City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) (46 page)

“Why are you making this chromoplay,” Aiah asks, “if it isn’t very good?”

Aiah is relieved that Aldemar doesn’t seem offended by the question. “To begin with," she says quite seriously, “good scripts are rare, and for the most part they go to other people. Those few that I have been involved with have all gone wrong somewhere— bad direction, bad editing, actors who didn’t understand their roles, or who demanded inane rewrites to make their parts larger or more sympathetic ... well—” A dismissive shrug. “I have not been lucky that way.

“And while I am waiting for something good to turn up, I must remain bankable— I must remain popular enough for investors to wish to invest in my ’plays. And it may surprise you to learn that the most popular chromoplay, worldwide, is the sort in which people like me fly and fight and war against evil. The genre transcends problems of ethnicity, dialect, metropolitan allegiance— everyone understands them, and everyone buys a ticket.”

“Is it what you intended when you chose to be an actress?”

Aldemar blows out her cheeks, looks abstract, a bit melancholy. “Perhaps that is why I’ve become interested in politics.”

“Are you a believer in the New City?”

“
I used to be, but I’ve grown more modest over the years.” The actress tilts her head, props her jaw on one hand. “I support those who are straight against those who are corrupt, those with dreams against those who have none. The details— the precise content of those dreams— no longer interest me, provided they are not absolutely vicious. I’ve heard it claimed that political visionaries have caused more destruction and havoc and death than those leaders with less ambition— true, perhaps; I have seen no statistics— but I wonder about those lesser figures, those managers who say,
I have no ideals, no dreams, all I want to do is make things run a little more efficiently.”
She shrugs. “What reason is that for us to give them anything?
I am mediocre, I have never had an idea to which you could object, give me your trust.
They appeal only to exhaustion. It is an emptiness of soul into which rot is guaranteed to enter. Phah.”

Amusement tugs at Aiah’s lips. “But what you do is something more than
support
, ne?” she says. “You’re teleporting guns and spies and whatnot behind enemy lines. That doesn’t seem very much like disinterested idealism to me.”

Aldemar shrugs again. “Understand that I look at the world through a kind of aesthete’s eyeglass. Certain classes of people are offensive in a purely artistic sense— and that includes the Keremaths. Drooling, savage idiots, barely able to button their trousers unassisted, and running a metropolis! And this Provisional Government— gangsters, military renegadoes, thieves, and the Keremaths again, all propped up by the Foreign Ministry of Lanbola for no other reason than it gives them something to
do
, something to
meddle
in. Great Senko— I would teleport them all to the Moon if I could.”

The mention of the Moon sends a memory on a spiral course through Aiah’s thoughts, a slate-gray woman a-dance in the sky.

Aldemar continues, unaware of Aiah’s distraction. “Constantine deserves a chance to fix this place. If anyone can do it, he can.”

“So your loyalty is to Constantine? Not to the government?”

Beneath her black bangs, Aldemar’s eyes glimmer as they look into Aiah’s.

“
Miss Aiah, I do not
know
the government.” She shifts her gaze, looks moodily out one of the Dragonfly's faceted windows. “Bad policy, perhaps, to support individuals this way— to expect a single person to change the course of a metropolis, a world— but ultimately who else is there? You either trust the person to do it or you don’t.”

Their luncheon arrives. Aldemar looks at her grapefruit, with its scalloped edges and the sprig of mint laid on top, sitting on fine porcelain rimmed with gold and painted with delicate figures of plum blossoms, and says, “At least it’s presented well.” She picks up a silver-topped shaker and sprinkles left-handed sugar on the fruit.

“How long have you known Constantine?” Aiah prompts.

The last thing Aiah wants is to talk about herself. Aldemar obliges her. “Thirty years,” she says. “I was in school in Kukash, studying to be a mage with the intention of going into advertising. Constantine was there to get an advanced degree. We were lovers for, oh, two years or so.”

Blood surges into Aiah’s cheeks, catching her by surprise. Aldemar perceives it and narrows her brows.

“Are you jealous?” she says.

“It depends.”

