Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  Aiah shrugs. “Three men. Maybe they were Jaspeeri Nation, maybe just sympathizers. I—” She swallows, hard, against the fist that’s suddenly closing about her throat. “They beat me. I struck back — with plasm. Two are probably in the hospital. I don’t know about the third.”

  Constantine’s hand stretches a few inches, takes her hand, “I saw you had been injured,” he says. “I thought perhaps this lover of yours —”

  “No. He’s a gentle man.”

  His big hand closes around hers as if it were that of a child. His brows contract. “You’ve risked much, daughter,” he says. “This must mean this business is important to you.”

  “It is.”

  “Very little, these days, is of such importance to me,” he says. His look turns a little challenging. “What does this matter so much to you?”

  Aiah takes a breath. Constantine’s hand is very warm. “It’s a contracting economy, and I’m a foreigner — treated as foreign, anyway, even though I was born here, and so were my parents. To most of the people here — certainly to those men who attacked me — I’m disposable. My own people were destroyed as a nation generations ago. Anything resembling normal family life was devastated by twenty years of civil war, and my people haven’t recovered.”

  There is a haunted look in Constantine’s eyes. His fingers grip Aiah’s. “My own people,” he says, “the Cheloki — have I done that to them?”

  “I,” she hesitates and wonders why she feels an impulse to comfort him. “I can’t say. The Barkazils have unusual ideas about themselves that may make their situation unique.”

  Constantine senses the weak comfort in Aiah’s words. He drops her hand, stands, steps to the rail. He gazes out over the city, eyes moving restlessly; and his voice rumbles so low in his chest that Aiah strains to make out the words.

  “There was so much more at stake than lives and misery,” he says. “A metropolis misgoverned — how absurdly common is that? Why should it be important to me? Why should I lift a hand?” He turns to her. “It was only a first step,” he says. “I wasn’t aiming at the mere salvaging of a metropolis, but of the entirety of our miserable world. Only,” he gives a mocking smile, “I miscalculated that very first step. And so more misery was brought into the world, and war and conflagration, and so Cheloki died, smothered in its own rubble. And though my training is in detachment, in a body of doctrine that tells me to seek only knowledge, to know only my mind and the reality of plasm and not the world — still,” he grips the rail again, fingers sawing against iron, “still I care. I bleed for my people, and I want to find a place for them.”

  He spins abruptly with the surprising swiftness she had learned was a part of him, moves toward her with a purposeful intent that makes her inwardly quail as he suddenly looms over her, remorseless and gigantic as one of Mage Towers suddenly free of its foundations. She can scent his hair oil, sense his body heat.

  “Will you help me do that?” he demands.

  She puts a hand up, a pointless effort to shield herself from the power of his presence, “I don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I want you to help me use this gift of yours. Not just ask for money and run away, but help me use the power. You said you admired the New City — help me bring it out of the ashes.”

  She looks at the silver-tipped braid that hangs over Constantine’s shoulder, the complicated device of the School of Radritha, a figure of a hovering bird surrounded by a complex, interwoven plasm focus. She looks at it, tries to focus her own thoughts.

  “I don’t know what you want,” she says. He barks a sudden gusty laugh, then steps back.

  “Nor do I,” he says. “Not precisely. There have been . . . projects . . . suggested to me. I have said neither yes nor no.” He begins pacing again. “I did not know whether I was truly interested. Or perhaps I am merely afraid.”

  “I can’t give you courage, Metropolitan,” Aiah says.

  He seems amused by this. “Indeed not. But you can give me the benefit of your advice.” He sits again, containing for the moment his powerful presence in a chair. “I need to know how to make use of this discovery of yours. How best to find it, tap it, deliver it.”

  Surprise stirs along Aiah’s nerves. “You are the mage, Metropolitan,” she says. “Not I.”

  “My training is in the higher use of plasm, not in the practical arts,” he said. “In the past I have had competent engineers to serve me, but now . . .” He shrugs, “I will need help. You understand the local systems, the way Jaspeer is wired together below the ground, and none of my people do.”

  “I’m an outsider myself,” Aiah reminds.

