Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  He shakes his head. “No. The captains of the Operation are vicious animals, with no more concept of the world or their place in it than Sorya’s Prowler. And I should know — my family, you remember, were the Operation, or anyway what the Operation can become when it runs an entire metropolis. They had the kind of power that the street captains in Jaspeer can only dream about. Here, in Jaspeer, the Operation are animals — predators, but smallish ones. Rats, perhaps. They fight over scraps, over territory, over prestige, or at any rate what seems like prestige to a rat. But in Cheloki they weren’t rats any longer, they were higher animals, like Sorya’s cat, or perhaps more to the point like a pack of dogs, who through numbers and ruthlessness and brute intelligence could bring down game stronger and greater than they.” He smiles, a cold reminiscent glow in his eyes. “They dined very well, my family, very high off the food chain. They loved power for its own sake, and permitted no threat to that power to exist.” He shrugs, looks offhand at Aiah.

  “A person’s intent matters,” he says. “It must. I desire power for myself, yes, I will admit it. But further I will say that I want nothing for myself that I do not desire for humanity at large, and that I desire power only for its ends, not for the thing in itself. The rest of power’s trappings are wearisome: the fawning, the flattery, the raking in of tribute and booty — it was a mark of my family’s merit that such pathetic, unreal aspects of power were all they cared about, while the reality of it, the ability to fundamentally alter the world and all nature, mattered to them not at all.”

  He smiles in memory, and the smile is cold. “They tried to outdo one another in palace-building — horrible places, tasteless and pretentious and shallow, and we may thank Tangid that most of these structures were destroyed in the war — and, with their minds on such earthly glory, it is preposterous what my family overlooked. They had access to all the plasm in their domain, which they used to pursue or crush their enemies, or spy on each other, or create elaborate public spectacles, or engage in the most astoundingly petty intrigues. Plasm is the most perfect transformational agent of the universe, the thing that can alter matter, alter the fundamental nature of all reality, and they used it with no more consciousness of its significance than if they had been children. They’d been around the stuff all their lives, and even you, daughter —” his hand finds Aiah’s on the plush seat and covers it, “even you, barely a novice in geomancy, have a better idea of what to do with plasm than they.” He looks at her intently, and Aiah can feel a flush creep up her neck. “You used it to fly, to liberate yourself from matter. Whereas base matter—” he smiles wolfishly, “the baser the better, was all my family could find to interest them.”

  The Elton turns, and the old brick factory’s door automatically rolls open to welcome it. Constantine lifts his hand from Aiah’s, opens his door, and steps out of the car before it has quite rolled to a stop. The sound of hammering rings off the factory’s hard interior surfaces. Aiah looks for a moment at her hand, still warm from his touch, and then leaves the car herself.

  The amount of progress in three days is astonishing. The factory floor is covered with plasm accumulators, a few of them unpacked to show their new, gleaming brass and smooth black ceramic, but most of them — those nearest the doors, and the sight of any curious onlooker — still in their packing crates, as if they were being warehoused. Above them a scaffolding has been completed, and contacts are being lowered into place. An even larger scaffolding, a bronze collection web, is being erected around it in order to diffuse any attack. Guards prowl the perimeter, their professional scowls in place.

  “I’m amazed by the scale of it,” Aiah says. “Aren’t you worried about being detected?”

  “The warehouse is being rented by a corporation based in Taiphon,” Constantine says, “and the accumulators belong to another group out of Gunalaht. The ownership is so complex that no one will ever trace either to me.” His rumbling laugh echoes in the huge space. “Besides, Miss Aiah,” he says, “have you ever, in your personal experience, known of a crime that was actually solved by the authorities acting on their own?”

  Aiah’s laugh answers Constantine’s. Her old neighborhood provides the answer every day of the week.

  “Of course not,” she says. “People get caught because they’re ratted out.” Her cousin Landro, the plasm diver, had been turned in to the Authority creepers by a friend who’d run short of money in mid-week and couldn’t wait till payday to buy a ten-pack of beer. The only people the police caught on their own were the unlucky and stupid, those who committed crimes in plain sight and waited around to be arrested, or those whose behavior afterwards brought suspicion on them.

