Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  Aiah looks at Constantine, her mind warming to the memory, “It was my idea of what magic was, when I was little. And I always thought that when I really loved someone, I’d take him to the temple, and we’d sprinkle some rice and push our wish under the door, and it would be granted.”

  “What was your wish?”

  “The wish varied, but mostly it was to have the temple to ourselves, for one shift. It was the most extravagant wish I could think of, to have some kind of privacy.” Aiah eats the orange slice, feels the flavor of memory burst on her tongue.

  “Did you ever take anyone there?” Constantine asks.

  Aiah, mouth filled with pulp, shakes her head.

  “Not even your Gil?”

  Aiah shakes her head again. Constantine touches her cheek again.

  “Then I am still sad for that little girl.”

  “Don’t be,” Aiah says. “She’s done all right so far.”

  He nods, but she can still see the tint of sorrow in his eyes. She nudges his biceps with a knuckle. “And you?” she asks. “I take it you’ve never had sex in a stairwell?”

  “No. I thought my education had been fairly comprehensive, but apparently that area was overlooked.” He frowns, dismembers an orange slice. “My uncle gave me one of his girls, one of the younger ones. There was a whole class of them, and they tended to rotate through the family. A number rotated through my bed on a kind of informal schedule.” He chews a bit of orange thoughtfully. “There’s a practical political aspect to it I only appreciated later: if you’ve already experienced every conceivable combination by the time you’re fifteen, when you finally grow into a position of power it’s unlikely anyone will be able to manipulate you through sex.”

  “I’ll have to remember not to try, then.”

  He gives her a sly look and pops another bit of orange into his mouth. “How unfortunate. It would have been fun.”

  She smiles, one hand stroking the blue satin between them. “What next?” she asks.

  “Now? I’ll take you home when you’re ready. Though I hope it’s not yet, because I’m just getting comfortable.”

  “And then? What after that? Do we keep meeting in hotels?”

  Constantine puts down his remaining bit of orange, towels his fingers dry, sits up straighter in bed. “What happens next,” he says, “depends on what it is that Miss Aiah wants.”

  Frustration hums in Aiah’s nerves. “Why must I decide everything?” she says.

  For a moment Constantine seems ancient, looking at her with the distant, knowing eyes of an old man. “Because you are the one who is most likely to be hurt,” he says.

  Aiah’s mouth is dry. “I’m not very easy to damage,” she says.

  “What is it that you desire?” Constantine asks. “To spend time with me for the present, then to return to your life in your black tower? This I can grant you. Or do you wish to hazard everything and follow me to Caraqui? I can’t decide this for you, and the decision must be made in, well, in a matter of days.”

  Aiah is surprised. She hasn’t realized Constantine’s timetable is so advanced. “Say I come with you to Caraqui,” Aiah says cautiously. “Would I have a place there?”

  “A place in the New City? Of course. A place with me?” He frowns, his fierce gaze focused on the ceiling. “Too much depends on chance.”

  “What sort of chance? Will you need Sorya after the coup?”

  “Perhaps.” He slumps into the bed and seems unhappy enough that Aiah wants to reach out to comfort him. “And in any case I would have little time for her, or for you.” He looks at her, a kind of pain in his eyes, “I can’t promise you anything in Caraqui, other than a job in some government office. I am using you most damnably, and one day you will see that and hate me.”

  “I can’t see that you’re using me any more than I’m using you.”

  Constantine’s gaze burns into hers. “You’re young,” he says.

  Aiah can feel herself flush. I am not your passu she thinks violently, and turns away. The orange tastes bitter on her tongue.

  “I don’t know what I want,” she admits. “I wanted security — money in the bank, not to have to fight all the time — and I never thought beyond that. But now you’ve given me security, and so much else that I’m afraid I’ve turned greedy.”

  He leans close to her, kisses her bare shoulder. “You are welcome to what you can take from me, in such time as we have left,” he says.

