. Aiah follows in the press, finds herself at the top of the stair, grabs the rail for balance. Blood from her abraded hands streaks the rusty stair rail as she runs down as fast as she can, aware that guards are clumping up behind her. Turbines whine as the guard boat chews water, heading for the broader canal beyond the lotus-bridge. The guards on board have guns out— larger, longer guns, as purposeful and evil as the small ones. The floating jetty bobs and bangs under racing feet. The two guards pass Aiah as they run.
The lines are cast off and the turbines are ready, the boat drifting away from the jetty. Constantine is standing in the cabin hatch, turned briefly to scan behind him. The boat comes up fast as Aiah runs for it. Constantine’s eyes widen and his mouth opens.
“Aiah! No!”
Too late. She leaps as the boat’s turbines throttle up. Her boots hit the deck and then shoot out from under her as the boat flies forward. She falls onto a black plastic chair bolted to the deck and feels the chair arm bite her ribs. She scrambles up, sees boiling foam under the stern counter, a bottle of wine spilling its contents as it rolls on the deck, shattered windows in the buildings, and the hermit, half his flesh burned away, swinging lifeless in his harness, dangling limbs and blackened hair. .. .
Aiah quickly looks the other way. Constantine has disappeared into the cabin in search of the emergency plasm batteries she knows are kept charged belowdecks. The guard boat plows on ahead. And then, lights flashing, a police boat, one of those that had been blocking traffic, turns into the canal. Fire crackles from the guard boat, a sudden drumming of rifles; and to Aiah’s amazement the water police are shooting back, a cluster of men on the foredeck carrying weapons and wearing helmets. There is a snapping sound, like firecrackers going off next to Aiah’s ear, and she realizes that it’s bullets, bullets snapping the sound barrier just over her head. It occurs to her that she should take cover, hide somewhere, but there’s nowhere to go, she’s on a boat. . . .
And then Aiah feels sudden heat on her face as the police boat explodes, first a yellow blast like a sunburst, then a beautiful blue cloud going up like a blooming flower, the hydrogen fuel flaming as it rises. The rattling gunfire shoots only one way now, the helmeted figures on the police boat falling to the deck or jumping into the water.
Dead Keremaths smile from the pontoon. Our family is your family.
Aiah jumps as a hand touches her shoulder. “Go into the cabin, miss,” a guard tells her, and Aiah sees it’s blond Khoriak, the first person she’d contacted when she’d come to Caraqui.
“Thank you," she says, and gives Khoriak an apologetic grin for being in the way— all she needed was direction, really— then makes her way down the hatch.
There are three people slumped on couches in the cabin, Constantine and Martinus and a guard Aiah doesn’t know. Each of them has a copper transference grip in his hand and has his eyes closed— they’re telepresent now, guarding the boat. Blood trickles down Constantine’s face from cuts on his scalp. His clothing is scarred and covered with dust.
Ahead, through glass windows, she can see the guard boat ram the police launch— it’s not an offensive move, it’s just intended to shove the police boat back into the broader canal and out of the way. The explosions overhead have ceased: whatever mage was attacking has given up, or had his sourceline cut off.
Aiah finds a place on one of the couches and sits. Soft black leather sighs beneath her, luxury inappropriate to the setting. There is a lot of food here, chafing dishes and elegant glass bowls sculpted with vines and bright red berries.
A celebratory feast, interrupted . . .
The sinking police boat is pushed into the wider canal. Constantine’s launch sways as it turns into the larger channel and accelerates. His eyes slit open, plasm power glimmering in the whites as he gazes at Aiah. “I did not want you to join us,” he says. “You would have been safer if you’d stayed behind.”
“I want to help,” she says. “What’s happening?”
“Countercoup. More than that I don’t know.” Constantine’s voice is strangely calm. “You will be of use,” he says, “if we can reach the Palace.” His eyes close.
The boat’s bow lifts as it accelerates. Aiah can feel waves beating at the hull beneath her feet. Then the boat cuts power, turns, crashes into something, grinds as it bounces off, and accelerates. The light fades away. They are diving into a dark passage between a pair of pontoons. Evading pursuit.
Who is chasing us? Aiah wonders.
She will know soon enough, she thinks.
Excerpt (c) 1997, 2012 by Walter Jon Williams. All rights reserved.
Other Books by Walter Jon Williams
Novels
Hardwired
Knight Moves
Voice of the Whirlwind
Days of Atonement
Aristoi
Metropolitan
City on Fire
Ambassador of Progress
Angel Station
The Rift
Implied Spaces
Divertimenti
The Crown Jewels
House of Shards
Rock of Ages
Dread Empire's Fall
The Praxis
The Sundering
Conventions of War
Investments
Dagmar Shaw Thrillers
This Is Not a Game
Deep State
The Fourth Wall
Collections
Facets
Frankensteins & Foreign Devils
The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories