City on Fire (Metropolitan 2)

by Walter Jon Williams

  “I will not support the invasion of another metropolis,” Hilthi retorts. “Hegemonism is insupportable at any time, for any reason. This war with the Provisionals is the natural price we pay for our centuries of misrule.”

  “And the Lanbolan artillery?” President Faltheg speaks hesitantly. “Can’t they be said to have opened a war against us? How can we fight this without an invasion?” He shakes his head. “We could file another protest... I suppose.” He looks at Hilthi. “Mr. Hilthi? Do you have a suggestion?”

  Hilthi looks troubled, but makes no reply.

  Constantine turns to Aiah. “Miss Aiah?”

  Aiah testifies as to the availability of plasm. Caraqui’s reserves have been cut in half by the first day of the offensive, and the ability of the government to support their assaults is fading.

  Faltheg turns to Constantine. “Your recommendations, Minister?”

  “I do not offer this advice lightly,” Constantine says. “But it seems to me that there would be far less suffering, less damage, if we went into Lanbola and ended the war at its source.” He gives an uneasy shrug. “The political problem of what to do with Lanbola,” he adds, “may be dealt with afterward.”

  Aiah looks at her hands. It is the wrong move, she thinks, but she can’t explain why. And she has no acceptable alternative.

  “Make them pay!” Parq says. “Make them pay for our suffering! Their wealth can make Caraqui a paradise!”

  Hilthi sits stiffly in his chair, his eyes locked with Constantine’s. “I will not be a part of a hegemonist government,” he says. “I will not countenance the looting of another metropolis. If I am outvoted in this, I will resign.”

  Faltheg’s tongue runs round his lips. He sighs heavily. “I must reluctantly agree with Triumvir Parq and Minister Constantine. The Lanbolans’ actions are intolerable.”

  “You will have my resignation before the shift is over,” Hilthi says. “I will go into opposition.”

  Constantine turns to him. “Triumvir, I am sorry about this, and I hope you will reconsider. But may I ask you to delay this action for another day or two? Disarray in the government now will only encourage our enemies.”

  Hilthi hesitates, then nods. “I will do as the minister suggests.”

  Aiah turns to Sorya, sees the triumph glittering in her green eyes. This is what she has wanted all along, and Aiah wonders if she has somehow managed it all.

  The meeting ends. As they head back to the command center, Constantine takes Aiah’s arm. “I would like to use Karlo’s Brigade in the assault on Lanbola. They are near the border, ideally placed, and they are not yet committed to the bridgehead.”

  It is, Aiah thinks, the only way to save Landro’s Escaliers and the others in the bridgeheads.

  “Yes,” she says. “But I want to talk to Ceison personally.”

  “I will arrange it.”

  And so, a half hour later, she finds herself talking to Brigadier Ceison, and giving him her personal assent to the invasion, along with her best wishes for its success.

  Within another two hours, Karlo’s Brigade spearheads the assault into Lanbola, moving deep inland without opposition while assault troops are landed by helicopter on enemy buildings to seize control of the seat of government. Other airborne units engage and capture the Lanbolan artillery.

  Within twenty-four hours, its political leadership dispersed or under arrest, the army of Lanbola surrenders without ever having left the vicinity of its barracks.

  A day later, the Provisionals have collapsed and the war is over, and Constantine— because there was no one else, no one at all— has taken Hilthi’s place in the triumvirate.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sea Mage Motor Craft— Take a Voyage to Victory!

  The golden letters burn for a moment in the sky, a garish display, complete with a Marine striking a heroic pose in a motorboat. The sight makes Aiah want to cheer. Not because the Sea Mage company had contributed to the last, triumphant campaign, though it had, but because the plasm advert is there at all.

  Peace. The price of plasm has fallen, and the sky is filled with the reassuring fires of commerce.

  Another blaze floats up into the sky, happy people dancing with bottles of Snap! in their hands.

  “Has the advertising improved in the last months, that you are so entranced?”