  She looks at him. “I just told you I’m greedy,” she reminds.

  A smile hints that Constantine is pleased by her response. “Take what you will,” he says, “I would not limit myself if I were you.”

  *

  There are messages from Stonn on her repaired communications array when she gets home, and a call from him comes again as she’s eating her breakfast sweet rolls.

  “That was pretty good, what you did,” he says.

  Weariness falls on Aiah like rain. “Yeah? And what did I do, exactly?”

  “Took care of Guvag. It was on video and everything. The burns sent him to the hospital. He’s not going to be bothering anyone for a long time.”

  “What makes you think it was me who did that?”

  “Come on, Aiah. You said you’d take care of it, and you did.”

  “It doesn’t have to have been me. He had a lot of enemies.”

  Stonn gives a little laugh. “Whatever you say. The point is, I know a way to make some money.”

  “No.” Flatly.

  “For anyone with access to that much plasm, I know where we can . . .”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Just listen—”

  “I can’t!” Coffee spills from Aiah’s cup as she slaps the table with her hand.

  There is a moment of resentful silence. “You’ve got to be dealing the goods,” Stonn says. “That’s the only way it adds up. And now you’re not willing to share your chonah with your family?”

  “Stonn.” She searches for words. You’re going to put me in prison, while accurate enough, is probably too confrontational under the circumstances.

  “Nothing’s free, okay?” she says. “It’s not as if I have any plasm of my own. If I accomplished anything, it’s because somebody did me a favor. And now I have to do favors back, understand?”

  “Do the man a favor then,” Stonn says. “Introduce him to me. I’ve got this great opportunity for him.”

  “It wouldn’t work.”

  “Well, who is the guy, anyway?”

  Aiah rubs the pain between her eyes. “Stonn,” she says, “I’m sorry, but nothing is going to happen.”

  Stonn’s voice is full of resentment. “All right,” he says, “cut your family out of everything.”

  “I can’t help you!” Aiah says. “I would if I could!”

  Stonn hits the disconnect button before Aiah gets all the words out. She slams the headset back onto its hook.

  Now she’s made passus out of her family, lying to them as she’s lied to everyone else. She wonders what will happen when all the lies start intersecting, if Gil should talk to someone in the family about Constantine, or if Rohder should hear about Bobo and Momo.

  Deal with it when it happens, she thinks dully, it’s all she can do.

  *

  Telia’s baby is screaming so loudly — and without any apparent reason, all the normal ones having been looked into and dismissed — that Aiah doesn’t hear the message cylinder drop from the pneumatic tube into her wire basket. Suddenly she looks and it’s there, and she wonders for how long. The blue-pencil message is signed “Rohder”. He wants to see her right away.

  A cold breeze wafts across her nape.

  Aiah doesn’t know if Rohder has the authority to give her orders or not. He isn’t her immediate boss, but his rank is so high that he might well have authority over her without her even knowing it. She calls tabulator control and tells him she’s been called to a meeting and is logging out early. The baby’s shrieks are so loud she can
barely make out the controller’s responses.

  She heads for the building’s hydraulic elevators, and their peculiar liquid motion makes her nervous stomach queasy.

  Rohder’s on the 106th floor, which is under reconstruction; walls are torn down or have craters punched in them, bricks and concrete blocks are stacked in piles, there’s plastic draped over everything, and temporary scaffolding shores up the ceiling and walls. Despite the disorder the only sound here is the concrete dust grating beneath Aiah’s shoes. She has the feeling no one has actually worked on any of this for some time.

  Even if Rohder doesn’t seem to have a real job anymore he’s still senior enough to rate a corner office. The receptionist’s desk and chair are covered with an undisturbed layer of concrete dust, but the door beyond is open. Aiah can smell Rohder’s cigarets before she enters. There are monumental statues, ten stories tall, set on the corners of the building, shining bronze hawk-nosed human figures staring down at the city with slitted eyes. They’re supposed to be the Angels of Power or something. The windows in Rohder’s office give a glorious view of two corner statues’ stern profiles turned out to the city below. Rohder, insignificant by comparison, sits behind an enormous bronze-fronted desk covered with a design of rays, a desk that seems to diminish rather than enhance his majesty. He looks as if he’s wearing the same ill-fitting gray suit as when Aiah first met him. A cigaret, naturally, hangs from the corner of his mouth.

