Metropolitan (16 page)

“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.

There’s a wild soaring sensation as she springs upward from the transmission horn into the sky, bounds free of solid matter. Jaspeer’s regular road grid falls away beneath her, dropping far faster than it had in Martinus’s aerocar. The visual details fade as she climbs, but the awareness, the knowledge, of what’s below never seems to leave her mind: steel and stone, brick and concrete, the ponderous matter that encloses and shelters and sustains all the world’s fragile life, that generates plasm and powers her ascent.

Scattered white cloud drops below, overlaid on the world like one of the Authority’s transparencies, and joyously Aiah continues her ascent. She can see the world curve away on all sides, the implastic gray mass of the city that wraps the globe, that stretches to every horizon. And then she looks up, and her mind staggers ...

She hadn’t intended coming this close to the Shield. But there it is, seemingly just above her, at this distance not opalescent gray but burning featureless white, the source of light and heat for the world. Aiah senses its enmity, its roaring power, an energy not merely the opposite of plasm, but plasm’s destroyer, the raging enemy of all things earthly, power that will, if she touches it, snuff her out in an instant — and in the face of its fury she falters, loses command of herself, and her spirits reel. The horizon tumbles sickeningly about her. She can’t tell her direction of motion — is she falling or still rising? And if so might she come in contact with the Shield, and be obliterated?

Panic reaches for her throat with clawed fingers.

— Ah. Constantine’s presence speaks softly to her inner ear. Stabilize so. Now down, and slowly.

The spinning stops. She and Constantine are drifting downward, away from the Shield, safe as if he were holding her arm while descending a stair. In a corner of her awareness, she knows that, far below, her heart throbs furiously in her body, her breath rasps in her throat.

— It’s requiring rather a lot of plasm to maintain our lifeline to my apartment, Constantine tells her. Aiah can sense the amusement in his voice.

— Next time, he continues, we’ll have to do this from underground

— We can go back if you like, Aiah sends. Reluctantly.

The bright clouds rise toward them.

— We may as well stay. To Aiah’s relief. We can play up here, with no ill consequences to anything below.

Plasm adverts, brief flares of incandescence, flash below over the city.

— Plasm is of incalculable value, Constantine says, and do you observe how we use it? To reduce tumors and to advertise shoes, to wage war and to entertain children. For purposes either absurdly foolish or deeply profound, and virtually nothing in between, a characteristic plasm shares with everything else of great value.

— I see your point.

—
One might say
this
exercise is foolish, these aeronautics on the end of a plasm tether. But I find it useful, if for no other reason than it instructs me concerning your nature: that is, given some small encouragement, the first thing you desire is to take flight.

Aiah wonders if, back in Mage Towers, the blood burns in her cheeks.

— And what better desire to keep in your heart? Constantine continues. There are too many people who fence their minds with walls of stone and concrete, but to your credit you are not of these.

— No, she sends, no walls for me, it seems I’m transparent.

Amusement chimes in her senses, then fades. Aiah intuits that he is regarding her closely.

— You seem calmer now, he says.

Aiah is aware again of his fingers riding her pulse, and wonders if the whole purpose of this discourse was to control her panic by keeping her thoughts busy.

— Perhaps we can commence some actual instruction now, Constantine sends.

— I’m sorry if I’m wasting time with all this.

— No time was wasted, he says firmly. We have learned much, and I no less than you.

Though now there is much else to do, Aiah’s surprise at this judgment fades only slowly.

*

Black, empty faces of video monitors gaze down at her. Constantine has removed the t-grip and put it away, but Aiah still sits on the sofa, immersed in the lingering sensation of plasm.

Constantine moves back and forth along the buffet, putting food on a plate. He pours sparkling wine, holds it to the light for a moment, then sips. He turns to look at her.

“Well,” he says, “I believe all you need from this point is experience. You have the talent.” Aiah looks at the plasm focus in her hand, lifts her eyebrows, begins to speak, to say something like, “ Have I?”, but an inner knowledge amounting to certainty keeps the modest commonplace from her tongue.

“How do you know?” she says instead, and puts the focus back around her neck.

“I gave you all the power you asked for,” he says, “and you wasted none of it. When you took flight, you carried your anima intact, with a fully-formed mentality and a full sensorium.”

“I lost control,” Aiah says.

He frowns, shakes his head. “Inexperience only. You weren’t closer than a hundred radii from the Shield, but without any other point of reference you thought you were much nearer. And even when you panicked, your personality didn’t fragment — your sensorium stayed intact, and your anima. Telepresence may well be your forte.” He smiles, poured another glass of wine, and offers it to Aiah. She takes it, looks at the amber fluid with its tiny streams of bubbles rising, each bursting free as it explodes on the surface.

Constantine drops next to her on the couch, chews meditatively on a sweet bread. “Do you know how they’d teach you to fly in the schools?” he says. “You’d be put through a long procedure to evoke a spirit body and then endow it with senses. You’d spend an hour or so giving it sight, and hearing, and taste and so on, and then you’d very carefully walk —
walk
— through the doors, and down stairs, and out into the street. It would cost you a fortune in plasm, but that’s the way you’d learn to do it, step by tedious step; and perhaps after a year or so of walking about they’d let you imagine yourself in an aircraft and take a few hesitant swoops through the air . . . and they’re cautious because most people are afraid of any real power, any real taste of liberty, and when they have it they just go to pieces. But you, my daughter,” he sips the wine and smiles, “you knew what you wanted, and you did it, and all I did was feed you the power, and make a small correction when you lost your concentration. You had no fear, no hesitation, and you were capable of imagining everything you needed — and these qualities are the true attributes of the mage, not the miserable university degree, written on plastic and hung on a wall, that demonstrates only your ability to overcome the limitations imposed by your instructors.”