CHAPTER 13

LOTTERY SCANDAL ALLEGED!

DETAILS ON THE WIRE!

Work has ended for the day. Aside from a pair of guards, Aiah is alone with Sorya in the big building. Their heels clack loudly in the narrow spaces between the looming accumulators.

“A flaming woman,” Sorya says. Her long forest-green dress swirls about her ankles; ruby earrings and necklace glow in the shadows with a smoky light. “You astounded our crew,” she says. “I must say, Miss Aiah, that you have a greater dramatic sense than I’d given you credit for.”

Surprise tingles ominously along Aiah’s nerves as she walks with Sorya along the factory floor.

“A burning woman?” Aiah says. “Is that what I looked like?”

Amusement glitters in Sorya’s green eyes. “Didn’t you know?”

“I wanted my anima to fluoresce. I didn’t know what I really looked like.”

Sorya gives a tigerish grin. “You nearly scorched the eyebrows off a couple of them.”

“Ah.” Aiah is absorbed by thoughts of the burning woman. Is this how it starts? she wonders. If she hadn’t turned the tap when she did, perhaps she would have become a flaming giant stalking the streets of Jaspeer.

Sorya pauses, lips tilted in a smile. “Not that the crew would look away,” she adds, “since you forgot to give your anima any hint of clothing.”

“Ah.” Aiah glances down at her gangly body and is embarrassed to consider its defects magnified by plasm, skinny legs and pointed elbows and every rib visible — more humiliating, really, than the mere fact of nudity. Now, she thinks enviously, if she’d really wanted to give the workmen an eyeful, she should have thought to clothe her anima in Sorya’s body, with its abundant curve of hip and breast, narrow waist and legs of whipcord muscle.

Sorya reaches out, touches the black ceramic surface of an accumulator. It’s so polished that Aiah can see the blue eddies of the other woman’s reflection in its surface. “At least we’re tapping the stuff now,” Sorya says. “No more monsters, no more strange effects to call attention to what we possess. Since we won’t be needing it, we’ll want you to lead a work party down into the pneuma station to seal off that old toilet.”

Entombing the plasm diver’s mummy, Aiah thinks. If only remembrance was buried as easily, memories of the empty eye-sockets, the mouth with its silent scream . . .

“Get Authority jumpsuits and hardhats for your party,” Aiah says, “and let me know when you want it done.”

Sorya’s fingers leave smudge marks on the immaculate black ceramic as her hand drifts away. She glances up at the bronze collection web that protects the plasm batteries. As if in response to her glance, one of the factory’s pigeons flaps upward from its new resting place.

Sorya’s glance narrows. “Will the cage work?” she says.

Aiah is amused. Sorya is used to the elaborate collection webs built into the architecture of structures like Mage Towers and the Plasm Authority Building; this improvised apparatus looks suspicious to her.

“If the web’s extended into the basement,” Aiah says, “and also covers the tap, yes. But it’s hard to make specific judgments without knowing what the web is intended to protect the accumulators from.”

Sorya gives Aiah a sidelong look out of her eyes, then looks up to the web again.

“We’ll need some way to project our power more efficiently,” she says. “Transmission horns or something like them, but they’ll have to be hidden. We can have a fixed horn pointed straight at Mage Towers to give us power there, but there will need to be other horns with multidirectional capability.”

Aiah gives this some thought. “Billboards,” she says. “Put billboards on top of the factory. The scaffolding can disguise your apparatus, ne?”

Sorya looks at her in surprise. “Very good,” she said.

Aiah grins. “Warriors of Thunderworld,” she says. “With Khore and Semlin. They used that trick in the chromoplay.”

Sorya laughs. “Obviously I’m not sufficiently in tune with popular culture.” She walks toward the little office, bright silk skirt outlining her legs at each stride. Aiah follows.

“What’s it in aid of?” she asks.

“Say again?”

Aiah waves an arm. “All this. What’s it for? What’s the web supposed to be protecting you from? Why is everything being done in such a rush?”

Sorya looks over her shoulder, frowns a bit. She opens the door to the office, steps inside, closes the door after Aiah. The office is a mess, metal furniture stacked in a corner, the floor used as a storage area for a propane torch, bits of bronze rod, cushioned boxes of control equipment that haven’t been installed yet. Aiah looks for a place to sit and fails to find one.

Sorya leans her back against the door, folds her arms, looks at Aiah.

“What is plasm but power?” she says. “And what are plasm and power but reflections of the human will? It’s will that controls plasm, and power, and — ultimately — people.”

“What about access?” Aiah asks. “If you don’t have access to plasm, what good is will?”

“The will finds its own access,” Sorya says. “It did for you, did it not?”

Surprise touches Aiah’s nerves. “I suppose it did,” she says slowly.

“Constantine told you once,” Sorya says, “that he and I were not little people. It is not our wealth that makes us giants in this world, but the force of our wills. And the strong will, ultimately, makes its own rules.” Her green eyes glitter as they gaze at Aiah, and Aiah seems to sense the formidable power of Sorya’s will, a constant pressure like that of wind funneling between two buildings. Aiah feels almost as if she needs to lean into it to keep from toppling backwards.

“You and I,” Sorya says, “are breaking a hundred laws simply by standing here. But laws mean nothing in this place, because laws are made by little people — which I, at least, am not — and the laws are made to guard the small against the powerful. Futile, firstly because the truly powerful find their own opportunities; and secondly, because when the small suppress the great, they suppress as well the greatness of their own commonwealth.”

Sorya smiles, sharp teeth gleaming white in the small room. “Given this, given that the strong find their own place, and do so as inevitably as the water that seeks its own level, then what we intend here becomes clear enough. Specific details are inconsequential, but” Sorya takes a breath. “We seek to enlarge our scope. Our power. To project our will into the world. And this, inevitably, will bring us into conflict with others that possess the power we intend to make our own. And so, in this conflict of will, we must guard ourselves against those who may seek to attack us.”

Some kind of war, Aiah thinks, and Sorya’s no administrative assistant, she’s a general.

But war on who? An individual? The Operation? Or a whole metropolis?

Her mind chills at the thought that Constantine had, in one sense or another, warred on all three at one time or another.

“You’re guarding against a plasm attack, obviously,” Aiah says, “or you wouldn’t need a collection web.”

Sorya nods.

“If,” Aiah reasons carefully, “you were preparing to defend against, say, the police or military of Jaspeer, they would have to assault this place very carefully so as not to cause casualties among the population here. There must be ten thousand people living within a radius of this building.”

“Yes.” Sorya’s glittering eyes watch her with interest.

“But if, say, your . . . opponents .. . have no reason to care about casualties in the neighborhood, they could do great damage to you and your apparatus as things stand now.”

“Ah.” Sorya’s terse monosyllable gives her no clue as to whether Aiah’s speculations are the least bit relevant. Aiah bites back on her growing frustration and continues.

“They can’t hurt your equipment through the collection web,” Aiah says. “But they can damage its environment.” She glances through the office windows at the tented ceiling, the high arched windows. “Hit those windows hard enough and the glass flies in like a thousand knives. Knock the roof hard enough and it falls down on the collection web. It might break the web, and even if it doesn’t your personnel are going to take a bad hit.”

Sorya gives a thin, knowing smile, the briefest nod. “Warriors of Thunderworld?” she says.

