Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  And it’s cold. Aiah realizes her teeth are chattering. She wonders why her breath doesn’t bloom out in front of her, frozen into mist.

  “Metropolitan,” the thing says. “Why do you seek me again?”

  “I wish you to serve me,” Constantine says. “And in exchange, I will give you what you desire.”

  “Four each month,” the thing says. “And for five years.” Its voice is resonant, seems to vibrate deep in Aiah’s belly.

  Constantine lifts his head. “Two. And for two years.”

  Aiah huddles in her jacket, nerves crawling with fear, flesh crawling with cold. It feels as if her bones have turned to ice.

  “Two?” the thing says. “And what is it you wish me to do for this ... token?”

  Aiah can hear the steel in Constantine’s voice. “I wish to put the Metropolis of Caraqui in my pocket,” he says.

  “You wish me to kill?”

  “Certain people. Yes.”

  “Bad people?” The question sounds like a taunt. Aiah can sense the creature’s mirth.

  “I believe so.”

  “Three.” There is hunger in the thing’s voice.

  “Two.” Firmly.

  “I could kill you,” the thing offers.

  Even Constantine’s teeth are chattering now. But he takes a step toward the thing, gestures with one fist.

  “That would not get you what you want,” he says.

  There is a moment of silence. Silver and black run through the thing’s faintly humanoid outline.

  “Two,” it concedes. The voice is silky. “And when does the killing start?”

  “In a few days. I will send you a message by our accustomed route.”

  Aiah gives a warning cry as the creature flows toward Constantine, spreading wide its arms, or whatever it uses for arms, but it’s not an attack, it’s a kind of submission, the thing bowing down before Constantine, huddling on the concrete floor.

  “I will do as you ask,” it says.

  Constantine holds out a hand over the bowed form. “Do this thing for me,” he says, “and I will give you release, if you want it.”

  “Perhaps,” it says, and then, “Not yet.”

  “As you wish.”

  And then it flows away, vanishing through the solid wall of the tunnel, and Aiah cries out in relief.

  For a long moment, the only sound in the tunnel is the trickling of water. The cold fades from Aiah’s bones, and suddenly she realizes she’s wet, both from the sweat that covers her skin and from the fact that she’s sitting in the rivulet at the bottom of the tunnel. Her knees had folded and she’d slid down the concrete tunnel wall and she hadn’t even noticed.

  Constantine gives a relieved sigh, then turns, sees her on the floor, and smiles. “Gone now,” he says, and offers her a hand.

  Aiah isn’t certain whether her legs will yet support her, but she takes the hand anyway, allows herself to be set on her feet. She’s relieved to find them capable of bearing her weight.

  The air in the tunnel is very hot. Sweat pours down her face, but her body still shudders with cold.

  “Why am I sweating and shivering at the same time?” she asks.

  “It’s a cold thing, isn’t it?” Constantine’s tone is light, but Aiah can tell it’s an effort. “The effect is purely mental, though ... your body continued to respond to the heat and humidity here, even though your mind was convinced it was cold.”

  He takes her arm and begins to guide her to the exit. Their boots splash through water. A wave of adrenaline shivers through her body. She looks up at him, clutches at his arm.

  “What was it?”

  “Its kind have different names. Creature of light. Ice man. Hanged man.” He licks his lips. “The Damned. That’s the nearest description, I think.”

  “A h-hanged man?” Astonishment trips up Aiah’s tongue. Hanged men are a feature of children’s stories and bad fright chromoplays, monsters that leap out of closets and bring down their victims in a spray of blood. “They’re real?”

  “Oh yes. But quite rare.”

  “Thank Senko.”

  They reach the door, and Constantine pulls it open. Aiah staggers out into the cool air of a pump room. She wipes sweat from her face with a handkerchief and straightens her skirt. A clammy spot, where she’d sat in the water, clings to her thighs.

  Constantine walks past, opens the door into the garage. Aiah follows him out. “You knew this one,” she says. “How?”