  Constantine’s question turns Aiah away from her terrace window. “I would rather see that ad every minute for the next week,” she says, “than have the sky filled with artillery rounds.”

  Constantine concedes the point. “Yes. I quite agree.” He pats the sofa cushion next to him. “Would you join me?”

  She does so, leaning back against the warmth of his massive body. His puts an arm around her shoulder.

  Outside, the sky blazes with the lights of peace.

  On the table before them are the recordings of Aiah’s meeting with Holson and Galagas. The plastic casings are broken open, and the cellulose tape cut into coiled shreds by Aiah’s scissors. Tomorrow Aiah will throw the fragments out with the rubbish.

  It will not be quite as simple to dispose of the memories of how those recordings were made. She is not as easy, leaning against Constantine’s strength, as once she had been.

  I shall guard my own back in future. Aiah had made that promise in anger; but now, soberly, she was keeping it. Sixteen bodyguards had been put on the payroll at the PED, and were now undergoing training in the Timocracy: in the meantime, when she left the Palace, she was accompanied by soldiers from Karlo’s Brigade.

  “Are you pleased to find yourself a triumvir?” Aiah asks.

  Constantine pauses a moment to consider. “There is less interference in my work,” he says, “but the company is not as congenial. In truth, I would prefer to take the place either of Faltheg or Parq, and to leave Hilthi in place.” His voice deepens as it grows thoughtful. “In the past it was others who made the compromises, while I resisted and spoke of principle; but now I must compromise my own beliefs, and make certain my people follow my lead....” A kind of self-disgust enters his words. “A particularly nasty compromise has just been made.” His arms fold around her, and he murmurs urgently into her ear. “I beg you, do not go outside without guards for the next week or ten days. The city may not be safe.”

  The warning tingles along Aiah’s nerves. She pulls free of his embrace and glances over her shoulder, sees him looking at her somberly. “The war is over,” she says. “Why should there be danger now?”

  Constantine’s gaze is directed toward the terrace window, where the sky blazes with one bright advertisement after another. “The war is over,” he says, “but the shape of the peace is uncertain.”

  “You are a triumvir, one third of the government. Minister of War and of Resources. You can’t enforce order in the streets?”

  His eyes shift away, and he rubs his jaw with one uneasy hand. “Not when I am opposed from within the government.”

  “Parq, then,” Aiah judges. “Because I can’t see Faltheg behind any sort of violence.”

  Constantine looks at her, eyes narrowing. “I cannot confirm your suppositions. But guard yourself— and if you are given an order, follow it.”

  “There is no one who can give me an order but you.”

  Again he looks uneasy. “That is not quite the case,” he says.

  She will have to talk to Ethemark, she thinks. And if the orders are unacceptable, she can resign.

  But what kind of threat, she wonders, is that resignation? Who, besides Constantine, would care? Who, besides herself, would lose? No one gives a damn, she learned long ago, about the high and noble principles of a girl from Old Shorings. She will just be replaced by one of Parq’s people, and that would deliver the PED right into the hands of his organization.

  Constantine’s burning eyes hold her. “Do as your orders bid you,” he says. “I will do what I can for you, but it will take time. Remember our time in Achanos, and give me your trust.”

  She lo
oks at him narrowly, and— she must decide this now; it has come to that— she makes up her mind, for the moment, to trust him. It has nothing to do with any sentimental memories of their stolen hours in Achanos, either— very odd of Constantine to mention them— but everything to do with calculation.

  He uses her— he has always freely admitted it, a disarming element of his charm— and he loves her, she supposes, insofar as she is useful to him. But what he really loves is something else, power perhaps, or stated even more grandly, his Destiny. One must keep one’s true end in view.... She is not, she concludes, a part of that vision, whatever it is.

  But Constantine has given her power. She did not want it particularly, nor had she asked for it— she had not considered it hers, had considered herself an extension of Constantine, and her power his on loan.

