City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (24 page)

Cold rain drizzles down as Aiah looks at the overturned apartment building. One of its two support pontoons had been bashed in, and the entire building, with upward of four thousand people inside, had capsized in minutes. The huge concrete pontoons are built with watertight compartments below the waterline and had capsized in minutes. The pontoons are built with massive redundancy, and such sudden and catastrophic failure should not be possible.

Not without help, anyway.

The apartment building, brick on a steel frame, had collapsed when it was overturned, though its watery grave is shallow and the intact pontoon is still visible, barnacle-encrusted flank exposed to the air like some strange leviathan floating dead on the water. Boats sit on the slack green water around the structure, picking up debris and the dead, and barges with huge cranes stand ready. But most of the rescue work is invisible: telepresent mages at nearby plasm substations scouring the rubble for signs of anyone trapped in an air pocket, and other mages with the rare and difficult skill of teleportation stand by to pop any survivors to the nearest hospital.

Constantine watches grimly, the collar of his windbreaker turned up as the rain falls in a soft mist on his bare head. Disposed about the boat are his guards, all twisted Cheloki with bony faces like armored black visors, and led by Martinus. They have followed Constantine all these years, from the Cheloki Wars on, and they have never failed him.

Constantine had not used so many guards until recently. Aiah assumes that telepresent mages are on guard as well. This business, she reflects, has made Constantine wary.

“It will be the Hand sending a message,” he says. Drops of rain course down his face, and he blinks them from his lashes as he speaks. “Who else has the plasm to waste? Sorya taught them not to use bombs.”

Aiah huddles beneath her jacket hood as rain patters on it, a steady percussion near her ears. “What can we do?”

Constantine tilts his head back, as if to consult with the low clouds. He opens his mouth and lets the rain refresh him. Then he looks at Aiah, and a dangerous light burns in his eyes.

“I want you to give me a list,” Constantine says. “Ten Handmen we have not arrested. Not necessarily the highest-ranking, but the worst, and all married— with large families, preferably. I want their addresses and the names of their close kin. I want them by the beginning of work shift tomorrow.”

Aiah’s mouth goes dry. Her hand, holding her rain hood closed beneath her chin, begins to tremble. “Yes, Metropolitan,” she says.

He does not correct her use of his old title. Instead he looks at the rubble of the building. His tone turns meditative. “And another list, I think. Every Handman in your files. Names, pictures, current addresses.” He looks at her sharply. “But
that
for later. The list of ten, first of all. I would send Great-Uncle Rathmen an answer to his message.”

INTERFACT PURCHASES WORLDWIDE NEWS, DATAFILES

THE
WIRE
PROTESTS BIDDING PROTOCOLS

There are three bombings in the next wave. Three Handmen are killed, along with their families. Three Handmen from the list of ten that Aiah had prepared. The explosions are carefully controlled, and there are no other casualties.

After this, the bombings cease entirely.

Aiah concludes that Constantine’s message has been received.

She does not watch the video for days, in order to avoid any pictures of dead children, but she finds, regardless, the dead haunting her dreams, a sad and silent procession, gazing at her with drowned, frozen, reproachful eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Weeks pass.

The Plasm Enforcement Division hones its moves, gathers more data, makes more arrests against increasingly powerless, increasingly desperate opposition. Mercenaries, now dressed in more politically acceptable Shield-gray uniforms instead of full combat gear, continue to storm the bastions of the Silver Hand.

Even the police begin to do their bit, rounding up Handmen on one charge or another. Not major figures, scarcely anyone ranked above brother, but every arrest helps.

The firing squads continue in their work, though the executions are no longer publicized, and terse press releases— providing just names and the crimes of which the Handmen were convicted— are given out instead. It is not work of which anyone is particularly proud.

Aiah hears more and more reports of Handmen and their associates who have decided to leave Caraqui and seek a life elsewhere. The knowledge gives her nothing but satisfaction.

