Metropolitan (34 page)

The plasm house is kept in a nondescript office building, its red-brick walls gone gray with grime. Behind it squats the dark bulk of the housing project, a garden of fortress-like buildings crowned by pigeon coops and roof gardens. As the car pulls up Aiah peers upward out the window to look at the top of the building and sees a thorny, decorative crown of ornate wrought iron. Possibly there are antennae concealed there, possibly not.

She enters through stained bronze doors. Inside the air smells of fish fried in grease. Booming dance music echoes up a tall atrium surrounded by a ramp that spirals all the way to the top. There are young men loitering against the iron rails in the foyer, hoping to find a friend or a girl willing to pay the cover charge for one of the clubs. They look startled at Aiah’s arrival, and she feels a warning cry through her nerves. Insulated by drivers, armor and limousines, she’s grown careless about Terminal, about the Jaspeeri Nation stickers in the windows. But other than the usual whistles and pick-up lines they’re civil enough, and she steps into the building and gazes upward.

The atrium is surrounded by an ancient webwork of wrought iron, an intricate spiral design that, reflecting the Shieldlight brought in by the big skylight above, looks like a silvery spider’s web funneling up to the ceiling. An elevator, a wrought-iron cage, pilots people to and from the restaurants. Aiah walks slowly up the spiral ramp, mentally calculating loads, distances, masses of brick and iron. She’ll have to pull the plasm records for the whole building.

On the second floor she buys some ice cream from a vendor and continues her walk. The businesses here seem to be pawn shops, loan offices, clubs, music stores and bail bondsmen. Pairs of young lovers, pressed against one another in doorways, pay Aiah no attention as she walks by. The plasm house is in an office on the fifth floor, a gray metal door with flaking white lettering,
Kremag and Associates
. She doesn’t spare it a second glance, but she suspects she sees video monitors concealed in the wrought-iron leaves sprouting from the false iron pillars on either side of the door.

Aiah walks up another couple floors, then takes the elevator back down.

There is power, she thinks as she interlaces her fingers in the wrought-iron elevator wall, and power. Sorya knows of one kind, and Aiah another. And though Aiah wasn’t born to Sorya’s kind of power, she is learning it.

Is she afraid of Sorya? she wonders, and realizes that the answer to her question is no. She wonders why, and suspects this is probably a comment on her sanity.

She leaves the building and dives into the limousine. “Nothing much to see,” she says, “I’ll have to look through the records.”

Constantine nods, “I can take you home now,” he says, “but I have a stop along the way. A meeting.” He lifts his head, and Aiah can see a kind of excitement in him, a fierceness in his look, a readiness coiled in his restless body. He looks at her. “There is an element of danger. You can stay in the car with Martinus.”

“Martinus isn’t going with you? It’s his job to protect you.”

“With this — gentleman — I’m best protected from here, from the car.”

Power, Aiah thinks. This could be an interesting lesson. “Does it matter if he sees me? Is it like the situation with Parq, that he might blackmail me if he knows who I am?”

A private smile touches Constantine’s lips. He shakes his head. “No. Blackmail is not a danger here. My principal worry is that if things go awry, the both of us would be swiftly and certainly killed.”

He looks at her, eyes sparkling. The thought of death seems to amuse him.

“May I come?” Aiah asks.

Constantine laughs. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

He is daring her. Cheerful defiance rises in her mind on a whirlwind of plasm, and she grins back at him. “Why stop taking chances now?” she says.

Constantine’s mirth answers her own, and then a hint of caution crosses his face, “I don’t know if I want you to see me with this person,” he says. “It may injure your good opinion of me.”

Aiah laughs. Constantine takes her hand, laces his fingers through hers.

“Very well,” he says. “But you are asking more of yourself than you know.”

Constantine has a way of being fatal to his friends.
Aiah remembers Sorya’s words, then defiantly dismisses them.

The car takes the Trans-City east, then leaves the highway and heads north. Tall office buildings gleam, white stone and bright metal and glass, on all sides. Off-shift, there is very little traffic. Martinus drives into a parking garage, winds down a spiral ramp to the bottom. He parks but leaves the engine running. Then he drops a panel on the dashboard, takes out a t-grip, and holds it ready.

Surprise floats through Aiah. “There are plasm batteries in the car?” she says.

“Of course. For protection.”

It’s obvious enough, but somehow the idea never crossed Aiah’s mind. She follows Constantine from the car.

“Martinus is a mage?” Aiah asks.

“Martinus is a protection specialist. His abilities to protect me against plasm attack are considerable, and have never failed me.”

Constantine leads her to a steel door inset into the wall, takes the handle, pulls, and the door swings open. A loud buzzing sound rattles out of the darkness beyond. Constantine hesitates.

“I must caution you not to run,” he says, “It may . . . awaken instincts best left asleep.”

Constantine finds a light switch and turns it. The room beyond is full of pumps screened off by mesh cages; apparently the garage is below the water table and needs constant pumping. Aiah follows Constantine past them and to another metal door with a yellow-and-red Authority sticker on it. Aiah pats her pockets for keys, but Constantine opens this door as easily as he had the other, and with a chill Aiah realizes that someone else has preceded them.

Beyond is a utility tunnel, hot and humid, with sweat beading its round concrete walls and a rivulet of water at the bottom. Yellow electric bulbs hang in metal cages every quarter pitch. A bulky shielded cable, held to the wall by huge metal staples, carries a fortune in plasm from one place to another. There is a smell of suspended dust. Earthquake anxieties rise in Aiah’s mind and she tamps them firmly down as she follows Constantine.

Aiah loosens her collar in the hot air. “Who lives down here?” she says. “Who would want to meet anyone here?”

“He said the fourth light,” Constantine murmurs. Even though he has to crouch his pace is rapid and Aiah strains to keep up. The sound of their bootsteps is loud in the small space.

And suddenly Aiah knows something else is there, sharing the tunnel with them, and despite the heat her blood runs cold. She gives a cry and shrinks away, the curved tunnel firm against her spine. It seems to have come in through the tunnel wall just ahead of them, oozing through it as if the concrete were porous.

“Greetings,” Constantine says, his voice firm, but Aiah can see fists at the ends of his arms, fists clenched so tight the nails gnaw at his palms.

Aiah can’t tell what it is he’s talking to. For some reason, even though there’s no obstruction, it’s impossible to get a clear view of it. It seems silver, gleaming under the light, and yet also deep black, black as the deepest abandoned pit, and yet there are hints of other colors, whole spectra running fast through its uncertain outlines, like an interference pattern on the video.

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.”