He drinks and passes the flask to Aiah, who echoes the toast and takes a swig. It is brandy, harsh and fiery and absent of refinement, without doubt the worst stuff she has ever tasted. This baby is dead, she thinks. Eyes streaming, she passes the flask to Holson.
If this is what the homeland tastes like, she thinks, I am not going.
She sees her guests out, and as they say farewell Holson surprises her by embracing her, kissing her on both cheeks.
“I know we will accomplish great things,” he says.
Aiah manages through her surprise to retain her air of confidence. “I have no doubt,” she says, and then accepts Galagas’s somewhat more reserved embrace.
As Aiah watches the two officers make their way across the swaying bridge, she feels a kind of wonder that it has all worked out exactly as Constantine had, weeks ago, anticipated. He has maneuvered all of them, somehow, into this position, and will doubtless get his victory.
But what then? Aiah wonders. Aiah and the Escaliers have been maneuvered into this position, true, but the position is an artificial one. Aiah is not the redeemer of Barkazi—except on video, and in the mind of a deranged hermit back in Jaspeer—and the Escaliers are not an army of liberation. She doesn’t know how she can ever meet these people’s expectations.
We will accomplish great things.
She fears she is going to be a terrible disappointment to everyone who believes in her.
Aiah returns to Lamarath’s office to organize her notes and finds Lamarath there, along with one of his hulking guards. One of the locked metal cabinets has been opened, and Aiah sees inside it a video camera, set to gaze at the room through a spyhole. Lamarath has opened the camera and is removing the video cartridge.
Aiah looks at the camera in shock. “The meetings were recorded?”
Lamarath looks at her over his shoulder. “You didn’t know?” He seems surprised.
“No. I didn’t.” Anger blazes up in her. “I should have been told!” she says. “If they’d found out—”
If they’d found out, Aiah thinks, she’d have been killed.
Lamarath opens a briefcase and drops the cartridge into it. “A dolphin will carry it beneath the front to our friends,” he says. He pats the case. “Insurance,” he adds, “to make sure our mercenary friends won’t betray us.”
And insurance, Aiah knows, in case they’d failed to make an agreement at all. If the negotiations had failed, Constantine could have threatened to release the video to the Provisionals, which Holson and Galagas would have realized meant the end of them.
Displaced anger and fear rattle in the hollow of Aiah’s chest. Constantine, she thinks, is willing to sacrifice her here, if it means a greater chance to win his war.
She feels a tremor in her knees.
One must keep one’s true end in view. His end is victory, and Aiah herself—her life, her happiness—ranks somewhat lower on his scale of priorities.
Aiah walks unsteadily to Lamarath’s chair and lowers herself into it.
“Insurance,” she repeats, and thinks, Who is insuring me?
TIMES CHANGE, BUT OBEDIENCE IS ETERNAL.
A THOUGHT-MESSAGE FROM HIS PERFECTION, THE PROPHET OF AJAS
—I am very pleased with this, Constantine sends. His tone, silky and satisfied, rolls through Aiah’s mind.
—I expect the Escaliers will keep their agreements, Aiah replies. Which means that those recordings made by Lamarath can be destroyed… I would like, in fact, to see them destroyed personally.
Their mental contact is sufficient for Aiah to receive Constantine’s jolt of surprise, along with his reaction, chosen from an array of possible responses. He rejects a lie, first thing of all.
—It was to protect you, he ventures. If they had attempted treachery…
—The recordings could not have been produced until it was too late. You have put me in danger with this.
—Very little. It was all carefully calculated…
Wordless fury rages through Aiah’s mind. She can feel Constantine recoil.
—Apologies, he responds quickly. It was a bad decision, and shall not—
—It will not have the opportunity to happen again. I shall guard my own back in future, and not let you do it.
For a moment she senses thoughts rolling in his mind, their exact nature beyond her reach, imponderable.
—That is wise, he judges.
In answer she just radiates anger at him. Constantine absorbs this, and she senses, strangely, his approval.
—You are growing, Miss Aiah, and that is good.
He breaks contact, and leaves her with a reluctant sense of surprise tingling in her bones.
WANTED HANDMAN FOUND DEAD
“CAROUSED TO DEATH” IN NEIGHBORHOOD BAR
Head down, arms folded over the dangling Trigram on her ivory necklace, Aiah paces along the deck, thoroughly in the grip of the Adrenaline Monster. It is third shift, the two officers could arrive at any time, and she is too nervous to wait in Lamarath’s stuffy office. It is dinnertime, and the twisted families are settling in for the sleep shift that will begin at 24:00. Cooking smells join the miasma over the dark half-world, mingled with the odor of sea, garbage, and feces. Video screens light the darkness here and there, blue video light glowing on twisted faces, reflecting off dark water. Judging by the laughter rolling up from barges here and there, most are tuned to the weekly episode of Folks Next Door. Aiah wonders what these people make of the video they watch, the constant display of goods, wealth, and security they have never possessed.
No one, she thinks, will ever make a weekly comedy about life in the half-worlds.
And then something blows up.
Right in the middle of the half-world, fifty paces away, a bright flash followed by a hot wind that presses on Aiah’s face, that blows her hair back and ruffles the lace at her throat and wrists. In the roofed space of the half-world the sound is deafening. Aiah claps her hands over her ears, but this does not shut out the screams and cries for help or the sudden startled pounding of her own stammering heart.
She stands on the iron deck and stares into the darkness, but there is a huge bright bloom on her retinas that dazzles her, keeps her from seeing any of the explosion’s aftereffects. Suddenly there is a firm hand on her elbow, and she jumps.
“Miss, you should take shelter.” Statius’s voice. “It’s probably just an accident, there are all these pressurized hydrogen tanks here and open burners, but we should—”
Another explosion rips through the darkness. The pressure wave punches Aiah in the solar plexus and tears a cry from her throat. Statius wastes no more words; his hands close on her shoulders and he half-carries her toward the hatch.
A third explosion, on the other side of the barge from the first two, turns the darkness bright. Actinic light etches the ramshackle structures, the hunched bodies of the twisted people, bent over their meals and only now beginning to react. Aiah can hear metal fragments whistling through the air. There is a terrible stench, the smell of the explosive chemicals themselves. And then Aiah hears sirens, a terrifying wailing that echoes dizzyingly from the concrete and iron that surrounds them, and the sound of a machine gun, thud-thud-thud, and sees tracer rounds flying overhead in a regular stream…
Statius throws her inside the hatch and slams the door shut behind them. Cornelius is there, machine pistol ready in his hand. He licks his lips. “What’s happening?”