“Common sense,” Aiah retorts. “A lot of the casualties of the Bursary Street flamer came from flying glass.”

“Indeed,” Sorya says, “your reasoning is impeccable. Given, of course, your premises.”

And if this place starts getting sandbagged, Aiah thinks, with shields put up over the delicate equipment and work spaces, then I’ll know a thing or two.

“Of course,” Sorya says, “Constantine and many of his people are trained warriors, who would already have considered these matters. Should,” she adds, again with that thin, ambiguous smile, “they be relevant to our goals.”

“Are you a warrior, Madam Sorya?” Aiah asks.

“My battles,” she says briefly, “have been on a less grand scale.” She turns, opens the office door, then looks at Aiah over her shoulder. “But on the whole,” she adds, “mine have been more successful than his. Perhaps I am less distracted by unrealities.”

Aiah follows Sorya onto the factory floor. From above comes the flap of pigeon wings.

“You may as well tell me, you know,” Aiah says, “I may be able to help you.”

“It’s not my decision,” Sorya says. She tosses her streaky hair and offers her trilling laugh. “Besides,” she says, “it’s amusing watching you try to guess.”

“Thank you,” Aiah says flatly.

Sorya, she thinks, seeks power, and enjoys such power as she has, even if some of it is petty.

But the power of knowledge is a temporary thing, Aiah suspects. She has her own little data points, and sooner or later they’ll point to something.

Fire tests precious metal, and grief tests men.

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

District Hospital Twelve is of gray stone, centuries old, with sagging floors, windows fixed in their frames by a hundred layers of paint, cobwebs in the high-cornered ceilings, cracked plaster, peeling paint. The building is covered with ornamental stonework, leaf-traceries and statues of the Messengers of Vida flying on membranous wings to the aid of the sick. As a child Aiah had always been afraid of the stern-faced statues with their bat wings, rain-pitted hair, blank eyes and gaping, wordless mouths. Inside, the smell of disinfectant cannot entirely conceal the sad scent of age and despair: too much sickness, too much pain, over too many years.

Aiah catches a heel on a broken tile, stumbles, recovers. She makes a turn into a room, and here is her family standing round one of the room’s four occupied beds, and a situation she needs to deal with.

“Hi there.” From the bed her cousin Esmon waves listlessly, hand bulky with wrapped finger splints. His face is badly cut, his eyes masked by swollen tissue.

Aiah remembers the rain of boots and fists in the trackline station, the blast of plasm fire that brought an end to the beating. Esmon hadn’t any plasm batteries to protect him. It looks as if his attackers went at him very thoroughly.

Aiah approaches Esmon and bends over to carefully kiss each cheek. She looks to clasp a hand, but one is splinted, and the other, and with it the entire forearm, is strapped into some kind of tape-swathed box. She runs her hand over the top of his head, and her nerves flare as she sees him wince. Even there, he’s sensitive.

She remembers Esmon at the Senko’s Day celebration, proud in his green-and-gold sequined coat, his plans to join the Griffins for next year’s parade . . .

Aiah looks up at the rest, sees her mother, her grandmother Galaiah, Esmon’s witch-lover Khorsa. “He was attacked?” Aiah says. “What happened exactly?”

A call from Esmon’s brother Spano had come late in her work shift, and she’d taken the rest of the shift off and rushed to the hospital, but the summons had been short on details.

“Don’t want to go into it again,” Esmon says in a thick voice.

“Gangsters,” says Galaiah in a fierce voice. “Gangsters did this to him.”

Surprise stiffens Aiah’s frame. She looks from Esmon to Galaiah and back again. “You’ve got mixed up with the Operation? Or who? The Holy League?”

“Longnose gangsters,” Galaiah says.

“Don’t know it was them,” Esmon insists.

“Let’s talk outside,” Khorsa says. “I’ll tell you the story.”

Doubtfully Aiah lets the witch take her arm and lead her from the room. Another woman follows, a stranger in a red turban. As Aiah passes into the hallway she notices that the door has gone from the hospital room, that the doorframe holds only empty hinges. Who would steal a door? she wonders.

“This is my sister Dhival,” Khorsa says, nodding at the other woman.

Dhival, Aiah remembers, is a priestess, whereas Khorsa is a witch. She does not know the practical difference between the two, if any.

Tiny Khorsa looks up at Aiah, bites her lip. “It all has to do with us,” she says.

Aiah is not surprised. Her contact with mages of the caliber of Constantine and Sorya has made her less impressed with back-alley witches than ever.

“Before anything else,” Aiah says, “how is Esmon?”

Khorsa nods. “The two men who attacked him gave him a very thorough working over. He’s sedated right now, so he’s not in much pain.”

“What are the doctors doing for him?”

“We —” Khorsa corrects herself. “I — I can afford plasm treatments, so he’ll get them starting tomorrow. The only reason they’re waiting is they want to make sure he’s perfectly stable before they begin.”

There’s a bitter taste in Aiah’s mouth. She remembers Khorsa at the Senko’s Day party, the witch’s suspicious reaction to Aiah’s question about the Operation . .. anger burns hot in Aiah’s heart.

“So how have you two got involved with the Operation?” she asks.

Khorsa’s eyes widen. “We haven’t,” she says.

“They’ve got involved with us,” Dhival says. Her tone is bitter. “There’s this street captain, Guvag, he’s been trying to push his plasm on us, and we won’t take it. So he’s had some of his thugs attack Esmon.”

Aiah isn’t sure she believes this. “You’re not in debt to them? You don’t gamble?”

“No,” Khorsa says. “And Esmon doesn’t, either.”

“You’ve never bought the goods from this man? Or sold them? Or walked the streets for him? Or anything that would give him a foot in your door?”

“No!” Khorsa insists. “Absolutely not! That’s why we wanted to talk to you — you work for the Plasm Authority. Is there someone you know in the Authority police that we can talk to?”

Aiah thinks for a moment. The Authority creepers, the Investigative Division, are a separate jurisdiction that report only to the Intendant.

“No, I don’t know anyone specifically,” she says. “But I can make some inquiries.”

“If you could?” Khorsa says. “And soon?”

Aiah reaches for her notebook. “What’s the man’s name again? And do you have an address for him or anything that would help me track him?”

“I don’t have an address, no. But he hangs at the Shade Club on Elbar Avenue with his soldiers.”

Aiah writes this down. “I’ll see what I can do. But the question is: will you testify?”

Khorsa and Dhival look at each other. Dhival licks her lips.

“People don’t testify against the Operation,” she says.

“What if I could get you protection?”

“We’d still lose everything, wouldn’t we? You couldn’t protect us forever. We couldn’t keep the Temple going with the Operation after us. We’d be in hiding for the rest of our lives.”

Aiah looks at the two. She knows what their choice will be: testify and lose everything at once, or submit to the Operation’s demands and lose everything slowly, beginning with pride and independence and eventually everything else, the Operation slicing off one bit after another, their money, their possessions, eventually the Wisdom Fortune Temple itself.

“We were hoping,” Khorsa says slowly, “that we could get Guvag arrested for something else other than threatening us. He deals illegal plasm — maybe if we alert the authorities to his activities he can get arrested for selling it to someone else.”

Faint hope, Aiah thinks. She puts away her notebook. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says. “In the meantime, I want to see Esmon get the treatments he needs.”