  “That perspective will also be useful.” He leans toward her. “I hope to learn from you,” he says, “but I hope to teach as well. During our association, you will have access to the plasm at Terminal and, if you like, Sorya and I will teach you methods of using it.”

  Aiah’s mind staggers beneath the weight of this offer.

  “Are you serious?” she asks, the best she can manage after long moments of silence.

  “Of course,” simply. “You obviously possess intelligence and talent — I will teach you what you can absorb, and without all the mystic drivel the great sages of the universities would think necessary.”

  Aiah’s thoughts swirl alarmingly. “Money,” she says, returning to fundamentals. “I still want money.”

  There is a glow of amusement in Constantine’s eyes. “Money,” he says, “very well. Let us talk then about money. Elbows on the table —” he plants his arms on either side of his plate, and with a smile shows her his empty hands, “— and nothing up my sleeve.”

  *

  It’s the sort of thing a Barkazil learns from the cradle, the cut and thrust of fine-honed argument, the bluff, the hedge, the last-minute condition reluctantly recalled to mind. It’s hard to say who’s the passu, who’s the pascol, since Constantine is good at this as well, enjoys the bargaining simply for its own sake, and has a hundred tricks of rhetoric to draw on. But in the end, since he’s always had money available, Constantine doesn’t really care about it, it doesn’t have a reality for him, whereas Aiah cares deeply about the cash, and knows exactly what every half-clink is worth, and that makes a big difference.

  Aiah finishes the bargaining with two hundred thousand dalders, more than she ever thought she’d get — the original demand of a million was pure outrageous bluff. Still, she has to remind herself that she doesn’t have it yet. Raising that much cash discreetly, Constantine reminds her, is a time-consuming business; and he also wants to give her some advice about hiding the money, so that the tax police won’t descend on them all.

  “Tomorrow,” Constantine says, “we will begin our lessons.” He calls for his car to drive Aiah home. And, before they leave the terrace, Constantine smiles as he puts fruit in a basket, and wordlessly hands it to her before she leaves.

  She hates to think he already knows her this well.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Elton limousine is parked at the northwest corner of the Authority building, and Martinus’s slablike figure stands by it. Aiah feels a prickle between her shoulder-blades as she steps toward the car and wonders if any of her co-workers are watching, but she finds herself straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin as she walks, swinging her briefcase at the end of her arm, and when Martinus opens the door for her she can almost hear Constantine’s amused voice in her ear: Let ’em look.

  If he doesn’t care about subtlety, why the hell should she?

  A basket of fruit, cheeses and a chilled bottle of wine wait in the back. Aiah smiles. She could really get used to this.

  Martinus climbs into the driver’s seat, and the door closes with that too-solid chunk. “Mr. Martinus,” she asks, “where are we going?”

  “To the Metropolitan’s apartment, miss,” he says. The contra-rotating flywheels whirr, and the Elton makes a quiet, efficient acceleration. Aiah relaxes gratefully into the plush seat. “Did you have
a pleasant Sunday?” she asks.

  In the rearview mirror Aiah can see Martinus’s eyes regarding her from within armor-plated sockets. “I didn’t have the day off, I’m afraid.”

  “Sorry.” she says. “I hope it was pleasant anyway.”

  Martinus’ look seems to soften a degree, “It was a more active day than most,” he concedes.

  Indeed, she thinks, and files the datum away.

  She notices alligator clips falling out of her jacket pocket, and tucks them back in. She’d taken them off the phone lines on quarterbreak.

  The end-of-shift traffic is thick, and Aiah eats a bright pink plum, a handful of grapes, and drinks a half glass of wine — it’s dry, so dry it’s almost hard to believe the stuff is liquid. The wine is like the most fabulous air she’s ever tasted, and the contrast brightens the taste of the fruit on her palate, makes the juices seem almost to sizzle on her tongue.

  She could indeed get used to this.

  She has another half glass and hopes it won’t make her stupid.

