Aiah looks down at the last plastic flimsy, at the bottom crowded with endnotes in tiny print, at the slight smear on one corner caused by an error in copying. Her nerves sing with the document’s strangeness.
Why, she wonders, did Constantine write this thing? Even though it is in a speculative style, it still betrays too much knowledge. Anyone who had ever had dealings with an actual ice man would look at this and know without doubt that Constantine was a secret brother…
Perhaps when Constantine wrote this he simply didn’t care—his first encounter with Taikoen had not come at an edifying point of his life—but Aiah senses there’s something else at work here. She looks again over the last paragraph.
… the creature itself deserves more than a share of our compassion.
She wonders if Constantine is trying to make her feel sympathy for the ice man—pity my friend, he only kills because he’s a lonely perceptual cripple! But it doesn’t work, Aiah has actually met the thing. And then she wonders if Constantine wants the reader to feel sorry for Constantine himself, for the person who, out of compassion and at the risk of his life and soul, associates with the damned, with something that others would view as a demon…
That, Aiah considers, seems more plausible. It isn’t as if Constantine has not been known to turn his life into drama.
She scans the words again… an end to its existence must be looked on not as a death, not even as justice, but as a release, an act of mercy.
A crystal comprehension forms in Aiah’s mind, and suddenly she knows.
Constantine was trying to justify an attempt to end Taikoen’s existence. To kill it.
But he didn’t. He never tried. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, or he found a reason to keep Taikoen alive.
The columns of print swim before Aiah’s eyes. She takes a deep breath, tips her head back, and lets what she knows of Constantine’s biography enter her mind. Constantine would have encountered Taikoen in his early twenties, before he met Aldemar and went into the School of Radritha. Constantine had been a member of a kind of cult, and then his cousin and all the other cult members were killed, and Constantine wrote his article and went to university for an advanced degree, and from there, and from Aldemar, to the monkish order of the School of Radritha, where he was taught an extreme self-discipline, a philosophy based on the denial of the world and of passion, a retreat from action and power.
He was fleeing, Aiah realizes. Running from Taikoen, from what with this essay he had promised to do… But the university had not been far enough, nor had Aldemar’s arms; he needed something more radical, like Radritha, a school which maintained that nothing mattered outside the perfectly balanced, passionless mind. If nothing outside the mind mattered, it didn’t signify whether Taikoen existed or not.
Aiah glances out the window, sees splashes of brightness in the sky where disembodied clothing dances in ecstasy over Colorsafe Soap. A cold hand brushes her spine. The thought of Constantine afraid is in itself frightening: he has never seemed afraid of anything.
Of course, she thinks immediately, he was young. Later he left the school and returned to Cheloki to begin his New City campaign, and there were no hesitations there.
But when he reestablished contact with Taikoen, it was an alliance that Constantine offered, a bargain. Two lives per month, two bodies, and then, when he needed Taikoen again, more lives, more bodies.
Color bleeds across the sky. Aiah closes her eyes and wonders if she will have the courage to face the thing that Constantine did not.
GARGELIUS ENCHUK WEARS GULMAN SHOES WHY DON’T YOU?
Aiah strolls into the antechamber to the secure room, and smiles at the clerk, a huge stoneface who could probably keep the files safe simply through her intimidating presence.
“Hello,” the clerk says. “I thought you were on vacation.”
“Officially. But there was something I need to look at. I need to check the logs and see which files I had out last week.”
The clerk obligingly turns the logbook around to face Aiah, who pages back through the book until she finds Constantine’s signature. Only four days ago. Her nerves hum as she jots the file numbers down—no names are used in the logs, nothing that might reveal their contents to an outsider—and then she turns the book around again and thanks the clerk. “Let me just look one of those up,” she says, and heads for the secure room’s barred gate.
Refiq, Tollan, Brandrag. The names attached to the files that Constantine had read. Cousins—not Handmen, but bad enough for all that. One of these, Aiah assumes, will be Taikoen’s next victim.
