Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Impossible,” Constantine murmurs.

  “Find a plasm thief,” Aiah says. “A big one, somewhere in that neighborhood. And then we wrap him in a big ribbon and hand him to the Authority with our compliments.”

  Aiah is gratified to find that once again she has their full attention.

  “Who?” Constantine asks.

  “Someone in the Operation,” Aiah says. “Street captain or higher. Colonel, or a general if we can find him. Or Jaspeeri Nation. Or a high-class witch or maybe a priest with a little business selling the goods on the side. Who knows?” She shrugs. “There has to be someone.”

  There is a short, tense silence in which the others look at each other. Then Constantine booms out a deep laugh. “Very good!” he says. “Another challenge!”

  Disdain tugs at Sorya’s lip. “So now we must put everything aside and go do

  the Authority’s job for them?”

  “Not everything,” Constantine says. “We must form a task group around Miss Aiah, and the rest of us will proceed normally.”

  “I’ll try to get the Authority to assign me to the investigation,” Aiah says. “And then I can steer it the way it needs to go.”

  “Once we find out where that is,” Sorya says.

  There is a moment of silence. “How do we find the target?” Geymard says, a proper military question.

  “You have to know what to look for,” Aiah says. ’I grew up in a similar neighborhood, let me think for a moment.”

  She consults her memories while the half-circle of intent faces gazes at her. She tries to call to her mind images of Terminal, the throb of music, the scent of food heavy with comino, the businesses crowded under the scaffolding, the little old man who sold her the cheap metal Trigram from off his homemade table. “What’s today?” she asks finally. “Tuesday? Wednesday is collection day in my old neighborhood, I wonder if that holds true for Terminal.”

  “What do you mean, collection day?” It’s the man in spectacles who asks the question.

  “The day when all the illegal businesses make their payoffs,” Aiah says. “Those little businesses under the scaffolding, for example. How many of them do you think have real permits, or pay real taxes? And even if they did, would the police protect them? No — they pay the bagmen, who bring the cash to the street captains, and the street captains take care of the cops and then pass the rest up to the colonels and generals. Follow the money, we find where the power is.”

  “How do we know it’s even happening on Wednesday?” Sorya demands.

  Aiah shrugs. “If anyone has a better idea ... ?”

  Silence. Sorya reaches into her gold case for another cigaret.

  “There are other things to look for,” Aiah says. “Ordinary office buildings that seem to have too much security — exterior cameras and such. Doormen who look as if they might really be someone’s bodyguard. The same with apartment buildings, but with some of the buildings in Terminal, you’d go crazy looking for the right apartment, some of them must have a thousand units. And sometimes the Operation advertises. Look in the directory under ‘social clubs’, and though that’s probably not where they keep the plasm, that’s where you’ll find the people who use it. Can you tell who’s been using plasm recently just by looking?”

  “Aerial anima search,” Constantine says. “From here.” He turns to Sorya. “Call our mages, bring them here.”

  “That violates security procedure, Metropolitan,” Martinus says. “It may not be wise to connect some of these people with us directly.”

  Constantine nods. “Very well,” he says. “Rent three plasm-user suites in the Landmark Hotel. Use the BMG credit line. I will be there to tell our people what to look for.”

  “I would like to get on the ground in Terminal,” Aiah says. “Can you get me a car and driver?”

  “Yes.” Constantine’s intent gaze locks briefly with hers. “Report to me afterwards at the Landmark.”

  “I believe Miss Aiah knows the way,” Sorya says, her voice silky. Fear pours like an icy waterfall down Aiah’s spine.

  Constantine’s face is expressionless. “Let’s get moving,” he says.

  *

  “Mr. Rohder? This is Aiah.”

  She’s calling from a crowded restaurant halfway between Mage Towers and Terminal. Clatter and conversation aren’t quite sealed off by the torn old padding on the heavy ceramic earphones, and she has to shout into a speaker built into the wall.

  “Ah? Yes?”

