City on Fire

THREE

Aiah is well into her list of requisitions, and the rest—access to certain files, the precise methods by which she will recruit her talent—is not entirely up to her. She is trying to reach Constantine to schedule a meeting, but he’s persistently unavailable.

There is a knock on her receptionist’s door, and there is no receptionist to answer. She rises from her desk, anticipating workers come to fix her window, and instead her skin crawls at the sight of a pair of the twisted, small figures with black goggle eyes and moist salamander flesh.

“I am Adaveth,” one says. “Do you remember me?”

“Yes, Minister, of course,” she says. She steels herself and shakes Adaveth’s smooth gray hand. Her nostrils twitch for expected odor, but she can detect nothing.

“This is Ethemark,” Adaveth continues. “He has been appointed your deputy.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Aiah lies, and clasps the offered hand.

“Honored, miss,” Ethemark says. The voice is surprisingly deep for such a small figure. He is dressed in subdued white lace and black velvet—velvet is worn a great deal here, Aiah has noticed, much more than in Jaspeer.

“Ethemark has a degree in plasm engineering,” Adaveth says. “He is also a mage with specialties in telepresence and tele-engineering.”

And therefore, Aiah reads behind his bland, expressionless face, is much more qualified for your job than you are.

“I’m sure he will be very useful, Minister,” Aiah says.

“During the revolution,” Adaveth adds, “Ethemark coordinated several sabotage teams.”

“I ran the plasm house in Jaspeer,” Aiah says, the defense rising to her lips without her quite intending it. Her claim is not precisely true, but she feels she ought to add a qualification or two to her side of the ledger.

“Ah,” Adaveth says. Transparent nictitating membranes partially deploy over his big eyes, giving him a sly look. “In that case, I am sure you will have much to say to one another concerning your service during the coup. I will leave you to your work.”

“Thank you for taking the time from your schedule, Minister,” Aiah says.

“You are very welcome. We have great hopes for your department, Miss Aiah.”

Adaveth leaves in the ensuing silence. Aiah turns to her deputy and looks at him. He gazes up at her with his huge eyes—all iris and pupil, no whites—and gives a little meaningless nod. Aiah wonders if he will ever have anything to say.

At least he doesn’t smell bad.

“Truth to tell,” Aiah says, “the two of us constitute the entire department right now. I’m keeping the whole of the department files in my briefcase. I have requisitioned rooms and equipment, but I can’t be sure I’ll get them.”

“I expected as much,” Ethemark says, the deep voice rolling out of the tiny frame. “The cabinet was pleased to create this department, but each minister will want his own constituency served.”

Aiah considers this. “May I expect other deputies to arrive in the next few days?”

“Not if Constantine and Adaveth can keep them out, no.” Ethemark’s head cocks to one side. “I don’t suppose we might sit down? I’ve been on my feet a lot in the last few weeks—they are webbed, and these shoes are new.”

“My office,” Aiah says reluctantly. “I would offer to show you yours, but I don’t know where it is, or shall be. Perhaps you should just find one on this floor and take it.”

“Perhaps I shall.” Agreeably.

“Would you like some coffee? I brought a flask.”

“Thank you, no.”

They sit. The broken window’s plastic sheeting rustles as they talk.

“From my own point of view,” Ethemark says, “I am concerned with any potential threat of interference from Triu-mur Parq.”

Parq, Aiah knows, is a priest who had betrayed both sides in the rebellion, playing his own duplicitous game, but managed to end up in the ruling triumvirate anyway.

“Do you think he is likely to interfere?” Aiah asks.

“When the Keremaths took power from the Avians,” Ethemark says, “it was in alliance with those of the Dalavan faith, who the Avians had subjected to continuous persecution.”

“Dalavans?” Aiah says. “They are not Dalavites? Or are they two different branches of the same—?”

A smile tugs at the corners of Ethemark’s lips. “The followers of the prophet Dalavos consider the term Dalavite pejorative. The reason involves their rather complex history, and I will spare you the details unless you are truly interested.”

“Thank you,” Aiah says. “I’m glad you told me this before I met Parq. But I’ve made you digress—do go on.”

“The prophet Dalavos preached continually against those with twisted genes, claiming that they—we—are a spiritual evil polluted by our altered genetics.” He clasps his hands together, the knuckles turning white. His voice maintains its objective tone, but the gesture informs Aiah of his feelings with perfect eloquence. “His target was the Avian aristocracy, of course, but the rest of the twisted fall almost by accident within the scope of this condemnation.”

Aiah watches Ethemark’s hands, the furious, trembling pressure they exert on one another.

“I would not find it congenial,” Ethemark says, “if Parq were able to control personnel in this department, or indeed in any other. The Dalavan prejudice against the twisted would be exerted to the full.”

“If Parq ever controls hiring to that extent,” Aiah says, “I would leave. I am not willing to offer my services to a theocracy.”

Ethemark’s huge deep eyes gaze at Aiah. Regret touches his voice. “You are lucky in having someplace to go, Miss Aiah.”

For a moment there is silence. Aiah’s nerves tingle with the force of this rebuke.

“You are very frank, Mr. Ethemark.”

Nictitating membranes half-shutter Ethemark’s eyes, and Aiah feels another eerie shiver up her nerves at this inhuman gesture.

“I answer frankness with frankness,” he says. “You were open in regard to our department’s deficiencies, and I in regard to what the future might bring us.” He sighs, his short child’s legs swinging below the chair, and uncouples his hands.

“To tell the truth,” he says, “we both owe our jobs to our loyalties. You are loyal to Constantine and I to Adaveth—or perhaps to the purpose each of our patrons represents—and therefore we have no present cause for conflict, as our two patrons are in alliance.”

Aiah raises an eyebrow. “No present cause?”

Ethemark presses his gray palms together and cocks his large head at a strangely birdlike angle. “I understand that you spent yesterday studying the plasm system within the Palace.”

“You are changing the subject, Mr. Ethemark.” And Adaveth has some good spies, she thinks.

“I hope to return to the subject by way of illustration, but in order to make my point I would like to take you outside the Palace. May I?”

“Now?” Dubiously.

“If you are not otherwise engaged. I gather you are not.”

Aiah hides her amusement. Ethemark is trying to rig a chonah for her.

