Metropolitan (15 page)

“Metropolitan?”

“That disused terminal is hard to get to, by Sorya’s account. And if I were to use it, I’d have to send work parties down there, build accumulators, string cable to carry the plasm to where I could use it, or work some way to broadcast it from a building.”

“There’s an easier way to do it, Metropolitan.”

“Yes?”

“The Authority buys plasm at fixed rates, then resells it. What you do is create a dummy company, one that owns a building at a fictional address. You create a fictional history to go with that address. And then you get yourself a phony work order to install a meter, get another saying the job’s been done, then sell the plasm from Terminal through that company. You take the money, then buy plasm for yourself here with it, and do it quite legally.” She smiles. “If you have someone at the Authority to keep all the paperwork straight, you could go on that way for years.”

“I see.” Cold amusement glows in Constantine’s eyes. “But I lose something that way, don’t I? I’d sell plasm to the Authority at a rate considerably below that which I’d pay to use it. What if I simply wanted to use the stuff at Terminal, not sell it?”

Aiah checks for a moment, rethinks. If Constantine actually wants to use the plasm at Terminal, it almost certainly has to be for purposes that would get his meters shut off here at Mage Towers. Something well over the border into illegality.

Interesting, she thinks.

“You don’t have to go to the pneuma station to tap that potential well,” Aiah says. “All you need to do is find another part of that old plastics plant — it’s all strung together. Tap any one part, you tap the entire structure. You might be able to find some of the structure using standard utility tunnels, with a little digging, anyway. There are hundreds of old tunnels down there, many of them so old they’re off the map.”

“Hm.” He frowns.

“But on the other hand,” Aiah says, “the disused platform would make construction easier.”

“I foresee nothing but difficulty,” Constantine says. “I’d need a control facility, a battery station, broadcast horns.” He shrugs. “I may have to buy a building in the area, remodel it to the necessary specifications. And that means working through dummy companies, hiding the money, coming up with a plausible cover. A complicated business.”

Aiah leans back. This is a scope of effort she hadn’t quite contemplated. “You seem to have funds available, Metropolitan,” she says.

“
I can spend only a certain amount,” Constantine says, “before it becomes more cost-effective to buy my plasm from the Authority like any other mortal. If I must buy a building,
you
, Miss Aiah, would get less money.”

Aiah considers this. The sky above brightens with an advertisement for jewelry, the sky glittering with diamonds that reflect rainbows.

The advertising over Mage Towers, she observes, has a somewhat greater cachet than that over Old Shorings.

“There’s always the way I first suggested. Reselling through the dummy company. It’s a sure profit-maker. That’s how the Operation sanitize their plasm, when they can.”

“Profit.” Constantine is disdainful. “Profit is not why I do what I do.”

“Either money matters, or it doesn’t,” Aiah says. “If it doesn’t, why are you haggling?”

He looks at her stonily.
Got you
, she thinks.

“If it’s a building you want,” Aiah says, “perhaps you need only rent a warehouse.”

“Perhaps.” He leans back in his chair, moody again. “You know this metropolis better than I. Perhaps you could make the arrangements.”

“Not I.” Aiah bares her teeth in a smile. “I’m the wrong color for that neighborhood.”

Constantine laughs, puts his black hand on the table next to Aiah’s brown one. “If you’re the wrong color,” he says, “what am I?”

“Too intimidating to deal with, I imagine. But not me — I’ve already been attacked once.”

The laughter vanishes from Constantine’s face as suddenly as if it had been wiped away. “Who?” he says.

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.