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day away by pneuma, or a day and a half by airship, just long enough to make
the journey an inconvenience.
'I may have to take a day or two off,' Aiah says. Her eyes move apprehensively
along the busy streets, looking for a familiar form - the skinny man, any of
her other attackers. Forget the man, Constantine had said. The problem is
over. But now she can't seem to forget him at all.
'A day off ?' Constantine says. 'I wish you'd take a week. What is it you do
in that job of yours?'
'At my level,' Aiah says, 'I mostly wait for the people above me to die or
retire. They could automate my job completely, but that would mean Authority
personnel budgets would decline, and '
'Ah, yes.' Constantine is bitterly amused. 'The way of officialdom. What is
the distinguishing feature of the budget of Jaspeer? Over ninety percent
devoted to maintaining that which is. Keeping transport moving, maintaining
buildings and roadways, paying pensions, keeping people like you stuck at your
desks doing unproductive jobs while you wait for your seniors to die off so
that you can advance to perform their unproductive jobs. And does it change
when the electorate vote in a new government? Of course not. Because the
people on top really don't hold the power. Everything's really run by a
triumvirate of interest groups.' He holds his right hand up, stabs three
fingers up toward the car's roof, ticks the fingers off one by one with his
left thumb. 'The bureaucracy, the unions, and the Operation. They've divided
the budget between them. The first two get everything that's on the books, and
the Operation gets the rest. And of these, only the last is efficient, because
in the Operation there are penalties for incompetence.'
Aiah looks at Constantine's cynical smile. 'You sound almost as if you admire
the Operation,' she says, and remembers the words, The problem is over.
Something a street captain might well say. He shakes his head. 'No. The
captains of the Operation are vicious animals, with no more concept of the
world or their place in it than Sorya's Prowler. And I should know - my
family, you remember, were the Operation, or anyway what the Operation can
become when it runs an entire metropolis. They had the kind of power that the
street captains in Jaspeer can only dream about. Here, in Jaspeer, the
Operation are animals - predators, but smallish ones. Rats, perhaps. They
fight over scraps, over territory, over prestige, or at any rate what seems
like prestige to a rat. But in Cheloki they weren't rats any longer, they were
higher animals, like Sorya's cat, or perhaps more to the point like a pack of
dogs, who through numbers and ruth-lessness and brute intelligence could bring
down game stronger and greater than they.' He smiles, a cold reminiscent glow
in his eyes. 'They dined very well, my family, very high off the food chain.
They loved power for its own sake, and permitted no threat to that power to
exist.' He shrugs, looks offhand at Aiah.
'A person's intent matters,' he says. 'It must. I desire power for myself,
yes, I will admit it. But further I will say that I want nothing for myself
that 1 do not desire for humanity at large, and that I desire power only for
its ends, not for the thing in itself. The rest of power's trappings are
wearisome: the fawning, the flattery, the raking in of tribute and booty ...
it was a mark of my family's merit that such pathetic, unreal aspects of power
were all they cared about, while the reality of it, the ability to
fundamentally alter the world and all nature, mattered to them not at all.'
He smiles in memory, and the smile is cold. 'They tried to outdo one another
in palace-building horrible places, tasteless and pretentious and shallow,
and we may thank Tangid that most of these structures were destroyed in the
war - and, with their minds on such earthly glory, it is preposterous what my
family overlooked. They had access to all the plasm in their domain, which
they used to pursue or crush their enemies, or spy on each other, or create
elaborate public spectacles, or engage in the most astound-ingly petty
intrigues. Plasm is the most perfect transformational agent of the universe,
the thing that can alter matter, alter the fundamental nature of all reality,
and they used it with no more consciousness of its significance than if they
had been children. They'd been around the stuff all their lives, and even you,
daughter -' his hand finds Aiah's on the plush seat and covers it, 'even you,
barely a novice in geomancy, have a better idea of what to do with plasm than
they.' He looks at her intently, and Aiah can feel a flush creep up her neck.
'You used it to fly, to liberate yourself from matter. Whereas base matter '
he smiles wolfishly, 'the baser the better, was all my family could find to
interest them in the geomantic arts.'
The Elton turns, and the old brick factory's door automatically rolls open to
welcome it. Constantine lifts his hand from Aiah's, opens his door, and steps
out of the car before it has quite rolled to a stop. The sound of hammering
rings off the factory's hard interior surfaces. Aiah looks for a moment at her
hand, still warm from his touch, and then leaves the car herself.
The amount of progress in three days is astonishing. The factory floor is
covered with plasm accumulators, a few of them unpacked to show their new,
gleaming brass and smooth black ceramic, but most of them - those nearest the
doors, and the sight of any curious onlooker still in their packing crates,
as if they were being warehoused. Above them a scaffolding has been completed,
and contacts are being lowered into place. An even larger scaffolding, a
bronze collection web, is being erected around it in order to diffuse any
attack. Guards prowl the perimeter, their professional scowls in place.
'I'm amazed by the scale of it,' Aiah says. 'Aren't you worried about being
detected?' 'The warehouse is being rented by a corporation based in Taiphon,'
Constantine says, 'and the accumulators belong to another group out of
Gunalaht. The ownership is so complex that no one will ever trace either to
me.' His rumbling laugh echoes in the huge space. 'Besides, Miss Aiah,' he
says, 'have you ever, in your personal experience, known of a crime that was
actually solved by the authorities acting on their own?'
Aiah's laugh answers Constantine's. Her old neighborhood provides the answer
every day of the week.
'Of course not,' she says. 'People get caught because they're ratted out.' Her
cousin Landro, the plasm diver, had been turned in to the Authority creepers
by a friend who'd run short of money in mid-week and couldn't wait till payday
to buy a ten-pack of beer. The only people the police caught on their own were
the unlucky and stupid, those who committed crimes in plain sight and waited
around to be arrested, or those whose behavior afterwards brought suspicion on
them.
Like brilliant rain, sparks fall from a torch on the overhead scaffold to the
concrete floor. Constantine moves toward the stair leading to the basement,
and Aiah follows. 'Every person involved in this endeavor,' Constantine says,
'has much more to gain from our adventure than they ever would from
cooperating with the authorities. All my people-' he nods at the dozen or so
visible, 'are tried, tested, and loyal. They have served the New City for
years, in every manner of peril. The weak links are two: our neighbors here,
who at present however have no reason to suspect us, and ' He stops and turns
at the top of the stair. His eyes turn to Aiah. 'And you, my daughter.'
A chill drifts down Aiah's spine, i have no reason to betray you,' she says. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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