City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  Somewhere, audio feed from one of her teams, there comes the sound of cheering.

  CRIME LORD PROTESTS INNOCENCE

  “GOVERNMENT ILL-ADVISED,” SAYS ATTORNEY.

  CRACKDOWN ON GANGSTERS CONTINUES UNDER MARTIAL LAW

  “Well,” Ethemark says, “the suspect just exploded. He was under arrest; our soldiers had him handcuffed and were marching him out of the room—and then…” His mouth twists with distaste. “We had a camera on him at the time. You can watch the video, if you like, but unless you want to see your lunch again I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  It is an inquiry on the PED’s only complete disaster: suspect dead while under arrest, the dead man’s wife and children witnesses to everything, everyone involved under suspension pending the outcome of the investigation.

  Aiah looks down the table at the three members of the commission she’d appointed when the incident occurred. “The plasm angels saw nothing?”

  “Three mages were telepresent in the room,” says Kelban, one of her team supervisors. “They maintain they had configured their sensoriums so as to be aware of plasm, and they saw nothing… not till after it was over.”

  “They saw something then,” Ethemark says. “They were all aware of a powerful… presence. It hovered over the body for a moment, then disappeared. No one saw a source-line. And they all say…” He hesitates. “They were all terrified. Not just the mages, but the soldiers, too. The soldiers couldn’t even see it, whatever it was, but they could somehow feel it, and it spooked them.”

  “If you ask me,” Kelban says, “a man exploding right in front of them is enough to scare any number of soldiers.”

  Aiah’s mouth goes dry. Taikoen, she thinks, or another creature like him. Constantine had put him in the Handman’s body, and when the soldiers came, Taikoen had seen no point in staying.

  “Do we have any conclusions?” she ventures.

  “I think it’s down to the inexperience of our personnel,” says Kelban. “They got careless, or overexcited, and weren’t paying proper attention. The suspect was killed by some enemy, or by other Handmen who were afraid he would turn informer.”

  “I have another theory,” Ethemark ventures, “though I admit it’s very tenuous.”

  Aiah looks at him warily. She must protect Constantine, she thinks, and discourage even the notion of a hanged man.

  “Go on,” she says.

  “It may be some kind of time bomb,” Ethemark says, to Aiah’s relief. “A plasm bomb planted inside him, with the instruction to kill him if he were ever arrested.”

  “That kind of time bomb would be very difficult,” Kelban says. “And time bombs have a temporal limit—you can’t confine plasm in a human body for more than a few hours. And who would have done such a thing… to him? And why? He was only a cousin.”

  “He might have done it to himself,” Ethemark says. “We know he had access to plasm. And some Handmen are simply crazy.”

  “Well,” Aiah says, “if the Silver Hand possesses a mage capable of such a difficult piece of work, then we shall discover it soon enough. The next time…”

  Kelban finishes her sentence. “The next time one of our suspects blows up.”

  And then he laughs and shakes his head.

  Aiah does not find herself amused. She has a suspicion that more than one Handman is going to die this way.

  “Finish your report,” Aiah says, “and have it on my desk tomorrow.”

  GARGELIUS ENCHUK ON TOUR NEW RECORDING BREAKS RECORDS “NEW CITY WORLD” TOPS CHARTS

  A week later, the first sheaf of typed interrogation transcripts arrives on Aiah’s desk. An eerie sensation creeps up her spine as she reads them.

  All of them are in the first person. There are no questions included, as if the Handmen were dictating lengthy confessions rather than responding to interrogators. The typed pages are all in the same format.

  My name is such-and-such… On such-and-such a date I committed the following crime… This was at the instigation of so-and-so, and assisting me were the following accomplices… I am aware of plasm houses at the following locations…

  The last information, she decides, she can check. She does, and her mages discover it is all perfectly accurate.

  The transcripts keep arriving, a new bundle every few days.

  Military courts move briskly through the long line of cases.

  Eventually soldiers draw lots, and the losers are assigned to the firing squads.