Khorsa looks up at her, eyes wide. “Of course.”

“And you might also talk to a lawyer. Find out what your options are.”

The two sisters look at each other again. Lawyers, Aiah knows, are not a part of their world. The impersonal mechanism of the law is not something that would ever enter their life unless they’d either been arrested or maybe evicted. Lawyers are the enemy, as are the police and the judges, and the thought of having one on your side is something that is perfectly alien.

Aiah puts away her notebook, “I need to make a call,” she says. “Do you know where I can find a phone?”

Khorsa points down the hall, and Aiah follows the pointing finger. She has to tell Constantine that he needn’t send a car to pick her up for her plasm lesson. Family emergencies, unfortunately, come first.

EXPERIMENTAL ROCKET CRASHES IN LIRE-DOMEI

2000 PEOPLE KILLED IN BLAZING ACCIDENT

LEGISLATURE CALLS FOR BANNING ROCKET EXPERIMENTS

When Aiah leaves the hospital she returns to her office. There are fewer demands on plasm second shift, and there’s only one person in the office, Vikar, the plump Grade Six who’s inhabiting Aiah’s chair during the service shift this week. She greets him and takes Telia’s chair. She jacks in her headset, calls Compilation and Billing, and asks for Guvag’s records. When they complain, she tartly reminds them that she’s working Emergency Response and she needs the information now. Forty minutes later it arrives, tightly rolled plastic flimsies in two message cylinders that thunk out of the message system into her wire tray.

She reads the records and doesn’t find much: Guvag doesn’t use much plasm, at least not officially. Neither does the Shade Club. There’s an address, and a red tab, which isn’t actually red, or even a tab, just a printed message that reads “red tab”, an indication that Guvag has been convicted of plasm theft and that his file bears watching.

It’s pointless to try getting any records out of the Investigative Division, so the next step is probably to get public records from the Wire’s information service. She’d like to use the computer in the office, but it’s built to Arvag standards while the Wire uses the incompatible Cathobeth compression system, so Aiah will have to walk to the Wire office two streets away.

Aiah says goodbye to Vikar, finds the office still open, and rents one of the library consoles. She plugs coins into its slot and calls for a complete public records search on Guvag. An hour and a half later she has everything printed out on slick plastic fax paper, and she stuffs the rolled records, still smelling of the developing fluid, into a bag for reading on the pneuma home.

Guvag was indeed convicted of plasm theft twelve years ago, and did a couple years’ stretch in Chonmas. The chromograph taken at his conviction shows a bullnecked, mustached man scowling at the camera; extravagant amounts of lace explode from his collar and chest, and he wears an expensive Stoka watch on one wrist, a trademark of connected Operation types. According to the records he’s also been accused of assault numerous times and convicted once, though most of the charges seem to have been dropped — probably, Aiah thinks, because the witnesses changed their minds about testifying.

Not just an Operation thug, she thinks, but a violent one. Khorsa and Esmon have their work cut out for them.

Aiah looks again at the printout. Nothing much to go on, she concludes, but she’ll see what she can do.

TRACKLINE SCANDAL DEEPENS

CALLS FOR INTENDANT’S RESIGNATION

DETAILS ON THE WIRE!

The Emergency Response team has been demobilized. Oeneme’s declared victory on Old Parade, and now Aiah’s back in the office full time.

A message tube thunks from the pneumatic message system into Aiah’s wire basket. She opens it, scans the note - another dreary reminder about personal use of telephones — and then she wads the plastic flimsy and drops it in the recycling box.

Why do they bother?

No one in the Authority seems to have any real work to do. All they do is pass pointless instructions back and forth.

She’s heard from Galaiah about Esmon. He’s had plasm treatments and is much better, cheerful even. She’ll call him later and talk to him in person.

One of the personal calls the Authority is so upset about. To hell with them. Over ninety percent of the budget, she remembers Constantine saying, in maintaining that which is. Each executive in her little box, bored out of her skull, waiting for someone above to die or move up so everyone can advance.

Like a dance in which every step takes ten years.

She remembers the mosaic in the Rocketman terminal, the bright new whitestone city broadcasting rays of golden glory. The mosaic has become her mind’s view of Constantine’s New City. A little dirtied and chipped perhaps, but worthy of salvage.

Aiah turns to Telia, who is watching little Jayme scuttle about the floor on his stomach. He isn’t crawling properly yet, on hands and knees, he’s just at the insect stage.

“They don’t know what they want,” Aiah says. “The decorator says something, and suddenly they’re ripping out finished cabinets and rearranging everything. And then I have to change all the access ports around.”

“At least you’re getting paid for all your work,” Telia consoled. Her eyes brighten. “How’s he getting along with Momo?”

“They’re in love again.”

“Bad luck.”

“Won’t last, though. I’ll give it a week.”

Telia looks at the wall clock. “Break time. You want to go first?”

Aiah shakes her head. “Go ahead.”

Telia contacts the tabulator and tells her that she’s offline for the next fifteen minutes. Aiah smiles — she’s invented a false Constantine, a false Sorya, and all for Telia’s benefit. She calls them Bobo and Momo. She’s been inventing details of their relationship and inability to make decisions; she’s made them the most absurd couple imaginable, a family out of a chromoplay comedy.

Such a couple wouldn’t be up to anything illegal, would they?

Telia picks up Jayme, wipes drool from his chin, carries him away. Aiah programs a broadcast into her computer, then sits for a long moment and listens to the distant clicks of the gears.

“May I come in?”

A man stands at the door dressed in a rumpled gray suit. Blue eyes peer at her from a red, lined face, and a cigaret hangs carelessly from a corner of his mouth. She’s seen the man around, and perhaps she should know his name.

“Take a seat,” Aiah says. In order to hear him better she pulls back one earpiece of her headset and places it against her mastoid.

The man enters and reaches for one of a pair of metal chairs standing against the wall.

“Not those,” Aiah says. “Broken — we reported them months ago, but no help. Use my office-mate’s chair, she’s on break.”

The man nods and cigaret ash falls onto his chin lace. He moves Telia’s chair next to Aiah’s desk and sits.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, but Mr Mengene speaks well of you,” the man says. He holds out a hand. “I’m Rohder.”

Alarm sirens wail along the back-alleys of Aiah’s nerves. This is the man who snuffed the Bursary Street flamer, who saw with the enhanced eyes of his anima the flamer’s sourceline stretching to Terminal.

He’s also the man whose phone she gimmicked, making her initial calls to Constantine appear to come from his desk.

Aiah peels back the lace from her wrist and shakes Rohder’s hand. “Good that you’re out of the hospital,” she says, and hopes he can’t see the pulse leaping in her throat.

Rohder smiles. “I got a little jangled,” he says. “I wasn’t expecting to have to deal with a large-scale emergency at my age.”

“Everything’s all right now?” Aiah wonders if her voice is too loud.

“Oh yes. Good as new.”

“14:40 hours,” says the voice on Aiah’s headset, “Horn Four reorientation to degrees 033.3. Ne?”

“Ne,” Aiah says. “Say again, please?” She looks apologetically at Rohder and returns the speaker to her ear. The accustomed actions of programming her computer, the simple movements of fingers and eyes, help her assemble for herself a precarious state of serenity.