  He looks up at her with his rheumy blue eyes, and for a moment he seems not to recognize her. Then he nods, stands, and brushes cigaret ash off his chin-lace, “I see you made it through what used to be my department,” he says.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Terminal.”

  The old lavatory is walled off, Aiah reminds herself. The structure is being tapped now, so even if Rohder finds it, he won’t find this huge potential well just sitting there. He won’t be able to prove it isn’t tapped and metered legitimately.

  No need to be afraid, Aiah thinks, but as she steps forward she feels insects crawl along her nerves.

  Rohder’s carpet is covered with plastic sheeting that crackles under Aiah’s heels. There is a huge padded chair in the corner of the room, she sees, with copper t-grips on the wide arms. He can access plasm right from here, from a seat that gazes out from two sides of the building.

  And there are maps layered atop Rohder’s desk, she sees, each anchored on its corners by a brimming ashtray. She recognizes every map.

  “Just how do you get down to that old pneuma station?” Rohder asks.

  “It’s dangerous down there,” Aiah says. “I’ll guide you if you like.”

  “Ah.” Rohder’s hands wander in and out of his jacket pockets, fail to find cigarets, discover them instead in a drawer. “Well, that’s kind of you, but I thought I might as well do it from here, just use telepresence.”

  Terror creeps slowly up Aiah’s spine. “Ah,” she says.

  Rohder lights the new cigaret off the old. His ruddy complexion and baby-blue eyes provide a startling contrast with his wrinkled face, every line of which is mercilessly revealed by the Shieldlight flooding through the big windows.

  It’s all down to how good Rohder actually is, Aiah knows. If he can find the structure of the old plastics plant, he can map it, but only if he’s good enough to project an anima through solid matter, an act that requires a series of complex skills in which Aiah has no real experience but which seem intimidating enough in theory: to develop a sensorium that can sense in ways that a human could not, sense difference in mass, in materials, to tell bricks from bedrock from steel, to translate all of this into knowledge, and of course to navigate without losing one’s path.

  But Rohder is good. Mengene said he was a real wizard. Aiah reaches up into her cuff-lace and clasps her wrist with one hand in order to keep herself from trembling.

  “Uhh,” Rohder reminds, “where exactly do I need to look?”

  Aiah leans over the desk and looks over the maps, tries to trace her route. Plants her finger firmly on the map to keep the hand from shaking. “Here,” she says. “South side of the street. I don’t remember the number of the building.”

  Rohder screws up his face. “But there’s public access leading in?”

  The law is fairly firm on the subject of sending one’s anima into “private domestic space”— various kinds of complicated official permissions are required — but Rohder’s allowed to move through what the law defines as a “public access”, meaning in this case the hallways, stairs and corridors of an apartment building.

  “I’m not entirely certain of the technicalities,” Aiah says, “but I suppose it’s public.”

  Rohder draws on his cigaret and looks moodily at the map. “Perhaps it would be easier,” Rohder says, “if I just quartered the district through the air. Any signs of large plasm use could be traced to their source.”

  “Wouldn’t it most likely be legitimate?” Aiah says. “How many thousands of people are using plasm at any given moment?”

  “In that district?” Rohder mused. “Very few would be using the goods in any quantity. It’s a working-class neighborhood with very little local industry.”

  And very few, Aiah thinks, beaming plasm from transmission horns disguised as billboards. She is aware of sweat gathering at her nape.

  “Did you need anything else?” she asks.

  “Hm?” He’s already lost in thought. “No,” he says, “I don’t think so. Thank you.”

