Metropolitan (12 page)

“Who are you talking to?” Aiah asks.

The woman lifts her pointed chin. “Someone you don’t know.” She nods. “Come with me, please.”

As she steps back Aiah sees a wire leading from her hand to the other room and realizes the woman was dipping the well, reading her with a plasm connection. Aiah should have recognized that sense of warmth, that prickling of the skin. Aiah’s boots glide silently on the plush carpet as she follows the woman through the door into a spacious office room equipped with an elegant glass-and-alloy desk and a terminal and a silvery spiral stair. The green-eyed woman unjacks her wire from a plasm connection in the desk, then coils the wire around her fist as she mounts the stairway: Aiah follows and is halfway up the stair before she realizes that the central pillar is structural, that it’s a plasm-generating inconvenience artfully disguised.

Upstairs is another empty office, though this glass desk has some loose flimsies on its gleaming surface. The woman knocks at a door, then enters without waiting for an answer. Aiah follows and is face to face with Constantine before she realizes it.

There’s a strange little moment of adjustment in which Aiah has to reconfigure her mental image of the man; now she realizes that every chromograph she’s seen, every flat-screen video image, has diminished the reality. Constantine is a powerful man, a head taller than Aiah, with great bull-like shoulders and a barrel chest that an opera baritone might commit murder to possess. His hands and wrists were made to bend iron. His skin is blue-black. His face is a little fleshy, not unattractively, and his tight-coiled hair is oiled and braided and worn over the left shoulder, the braid tipped with ornamented silver. Aiah recognizes the symbol worn by a graduate of the School of Radritha.

Lord of the New City, she thinks.

Lord of Creation, looks like. She knows there are people who worship him, literally, as an avatar of Senko.

She is beginning to see their point.

Constantine wears loose black trousers stuffed into suede boots, a plain white shirt, a thigh-length leather vest worked with obscure symbols. Aiah recognizes some of them as geomantic foci, but the others are unknown. No need for lace, Aiah thinks. The leather and suede alone must have cost—

“You want to save me money?” he says. The voice is deep and, for the moment, expressionless.

“Yes, sir.” Aiah tries to speak slowly, not permit the adrenaline that burns through her veins to blurt out the words.

“How unusual in a bureaucrat,” Constantine says.

He turns without a word and pads back into the room, drawing Aiah after. He has a delicate way of walking, poised and balanced, that makes her think of armored warriors who have to adjust to the inertia of their combat suits, as if he’s somehow carrying more weight than is otherwise apparent. . .

It’s a long room, big enough to contain any three Loeno Towers apartments the size of Aiah’s. One whole wall of the room is transparent and looks out into a huge conservatory that must cover most of the tower roof: there are full-sized trees under arching glass, all heavy with fruit, and above them the curved, shadowy shapes of the tower’s huge transmission horns. Colorful birds flap among the high branches. A battery of huge video sets, all dark, looms down from high wall mountings.

Constantine walks to the far end, steps behind a desk and sits in a big chair that seems all chrome rods and black tanned calfskin. There’s the sigh of pneumatics, the creak of leather. Constantine puts his big hands on top of the desk.

“Tell me, then.”

She catches movement out of the slant of her eye and her heart gives a surprised leap. A huge spotted cat is walking through the ferns of the conservatory, padding purposefully toward the glass wall. Shieldlight gleams from jewels in its collar.

“It’s Prowler,” the woman says. “He’s seen me. May he come in?”

“Yes.” Constantine’s eyes haven’t left Aiah. She drags her attention from the glass wall and tries mentally to reassemble the presentation she’d so carefully prepared, the plan she was going to offer him. She glances left and right, sees chairs.

“May I sit?”

“It’s going to take that long?” Unsurprised. “Very well.”

As she draws up a chair she hears a little hiss behind her, the sound of a sealed door opening. There is a waft of warm air, the scent of fruit and vegetation and decay. Aiah tries not to react to it, to the somber eyes of Constantine that haven’t moved once from her face.

She opens her briefcase, pulls out the flimsies that detail Constantine’s plasm use. Something patters on the glass ceiling of the arboretum: the promised rain.