As she sets her dials she remembers that both Sorya and Khorsa, on first meeting, had been able to tell she’d been working with plasm — though at least Sorya had been pumping the well at the time. In the last two weeks Aiah has used a thousand times more plasm than she had when she’d met Sorya. Rohder is senior enough to have access to plasm — probably, at his age, using most of it to extend his life and therefore seniority - and might be able to recognize a fellow user.

And he used to be head of the Research Division, Aiah thinks, before he got his funding pulled. So he’s probably very good at what he does.

Lies flicker through her mind as her hand jacks the cable into the transmission scalar. Aiah is a bit surprised at the facility of her invention. Apparently deception improves with practice.

My temple lets me use plasm, she decides. In the rites. That’s the one she’ll use.

“Yes?” she says, pulling back the earpiece once more. “How can I help you?”

Rohder looks in vain for an ashtray, taps a long gray worm of ash into his palm instead, then wipes the hand on his ash-gray slacks. “You headed the group that Mr Mengene sent east, toward Grand City.”

Aiah shifts in her chair, tries fiercely to will herself into a state of tranquility. “That’s right,” she says.

“And you found nothing?”

“I thought I’d found something promising. But it turned out there was nothing in it.” And get that door bricked up now, she thinks.

Rohder leans toward her, a watery light in his bright blue eyes. Aiah wonders how old he is — he seems surprisingly youthful in spite of the white hair and the network of creases around his eyes, but with regular plasm treatments he could easily be over a hundred.

“And that something was?” he says.

Aiah takes a breath. “There was an abandoned pneuma station called Terminal. The access was right under a building where someone had been gimmicking the meters, so I thought maybe they’d been tapping off some plasm from an unknown structure. But my team searched the station thoroughly and didn’t find anything.” She shrugs. “We took two days at it. So all it amounts to was that someone was gimmicking the meters to hide some plasm use, and that was that.”

“What made you start in this particular neighborhood?”

Aiah decides not to mention the abandoned plastic plant she’d found on the Rocketman transparency. She still has the original in her possession, and she doubts there’s another copy of the four-hundred-year-old eel in existence.

“The pneuma station seemed promising,” she says. “And we had to start somewhere. It wasn’t as if there was more than one team working the whole district.”

A flag snaps over on the scalar with an audible click, and Aiah jumps. A transmission ending.

Rohder nods. “I understand Oeneme thought that Old Parade was more promising,” he says. He nods again. “But nothing was found on Old Parade.”

“Nothing much,” Aiah corrects. “A few leaks. But they could have built up to a Grade A leak over time.”

Rohder draws on his cigaret meditatively. The bright line of flame, advancing up the length of the cigaret, touches his lips, but he seems used to it. He draws the wet stub from his mouth, looks at it for an uncertain moment, and then balances it precisely on the edge of Aiah’s desk, the burnt end overhanging the floor’s plastic sheeting. He breathes out smoke, looks at the cigaret butt, and frowns.

“I saw the thing’s sourceline heading east,” he says. “I was a little addled when I got into the hospital, so perhaps I didn’t explain myself properly, but I know I wasn’t wrong.” He gives a little smile. “Curious how Oeneme chose to disregard this. Old Parade was just so much more convenient for him — right there in public near the Broadcast Complex, to make it convenient for his press releases, and he didn’t have that long commute out to Grand Towers.”

He reaches into a jacket pocket, comes out with a cigaret case, thumbs it open.

“Did it occur to you to wonder why the pneuma station was abandoned?” he says.

This is precisely the line of reasoning that led Aiah to the plastics factory. She doesn’t at all like Rohder’s reasoning.

“No,” Aiah says promptly. Then she shrugs again. “The overlays are full of old structures.”

Rohder methodically lights his cigaret, lets smoke drift upward. “That neighborhood was built four hundred years ago,” he says. “I had some people at Rocketman look it up.”

Aiah tries to smile. “I wish I’d had the authority to tell Rocketman that. It would have saved me a day.”

“It had to have been built on the site of something that had been there previously, though there’s no record of what it was. A water treatment plant, a food factory, something big. And when people no longer had to commute to Terminal to work, they closed the pneuma.”

Aiah attempts a thoughtful look. “If you can get permission,” she says, “I could resume my search.” And make sure, she thinks, that nothing gets found. “I’ve become familiar with the district,” she adds.

Rohder shakes his head. “Oeneme was in charge,” he says, “and he’s told everyone the problem’s solved.” He sighs, “I could get the investigation reopened, I suppose, but it would be a struggle, and I have too many enemies in this organization as it is. No,” he looks up at her, “we’ll just have to wait, and alert the creepers that work that district. If anyone’s tapping that old structure, someone’s bound to turn her in sooner or later.”

Her? Aiah thinks. She smiles and feels insects crawling up and down her spine.

Rohder stands and returns her smile. “I just wanted to satisfy my curiosity,” he says. “Mengene said you were bright, and I wanted to see for myself.”

Aiah stands to see him off, crouching a bit at the limit of her headset cord.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she says.

He shakes her hand, peering at her with his watery blue eyes, and then ambles away.

Aiah wonders if she dares tell Constantine about this. What would be Constantine’s response? Forget the man . . . the problem is over. No, she thinks. She doesn’t want anything like that on her conscience.

But get a team down to Terminal Station and wall that support brace up soon.

Next day, it’s done.

ATTACK OF THE HANGED MAN

ALDEMAR’S SPINE-TINGLING NEW CHROMOPLAY

“The First Degree of Terror”

PREMIERE THIS WEEK!

The day after walling up the toilet Aiah takes off the second half of her shift and heads for Old Shorings. Esmon’s out of the hospital and she should pay a visit. To that end she’s bought a chocolate cake as a gift. But another gift is the information on Guvag she’s collected, and she doesn’t want to trouble Esmon’s thoughts with it.

She'll give it to Khorsa. It's really Khorsa's problem anyway.

The Wisdom Fortune Temple is on the second floor of a brownstone office building. It smells strongly of herbs grown on rooftops and in closets, then packaged neatly in plastic bags behind a glass countertop. Candles stand on shelves, ready to be anointed with special charmed oils and burned for good luck. Packages of reconstituted soup-mixes are ranked on cheap wire racks — people take them home, brew them up, and have a little feast in order to fix what’s wrong with them, or maybe what’s wrong with the universe.

Above the counter is a picture of Karlo in an ornamented tin frame, identical to the one Aiah has in her apartment.

Through a beaded curtain is the temple itself. There are benches on the walls for elderly or infirm worshipers, but Aiah knows most of the rituals are done round the circle painted on the cheap tiles in the center of the floor, where the worshipers will don their temple garb, kneel on pillows brought from home, and sway back and forth to the sound of chanting. Inside the circle is painted the Branch of Tangid, with a live plasm circuit at its center. On the walls, icons of Tangid, Karlo, and Dhoran of the Dead alternate with the Mirror Twins and the White Horse and other foci.

God, or the Gods, are too remote from humanity really to be worshiped in any kind of personal way; they’re far off somewhere, walled off by the Shield. It’s the immortals to whom people pray, and who are invoked in the ceremonies. The immortals were once people themselves, and they understand human desires and frailty. They are presumed capable of interceding on human behalf with the remoter divinities, the Gods or the Ascended Ones.

