Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

Aiah shrugs. “I’m sure I can’t stop you.” There’s a tremor behind her left knee that threatens to capsize her at any moment. More for support than anything else, Aiah leans a shoulder against the door jamb, though she tries to turn the movement into a confident gesture.

  She looks up into the creeper’s eyes.

  “What’s this about, exactly?”

  The man looks at his partner, and it’s the partner who speaks, a man in a worn green suit. “Your name is Aiah, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is your place of employment?”

  Aiah smiles. “I work at the Plasm Control Authority headquarters on the Avenue of the Exchange.”

  The cops look at each other again. Apparently they hadn’t known this.

  “What do you do there?” says Green Suit.

  Aiah’s smile broadens. Somewhere in the back of her brain is a nasty little imp who’s enjoying this more than she should.

  “I’m a Grade Six. Right at the moment I’m assigned to Mr. Rohder, the head of the Research Division, engaged in a special project solving major plasm thefts.”

  The creepers seem to sag, the big shoulders crumpling inside the worn suits, and Aiah knows she’s won, at least for the present. She knows just what’s going through their minds: some hopeless bungle, one division of the Authority chasing another, lots of reports to file and probably someone’s ass on the hot seat.

  Aiah’s imp tells her to follow up while she still has the advantage.

  “Does this have to do with the arrests at Kremag and Associates?” she asks.

  Her interrogators give her blank looks. “Where?”

  “An Operation plasm house down on 1193rd Street, near Garakh Station. The Authority took it down late Friday. I provided the information that secured the warrants.”

  “1193rd?” Fat Lids makes an effort to retrieve the situation. “How about 1190th? Were you at the factory that exploded first shift today?”

  Aiah narrows her eyes and opens her arms, inviting them to feast their eyes. “Do I look like I’ve been through an explosion?”

  “Were you there,” patiently, “before the explosion?”

  “Possibly. Late Friday. I went down to look at the Kremag raid, but there was a lot of pepper gas and not much to look at, so I wandered around the neigborhood for awhile and then came home.”

  Aiah considers herself lucky that the creepers are Jaspeeris who probably wouldn’t consider how implausible it is that any Barkazil would wander around Terminal by herself at an odd hour of the sleep shift.

  The creeper starts again. “This factory—”

  “I don’t really remember a factory,” Aiah says. “Although it’s possible that your factory might be one of the plasm houses I reported to Mr. Rohder. I don’t remember all the addresses, and I never actually saw any of them — except for Kremag, I mean.”

  “Our plasm hound,” the creeper says, “led us from the factory straight to your door.”

  Aiah shrugs. “Well,” she says, “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “And you had nothing to do with the plasm station in the factory on 1190th that was used to assist in the overthrow of a foreign government?”

  Aiah tries to look impressed. “I don’t think so,” she says. “Not unless it was on the list I gave to Mr. Rohder.”

  The creeper circles back to the beginning. “And you won’t let us in?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Aiah folds her arms. “Because there’s obviously been a fuckup at the Authority,” she says, “and whichever of our superiors is responsible will be looking to foist the blame on someone else. Why should I cooperate in cutting my own throat?”

  The creeper gives up. “We may have more questions later.”

  “I’ll be at work tomorrow. You can talk to me then.”

  The creeper nods. “Till next time,” he says.

  GRADE B EARTHQUAKE IN QELHORN MOUNTAIN DISTRICT

  100,000 FEARED DEAD

  DETAILS ON THE WIRE.

  Just act normally.

  It isn’t hard. Nothing remaining in Aiah’s life is abnormal.

  While brewing coffee early Monday she listens to the early newscasts. The casualties in the Caraqui coup are in the 50,000 range, divided about fifty-fifty between the firestorm victims on the Martyrs’ Canal and the Metropolitan Guard, who died almost to the last man. By now the authorities have connected the crashed plane in Makdar and the deflated airship in Liri-Domei with the coup, and some of the airship’s crew are being held pending charges.