  Constantine has guests, waiting for the elevator in the mirrored anteroom, who leave as Aiah arrives. One is a hook-nosed man with tufts of gray hair sprouting over his ears, another a younger man in a quiet blue suit and modest lace, and a third some kind of bearded clergyman in a flat round cap of velvet and a gray cassock. He’s wearing ecclesiastical jewelry with symbols and devices, though none that Aiah recognizes. He and his friends have copper skin, dark eyes, wide cheekbones. The strangers smile at Aiah with polite disinterest as she leaves the elevator, then make room for Martinus as he

  looms in her wake.

  She can’t really picture the clergyman and Constantine having much to say to each other.

  The door is open so she enters the parlor, walking past one of the bulky-suited guards she’d met on her first visit. The other guard is standing in a doorway in the parlor, a doorway Aiah hadn’t particularly noticed before. He’s looking away. “They’re gone,” he says, “and the Aiah woman is here with Mr Martinus,” and then he turns toward her and looks a bit startled, he hadn’t realized the door was open. “Sorry, miss,” he says.

  “Close the door,” Martinus says, a cold voice that grates along Aiah’s spine, and the guard vanishes, but not before Aiah suddenly understands why the anteroom is mirrored: it’s two-way glass, so that Constantine’s security can observe anyone leaving the elevator.

  Another little datum, she thinks.

  The guard leads her up the spiral stair to the long room fronting the arboretum. As she comes to the top of the stair Aiah can hear, through the open door, Constantine’s deep voice alternating with Sorya’s.

  “I wouldn’t trust those people for a second,” she says.

  “I don’t trust them at all,” Constantine answers.

  Hearing the voices, the guard hesitates. Sorya’s voice rises in pitch. “Why are you negotiating with them, then?”

  Aiah walks past the vacillating guard and stands within the open door’s frame, waits for them to notice her. Constantine is dressed in soft formal gray and white lace, Sorya in a broad-shouldered red silk jacket over form-fitting trousers splashed with bright color. There’s a buffet set up, fruit displayed in crystal bowls as if they were works of art, gleaming copper chafing dishes, abandoned glasses smudged with fingerprints. Aiah detects the stink of spent tobacco.

  Sorya and Constantine circle each other as they speak. “If this business were only a cocktail party,” Constantine says, “I would have Martinus kick them out, and not gently. But it is not a cocktail party, and they can help us.”

  “I’ve given you reliable people to work with, and you choose this rabble?” Sorya catches sight of Aiah then, and lightning flashes in her green eyes.

  Aiah’s hands tighten on the grip of her briefcase, but she holds Sorya’s gaze.

  “If you deal with them at all,” Sorya adds coldly, “you’re insane.”

  And then she leaves, heels clicking on marble. Her bare arm brushes against Aiah’s sleeve in the doorway, and then her step hesitates, and her voice comes low in Aiah’s ear.

  “Learning something, missy?” she says. “I hope so.”

  Aiah keeps her gaze fastened on Constantine. His face is somber, chin tucked

  in, but there’s a glow of amusement in his eyes.

  “Come in, daughter,” he says, then adds, “your education is commencing, I believe.”

  Aiah lets her breath out and realizes she’s been holding it for some while. She steps into the room, glances at dirty dishes and napkins.

  “My luncheon seems to have run overlong,” Constantine says. He takes off his jacket, throws it over a chair, rolls up his sleeves. “Have some supper, if you like,” he says.

  “I ate in the car.” Her glance drifts across the buffet, sees a centerpiece of extravagant flowers, and displayed before it a thin gunmetal box propped up to exhibit its contents, a necklace of gold and platinum, its central orb aglitter with diamonds. Constantine sees the direction of Aiah’s gaze and lazily prowls to the buffet, picks the necklace up with one finger and holds it out.

  “I gave this to Sorya just now,” he says, “a Forlong piece, and then curiously enough we began to fight. I wonder why.”

  “Your disagreement didn’t seem to be about jewelry.”

  “The words concerned one thing, the passions another.” He holds the necklace toward Aiah, dangling it at the end of a finger, “It seems not to be to Sorya’s taste. You may have it, if you wish.”

