Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  “We’ll convert it to a warehouse,” Constantine says, “and what will we warehouse? Plasm accumulators, I believe.”

  His security, Martinus and two other men, walk in a widening circle about Constantine and the Elton. Their grating footsteps echo in the big room. Constantine walks to the north wall, turns, takes five paces toward the center of the room. “Below me,” he says, “should be the foundation of the old plastics factory. Can we reach it?”

  Aiah frowns, “Is there a basement?”

  “Yes.”

  The elevator is frozen in place, so Aiah takes the old concrete stair. She’s come straight from work and isn’t dressed for this, and she steps carefully in her heels. The low basement supports the factory floor on arches of crumbling brick. Rusting lathe equipment, old boxes, and olive-green metal cabinets stuffed with moldering records are piled under the low arches like carelessly flung toys, leaving only a few cobwebbed paths amid all the rubble. By the light of her flash, Aiah finds an electric switchboard with stained hemispherical brass buttons. She presses them and to her surprise lights come on, faint yellow bulbs in metal cages.

  She moves to the north end of the basement and prowls amid the rubbish, looking for a route to the foundations. A fat long-tailed rat, displaying no sense of hurry, ambles across her path and disappears among the rubbish.

  Something plinks into a wide, shallow puddle of water. Aiah sees an old water pipe hanging loose in its brackets and runs her flashlight beam along it, and then feels a tingle creep along her nerves as she sees a faint trail of rust angling down the length of a brick pillar, not from the pipe but from the lighter metal of the bracket. Electrolysis, just as she’d seen on the pillar in the old pneuma, a trail of oxidized metal pointing like a finger to a hidden source of power.

  Aiah steps closer, reaching out a hand, and then something uncoils from the pipe and hisses at her.

  She jumps back, crashes into a pillar, almost falls. The thing is pale, glutinous, sluglike, and the length and thickness of her leg; its lips are red, like those of a woman in a fashion ad. Aiah scrambles away, heart hammering against her ribs.

  By the time she returns to the factory floor her fear has turned to annoyance and anger. She swipes grime from her suit as she walks to where Constantine waits by the car.

  “Yes,” she says, “there’s access, I think. But there’s a monster down there that needs killing.”

  Constantine lifts an eyebrow, then gestures to one of his guards. Aiah points out the creature from a safe distance, then holds hands over her ears as the guard takes aim with his pistol and fires.

  *

  The factory gate opens and the Elton glides out. While one guard closes and locks the door behind them, Martinus and the other guard seem taut, alert, their eyes intent on the streets. Then the first guard jumps into the front passenger seat and the limousine pulls away.

  Constantine, accustomed to these sorts of precautions, pays them no attention and instead reaches into the pocket of his soft leather jacket for a notepad. He and Aiah sit opposite each other in the back of the car, Constantine facing the rear.

  “What are we going to need?” he asks.

  Aiah swabs at her skirt with a handkerchief and contemplates cleaning bills before she recalls she can, these days, afford them. She wonders what the monster had been originally, before it began to resonate with the hidden plasm: a rat? Mouse? Slug?

  Or worse, human? There had been tramps living in there. Maybe a drunk or addict had found something else more addictive.

  She feels a chill on her neck at the thought.

  Aiah clears her throat, and with it her mind. “Clean out all the rubbish, first of all,” she says. “There may be access that we simply can’t see. If not, break up the floor, then we’ll get a better look. The track of the electrolysis points straight to our goal. But you’d better have your people work with insulated equipment.”

  “There are other basements in the neighborhood,” Constantine says. “There must be other bits of electrolysis happening, perhaps other monsters. All clues to what lies beneath. The sooner we tap that stuff and put it in batteries, the better.”

  The Elton pauses at a corner, and suddenly alarm courses through Aiah’s veins. She shrinks into her seat, turns away from the scene outside, hand raised to shade her face.

  “What’s wrong?” Constantine’s response is instant.

  “One of those men,” she says. “He attacked me.”