  Now she is not so certain. The PED is hers— she built it, shaped it, hired every single member herself. Constantine wanted it to be loyal to her personally, and it is as loyal as she can make it. Rohder’s division of engineers and architecture students, madly making plasm, is hers. The Barkazil mercenary units are hers, at least informally— and she can attempt to make the arrangement more personal, if she desires.

  Power. She can learn to use it, to acquire more, to impose her will on the world like an alchemist working with plasm-fired metal.

  Or she can quit. Become Constantine’s mistress, an appendage of which he would soon grow weary; and then— or now, for that matter— become nothing at all, a private person with a little dirty money put away.

  But if she chooses the road of power, she must learn how to use it.

  And for that, she reasons, Constantine is necessary. As she once learned the ways of magic from him, so she must now learn the ways of command.

  She must learn from him; and in order to do that, she must stay close to Constantine. Closer than she already has been, if possible.

  “Very well,” she says. “I will do as you wish.”

  The fiery intensity in his look is banked behind the lids of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. He seems to recollect something, then reaches in his jacket pocket. “Aldemar gave me this for you before she left to finish her chromoplay.” He takes out an oblong box and hands it to her. “She said you left it in her room.”

  She knows what it is before she opens the box. She fastens the ivory necklace around her neck. “Do you know Aldemar’s number in Chemra?” she asks. “I would like to wire her my thanks.”

  “I will give it to you.”

  His large hand reaches for the necklace, picks up the dangling Trigram, and lets the smooth ivory rest in his palm. He shares with her a smile of remembrance. “This is the best investment I have made,” he says. “You have exceeded all expectations.”

  “I will thank you to remember it,” she says.

  “You want rewards?” He lifts a brow. “Ask, and I will give it, if I can.”

  She considers. “I will keep them as IOUs, for now.”

  “Perhaps you trust overmuch in the generosity of the powerful, to trust that I will remember, in weeks or months, how much I owe you.”

  “Had I ever known you petty,” Aiah says, “you would already have the list of what I want, each item numbered, on a sheet of paper.”

  He smiles, lips drawn with a touch of cruelty, then closes his fist on the Trigram and brings it gently toward him, pulling her to him by the priceless collar. They kiss, and Aiah feels the little flutter in her belly that tells her that this is not entirely about power, about abstract desire for knowledge of political strategy.

  “We have won a peace,” Constantine murmurs. “Our lives are changed, and we may have as much time for one another as we desire. It is a luxury I intend to savor.”

  “I hope you will,” Aiah says, “but I should warn you that my capacity for luxury is very large indeed.”

  He gives a knowing smile and draws her to him again. “Let us discover,” he says, “just how large it is.”

  POLAR LEAGUE DEMANDS CARAQUI LEAVE LANBOLA

  “I had suspected this,” says Adaveth. “We knew that Parq would make a move once there was a peace and the triumvirate didn’t need us.”

  The twisted Minister of Waterways’ fingers drum angrily on the tabletop. “But none of the important things are talked about in the cabinet,” he says. “All we discuss is what to do with Lanbola, and that’s pointless, because we’re going to have to give it back sooner or later. The Polar League is up in arms, wailing about sovereignty— not that they cared about ours, when we were invaded.”

  “Constantine says— implies, anyway— it will not last,” Aiah says. “That eventually he will be able to act to change things.”

  Adaveth and Ethemark exchange scornful looks. “Constantine is keeping the War and Resources portfolios,” Adaveth says. “It was expected he would have to give up at least one now the war is ended. But in exchange for selling the twisted to Parq, he will keep both.”

  Aiah feels a cold certainty, a draft of ice along her bones, that this is exactly the bargain that has been struck.

  It is early service shift, and across the world people are sitting down to supper. Aiah, instead, hosts a meeting of her working group on the problem of Parq and the twisted, and serves soft drinks and krill wafers because she has not had a chance to cook in all the time she’s been here.

  Ethemark looks at her. “Do you know what Togthan is up to?”

