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'Why are you so interested in this task?'
'Because my regular job is the most boring thing imaginable,' Aiah says. 'And
this would be a change.'
Rohder sighs heavily. Aiah pictures the cigaret smoke billowing from his
lungs.
'I will see if I can get you a temporary transfer,' Rohder says.
'Thank you.'
Another passu, she thinks. She seems to be acquiring quite a string of them.
16
Khoriak takes Aiah around Terminal in his two-seater Gel-dan. Suddenly
ravenous, she's taken the basket of fruit from the Elton limo and sits with it
in her lap: juice trickles down her wrist as she peers through smoked windows
at people and buildings. But when she reports to Constantine after shift
change she has little to tell him; they had followed a few obvious Operation
types from one address to another, and otherwise had found a few businesses
that, oddly, were protected by well-disguised bronze collection webs, a fact
that probably meant nothing at all because it was impossible to determine how
old the collection webs were, and whether whatever they were guarding had left
the vicinity a hundred years ago.
'We have detected someone sniffing about the neighborhood,' Constantine says.
He paces as he speaks, and his boot-heels have already trodden an anxious path
in the plush carpet. Behind him mages are locked to their t-grips, eyes closed
as they navigate over a geomaturgical landscape; security people stand like
potted palms in their corners.
'Whoever he is,' Constantine mutters, 'he's good. Very methodical, seems to
miss nothing. We daren't use the factory.'
'Tomorrow,' Aiah says. Weariness seems to fall on her like a mist of rain.
'Collection day. We may find something.'
Constantine stops in the middle of his pacing and gives her another of his
intent looks. 'Come,' he says, and takes her arm. 'A dose of the goods will
set you up.' The bedroom is familiar, with its plump pillows and blue satin
spread, and proves to have cables and copper t-grips lying ready in desk
drawers. Aiah imagines she can detect the faint scent of blood-oranges. She
takes the Trigram from around her neck and directs it through her body,
burning away fatigue toxins, filling every cell with blazing power. She looks
up at Constantine, sees his dark eyes intent on her, absorbing her. She feels
a resonance, her power and his, like buildings set a precise half-radius
apart, building a greater charge of plasm than either would on its own.
Her tissues are flushed with plasm and arousal. Aiah's lips involuntarily draw
back in a fierce grin and she laughs. She puts down the t-grip and launches
herself at Constantine, suddenly so full of power that she is possessed by the
perfect illusion that she can drag his big body toward the bed and fling him
into it. The sex that follows is fierce and fearless and leaves the room
strewn with discarded clothing.
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'You are learning to enjoy your power: good,' he says. He looks at her with
lazy approval, eyes half-slitted like those of a cat.
Aiah is feeling a bit feline herself. She draws her claws lightly through the
wiry hair on his chest. 'I don't know if I can give this up,' she says.
Constantine laughs, a low, indolent rumble. 'Well, sister,' he says, 'you
could decide not to.'
She considers this. 'What is there in Caraqui for me? Nothing.'
'There may be the New City,' he says seriously. 'And I hope that in your
measure of value I, myself, am rated somewhere above this nothing.'
'You have made me no promises,' Aiah reminds, 'except that you might replace
my dull government job with another dull government job, and that perhaps in
the near future I may hate you. And Sorya knows about our meeting here.' He
frowns. 'Don't worry for your safety, if that's what concerns you,' he says,
if you are harmed through Sorya's actions, she will suffer for it. And she
knows that.'
Aiah looks into his gold-flecked brown eyes. 'Have you told her that?'
Constantine gives a minute shake of his head. 'No need
she knows who is under my protection and who is not.'
'She could rat me to the Authority, and no one would know.'
7 would know. And Sorya knows I would know.' His lip gives a little curl, i
know things about her that could send her to the Hell her Torgenil family so
fervently believes in. I would use them if she compelled me.'
A chill wafts up Aiah's spine, if you know these things about her, isn't she
dangerous to you}'
Constantine's eyelids half-slit his eyes again, and again Aiah is reminded of
a cat, a cat contemplating its prey cruel and predatory and hard, merciless
in its calculation, in its perfect objective need. 'Without me,' he says, 'she
would revert to the life in which I found her - and that life, believe me, was
Hell, little though she knew it. No she needs me more than I need her, and
understands that perfectly well.'
Again Aiah feels a chill. She reaches for the sheets, crumpled at the foot of
the bed, and covers herself. She rests her head on Constantine's shoulder and
throws an arm across his barrel chest. The silver tip of his braid is cool
against her forehead.
it seems to me there are very many people who need you,' she says.
'And I'm not fair to any of them.' His hand strokes her hair. He sighs, Aiah's
head lifting, then dropping, with the breath. 'Well, in another few days,
things will be decided
whether I will continue this pointless, rootless life, pur veying my fading
theories of government and geomancy to an indifferent world, or make use of
the gift you, my precious one, have given me. It may be that I
will yet make the foundations of heaven tremble, and if so I will have you to
thank.' He kisses her forehead gravely.
'Thank you,' she says, and hugs herself to him. 'Though I scarcely think I've
given you the means to trouble the foundations of heaven.'
Again comes that lazy, rolling laugh. 'You have given me power, which used
with care is a means to more power. And the purpose of power, to my way of
thought, is to make us free. And what oppresses us more than ... ?' His words
fade away, but the hand, stroking her hair, pauses before her eyes, index
finger pointed to the ceiling, and beyond.
Her eyes follow the pointing finger, her thoughts flying up beyond the
ceiling, climbing higher, past the realm of falcons and airships, aeroplanes
and rockets, high aloft to the place where the air is so thin it might as well
not be there, and then, beyond even that.
'The Shield,' she murmurs, and then jolts upright, staring at him. 'The
Shield} You want to attack the Shield!'
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'The purpose of the New City is to bring liberty,' Con-stantine says. 'And
what constrains us more than the Shield?'
'But how can you do it? Nothing can survive the Shield!'
'Matter is annihilated on contact with the Shield, or so we presume from the
consequent burst of radiation,' Con-stantine says. 'And plasm is destroyed as
well, or so it appears. Electromagnetic energy is absorbed and probably
retransmitted. But gravity gets through, so the Shield is not perfect in its
hostility to nature. And where there is an imperfection, a weakness can be
found.'
Aiah finds herself uneasy at this discussion probably half the priests on
the planet would find it plain blasphemy and she finds herself casting
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