It will take more than this little gray-skinned homunculus to catch one of the Cunning People.

At this point there is a knock on the outer office door, and Aiah rises to discover the workers come to replace her window.

At least she can successfully give orders to the maintenance staff. This was more than she ever achieved in her old job at the Plasm Authority in Jaspeer.

She turns to Ethemark and resigns herself to spending more time with him. “Very well,” she says. “I hope we will not have to go too far.”

THE BLUE TITAN THREATENS… BUT THE LYNXOID BROTHERS ARE READY! NEW CHROMOPLAY AT THEATERS NOW!

It isn’t far—forty minutes by aerial tram from the station nearest the Palace—but in terms of a difference in character, for sheer existential antithesis, a hundred hours would not be far enough.

Aiah leaves the department files, still in their briefcase, at one of the palace guard stations. A change of clothing is necessary: Ethemark advises waterproof boots, overalls, a waterproof hat. Aiah buys them en route. Dressed like a sewer worker, she enjoys her first ride on an aerial tram. It flies much faster than she’d expected, and when the high winds catch its slab sides the tram bobs alarmingly on its cable. Below, boats leave silver tracks in gray, watery canyons. The white granite towers of Lorkhin Island loom close, then are left behind.

Once they leave the tram station, they find a water taxi, but the taxi will take them only so far, and drops them off on a steel-mesh quay scarred with rust and graffiti. Aiah looks uneasily around her at a decaying, abandoned factory structure and ramshackle brick tenements.

“You are safe,” Ethemark says. “These people know me.”

Weathered Keremath faces gaze at Aiah from the pontoon opposite. Our family is your family.

The white towers of Lorkhin Island are still visible on the near horizon. Ethemark hails and hires a boatman who happens to pass the quay. The boatman is twisted—a huge creature, broad and powerful, a walking slab designed for a hard life of manual labor. His family lives on the boat with him, beneath a tarpaulin roof: an old grandmother—a white-haired, wrinkled slab, still powerful as a truck—and a number of children. Their deformities, the boundless terrain of bone and muscle, become more pronounced as they grow older—the youngest is almost human in appearance, the oldest a near-copy of her father. The hull is some kind of foam which, when scarred or torn, can be repaired simply by adding more foam. The boat’s engine is a noisy old two-cycle outboard that runs off the same hydrogen tank as the single-burner stove, and also powers a dim light stuck up on a short mast forward.

Ethemark nods toward their hosts. “These people are among the more common of the altered,” he remarks conversationally. “They’re commonly called ‘stonefaces.’ ” Nictitating membranes shade his eyes. “My kind,” he adds, “are ‘embryos.’ ”

“Are these terms, ah, insulting?” Aiah asks. “Would I use them in polite company?”

“It depends on how you use them,” Ethemark says.

Aiah nods. There are Jaspeeri words for the Barkazil that can vary the same way in their meanings.

Aiah feels a chill of apprehension as the boat slips away from the warmth of Shieldlight, into the darkness beneath a pair of lumbering concrete pontoons: the buildings above the pontoons are crumbling brick tenements, bad enough in themselves, and who knows what lives underneath?

The boat moves slowly onward. Aiah’s eyes adjust to the darkness. Ethemark stands by the little mast forward and signals to Aiah. “Will you join me?”

Reluctantly Aiah makes her way forward in the last of the light, stands, and holds the mast for balance. A webwork of lights glows ahead, dim yellow dots that resolve, as Aiah nears, into bulbs strung on long strands. Somewhere there is the unmuffled cough of a generator, heard even over the racket of the boat’s two-cycle engine.

Slowly the dimensions of a floating city emerge, a city built in the shadow of the larger, Shieldlit floating city above. On the fringes are boats packed together, seemingly at random, and farther in are rafts, barges, a listing old tug… everything strung together by planks, rope or cable bridges, scaffolding, ladders, a structure of arcane complexity… Cooking smells float in the thick air, along with the odor of fecal matter, of ooze and rich salt ocean. And, dimly seen in the light of the strung bulbs, the twisted: hulking shapes like the boatman, moving massively in the darkness like moving walls; lithe small forms like Ethemark that scamper over the scaffolding; and other, rarer figures, fantastic things in nightmare shapes, things with horns and claws, with extra limbs or no limbs, with serpent scales or green-glowing lamp eyes that turn to follow Aiah as the boat moves deeper into the darkness.

“There are hundreds of these places,” Ethemark says, his voice a deep counterpoint to the high-pitched bang of the engine. “Perhaps thousands. No one has ever counted them. No one knows how many people live in them, but there must be many millions. They are called half-worlds, and those who live in them are accounted half-human.”

There is a splash ahead in the water, and Aiah’s heart leaps. Whatever it was has disappeared, leaving a ring of oily ripples. She puts a hand to her throat, looks at Ethemark.

“Plasm is generated here, isn’t it?”

The strung bulbs glow yellow in Ethemark’s saucerlike pupils. “Of course. The plasm-generating matter in the boats and rafts is insignificant, but some plasm is generated in resonance with the larger structures of the city around us, and additional plasm is… acquired from one place or another.”

“And what is done with it?”

“The people here own it. They use it for their own purposes. The boss decides.”

Aiah scowls. “Who picks the boss?”

“They are self-appointed, most of them. One might consider them a type of gangster, though gangsters of a lower order. The Silver Hand lives on the population as a predator lives on prey: the bosses of the half-worlds live among their people in a kind of symbiosis. The bosses cannot afford too great a tyranny—people could always leave—and besides, in the end, the rafts are dangerous places, and a tyrannous boss would not survive them.”

Aiah finds this assonance unconvincing. In her experience, a minor gangster is only a major gangster who hasn’t got the breaks. She hates them all.

A huge barge looms to starboard, sides streaked with rust. Aiah looks up to see a horned head gazing at her with glittering eyes, and her heart skips a beat before she realizes it’s a goat in a pen, kept for milk or meat. Elsewhere on the barge a large video set, its oval screen set high, burns its images downward for an audience of twisted children. Poppet the Puppet sings a song about the alphabet, her image gleaming off the restless goggle eyes and corded muscle of her audience.

Aiah remembers watching Poppet during her own childhood. The juxtaposition of the familiar and the strange sends an eerie shiver up her spine.