She checks the files out just long enough to copy the pages and the cousins’ chromographs, and then returns them to the strong room.
And wonders about the next step.
COLONELS’ COUNCIL DEMANDS EXTRADITION OF FORMER OFFICIALS
NESCA DECLINES TO REVOKE ASYLUM
“Did you have a good time?” Aiah asks. Khorsa nods. “Very fine, yes. Lost a few too many dinars in the casinos, though.” “And the airship?”
Khorsa smiles. “The Dharku was lovely. The smoothest, most comfortable trip imaginable. And the views! We spent half our time in the observation lounge.”
“I’m glad. Would you like some coffee before you sit down?”
Khorsa, just back from her honeymoon, helps herself to some. Alfeg is already present, his notebook ready.
“By the way,” he says, “you have a request from the Sector Gazette for an interview.”
Sector was a euphemism for Barkazi, as the latter did not, officially, exist. The evasion permitted the magazine’s distribution in Jabzi, where the word Barkazi did not officially exist either.
“When?” Aiah asks. She is sick of interviews.
“Deadline’s in three days.” Alfeg offers a modest smile. “They must have noticed how much that profile in Corona boosted circulation.”
“I’ll think about it. Next time they should give more warning.”
Khorsa stirs sugar in her coffee and drops into a chair. Aiah pushes files toward them. Refiq, Tollan, Brandrag.
“I need the two of you to set up a rotating surveillance on these three,” she says. “This surveillance involves the highest possible security. Only the three of us know about this assignment. I want the surveillance to be run with extreme caution, from a distance. Configure your sensorium so that you can perceive plasm. Assume that the subjects are wired to plasm at all times, and are aware they might be surveilled. No one else must be permitted to know what the two of you are up to.”
Alfeg picks up a file, looks through it, then glances up at Aiah.
“This is a copy of the original file,” he says. Aiah nods. “Yes.”
“These files aren’t supposed to be copied.”
Aiah looks coldly into Alfeg’s eyes. “Yes,” she says.
Alfeg glances nervously down at the file. “Ah,” he says.
Khorsa pages through another file. “I don’t see anything unusual about this Mr. Brandrag,” she says. “A typical cousin, so far as I can see. Why does the surveillance have to be so secret?”
Aiah looks at them both. “Because,” she says, “one of these three men is scheduled to come down with the Party Sickness.”
COLONELS’ COUNCIL DEMANDS EXTRADITION, MOBILIZES FORCES
NESCA “WILL NOT BOW TO INTIMIDATION”
Aiah arrives breathless in Constantine’s anteroom, briefcase full of the latest plasm figures, and finds others waiting outside the office door: the other triumvirs clustered with Belckon, Sorya smoking a cigaret in the corner, Geymard and Arviro, both in undress uniform, and Personal Secretary Drusus pretending to look busy behind his desk…
Martinus, the bodyguard, stands quietly in front of Constantine’s door, his callused hands folded quietly. His attitude is polite, but clearly nothing is getting past him right now.
Aiah pauses at the door, catches her breath. The message had said, Come at once.
Come yesterday is what its tone had i
mplied.
And now Constantine is keeping even the other triumvirs waiting outside his door. Aiah can tell from their expressions that they aren’t happy about it.
Aiah walks up to the guard, lifts her brows in a silent query, receives in return a minute shake of Martinus’s armored head. She turns back toward the room and drifts toward Drusus’s desk.
“Mr. Drusus? Is the president—?”
“The triumvir is on the phone,” softly. “It’s urgent.”
Aiah glances down at Drusus’s communications array and sees that no lights shine to mark that any of the phone lines are being used. She bends down and whispers into his ear.
“If the triumvir were on the phone,” she says, “there would be something lit, ne?”
A look of horror crosses Drusus’s face. He picks up a headset from the cradle and presses buttons. Lights begin to flash. Aiah straightens, moves away from the desk, and wonders if anyone else has observed this discrepancy.
