Walter Williams - City on Fire

Then plasm sizzles the air and Constantine flies backward with a grunt, as if he’s been hit in the stomach. He tangles with Aiah’s chair and goes down. The world seems to lean in, as if about to crush them all. Aiah clutches her throat. Heat flashes on Aiah’s skin. The bodyguards, with their portable plasm packs, are dueling with the mages they haven’t yet disarmed.

“Stop this!” Aiah shouts. Constantine rises from the floor, murder in his eyes, and lunges for Aiah again. She gets her feet between them, drives at him with her legs, keeps him off. Out of the corner of her eye Aiah sees a guard with a gun, and her cry of warning occurs simultaneously with the gun’s exploding at the touch of plasm, all its ammunition detonating. The guard, face blackened, hand mangled, gives a cry and falls. Constantine lunges again, throws aside Aiah’s legs, and dives atop her. He seizes her hair, beats her head against the desk. “ What is the matter with you?” he demands. “ What is this spirit of treachery?” Red explosions fill Aiah’s head as he pounds her against the desk.

And then Constantine is torn off her again, and she hears him give a cry of rage, a cry abruptly choked off. Aiah sits up, clutching her throat, blinking furiously as she tries to bring her vision back. The room is filled with an ominous silence.

The red splashes fade, from Aiah’s sight but waves of distortion flood her vision. Dr. Romus has wrapped his thick body about Constantine, has pinned his arms and brought him down, a loop around his throat. Martinus has been thrown against the wall, his arms held there, obviously by plasm. Another guard is unconscious, and the guard whose gun exploded rolls on the floor, clutching his maimed hand. The military mages—Aratha, Kari, and Melko—stand erect in their uniforms, transference grips in their hands, shields buzzing before them. In command. The room seems to bend toward them as if in homage.

Alfeg touches a split lip, a black eye. Khorsa, businesslike, plugs in her t-grip and arms herself.

Alarmed faces—PED employees—blink at the scene from the doorway.

Constantine gives Aiah a stricken look. “What are you doing?” he whispers, using the little air Romus has left him. “What is this madness?”

Aiah massages her throat. “It’s finished,” she says. “The thing is dead.”

A convulsion crosses Constantine’s face. “You had no right!” he says. “He had more than a measure of greatness! My oldest”—he blinks—“oldest friend. Greatest advisor. The one to whom I owe…” His voice fails.

Friend, Constantine had called the monster. Advisor. New words for such a thing.

Aiah carefully puts her feet on the floor, lets her weight rest on them, looks down at Constantine.

“I had every right,” she says. “I finished the job you couldn’t, thirty-odd years ago. The job you ran from.”

An ardent look comes to Constantine’s face. “He was useful. He was necessary. My plans—”

His voice chokes off again as Dr. Romus shifts his coils, shuts his wind. Romus’s reedy voice buzzes in the sudden silence.

“So this is the creature’s protector,” he says. His irony sizzles in the air. “This… great man… permitted so many to die. And he would have handed one of the Dreaming Sisters to such a thing.”

“Gangsters,” Constantine whispers. “I thought they were gangsters.”

Romus’s coils shift again, tightening on chest and throat, and Aiah can see fear enter Constantine’s eyes. Aiah sees death settle onto his face, a smiling skull behind the purpling flesh. Romus turns his little face to Aiah.

“Shall I kill him, miss?” Romus asks. “It would be easy… His usefulness to the world is over.”

A great weariness falls on Aiah. She shakes her head.

“He may try to kill us all,” Romus reminds.

“He can’t,” Aiah says. She looks at her people standing in the doorway, the people she has hired personally, made loyal to her, her PED, intended as an instrument of Constantine’s will, now her own. And through the small crowd hurry members of Aiah’s own guard—she normally does not use guards unless she leaves the building, but here they are now, summoned by calls from people in her division.

She looks down at Constantine. “It’s gone too far,” she says. “Too many people know now, or could put it together if they wished. Enough to destroy you if you press this. PED, Barkazils, the army.” She passes a hand across her forehead, looks at her own guards taking up position in the room. “Your only hope,” Aiah tells Con-stantine, “is if those who know remain silent—no, wrong,” shaking her head. “You are safe only if we deny certain things ever happened at all. And for that, we will need to feel safe.”

Constantine mouths words that cannot be heard. Aiah looks up at Martinus, pinned by plasm against the wall. “You understand this, don’t you?”

In Martinus’s eyes she reads understanding. He gives a little nod, as much as the plasm bonds will let him. Aiah looks at Romus.

“Let him go,” she says.

A touch of petulance enters the reedy voice. “I do not think,” Romus says, “he will feel grateful for his life.” “That’s up to him,” Aiah says.

Dr. Romus loosens his coils. Constantine gasps for air, blinking dumbly at the world. His hand tugs at the lace at his throat.

“I want your resignation,” he says. “I want it tomorrow.”

“As the triumvir wishes,” Aiah says, too tired to care.

Aiah and her team leave the room before Constantine, her guards a wall between her and his party. The crowd, the couple of dozen people working third shift, parts in silence. Aiah’s deranged perception sees them as stick figures with huge, staring eyes. Aiah sees that Rohder is among them, cigaret dangling from his lips, his blue eyes observing with keen interest.

“Kari and I will return directly to the division by aerocar,” Aratha says. “Melko will take a different route. We’re going to stay shielded until we hear from you.”

Aiah nods. “Of course. But we’ll be safe enough, once Constantine has time to think.”

“His right thoughts are best assured by our thorough preparation,” Aratha says.

“Exactly,” Khorsa adds. “I’m going to lock myself in the secure room and write up a full report.”

“And so will I,” Aratha says.

“Make sure you know where those reports are,” Aiah says. “If the wrong people get ahold of them…”

“Not that I particularly give a damn,” Khorsa says, “but if all works out as planned, no one will see my report at all.” Her face turns hard. “The bastard,” she adds.

Alfeg holds a handkerchief to his bleeding lip. “Miss Aiah,” he says, “let me stay with you till tomorrow.”

Aiah shakes her head. “Staying with me won’t make you safer.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

An exhausted smile touches Aiah’s lips. “Yes. I know.” She takes him in her arms, kisses his cheek. “Go to the infirmary. That eye looks nasty. And you might be concussed.”

“So might you.”

Aiah fingers the tender place at the back of her head, winces. “Possibly,” she admits.

In the end it is agreed that Dr. Romus and her guards will accompany Aiah to her apartment.

Which they find filled with Constantine’s flowers, hundreds of them, and a written apology, a model of its kind, still unread on the table.

Romus and one of the guards enter the plasm well and stand sentry, ready to repel an attack.

It’s a nice gesture, but Aiah knows it’s futile. If Constantine wanted to attack her here, he would first shut off her plasm with a call to the control room deep in the bowels of the Palace, and then do whatever he wanted.