“This place is called Aground,” Ethemark says, “because as the sea has receded the pontoons around us have settled on the bottom. I was born here.”

The lights of his childhood home glimmer in Ethemark’s big saucer eyes.

“Why is the sea receding?”

“People have found other things to do with the water.”

A stench floats toward the boat. Aiah shrinks from it. “The conditions…,” she begins, appalled. She had grown up poor in Jaspeer, but has never seen anything like this.

“Infant mortality is very high,” Ethemark says. “Sanitary conditions are not very good, though they’re better than one might expect, and everywhere there is poverty and neglect. The twisted often have special medical needs, and there is no medicine here in any case. Educational opportunities,” dryly, “tend to be limited.”

Aiah looks at him. It is the first hint of irony she has seen in him.

“I was the son of the boss,” he says, “so I got out. I was lucky.” He stands on tiptoe, points. “My cousin is the new boss, and lives there. We will visit him.”

Aiah’s courage quails at the thought. Ethemark’s large eyes turn to her.

“This place is illegal, of course. All the half-worlds are, but certain people are paid off, and others don’t care or find the people who live here useful… and besides there is a need for places like this, so they exist. But any of these people could be driven out of here at any time, and all these homes dispersed or destroyed by any official inclined to do so. The population has no rights in the matter.”

He looks up at Aiah, and urgency enters his voice. “I said that your patron and mine have no present cause to disagree. I bring you to this place to show you where my loyalties truly lie. If anyone strikes at these people, tries to cut them off from what little they have, then I will owe your people no loyalty. Do you understand?”

Aiah shrinks from a cold drizzle that falls from some invisible drain high overhead. The boss’s house, covered in scaffolds and with red lights dangling overhead, floats nearer.

“What of the bosses?” she asks. “These little gangsters you talk about, one of whom is your cousin. Are your loyalties to them?”

Ethemark’s thin lips draw back from his teeth, giving him a strange urgency. “Miss Aiah,” he says, “at this moment in time, the bosses are necessary. If these people were no longer driven to live here, the bosses would no longer exist. They would disappear of their own accord.”

Aiah lacks Ethemark’s optimism. She has never known gangsters to vanish of their own free will.

The boatman cuts the engine and the boat drifts up to a half-submerged landing. One of the children lashes the boat to an upright. From somewhere comes the surprising smell of coffee.

“This way.”

Ethemark reveals an unexpected agility as he springs from the boat, touches one boot to the half-submerged platform, then leaps to the rungs of a ladder that seems to be bolted together from bits of old pipe. Aiah is less graceful, and while Ethemark scurries up the ladder Aiah soaks her boots to the ankle as the platform sinks beneath her weight.

“Ethemark!” It’s a juvenile voice, but the sound comes from a mountainous shadow, dimly seen in the faint light on a catwalk above Aiah’s head.

“Hello, Craftig,” Ethemark says. “How’s the family?”

Craftig’s answer is expansive, enthusiastic, and full of digressions. Aiah climbs the improvised ladder to a narrow overhead catwalk that runs across several of the moored vessels. The half-world of Aground spreads out below her on either side like some strange half-lit blight spreading across the water. She can see grotesque faces flickering in the reflected light of gas stoves. The generator thuds at her ears, and the smell of fecal matter is overwhelming.

“Hi, lady,” the boy says.

Aiah’s attention snaps back to the two twisted. “Hello, Craftig,” she says.

Craftig, not having got his growth, is about a head shorter than Aiah, but he is built on such a massive scale that he must outweigh her by at least a factor of three.

“This is Miss Aiah,” Ethemark says. “She’s my boss.”

“Nice to meet you,” Craftig says.

“We need to see Sergeant Lamarath,” Ethemark says.

“Great! This way!”

Craftig turns and scurries back along the catwalk. He has a bad limp—one knee folds under him at every step—but that doesn’t seem to slow him down. Now that Aiah is closer, she can see that something’s gone very wrong with his twisted genetics. Bone masses seem to have grown abnormally, and gray lumps of bone protrude through the skin in some places. Aiah’s stomach turns over, and she clenches her teeth and marches herself deeper into Aground.

Ethemark and Aiah follow the boy down the platform, then along a swaying bridge made of scavenged cable. Below, Aiah can see faces turned up to watch her. She can’t tell whether they are curious or hostile, but the sea of glittering eyes gives her the shivers anyway.

“I apologize for the smell,” Ethemark says. “We have an agreement with the dolphins to keep the water clean. They provided us with the generator, and we power it with methane made from human waste. That way Aground gets electricity, the water doesn’t get fouled, and we can sell the residue for fertilizer, which is used to pay the people for bringing in their night soil.”

Aiah places her feet carefully on the swaying bridge. She’s incredulous at the thought that this water is considered clean. And the implications of Ethemark’s statement seize her attention.

“The dolphins? Do you—do the people here—deal with them on a regular basis?”

“Naturally. We have a number of issues in common—we are both exiles from the world above, and neither of us were high on the old government’s list of priorities. The dolphins have an interest in sanitation because they are susceptible to a wide range of human diseases, so they’ve made similar deals with most of the other half-worlds. I’ve heard it said that they are not a separate species at all, but humans adapted for an aquatic environment. Twisted genetics, just like ours.”

He turns, his unblinking eyes gazing at Aiah like spheres of polished black glass. “The dolphins turned against the Kere-maths because of the water situation. Did you know that?”

Aiah shakes her head. The bridge sways uneasily beneath her feet, and droplets of condensation spatter on her hat.

“The Keremaths allowed their waste disposal systems to deteriorate. Thousands of tons of waste were being dumped untreated into the water every day. The repair went out for bids, but there was the usual fiddling over the contracts, and the dumping went on for twelve years.” Fury sharpens Ethemark’s deep tones. “Once the fighting was over, Constantine sent in some military engineers to the waste plants, and they fixed the problem in two days. Two days!”

“Hey, Ethemark!” Craftig’s voice calls through the darkness. “Did you forget the way? It’s over here!”

Ethemark turns abruptly and steps off the swaying bridge onto another platform. Aiah follows, placing her feet carefully. The only route down is a ladder, then a pair of planks spanning the gap from one craft to another.