  “There are people who worship hanged men, or make bargains with them. For a time —” He takes a breath, lets it out. “For a time, I belonged to such a cult. It was a period in which I had lost all faith in humanity, and in which I was seeking . . . extremes. But during that time I gained knowledge of hanged men, and what they are and desire.”

  “What is it—” Aiah’s mind stumbles on the question, and she has to will it to continue. “What is it that they want?”

  “To be what they once were.” They approach the limousine, and Constantine opens the door for her. She seats herself, and Constantine sits across from her. He opens the bar and pours brandy into a pair of crystal glasses.

  “Have a stiff one,” he says, and offers a glass. “It’ll do you good.”

  Aiah bolts the brandy and welcomes the fiery reality that burns its way down her throat. Constantine sips at his drink with more delicacy. Martinus starts the car, heads toward the ramp leading to the street.

  “He was once a man, that creature,” Constantine says. “You knows about plasm’s mutagenic effects, how it can warp things, can create monsters out of ordinary animals.”

  Aiah remembers the thing in the pneuma station, the ripple of silver belly scales that, in memory, now glow with the peculiar liquid sheen of the patterns that ran through the hanged man, and suddenly the brandy wants to come up. She turns away, shuddering, acid burning her throat. She forces the brandy back down.

  Constantine, gazing into his glass, seems not to notice. The car spirals up the long concrete ramp.

  “It can happen with people, but more rarely,” he continues. “Scholars, sometimes, or philosophers, those who live in plasm all the time, who practically bathe in it, and never notice when they slip away from matter and become a prisoner of the plasm itself. A few very powerful people, tyrants or captains of industry, people who can afford all the plasm they can consume, have been brought down that way. Some politicians, leaders, but not as often. The day-to-day realities of politics, of decision-making, provide an anchor on the world’s reality.

  “And then . . .” Constantine’s deep voice turns dreamy. “And then, when they have become plasm only, their material substance gone or used up, they begin to yearn for what they once were. But they can’t manage it — they can’t work with matter any more, their very touch is hostile to life. They can kill, easily and without thought, but they can’t create, can’t touch, and life itself, the life of the warm body, becomes a dream, a yearning, an ever-increasing desire they can’t fulfill.”

  An icy hand touches the back of Aiah’s neck. “So what is it they want?” she says for the second time. The car arrives at ground level, Shieldlight beckoning just ahead, promising a world of normality, safety, the company of human beings.

  Constantine looks at Aiah, his eyes hard, “It wants life. To be back among living things, to know the touch of the wind, the taste of wine, the joys of the flesh. It can’t accomplish this by itself, because it’s no longer a thing of matter, and cannot work with matter but to destroy. But with the help of a capable mage — my help in this case — it can take a body, occupy it. Use it for a time.”

  The brandy tries to rise past Aiah’s throat again, and she fights it back down. “And what happens to the person occupied by this thing?”

  Constantine’s voice is toneless. “The body is used up; the hanged man is fatal to life in the long run. In a matter of days the body becomes a husk. And as for the victim’s soul, I suppose it goes wherever it is that souls go.”

 
; Sadness swims through Aiah. She leans back, rests her nape against plush fabric. “And these victims?” she asks. “Who will they be?”

  Constantine sighs. “Criminals, I suppose. Perhaps some of Caraqui’s utterly deserving political class. It is a sad fact of political life that once you concede the notion that certain people deserve death, it isn’t hard to find them.”

  “And this cult you belonged to? What did it offer this hanged man of yours?”

  “My cousin Heromë was the priest. He was also in charge of our political prisons. The hanged man did not lack for souls to eat.”

  Aiah shudders. Constantine’s toneless, objective voice goes on. “Years later, at my instigation, the hanged man destroyed Heromë and his whole circle. He did not like them, you see, or the things they required of him . . . he is a distinguished personage, even among his kind. Once he was Taikoen, Taikoen the Great, the man who saved Atavir from the Slaver Mages.”

  Aiah glances at Constantine in astonishment. Taikoen is one of the great heroes in all history.