Aiah remembers it all from her childhood: the herbal scent, the chants and drums and hand-claps, the congregation swaying and crying out and calling on the immortals. She knows how some of the worshipers will go into trance and cry out a message from some immortal or other, or sometimes just go into spasms that, to a jaundiced adult eye, look remarkably sexual. Aiah knows that the congregation consists largely of middle-aged women, their children and, for some reason, homosexual men. And she knows all Khorsa’s lines, the rhythmic speech meant to lull people into a mild trance, set them up for the special pleas for special sums for some special task or other, healing or redecorating or maybe even sending someone to the Barkazi Sectors to study at the feet of some illuminated seer.

Khorsa sits behind the counter, ready to dispense soup or blessings or advice. She looks surprised when Aiah enters, and rises to greet her.

“How’s Esmon?” Aiah asks.

“Taking it easy in our apartment,” Khorsa says. “But he’s fine. The treatments were very successful.”

“I’m on my way to see him,” Aiah says, “but I thought I’d drop these off first.” She reaches into her tote bag, pulls out all the information she’s gathered on Guvag, then puts the thick roll of fax paper on the countertop.

“This is all I could find out,” she says, “and it’s not going to help. I’ve talked to some people in the Investigative Division about him, and they know his name and would be happy to put him back in Chonmas, but they can’t do anything if there’s no formal complaint and no witnesses. They’ve had a lot of witness problems with this one.”

Khorsa bites her lip. “Would they provide protection?”

“Probably not — not unless you agreed to turn informer and spy, work with Guvag for a while, and get close enough to him to find out some real criminality. I assumed you wouldn’t be willing to do that.” Khorsa gives a little shake of her head, then sighs. “Well, then,” she says.

“What are you going to do?”

“I won’t work with the man. And I won’t close down the Temple. Perhaps if I get the right magic working, someone, if I make an appeal to the congregation . . .” Her voice trails off.

“Well,” Aiah says, “good luck. I wish I could have been more help.”

Aiah picks up her gift cake and walks down the building’s worn steel steps to street level. A weary sense of tragedy fills her; this is going to be worse than what happened to Henley, and the dreary inevitability of it all sends a wave of sadness drifting through her nerves.

She walks to the apartment that Khorsa and Esmon share. It’s a nice place, with a proper balcony instead of a scaffold, big enough for a nice pocket garden planted with squash, onions, chilies and herbs. Esmon is there, looking much his old self after expert plasm treatments — there’s a little bruising visible on his face, and the bridge of his nose has a new hump on it, but he greets Aiah with a smile and invites her in. He cuts pieces of the chocolate cake for Aiah and himself, and asks if she’s heard from Gil. She says she has.

Esmon stretches out on the sofa while Aiah tells him more or less what she told Khorsa. She’s halfway through her story when there’s a knock on the door, and then her brother Stonn enters along with Esmon’s brother Spano. Cold suspicion wriggles its way up Aiah’s spine.

“Thanks for doing what you could,” Stonn says. He’s a practiced felon, with powerful arms and shoulders and tattoos on his biceps. Mostly he’s a thief, but he’s strong enough to have occasionally hired out as muscle for some of Old Shorings’s Fastani gangsters.

“I didn’t think anything would come of it,” Stonn says. “Don’t worry, we’ll deal with it anyway.”

“What are you going to do?” Aiah demands. She looks from one to another in alarm.

The men shrug. “We’ll take care of it,” Stonn says.

“Take care of Guvag, you mean.”

“Same thing.”

“Stonn.” Pointing at him. “You’ll lose.”

There’s a resentful glimmer in Stonn’s eyes. “Not if we do it right.”

Stonn is hopeless; Aiah should have known that. She turns to her two cousins. “It’s the Operation,” she says. “They’re professionals. They have soldiers who do nothing but kill people. You two have never been involved with anything like that, you’ll get chopped down for nothing.”

Esmon and Spano look at each other uneasily. “Stonn says we can wait for him outside his club,” Spano says.

“There are longnose Operation types in and out of there all the time. You think they’re not going to notice three Barkazils standing in a doorway waiting for them? Including a man they just dropped the shoe on?”

“I can get a gun,” Stonn says.

“You think they don’t have guns?”

“We don’t have to go to the club,” Spano adds. “We can find out where he lives.”

Aiah’s frustration boils over, and she tells them exactly how foolish this all is — and that of course only confirms them in their course.

“What else can we do?” Spano demands. “They beat up my brother, ne?”

“All right,” Aiah says, standing, “fine. But don’t do anything till you hear from me. Nothing.” She looks at Esmon. “You promise?”

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

She looks at him, anger curling her lips. “I’m going to take care of it,” she says.

DRUG DEALERS SENTENCED!

PAY WITH LIVES FOR THEIR UNSPEAKABLE CRIME

Let Justice be Served!

The anger lasts halfway to Terminal, and is then replaced by anxiety. What, exactly, is she going to do? This isn’t the sort of situation in which she can improvise and hope to get away with it. And if the Operation traces her to the factory, then Constantine can kiss his whole plan goodbye.

By the time the New Central Line drops her off at Garakh Station near Terminal, she has a scheme halfway put together. As she walks up the station steps into Shieldlight, she brushes her hair forward around her face and puts on a pair of shieldglasses. With luck, the Barkazil businesswoman in the gray suit and lace won’t be connected with the Barkazil girl in the yellow jumpsuit who fried the face off a local resident a couple weeks ago.

From a public phone she calls Constantine’s accommodation number and leaves a message telling him she won’t need a ride from her job. Constantine’s workmen, accustomed to her presence, let her into the factory when she knocks on the door, then go on about their business.

Aiah’s had her most recent lessons here: the plasm is free, even if the equipment is still primitive. There aren’t any proper workstations yet, but improvised stations have been jacked into the tap while the real equipment is being assembled. Aiah swabs dust off one of the cheap plastic-and-metal chairs and seats herself. The console consists of a sawed-off plastic plank with gauges and dials cemented on it with a gummy white adhesive. Aiah pulls her chair to it and picks up the dusty copper t-grip that’s been sitting here since her last lesson.

Her mouth is dry. Somewhere in the factory a circular saw whines. Perhaps, she thinks, she ought to tell Constantine, get his help and assistance.

No, she thinks. That’s not his job. He’s paying her for her knowledge, not to get him involved in some sordid family matter.

Go, she decides. Do it now, before she comes to her senses.

She takes her Trigram token from around her neck and puts it on the table in front of her, then drops the transference-grip into the waiting slot. There’s a mental snap! as the roar of power fills her senses, an instantaneous shift in perspective, as if she were half-blind before and has only now learned to see fully, to comprehend the essential structure of reality, the power that lies at the heart of the matter.

A thousand Angels of Power sing in Aiah’s mind. She builds an anima and leaps from the building, flies under bright Shieldlight to Old Shorings, and from there to the Third Ward, the Jaspeeri neighborhood adjacent.

Guvag, Aiah thinks, spends his time at the Shade Club on Elbar Avenue. And if he’s not there, she knows where he lives.

Elbar Avenue is a cheerless, dingy little dog’s leg only one block in length, overshadowed by old brownstone buildings swathed in scaffolding and plastic. Aiah doesn’t understand how any of these places survived the last earthquake. The Shade Club is a small place, discreet, but underneath the chipped black paint of the club’s exterior Aiah can see the bronze sheathing that is supposed to keep it safe from plasm assault. The flyspecked window is checkered by a discreet bronze mesh.

