City on Fire

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.

Atmospheric generation. From out of nothing, something.

Difficult, or it would be more common. Hermetic plasm transformations are most often used in making or alloying metal, creating chemicals and materials for plastics, and sometimes for generating food substances… All that is relatively simple, one reaction at a time. But creating matter, and doing it in the open air, outside a factory or other controlled environment, is exacting, exhausting, and potentially dangerous.

The effects fade, and there is a wall there, intact, solid, real. Rohder’s crew grin, chatter, make excited gestures. Rohder scans the instruments on the table, nods, gropes in the pocket of his jacket for a cigaret. Puffing, he approaches the vehicle.

“Congratulations, Mr. Rohder,” Constantine says. “And congratulations as well to your mages.”

An uncharacteristic pleasure glows in Rohder’s blue eyes. “The transformation was very well controlled,” Rohder says. “So little radiation that my instruments barely detected it, and we kept heat within limits. The wall should be a bit warm to the touch, but the heat will dissipate. And our engineers will examine the wall in the next few minutes—take measurings and core samples and so on—and we shall see if it is structurally sound.”

“I have no doubt that the experiment was a complete success,” Constantine says. “I hope you will accelerate the pro-ject.”

Rohder gives him a judicious look. “It is difficult to train people to this work,” he says. “Even if things go better than expected, our progress will be slow.”

“Amplify your sense of scale, Mr. Rohder,” Constantine says. “Caraqui needs housing, and needs it cheaply, and soon. You may call upon every government resource.”

“We’ll take the samples,” Rohder says, “and see.”

Rohder’s caution does not dampen Constantine’s enthusiasm—all the way back to the Palace he speaks of hermet-ics, of the creation of living space for the city’s tens of thousands of refugees, for those now confined to the half-worlds. “And now that Rohder’s FIT theory is demonstrated, we can make use of that in construction—make certain that building skeletons are placed in the proper ratios, or even, through freestanding transformation, create retroactively a new structure within the old. Multiply plasm generation, and then use the new plasm to generate even more…”

Aiah watches him, smiling at his enthusiasm—this is a glimpse into a younger Constantine, one just formulating his ideas, a man subsequently eclipsed by disappointment, tragedy, his own cold irony. Constantine pauses, and gives her a sudden, sharp look.

“I have been meaning to ask,” he says, “and it has slipped my mind—I am addressing a New City Party election rally at Alaphen Plaza tomorrow. May I hope that my new ministerial assistant will persuade the Golden Lady to appear?” He smiles. “I think it will give greater impact to my harangue, and may guarantee a wider coverage on the video reports.”

Aiah considers this and finds herself surprised. “You expect that / will be able to secure you greater coverage on video?” she says. “Is this something new? Is this the Constantine I know?”

His look turns haughty, but there is self-mockery there as well. “I did not achieve my present station,” he says, “by overlooking a chance to secure myself a place on video screens.”

“No,” Aiah agrees. “I’m sure you have not.”

ELECTION ENTERS FINAL DAYS NEW CITY LEADS IN POLLS

The Golden Lady appears on cue at the rally, flying over the heads of the assembled crowd while Constantine, in a large bulletproof enclosure shielded from mage attack, watches as the crowd goes wild, chanting Aiah’s name over and over again. It is exhilarating, swooping over this endless expanse of waving arms and upturned faces, a human sea teeming with life.

Not bad, Aiah thinks, for a ministerial assistant.

And then she swoops over the speakers’ platform and sees Constantine, a little sullen twist on his lips, a considered calculation in his eyes. His own reception from the crowd had been somewhat less rapturous than this.

Perhaps, she thinks, he is beginning to view the Golden Lady as a rival.

The Third Shift interview goes well. The Wire interview is tougher—they have built an interesting, though circumstantial, plasm theft case against her. But she denies everything, and they have no evidence.

Her heart gives a little lurch as Gil’s name comes up. Apparently they have interviewed him, but he declined to say much, and wisely did not mention the ten thousand dalders she had wired him.

The elections are held with a certain amount of confusion, but with no violence, no suggestion of large-scale tampering.

The New City Party wins 40 percent of the popular vote. Parq’s Spiritual Renewal Party comes in second with 12 percent, and Adaveth’s Altered People’s Party takes slightly under 10 percent.

The Liberal Coalition, the party to which President Faltheg has lately attached himself, takes less than 8 percent of the vote, and a host of smaller parties split the rest.

Faltheg, presumably concluding from the totals that he had failed to kindle the enthusiasm of the electorate, resigns his post as president of the triumvirate—to his relief, Aiah suspects—though he remains one of the triumvirs, and also continues as Minister for Economic Development, a post for which he has genuine ability.

Constantine becomes president of the triumvirate, first among the three alleged equals. With his own party, Faltheg’s, Adaveth’s, and as many of the smaller parties as he can tempt to his side with promises of rewards and