  Like brilliant rain, sparks fall from a torch on the overhead scaffold to the concrete floor. Constantine moves toward the stair leading to the basement, and Aiah follows.

  “Every person involved in this endeavor,” Constantine says, “has much more to gain from our adventure than they ever would from cooperating with the authorities. All my people —” he nods at the dozen or so visible, “are tried, tested, and loyal. They have served the New City for years, in every manner of peril. The weak links are two: our neighbors here, who at present however have no reason to suspect us, and—” He stops and turns at the top of the stair. His eyes turn to Aiah. “And you, my daughter.”

  A chill drifts down Aiah’s spine, “I have no reason to betray you,” she says.

  A cold little curl of amusement touches Constantine’s lips. He speaks softly, barely audible over a barrage of furious pneumatic hammering that suddenly rackets up from the basement. “No,” he says, “you have no reason to betray me, at least not once you get your money. But — who can tell? — you might be an irrational person. You might inform simply because you are under a neurotic compulsion.”

  Alarm chills Aiah’s nerves, but she manages to give Constantine a cold Barkazil glare. “So might any of your people, Metropolitan,” she says.

  The hammering sound from the basement dies away, and Constantine’s deep laugh booms out in the sudden silence. “So they might, daughter! But I know them, and you I do not know.”

  Aiah’s hands make fists at her sides. She wasn’t prepared to be made this man’s passu.

  “I don’t like this game, Metropolitan.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “What game is that?”

  “I raised a genuine issue of security, and instead you imply that I’m the one not to be trusted.”

  “Ah. Forget it then.” He waves a hand dismissively, then turns to descend the stair.

  “You said the authorities are keeping track of you.”

  He turns back to her. “No doubt some of the personnel at Mage Towers, or perhaps my neighbors, have been asked to make reports. Probably my fiscal transactions have been scrutinized, at least to some extent. No doubt my plasm use has been monitored. But...” he holds up a hand, “nothing overt. No one has followed me around, no one has been to my apartment to ask questions. Because there is nothing to make them suspicious.”

  “People at work have noticed me being picked up by your car.”

  Constantine smiles. “And what conclusions have they drawn from this?”

  “That I have a lover.”

  He shrugs. “Let ’em believe it, then. Deny it if you like, but make your denials unconvincing.” He turns to head down the stair. Aiah, having no choice, follows. Frustration gnaws at her nerves with little rodent teeth.

  The basement opens out before her. All the clutter has been miraculously removed, and the room is filled with the smell of fresh concrete dust. Amid a circle of debris and frowning men in hardhats sits a pneumatic drill, a squat man-high egg-shaped machine with four feet braced wide on the floor, and another four long jointed metal legs bolted to the ceiling or pillars.

  One man comes forward to report to Constantine. Concrete dust coats his beard-stubble and the bandanna he’s wrapped around his neck, and there are two pale sweat-shiny patches around his eyes where he’s worn protective
goggles.

  “We got through the floor all right,” he says, “and the layer of stonework under that, but now we’ve hit a layer of concrete reinforced with some kind of alloy rebar, and it’s stopped us. We’ve been trying to drill it for hours.”

  “What can you do?” Constantine asks.

  The man shrugs. “Blast, maybe. Get a bigger drill. Hell, I’m not an engineer — the man who rented us this stuff said it’d work, that’s all I know.”

  “Geomaturgy,” Aiah says.

  The man looks at her. “Well,” he says. “Of course.”

  Constantine looks over his massive shoulder, gives Aiah a frown. “Fine,” he says, “you’re right — magic is easier. Tell Martinus to get someone to drive you to the Towers. You know where the t-grips are.”

  She looks up at Constantine in confusion. “Are you coming, too?”

  “I have work here.” And then, at her silence, Constantine only deepens his frown. “It’s time you managed without me. You’ll do perfectly well.”