Power howls in her ears, urging her just to smash into the club, clear the place out with one great cleansing jet of flame. But that would be impossible — the bronze sheathing would suck her anima dry. With an effort of will Aiah carefully sinks her sourceline below ground, puts the umbilicus connecting her to the factory where it can’t be seen. She doesn’t want anyone backtracking her to her point of origin.

Carefully she raises her anima to the window and peers in, adjusts her perceptions to the dim light. And there, sure enough, is Guvag — older and fatter than in his chromo-graphs, but clearly the same man. He sits in his shirtsleeves at a round table in the center of the room, a glass of liquor in front of him. A few of his cronies sit round the table, young men dressed with peacock extravagance or old men with expressionless, masklike faces. None of them seems to be engaged in anything in particular.

All Aiah has to do, she thinks, is wait for Guvag to come out.

Plasm growls impatiently in her ears. She might not have time, Aiah thinks; Constantine or Sorya could arrive at any moment. She expands the perceptions of her anima to include the street. The big Carfacin limousine, parked illegally near the fire hydrant, has to be Guvag’s. Might as well start with that. Aiah moves to the car, carefully sculpts ectomorphic hands, places them beneath the vehicle. Power pulses along her sourceline. The car trembles, rises, balances precariously. Aiah feels invisible back and shoulder muscles flex as she lifts the car to head height. Then, impatient, she wraps the entire car in a ball of power and fires it across the street like a round from a cannon.

The club’s window explodes inward as the car’s massive, chromed front end drives through it. Tables and chairs spill amid a crash of shattered glass.

Aiah flies into the building through the gap in its bronze shield and sees Guvag, surprisingly fast for his bulk, already out of his chair and running.

Aiah reaches out a thought like a slap, and Guvag reels. She seizes his collar in invisible hands, hauls him back to the table.

Let him see her, she thinks. And she wills herself a body — not her own, she decides, but something much more impressive, a powerful, giant figure with hands like talons and the face of a raging animal. And aflame, alight with a fire that matches her rage.

Fire’s reflection shimmers off the walls of the dingy club as her plasm body takes shape. Guvag, on his knees behind his table, stares at her with an expression of sick terror. His friends and servants have fled. Aiah looks at him with the keen, slitted eyes of a hawk.

“Can you hear me?” she asks.

Speechless, he nods. The tablecloth bursts into sudden flame and Aiah sweeps it away with her free hand.

“You have made a mistake,” Aiah tells him. “The Wisdom Fortune Temple is under my protection. I want that understood.”

“Yes!” he says. “I understand!” Her flame is scorching his face.

“You do not know who I am,” Aiah says. “You will never know who I am. But if you do not keep out of Old Shorings, you will meet me again. Understand!”

“Yes!” he shrieks. “Yes! I’ll leave your people alone!”

Aiah releases him and he drops to the floor like a sack. She can see herself reflected in the bar’s mirrors, a hunched predator shape, an angel of fire and destruction. Her feet are melting through the bar’s plastic flooring. Guvag’s car, halfway through the window, rests on its nose. Aiah laughs, and the echoes of her mirth ring from the walls. She has never felt such glory in her life.

“Goodbye, Guvag,” she says. “Remember that I can come back at any time.” She would like to stalk out in triumph, but she doesn’t dare touch any of the club’s bronze sheathing, so back in the factory she just unclamps her hand from the t-grip, and the distant reality of the shattered Shade Club fades from her perceptions.

“Working already?” Constantine’s voice. He stands behind her, having arrived at the factory while she was occupied.

Aiah licks dry lips. “Yes,” she says. “I was working on my telepresence techniques.”

A tremor runs through her. She feels diminished, a tiny, insignificant figure compared to the flaming figure of vengeance, the Burning Woman, whose fiery existence she had just inhabited.

“With success?” Constantine inquires.

“I believe so.” Either she has just scared Guvag off, or she’s killed her entire family. Her display had been spectacular — if that plasm had been metered, it would probably have cost ten thousand dalders — and she hopes the thought of an enemy who can use plasm that extravagantly will cause Guvag to think twice.

“Shall we do something a little more structured?” Constantine asks. He pulls up another of the cheap chairs, tugs at the knees of his gray slacks, sits.

“All right.”

Docilely, Aiah holds out her wrist, and Constantine takes it.

STOKA SEVENTEEN

The watch worn by those whose word is law

Constantine’s guard Khoriak drives Aiah home in a little two-seater Geldan. She has him drop her off at the food market, and from there she makes a call on a public phone to Esmon’s apartment.

“I’ve dealt with Guvag,” she says. “You shouldn’t be bothered from now on.”

There’s a moment in which Esmon processes this, and then he says, “What do you mean? What do you mean you dealt with him?”

“If he bothers you or Khorsa again, let me know. But he shouldn’t. You don’t have to do anything, understand?”

“Ah . .. I suppose. But—”

“And you’ve got to keep Stonn from doing anything stupid. That’s a lifelong task, I know, but if he moves on Guvag right now it could wreck everything.”

“I’ll — talk to him.”

Aiah hangs up, buys some soft drinks for the refrigerator and heads home.

A memory of the Burning Woman flames softly in her mind.

THE BLUE TITAN THREATENS...

But the Lynxoid Brothers are Ready!

See the new chromoplay now!

Aiah hears the hiss of air and the little tug on her inner ear that signifies the car braking from its top speed of over 450 radii per hour. The InterMetropolitan pneuma to Gunalaht is a high-speed run, and the train spends more time in stations than it does in motion.

Aiah places a bookmark in her text on plasm theory and waits for the deceleration. Regularly spaced soft glowing green lights, all that is visible through the window, shift from a constant blur to a slower, numerable pace. Then Aiah’s stomach leaps into her throat as the train drops out of the system and comes to a hissing halt at the station.

The first thing she sees from the train window is a row of bright advertisements for casinos, all with that burnished golden color suggestive of luxury, each promising more spectacle, more indulgence, more ways to win than the last. She puts her book in her traveling bag — it’s heavy with Constantine’s coin — shoulders it, and steps off the train.

She’d purchased a ticket for a metropolis a stop past Gunalaht. One of the little security procedures recommended to her by Martinus.

She walks past the casino adverts, locates signs to a local train, and then realizes she needs to convert to the local money in order to pay the fare. She converts her money at one of a half-dozen kiosks that all seem to offer the same rate, then takes the local train to the stop nearest her bank.

If she were a real big spender, she supposes, she could have taken a cab. She really doesn’t have the reflexes of a wealthy person yet.

The bank is unlike anything she’s encountered, a large quiet room, softly carpeted, with silent people sitting at desks. Fluted white enamel pillars support an elaborate fan-vaulted ceiling. A white-gloved usher in a black velvet coat takes Aiah to the desk of a Mr. nar-Ombre. He has a voice so soft that she has to lean closely to hear him.

Formalities are dealt with: she gives the codes Constantine provided her, gives her signature and chop, asks for the balance. Nar-Ombre’s computer whirrs for a few seconds and produces a total. 200,141.81. A few days’ interest to the good.

“Thank you,” she says, and feigns a few seconds’ hesitation. “Does anyone else have access to the account?” she asks.