  Aiah feels her heart thrashing against her ribcage. She didn’t know whether Rohder would still be in his office at this hour, but then, she’d reasoned, where else did he have to go?

  Nowhere, apparently.

  “I was thinking about Terminal,” she says.

  “Yes. I’ve been looking there.”

  Aiah bites her lip to stop herself from demanding to know if Rohder’s discovered anything.

  “I think I could help, sir,” she says, “It occurs to me that I could go through the records, see if there’s any suspicious activity on the meters.”

  “Ah. Yes?” He ponders this for a long moment. “That will involve many long hours. How will you know where to look?”

  “Meters with recent updates. Businesses that have opened in the last few years but which are selling a lot of plasm to the Authority. And I could go out to Terminal and scout around on the ground, then backtrack through the address in the records.”

  “Ah.” Aiah hears Rohder inhaling a cigaret. “Yes,” he says. “Well. That is most diligent. But I wonder.” And there is a long pause.

  “Yes?” Aiah reminds finally. “What is it that you wonder?”

  “Why are you so interested in this task?”

  “Because my regular job is the most boring thing imaginable,” Aiah says. “And this would be a change.”

  Rohder sighs heavily. Aiah pictures the cigaret smoke billowing from his lungs.

  “I will see if I can get you a temporary transfer,” Rohder says.

  “Thank you.”

  Another passu, she thinks. She seems to be acquiring quite a string of them.

  CHAPTER 16

  Khoriak takes Aiah around Terminal in his two-seater Gedan. Suddenly ravenous, she’s taken the basket of fruit from the Elton limo and sits with it in her lap: juice trickles down her wrist as she peers through smoked windows at people and buildings. But when she reports to Constantine after shift change she has little to tell him; they had followed a few obvious Operation types from one address to another, and otherwise had found a few businesses that, oddly, were protected by well-disguised bronze collection webs, a fact that probably meant nothing at all because it was impossible to determine how old the collection webs were, and whether whatever they were guarding had left the vicinity a hundred years ago.

  “We have detected someone sniffing about the neighborhood,” Constantine says. He paces as he speaks, and his boot-heels have already trodden an anxious path in the plush carpet. Behind him mages are locked to their t-grips, eyes closed as they navigate over a geomaturgical landscape; security people stand like potted palms in their corners.

  “Whoever he is,” Constantine mutters, “he’s good. Very methodical, seems to miss nothing. We daren’t use the factory.”

  “Tomorrow,” Aiah says. Weariness seems to fall on her like a mist of rain. “Collection day. We may find something.”

  Constantine stops in the middle of his pacing and gives her another of his intent looks. “Come,” he says, and takes her arm. “A dose of the goods will set you up.”

  The bedroom is familiar, with its plump pillows and blue satin spread, and proves to have cables and copper t-grips lying ready in desk drawers. Aiah imagines she can detect the faint scent of blood-oranges. She takes the Trigram from around her neck and directs it through her body, burning away fatigue toxins, filling every cell with blazing power. She looks up at Constantine, sees his dark eyes intent on her, absorbing her. She feels a resonance, her power and his, li
ke buildings set a precise half-radius apart, building a greater charge of plasm than either would on its own.

  Her tissues are flushed with plasm and arousal. Aiah’s lips involuntarily draw back in a fierce grin and she laughs. She puts down the t-grip and launches herself at Constantine, suddenly so full of power that she is possessed by the perfect illusion that she can drag his big body toward the bed and fling him into it. The sex that follows is fierce and fearless and leaves the room strewn with discarded clothing.

  “You are learning to enjoy your power: good,” he says. He looks at her with lazy approval, eyes half-slitted like those of a cat.

  Aiah is feeling a bit feline herself. She draws her claws lightly through the wiry hair on his chest. “I don’t know if I can give this up,” she says.

  Constantine laughs, a low, indolent rumble. “Well, sister,” he says, “you could decide not to.”

  She considers this. “What is there in Caraqui for me? Nothing.”

  “There may be the New City,” he says seriously. “And I hope that in your measure of value I, myself, am rated somewhere above this nothing.”

