City on Fire

Aiah recalls Constantine’s wish that she become Togthan’s best friend, and compels herself to grace her clenched teeth with a smile. “I’ll give your wishes my best consideration,” she says.

Togthan sips his coffee again, his confiding smile an answer to hers. “I’m gratified that we understand one another,” he says.

Oh yes, Aiah thinks, / understand, all right.

TRIUMVIR HILTHI DECLINES TO ORGANIZE POLITICAL PARTY

WISHES TO REMAIN ABOVE POLITICS

“WILL ENDORSE IDEAS, NOT CANDIDATES”

The Kestrel Room faces the guns of Lorkhin Island and is closed on that account; and so Aiah’s luncheon with Aldemar takes place at Dragonfly, a restaurant on the other side of the Palace, with a view of the distant blue volcanoes of Barchab. Dragonfly is smaller than the Kestrel Room, without its intimate alcoves and private rooms, and without its luxurious wood paneling; but it is a brighter place, its white plaster walls featuring strips of dark glossy polymer. It looks out over Caraqui with multifaceted, insectlike eyes, each reflecting a slightly different Caraqui, a slightly different plane. Along the walls and between the tables are fish tanks filled with scaled, rainbow-colored exotica, few of which Aiah imagines are actually to be found swimming in Caraqui’s sea below.

The actress wears a russet-colored rollneck, gray pleated slacks with nubbles and a subdued russet stripe, tasteful gold jewelry, suede boots with high heels. Her skin is flawless—the result more of genetics and lavish care, Aiah suspects, than plasm rejuvenation treatments, though beneath carefully applied cosmetic Aiah can see evidence for the latter, a kind of eerie, ambiguous glow notable more for its absence of character than anything else. Aiah finds herself envying Aldemar her epidermis far more than her celebrity.

Aiah orders fried noodles with prawns, vegetables, and chiles. Aldemar asks for half a grapefruit.

“You eat worse than I do,” Aiah says in surprise.

Aldemar’s answer is matter-of-fact. “It’s my job.”

“I guess you’re paid well enough for it.”

A smile tweaks its way onto Aldemar’s features. “Yes. Otherwise I’d never eat another damn grapefruit as long as I live.”

“What has become of the chromoplay you were working on? The one you abandoned to come here?”

Aldemar blinks. “Ah.” A dissatisfied look crosses her face. “Shut down for six weeks, a deadline soon to be extended. They have very cleverly shot every scene that can be managed without me. There are wrangles over money—I expect I shall have to part with some—but it’s not a very good chromo anyway, and letting it age in the bottle will not do it harm, and may do some good. And since in the chromo we get as far as staging a revolution, I suppose I can claim that I’m here researching a sequel.”

“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, / 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? / 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 tele-porting 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 china 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