The banker consults his records. “We provided the codes to the gentleman who established the account, a Mr. Cangene. We have a signature and chop on record for him.”

Aiah represses a smile. Constantine ought to know better than to try to make her his passu.

Not that she wouldn’t have done it herself, in his place.

“In that case,” Aiah says, “I would like to withdraw the money, and open another account in my name alone.”

Mr. nar-Ombre’s expression implies he hears requests like this every day, and perhaps he does. “There is a penalty for closing this type of account, I’m afraid,” he says. “And a fee for opening another.”

“I understand,” Aiah says. She hefts her shoulder bag. “I’d like to make a deposit as well.”

Mr. nar-Ombre’s long fingers reach for his computer. “Very good, miss,” he says.

A few more days’ interest will offset the penalties, she concludes. When she leaves the bank, she asks the usher for his recommendation as to a hotel, and when she goes there, she takes a cab.

Learn to live well, she thinks.

She manages her entire day in Gunalaht without entering a single casino. If she’s not going to be Constantine’s passu, there’s not a lot of point to becoming the passu of an entire state.

GRADE B PLASM LEAK IN KARAPOOR!

HUNDREDS INJURED!

DETAILS ON THE WIRE!

Again, that incredibly fast work: over the weekend Aiah spent in transit to and from Gunalaht, the factory has been readied for use. A row of workstations has been built inside the completed collection web, each with a comfortable padded chair and a pair of oval video monitors, side by side like a pair of eyes, to provide an outside feed. A metal shed roof now covers the whole installation to protect it against any attempts to drop the factory’s ceiling, and the high windows have been taped so thoroughly that almost all outside Shieldlight has been cut off.

Aiah’s lessons in plasm use will take place here from now on. Unlike the plasm at Constantine’s apartment, the goods here are free.

Three men are using the workstations, hands clasped around copper t-grips, eyes closed, concentration etched into their faces. Two are Jaspeeris, surprisingly young and with bad skin, but they’re neatly dressed in quiet gray, like the uniforms of an elite school, an effect that only makes them seem younger. One whispers inaudibly to himself as he dips the well, his upper body swaying left and right in response to some secret inner pulse. The third is older and black-skinned and looks Cheloki: he has a hard face, a hawk nose placed like a sword between his eyes, and may well be a veteran of Constantine’s wars.

Through the as-yet-untaped windows of the office, Aiah glances out at the truckload of sandbags just arrived in the loading bay, then turns to Constantine and lifts an eyebrow. “Who are you planning on attacking, exactly?” she says.

He glances up from his desk. “Sorya said you were curious.”

He doesn’t seem upset by the thought, but just to play it safe Aiah says, “Who wouldn’t be?”

A trace of a smile plays about Constantine’s lips. “You don’t need to know the answer.”

“It’s obvious enough you’re planning some kind of war.”

“I’m planning a change,” Constantine says. “An evolutionary transformation. And it should come cheap at the price.” He stands, flexes burly shoulders. His burning eyes are fixed on the workstations.

“Nothing changes in our world,” he says, “because the cost of change is so enormous. Not the least is simply the cost of space. Consider what’s needed simply to build a new building. There will be something on the site already, so the old building must be purchased, and all the people living or working there moved. All those displaced people will have to go somewhere else, at enormous cost, and even if the builders manage somehow not to pay the displacement fees, somebody will. So every new structure is a drain on the economy before it even starts. Few banks can afford to finance such an effort unless it’s guaranteed by the government or the central bank, and that just adds another layer of complexity to the whole problem. Jaspeer can afford a new Mage Towers perhaps every dozen years. Nothing can be transformed in any significant way, because the cost of transformation is just so high. So most people can’t put up new buildings, just remodel old ones, but that means accepting the older buildings’ design limitations, the way they’re tied into the infrastructure.

“And so,” he nods, “I wish to redesign the world. Rethink it. Transform it.”

“So what are you going to do?” Aiah asks. “Knock a bunch of it down and start over?”

A laugh gusts out of him. “I wish I could!” He shakes his head. “They could have used me when Senko and his crowd were setting things up. Ah well.”

Aiah nods at the three intent men at the workstations. “What are they up to?”

Amusement lights Constantine’s eyes. “Preparing to knock a few things down.”

“Seriously.”

“They are ...” he frowns. “Quarrying. Remember when I told you about combat mages? Their short lifespans in action? Well, that is one sort of military mage, those used in battle. The kind who turn,” he looks at Aiah and smiles, “into giant burning women who hammer the enemy with sheer blasts of power.”

That smile makes Aiah uneasy, and she wonders for an uneasy moment if he could have heard about Guvag. But Constantine, apparently unaware of Aiah’s anxiety, continues.

“The other kind of military mage is more subtle,” he says. “Refrains from attacking, and instead tries to worm his way in. Finds weak points in the enemy’s defenses, maps them, tries to work out ways to exploit them without alerting the opposition. They are less warriors than spies, and each is worth a hundred of the other sort. These,” he nods at the three men, “are among the best.”

“Those two boys ...”

“Naturals.” A smile lights Constantine’s lips. “Like yourself, Miss Aiah. People who have learned plasm use instinctively rather than through formal applications. Young minds are very suitable for that sort of work, being free of inhibiting structures, of overjudicial interpretation.” He nods again. “They are very successful, those two.”

“Isn’t what they’re doing dangerous? If they’re detected. . .”

He looks at her appraisingly. “They understand the risks better than you, I believe.”

Aiah rephrases her objection. “They’re young. They can’t possibly know what they’re getting into. You’re using them.”

Constantine smiles with his strong white teeth. “Miss Aiah,” he reminds, “you are young, and I am using you. And — I assure you — you do not know what you’re getting into, either.” He spreads his hands. “But you find yourself here, do you not? Your will led you here; and my will,” he waves a hand, embracing the factory, the huge accumulators, the web and workstations, “brought this into being. And will shortly bring into being other things, ideas brought to the world of reality.”

Aiah finds herself unwilling to let Constantine escape into metaphysics, at least not yet. “ I’m older than they are, anyway,” she says. “They can’t possibly—”

Constantine’s eyes turn hard. “Why value the lives of the young more than those of the old?” he asks. “It is the qualities that come with youth that make them valuable to me, or, at this stage, to anyone. Years from now, they will look back on this episode as their golden time, the time when they discovered, as few young people ever do, who they are, and what they are capable of. And if they do not survive to that time . . .” He steps up to Aiah, puts a heavy hand on her shoulder, looks at her with eyes of stone. “I learned long ago,” he says, “that the actions of the powerful have consequences. As a consequence of my actions, thousands of boys have died, and girls, and babies, and thousands and thousands of ordinary people who had nothing to do with me. I didn’t kill them myself, I didn’t wish them dead, and if I could have prevented it I would, but they died none the less. And these boys,” nodding to the two mages, “at least volunteered.”

Aiah had forgotten the cost of the Cheloki wars, the destruction of a metropolis as thorough as the devastation that had been wrought in Barkazi. She licks her lips. “I wouldn’t want that sort of responsibility,” she says.

He leans closer to her, his deep voice almost a whisper but still powered by his ferocious energy, a low rumble that Aiah can feel in her toes. “Miss Aiah, your sentiment is too late. You’ve given me power, and are as responsible as anyone for what follows. And,” almost offhand, “there have already been deaths.”