  Constantine leans forward to peer through the window. “Which one?” he says. “You don’t have to hide — he can’t see you through the smoked windows.”

  A metallic taste of fear still coats Aiah’s tongue. Reluctantly she turns to the window and sees again the skinny man, the bottle thrower, seated on a piece of scaffold pipe and talking with some friends. “The thin one,” she says. “Peaked cap, green pants.”

  Constantine’s eyes are intent on the target. He addresses one of the guards.

  “Do you see him, Khoriak?”

  “Yes, Metropolitan.”

  “When we turn the corner, get out of the car and find out who he is.”

  Khoriak is pale and blond and won’t look too out of place here. He begins to take off his jacket.

  A truck, stuck behind the Elton, begins to blip its horn. Constantine looks at Aiah, nods at the thin man and his companions. “Have you seen his friends before?”

  “No. The other attackers were hurt badly. Maybe they’re still in the hospital.”

  Constantine looks over his shoulder at the driver. “Drive around the corner, Mr Martinus.”

  “Yes, Metropolitan.”

  Khoriak has taken off his jacket and lace, and opened his collar. He puts his pistol and holster on the dash, then, as the car drives partway down the block and slows, he steps out, closing the door with that too-solid sound, armor dropping into place. Constantine leans back in his seat, eyes heavy-lidded, and gives Aiah a lazy smile.

  “Forget the man,” he says, “and his friends, too. The problem is over.”

  Aiah looks at him, her heart still leaping. Over? she wonders. How?

  “I’m sorry,” Constantine says, “but there’s no time for lessons today. I have . . .” he pauses to search for a word, “a conference. But tomorrow, I will send Mr Martinus at the usual time.”

  *

  Tick tick tick . .Telia’s child clicks back and forth in his automated swing, each clack of the gears pacing off another torpid moment to the end of the shift.

  “Tell me about him,” Telia says. It’s a slow period, with few calls on Aiah’s computer. There’s something wrong with the air circulation again, and Aiah’s windowless office is hot and close and smells strongly of the sleeping baby’s diapers. Aiah spends her spare time reading, a text on plasm theory, while Telia works puzzles and talks with friends on the phone.

  “Who?” Aiah asks absently, and her eyes turn to the picture of Gil in its wetsilver frame. She feels a pang in her heart — though not, perhaps, the usual pang.

  “The man who picks you up after work. In the big car.” Telia smiles. “Are you doing a little stepping out? I wouldn’t blame you, the way Gil treats you.”

  “Gil treats me perfectly well,” Aiah says automatically. “It’s not his fault he’s away.”

  “Who is he?” Telia’s white smile is relentless. “Gelen from Tasking says that he’s a Barkazil.”

  Who? Aiah wants to ask, not having heard of Gelen from Tasking till this minute. Not that it matters — Telia’s network of friends in the Authority is complex beyond comprehension.

  “He’s not a Barkazil,” Aiah says, “he’s Cheloki.”

  “Is he rich?” Telia asks. “He must be, to drive an Elton. You’re dressing better, I’ve noticed.”

  Aiah fluffs an annoyed hand through her chin-lace. Two suits, she thinks, a pair of shoes, and now she’s a kept woman.

  She wonders what Telia would say if she’d come to work wearing the diamond necklace.

  Tick ti
ck tick. The swing marks off the seconds to Aiah’s answer.

  “The man Gelen saw is the car’s driver, not its owner,” she says carefully, knowing that Gelen and every other correspondent of Telia’s are going to be retelling this over the entire Authority building in the next few hours.

  Telia’s gray eyes glitter. “I’m impressed.”

  “It’s work,” Aiah says. “It’s a consulting job I’ve taken to make ends meet.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I haven’t asked the Authority’s permission, so I’d appreciate discretion.”

  “Ah.”

  “And he’s married. Well, good as.”

  Telia digests this for a moment. “What does Gil say about it?” she asks finally.

  “I haven’t spoken to him since I started.”

  “Ah.”