  “You have made me no promises,” Aiah reminds, “except that you might replace my dull government job with another dull government job, and that perhaps in the near future I may hate you. And Sorya knows about our meeting here.”

  He frowns. “Don’t worry for your safety, if that’s what concerns you,” he says, “If you are harmed through Sorya’s actions, she will suffer for it. And she knows that.”

  Aiah looks into his gold-flecked brown eyes. “Have you told her that?”

  Constantine gives a minute shake of his head. “No need — she knows who is under my protection and who is not.”

  “She could rat me to the Authority, and no one would know.”

  “I would know. And Sorya knows I would know.” His lip gives a little curl, “I know things about her that could send her to the Hell her Torgenil family so fervently believes in. I would use them if she compelled me.”

  A chill wafts up Aiah’s spine, “If you know these things about her, isn’t she dangerous to you?”

  Constantine’s eyelids half-slit his eyes again, and again Aiah is reminded of a cat, a cat contemplating its prey — cruel and predatory and hard, merciless in its calculation, in its perfect objective need. “Without me,” he says, “she would revert to the life in which I found her — and that life, believe me, was Hell, little though she knew it. No — she needs me more than I need her, and understands that perfectly well.”

  Again Aiah feels a chill. She reaches for the sheets, crumpled at the foot of the bed, and covers herself. She rests her head on Constantine’s shoulder and throws an arm across his barrel chest. The silver tip of his braid is cool against her forehead.

  “It seems to me there are very many people who need you,” she says.

  “And I’m not fair to any of them.” His hand strokes her hair. He sighs, Aiah’s head lifting, then dropping, with the breath. “Well, in another few days, things will be decided — whether I will continue this pointless, rootless life, purveying my fading theories of government and geomancy to an indifferent world, or make use of the gift you, my precious one, have given me. It may be that I will yet make the foundations of heaven tremble, and if so I will have you to thank.” He kisses her forehead gravely.

  “Thank you,” she says, and hugs herself to him. “Though I scarcely think I’ve given you the means to trouble the foundations of heaven.”

  Again comes that lazy, rolling laugh. “You have given me power, which used with care is a means to more power. And the purpose of power, to my way of thought, is to make us free. And what oppresses us more than ... ?” His words fade away, but the hand, stroking her hair, pauses before her eyes, index finger pointed to the ceiling, and beyond.

  Her eyes follow the pointing finger, her thoughts flying up beyond the ceiling, climbing higher, past the realm of falcons and airships, aeroplanes and rockets, high aloft to the place where the air is so thin it might as well not be there, and then, beyond even that.

  “The Shield,” she murmurs, and then jolts upright, staring at him. “The Shield! You want to attack the Shield!”

  “The purpose of the New City is to bring liberty,” Constantine says. “And what constrains us more than the Shield?”

  “But how can you do it? Nothing can survive the Shield!”

  “Matter is annihilated on contact with the Shield, or so we presume from the subsequent burst of radiation,” Constantine says. “And plasm is destroyed as well, or so it appears. Electromagnetic energy is absorbed and probably retransmitted. But gravity gets through, so the Shield is not perfect in its hostility to nature. And where there is an imperfection, a weakness can be found.”

  Aiah finds herself uneasy at this discussion — probably half the priests on the planet would find it plain blasphemy — and she finds herself casting restless sidelong glances just in case spirits, gods or disapproving Malakas are hovering about listening.

  “I thought everything had been tried,” she says.

  “No records survive from Senko’s time. We don’t even know how long ago that was — thousands of years, anyway. Every so often someone takes a crack at the Shield in a kind of half-hearted, disorganized way, but the last time was eight hundred years ago, and a few years ago I bought the records in a surplus sale in an old warehouse and read them, and they only confirm what everyone already knows.”

  “So what can you do?”

  “A grand plasm assault, perhaps? Senko tried it, but by the available accounts plasm science was uncertain then, and he didn’t have any great amount of the stuff to work with. If we can unify more than one metropolis in this matter, take the plasm from many states and direct it against the Shield, we might be able to somehow overload its mechanisms.”