“Your use patterns,” she says, “demonstrate that much of your plasm use is second or third shift, so you’re already getting much of it at off-peak rates.”

“I do not keep conventional hours,” Constantine says.

“I thought perhaps you were attempting to economize.”

Constantine’s eyes shift briefly, somehow encompassing the long room, the huge conservatory, the expensive furniture, Mage Towers itself.
Do I need to economize?
he seems to ask.

The eyes return to Aiah’s face. It is not an unfriendly stare, but there is no warmth in it either. Not even expectancy. Just a frowning challenge:
give me something useful, or go away.

Aiah licks dry lips, “I can enroll you in a plan that can get you a minimum of 1500 mm per hour at a cost fifty percent off the top rate — there’s a lump sum payment of a million up front. Or you can go five million out front, in which case you can forget any hourly charges.”

Constantine doesn’t change expression. Rain is a constant drumming overhead.

“That sounds attractive,” he says.

“I take it you’re interested?” Aiah hears a cough behind her, a growl. That big cat. She tries to keep her mind on business.

“Who did you say you are exactly?” Constantine asks.

“I work for the Plasm Authority,” Aiah says. “’I’m a Grade Six. One of your people checked my ID, but perhaps you’d like to see it.” She reaches into her briefcase, takes her identification, holds it up. Constantine’s eyes don’t even flicker toward her picture, instead remain focused on the original.

The blonde woman ghosts up by Aiah’s side. The big spotted cat is with her, butting her hip with its huge head while she scratches its ears. Its rasping purr sounds loud as a portable generator. Humid breath bathes Aiah’s cheek, and she can scent raw dead flesh.

“I thought perhaps you were working for a private individual,” Constantine says. “Someone with his own building or other plasm generator, who needs an installment of money so badly that he’s willing to sell future plasm at below market rates.”

“It’s something like that,” she says.

“What’s the problem?” Frowning. “A gambling debt? If it’s to the Operation, then your principal can just sell them plasm.”

“
And then never
stop
selling it to them,” Aiah says. “That’s how the Operation would work it. But no, nobody’s in debt to the Operation.”

“Then why this great generosity?”

Aiah allows herself to smile. Her heart sounds in her ears louder than the purr of the great cat. “I’m an admirer of the New City Movement,” she says. Constantine makes a surprised sound deep in his throat, a growl that sounds as if it might come from the cat. The blonde woman gives a brief, trilling laugh.

“The New City Movement,” Constantine says, “was dead when you were in diapers.”

“Not that long ago,” Aiah says. “I remember you.”

“The movement was a stillbirth.” He shifts in his seat. “None of us realized it, that was all.”

The big cat approaches, sniffs Aiah’s hand. Aiah restrains the impulse to snatch it away. She glances at the green-eyed woman, then faces Constantine.

“May we speak privately?” she says. “I was hoping for a private interview.”

Constantine absorbs this, leans forward, clasps his big hands on the desk as he gazes at Aiah. “Madame Sorya has my confidence,” he says.

Sorya. The Special Assistant, Aiah remembers. She and Aiah had spoken on the phone, and it had taken Aiah a lot of effort to get past her.

Thunder speaks nearby and the building trembles. Aiah glances at Sorya again, sees the green eyes regarding her casually, without interest. She turns back to Constantine and takes a breath.

“The plasm is mine,” she says. “I’m the person who needs the money, though it’s not for anything so romantic as a gambling debt.”

Constantine says nothing, just continues his stare. Aiah resists the impulse to fidget, keeps her hands still, her shoulders square to her target. “You may remember,” she says, “the flaming plasm apparition that appeared on Bursary Street a few weeks ago. There were deaths.”

“That was you?” Constantine’s voice shows no amusement, but Sorya trills another laugh. Aiah feels herself flush.

“No,” Aiah says. “But since I’d volunteered for the Authority’s Emergency Response team, I was sent out to look for the source.” She pauses, presses her hands firmly to her thighs, onto the rich gray wool. “I found it,” she says.

“Congratulations,” Sorya says. Constantine says nothing, just continues his open stare.