  Aiah’s mouth goes dry. A little voice wails in her head, a plaintive whine of greed that wails out numbers, dalder amounts in the tens of thousands, then multiplied because it was crafted by Forlong. She looks at the glittering nest of diamonds, looks at Constantine, sees a little cold smile on his lips, a dangerous light in his eyes, and wonders if this is some kind of test, if he means to discover her character, if there is a correct choice involved. Dare she refuse his gift? And dare she take it, knowing it’s Sorya’s?

  But then, as she looks at him an understanding slowly enfolds her, and Aiah knows she can have it, that at this point Constantine truly does not care what happens to the thing, and for some unknown reason that knowledge chills her, a cold that floods her bones. She licks her lips.

  “Metropolitan,” she says, “I don’t think I’d feel safe with it.”

  He shrugs, looks for a trash receptacle, and throws the necklace in. There is a liquid sound as it strikes uneaten food. Aiah has to suppress a part of her that wants to run screaming to the trash and dig the necklace out.

  “Sit here,” Constantine says, “and we’ll begin.”

  “We’re doing this here? Not at Terminal?”

  “I don’t feel like climbing about in a cave. The plasm from Terminal will pay for any losses I incur.”

  Perhaps, Aiah thinks, she ought to have held out for more money. She puts her briefcase down and sits on the chromium-and-leather sofa, sinks deep into soft calfskin. Constantine takes a copper transfer grip from his desk, then sits next to Aiah and fixes the t-grip into a slot on the couch. Surprise tingles through Aiah as she realizes she’s sitting on a live well.

  And then she looks up at the battery of video displays hanging overhead and realizes she’s in a kind of command center, that the video is for remote plasm manipulation. It had all been discreet enough, or strange enough, that she hadn’t noticed what the room was really for.

  She turns to Constantine, ready to begin, and realizes that all his height is in his legs. Seated, she is the taller of the two.

  An irrelevant datum, but there it is.

  Know your passu. A Barkazil proverb.

  Constantine looks at her. “Sorya tells me that, in the old pneuma station, you used a guideline when you created a plasm screen. To insulate yourself from the source?”

  “Yes,” Aiah says. “Or I used batteries. I didn’t want to end up like the flamer.”

  Constantine nods. “That was wise of you. I’ll act as your insulator, then. I’ll use the
t-grip, and feed you such plasm as you can control. Agreed?”

  Aiah nods. “Should I use my focus?” she asks.

  “If you use one normally, yes.”

  There are people who don’t use one normally? she wonders. But she unbuttons her collar, pushes the lace aside, and fetches out the little metal charm. Constantine’s expression doesn’t change when he looks at the little trinket in her pale palm — no sign of condescension or pity — and Aiah’s heart warms toward him.

  “I should point out,” he says, “that in exchange for this education and use of plasm, I will ask you to do me certain services. And these services will be illegal.”

  “Why start worrying about it now?” The answer is ready in her thoughts, and it amuses him.

  He takes her wrist in one powerful hand. His touch is clinical. Aiah isn’t certain if she likes that or not.

  “You’re skinny,” he says.

  “So my mother tells me.”

  His fingers close about her pulse. The other hand takes the transfer grip, and suddenly Aiah senses the snarling presence of plasm, a vast electric beast suddenly glowing in Constantine’s mild eyes, and hairs lift on the back of her neck.

  “Do whatever it is you do to get yourself ready,” he says, “and we will begin.”

  *

  Aiah feels as if her mind is lit from within. Wherever she turns her thoughts she seems to know things that weren’t apparent before: connections are perceived, facts tumble into place, and knowledge presents itself, neatly displayed, as if on a silver salver. Throughout the lesson she’s aware of Constantine hovering in her mind, guiding her movements, making suggestions, feeding her power. He approves of her choices — approves — and a spirit of fierce liberty possesses her. It’s as if she’s never felt approval before — and perhaps, on consideration, she never has.

  An idea forms, and she wordlessly suggests it to Constantine. Again comes the unaccustomed, glorious sensation of approval, of liberation — and without quite realizing how, she jumps away, through the glass rooftop of the arboretum, along the arcing transmission horns and up. Her mind free of her physical location, as she’d experienced only once before, tentatively, when she reached out to Gil in faraway Gerad.