  The concrete dust on Aiah’s tongue begins to taste like fear. “As you wish, Metropolitan,” she says, and turns to leave.

  There is a part of her that wants Constantine to call her back. But he doesn’t, and that’s that.

  The face of the flaming woman burns in her mind, mouth open in a silent scream.

  *

  Aiah sits on the couch opposite the arboretum. Prowler, the big cat, stares at her from the other side of the glass wall, a constant unwinking green-eyed gaze of steady interest. Colorful birds flitter in the trees. The solid copper transference grip, as yet unconnected to any power well, sits heavy in her hand.

  She takes the little charm from around her neck, holds it in the palm of her right hand and hefts the t-grip in her left.

  A touch of the burning woman seems to revolve in her heart like wheel of fire. She looks at the Trigram and tries to clear her mind of everything but the task ahead.

  Somehow it’s very difficult to banish from her awareness the touch of sweaty moisture that beads at the hollow of her throat.

  In the last week Aiah has flown. She’s taken plasm into her body, projected it from her fingertips, molded it, made it dance in midair. All with perfect confidence. But always Aiah knew the presence of Constantine’s hand on her wrist, and her confidence was buoyed by the fact that he was guiding her, that if anything went wrong he could throw the switch and she would return to the safety of the leather couch.

  Things are a little different now, with the weight of the t-grip in her hand.

  Prowler gazes at her with steady green eyes. Aiah takes a deep breath, looks at the Trigram, and drops the t-grip into its waiting socket.

  Raw power blows the breath from her lungs. Aiah’s nerves wake to snarling readiness. Heart crashing, she tries to master the sensation, to direct her senses outward, into her environment. Awareness expands like a ripple in a still pond. The universe pours itself into her like a fall of liquid metal — the carbon-steel skeleton of Mage Towers seems to support her limbs; the transmission horns crown her head with polished bronze radiance; her eyes gaze out from a thousand ports of glass; and the people living inside seem like little atomies that flow through her veins.

  Prowler, startled by whatever it is he sees, leaps from his place and flees deeper into the foliage.

  Aiah concentrates, narrows her focus to the room. Everything here, the desk, the chairs, the video monitors, all seem unchanged, but somehow ominous, charged with hidden power. Aiah takes a moment to firm her anima and the sensorium by which she will apprehend reality outside herself — she numbers her senses one by one, and makes certain each delivers appropriate sensation — and then her anima floats upwards, towards the transmission horns, and out into space.

  She could meticulously follow the road grid to Terminal, but there’s an easier way: she knows that Terminal is near Grand City, and Grand City’s white granite pinnacles, designed as if to create a shining antithesis to Mage Towers’ black fangs, are visible on the horizon. She streaks to them, orients herself along District Boulevard, follows the four-level highway along the outskirts of Rocketman, then turns into the brownstone canyons of Terminal. Still, in the end, she has to descend to ground level to look at street signs before she can find the old factory.

  When she ghosts into the factory, Constantine is talking on the telephone and seems unaware of her presence. It’s lucky the bronze collection web hasn’t been fully assembled, otherwise Aiah’s journey would end here, anima diffused into Constantine’s plasm defenses — but she threads between the uprights easily enough, moves down the stair, and enters the basement.

  The taste of concrete dust floods her senses, and she wonders if the dust still floats through the air here, or whether she has somehow created the sensation for herself because she expected it. The pneumatic drill has been moved back; perhaps they were afraid she’d damage it. Workmen stand near the stair, unaware of her presence, and share food and coffee. Clearly there’s been no more activity since she left.

  She circles the pit, sees the rubble piled up, fragments of concrete and brick. Below is the scarred surface, glints of bright webbed metal amid pitted concrete. She wonders if this is some kind of centuries-old military relic, a bunker protected from geomaturgic attacks by an intrinsic collection web. If so, her anima will be dissolved once she touches it — harmless to her real body, other than through disorientation to her senses.

  So far as she knows there’s no way to find out except by trying. She visualizes herself a pair of arms, invisible bone and muscle animated by plasm, and reaches down into the hole, touches elements of the metal web.