At the end of the journey is a barge with a building constructed on its rusting deck plates. It’s an assemblage of parts thrown together almost randomly: the superstructure of some other vessel; a picture window out of a streetfront display; a large trailer, wheels removed. The whole thing is decorated with long strands of decorative red lights, giving it a misplaced holiday air.

Aiah feels her spine stiffen as she nears the building: there are some stonefaces waiting here, scarred visages atop huge, muscular bodies, obvious bodyguards. An assortment of people sit waiting: a mother with children overflowing her lap, an elderly woman holding a scabrous-looking chicken in a cage, a young gray-skinned embryo reading a book in the darkness with his large goggle eyes. Petitioners, Aiah assumes, here to ask the big man for favors.

Craftig speaks to one of the guards, and then Ethemark, and the guards look at Aiah before one of them disappears into the structure. Aiah stands for a long, uncomfortable moment, hating every second of this gangster ritual, and then the guard returns and gestures for Ethemark and Aiah to enter.

“See you later, Miss Aiah!” Craftig calls.

Aiah stops, turns to the boy, forces a smile onto her face. “Nice to meet you, Craftig. Thanks for showing us the way.”

The building is tidy inside, one small, whitewashed room after another. The boss meets Aiah in a comfortable office that features a battered metal desk, gunmetal file cabinets, and the strong smell of cigar smoke. Brass-rimmed portholes look out into the darkness, and the interior lights are dim: the big-eyed twisted probably have no problem seeing, but Aiah finds herself squinting. There are no straight lines in the architecture, or angles, but rounded corners and a barrel ceiling. It’s not a feature of nautical design, but defense: the room’s been wrapped in bronze mesh in a crude attempt to defend against plasm attack, then plastered and painted. Bits of the plaster have flaked off to reveal the mesh beneath.

High on one wall, something coiled hangs from a projection. At first, in the dim light, Aiah thinks it’s a canvas fire hose, and then she realizes it’s alive. A huge snake, or a monster created by plasm, kept as a pet. She shivers.

“Miss Aiah,” Ethemark says, “this is my cousin, Sergeant Lamarath.”

“How do you do,” Aiah says, and offers her hand. Pleased to meet you, under the circumstances, would be a hopeless misrepresentation.

Lamarath takes her hand in his moist, nicotine-stained grip.

“The ‘Sergeant’ isn’t official,” he says. “It’s just something that goes with the job.” His voice is husky with smoking.

He’s one of the small, gray-skinned, large-eyed twisted—as of course he would be, being a cousin of Ethemark’s—and is dressed casually in high-clipped boots and a pair of tan overalls. His expression, like all expressions here, is unreadable. Aiah realizes that if she has very many of these people in her department, she’s going to have a hard time telling them apart.

Lamarath picks up a small cigar from an overflowing ashtray and props it in the corner of his mouth. “Please sit down.” “Thank you.”

The chairs are metal, with—incongruously bright—plastic-covered cushions. She sits.

“Congratulations on your appointment,” Lamarath says. “You must be very excited.”

“At the moment,” sitting, “I’m very overwhelmed.”

“Would you like something to eat? Drink?”

The journey has left her without an appetite. And gangster hospitality is something she could do without.

“No,” she says. “Thank you.”

He sits, inhales smoke, blows it out, then leans forward and props his elbows on his desk. “What do you think of our little community?”

“I think it could use some light,” Aiah says.

Nictitating membranes eclipse a third of the Sergeant’s eyes. “Has Ethemark told you of my proposition?”

Aiah looks at her deputy. “No. He hasn’t.”

“Simply this,” Lamarath says. “I want my people to be left alone until things change outside.”

So this visit is, perhaps inevitably, official. Aiah straightens her back, puts her feet flat on the floor, clasps her hands in her lap. The proper civil servant, ready to bargain.

“Change how?” she asks.

Lamarath jabs his cigar into the ashtray. “My people need a lot of things.”

“Housing, obviously. Medical care.”

Aiah looks at Ethemark, who shifts uneasily in his seat. “That isn’t our department,” she points out. “We’re strictly plasm hunters.”

“That plasm is all we’ve got,” Lamarath says. “That and the strength of our bodies. The plasm we steal doesn’t amount to much, and if we sometimes tap some electricity or fresh water, or steal some phone or video service, or even motor off with some equipment left lying around on the quays, well, that doesn’t add up to a great deal.”

“But the half-worlds are vulnerable,” Ethemark points out.

“Yes.” Lamarath’s husky voice grates with anger. “If your superiors demand some cheap victories, the half-worlds are where you can find them on short notice. The cops can bust up ten half-worlds per day for weeks, and it will all look very good on video—’Dockyard thieves arrested. Underworld plasm theft ring broken up. Fifty suspects taken into custody. Vagrants dispersed from illegal, unsanitary settlement.’—We know how this sort of thing works, you see.”

“It’s happened often enough,” Ethemark says. “The cops get enough complaints from their superiors, they’ll come after the easy targets instead of the real thieves. The real thieves can afford better payoffs.”

“If you disperse the people here,” Lamarath says, “there’s no housing for them, so they’ll have to find another half-world; and in the meantime you’ve taken everything they own and deprived them of protection. Our plasm is all that keeps the Silver Hand off our necks, not to mention the fact that we use it for doctoring and so on.” He turns and looks up at the huge snake hanging on the wall. “Right, Doc?”

The snake slowly raises its head. “Absolutely,” it says.

Cold terror floods Aiah’s veins. It isn’t a snake, it’s some kind of twisted human being—the thing’s bald head is that of an old man, with wizened features, deep brown skin, and glittering, yellow eyes. Writhing feathery tentacles circle the creature’s neck.

“This is Doctor Romus,” Lamarath adds. “He’s my advisor.”

“The title, like that of Sergeant, goes with the job,” Romus says, then adds, “Pleased to meet you.” His voice is high-pitched, with odd, reedlike overtones.

“Hello,” Aiah manages. Her nails dig into her thighs, a reminder not to run screaming from the room.

“I would have greeted you earlier,” Romus says, “but I was engaged in a little act of telepresence.” He turns to Lamarath. “The Mokhrath Canal house is still active.”

Lamarath nods. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“My pleasure.”

Dr. Romus isn’t hanging from a hook, Aiah realizes, it’s a plasm connection. He’s a mage, and he’s been on a mission.

Lamarath opens a drawer, pulls out a folder, and pushes it across the desk.