Other Handmen turn up with growing frequency in byways and canals, all dead by violence. Aiah follows these cases in hopes that they may turn out to be a sign that the Hand has turned on itself, is warring over the remains of its power in the absence of its leadership, but the available evidence suggests this is not so. The members of the Hand are too terrified of the government to spend time fighting each other. These bodies are the result of private vengeance, citizens no longer afraid of the Handmen and considering themselves free to act without fear.

Aiah supposes that she can’t approve. But neither, she decides, can she much blame the citizens for turning on their persecutors.

She spends a certain amount of time compiling a dossier on Gentri. There is little to discover beyond what is in the public record. She spends some time surveilling him through telepresence, but it’s impossible to monitor him when he’s at work in the heavily shielded Palace, and otherwise his life seems unexceptional— he works long hours, returns to his family on his off shifts, and if he spends time skulking with Handmen and Keremaths it’s when she’s not looking. She doesn’t feel comfortable peering in at him this way, and is wary of the consequences should she be discovered.

This is Sorya’s sort of work, anyway.

Rohder arrives in Caraqui, and there is a party to welcome him, but afterward Aiah sees him only rarely, at weekly meetings in which he reports to her and Constantine. He spends his time closeted with engineers and plasm theorists from the university.

Eventually Aiah and her entire division hit the wall. Everyone is exhausted, arrests fall off, mistakes are made that result in the wrong doors being bashed in, the wrong people arrested, military police wandering down the wrong corridors, the wrong canals. Aiah prevails upon Constantine to declare a ten-day amnesty in which people are encouraged to report to the government any stolen plasm they may possess without fear of retaliation, and during which she and her department can catch up on their sleep.

Unlike the first amnesty, this one produces results. Aiah has the impression that people are relieved to give their stolen plasm back. “Apparently the guilty knowledge of all that plasm has been weighing heavily upon the thieves’ consciences,” Constantine remarks. Then a devil’s smile dances along his lips, and he adds: “That or the weekly lists of the defunct.”

It is the fifth day of the amnesty, and Aiah is beginning to regain an interest in things other than surveillance, arrests, and stolen moments with Constantine. Early second shift she’d actually phoned her mother— voluntarily!— and spent an hour talking with her.

“
There’s some dirty hermit saying
things
about you,” her mother reports.

“I’m not interested,” Aiah says. “I want to talk about Henley.” Henley is Aiah’s sister, and Aiah has a plan for her. Ten years ago Henley had been crippled by an Operation street lieutenant who had broken her hands— just for the fun of it— and afterward arthritis set in, and Henley’s budding career as a graphic artist had come to an end.

“I want to buy her some plasm treatments,” Aiah says. “Straighten the bones, erase the arthritis. I can afford it now.”

Arrangements are discussed, and Aiah hangs up with an unusual feeling of righteousness. Then the com unit chimes, with Constantine calling to invite her to a picnic of sorts.

“Rohder has finished his calculations and has called in some engineers, and is going to be shifting some buildings about. Would you like to attend? Food and drink will be available on my launch should you desire refreshment.”

Refreshment
, Aiah suspects, means choice wines and ten or twelve courses: that is Constantine’s style.

The day is blustery, with deep gray clouds scudding low and threatening possible rain, so Aiah wears a blue wool suit with red piping, a red scarf to add extra color, and boots with modest heels, and clips her hair back so it won’t blow in the wind. She takes a hooded windbreaker along in case it rains, and shieldglasses in the event the clouds clear.

Constantine meets her at the water gate and smiles as he hands her into his boat. He is dressed casually, cords and a leather jacket— much more the rogue than the minister, and the more attractive for it.

“You look lovely, Miss Aiah. Would you care for a glass?”

The wine bottle is already uncorked and waits in a silver bucket. Constantine pours her a glass, hands it to her with a flourish, and then takes the helm of the launch himself. The turbines purr under his command as the black composite prow rises and cuts the water. His big hands handle the wheel with a fine delicacy, fingertips transmitting the boat’s vibration up his arms. He handles the boat with supreme skill: the liquid in Aiah’s wineglass trembles only slightly as he accelerates onto the Khola Canal and cuts a neat path through the traffic.