Plasm buzzes in her nerves. Before the panic started, she’d given herself a dose to clear her head and burn off the fatigue toxins. Now she finds plasm-energy twitching at her, making her want to do anything rather than sit in a waiting room.
“I fear this will end any funds for compensated demobilization,” Belckon says in a low voice to the two triumvirs. “And we may lose other Polar League funds as well, for rebuilding and refugee work.”
“These military upstarts are jeopardizing everything,” Faltheg murmurs. “They don’t have the slightest idea how to behave.”
“Or to run a country,” says Adaveth. “If our policy is shackled to them, they’ll bring us down.”
“But they’re New City. Constantine can’t disavow them, and…”
Faltheg falls silent, then gives a sharp look over his shoulder at Aiah. Aiah feels herself flush—she had not meant to overhear—she gives him an apologetic smile and backs away, toward Martinus and the door.
Without warning ice water floods Aiah’s spine, and she manages to bottle up her cry of terror at the last instant. Blood hammers at her ears.
Now she knows why Constantine is keeping his own administration locked out.
Taikoen is inside. Making demands, refusing to be sent away, forcing Constantine to deal with him now. Aiah’s plasm-charged nerves are just sensitive enough to detect his presence.
Aiah whirls, gives an alarmed look to Martinus. The man’s face is expressionless, but Aiah sees a knowing look in his deep-set eyes.
And then it occurs to Aiah that if she can detect Taikoen, Taikoen might be able to detect her. The thought sends a pulse of terror through her heart. She wills herself not to flee and, hoping she is not too conspicuous in her haste, backs away from the door.
Aiah gives a start as Sorya’s voice comes low in her ear. “I have received some intriguing news. A religious leader in Charna—a wandering priestess I believe, has just proclaimed that I am an emanation of a god.” A lazy, amused tone enters her voice. “I hope I may have your congratulations, one celestial sister to another.”
Aiah clenches her teeth, tries to control her flailing nerves. The presence of Taikoen doesn’t seem so strong here, and perhaps wouldn’t be detectable at all if Aiah didn’t already know he was just beyond the door.
“Congratulations,” she tells Sorya. “I remember when you predicted the appearance of this, ah, priestess.”
Sorya’s laugh tinkles out. “Superhuman prescience, of course.” A touch of ice enters her tone. “I wish my foreknowledge extended to the point of predicting a fat chromoplay contract like yours.”
Aiah turns to face her. “You don’t need the money.”
“No, not really, though money of course is always useful.” Sorya tilts her head, considers. “But I could use the publicity. That’s the problem with being in the secret service—no one ever knows how splendidly you do your job.” She shows her delicate, pearly teeth in a smile. “Constantine restarted his career with Lords of the New City. You may do well with your Golden Lady chromo—you may even ascend in Barkazi, who can tell?”
“Who can tell?” Aiah echoes.
Sorya touches her tongue to her teeth in languid amusement, and then gives a meaningful look in the direction of Constantine’s door. “And with both of us being goddesses—well, practically goddesses—I wonder what that makes our mutual lover.”
“He was a god before we were, according to some.”
“But did he make use of those people?” Scorn narrows her green eyes. “They were a resource—admittedly a mind-impoverished one—and he threw them away. Something could have been made of them, with proper direction. In contrast,” nodding as if awarding Aiah a point, “you’ve done very well with your moldy old hermit.”
“I work with the material I’m given,” Aiah says, deadpan.
Sorya seems immune to Aiah’s irony. “My prophet has the advantage of mobility—she can travel about, make converts, acquire donations. I expect the faith to be in the black within two or three years.”
“Well done.” One goddess to another.
Sorya glances across the room at Adaveth, Belckon, and Faltheg, and scorn glitters in her green eyes. “I do not understand why Constantine allows himself to be fettered to those… people.” Some residual caution has clearly replaced one description with another. “I would sweep away the lot,” she says, “and both I and the metropolis would be the better. But rather than taking control, Constantine prefers to let events narrow his choices and impel him in the direction he would have taken all along. He rules with one eye toward the history books, and concerns himself with what they will say when he is dead. He wants them to credit him with good intentions.” She shrugs.