  There’s plenty on the news about the factory — neighboring buildings went up in smoke, and hundreds are homeless — but the reporters, as opposed to the police, haven’t as yet connected the building with Constantine or his coup. At least there’s no mention of Constantine’s mystery lover. It seems clear to the reporters that, whoever he was meeting with in the Landmark, it was to plan his attack.

  On the pneuma, she reads Rohder’s Proceedings. At the kiosk on the Avenue of the Exchange, Aiah buys a lottery ticket, then heads for work. She stops by her office to pick up messages, and finds the office empty: no Telia, no Jayme. The message tube in her wire tray, from Mengene, informs her of an emergency meeting at 09:00.

  She takes the elevator to Rohder’s office on the 106th floor. Rohder’s sitting at his desk, his pink face in his hands. It’s the first time Aiah’s ever seen him without a lit cigaret. When Aiah walks in, he straightens and looks at her with his head cocked to one side.

  “The Investigative Division’s been onto me about you.”

  “Yes. The creepers showed up at my apartment yesterday.” She walks up to his desk. “What’s it about? They asked a lot of questions but they didn’t tell me much.”

  “That plasm well in Terminal we were looking for, the one that probably caused the Bursary Street flamer —” His pale blue eyes gaze up at her expressionlessly from behind his thick spectacles. “Well,” he continues, “someone used it to kill fifty thousand people yesterday.”

  The shock that clamps a cold hand on Aiah’s throat isn’t feigned. She hadn’t considered the facts in quite this brutal light before.

  She clears her throat. “Was it one of the addresses I gave you?”

  “No.”

  “Well — at least we were looking for it. If those others had backed us, maybe we’d have found it before this, ah, disaster happened.”

  Rohder nods slowly, his eyes fixed on her. “Since I last saw you I’ve procured two more warrants, by the way. There was another big arrest late yesterday.”

  “Well,” Aiah restrains an impulse to wave her arms. “What more do they want from us? We were looking — and that’s more than the creepers ever did!”

  “Ah. Yes.” Rohder frowns and looks at his hands. “As it happens I had a call from the Intendant earlier today. He congratulated me on the way I — we — had managed to discover so many plasm houses in such a short time. But he pointed out — nicely, I thought — that it wasn’t really my job to find criminals, and that we should really share our methods with the Investigative Division, who could then finish the work for us.”

  Anger buzzes through Aiah’s brain. It’s all going to waste, she thinks.

  “Did you point out that one of the plasm cheats we found was in the Investigative Division?” she asks.

  “Well. No. Not as yet.”

  “If we give the creepers our method — my method — any investigation in the district plasm stations will likely be carried out by the same corrupt officials who were paid off in the first place. And if word of the method gets out, the crooks will know that all they have to do is program a little more efficiently, and then we won’t catch them.”

  Rohder frowns, then reaches for a pack on the table and thoughtfully draws out a cigaret. “I know,” he says. “And I’m sure the lesson’s been learned before, over the decades. Someone like you comes along, the thieves get cautious for a while, and then they get careless again and a few get caug
ht and the rest learn again to be more cautious.” He sighs, looks at the cigaret for a moment, then puts it in his mouth and lights it.

  His eyes shift restlessly; he won’t look at her. The cigaret bobs up and down in his mouth as he speaks. “What I’m saying is, well, fine, we caught a few. And the creepers will catch a few more with the information we gave them. But as far as developing any more leads goes, well, the Intendant doesn’t want it.”

  “We make the Investigative Division look bad.”

  “That’s a part of it, yes.”

  Anger and frustration crackle through Aiah’s nerves. She doesn’t have to act this part, she knows, all her anger is perfectly genuine. The truth is bitter on her tongue as she lashes out.

  “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that I find a plasm thief in the Investigative Division, and within two days the creepers are trying to pin some kind of major crime on me?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone of your discovery. I was going to approach the Intendant properly when the moment suited. Did you tell anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Your office mate? Anyone?”

