City on Fire m-2

by Walter Jon Williams

  Statius looks uncertain for a moment, then takes his hand away. Cornelius is by the communications array, jiggling the headset hook. He shrugs. “Line’s cut,” he says. “I’ll have to radio for an evacuation.” He picks up the portable radio in its padded black plastic case and slings the strap over one shoulder. Statius joins him, gripping his gun. Cornelius looks back at Romus.

  “Can you give me cover?” he asks.

  Romus speaks without opening his eyes. “I’ll do what I can. There’s not much plasm here.”

  The two guards open the hatch that leads to the back passage, hop over the sill, and slam the hatch shut behind them. A nearby explosion shifts the barge under Aiah’s feet, and soft white plaster rains down from the ceiling.

  Aiah feels warm blood dripping down her scraped shin. She looks down at herself, at the neat suit, white lace, pumps, torn hose. This is the most ridiculous outfit she can imagine for a battle. She turns to Romus.

  “Can I help?” she asks. “Can I do anything?”

  Romus just gives a brief shake of his head. The sound of battle outside has increased, weapons rattling like a continuous storm of hail. Aiah decides she might as well get out of her absurd clothing, and yanks open the door to her private room. She kicks off her pumps, grabs the jumpsuit she arrived in, and pulls it on over the clothes she’s already wearing. There’s an unpleasant baggy lump in her crotch where the skirt has wadded up, but she feels a greater readiness now that she’s no longer dressed for a business meeting, and no longer so conspicuous.

  She closes the jumpsuit up to the collar, over the ivory necklace, then pulls on a pair of boots and slams down the metal clips—she has to hit them with her fist because her fingers are trembling too hard to work them properly. Explosive compression waves slap the barge, rain plaster down.

  “Miss? Miss?” Romus’s voice. Aiah jumps into the other room, sees Romus’s fierce yellow eyes staring at her. “Yes?” Aiah says.

  “Your guards want me to tell you this: Statius is broadcasting the pickup signal, but he hasn’t got an answer. That doesn’t mean they’re not hearing it at the Palace, it just means the receiver isn’t placed well enough to catch any reply.”

  Aiah nods her understanding. Adrenaline is making her teeth chatter, causing sweat to pop out on her forehead. There’s nothing she can do.

  Romus continues, voice rapid. “There are mages attacking, and I’m running the plasm batteries low fending them off. Soon this shielding is going to be breached. Your guards say that you need to get into the water and start breathing off that apparatus and wait for pickup.”

  Aiah gives another frantic nod. “Yes,” she says. “I understand.”

  “Now, miss.”

  She nods again, then realizes that, despite her intentions, her feet are somehow not moving toward the water. She makes them move and runs to the hatch, tears it open, steps through into the low corridor behind.

  “Close it, miss.”

  “Ah. Right.” Aiah stops, reverses herself in the narrow space, pulls the hatch shut. Then she runs along the corridor, tries the hatch leading outside, and finds it won’t open. She slams her shoulder into it; pain jolts her body, and she realizes the door is locked. She claws at the bolt, throws the door open, and then there is the flash of an explosion that lights the hallway from the outside, and all the electric lights die. The mad sound of sirens fills the air, monsters calling their kin. Tracer bullets flash by in the dark, making snapping sounds like a whip, and glowing off every surface is the rolling red glare of fires. Aiah huddles in the doorway as terror scrapes her nerves, hands clenched on the doorjamb, with no intention of ever letting go.

  I’m sorry, she thinks, / can’t go in that water.

  Then an explosion rocks the barge and Aiah finds herself pitching forward. The lurch unlocks her hands, lets her tumble through the doorway. Deck plates bite her palms. Bullets snap overhead. The pipe clamped to the side of the barge reflects silver-red fires, and Aiah can see it plainly. She crawls madly for the pipe, clutches it, pulls herself to it. The water below flares with reflected fire. Aiah takes a breath, kicks her legs, and tumbles off the barge.

  The freezing water stops her heart for a long, shocking second. The taste of salt floods her mouth. She flails out for the pipe, finds it, pulls herself down its length. She can hear, louder even than the explosions, the whine of high-pitched screws.