“Ah well, that way his hand is not seen in events, though it makes for more confusion than one would desire…” She smiles, pinches out her cigaret with finger and thumb. “He will go where he wishes, but he lets others choose the time. He sacrifices initiative for deniability. I prefer to shape things directly, and will take the responsibility for success and failure both.”
She turns to find an ashtray for her cigaret, and Aiah wonders how much to trust Sorya’s judgment in this: that Constantine has somehow desired the constant crises since his arrival in Caraqui, and has preferred to let others create them… and, Aiah now adds, has put others in a position to solve these crises for him. Taikoen has solved certain problems, it occurs to her, and now—a shiver goes up her spine—perhaps she is to solve the problem of Taikoen.
And take the blame if anything goes wrong.
Sorya drops her cigaret into the ashtray and turns back to Aiah, a delicate smile on her lips. Aiah’s mind is still cautiously palpating this new vision of Constantine. She doesn’t wish to accept Sorya’s views of Constantine, but on the other hand she knows it is a logical enough view and that it fits with the facts, if also with Sorya’s prejudices…
But the proof will be before her today. If Constantine supports Sorya’s provocations in Charna, it will demonstrate he has desired such a thing all along.
Suddenly the door opens and Constantine appears, all smiles and apologies. “I am truly sorry,” he says. “There was a matter of some urgency having to do with…” He waves a hand. “But what does it matter? We must deal with Charna.”
As the others file into Constantine’s office, Aiah wonders if only she notices the t-grip sitting plainly on a side table, its cable still plugged into the socket—the t-grip that Constantine had undoubtedly used to project himself to Taikoen’s next victim and to put the hanged man in control.
But perhaps Aiah is the only one who notices, because the others are concerned solely with Charna. Sitting around Constantine’s spacious ebony desk, the other triumvirs insist that they have no reason to support Charna’s new government, let alone back a demented invasion threat. Belckon also speaks out strongly on the intermetropolitan repercussions of being associated with Charna’s junta and its reckless behavior.
Despite the tension and disagreement, Constantine seem
s perfectly at ease, almost lounging in his chair, a contrast to the others, who have to edge their chairs up to his desk to make their points. Despite the air of informality, Constantine is clearly controlling the meeting, indicating with a glance or a word who should speak next. Aiah can see Sorya’s face harden as one person after another speaks against her policy.
“I beg to disagree,” Sorya says when Constantine finally allows her to speak. “These people, however inept, are among our few friends in the region. They must be supported—yes, and guided. A communique must be issued promising action on our part if Charna is attacked. As for this foolish invasion threat—well, the invasion will not happen. President Constantine can see to that with a single phone call.”
Adaveth’s nictitating membranes slide partway over his eyes. “I beg to disagree with Madam Sorya’s premise. Charna is not our friend. Perhaps this Council of Colonels is the ideological ally of certain members of our government, but not all of us, and not our metropolis.” He leans forward, jabs the desk with a delicate hand. “I will utterly oppose any statement of support for Charna.”
“And I,” says Faltheg. “These people are out of control.”
Sorya’s lips press into a thin, white line. “What matters,” she says, “is power, and who has it, and who is willing to use it. If we do not support our friends, it will not matter how large our army may be, our word and our counsels will be ignored by everyone, and we will be seen as ripe for overthrow. For I remind everyone here,” tossing her head, “that we took power through force, and maintained ourselves through force, and if we do not show our willingness to use force to support our friends, compel neutrals, and punish our enemies, we will be seen as vulnerable by every pathetic little interventionist in the region; that this misapprehension is far more dangerous for us than any impression that we are dangerous, as our recent history has proved.”
In the quiet chill that follows, Adaveth and Faltheg gaze at Sorya with the same cold expression on their dissimilar faces. Belckon polishes his spectacles. Constantine breaks the silence.
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