  SIX

  The balcony rail of the Falcon Tower is a huge bronze likeness of a peregrine, gazing fiercely over the Palace and the city below, wings outspread to shelter those who stand on the balcony. Constantine, standing behind the peregrine with no less fierce an expression, looks as if he is riding the falcon’s back, aimed like an arrow at the city. A brisk wind rattles the air around him and he clearly rejoices in it, in its cold perfect vigor.

  “Governing,” he murmurs. “All contradictions, all paradox.”

  The city spreads out below him: green sea, rooftop gardens, glittering mirrorglass. In the distance, the spikes of Lorkhin Island sit on the horizon like a strange, alien crown.

  “Plasm makes everything more intense,” he says. “It fills the world’s political history with turbulence even as it opens realms of political possibility. Plasm is transformative in this as in everything else.”

  He gives his cynical demon grin. “How many of our histories—hah! our legends, our chromoplays and operas—how many concern a leader, a Metropolitan or king or general, who is destroyed by some bright spark who gets lucky with a plasm strike? And then this spark becomes the new leader-absolute power leaving a greater vacuum than other sorts—

  and our young hero gathers dominion until he has it all, is able to wave a transphysical hand and give foundation to his dreams, and perhaps he achieves wisdom as well as glory… ah, but then, death at the hands of some other political entrepreneur.”

  “That tale describes you, except for the ending,” Aiah says. “You survived.”

  He looks at her, raises a thoughtful eyebrow. “In a sense, I did not. The man that I was did not survive. All that sustained him died—friends, family, nation, ideals. I had to make a new self afterward.” His look turns inward. “I am wiser now, but it is the kind of wisdom that turns a man bitter. I do not know if I am better for having achieved it.”

  He looks down at the city again. The blustery wind paws at the lace at his throat. He throws out a hand, encompassing the world below, and then closes a fist, takes possession. Irony tugs at his lips. “To be the one man is dangerous. When I was Metropolitan of Cheloki, when the whole state rested on my shoulders—what happened to my dreams then? I wanted to change the foundations of everything, but it was all I could do to keep my head safely on my neck. But to give up power—that is dangerous, too, because to surrender power is to surrender the ability to create change…”

  He nods, looks out to the southwest, to the distant metropolis where Aiah was born. “That is the solution of the Scope of Jaspeer, to divide the power sufficiently that no one strike can threaten the survival of the state. The assembly, the senate, the powerful intendants, the premier, the president, the council of ministers…” He shakes his head. “But with division of power comes division of responsibility. No one in Jaspeer possesses real power, and no one is really responsible for anything, least of all positive change—a certain discrete flow in the negative direction is permitted, a calcification of the public arteries… But while the decay slowly sets in, it is the boast of Jaspeer that nothing has changed there in hundreds of years.” Amusement sparkles in his eyes, and he gives a low laugh. “Perhaps not boast, perhaps rather a self-satisfied little moan, we are as our grandfathers were, and want nothing more.”

  Aiah’s laugh echoes Constantine’s own. She worked in the faspeeri government for years, and her impression of her superiors is no more positive than Constantine’s.

  “And so the cycles continue,” Constantine says. �
�Despots follow despots, bureaucrats follow bureaucrats, each condemned to do the job of his predecessor, sometimes a little better, usually only a little worse. When the decay gets too pronounced there’s revolution or war, but then a new despot or faction takes control and begins the game all over again. Can it be changed, I wonder, without bringing it all down?”

  “You’ve changed it,” Aiah says. “You’ve got rid of the Keremaths and replaced them with something better.”

  “I’ve done as well as could be expected,” Constantine says. He looks pensive; this self-deprecating mood is not a natural one for him. “One person can change little,” he muses, “but a person’s idea … an idea tested, perfected, demonstrated, shown to be true… that is real power. Ideas—the good ones, anyway—can be immortal.”

  His hard raptor eyes gaze down at the city, looking at it as an opponent, a thing to be subdued and brought to heel. “This Caraqui is the testing ground,” he says. “Here, with a little luck, things can be made to happen. Here, the ideas may meet their proof. But the place is poor, desperately poor, the workforce has little education and few skills, and I have little time…” He frowns.

