City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) Read Online Free Page A

“Yes," she says. “If that’s what you want.”
    “Gangsters, Miss Aiah,” Constantine reminds. “What in Jaspeer you called the Operation. Here they are the Silver Hand, and they are a threat to us and to the New City, and they must be destroyed. Destroyed completely. And it is best to do it as soon as possible, before the Handmen make ...” He frowns. “Inroads. Inroads into the new structure.”
    Aiah thinks of the Operation, the street captains with their stony, inhuman eyes and their utter, perfectly human greed. Their dominance was difficult to avoid; they had injured her family, and her hatred for them had burned long. Damn Constantine for reminding her.
    “ I’ll do it, if that’s what you want,” Aiah says, “but only if you want it really done.”
    His brown eyes challenge hers. “I said destroyed . Did I not?”
    She nods. Fists clench at her sides, nails digging into palms. “Yes,” she says. “I can do that.”
    He looks down at the gold ashtray in his hands, and her gaze follows his. His massive hands and powerful wrists have twisted the ashtray, turned it into a half-spiral of yellow metal, all without visible effort. He holds it up and smiles.
    “Too malleable,” he comments. “I find myself disliking the useless ostentation in this place more and more.”
    Aiah looks at him. “I will bear that in mind, Metropolitan.”
    A knowing smile dances about his lips. His arm flies out, and the ashtray gives a little metallic keen as it skids across the tabletop. It strikes another ashtray with a clang and knocks it to the carpet before coming to a halt, spinning lazily on the polished wood.
    “I will find you an office,” Constantine says. He takes her arm, guides her to the door. “We can postpone discussions of salary, and so forth, for the moment. Budgets,” he smiles, “are in flux. But I will assign you an apartment here in the Palace. I want you close by.”
    His hand is very warm on her arm. Close by, she thinks, yes.
    “Congratulations on your revolution, Metropolitan,” she says.
    Constantine opens the door. “We have had only a change in administration,” he says. “The revolution is yet to come.”
    "Congratulations, anyway.”
    “Thank you,” he says, and smiles as she passes through the door.
     
    LIFE EXTENSION
    WHAT’S WRONG WITH LIVING FOREVER?
    REASONABLE TERMS—PRIVACY ASSURED
     
    Constantine leaves Aiah to underlings who don’t quite know what to do with her. But by the end of first shift Aiah has an office in Owl Wing. It has a receptionist’s office (sans receptionist), a rather nicely finished metal desk complete with bullet holes, and a communications array that doesn’t work. An Evo-Matic computer sits in the corner, brass with fins, but it requires a three-prong commo socket and the office isn’t wired for them. The plastic sheeting tacked up over the window booms with every gust of wind.
    The carpet is nice, though. Gray, with black patterns that look like geomantic foci.
    From this office she will direct a team that as yet does not exist, that has no history, no personnel, no records, no budget; but which nevertheless is charged with a task of awesome complexity and importance.
    Gathering plasm. The most important element of power, because it can do anything.
    Mass transformed is energy —the most fundamental difference is not one of matter, but of perspective. And mass, in the right configurations, can create energy.
    That’s plasm.
    And the science of configuring mass so as to produce plasm is geomancy. And because plasm exists in a kind of resonance with the human will, it can be used to create realities— create almost anything the human mind can conceive. Cure disease, alter genes, destroy life, halt or reverse aging, creep into the human mind to burn every neuron or, more subtly, to turn one emotion into another, to create love or hate where neither existed before. Plasm can knock tall buildings down, move objects from one place to another,