  “But,” stubbornly, and feeling heat creep up her neck, “I don’t see why he’d care.”

  “But this man’s rich, that you’re working for?” Telia leans across the table.

  “I believe he is.” Amusement twitches the corners of Aiah’s mouth. “Though he seems to enjoy complaining about money.”

  “Some rich people are like that,” Telia says.

  Aiah looks at her. “How many rich people do you know?”

  “Really rich? Well . . .”

  “He’s rich enough so that he doesn’t have to count his clinks. But he does, because being rich is still a game with rules, and not being taken advantage of is one of them. I think.” She knits her brows, “I think that’s how it works.”

  “And what does he want you to do for all these clinks he’s paying you?”

  Aiah laughs. “God knows. Nothing he couldn’t do himself, if he wanted to.”

  “And is he happy with his wife, or whatever she is?”

  “Personal assistant.”

  Telia laughs. “Personal assistant!” She shakes her head. “How are they getting along?”

  “I believe they are not in agreement.”

  “Girl!” Telia claps her hands. “Wake up! You can have him!”

  Aiah laughs, shakes her head, dismissively slides the pads of her fingers across the surface of her scarred metal desk. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well — what if you can? What are you going to do about it?”

  Take all the money I can, she thinks. He’s my passu, damn it. By far the safest course.

  “Either it will occur to him or it won’t,” Aiah says. “I think what happened is that it occurred to him and he decided not.”

  Telia looks a little disdainful. “Takes the pressure off you, then. But I still think you should try something.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You’ll tell me if anything happens, won’t you?”

  Tick tick tick . . .

  Aiah looks at Telia out of the corner of her eye, and as the seconds click by it occurs to her, a Barkazil notion, that there is more than one kind of passu.

  “Of course,” she says. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  *

  Aiah says goodbye to Martinus, steps out of the Elton, and heads toward the Loeno lobby. Plasm seems to buoy her every step. Her senses dance to the scent of the fresh northeasterly wind that has blown away the previous day’s clouds, the aftertaste of wine on her tongue, the astringent scent of the potted chrysanthemums that line the path to the door.

  She’s just finished a lesson with Constantine. They had concentrated on telepresence technique, invoking and using the sensorium, the battery of sensory perceptions carried from by the anima, the telepresent plasm-body that can be made to fly from place to place, independent of matter. Aiah concluded the lesson with her senses refreshed, hyper-sensitive; the usual wine, fruit and cheese that waited for her in the car seems ecstatic in its power to delight her palate.

  Here on the cusp between service and sleep shift, when few people are awake, Aiah meets no one on her route to the elevator. When she reaches the apartment she can hear, through the door, a voice, and she recognizes Gil’s tones grating from the speaker of her message system.

  As soon as the bolt slams back Aiah pushes the door open and dashes for the communications array, hand outstretched to snatch up the headset.

  “Da? Hello?” Clapping one earpiece to her ear.

  “Aiah?”

  “I just stepped through the door. I’m glad I caught you.”

  Aiah settles the headset in place, then maneuvers backwards to the limits of the cord, catches the door with her heel, swings it shut.

  “Where have you been?” Gil asks. “I’ve been calling every second shift for days. I was starting to get worried.”

  “Let me stop and catch my breath,” Aiah says. “I was so afraid you’d hang up.”

  “I was beginning to think I should call your sister or something and find out if you were all right.”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I’ve been working — I’ve taken on a consulting job to help pay our debts.”

  “Consulting? Who for?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. It’s too long a story to waste telephone charges on.”

  And besides, she hasn’t worked out what to tell him. It might be dangerous even to breathe Constantine’s name over the telephone.

  “Well, you won’t have to keep the job for long,” Gil says. “The company’s finally reimbursed some of my expenses — a lot of the entertainment, and the bed money thing. Hillel went to headquarters in Jaspeer and took care of it personally.”

  “That’s good.”

  “So I’ll be sending you a cashgram for eight hundred tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “That will be useful.”

