City on Fire

Aiah surrenders—the fact of his touch, this near-embrace, make surrender all too easy—and allows herself to sit. She has been in the kitchen so little she has no real notion it’s hers. She cocks her head and regards him from this new angle. “I didn’t know you could cook, Minister.”

An amused glow warms his brown eyes. “I didn’t say I could cook well. But I have absorbed at least a few principles of cooking which I hope, in this case, will prove universal.”

He takes off his jacket, opens the pantry door, gazes in thoughtfully. Plucks things from the shelf and finds a saucepan. He cocks an eye at her.

“I take it all this dates from the previous administration?”

Aiah shrugs. “Who has time to shop?”

“I wish you would remember to eat from time to time.” His big body prowls the confined kitchen with perfect assurance. He surveys his finds, then reaches for a knife.

“Our main course will have to come out of cans. And the vegetables are far from fresh, but I will try to make do.”

“There are few sights as attractive,” Aiah observes, “as that of a man cooking.”

“Wait till you see how dinner turns out before you judge how attractive I am.”

He sets water boiling, opens cans, and finds a bottle of wine on the built-in rack. “Do you know,” he says, looking in drawers for a tool to remove the bottle cap, “that thirty percent of the population of Caraqui are on the government payroll?”

“The drawer on your left, Minister. We have that many civil servants?”

“Civil servants plus the dole, yes. Besides a civil service so bloated that it defies comprehension—the Keremaths wanted everyone on their payroll—the government owns a surprising number of commercial firms. All the communications companies save for the broadcast station controlled by the Dalavans, the Worldwide News Service, the video networks, construction and shipping firms. Factories. Fisheries. Office buildings. Even restaurants! And if you add the firms that the Keremaths owned personally, the total is even higher.” He gives a knowing smile as he opens the wine bottle and pours. “They arranged things with a certain criminal inevitability,” he says. “I find the pattern familiar—my own family in Cheloki were no better. There was a law that all streets had to be paved with a certain grade of concrete, but the only company offering such a grade was owned by the Keremaths. And another special type of nonporous concrete was required for the pontoons that underlie all the buildings, and again the Keremaths’ company was the only company that offered it. To prevent dependence on foreign energy sources, only domestically produced hydrogen is permitted in the metropolis, but the New Theory Hydrogen Company, the only one in Caraqui, was owned by the Keremaths…” A laugh rumbles deep in his barrel chest. “The only New Theory, so far as I can tell, was that the Keremaths got everything.” He touches glasses. “To your health.”

“To yours.” The amber wine tastes of smoke and walnuts.

“Have you seen the news? How one scandal after another is being revealed?”

“I have been a little busy, and haven’t watched the news.”

“It is the function of a new government to discredit the old, and fortunately in our case we have but to tell the truth.” He tilts his head back, savoring the wine. “Within a few months the scandals will multiply, and the Keremaths will be so discredited that no one will want them back.”

Constantine returns to the kitchen, and gives a cynical smile. “Last shift the cabinet reacted to these continuing scandalous revelations, and have annexed the Keremaths’ companies, personal property, and bank accounts.”

“And thus the state acquires that many more civil servants. Was that one of the triumphs you mentioned?”

Constantine smiles coldly. His bright steel knife slices onions as if they were Keremath livers. “No. Acquiring the companies was not a difficult decision—we could hardly leave them under the Keremaths’ ownership, after all. It was in deciding the companies’ ultimate fate wherein my brilliant political talents were fully deployed.”

“You wanted to sell the companies,” Aiah says. “And others wished to keep them.”

Constantine gives an impatient smile. “It is a source of astonishment to me that such things are even matters for debate,” he says. “The state should be an instrument of evolution, not a bank, a stock exchange, or a nursery for inefficient enterprises. But—” He shrugs. “Not all the cabinet members are soldiers or idealists. Some have political instincts that are quite sound, in their fashion. And the possibility of employing the New Theory Hydrogen Company and the other concerns as a source for patronage was, I suspect, a temptation to more than one.”

“And the triumvirate?”

“Parq was anxious to stuff the companies with his retainers. Colonel Drumbeth was of a mind with me. And Hilthi—an interesting man, Hilthi—seemed to have no interest whatever in the economic issues, but rather a care for the companies’ moral health.” He laughs. Chopped onions fly from his fingers and fall hissing into the pan. “An unusual attitude for a journalist, don’t you think?” “I know nothing of Hilthi.”

“A noble man, truly. The greatest enemy the Keremaths had—” His eyes turn to Aiah, glittering. “Until myself,” he adds. Steam rises as he throws noodles into the boiling water and stirs things in the pan. His voice turns reflective. “In a tyranny, a single dissenting individual can sometimes engage in a dialogue with the entire government. Hilthi was raised in Caraqui and found the Keremaths repulsive and denounced them. Was sent to prison, came out, and denounced them again, after having sensibly put a border or two between himself and the Specials. He made it his life’s work to expose the Keremaths for what they were. He meticulously gathered facts, published them, made brilliant propaganda. It is a monument to his skill that the Keremaths referred to dissidents as ‘Hilthists.’ ”

He laughs, a low rumble. “He was invited into the triumvirate to offer a certain moral tone to what otherwise might have been seen only as a tawdry adventure in military government.” He gives Aiah another sly, sideways glance. “Certainly he provides a tone that / lack.” He sighs. “But the fellow knows nothing about government. He desires only that we practice virtue. He doesn’t care whether the companies are sold or not, only that any Keremath loyalists in their hierarchy be punished.”

“Is that so bad?”

“The crime of which most stand accused is making the money for the Keremaths. There are far worse crimes in Caraqui for us to concern ourselves with. I was able to edge him along to the position that any serious crimes on the part of any of the managers would be dealt with, but that running a company was not necessarily a crime.”

“Very good.”

“So Hilthi was brought around. Parq was outnumbered. The army was bought off—it will be doubled in size to two divisions, an unnecessary expense, but it gives the officer class new commands and new promotions and may serve to keep them quiet. And, after a little political magic”—he sprinkles things into the saucepan—“decisions were made. The companies will be sold. We anticipate no difficulty with that—they were all remarkably profitable, after all. The profits will help to finance reorganization in various other state enterprises, which will also be sold as soon as they can be made efficient. I convinced them, you see, that it had to be done now, while martial law was still in force, because a popular government would not be able to shrink in size with the proper ruthlessness. So the enlarged army will hold the metropolis together while structural changes take place, and then—we hope—they will march back to the barracks before they are all possessed of the delusion that they can actually run a modern state.”

The smoky wine murmurs in Aiah’s veins. “But they run Caraqui now, don’t they?”

“They have some notion they might be in charge, yes. But running a metropolis requires the ability to count above a hundred, which generally speaking the officer class of Caraqui does not possess. Here.” He passes her a plate.

Noodles, and on them onions, smoked pigeon, and shredded black olives in a light sauce. Tossed salad. The amber wine.

Surprisingly delicious. The onions, pigeon, and olives are three stark flavors that should not blend, but somehow they do, and the wine goes beautifully with it all.

“I’m very impressed, Metro—Minister,” Aiah says.

Constantine gives his rumbling laugh. “Metro-minister is a title in which I could rejoice.” He brings his own plate to the table. “You may consider this dish a metaphor for politics.” He points to his plate with the tip of a knife.