  “There is a recipe for creating wealth,” he says. “It is simple enough. Reduce tariffs, reduce state spending, reduce controls on borrowing and lending. Protect the value of the currency while allowing free exchange, permit the citizens free access to foreign currencies. Permit the citizens to keep any wealth they earn—no confiscations or extortions, such as were practiced under the Keremaths—and tax with a light hand, with a tax code renowned for its evenhandedness and a revenue bureau renowned for its incorruptibility…”

  He laughs. “Incorruptibility in Caraqui! But it is necessary: one must be seen to do all this, because it works only when it can be seen that you can be trusted, and to build full trust requires at least a generation. There are plenty of other places to put money where one can get a good return, and an investor wants guarantees…

  “And in the meantime, to make certain the wealth is not so completely concentrated at the top, one encourages trade unions, one promotes safety standards and discourages child labor… but that is all one can do at this point, for there is no money yet, nothing for good universal education, nothing for housing, and that places the most vulnerable portion of our population in jeopardy, isolated, hopeless, confined to slums or in half-worlds, subject to extortion by the Silver Hand…”

  He looks at Aiah. “That is where you come in. You must show the people that the Silver Hand is vulnerable, that they can be broken. It is a way of building trust in the new regime, a way just like all the other methods, only more visible. And like the other ways, it will take a generation or more. Building a nation is slow work, one has to think in long spans of time; but that works against instinct, because in politics one always reaches for a solution, and the only realistic solution in Caraqui is that if you do this now, your grandchildren may be happy.”

  Aiah steps forward, touches his arm. “I think you may be underestimating the strength of your argument.”

  He looks at her, a glow in his eyes, and puts his hand over hers. “Possibly I am. But still, the problem is wealth, and how to get it. And that is why your Mr. Rohder is important. He can increase the wealth of the nation, and in a short space of time; and then the problem becomes one of conserving the wealth, keeping the government from pissing it all into the canals…”

  Constantine laughs, and Aiah laughs with him. And then he shakes his head. “And it is not up to me. I am but a voice in the government. I must persuade, and I must persuade for the next thirty years.”

  “You’re doing pretty well so far.”

  He shrugs. “I have the PED, yes. I have given it to you, because I can trust you to carry on with it.”

  The keys on Aiah’s office commo unit are stainless steel, ranked in a gleaming, efficient array. Here in her bedroom the commo keys are silver, and set amid a polished fruitwood setting, a design of interlocking sigmas that climb into a third dimension through clever use of trompe l’oeil.

  Aiah wonders if living amid this type of ornate luxury is changing her, even if the luxury is not precisely hers.

  She remembers Rohder’s extension number perfectly well, and punches the number onto the silver keys of her commo array. Through her gold-and-ivory headset she hears the clatter of relays, and then the ringing signal.

  “Da. Rohder.” The voice is breathy, distracted, cigaret-harsh. Aiah finds herself smiling at the familiar sound.

  “Mr. Rohder? This is Aiah.”

  There is a moment’s silence. “I am surprised to hear from you,” Rohder finally says. “Why is that?”

  Aiah hears the sound of Rohder pulling on a cigaret, then the exhalation. “The Authority police seem to think you are a criminal,” he says. “They have questioned me repeatedly. Perhaps I am under suspicion myself.”

  “They would be pretty foolish to think that.”

  “You embarrassed them.” There is a little pause. “And you embarrassed me.”

  A pang of conscience burns in Aiah’s throat. “I’m sorry if that’s the case,” she says. “I hunted plasm thieves for you. And I found them, too.”

  “Yes, you did. Which makes your other behavior even more surprising.”

  Time, Aiah thinks, to change the subject. She is tired of dwelling on her sins.

  “Perhaps I can make it up to you,” she says. “I head the Plasm Enforcement Division now, in Caraqui.”