  There is a little hesitation on Gil’s end of the line. Aiah knows that pause, knows the little creases between Gil’s brows that deepen when he pauses to think.

  “You don’t sound precisely overjoyed,” he says.

  Two weeks ago, Aiah thinks, she’d have fallen on her knees and thanked the immortals for that money. But now it’s redundant, and she can’t tell her lover why.

  She’s made Gil her passu, she realizes. And she doesn’t want to, but she can’t help it, because the truth is too complex, too dangerous.

  He can’t ever know, she thinks. Because if he ever finds out, he’ll never look at her the same way again, he’ll never cease wondering if some other scheme has come between them, or endangered them somehow ...

  “I’m just tired,” she says. And even that is a lie, with the plasm having scrubbed her weariness away.

  “After the cashgram, there’ll be money for a trip home,” Gil says, “I don’t know precisely when I’ll be able to get away, but it will be sometime in the next few weeks. And then we’ll be able to sit down and work out our finances together.”

  “Good,” Aiah says. “But I think the eight hundred should settle everything before you get here.”

  She kicks off her shoes and sits down on the carpet and looks up at Gil’s picture and wordlessly apologizes for all this, for the deception she’s put between them, the situations he’ll never understand, the cascade of lies she may never be able to end.

  “I love you,” Gil says. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you. But I’ll do my best to make it up to you once I get home.”

  “I love you, too,” Aiah says, and wonders if even this is true any more.

  Perhaps, she thinks, she has made a passu of herself.

  *

  “The money,” Aiah says. “Just to remind you, I haven’t seen it.”

  Constantine looks ahead, through smoked glass, as the Elton moves slowly past the Terminal trackline station. He and Aiah sit next to each other on the plush rear seat while the life of the narrow streets presses in around them.

  “I was wondering when you’d ask,” he says.

  “I thought I’d give you a week.”

  “Arrangements have been made with a bank in Gunalaht. I’ll give you the codes tomorrow. You can withdraw money by wire, but to avoid the scru
tiny of tax officials it might be best to visit the place yourself, by the Inter-Metropolitan pneuma, and withdraw in person. Also, you’ll need to visit them at least once so they have a record of your chop.”

  Gunalaht is a small metropolis known for its banks and casinos. The banks obey strict privacy laws and therefore hold the deposits of half the gangsters and chonah riggers in Jaspeer. The casinos exist to move the money from the gangsters’ accounts to those of the government. The metropolis is about half a day away by pneuma, or a day and a half by airship, just long enough to make the journey an inconvenience.

  “I may have to take a day or two off,” Aiah says. Her eyes move apprehensively along the busy streets, looking for a familiar form — the skinny man, any of her other attackers. Forget the man, Constantine had said. The problem is over. But now she can’t seem to forget him at all.

  “A day off ?” Constantine says. “I wish you’d take a week. What is it you do in that job of yours?”

  “At my level,” Aiah says, “I mostly wait for the people above me to die or retire. They could automate my job completely, but that would mean Authority personnel budgets would decline, and—”

  “Ah, yes.” Constantine is bitterly amused. “The way of officialdom. What is the distinguishing feature of the budget of Jaspeer? Over ninety percent devoted to maintaining that which is. Keeping transport moving, maintaining buildings and roadways, paying pensions, keeping people like you stuck at your desks doing unproductive jobs while you wait for your seniors to die off so that you can advance to perform their unproductive jobs. And does it change when the electorate vote in a new government? Of course not. Because the people on top really don’t hold the power. Everything’s really run by a triumvirate of interest groups.” He holds his right hand up, stabs three fingers up toward the car’s roof, ticks the fingers off one by one with his left thumb. “The bureaucracy, the unions, and the Operation. They’ve divided the budget between them. The first two get everything that’s on the books, and the Operation gets the rest. And of these, only the last is efficient, because in the Operation there are penalties for incompetence.”

  Aiah looks at Constantine’s cynical smile. “You sound almost as if you admire the Operation,” she says, and remembers the words, The problem is over. Something a street captain might well say.