Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams

at her.
    “Esmon seems happy,” Aiah offers.
    “I hope so.”
    “You’re a — what is it? — a priestess?”
    “My sister’s a priestess. I’m a geomaterga. I do magic, she talks to the gods.”
    “Do you go to school for that?”
    Khorsa puts her hand on Aiah’s arm and smiles.
    “No. It sort of runs in the family. My mother founded our teaching, and my sister and I have inherited it.”
    “Does the Operation bother you much?”
    It’s as if a mask drops into place — Khorsa’s smile is still there, but the amusement behind it is gone, and the eyes are like a wall of glass.
    “Why do you ask?”
    Warning sirens sound in Aiah’s mind. “I don’t know,” she says. “Just making conversation.”
    She will not , she thinks, sell plasm to this woman. Maybe Khorsa isn’t the Operation, but there’s some other angle that Aiah doesn’t know about and doesn’t want to get messed up in.
    Khorsa looks at her keenly, frowns, shakes her head. “We’ve kept them out,” she says. “Once you buy their unmetered plasm, they’re into you forever.” She sips beer, looks serious. “A lot of our clients come from among their victims. They always want us to soften the street captains’ hearts. But,” shaking her head, “of course the Operation has no heart.”
    “No,” Aiah says, thinking of Henley. “It doesn’t.”
    Khorsa gives her a shrewd look. “Why are you asking? You’re not interested in religious teaching, are you?”
    Aiah shakes her head, smiles. “Perhaps not today.”
    A drum rattles outside. There’s a subdued cheer.
    “Strange,” Khorsa says. “All this celebration and joy, and what we’re celebrating is really the greatest tragedy in human history.”
    “Yes?”
    Khorsa lifts her head, a bit defiantly. “Well, Senko failed, didn’t he? He beat the Lord of the Trees and the Prince of Oceans, but when he challenged the Ascended Ones they destroyed him, and they put the Shield over our heads to keep humanity from ever challenging them again, so ...” She waves her arms. “Why do we celebrate? Why aren’t we all weeping?”
    Aiah looks at her. “Because we get the day off ?”
    Khorsa laughs. “Maybe so.”
    “Perhaps I should contribute to party supplies. Excuse me.”
    *
    The little elevator passes the landing four times, each time jammed too full for Aiah to get on board, so Aiah walks down the twelve flights to the ground floor and steps out. There’s a liquor and cigaret store on the far corner, and Aiah crosses the street to reach it. The sky overhead sizzles with plasm displays. A stiltwalker strides past roaring and pounding his chest, his foam-plastic tail floating out behind him. A group of twisted people dance on the corner to music booming down from the scaffold above— they’re short and gray, with hairless, glabrous skins. A cold finger slides up Aiah’s spine at the sight. She hasn’t seen this variety of genetically tampered before.
    Aiah buys a case of beer at a marked-up holiday price, and a large plastic bag of salty krill wafers. While she stands in the long cashier line behind some local groover girls, she hears the booms and thumps of the Assassins Parade marching this way.
    She follows the groovers out of the store. Police are clearing the street, so Aiah crosses at the corner and glances up to see old Charduq the Hermit up on his fluted pillar at the old Barkazi Savings Institute. A warm memory rises in Aiah at the sight. She’d assumed Charduq had died years ago. She waves at him and calls out.
    “Hi, Charduq! Remember me?”
    The old man’s eyes twinkle from deep within wrinkled sockets. He’s bald except for a long beard that reaches to his lap. His naked skin is deep brown from constant exposure to Shieldlight, and he lives entirely off what people drop into the plastic bucket he lowers on a rope for offerings. He’s been sitting on one of the Savings Institute’s ornamental pillars for as long as Aiah can remember.
    “Hai-ee, Miss