  Rohder takes a meditative draw on his cigaret. “Caraqui, yes. People are being shot there, I believe, by foreign mercenaries. I have seen it on video.”

  Aiah winces. The executions of the first few Handmen were widely publicized, to demonstrate to the population that the Silver Hand was no longer immune to justice.

  But the publicity didn’t stop at the borders. Now all most people knew about Caraqui was that Constantine’s government was employing firing squads.

  “I—it wasn’t my idea to shoot them,” she says. “They are gangsters, of course.”

  “Were,” Rohder corrects. “And if you ever engage in the sort of activities in Caraqui in which you seem to have engaged here in Jaspeer, you could be shot, too.”

  Aiah feels herself harden at the implied accusation. “You don’t know what I did in Jaspeer, Mr. Rohder.”

  “True.” After a moment’s thought.

  “The fact that I helped you take down some Operation plasm houses should show you what side I’m on.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Since my department started its work just a few weeks ago, we’ve put the hammer on ninety-one plasm houses in Caraqui and arrested over three hundred people, many of them high-level Operation types. There are another sixty-odd plasm houses we’ll move on in the next few weeks, once investigations are completed. I wonder, Mr. Rohder—how many plasm houses has the Jaspeeri Plasm Authority taken down since I left?”

  There is a long silence, filled only by the meditative drawing on a cigaret.

  “Perhaps you have a point, Miss Aiah,” he says.

  Aiah plunges ahead. “My boss, the Minister of Resources Constantine, has read your books. Proceedings, I mean. All fourteen volumes. And he thinks they, and you, are brilliant, and wants to meet you.”

  There is another silence, then, “He must be a fast reader.”

  “He would like to arrange a personal meeting to discuss your work. You would be picked up by aerocar, taken to Caraqui, lodged in the Aerial Palace for the duration of your stay, and returned by aerocar. Your fee would come to two thousand Jaspeeri dalders.”

  “That is remarkably attractive.”

  Aiah smiles. “Constantine makes attractive offers to those whose work impresses him. Is there a time when the visit will be most convenient?”

  There is a hint of humor in Rohder’s reply. “Well, I seem to have little occupying my attention at present. Though I suppose it would be best if I came to Caraqui on a weekend, just for appearances. And also for appearances�
�� sake I will decline the fee, lest someone conclude that I am being paid for… well, past services rendered, and not a lecture.”

  “Perhaps I could arrange for the aerocar to fetch you this Friday? Service shift, after work hours?”

  Arrangements are made. A glow of triumph warms Aiah’s heart.

  Things are progressing.

  She hangs her headset on the hook, leans back on the pillows she’s propped up on her bed, and considers what to do next. Perhaps she could go down to the operations center and see how the shift’s activities are advancing. Several arrests have been scheduled for midway through sleep shift.

  But no. Ethemark is in charge this shift. Aiah would just be in the way.

  She wonders if there’s anything on video worth watching.

  The truth is, outside of her work and the few hours each week she spends with Constantine, she has no life in Caraqui. What she has seen of the metropolis does not attract her, and though she’s grown familiar with parts of the city through telepresent surveillance work, most of her physical knowledge of Caraqui is confined to the carpeted, paneled labyrinth of the Aerial Palace.

  It occurs to her that she could use a few friends. Perhaps she should try to recruit a few.

  There is an urgent knock on the door, and then the door chime, the soft tone repeating itself over and over again as Aiah’s visitor leans on it.

  There is no reason for anyone to behave this way. If there’s a situation in the department, someone can call. It’s certainly faster than running all the way over from the Owl Wing.

  Aiah puts her eye to the peephole. She doesn’t see anyone.

  Reflexes honed in her old neighborhood remind her not to open the door.

  “Who’s there?” she calls. “Ethemark.”

  Ethemark, too short to be visible through the peephole. Aiah opens the door, sees herself reflected in her deputy’s goggle eyes.

  A cold hand touches Aiah’s neck at the expression on Ethemark’s face.

  “What’s happened?” “Great-Uncle Rathmen. He’s gone.” “Gone? How?”