“I see.” An amused smile dances across her face, and Aiah notes an echo of Constantine’s own amusement there, his own delight in irony. “One may judge the relationship by its outcome,” she says. “I became an actress, and Constantine a monk. He abandoned his degree and went to the School of Radritha. I finished my degree but never made use of it, went to Chemra, and began working in video.” Her smile turns contemplative. “Constantine is very good at finding the chrysalis within his friends. I had no more notion of being an actress than becoming a mechanic. But he turned me inside out and found an ambition that wouldn’t go away.” She looks at Aiah once again. “I imagine he has done much the same to you.”

“He’s certainly doing his best,” Aiah says, uncertain whether it is her ambition or Constantine’s that she serves. She glances down at her meal and discovers that she has forgotten to taste it; she picks up a fork and wraps a noodle about its prongs, then looks up.

“I have a hard time picturing what Constantine was like when he was young. He was ... what, thirty when you met?”

“Just under thirty, I think. And I was just under twenty.” She smiles at the memory. “He was in headlong flight from his destiny— trying for a degree in the philosophy of plasm, forsooth, before bolting for the monastery and impractical religion.” Her bright eyes turn to Aiah again. “Are you still jealous?”

“Probably not,” Aiah decides.

“He and I enjoy each other’s company now, but we are both very different people than we were. Not that I wouldn’t bed him if he asked nicely”— a wry look crosses her face— “but I don’t think he’s interested in old ladies like me.”

“You look younger than I do.”

“
Kind”— a brisk nod— “but untrue. I am practiced at
seeming
, but by now, inwardly at least, I’m afraid I am become a very constant and unalterable sort of person. In the future I will change slightly, if at all. But Constantine has always been intrigued by transformation— in politics, in plasm, in bed— and your transformation from what you
were
to what you
are
to what you
shall be
... well, that is what delights him in you.”

This analysis sends tiny cold blades scraping along Aiah’s nerves, and she wonders how often Constantine discusses her with Aldemar—or with others.

Amusement dances in the actress’s eyes, and breaks Aiah’s alarm. “Besides,” Aldemar says, “you’re an attractive couple. I can’t help but want the best for you.”

Aiah wants to ask Aldemar about more practical matters, about why Constantine is allying himself with Parq; but at that moment the maitre d’ sits a pair of Dalavan priests at the next table, and Aiah applies herself to her noodles.

Damn it.

After luncheon, Aiah steps to the insect-eye windows and gazes out at the city, at the teeming composition, repeated endlessly in faceted glass, of gray and green that has become her life and burden. Above it roils a flat gray cloud, scudding toward the Palace with surprising speed; and with a start Aiah realizes that the cloud is not a cloud at all, but a plasm projection, a fantasy of images, teeth and heads and eyes and vehicles, all vanishing and disappearing too fast for Aiah to follow, though a few of the icons seem to stick in Aiah’s retina: Crassus the actor, an old airship of the Parbund class, a spotted dog with its forefeet propped on a child’s tricycle ...

Aiah stares as shock rolls through her. For there, repeated sixfold by the panes of Dragonfly glass, she recognizes an image, a long-eyed profile of a gray-skinned woman, her hair done in ringlets and an equivocal smile on her lips.

The Woman who is the Moon.

The image vanishes, folding into something else; and in a moment, the entire plasm display is gone.

She must visit the Dreaming Sisters, Aiah thinks, and soon.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Aiah wants to cringe as she watches herself on video. “On behalf of the government and the Barkazil community of Caraqui,” the woman on-screen bellows, “I’d like to welcome you all to our metropolis!”

Senko. Is her voice really that harsh? Tumultuous cheers follow, far more impressive than the cheers at the actual event. The sound has been dubbed in after the fact.

The chromo is called
The Mystery of Aiah.
In it, a journalist named Stacie— a woman whom Aiah has never met— attempts to solve the mystery of Aiah’s character and personality.

“There’s no mystery about me!” Aiah protests when she sees the direction the chromoplay is taking.

“
There is
now
,” Constantine says, a purposeful light in his eyes.