Resentment skates along Aiah’s nerves. Constantine isn’t doing anything, isn’t saying anything. He’s making her do all the work.

Draw him out, she thinks. Make him respond to her.

“What would you do, Metropolitan,” she asks, “if you found a renewable plasm source that powerful? A glory hole worth millions, that no one knows about?”

His response gives her nothing. “What I would do is not the issue. But I suspect we are soon to find out what
you
did.”

The cat leans close and sniffs at Aiah’s ear. Aiah’s stomach turns at the moist touch of his breath, at the stench of a thousand dead animals. Aiah fights the sick feeling in her belly, the cry of despair and futility that rises in her heart.

Stick to the program
, she thinks, and lightning illuminates the conservatory in pale corpse-light.

“Were I given such a thing,” Aiah says, “I would know I couldn’t use it myself. So I would offer it to someone . ..”

Sorya laughs again. “For a million.”

Aiah clenches her teeth. “For a sum considerably less than its value.” The cat’s rumble is loud in her ear; maybe even the cat is laughing at her.

Constantine leans back in his chair. Leather creaks, pneumatics sigh. “Ah. I knew —
we
knew —” with a nod at Sorya, “— from your peculiar insistence over the phone, that you wanted to see me for some reason other than some little metering problem. At least it isn’t some,” he lets weariness show in his eyes, “feeble attempt at romance. You are not as tedious as that.”

“Thank you.” Aiah speaks as coldly as she can.

“You want to sell me power,” Constantine says. “But what use would I have for it? I reside in the Scope of Jaspeer on sufferance. Your sad little republic is stable and old and possesses neither imagination nor conviction, and it considers me an adventurer. It is cautious; it spends a certain amount of effort monitoring my activities. I make this government uneasy, and it would as soon see the last of me.”

His tone is perfectly level, as opaque as his manner, and betrays neither interest nor passion. Maybe, Aiah thinks wildly, I am
boring
these people.

The cat, at least, is bored with her. It sits and begins to lick its paw.

“What better way,” Constantine continues, “to dispose of its unease, than for this government, or one of its agencies operating on its own, to send a provocateur to my home to tempt me with some grand illegality?” He steeples his fingertips. “How much easier it is to believe this story than to believe that some young woman has discovered a vast source of power, and wishes to sell it.”

“I have it,” Aiah says, “I can show it.”

“
This proves nothing.” He sits in his chair unmoving. “If you are who
I
think you are, tell your government I am uninterested in these games. I have no ambitions, and no spare millions in any case. If you are who
you
say you are, I wish you success in finding a buyer. The Operation, I know, is always interested.”

Aiah’s nails drive through wool into her thighs. Pain leaps through nerves, tautens her voice. “I won’t do that,” she grates. “Never to them.”

Constantine’s somber pupils grow wider. “Why not?” he asks. “The Operation is at least as respectable as I am. Probably more so.”

“They,” Aiah lets out a breath. “They hurt my sister. I won’t deal with them.”

Constantine just looks at her. Waiting, as always, for her to reveal herself.

“They control all the clubs here,” she says. “And entertainment. And . . .” She waves her hands. “You know that.”

He says nothing. Aiah hates him for making her tell this story — for bringing up the memories, the rage, and all of it for nothing, because he’s not going to take the offer, he’s just bored and looking for entertainment, and Aiah will provide it because she’s too desperate to simply turn and leave.

“
She — my sister Henley — she worked for them. Just as a waitress, in a club. She was expected to dress a bit provocatively, but she wasn’t required to — there was nothing more than flirtation involved, and flirtation pays well — she was going through college, getting a degree in graphic arts. And when she’d saved enough, she tried to leave, and when she came to pick up her checktube...” Fingernails bite into thighs again. “The manager had her hands broken. Not just her hands, but wrists and elbows. You don’t do graphic arts with broken hands, do you? And now she got arthritis, and ...” Aiah finds herself snarling, her voice shaking with anger. “Henley wasn’t under contract to him or anything, she didn’t
owe
him anything, and she was just a
waitress
, the manager just did it because he
could
, because he was having a
bad day
and she made him angry. So —