Aiah is having a hard time concentrating on her maps.
“I don’t suppose,” she ventures, “it might be possible to lower the volume?”
Surely before he gets to the spleen, she thinks, but she doesn’t know how devout any in her party might be, and she dares not say it aloud.
Davath approaches the video and snaps it off. The picture vanishes, shrinks down to a little white eye in the center of the oval screen, and then this disappears as well.
Parq’s resonant voice can still be heard from speakers elsewhere in the building, but his words are indistinct. Aiah looks down at her map, points with a pencil.
“We’ll take Gernan Canal to Bannaltir,” she says. “That’s where we’ll split up. Hoyl and Parasqof will turn east.”
The telephone gives a loud electric buzz. Aiah picks up the headset, presses one earpiece to her ear.
“This is Aiah.”
“Congratulations, my lady. Fresh Water Bay Station has fallen, and the battle was brief.”
Constantine’s resonant voice and apparent cheerful mood bring a ghostly smile to her lips. She settles the headset into place and adjusts the mouthpiece on its flexible mount.
“Thank you, Minister,” she says, and she sees the others exchange glances, knowing now who is on the other end of the line.
“My people have done an exceptional job,” she adds. “Xurcal will not be as easy. The rebels have learned from their mistakes, it appears. Our mages tell us that police are guarding the cables near the station, and that there are roving patrols elsewhere.”
“Can you give me locations?”
“I will give you such information as I have,” Constantine says, and does so. Aiah jots it down with her pencil. “The situation is fluid, of course,” he adds. “I should be very careful.”
“Can you give me more crews?” Aiah asks. “It would be safer for us all in the long run.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“What else is happening?”
“The admirable Captain Arviro and his Marines will be pitching into the aerodrome very shortly. We are husbanding our plasm in aid of that fight. We have cleared the area around the Palace of police roadblocks, which is allowing our mages to come in from the city and join us. Radeen and his brigade at Government Harbor are not moving. I received a number of reports that a great many of the roadblocks dissolved once the police found out what they were in aid of, and that many of the cops simply went home. I have other reports of police gangs marauding and looting shops, however, so apparently some are not beyond using the situation to their advantage.”
“If there’s a fight about to start, we’d better drop the shoe on Xurcal soon.”
“Whenever you can.” Constantine lowers his voice, and at the intimate sound, like the touch of bedroom silk in the darkness, Aiah feels a yearning eddy along her nerves. “But be careful, Miss Aiah. I would not lose you for Xurcal or all the plasm stations in the world.”
Aiah’s heart fills her throat for a moment; when she can find words she says, “I don’t plan to do anything foolish.”
“I wish you had been less scrupulous, and not gone out with your people. I would have talked you out of it had I known what you intended.”
“What else could I do? I couldn’t stand it sitting in the Palace giving orders and wondering if my people would…” The word die withers on her tongue as she looks up at her crew and sees their patient eyes. “Run into trouble,” she finishes, lamely.
“Yes,” he says, “waiting in the Palace is my lot, and I know its frustrations. I would rather be with you, on your little boat, than here in perfect safety.”
Aiah licks dry lips. “I wish you were here, too.”
Her fellows exchange glances again. It is not often they hear a comrade exchange intimacies with one of the Powers.
Constantine’s voice turns weary. “Each in our spheres, we move according to our degree. At least certain political choices are now made easier.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I will try to get you more crews. Would Ethemark know how to raise more people?” “Yes.”
“I will have him call you.” “Good.”
There is a moment’s hesitation. “We are going to have a battle any moment, so I cannot speak for long.” “I understand.”
“Please understand that when I said I wanted you here, that was for my peace of mind only. But it is the Aiah who puts herself in danger for her people that has my devotion, and even for peace of mind I would not have you other than who you are…”
Aiah’s nerves sing at these words, flame and sorrow together. “Thank you,” she says.
“I am getting a signal. The war begins anew. Farewell.”
“Senko’s blessing,” she says, but he has already pressed the disconnect button.
She puts the headset on its hook and looks down at the map again. Now that she knows where some of the police are, she realizes that her plan will not work.
And so she makes another.
FIRST STRIKE FAILS
COUP PLOTTERS COUNT ON REINFORCEMENTS
GOVERNMENT CONTINUES APPEALS TO PEOPLE
Dark water surges at Aiah’s left hand as she walks along a rust-eaten catwalk of mesh. More water drizzles down from above, flashes of falling silver in the beams of helmet lamps.
They are between two of the giant concrete pontoons. At some point in the distant past iron beams were laid down to connect the pontoons, and a roof built to seal out the light; and on top of this roof a series of office buildings now stands.
In the half-forgotten darkness below, Aiah’s people scramble in the Shieldless gloom. Seawater sloshes around their feet as the catwalk sags under their weight. The operation is woefully behind schedule, and this time it is Aiah’s party that is late.
At Fresh Water Bay, Aiah’s group was able to get adjacent to the station and turn off the plasm mains at the easiest and most convenient place. With police patrolling the plasma mains near Xurcal Station, the sabotage has to be much more dispersed, and more prolonged. Instead of four faucets, thirty have to be turned off, all at a greater distance from the target. Since the plasm reroutes itself, Aiah hopes that the operators at the station may not even notice that their supply is in jeopardy—she supposes they may be receiving less than previously, but with both sides in the fighting making more demands on the city plasm grid, this should not be surprising.
Aiah and her teams have descended, over and over, into the dark wells of the pontoons, into the subbasements of office buildings, into dank sweating steel-walled rooms ankle-deep in seawater. They worked into the sleep shift, and then into the work shift—it has been over a day since Aiah slept. Butsleep was surrendered without protest: a battle is raging, and Xurcal may be critical. Either enemy mages are operating there, or it is beaming its power to mages operating elsewhere.
But now Aiah’s job is almost over. All but four of the thirty taps have been turned, four taps on the main plasm cables leading to Xurcal. All the branching cables have been shut off. And from this point it should be as simple as it was to turn off Fresh Water Bay.
Four simple operations.
If only Aiah weren’t lost.
Her maps are out of date. Where the map showed a cable junction complete with a rotating control, Aiah found only an empty steel room, rusting door swinging on its hinges. The cable was there, but it was covered by armored plates and surrounded by the heavy steel footings of the scavenged rotator box. And so there was nothing to do but to follow the cable onward, toward Xurcal, and hope to find a place where the tap could be turned.