  “Why not utilize all the plasm in the world?” Aiah laughs.

  Constantine smiles. “Well, why not? But of course the New City must first gain control of the world, which perhaps is a greater challenge than dealing with the Shield itself, is it not?”

  Aiah is staggered by Constantine’s treating her facetious suggestion with any degree of seriousness at all. “Well,” she says, “let’s hope the Ascended Ones aren’t listening.”

  “If they are,” smiling, “I’m sure they’re laughing.”

  Aiah smiles uneasily and restrains the impulse to glance over her shoulder.

  “We might also approach the Shield through gravity,” Constantine continues, “the nature of which we know little, though we know its effects well enough. Perhaps, through plasm, we might be able to amplify gravity, and direct it outward, use it as a method for exploring the Shield or as a weapon directed against its mechanisms.”

  “Can plasm interact with gravity at all?” Aiah asks.

  “Thus far,” Constantine concedes, “no. We can use plasm to give impetus to matter— we can shoot our aerocars into the sky— but in that case the plasm is transformed to kinetic energy, and is no longer plasm.

  “But alter gravity itself? Who has tried? And besides — who knows what the Malakas were thinking of when they built the Shield? Perhaps it is not intended as an eternal barrier, but as an intelligence test.” He looks at her, his voice rolling on like a deep, inexorable river.

  “Why hasn’t the Shield been breached? One may as well ask why there is still poverty and hunger, why war is permitted, why there is such gross inequality in wealth and opportunity. It is because we, as a political species, permit all these to occur. Perhaps we permit the Shield as well. If we can put aside our foolishness, our shortsightedness and greed, we may discover the realm of the Ascended is in our grasp, and has been all along.”

  Aiah feels her head spin with the wine of Constantine’s words. The Shield has been there, immovable, irreconcilable, for thousands of years; it is a fact, as assuredly a fact as the bedrock beneath the hotel’s foundations. And Constantine would abolish it. Might as well, she thinks mirthfully, abolish
hunger and war, abolish the planet itself.

  Constantine sits up in bed and leans toward her, his voice confiding. “I would reckon it a favor if you would not confide to anyone this particular ambition of mine,” he says. “I would prefer not to be laughed out of all respect, or condemned as a heretic by some fanatic. I’m treated with enough skepticism as it is.”

  Aiah puts her arms around his neck and kisses him. “Who would I tell?”

  He shrugs. “Some inquiring Wire reporter, I suppose.”

  “Maybe when I’m an old granny,” Aiah says. “The statute of limitations on plasm theft won’t expire till then.”

  The room takes a sudden lurch, as if a giant had just kicked the hotel’s cornerstone. Something in the bathroom falls off a shelf with a crash. Aiah and Constantine scramble erect as the hotel lurches a second time. Aiah’s feet nearly shoot out from under her. And then there are a diminishing series of smaller shocks as the building rocks back and forth on its massive floating foundation, a swaying that continues long after the actual earthquake is over.

  Constantine is jumping into his clothes before the last shock fades. Aiah stands silent and still, gulping air in reaction to a sudden wave of inner-ear nausea.

  “I must check the factory,” Constantine says. “Have someone take you home—”

  “I have to go to the Authority,” Aiah says. “I’m Emergency Response, remember?”

  He nods. “Tell Khoriak.” And then is out the door into the busy front room, thrusting one arm through a sleeve of his shirt.

  *

  It is a middle-sized quake, and in Jaspeer causes only 16,000 casualties, 1,100 of which are fatal, mostly from scaffolding that peels away from buildings in poor neighborhoods and rains down on the off-shift traffic below. Some bridges and tunnels collapse. A food vat ruptures in the basement of a processing plant and drowns twelve workers in a deluge of krill. A few older buildings fall while a rather larger number go up in flames. Among the fallen buildings is a brand-new and very fashionable apartment that will soon be the subject of an investigation to find out which inspectors were paid off and when.