  Aiah finds the apparatus hanging there, fumbles in the darkness for a length of hose… She finds it, reaches frantically along it, finds the second-stage regulator and mouthpiece at its end. She jams the rubber mouthpiece in her mouth, blows out to clear the regulator, inhales… nothing.

  Nothing. No air. Terror fills her lungs instead. She’s going to drown! She flails for the surface, all frantic panic motion, and somehow manages to rise instead of sink. She breaks the surface, splashing, mouth gasping in air. Sirens and battle sounds fill her ears. Fire boils up all around her. In the confined space beneath the platform overhead, the air is filling with smoke. Aiah coughs, sees the pipe nearby, clutches at it. Thoughts whirlpool in her mind.

  It’s a catastrophe. The mission’s gone, she’ll be killed or captured, and there’s no air in the tank. This last treachery, the thoroughness of the way fate has betrayed her, leaves her numb.

  A concussion passes through her like a wave, blows the air from her lungs. She looks up at the slablike side of the barge and wonders how she’ll get back aboard. If she stays in the water she’ll freeze or drown.

  The valve. The thought comes to her head unbidden.

  The air tank, she realizes, has plenty of air. But its valve was turned off so that the air wouldn’t drain away through any minor leak in the connections. All she has to do is turn the valve on and she’s got at least an hour of air.

  Falling debris splashes water near her. Aiah drags in air, fills her lungs, then shuts her eyes and plunges underwater again. She finds the diving gear, gropes for the valve handle atop the tank, and gives it a yank. Then she reaches for the regulator hose, finds it, pulls on it hand over hand until she finds the regulator. Her teeth clamp down on the mouthpiece and she blows out, clearing the regulator, then inhales…

  Air. Sweet air. She feels a moment of indescribable bliss as the dry pressurized air touches her palate.

  Aiah floats in the frigid, buoyant darkness. High-speed screws sing in her ears. Detonations slap at the water.

  Red light seeps down, touches her eyelids. She opens her eyes, looks up at flame. The barge is on fire and has become very bright. She wonders if Dr. Romus is trapped inside, if Statius and Cornelius will manage an escape. She looks around her, sees the diving gear hanging on a hook. Had Cornelius said there was a mask here?

  Aiah reaches out and finds the mask, pushes floating hair back from her face, and puts the mask over her face. She tries to remember her brief lessons months ago, then presses the mask hard to her forehead and exhales through her nose. The water in the mask bubbles away and suddenly she can see quite clearly.

  The water is very bright, almost as bright as day. The barge is a huge shadow above her, and she can sense other shadows nearby.

  There is a splash, a rush of bubbles. It is one of the half-world’s inhabitants, a little goggle-eyed man. He swims with apparent ease beneath the surface, his big eyes like a pair of headlamps. He swims past her strongly, a line of little bubbles trailing from his mouth, and his eyes roll toward her. He watches her expressionlessly as he swims past, his adaptation to the aquatic environment much greater than hers, then kicks on into the darkness.

  A line of bullets rips the water over her head. Aiah watches the bullets hit the water in a fury of bubbles, then lose their momentum and spiral harmlessly past her. The fighting, she thinks, is getting very close.

  There is another splash overhead, another figure striking the water in a burst of bubbles. It is one of the stonefaces, mouth open, eyes agape. He drifts downward in a cruciform shape, arms wide as if to embrace the water. A thread of blood tra
ils from his mouth.

  Dead, Aiah thinks, and then, Davath!

  She bottles up a scream at the bottom of her throat. She flails as she drags on the buoyancy harness, fighting the tangle of straps. A whole family of goggle-eyed twisted swim by, mom and pop and two curious children. The lead weights in the harness pockets try to drag her to the bottom, so she inflates the air pockets in the harness until her buoyancy neutralizes. Then she kicks off her boots and puts on her fins.

  As she handles these routine tasks, her breath returns to normal, her heartbeat slows. But then the barge gives a huge lurch. The pipe kicks up and hits her in the face. An explosion batters at her ears. A surge of bubbles blinds her, and suddenly the pipe is tilting up, bringing her close to the surface.