Aiah sits on a sofa between Constantine and Aldemar, her hands clutching theirs. The two veteran performers are amused as she shrinks away from the journalist’s attempts to “solve” her.

The reporter interviews various figures from Aiah’s life in Jaspeer, including Charduq the Hermit, still on his pillar, who cheerfully proclaims her the redeemer of the Barkazi, a claim that Khorsa’s sister Dhival, in full sorceress getup, is all too happy to confirm— she has talked, she says, to spirits on the matter, and they confirm Charduq’s assessment. Old chromographs from Aiah’s school career are displayed, and some of her teachers from the prep school to which she’d won a scholarship are interviewed, teachers willing to testify as to her brilliance. Aiah remembers the praise during her girlhood as being far less fulsome.

“Aiah’s family declined to be interviewed,” the narrator reports, managing to imply they fear Aiah’s disapproval and vengeance. Aiah is relieved beyond words ... the very thought of her mother babbling away on video is terrifying, and Senko only knows what she would say. But if the family actually had been approached— which Aiah is inclined to doubt, as she has heard nothing from them— they had closed ranks against the outsider.

Aiah had broken Jaspeeri laws, and her family knew it. No indictments had ever been filed, but there was no sense in giving the prosecutors information. The section on her life in Caraqui is a hash of suggestion and demented fantasy. Aiah can’t even take it seriously enough to shrink from the image presented. There are hints of her great influence in the councils of power. “Aiah has single-handedly broken the gangsters’ control of the Caraqui economy and their hold on the people,” the chromo intones, and follows with jittery camera shots of police actions and of disheveled Handmen being led off to justice. Images of Karlo’s Brigade are mixed with suggestions that they are soldiers loyal not to the regime but, personally, to Aiah. There are pictures of Barkazil neighborhoods, which Aiah recognizes from faspeer, but they are ingeniously mixed with images from Caraqui to suggest that a large Barkazil community is in place here, and that Aiah is their unquestioned leader. Supposed Barkazil immigrants, allegedly drawn to Caraqui by Aiah’s personal magnetism, are shown being welcomed by Caraqui officials.

“She is our commander,” Alfeg says. He looks quite natural and comfortable on camera. “She fights for her people, her nation. We are here to serve her.” Two of the department’s total of four Barkazils, looking far less comfortable than Alfeg, sit in the background and nod stiff agreement.

“Aiah has transformed this metropolis,” Khorsa confirms. She has forgone her witch dress and appears in the conservative gray suit of the professional mage and member of the PED, albeit with one of her glittering jeweled foci pinned neatly to her lapel.

“I can’t think of another person,” she says, “who could have so totally destroyed such a huge, malevolent, and emplaced organization as the Silver Hand.”

“I haven’t destroyed it,” Aiah points out, but Aldemar hushes her.

There is a short diversion from the chromo’s relentless pursuit of its subject while the narrator embarks on a brief biography of Great-Uncle Rathmen and points out that his money is financing the current insurrection.

And then Khorsa is back, smiling brightly. “Of course Aiah is Constantine’s lover,” she says.

“
No!
” Aiah cries in horror.

Constantine glances at her sidelong, and a smile touches his lips. “If I can put up with this,” he says, “you can.”

Aiah watches with increasing dread as the chromo plunges into her relationship with Constantine. That few of the details are correct doesn’t make it any less horrifying.

“He was besotted by her the first time he saw her,” reports a talking head, alleged to belong to one of Constantine’s friends. “She’s his secret general— his good luck.”

“
What is the
point
of this?” Aiah demands.

“
It will make you
interesting
,” Constantine says. “Few will care about some shadowy figure in the Caraqui government, but revealed as my lover you will become the focus of millions.”

Aiah sinks hopelessly into her seat. “I don’t suppose there is any point in protesting,” she says.

“
Well,” Aldemar offers, “it’s
true
. The gist, anyway. You are lovers, after all. And you
do
chase criminals, and you
are
a Barkazil.” She gives a tight-lipped little smile. “It’s much more true than most of my publicity.”

Aiah looks at Constantine. “What does Sorya say about this?”