Walter Williams - City on Fire

A perfect workshop, Constantine considers it; a laboratory for experimentation.

Rohder is planning to perform a miracle here within the next hour.

Constantine’s convoy pulls off the road into an area bulldozed free of rubble. The song of the car’s flywheels decreases in volume. Constantine’s guards pour out of their vehicles and set up a watchful perimeter. A tugboat’s whistle shrieks on the nearby canal.

Constantine remains in the vehicle. After what happened at Rohder’s last outdoor demonstration, Constantine has decided to play it safe.

Rohder, already on the site with some of his assistants and a battery of complex instruments, approaches the car. He is wearing a red hard hat and heavy work boots.

Constantine presses a button and electric motors sing the window into the car’s armor. Aiah sees the guards grow more alert at the sign of this chink in their defenses. Rohder peers into the car, removes the inevitable cigaret from his lips, and says, “We are making some last-minute preparations. It’s very complex, and—”

“Take all the time you need, Mr. Rohder.”

Rohder nods and rejoins his assistants. Constantine smiles, sends the window up, settles back into the soft leather seat just as the telephone, set on the built-up area behind the driver, gives an urgent buzz. Constantine makes a face and moves forward into the seat opposite Aiah, picks up the headset, answers. A lengthy conversation follows, which from its diplomatic context Aiah concludes is with Belckon, the Minister of State. Constantine gives detailed instructions concerning something he calls “compensated demobilization,” then returns the headset to its cradle.

“Lanbola,” he sighs. “We will surrender it, now that Parq is gone and we have clear policy, but the details are complex. We do not want the Popular Democrats back, and we want some compensation for the expenses of the war, but our neighbors want us out—they do not like the precedent we have set.”

“Their protests have not been very loud,” Aiah says. “I was surprised.”

“They take note of the size of our army,” Constantine says, “and how swiftly Lanbola fell. It occurs to the wise among them not to protest too loudly, and it occurs especially to Nesca and Charna, who supported the Provisionals from the beginning… and it has occurred to some to hire mercenaries, and look to their own defense, but on hearing of their inquiries in Sayven, we told them these hires would not be considered friendly, and they have again chosen to act with caution. So even Adabil, which does not have a border in common with us, will not offer sanctuary to the surviving Provisionals or to Lanbola’s Popular Democrats, and Kerehorn and Great-Uncle Rathmen and their cohorts have been forced to Garshab, which is content to play host to the refugees so long as they bring their money with them.”

“’Compensated demobilization’?” Aiah asks.

Constantine makes an amused sound deep in his throat. “Our vast army is destabilizing to the region, and very expensive. Armies are expensive even to demobilize, and there are secondary effects, such as the economic consequences of releasing so many soldiers into the civilian economy at once. So we hope to acquire Polar League funds, both to rebuild our damaged homes and industry and to demobilize the army.” Merriment glitters in his eyes. “Our neighbors will pay us not to threaten them anymore. It will be cheaper for them than to raise armies of their own, and less dangerous… It is a fine sort of blackmail, one for which we need do nothing—not even threaten, for the mere presence of our army is enough—and I think I can bring it off.” He glances out the window, sees Rohder still talking to his staff, and then turns back to Aiah.

“Adabil, considering itself safe on account of our not having a border in common, will be against giving us aid, but unfortunately when we took Lanbola we discovered a store of documents detailing just who among them created the Provisionals, and why, and for how much. Does Adabil’s parliament know, I wonder, that its government drew twenty-two billions from the Secret Fund to support Kerehorn and his soldiers? Twenty-two billions!” He smiles grimly. “I will bring down their government with this, I think. It is just a matter of timing, and deciding how, and to whom, the discoveries will be leaked.”

Leaks, Aiah thinks; maneuverings, blinds, diplomacy, concessions, extortion. Behind it all, the threat of raw military power. All things that she must learn if the Ministerial Assistant for Barkazil Liaison is ever to prosper.

“We may thank the war for rationalizing much of the state,” Constantine muses. “Under pressure of the emergency, the tax laws were reformed at a single stroke. The government cut loose the various enterprises that were hampering its real work. Government departments could be relieved of their excess personnel, with the army to absorb the unemployed. Whole classes of criminals were swept away by the PED and the militia, and now the militia are swept away. Theocracy reduced, the Keremaths discredited beyond redemption, and our neighbors anxious to be our friends. Good laws, good armies—the foundation of a strong state. Such did the blood of our martyrs buy us.”

The phone buzzes again. Constantine gives an impatient look, answers, then hands the headset to Aiah. “For you,” he says.

It is Alfeg. “The interviewer from Third Shift wanted to change his appointment to 14:00 tomorrow. I checked with Anstine and your schedule is clear; shall I say yes?”

“I suppose. Why not?”

The Golden Lady was very much in demand these days. “And the Wire called again.”

Aiah sighs. The news service was doing a long piece on Aiah—she had been getting calls from her relatives about reporters turning up—and it seems it was doing some serious digging into Aiah’s life. Aiah dreaded a thorough investigation into the plasm she’d stolen in Jaspeer, dreaded what Charduq the Hermit might say in an interview, dreaded what her mother might be persuaded to say.

Dreaded, perhaps more than anything, a reporter talking to her former lover Gil.

And the results available over the Wire, in Jaspeer and half the world.

She sighs again. “We’ll use the Third Shift interview as a rehearsal,” she says. “Schedule the Wire for three or four days—that will give me time to prepare.”

“Very good. I’ll call Anstine and check your appointment schedule for a time, then call back and clear it with you.”

“Do that.”

She returns the headset to its box. Constantine gives her a skeptical look.

“You are discovering the perils of celebrity.” “I am. Yes.”

“Use it, Miss Aiah. It is not always up to you whether or not you are famous, but the use you make of it is yours.” “Yes,” she says. “I’ll try to do that.” There is a shadow at the window, a knock. It is one of Rohder’s assistants. Constantine lowers the window by a few inches.

“Mr. Rohder says we may begin now.” “Tell him to proceed,” Constantine says, and reaches for another grape.

Constantine and Aiah shift to seats on the port side of the limousine, nearer Rohder’s group. Rohder himself stands stiffly, his head thrown back—for Rohder this is an unusual posture, and Aiah concludes it is because he is in contact with one of his mages.

A broken wall stands before them, once part of a block of middle-class flats that had occupied the surface of this huge pontoon. The wall is broken now, cracked, fire-blackened, ragged-edged, its original peak gone. Tenuous plant life is taking root in its various niches. It is barely a wall at all.

There is a pause. Constantine fidgets as he looks out the window. And then a strange effect begins to take place around the wall, light shifted into a different spectrum, or a shade raised between the wall and the Shield. Constantine narrows his eyes, absorbed in the magework. The wall shimmers in the light and seems to expand, as if it has grown liquid and is filling an invisible mold. An apex forms, ready to support a roof, and the wall sheds its blackened color, shaking the soot from its skin.