“The twisted get around, you know,” he says. “People make a point of not seeing us, or think we’re too stupid to understand; or they employ us for things that aren’t strictly legal.”

Aiah finds a reply bubbling from her lips. “My people, too,” she says. The Jaspeeris had never known quite what to do with the Barkazils. Her teachers at school, and her superiors at the Authority, had always been faintly surprised whenever she said something intelligent.

Lamarath gives her a curious look at this remark. He nudges the folder toward Aiah again. “This is for you. A list of twelve plasm houses in this district. Most of them Silver Hand, some not.”

Aiah restrains the impulse to take the folder, clasps her hands in her lap again. “Please understand,” she says. “I’m not in a position to really dictate policy.”

Lamarath frowns at her. “Influence policy,” he says. “That’s all I ask.”

Aiah takes a breath. “All I can assure you,” she says carefully, “is that any minor—I do mean minor—plasm thefts in the half-worlds will not be given a high priority by my department.”

“I will speak to my… counterparts in other half-worlds,” Lamarath says. “I hope to be able to provide you with more information along these lines.”

She looks at him—her heart bangs in her throat, and it’s difficult to steady her gaze into the huge dark eyes—and she takes good care with her words. “I will be grateful for any information. But understand that I will make no bargains with anyone concerning any plasm thefts brought to my attention. I can’t set policy. All I can say is that, from the limited knowledge I have of the subject, the half-worlds will not be a high priority.”

Lamarath holds her eyes for a long moment—behind her own composed expression, Aiah thinks wildly of assassination, of how no one knows she is here and how she could so easily be disposed of—and then gives a brief nod and reaches for another cigar.

“That will have to do, then,” he says.

“Nice to have met you,” says Dr. Romus.

Aiah’s mind swims as she follows Ethemark out of the barge. The boy Craftig waits outside, playing on the deck plates with toy figures of the Lynxoid Brothers, and cheerfully leads them aloft and back to the landing, then calls “Long live the revolution!” as the boat begins its journey to the open air.

Outside the day has became overcast, a skein of gray cloud over the Shield, and Aiah shivers in the faint light. She considers the bargain she has just made—for it was a bargain, deny it though she would—and wonders if she is a fool. She can’t even tell if she’s just been bribed. If she has become the hireling of some minor gangster, and betrayed everything she holds dear, all through ignorance, or fear for her life, or through some hopeless flaw in herself.

Whatever decisions she makes, correct or not, corrupt or not, she knows she will pay for them sooner or later. She only hopes the payment is something that she can bear.

Item #5: Gil? Item #6: Family?

There’s yesterday’s list, its final two items still a weight on her conscience. Aiah still can’t bring herself to contact Gil, but she decides she can talk to someone else back in Jaspeer and at least let them know she’s well.

She looks at a wall clock: 20:04, halfway through third shift. People at home are probably still awake. Aiah goes to the communications array set into the wall near her bed, dons the headset—a nice lightweight model, with gold accents on the earpieces and the mouthpiece, a far cry from the heavy black plastic rig she’s accustomed to—and then presses the bright silver keys to connect her to her grandmother Galaiah back in Jaspeer.

“Hello?”

“Nana?” Aiah says. “This is Aiah.”

“It’s Aiah!” the woman bellows to someone else in the room. Aiah winces at her grandmother’s volume. There’s a sudden expectant babble of voices in the background, but then Galaiah hushes them.

“Where are you?” she demands. “Are you all right?”

Aiah turns down the headset volume. Her grandmother is a bit deaf and has a tendency to shout.

“I’m fine, Nana. I’m in Caraqui, and I have a new job.”

“You’ve got a good job?” Galaiah shouts. A refugee from the Barkazi Wars, she has a fine grasp of the essentials.

“A very important job. I’m going to be running a government department.”

“She’s running a government department in Caraqui!” Galaiah relays the information to her listeners.

“Who’s there?” Aiah asks.

“Landro and his family.”

Landro is Aiah’s cousin. He had been a plasm diver once, searching through forgotten tunnels and sealed-off basements in search of plasm he could sell. Caught, he’d done his term in Chonmas Prison, and now works in a hardware store.

“Have you talked to your mother?” Galaiah asks. “Not yet.”

“You should call her.”

“I will.” Reluctantly. Aiah’s mother is an indefatigable dramatist, and Aiah dreads the inevitable reaction: breast-beating, weeping, how could you do this to me? She can predict every word of the call.

“Those Authority creepers are still looking for you,” Galaiah says.

“Let them look.” She smiles: she’d got clean away, money in the bank and a new future.

“Esmon’s witch Khorsa told everybody how she helped you get away.”

“Did she tell the creepers?”

“Of course not,” scornfully. “She said she didn’t know anything!”

It occurs to Aiah that perhaps they have already told the creepers more than they ought to have.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t talk about this on the phone…”

“Hm?” Galaiah thinks about it for a moment. “Fine, then,” she says, and changes the subject. “There’s a lot of news about Caraqui on the video. They say Constantine’s in charge and that he’s going to change everything.”

“That’s… not really true, Nana. Constantine is only a minister in the government. But yes, we hope things are going to change.”

“That Constantine, he’s another of your passus, isn’t he?” she asks, using the Barkazil word for dupe or victim. She chortles. “That’s a lovely chonah you’ve rigged.”

“Constantine isn’t my passu.”

“Either he is your passu, or you are his.”

Aiah can’t find the strength to dispute this simple logic.

Besides, her grandmother might well be right.

“Your longnose lover is back in Jaspeer,” Galaiah adds. “He’s been calling the family and trying to find you.”

Sadness catches at Aiah’s throat. “Gil?”

“You haven’t called him, either, hanh?” Galaiah is gleeful—she’d never approved of Aiah taking up with a Jaspeeri. She holds the traditional Barkazil opinion that the rest of humanity is only useful as prey for the artful, devious, and highly superior Cunning People.

It’s precisely that attitude—that the Barkazil are a magical species above the laws that govern lesser beings—that led to the self-destruction of the Metropolis of Barkazi, and therefore to Galaiah’s journey as a refugee to Jaspeer. Aiah has always refrained from pointing this out to her grandmother. “I didn’t know Gil was back from Gerad,” Aiah says, perfectly aware of the inadequacy of her excuse.