Aiah stares at him in horror. Forget the man, she remembers, the problem is over.

“They were bad people, I believe, and dangerous,” Constantine says. “If that knowledge will help you sleep.”

“I don’t think it will,” Aiah says.

He steps back, lets his hand fall from her shoulder, gives her an appraising glance. “I have had sleepless hours myself,” he says, “but by and by they passed.” He reaches out, takes her wrist as he has in all their lessons together. “Shall we have your lesson now?” he asks. “Or were these last moments lesson enough?”

We seek to enlarge our scope. Our power. Sorya’s words.

Power, Aiah thinks. Perhaps she ought to get used to it.

“The lesson, if you please,” she says, and lets him lead her to a console.

GARGELIUS ENCHUK WEARS GULMAN SHOES!

Why Don’t You?

“The School of Radritha defines three sorts of power,” Constantine says. “Power over the self, power over others, and power over reality. And of these, they conceive the first to be the only worthwhile goal, because they consider the only thing a man can know truly is his own mind, and his knowledge of anything else is but a reflection of his inward sight. Which is why I broke with them finally, because their scope was limited only to self-knowledge and self-mastery, without any conception of what the self-mastery is for.

“I will agree that power over the self is primary,” he says, nodding, “because with self-knowledge and self-mastery, power over others and over reality will naturally follow. The School had power — some of the most powerful minds I’ve ever met — but it had withdrawn entirely into self-contemplation. And was a little smug about it, truthfully.”

Aiah sips at her wine as the Elton cruises away from the factory. The shift’s lesson had flushed her with plasm. Power sings in her blood, a chorus of exhilaration and control. But now she finds the wine a little bitter, and Constantine’s discourse on power the last thing she wants to hear.

Already been deaths . . . She hadn’t wanted to think about it until Constantine’s whisper had forced her to confront the fact. And now she is compelled to wonder whether her efforts to educate herself in the use of plasm are worth the loss of life.

“The School desired to give their initiates freedom,” Constantine continues. “Freedom from passion, from impulse, from — in essence — the world itself. Imagine the reaction of my family,” he smiles, “when I told them I wished to study there. The School stood in opposition to everything they held dear, and that, I imagine, is why I wished to go.” He shrugs.

“But detachment from all things?” he says. “Is that not also a trap? To say that nothing matters, or that nothing should matter, except that which occurs in the perfectly passionless mind . . .” He utters a black, sneering laugh. “This they call freedom? Skulking in their meditation chambers, hiding from the sight of the world, peering obsessively at the landscape of their own minds, terrified they might be caught in an impulse, an emotion, an urge...”

Detachment, Aiah decides, seems like a pretty good idea right now. Let us, she thinks, consider the problem dispassionately. People, I am informed bad people, have died. Although I do not absolutely know that these are the people who attacked me, I nevertheless suspect that they are. In which case I have evidence, written on my bones with the toes of boots, that they were in fact bad people, and therefore deserved punishment.

“Avoidance of passion does not conquer passion,” Constantine continues, “and the School of Radritha, for all the power of their minds, seemed not to know this. They did not conquer passion, they merely denied it. And that is why they were so afraid of power, because they knew it was dangerous to them . . . power becomes a slave to passion so easily, and to an unacknowledged passion easiest of all.”

And, Aiah thinks, if they are dead, I did not kill them. I didn’t ask for it to be done, I didn’t have it done. And so, perhaps, it has nothing to do with me at all.

Colored light floods the car, and a distant scream: an advert tumbling down the canyon of the street, crying its wares with a siren voice.

“Though it is true that a man who is a servant of his passions is not free,” Constantine says, “neither is a man in flight from those same passions. And, since the passions are an inevitable consequence of our own humanity, it is impossible to eliminate them so long as we wish to remain human. But Radritha was wrong: it isn’t passions that make us weak, but rather uncontrollable passions. Harness the passions and reason together, and the person, the real person, becomes free . .. and capable of liberating others, which is the only defensible use of power.”

But, Aiah thinks, if these deaths have nothing to do with me, why don’t I simply ask Constantine what happened?

Because, she concludes, I am afraid of the answer.

Constantine’s flow of words comes to a halt. He looks at Aiah appraisingly. “I see my discourse has failed in its intended purpose,” he says. “You remain buried in your own thoughts.”

“Yes.” She is unable, for some reason, to turn her face to him, to achieve any level of personal contact. She stares instead at the seat opposite her. Tries to achieve detachment.

“Perhaps my discourse on power was too abstract for the purpose,” he says. “I wanted to point out that my ultimate goals are not abstract, but concrete: the New City, power, and liberty. And not for me alone, but for all. And — ” he licks his lips, “sacrifices occur. In a world as entrenched as ours, thousands of years without substantial change, revolution does not happen easily, or neatly, or without consequence. From a strictly practical view, a little ruthlessness now may save much blood later.”

Constantine pauses, then impatiently dismisses his own argument with a contemptuous wave of his hand. Without warning, moving with absolute suddenness and intensity, he snatches Aiah’s wrist, the same grasp used when giving her instruction; but now a different power than plasm flows from him, lights the furious energy in his eyes — passion, she realizes, startled, but of a different order from what she’s accustomed to. A world-eating passion, fierce and hungry and able, without constraint or compromise. No School of Radritha, she knows, could possibly suppress this.

“Listen, Miss Aiah,” he says, and she recognizes the powerful whisper again, the deep voice that resonates in her bones, “if the New City comes into being, then any sacrifice — any — will have been justified. Because I see no hope otherwise, anywhere, in our prison of a world.” The hand clamped on her arm is more powerful than a vise; Aiah knows better than to try to break free.

Electricity flares through her nerves, as if in resonance with the fury that seems to blaze in his mind.

“And if the New City fails,” he continues, “then Sorya’s old disciples of Torgenil are right, and we are Damned, and in Hell. In which case —” And the power leaves him, the fierce eyes grow dim, his big hand now without strength; Aiah retrieves her arm, straightens her sleeve. “In which case,” he repeats, even the voice now without power, “then nothing matters, nothing. Death least of all.”

Aiah looks into the shrouded eyes that gaze into the bleakness of a hopeless, caged world, and she suppresses again the overwhelming urge to comfort him. Ridiculous, she thinks, that he would need her comfort.

The car glides silently beneath the plasm-streaked sky. Aiah thinks of power coursing beneath the streets like arterial blood, cities lying on the crust of the earth like granite-shouldered parasites, human lives flaring like matches in the dark canyons — a little heat, a brief light, extinction.

“What can I do to help?” she says. A deep ancestral voice wails in her head, He’s your passu! She needn’t give him comfort, only take his money.

Constantine lifts an eyebrow, “I don’t suppose you can breathe underwater?”

She stares at him. “Are you joking?”

“Not at all. Do you know the apparatus?”

“I’ve never used it.”

“Can you take two days off this next week? We can get you instruction in the meantime.”

Aiah opens her mouth, closes it. “I suppose I could take two vacation days,” she says.

She can’t believe she’s saying yes to this. Constantine had arranged to retrieve her money any time it suited him, and now she is doing him favors. It’s for the New City, she thinks. It’s for the dream. Because even a Barkazil girl from Old Shorings needs something to believe in.