  “Cults all over the world worship him.” A cold little smile plays about Constantine’s lips. “Would they still if they knew what he had become? The man I most admired in the last five hundred years, and when I met him he was the all-powerful slave of Heromë, a grubby little prison warden. After Taikoen’s retirement he lost himself in plasm and now cannot live without it. You thought he came out of the wall? No, he was within the cable. That is where he lives now — he cannot survive for long outside a plasm well.”

  Aiah runs fingers through her hair. Sorrow wells through her body. “I don’t know what to think,” she says.

  Constantine leans forward, takes her hand between his own. He looks at her for a long moment, and Aiah sees pain and longing in his eyes. “It’s the worst thing I have ever done,” he says, “or shall do. And for some reason it comforts me that you know of it.”

  There is a long silence. Aiah’s hand is warm between his palms, “I have no right to ask you, I suppose,” he says. “But will you forgive me?

  Aiah licks her lips, withdraws her hand. “Will you take me to Old Shorings?” she asks.

  Surprise glows in his eyes. “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  He turns to Martinus and gives the order. She holds out her glass. “More brandy, please,” she says. “A piece of paper, and a pencil.”

  It’s a long ride, and neither Constantine nor Aiah finds much to say. When they reach the neighborhood, Aiah guides Martinus until she finds the place she has in mind, the gray stone temple on its tiny lot. Aiah props Constantine’s notepad on her knee and writes on the thin leaf of plastic:

  Let my friend have Caraqui.

  She tears away the paper, takes the brandy bottle and leaves the car. Street hustlers peer alertly from doorways, but when Martinus gets out of the car to stand guard they swiftly lose interest. Aiah walks across the empty street, walks up the steps of the temple, looks up at the carvings, the plants and serpents and creatures of myth. Aiah kneels on the cold stones, feels grains of rice against her knees.

  Little leaves of paper flutter in the cracks of the huge door. Faded flowers and a few small coins lie scattered on the stoop. Aiah unstops the brandy bottle and pours it across the threshold as an offering. Then she leans forward against the huge iron door, feeling rust against her forehead, and folds the paper very small and inserts it in the crack between the two metal doors.

  “Whoever is there,” she says, “please forgive my friend, and give him what he wants.”

  She lets more brandy trickle from the bottle and repeats her prayer many times. Her knees grow wet with brandy. When the bottle is empty, she leaves it on the stoop and walks unsteadily back to the car, sits next to Constantine, and lets him take her in his arms.

  “I would like to go home now,” she says, and as the big car carries her away to Loeno she falls asleep on his shoulder.

  CHAPTER 17

  The scent of bowel hovers in Aiah’s nostrils as Telia changes Jayme’s diapers. “I can’t understand why you want to leave,” Telia complains. “Rohder’s a spent force in the Authority. He can’t get you anything.”

  Aiah wraps the cord around her headset and places it on the hook for Mokel, who has this desk on service shift this week.

  “Good for a change,” she says. “Maybe I’ll pick up some pointers.”

  “Rohder got his whole department flushed,” Telia says. “How many pointers can he give?”

  “Bye,” Aiah says.

  “I’m going to be lonely!” Telia wails, and Aiah heads for the 106th floor.

  Her nerves spark fire as the elevator rises. Rohder will be her passu, and through him, the Authority. Jaspeer’s most powerful force will be doing her bidding.

  On arrival she finds Rohder seated in his big padded chair, one hand dropped casually on a copper t-grip, the other holding a cigaret to his lips. When Aiah enters, the cigaret points Shieldward in a gesture that tells her to wait.

  Aiah waits for a few moments, then a few moments longer. The imperious Angels of Power gaze at her sidelong from their niches on the corner. She walks to one of the huge windows and looks out at the great city, the steep gray grid topped by water towers, roof gardens, cisterns and animal pens. A silver airship two blocks long drifts along the horizon, its belly bright with advertisements.

  Rohder lights a new cigaret, smokes it, lights another. Aiah wanders away from the window, walks alongside a long shelf built against the back wall. Identical sets of thick volumes are laid along it, books bound in red plastic with gold lettering along the spines. Proceedings of the Research Division of the Jaspeeri Plasm Authority, it says. Fourteen volumes. Aiah picks one at random and leafs through it. Complex mathematical formulae swarm before her eyes.