There’s a buzz on the commo array and a flashing green light, the signal that someone else is trying to call. “Excuse me, Nana,” Aiah says. “I’m getting another call. Hold on a moment.”

She pushes the hold button, then turns the dial that switches the solenoids in the commo array. There’s a click and electric buzz, and then Aiah answers.

“You left messages for me.” It’s Constantine’s baritone, and Aiah’s warm blood sings in her ears at the sound of it.

“I couldn’t get back to you earlier,” he says. “What did you require?”

Aiah tries to organize her thoughts. “I needed to talk to you…” she begins, and then begins to look frantically for her list.

“You’re in your suite? May I come see you?” The voice takes on a lazy, self-satisfied tone. “I would like to relate my latest triumphs. I am pleased to report that it has been a very good day.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“I’m just a few corridors away. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”

He presses the disconnect button, and Aiah jumps for the switch to connect herself to Galaiah. No time to bathe and change. Damn it. “Nana? That was business. I’ve got to go.” “Give me your phone number!” “Yes.” She gives it. “I got a question!” the old lady says. “Yes. Quickly.”

“Can you get jobs for some of your family?”

The question stops her dead. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Most of us have never had a good job.”

“Let me think. I’ll call you again. Okay?”

“Call your mother!”

The imperious command rings out just as Aiah presses the disconnect button. She brushes her hair, checks herself in the mirror, wishes again there was time for at least a shower. She puts on the priceless ivory necklace that Constantine bestowed upon her, then anoints herself with the Cedralla perfume Constantine gave to her their last time together, before he flew off to Caraqui and the coup.

Memories, scent and sensation, worn about her body like little charms. She can only hope the tiny magics will do the job.

When she opens the door to his knock, Constantine rolls into the room like the irresistible tide. He’s no longer wearing the proper velvet suit of the minister, but clothing meant for ease and comfort: a blousy black shirt, a jacket of soft black suede imprinted with a design of geomantic foci, suede boots, no lace. The clothing suits him better than the confining garb of the politician, provides him a physical scope to match the ranging of his mind.

“The cabinet meets daily,” he says, “and all the news is good.”

“Would you like to tell me the details over a bottle of wine?”

“And food, if you’ve got it.” He prowls to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, gazes inside.

Aiah scurries after. “I can throw something together, if you like.”

He turns, his massive hands close on her shoulders, and he propels her firmly to a chair next to the dining room table. His scent eddies along her nerves.

“Sit,” he says. “I’ll cook.”

“You don’t know where—”

“Yes I do. All these suites are built alike.”

Aiah surrenders—the fact of his touch, this near-embrace, make surrender all too easy—and allows herself to sit. She has been in the kitchen so little she has no real notion it’s hers. She cocks her head and regards him from this new angle. “I didn’t know you could cook, Minister.”

An amused glow warms his brown eyes. “I didn’t say I could cook well. But I have absorbed at least a few principles of cooking which I hope, in this case, will prove universal.”

He takes off his jacket, opens the pantry door, gazes in thoughtfully. Plucks things from the shelf and finds a saucepan. He cocks an eye at her.

“I take it all this dates from the previous administration?”

Aiah shrugs. “Who has time to shop?”

“I wish you would remember to eat from time to time.” His big body prowls the confined kitchen with perfect assurance. He surveys his finds, then reaches for a knife.

“Our main course will have to come out of cans. And the vegetables are far from fresh, but I will try to make do.”

“There are few sights as attractive,” Aiah observes, “as that of a man cooking.”

“Wait till you see how dinner turns out before you judge how attractive I am.”

He sets water boiling, opens cans, and finds a bottle of wine on the built-in rack. “Do you know,” he says, looking in drawers for a tool to remove the bottle cap, “that thirty percent of the population of Caraqui are on the government payroll?”

“The drawer on your left, Minister. We have that many civil servants?”

“Civil servants plus the dole, yes. Besides a civil service so bloated that it defies comprehension—the Keremaths wanted everyone on their payroll—the government owns a surprising number of commercial firms. All the communications companies save for the broadcast station controlled by the Dalavans, the Worldwide News Service, the video networks, construction and shipping firms. Factories. Fisheries. Office buildings. Even restaurants! And if you add the firms that the Keremaths owned personally, the total is even higher.” He gives a knowing smile as he opens the wine bottle and pours. “They arranged things with a certain criminal inevitability,” he says. “I find the pattern familiar—my own family in Cheloki were no better. There was a law that all streets had to be paved with a certain grade of concrete, but the only company offering such a grade was owned by the Keremaths. And another special type of nonporous concrete was required for the pontoons that underlie all the buildings, and again the Keremaths’ company was the only company that offered it. To prevent dependence on foreign energy sources, only domestically produced hydrogen is permitted in the metropolis, but the New Theory Hydrogen Company, the only one in Caraqui, was owned by the Keremaths…” A laugh rumbles deep in his barrel chest. “The only New Theory, so far as I can tell, was that the Keremaths got everything.” He touches glasses. “To your health.”

“To yours.” The amber wine tastes of smoke and walnuts.

“Have you seen the news? How one scandal after another is being revealed?”

“I have been a little busy, and haven’t watched the news.”

“It is the function of a new government to discredit the old, and fortunately in our case we have but to tell the truth.” He tilts his head back, savoring the wine. “Within a few months the scandals will multiply, and the Keremaths will be so discredited that no one will want them back.”

Constantine returns to the kitchen, and gives a cynical smile. “Last shift the cabinet reacted to these continuing scandalous revelations, and have annexed the Keremaths’ companies, personal property, and bank accounts.”

“And thus the state acquires that many more civil servants. Was that one of the triumphs you mentioned?”

Constantine smiles coldly. His bright steel knife slices onions as if they were Keremath livers. “No. Acquiring the companies was not a difficult decision—we could hardly leave them under the Keremaths’ ownership, after all. It was in deciding the companies’ ultimate fate wherein my brilliant political talents were fully deployed.”

“You wanted to sell the companies,” Aiah says. “And others wished to keep them.”