  Alfeg still shares an office with the Excellent Togthan, but has had little to report. “Togthan is spending a lot of time with personnel files,” Aiah says.

  “Not surprising,” says Adaveth.

  Ethemark’s eyes narrow as he gazes at Aiah. “If we are dismissed,” he asks, “you will resign?”

  Aiah hesitates. “Perhaps not,” she says.

  Adaveth and Ethemark exchange another look, and in it Aiah reads their scorn.

  “Resignation is your only weapon in matters of principle,” Adaveth says.

  “We had assumed,” says Ethemark, “you would resign. The people of Aground died for you, and you will not give up your job for them?”

  Aiah feels her insides twist. “I have thought about it,” she says. “And who would my resignation help? Not you or your people. Not the people in Aground. Who would my resignation harm? Only the department, because Parq would have a hand in the appointment of my successor. Would you like a captain in the Dalavan Militia to have my post?”

  They exchange another look, and Aiah knows, heart sinking, that she’s lost them. She’s become one of those they can no longer trust, another bureaucrat who will not risk her precious position to help them.

  How to win them back? she wonders.

  And then she wonders whether it is necessary. They are not her natural constituency, nor necessarily Constantine’s: they are their own. In the future she should not depend on them— because she is sympathetic to them, it does not follow automatically that they will wholeheartedly endorse her....

  It is the thought, she realizes, of a politician.

  HIGHWAY SCANDAL UNCOVERED IN LANBOLA!

  MINISTER POCKETED MILLIONS, SOURCE REPORTS

  Aiah watches as her driver— pilot, rather— jacks wires in and out of sockets to reconfigure the aerocar’s computer. He glances at his checklist, gimbals the turbines, works the control surfaces. Then, after adjusting his headset, he puts a hand on the yoke and rolls up the throttles. Plasm snarls in the air. The turbines shriek, the nose pitches up, and the aerocar leaps for the Shield, punches Aiah back in her seat.

  Aiah turns her head and watches Caraqui, flat on its sea, as it falls away. She has had much the same view while traveling telepresent on a thread of plasm, but the sensation here has a greater solidity than plasm’s hyperreality, a weightiness that places the journey into the realm of sensation: the tug of gravity, the scent of fuel, of lubricant and leather seats, and the cry of the turbines.

  The aerocar pitches forward until its flight is level. The sensation of plasm fades— magi
c is used only during take-offs. Yellow dials glow on the car’s computer.

  Alfeg, in one of the seats behind with Aiah’s guards, clears his throat.

  Below, jagged buildings reach high for the aerocar like taloned fingers, but they fall far short: the car has left flat Caraqui and its low buildings and entered Lanbolan airspace. The aerocar glides lower, losing altitude: Aiah watches needles spin on instrument dials. The turbines sing at a more urgent pitch: tremors run through the car’s frame. Aiah feels webbing bite her flesh as whining hydraulics shove dive brakes into place. The aerocar slows, hovers, descends. For a moment all is fire as the car drops through a plasm display. The tall buildings rise on either side, and the car finds a rooftop nest between them.

  The turbines cycle down and the aerocar taxies to a stop. Aiah sees her reception committee awaiting her: Ceison and Aratha in the deep blue uniforms of Karlo’s Brigade, Galagas in the gray of Landro’s Escaliers. Galagas commands the Escaliers these days: Holson was killed in the fighting.

  The cockpit rolls open to the right, and the passengers exit to the left. Guards fan out over the landing zone, and Aiah descends more leisurely: General Ceison hands her down the last step.

  “Welcome to Lanbola,” Ceison says, and gives a salute.

  Aiah returns it. She has no military rank, but these troops are hers— in some as-yet-unclarified fashion— and so she might as well perform the appropriate rituals.

  As she returns the salute, however, Aiah feels a faint sense of absurdity. She does not quite understand what one does with an army in peacetime. A peacetime army seems something of a contradiction in terms.