  Nothing. At least the structure isn’t hostile to her.

  Aiah doesn’t know the type of hard alloy used here, and doesn’t know enough chemical geomaturgy to find out, but she reasons that at the very least she can melt the stuff, so she calls for an increase in plasm flow along her sourceline from Mage Towers, and directs the power as heat energy along the arms of her anima.

  For the longest time nothing happens. But the metal finally blackens, then begins to burn with a dull red heat, and then at last glows white. Little bits of flame lick up. Drops of liquefied alloy spill from the exposed rebar. Aiah pulls the liquefied metal upwards with a tug of her mind, pulls it out of the concrete, and sees it settle like bright quicksilver in low places in the fractured concrete. She wants to get rid of it altogether, so she lofts it up, a reverse waterfall of bright liquid metal, out the lip of the pit and along the floor of the room. There it can cool and harden for all she cares. She visualizes herself more arms, each one touching a piece of exposed rebar, and then calls for more power. The concrete cracks with sharp popping sounds as the metal within expands. She extracts more and more of the alloy, then reaches downward with her arms, into the concrete itself, and gathers more metal into her incorporeal fingers. Her awareness reaches out into the structure and she can see the whole alloy web, feel the weight of the concrete, sense, below this layer, the huge beams that support its weight.

  Aiah digs into the structure like a burrowing animal, ripping up concrete with her claws, throwing it back into the room behind her while she fountains molten alloy upward. Her awareness effortlessly encompasses the workers who have seen, or probably heard, the activity and are watching with interest while keeping a wary distance. Aiah punches through the concrete layer into the soft layer below, then one of her plasm-fingers touches a support beam.

  Aiah feels herself light up like a neon display. The liquefied metal shoots white-hot through her veins. The support beam is a part of what they’re looking for, the glory hole, and the huge sleepy well of power leaps instantly to life, the power awesome and inexorable, like a reservoir of energy suddenly burst into flood.

  Aiah laughs, and it seems as if all Jaspeer trembles to the sound. Aiah draws her fingers upward, drawing the power up after her, concrete shattering at the force of her power, whirling out of the pit, the remaining rebar twisting at her force, snapp
ing like licorice.

  The pit is clear, and the workers can set up their tap now. Her anima hovers over the hole, in a billowing cloud of concrete dust, and she feels herself inflate with power, become a giant with a heart of blazing fire. It occurs to her that she ought to tell the workers that the beam below is part of the plasm well, and that they shouldn’t touch it, but she knows they can’t see her anima, and she doesn’t know how to communicate to them.

  She creates a wind to blow the dust away, and tries to fashion a body for herself out of her thoughts; imagine it, the lines of it, the skin and sinew and structure, a heart that pumps glowing plasm through its veins. Aiah wills the plasm-skin to fluoresce, become visible to the workers. She sees them react, throwing up hands to shield their eyes from the light — she can see her red-gold radiance reflecting from the pillars, glowing in the clouds of dust that she’s pushed out to the limits of the room. She tries to give herself a mouth, a tongue, a breath, a voice that she can speak with.

  “The iron beam at the bottom of the pit is live,” she says. “You must insulate yourself from it. Nod if you understand me.”

  Some of the stunned figures clap hands over their ears, but they all nod. Aiah laughs at her triumph, at the energy that floods her, leaps at the very touch of her will. More hands clap over ears.

  Her task is done, but Aiah finds herself reluctant to leave. The energy that floods her mind is exhilarating, a liberation greater than anything she’s known. Nothing seems beyond her capabilities. She considers going for a stroll in her current anima — flying into the sky, righting a few conspicuous wrongs, inscribing a poem across the sky ... something dazzling.

  But no. The workers need to get into the pit, and it would be dangerous to have a live sourceline, charged with plasm, running out of the pit to Aiah’s anima. Aiah decides to compel her second sourceline to shrivel, to close off the tap of power, but a few reluctant seconds pass before she can will it to happen.