  “No one at all.”

  Rohder stares uneasily out the window. “Do you think someone crept in and read the notes on my desk? Most odd, if true — no one’s expressed an interest in my work in years.”

  “How many years has it been since you uncovered a major crime being committed in our own headquarters building?”

  “Oh, thirty years or thereabouts.” He waves a hand airily while Aiah stares at him in surprise. “I had forgotten, till this business reminded me.” Rohder draws in smoke, his watery eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

  His glance lifts and, finally, he looks at her. “I have exerted myself on your behalf already,” he says. “I spoke rather forcefully to the creepers, and I will also speak to Mengene and the Intendant.”

  Aiah tries to conceal her glee. Like every other division of government, the police are stacked heavy with layers of officialdom anxious to protect their jobs and their privileges. If Aiah can win the bureaucratic war on the top floors of the Authority building, she can stifle the investigation below before it properly starts. Unless they get more physical evidence, Aiah thinks, the creepers are out of luck.

  “Thank you, Mr Rohder,” she says.

  He cocks his head again, blue eyes blinking, and Aiah feels as if she’s being regarded by some strange, hunched waterfowl. “I am sorry to have to return you to your job. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly rewarding one. I looked at your record — you’ve never had any education in live plasm use?”

  “No. I couldn’t afford it.”

  “Your advancement here would go faster with a degree in plasm engineering.”

  “Perhaps you know a millionaire I could marry.”

  “Ah.” Cigaret ash falls on Rohder’s lace. He brushes at it absently, “I have occasionally taken leaves of absence from the Authority to teach,” he says, “and some of my students have kept in touch. One is now chancellor of Margai University, and there are scholarships that are within his prerogative. If I were to recommend you, you would almost certainly be accepted, and the Authority would be more than pleased to grant you a leave of absence. When you returned with the degree, your career prospects would be enhanced.”

  The offer takes Aiah’s breath away. She stares at Rohder for a long moment and makes an effort to compose herself before answering. “Ah,” she says. “Yes. Yes, I’d be grateful for the recommendation.”

  “Well then.” Rohder swabs at his lace again as he stands, and then he offers his hand. “It was a pleasure working with you. If you have any more of these little projects in mind, do call me.”

  Aiah takes his hand. “Thank you again. I learned a great deal.”

  Rohder looks puzzled. “I can’t see how, Miss Aiah. Good day.”

  Obedience is the Greatest Gift

  — a thought-message from His Perfection, the Prophet of Ajas

  “Creepers!” Telia reports. She’s nursing Jayme, and for once the office is quiet. “I just spent half an hour with them! What the hell is this about?”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing!” Telia’s eyes are guileless, “I don’t tell people things, you know that.” She leans closer and lowers her voice, and Aiah hopes there isn’t some mage hovering in the room, overhearing every word. “I didn’t mention your little after-hours thing,” Telia whispers. Or course she’d told maybe a hundred other people in the building, but maybe the creepers wouldn’t know to ask any of them.

  Aiah wonders how many people had seen her driving off in Constantine’s limousine.

  “The folks upstairs are covering their asses,” Aiah says. “They’re trying to lay blame on me because they wrote off the Bursary Street flamer without a proper investigation.” She drops into her gray metal chair and it sags about twenty degrees to the right. Anger flares in Aiah’s heart. She swivels the chair left and right, but the list remains.

  “Shit!” she shouts, stands and kicks the chair across the room, where it crashes into the other two disabled chairs. All three chairs tumble onto the cracked tile floor. Fury flares in her veins. “I don’t know how many reports we’ve filed with Maintenance in the last year!”

  Urgency enters Telia’s voice again. “But the investigation . . . what are you going to do?”

  Aiah restrains herself from giving the chair another kick. “Tell me,” she demands, “if I should be afraid of an organization that can’t even fix a chair.”

  TRACKLINE INTENDANT RESIGNS!