  Fear makes her relinquish the pipe and drop back into the sheltering sea. The barge has been holed, she realizes, and it is filling with water and rolling away from her as it does so.

  It’s going to sink, and she needs to get away before it drags her down. She backpedals, kicking away from the barge. Bullets rip up the water above her head and she pulls the release valve on the buoyancy harness, allowing herself to sink deeper into the water… She tries to orient herself, tries to think which way is out. There is a horrid metallic rending sound from the barge, some internal bulkhead caving in.

  Another twisted man swims by, big eyes bulging. He must know a safe place, she thinks, and decides to follow him.

  She kicks out and has no trouble keeping up with him. The cold is making her shiver. Her body wants to curl up to conserve heat and she has to make an effort to keep her legs kicking.

  It’s a hideous failure, she thinks. Statius and Cornelius are probably dead, the half-world is being destroyed, hundreds of people are going to die.

  And the war will go on.

  An uncontrollable shudder runs through her frame.

  And I, Aiah thinks, am going to die of cold, and very soon.

  Then she feels plasm prickling her skin, warm like a blanket, and she is sprawling, amid a gurgling, splashing lake of seawater, on Aldemar’s carpet…

  Powerful arms pick her up, strip the mask from her face, the regulator, begin unclipping the harness.

  “A hot bath,” Constantine says. “Draw it. Now.” He kisses her cold lips. Aiah looks at him from heavy-lidded eyes.

  The diving gear tumbles to the floor, lead weights thudding.

  Constantine picks her up and carries her to warmth, to life.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Aiah lies in the scented bath and tries to let the warm water ease the cold in her bones, the numb and numbing sense of dread and sadness and hopeless failure. She stares at the ceiling, at a bright pattern of blue and yellow Avernach tiles; and her eye keeps following the pattern, up and left and down and then to the right across three tiles, then beginning again, the pattern repeating over and over and over without escaping the inevitability of its own design.

  Her eyes keep following the pattern. She dares not close them. If she allows her eyes to close, all she can see is a shimmering surface, like water, aglow with angry fire.

  And then all the guns around the Palace open fire at once, a rolling thunder that rattles the window for a half-minute at a time, deep concussions that drive up through her spine, releasing memories of explosions in the half-world, the flashes of blinding light, the acrid scent of used munitions. The dead man, arms splayed, drifting toward her on a red tether.

  The war is on again.

  There is a knock on the door, and without waiting for an answer Aldemar walks in. She kicks aside Aiah’s ruined, soggy clothing, then sits on a little gilt-legged stool and dangles her hands off her knees. The expression below the dark bangs is grave.

  “I was unable to bring back the two guards who went out with you,” she says. “It doesn’t mean they’re not all right, it just means that I couldn’t find them in all that mess.”

  Aiah sighs and tilts her head back, despair like a bitter drop on her tongue. Gunfire concussions thud in her ears.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Aldemar says. “The mission was betrayed somehow—probably on the other end.”

  Aiah tries to say something and fails. Words do not seem adequate to the appalling scope of the tragedy.

  “Those two had followed Constantine from the beginning,” Aldemar says. “For twenty years, beginning in Cheloki. He chose to risk them in this, because he thought it was important. He wanted the best to protect you.”

  “They did,” Aiah says. Her tongue is thick, and a pain deep in her throat makes it hard to speak. “They kept me alive.” They, she thinks, and Dr. Romus.

  Maybe, Aiah thinks absurdly, she will get them medals. Like Davath.

  Aldemar leans back on the stool, looks down at her. “I would like to stay with you,” she says, “but I can’t. Now that fighting has started again, I’ll be needed.” She begins to stand, hesitates, then sits again. “Stay here as long as you want. I’d offer you my clothes, but they wouldn’t fit. I’ll try to find someone to fetch some clothes from your apartment.”

  “Thank you,” Aiah says. She sits up in the tub, hair pouring down her back like rain, and looks up at Aldemar. “Thank you for getting me out,” she says.

