Metropolitan Read Online Free Page A

chances are she’d run into another relative, and then her mother would hear about it. Besides, considering that it’s shift change, it’s at least a two-hour ride to her new neighborhood.
     
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    Aiah is thankful for the noodles by the time she gets home. She can’t afford to eat out in her neighborhood, and she really can’t afford to buy groceries there, either; she usually buys food one stop up the pneuma line and walks home from there.
    But she doesn’t take the pneuma this time, because it doesn’t connect to Old Shorings. Instead, she has to use the trackline and transfer, Circle Line to Red Line to New Central Line — and every single car on Aiah’s journey is overdue for service on its suspension and tires. It’s a tooth-rattling ride, and by the end Aiah’s kidneys ache and her bladder is full.
    She has to walk a block and a half from the trackline station to her apartment at Loeno Towers. Hydrogen-powered cars hiss by on soft polymer wheels. Black clouds cruise under the Shield like hunter-killer craft, threatening a rain strike at any moment. It’s dark enough so that some of the stormlights go on.
    Loeno is a new apartment complex built on the rubble of a decayed residential district, sixteen tall black glass monoliths, housing maybe ten thousand people in all. The place is expensive and Aiah and Gil could barely afford to buy it.
    Now, it turns out, they can’t afford to sell.
    Well-dressed neighbors look at her with well-contained surprise as she walks to the elevators — assuming they notice her at all in the course of the day, something she doubts; they’re used to seeing her in her gray suits, heels, and white lace.
    The elevator carries her briskly to the thirtieth floor; from there it’s a hundred quick steps to her apartment door.
    Aiah steps inside and feels her boots sink into carpet. The first thing she notices is that the yellow message bulb on her communications array isn’t lit. The apartment is one largish room, with a counter between the living area and kitchen. There’s a small shower and toilet, a small room for a pocket garden, with grow lights and a tub of loam for vegetable cultivation. Through the black glass wall is a spectacular view, mostly of other black glass windows. It’s the largest area Aiah has ever had entirely to herself.
    She throws the map case onto the bed she hasn’t bothered to convert back to its sofa configuration in weeks, sits down on the disordered sheets and unclips her boots. She rubs her feet, locates a few places that will blister if she isn’t careful. Tomorrow she’ll wear a more appropriate style of sock.
    There’s something in a jumpsuit pocket that feels uncomfortable, and she unsnaps it to find the chipped ceramic cup that held her noodles. She forgot to redeem it for her five clinks. She puts it on the bedside table.
    Aiah takes a shower and wraps herself in a velour bathrobe. A tune sung by the vocal group in Old Shorings plays itself faintly in her head. She looks at the message machine again, just to make sure Gil hadn’t called when she was in the shower. No luck.
    An aerial advertisement shines through the black glass window, tracks its yellow light across the room. Vote No on Item Fourteen , letters snaking between the Loeno Towers. She’s never heard of Item Fourteen before.
    She sits on the bed, looks first at the life-size portrait of Gil on one wall, then the icon of Karlo on the other. The two poles of her personal universe.
    From the armrest control she turns on the video and lets the oval screen babble at her. It’s some kind of silly action chromo with Aldemar blowing up half a metropolis. She wishes Gil would call. She’d call him, but she never knows when he’s going to be near a phone.
    There had been a time, she