Constantine gives an impatient smile. “It is a source of astonishment to me that such things are even matters for debate,” he says. “The state should be an instrument of evolution, not a bank, a stock exchange, or a nursery for inefficient enterprises. But—” He shrugs. “Not all the cabinet members are soldiers or idealists. Some have political instincts that are quite sound, in their fashion. And the possibility of employing the New Theory Hydrogen Company and the other concerns as a source for patronage was, I suspect, a temptation to more than one.”

“And the triumvirate?”

“Parq was anxious to stuff the companies with his retainers. Colonel Drumbeth was of a mind with me. And Hilthi—an interesting man, Hilthi—seemed to have no interest whatever in the economic issues, but rather a care for the companies’ moral health.” He laughs. Chopped onions fly from his fingers and fall hissing into the pan. “An unusual attitude for a journalist, don’t you think?” “I know nothing of Hilthi.”

“A noble man, truly. The greatest enemy the Keremaths had—” His eyes turn to Aiah, glittering. “Until myself,” he adds. Steam rises as he throws noodles into the boiling water and stirs things in the pan. His voice turns reflective. “In a tyranny, a single dissenting individual can sometimes engage in a dialogue with the entire government. Hilthi was raised in Caraqui and found the Keremaths repulsive and denounced them. Was sent to prison, came out, and denounced them again, after having sensibly put a border or two between himself and the Specials. He made it his life’s work to expose the Keremaths for what they were. He meticulously gathered facts, published them, made brilliant propaganda. It is a monument to his skill that the Keremaths referred to dissidents as ‘Hilthists.’ ”

He laughs, a low rumble. “He was invited into the triumvirate to offer a certain moral tone to what otherwise might have been seen only as a tawdry adventure in military government.” He gives Aiah another sly, sideways glance. “Certainly he provides a tone that / lack.” He sighs. “But the fellow knows nothing about government. He desires only that we practice virtue. He doesn’t care whether the companies are sold or not, only that any Keremath loyalists in their hierarchy be punished.”

“Is that so bad?”

“The crime of which most stand accused is making the money for the Keremaths. There are far worse crimes in Caraqui for us to concern ourselves with. I was able to edge him along to the position that any serious crimes on the part of any of the managers would be dealt with, but that running a company was not necessarily a crime.”

“Very good.”

“So Hilthi was brought around. Parq was outnumbered. The army was bought off—it will be doubled in size to two divisions, an unnecessary expense, but it gives the officer class new commands and new promotions and may serve to keep them quiet. And, after a little political magic”—he sprinkles things into the saucepan—“decisions were made. The companies will be sold. We anticipate no difficulty with that—they were all remarkably profitable, after all. The profits will help to finance reorganization in various other state enterprises, which will also be sold as soon as they can be made efficient. I convinced them, you see, that it had to be done now, while martial law was still in force, because a popular government would not be able to shrink in size with the proper ruthlessness. So the enlarged army will hold the metropolis together while structural changes take place, and then—we hope—they will march back to the barracks before they are all possessed of the delusion that they can actually run a modern state.”

The smoky wine murmurs in Aiah’s veins. “But they run Caraqui now, don’t they?”

“They have some notion they might be in charge, yes. But running a metropolis requires the ability to count above a hundred, which generally speaking the officer class of Caraqui does not possess. Here.” He passes her a plate.

Noodles, and on them onions, smoked pigeon, and shredded black olives in a light sauce. Tossed salad. The amber wine.

Surprisingly delicious. The onions, pigeon, and olives are three stark flavors that should not blend, but somehow they do, and the wine goes beautifully with it all.

“I’m very impressed, Metro—Minister,” Aiah says.

Constantine gives his rumbling laugh. “Metro-minister is a title in which I could rejoice.” He brings his own plate to the table. “You may consider this dish a metaphor for politics.” He points to his plate with the tip of a knife. “Onions, olives, smoked fowl. Drumbeth, Parq, Hilthi. Diverse people, diverse interests, diverse tastes. Brought into union with a little skill on the part of your deponent.”

She raises her glass, offers him a salute. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” He tastes his creation, raises his eyebrows in pleasant surprise. “Better than I thought, in truth.”

“Let’s hope it’s an omen.”

“Let’s.” He sips the wine, takes a few more bites. Looks up from his plate. “And how are you getting on with Ethemark?” “It was—” She takes a breath. “An interesting day.”

“Tell me.”

She tells him. They finish their meal and take the wine bottle to the couch. “So what have I done?” she asks. “Have I sold the department to some little gangster in return for a handful of names?”

He considers this. “You judge yourself overharshly,” he says. “You have made no promises to this man, none at all. What you have done is make a policy decision—the first of a great many—to the effect that you will concentrate your efforts on one area of your mandate and not another.” His frown changes to a catlike smile. “It is a decision I support fully, by the way. The half-worlds are potentially a great resource. We should not waste them, or their people.”

Relief eases the tension that clings between Aiah’s shoulder blades. “But what about Ethemark? His loyalties are clearly with the half-worlds, and not with us.”

“That will require tactful handling, if and when the difference becomes important. But you need not worry over the loyalties of most of your people—I’ve decided that everyone will require deep plasm scans, to discover where their loyalties really lie.”

Aiah looks at him in surprise. “Who’s going to do the scanning?”

“The Force of the Interior. Sorya’s department. It’s the sort of thing they’re good at.”

Alarm jangles along Aiah’s nerves. “I don’t want Sorya in my brain!” she cries. Involuntarily she lifts a hand protectively to guard her head.

Constantine reaches out, takes her hand in his, gently lowers it to her lap. “Not you,” he says. “Nor Ethemark, nor any other political appointee I am forced to accept. But everyone else, yes. You need an absolutely straight department, even if we have to hire every single one of them from outside Caraqui, and plasm scans are the only way to make certain.”

She clasps Constantine’s big hand in her smaller ones, looks at him. A shiver of memory raises the hairs on her nape. “I saw Taikoen yesterday, Metropolitan.”

He looks startled, then masters himself and nods. “Yes. He is… making use… of an officer of the Specials. A killer, a torturer. He broke hundreds in his dungeons, and murdered many.” His lip curls in disdain. “Such people are best disposed of with the trash. If anyone deserves Taikoen, it is he.”

Aiah finds her lower lip shivering and wills it to stop. “Who knows about him? It.”

Constantine’s eyes gaze somberly into hers. “You. Martinus, my bodyguard. Myself. Sorya may suspect, though I have not told her. And lastly that torturer, who though his body lives is already dead.”