  “The Intendant found it overly abstruse, I’m afraid,” Rohder says. He’s finished his business and is walking around his huge rayed desk toward her. “But I felt I had to publish the proofs. If you look in the last volume, you’ll see our recommendations.”

  Aiah closes the heavy volume and returns it. “Maybe you should have put the recommendations first,” she says.

  Rohder blinks as if this is a startling new idea. “Perhaps.” He walks up alongside the shelf and runs his hand along the long row of volumes. “It took my department eight years to produce those books,” he says, “and I’ve always had the feeling that no one in the Authority ever read them.”

  The law of the chonah is for the pascol to agree with the passu whenever possible. “That strikes me as fairly typical of the Authority,” Aiah says. “Spend years and a lot of money on an elite commission, then flush its recommendations the second they’re made.”

  Rohder looks bemusedly at the shelf of books. “Would you like a set? I seem to have a few to spare.”

  “I don’t think I’d understand them. But I’d like to borrow the last volume, if I may.”

  “Of course.” His blue eyes gaze blankly at her for a long moment, and then he seems to remember why she’s here. “Terminal,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “You think you can help me?”

  “What I need you to do,” she says, “is call Compilation and Billing and tell them that I need to go through the records for that area for the last five years.” She speaks with care, suspecting that Rohder might not follow through unless she spells it out. “That means I need access to the belts, and someone to handle the belts for me, and a reader-computer. You need to insist that I be given access immediately, because otherwise they’ll just put me off forever.”

  Rohder nods at each point, as if ticking them off mentally. “Very well. I’ll call Niden first, then have him call his underlings and give the orders.”

  He heads back to his desk. Aiah follows. “How is your aerial search going?” she says.

  “I’ve found some small-scale use that’s probably illegitimate, but nothing big enough to cause the Bursary Street flamer.”

  “Let’s hope I can find something
interesting for you.”

  “Mmm.” Rohder’s look is already abstracted as he reaches for his headset.

  *

  All the data are kept in the nearest Authority station at Rocketman, a familiar trackline journey away. The station manager, at Niden’s bidding, gives her an alcove with an old Filbaq computer-reader in a room otherwise filled with people busy entering data. Aiah’s chosen assistant, Damusz, doesn’t seem happy to have drawn extra duty. Digging the old belt out of storage has striped his chest and thighs with grime. He silently and sullenly takes the belt from its case, loads the etching belt’s spool on the reader, then stretches the belt onto the secondary spool and tightens the continuous loop. “Thank you,” Aiah says, as nicely as she can, and adjusts the play head over the belt.

  The Filbaq is an old model and has probably been sitting unused in this alcove for years. It’s still functional, fortunately, and ozone scents the air as its whining electric motor soon brings the belt up to speed. Dancing dust falls from the reader’s ornamental brass fins. The screen hasn’t been cleaned in ages, and Aiah swabs it with her wrist lace to no effect. She turns to ask Damusz to bring her a spray bottle of glass cleaner, but he’s already disappeared.

  Squinting through the smeared lens, Aiah presses worn steel keys, finds Kremag and Associates in the directory, and calls up the data. Disappointingly, it’s all perfectly reasonable: the firm is twelve years old, is alleged to offer “ business consulting”, and hasn’t used an iota of plasm in all that time. Business consultants wouldn’t, would they? They just let it flow through the meters.

  She needs to come up with a plausible reason why she hands Kremag to Rohder. None seems to be available from the data.

  The most likely tampering would come with the matter of dates and names. She asks the reader to search the entire belt for other businesses at that address, a job that will probably take some time. While the read head whines over the long strands of data, Aiah provides herself with some coffee in a cardboard cup and finds a spray bottle of glass cleaner. She cleans the screen and drinks half the coffee by the time the reader comes up with the information she needs: no less than three other businesses occupied Kremag’s offices during the years Kremag has supposedly been there. And their plasm use is identical to Kremag’s, down to the last millimehr — it seems that whoever retroactively inserted Kremag and Associates onto this belt simply hijacked the earlier firms’ data.