  MAINTAINS INNOCENCE

  SCANDAL CLAIMS ITS GREATEST VICTIM

  Aiah walks into the 09:00 emergency meeting pushing her broken chair in front of her. While the others watch, she places the chair against the wall and then sits in one of the comfortably padded chairs at the long boardroom table. The others observe but do not comment.

  Oeneme is present in person, testifying to the seriousness of the meeting, “I’m not interested in facts,” he says. “I’m interested in impressions.”

  Oeneme’s subordinates duly supply him with their impressions, relieved of the duty of mentioning the fact that it was Oeneme himself who ignored Rohder’s report that the flamer’s sourceline was eastward and instead ordered Emergency Response to Old Parade.

  The meeting drags on for three hours and, as no one is willing to say anything pertinent, accomplishes nothing.

  In the New City, Aiah thinks darkly, all these people would be thrown out onto the street to beg for their bread.

  When Aiah leaves the meeting, she drags her plush chair behind her and takes it to her office. Everyone sees, but no one says a word.

  Her office smells of urine and baby stool. Two creepers wait for her there, small, polite men in neat suits, a different style from the street bruisers she met yesterday. “We’d like you to come with us,” one says, speaking over the wails of the baby.

  “Are you going to buy me lunch?” Aiah asks.

  They look at each other. “No.”

  “Then you can wait till after midbreak.”

  She plants the stolen chair in front of her desk and leaves. Outside, she buys a bowl of savory broth with rice noodles from a vendor and eats it while sitting on a bench on the Avenue of the Exchange. She reads Proceedings, making notes, for the rest of the lunch hour, then collects the deposit on her soup bowl and heads back to her office.

  The creepers are waiting when she returns. Telia leaves for her own lunch, taking the baby with her. For the next hour Aiah answers the creepers’ patient questions. When they start to ask the same questions all over again, hoping to catch her in some contradiction, she calls an end to it.

  “Unless you have anything new to ask, I have a job to do.”

  Somewhat to her surprise, the creepers put away their notes, thank her pleasantly, and leave.

  NEW CITY STUDY GROUP FORMING

  CONTACT BOX 1205

  “15.31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees
114m. Ne?”

  “Da. 15:31 hours, Horn Six reorientation to degrees 114. Confirmed.”

  “15:31, Horn Six transmit at 800 mm. 30 minutes. Ne?”

  “Da. 15:31, Horn Six transmit at 800 mm. 30 minutes. Confirmed.”

  IS ALDEMAR CONSTANTINE’S NEW LOVER?

  SPECULATION SWEEPS MEDIA!

  Her yellow message light blinks furiously in her apartment. All the messages are from relatives approached by the creepers: they all want to know what they should say, if anything, and simultaneously demand to know what she’s really up to.

  No messages from her mother; maybe the creepers haven’t located her as yet.

  Aiah goes out to buy supplies for supper, and while at the grocer’s uses a pay phone to call her grandmother.

  “What’s happening?” Galaiah demands. “Did you do something stupid? Did that passu of yours get you in trouble?”

  “I haven’t done anything stupid. I haven’t done anything at all. It’s some people above me who are trying to cover up their idiocy — too complicated to explain, really.”

  “You’re a Barkazil. They’ll sell you out without even thinking about it.”

  “I know.” Aiah looks at the grocery customers standing in lines with their sacks of food and wonders if she’s being followed. There are some Jaspeeri men loitering by the exit, but then on the other hand there are always people loitering there, and they don’t have to be creepers.

  And of course if some mage is following her on an invisible plasm tether, she’d never know.

  “Nana,” she says, “I’d appreciate it if you could just ask everyone in the family to tell the police they don’t know anything, and they think I’m an honest person. I don’t know if it would help, but at least it wouldn’t put anybody in jeopardy.”

  “Your mother,” Galaiah says darkly.

  “Yes,” Aiah says, heart sinking. Gurrah would tell the creepers anything that came into her head and worry about incriminating her daughter later.