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the floor. 'Congratulations, Miss Aiah,' Sorya says. 'Your solution looks to
be the right one.' The shadowed expression beneath her cap brim is unreadable.
'What's the next step?' Constantine asks. 'An anonymous phone call to the
Authority?'
Aiah mentally pages through the Authority's procedures. 'That will just put it
in a long queue,' Aiah says, 'and someone may get around to checking the call
in a few months, and it's very likely that the call will be assigned to the
man who's being paid off in the first place. If you can get someone to lodge a
formal complaint for the reward, the Authority will take it more seriously,
but if it's you filing the complaint, Metropolitan, or any of your known
entourage, they're likely to want to know how you know about all this illegal
plasm.' i see.'
'Best to give me some time, and I'll work out a way for the Authority to
discover the building in its own way.'
'We do not have time to spare,' Sorya says. 'Perhaps there could be an
accident in that building, something that might expose the heavy plasm use
there.'
A cold warning hand brushes Aiah's neck at Sorya's toneless word, accident.
'Give me the address,' Aiah says. 'I'll check to see who's registered at that
meter.'
'An accident is quicker,' Sorya says flatly.
'An accident is more dangerous for us,' Constantine says. 'We don't want to
have our business discovered as a result of a tangential brush with the
Operation. Nor do we want to attract their attention, having successfully
eluded them thus far.' He looks at Martinus. 'We'll take Miss Aiah there,' he
says, and then turns to Aiah again. 'But not just yet. You look tired, and it
doesn't do my cause any good to have your mind fuzzy. Refresh yourself at the
t-grips, and then we'll leave.'
'Thank you, Metropolitan.'
The plasm charges her body, quickens her mind. She wishes she could dawdle,
remain connected to the huge well she had discovered, the awesome reservoir of
raw power so fundamentally connected to the life of her world, to both its
reality and its unreality. But she reluctantly flicks the switch on the
operators' console that disconnects her copper grip from the well, then pushes
back her chair.
She realizes that she has been aware of Sorya's scent for some time.
Aiah turns to see Sorya standing behind her, hands stuffed in the pockets of
her faded green jacket. Aiah rises to her feet, mind and muscle blazing with
plasm-courage, and says, 'Yes?'
Sorya's tone of voice carries no hostility but little warmth, either. 'A word
of warning, Miss Aiah.' 'Yes?' Aiah repeats. She almost laughs at the whole
notion of warning. At the moment she feels capable of taking on an army.
'Constantine and I have been together a long time,' Sorya says, 'and though he
and I are no fit companions for one another now, both being so tied, nerve and
heart and bone, to this project of ours, and passionate over our differences,
we nevertheless, once this endeavor is concluded, will be together for the
future.'
Aiah bites back an impulse to reply, a defiant Are you sure about that, lady?
or something equally refined, equally a product of the old neighborhood.
Sorya's flat green eyes gaze from under her cap brim. 'I bear you no animosity
for your interlude here with Con-stantine,' she says. 'Insofar as you provide
him a little release, a little forgetfulness well,' she nods, 'that is good.
You provide a service, if you will, for which I haven't the time or energy
myself. But it is an interlude, Miss Aiah, and it would be dangerous for you
to think otherwise.'
Aiah clenches her teeth. She can feel her hackles rise, her hands trying to
form claws. 'Are you threatening me, Miss Sorya?' she asks.
A touch of contempt enters Sorya's eyes. 'Why should I do that? Do you think
you're the only worshiper at this particular shrine? For it's worship he
wants, make no mistake, and I know him too well to give him quite the
credulity he demands.' She shakes her head. 'No, I merely wish to reiterate
that he and I are both of the powers of this world, those blessed with
greatness and the will and means to use it, and that this fact alone makes us
dangerous to our friends as well as our enemies.'
'This power -' Aiah gestures toward the contents of the factory, the huge
accumulators and consoles and grids, '- this power was my gift.'
Sorya tilts her pointed chin. 'Ah, but you gave it away, didn't you? or rather
sold it. If you were one of the great, you would have kept it and made use of
it to lay the foundations of your own ascendancy.'
'Perhaps it isn't power that I want.'
'Does that make you great? I don't believe so.' She shakes her head. Behind
her, sparks fall gracefully to the factory floor. 'I ask you but to look at
Constantine's history. How many from the old days are still around him?
Martinus and Geymard alone of those who mattered, and Geymard is here almost
against his will and only because I worked on him for days.'
Sorya glances over her shoulder at Constantine, who stands in consultation
with Martinus and Geymard. Her voice turns contemplative. 'Constantine has a
way of being fatal to his friends. It is, in a peculiar way, a measure of his
greatness that he survives what they do not. Consider: all his family are
dead, even those who took his side in the war. All his old advisors, his
companions, those lovers who remained with him for any space of time .. .' Her
eyes return to Aiah. 'All but me. Because I can match him, in terms of will
and greatness, in talent and power. Because I am no worshiper of his thought
or philosophy or -' her lips twist contemptuously ' or his goodness, but of
his true greatness, his will and power and his ability to dominate others; and
because .. .' She leans closer to Aiah, close enough for Aiah to scent the
spice on her breath. Sorya's voice turns confiding. 'Because I tell him the
truth,' she says softly. Despite the silky tone her eyes are hard, pitiless.
'He wants worship, he wants the uncritical adoration of those such as
yourself, but after he has glutted himself on devotion, it's the truth he
needs, and it's the truth I give him.'
'And you think you're the only person who tells him the truth.'
'There are truths about Constantine that only I know,' Sorya says. 'I know
power and wealth and magic, and it is their truth to which the greatness in
Constantine speaks.' She fishes in her pocket for her cigaret case. 'Believe
me,' she says, 'I have nothing but the best of wishes for you, and that is why
I'm speaking to you now. I wish to protect you from disappointment, from any
consequences of broken hopes.' Aiah watches the little bright flame leap up
from Sorya's platinum lighter to ignite the cigaret poised between Sorya's
fingers.
'With all respect,' Sorya finishes, 'you are well out of your depth. In the
league in which Constantine and I play, you're not even rated.'
'Thank you for your advice,' Aiah says, managing to speak the words without
the sarcasm she feels in her heart, and then simply walks away, toward
Constantine and the big Elton.
With an elegant gesture Constantine opens the door. Aiah settles onto the
leather seat and Constantine closes the door behind her with that too-solid
thunk, that sound of armor falling into place between her and everything
outside.
Constantine is buoyant on the way to the plasm house, joking about the
dolphins and their pretentions, about the Operation street captains who are
about to have an unpleasant surprise. After a few moments of his insistent
good humor, and with plasm vitality filling every cell, Aiah feels the
tight-coiled anger slowly relax about her nerves.
The plasm house is kept in a nondescript office building, its red-brick walls
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