  “You’re welcome.” Aldemar reaches for Aiah’s hand, squeezes it briefly, then makes her way out. The window rattles to the sound of guns.

  She’d thought she’d done it, she thinks. She’d won, she’d got the Cunning People on her side, had the contract worked out. She would be the hero who’d won the war. Even Barkazi had seemed within reach—She had half-seen the liberated metropolis, the homeland she’d never seen living free under her maternal care……

  All dreams, she thought, had come aground in Aground. All gone, all betrayed, in that horrid burst of fire.

  WAR RENEWED IN CARAQUI! GOVERNMENT FORCES ON ATTACK!

  One of Aldemar’s people, a young bespectacled man, brings her a case of clothes he’d got from her apartment. She receives him wrapped in a towel, and he blushes becomingly.

  The contents of the bag makes her smile even through her despair. Aldemar’s naive young man seems not to know what women actually wear, and for what occasions, and even in what quantity. He’d emptied out Aiah’s lingerie drawer and filled the bag with every item of silk, satin, and lace that Aiah possessed, as if she were off for a romantic weekend in Gunalaht rather than a war. There are also bright flowered skirts, scarves, and lace-ruffled blouses.

  Well. At least she can wear some of this as far as her apartment, and then she can change into something more appropriate.

  She hesitates for a moment as she leaves, seeing her ivory necklace lying on a tabletop, then decides she may as well leave it here. Aldemar is unlikely to run off with it.

  A short while later, more conservatively clothed, she walks into the Palace’s command center, the cavernous room beneath the huge illuminated map. The place is full, and half a hundred uniformed communications techs sit with gold-and-ivory headsets clamped to their ears, relaying information back and forth. The overhead rows of video monitors all show views of skylines, smoke, silent flashes.

  Here in the shielded silence, the sound of the guns cannot be heard.

  Constantine stands near the front of the room, his casual civilian clothes—cords and a shirt open at the neck—a contrast to the uniformed officers standing around him. He spies Aiah the instant she enters, and though he continues speaking casually with his officers one eye remains fixed on Aiah as she walks down the aisle. The officers around Constantine fall silent as she approaches—respectfully, she thinks, while a comrade makes her report. Among them Aiah recognizes the former Captain Arviro of the Marine Brigade, the hero of the countercoup, who is now General Arviro of the Marine Corps.

  “Statius and Cornelius weren’t brought back,” Aiah says.

  There is a grim narrowing of Constantine’s eyes, then he shakes his head. “I am losing the old ones, one by one,” he says. “Statius was with me for thirty years, stood by
me in everything I ever attempted.”

  This is not, Aiah wants to say, about you.

  Constantine’s look softens, and he takes her arm. “But he and Cornelius succeeded in their final mission, which was to preserve your life. If I had sent people I did not know as well, we might not have brought you back.”

  Aiah can feel despair tighten in her chest. “But the whole thing,” she says, “was a botch.”

  He looks at her and shakes his head. “Your part of the mission was a success. That there was a failure somewhere else was not your fault.”

  She gives a little shudder. It did not feel like a success, not when she was in the water with bullets lighting the air above her.

  Constantine gently draws her closer by her arm. “In any case, well, things are not as bad as we might have feared. You succeeded in panicking the Provisionals.” He points at one of the video screens, and Aiah’s gaze reluctantly follows his hand, sees buildings being battered by shell-fire.

  “When the Provisional command realized you were on the verge of causing one of their frontline brigades to defect,” he says, “they ordered their nearby units to attack Landro’s Escaliers. Those gunboats that struck the half-world were among the first units to respond. But their command structure is not very flexible over there—they have dispersed their communications and headquarters units so that they are not, once again, all attacked at the same time—and the first attacks were uncoordinated and easily repelled by a unit as specialized in this sort of fighting as the Escaliers. The Provisionals still have not managed a proper assault, but when they started the shooting they did push the Escaliers over to us. We have a bridgehead into enemy territory; we now need only to funnel our troops over in sufficient quantity-”

  Uncertain hope catches in Aiah’s throat. “Do you mean it worked? The mission wasn’t…”