A shudder runs through her. “He recognized me. I was terrified.”

“He will not harm you.” Constantine puts his arms around her, cradles her against his massive chest. “Making use of Taikoen is the worst thing I have ever done. It is the worst thing I can ever conceive.” His hand caresses her jaw-line, turns her face up to his. There is a smouldering anger in his eyes, in the twisting muscles of his jaw. “Taikoen weighs on me,” Constantine says. “He is necessary, but…” There is a flicker in his pensive eyes, echo of a chill thought that passes through his mind. “I hope I judged this aright. The balance of rights and wrongs, the hope of a better outcome.”

Aiah smiles wanly. “It isn’t all as easy as cooking, is it?”

He nods in answer. There is a kind of painful hopelessness in his eyes. “Taikoen is a trap, I know. He is too powerful a weapon to ignore, but the very knowledge of him is… corrupting. I hope that someday I may be strong enough to do without him.” He takes a deep breath. “And he is, sometimes, still the Taikoen who fought the Slaver Mages. Even in his current form he is not without his share of greatness. And he is…” Constantine searches for a word. “He is impaired, and, for all his power, diminished… He has lost his humanity, and he wants it again, and he can’t find it.”

He straightens, visibly summons himself, and gives Aiah a sharp glance. “You know that I worshipped Taikoen once, as part of a…” He licks his lips. “A cult. My cousin Herome was priest.”

“You told me this,” Aiah says.

“It isn’t a part of my life that fills me with pride. I was debased and desperate, and I sought company as debased as I… and there was Herome, in charge of my grandfather’s prisons, feeding prisoners to this thing, and playing at worshipping it. But strangely, it was seeing Taikoen so degraded that brought back my own pride—I had no great opinion of myself, princeling of a bandit regime, but I knew that I was better than this. And when I came to know him, I managed to remind him of his own greatness, and managed to instill in him a memory of his own pride…” An image of that pride broods in Constantine’s eyes, along with bright defiance.

“And that,” he says, “was the end of Herome and his worshippers—Taikoen engulfed them all. It was my first strike against my family, for all they never knew it.” He looks down at Aiah, his glance uneasy. “And Taikoen has followed me ever since. And I have made use of him from time to time, and paid the price.”

She reaches up a hand, touches his cheek. He looks down at her, a kind of need plain on his face. “I hope I may have your understanding in this,” he says. “And better, your compassion.”

Aiah kisses him, driving her lips up into his. The only comfort she can offer, she thinks, is the comfort of her body. For a moment Constantine absorbs the kiss, inhales it as if it’s a consolation, an absolution, and then the kiss awakens in him a tigerish spirit, a fierceness, and his answering kiss is like a kiss of fire.

He carries her bodily to the bedroom, then lays her on the bed and takes off his clothes. She presses the button that polarizes the windows, and in the resulting shadow she looks at the half-light gleaming off his huge shoulders, his massive arms, the powerful muscles of his thighs and buttocks……

Either he is your passu, or you are his. Her grandmother’s voice floats through her mind, and she puts the treacherous thought away.

Aiah welcomes Constantine into the circle of her arms, the circle of her legs. Outside the circle all is dubious, in flux, but the weight of Constantine’s body on hers assures her of her own certainty in the world, of her own consequence, at least until all identity, all thought, is obliterated by climatic fire.

They lie together only a short while before Constantine has to leave. “A meeting,” he sighs, “cocktails. Would you believe it? But he is the Polar League’s ambassador, and we need League funds if we are to accomplish anything at all.”

She touches his shoulder, her fingers following the sheen of light on his black skin. “I wish you would stay.”

He bends over her, kisses her gravely on the forehead. “I cannot treat you as you deserve,” he says. “And for that, as much as anything else, I require your understanding.”

“Sorya—,” she begins, then cuts short at his frown.

“Don’t ask me to choose between you,” he says. “It is not simple. Sorya is what she is, and for a variety of reasons, I need her—her mind and skills more than anything.”

“I was not asking for a choice,” Aiah says. “I was wondering if she would kill me. She and I had… a side-agreement… concerning you. I may have violated it by coming here. And she has already sent me a message.”

All truces are temporary, Sorya said.

Constantine’s brows knit. Aiah can see muscles working on the side of his neck, as if he is chewing the news over before he makes his calm answer.

“If she harms you,” he says (his eyes are stone, cold as the breath of Taikoen), “then it will be the end of her.”

“I hope you will tell her that.”

“I will see that she knows.”

He kisses her forehead again, sealing the promise, then rises and begins to dress.

Aiah lies still for a moment, her nerves humming with the strangeness, the peculiar uncanny intensity, of this life-and-death bargain, and then she remembers she has carried something with her to give to him. She rises from the bed, looks for a moment for a dressing gown before remembering she hasn’t as yet acquired one, and then goes to her baggage to find her treasure.

She approaches him naked, the book offered on her upturned palms. “Yes?” he says, and cocks an eye at the gift.

“I brought this for you. You can judge it better than I can—but I think it will help our work.”

He picks up the book, looks at the gold lettering on the red plastic binding. “Proceedings of the Research Division of the faspeeri Plasm Authority. Volume Fourteen, no less.” He sighs. “An attractive title. You don’t want me to start at the beginning?”

“The first thirteen volumes are all formulae and proofs,” Aiah says. “I don’t understand them. This volume has the recommendations, and they involve a way to increase plasm by about twenty percent through use of something called ‘fractionate intervals.’ ”

Constantine looks skeptical.

“The Authority spent eight years producing the data,” Aiah says, “but then the Research Division got flushed. I think the decision was political, but I don’t know the details. The man in charge was Rohder—he’s brilliant, a real wizard, but I don’t think he’s very practical. Now he’s in charge of a whole suite of empty offices back in the Plasm Authority Building.”

Constantine frowns, runs his thumb along the spine. “I will give it my attention when I can,” he says.

Aiah puts her arms around him and holds him close, hoping to carry some last imprint of Constantine on her flesh. He kisses her—and for a moment she feels him softening, as if he might throw off his clothes and join her on the bed again, but the moment passes, and he says good-bye and returns to the Polar League’s ambassador and his duty.

Aiah decides she might as well follow his example, and begins to make a list for the next day.