  Aiah leaves, feet crunching on concrete dust. She considers dashing down to the lobby, calling the number Constantine gave her, giving Dr. Chandros an emergency message.

  And then cold fear runs through her veins like ice as she realizes that would be a bad idea. She might already be under investigation. Creepers from the Authority’s Investigative Division might be tracking her, either in person or through an anima. This could be a trick by Rohder designed to make her panic and do something foolish.

  She returns to her office, sweat cooling on her nape. Somehow she gets through the day.

  When she leaves, the hydraulic elevator feels hot and close and seems to take forever to reach the ground floor. And then, having rushed from the building as fast as she’s dared, she has to wait a few endless minutes at the curb, because her ride isn’t here. When the Elton pulls up, she doesn’t wait for Martinus to open her door for her, but dives through the rear door and confronts a startled Constantine. It’s safe to talk in here: the car has a bronze collection web that would disperse the anima of anyone trying to get inside.

  “The Jurisdiction is going to conduct a search for plasm thieves in the Terminal area,” Aiah says. “You’ve got to shut down the factory.”

  Constantine’s brows knit. “What sort of search?”

  The car’s acceleration tugs at Aiah’s balance, and she sways and then settles into her seat.

  “Anima search,” Aiah says. “Aerial, to look for large-scale plasm use, and underground, to try to find untapped structures. I just found out.”

  “When is this going to happen?”

  Aiah hesitates. “Who knows?” she says. “Tomorrow, most likely, but it could be underway already — heavy plasm use would stand out more during second shift than during first. And if you’re firing it off that rooftop . . .”

  “Find a public phone,” Constantine tells Martinus.

  He calls the factory and tells the people there to shut down operations and head for Mage Towers for an emergency meeting.

  *

  As the car speeds for Mage Towers, Aiah wonders if she should tell Constantine that the investigation, if it’s not occupying the attention of every creeper in Jaspeer, is most likely being run by one old man, operating on his own.

  But she knows perfectly well what would happen, and so she doesn’t say a word.

  She follows Constantine into his apartment, his broad back moving in front of her like a leather-clad wall. He moves at full speed, his
body set in lines of intense concentration, his long legs reaching for the carpet. Aiah hears Sorya’s words — “What the hell?” — before Aiah sees the woman herself, standing at the base of the spiral stair, tapping a booted foot and pointing her cigaret at the ceiling like a pistol held at half-cock. Her expression is half anger, half alarm, and she doesn’t give Aiah so much as a glance. Geymard the soldier is with her, and a thin bespectacled man Aiah doesn’t know.

  “The Authority,” Constantine says, and heads up the stairs three at a time. Aiah sticks close to his back and Sorya is third up the stair, followed by Geymard, Martinus and others. Once in the plasm control room, Constantine spins like a dancer, his burning eyes focused on Aiah, and says, “Explain.”

  Aiah gives them as much as she dares. She’s never had more attention from an audience, from this half-circle of intent, disciplined faces.

  “How long will this go on?” Sorya asks. Aiah’s skin tautens in alarm at the look in Sorya’s green eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Aiah says.

  Sorya’s glance shifts to Constantine. “Obvertag came over to us at breakfast today, and that gives us the Marine Brigade. But if we delay too long, his fears could get the better of him.”

  “We won’t shift our time, then,” Constantine says. “Not yet. Any further plasm work,” he turns to the bespectacled man, “can be done from here. It will be costly, but...” he shrugs, “unavoidable at this point.”

  The man nods smoothly. “Very well,” he says.

  Sorya and Constantine then suggest various schemes for continuing the work from the factory, and Aiah reluctantly shoots each one down.

  “A lot of things happen when the Authority’s not looking,” Aiah says finally. “There are a million holes in the net. But once something attracts their attention, they — we — don’t stop.” She sighs. “We’re very thorough that way.”

  Sorya stabs her cigaret into an ashtray. “So what can we do? Call the whole thing off?”