Martinus the bodyguard is on board, his black, bone-plated face expressionless as he looks out for any possible attackers. Two other guards also keep a silent watch, and a guard boat follows, with a half-dozen others on board. Telepresent mages are probably on hand as well.

Aiah looks at the guards and considers how one is never allowed to forget power, either its reality or its consequences.

Another power launch whips past on an opposite course, providing a blast of wind and the sight of laughing, copper-skinned young men; Constantine’s boat vaults up the other boat’s wake, finds itself airborne for a moment as the sound of the turbines climbs to a shriek, then slaps to a landing in a fine burst of spray. Constantine laughs as wipers scrape saltwater from the windscreen.

Aiah looks at Constantine’s joy and wonders how it is possible for him to experience such pleasure, surrounded as he is by guards and constant care. It is astonishing, she muses, how he is able to live so thoroughly in the moment, as vital as the plasm that keeps him young.

Office buildings loom up on either side, granite and steel and glass reflecting the scowling clouds overhead, tall as anyone dares to build atop the Sea of Caraqui. One of them has a tower constructed as a giant golden glass lotus, and in it a beacon that gives the glass a fine amber glow.

Rohder is conducting his experiments in a business district because, manipulating these giant buildings in accordance with his theories of geomancy, he expects to gain results more conclusive than if he uses less mass.

“The Lotus District,” Constantine remarks.

The launch passes beneath a glittering gold bridge, all white enamel and gilt gingerbread, each upright topped with the brushy golden image of a lotus; and then the dark cranes are seen ahead, with hawsers drooping low over the canal. Weathered Keremaths smile from the side of one of the pontoons:
Our family is
your
family.
Constantine slows, cuts the power, and the launch settles onto its bow wave as it drifts up to a rusty floating jetty. Crewmen throw hawsers, which are made fast; Constantine leaps from the boat to the jetty, then helps Aiah out of the boat and onto the mesh-steel surface. The jetty rocks under their weight.

The guard boat doesn’t come to a mooring, just waits in the canal with its engines idling, and in the relative silence Aiah can hear the ominous throb of helicopters echoing off the tall buildings, and looks up to find them, with no success— all she can find is a shaggy hermit hanging in a canvas sling fifteen stories up. He sways in the wind. Aiah glances at Constantine to see him gazing up as well, a thoughtful frown on his upturned face.

“Army on maneuvers,” he says. “Civilians wouldn’t fly that many copters at once.” He looks down, shrugs. “Readiness is best, I suppose. Though Radeen has complained of insufficient funds for fuel.”

They climb the battered steel stair to the road surface above. A woman with a video camera records their arrival: a ministry employee, Aiah notes, not media. A man stands next to her with a boxy microphone on a telescoping stick. It’s for history, then, not for broadcast— if the experiment doesn’t work, then no embarrassed explanations will have to be offered, and the recordings will probably be quietly tossed down some Palace oubliette.

Rohder, in a red windbreaker and an orange hard hat, stands near another of the gilt-lotus bridges, conferring with a group of helmeted engineers. Others call obscure orders into boxy handheld radios made of heavy black plastic. Constantine is content to let them do their business uninterrupted. He raises his collar against the blustery wind, then turns to Aiah.

“How do we fare with the amnesty?”

“Enough people have turned themselves in to keep ministry teams busy for the next three weeks, repairing and installing meters,” Aiah says. “It is difficult to say by how much plasm reserves will be increased, but I suspect the amount will be considerable.”

Constantine is amused. “That will be a nice tidbit to drop at the next cabinet meeting.” He sidles closer, gives her a covert look. “I have not seen any information on our friend Gentri.”

Exasperation plucks at her nerves. “Nothing, Minister,” she says. “He works long hours, he seems to be faithful to his wife, his record is clean. His name has not come up in any interrogation. And I have little time to pursue any investigation, not when I have a department to run and the investigation is so private I can have no help.”

“There have been complaints lodged. That where the Silver Hand is absent or ineffective, the police have been filling the vacuum. Extortion, strong-arm work for loan sharks or local bosses ... Perhaps only fear of the Hand was keeping the police out of the crime business.”