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floating trash. Scabrous-looking waterfowl paddle in the green water. The
boulevards on either side are lined with trees. Tall glass-walled apartment
buildings and towered temples gaze down at the verdant water. A wealthy
district, clear enough, with only a few people in the streets and no
commercial traffic on the water except for a few small barges.
'The Martyrs' Canal,' Constantine says. 'The Avians used to tie Delavites
together and throw them in.'
Aiah stands in the boat with her face above the windshield, enjoying the flood
of wind on her face. She looks for the famous Aerial Palace but can't find it.
She looks to her left and sees Constantine standing next to her, the collar of
his blue jacket raised against the wind, his black profile cutting the air,
hands on the wheel controlling the boat with a light, effortless touch despite
the intensity of his expression, as if he were involved wholly with the boat,
the water, the very concept of motion, arrowing from one place to another,
every second a journey, a transit, from one state to another. The School of
Radritha, she suspects, for all that Constantine seems to scorn it now, has
nevertheless left its mark, has enabled Constantine to approach everything he
does with that same level of intensity, of involvement.
Or maybe it's just being hooked into plasm long enough. Who knows?
Kherzaki's scowling face leaps into existence in the sky above. Another ad for
Lords of the New City.
Constantine throttles down, his eyes scanning the faded numbers painted on the
vast pontoons, the rust-pitted signs hanging beneath the low bridges. He finds
what he's looking for, turns right into a cool narrow cavern, the local
equivalent of a dark alley. A flock of swallows explodes from nests
constructed amid arching girders and streams toward the light. Constantine
doesn't increase speed much; his eyes still scan the walls in the vivid
illumination of his halogen lights, looking for landmarks. The Shield is a
thin bright strip overhead, like a distant fluorescent tube. Engine noise
booms off the concrete walls.
After a few moments Constantine throttles down. There's no light visible
overhead: the pontoons above have been completely built over, turned into
components of a raft. Constantine turns on underwater spotlights. The boat
planes on briefly, slows, drifts toward one of the slablike pontoons. The
water below is a milky soup in the halogen light. Constantine springs to the
foredeck, reaches for a coil of rope, ties it to a rung of one of the ladders
placed at intervals along the pontoon. The bodyguards' boat, still under
power, comes up slowly and lashes itself alongside.
'Put the sled in the water,' Constantine tells the guards. He turns to Aiah.
'We may as well get ready.'
The bodyguards manhandle the big underwater sled off the back of their boat
and into the water. It lands with a slap, scattering spray. Aiah pulls off her
sweater and baggy wool pants.
'We've timed this for slack tide,' Constantine says. 'The tide can cause
swells, currents, tidal waves rolling up between the pontoons. Sometimes
people surf the waves on boards.'
'I saw that on video once,' Aiah says. On the Oddities of the World program
she used to enjoy when she was little.
Tides are evidence of a universe outside the Shield  Aiah was taught that in
school. Because once the sky was supposed to have been dark, except there was
something in it called a Sun, and another thing called the Moon, and they both
fluoresced or something to make the sky light up, like plasm adverts
broadcasting from outside the atmosphere, and their gravity was responsible
for the tides - so they weren't plasm, anyway, but matter, because plasm
didn't have gravity. Aiah had always pictured them as big neon tubes twisted
into circles.
And now the Shield stands in the way of anyone seeing them, but the Sun and
Moon are presumed still to be out there, causing tides. Because so far as
anyone knew, gravity was the only force that could get through the Shield.
Aiah supposed she could believe in the existence of a Sun and Moon that
predated the Shield and were still in existence somewhere, but some other
traditional details of the Premetropolitan world were harder to credit. It was
said, for example, that different parts of the world somehow existed in
different times. Aiah couldn't understand that part at all, how you could move
into the future or past simply by going from one part of the globe to another.
And if you could travel from the present to the past simply by moving, for
example, from Jaspeer to Caraqui, then could you alter your present by going
back in time somewhere else and changing things? The whole business was,
somehow, counterintuitive.
The damp chill makes gooseflesh prickle beneath Aiah's bathing costume.
Shivering, she begins to drag on the awkward diving suit. The foam plastic
clings to her skin like wet towels, making every move a struggle. Despite the
chill air she can feel sweat breaking out on her forehead. By the time she
zips the jacket up to her chin, she feels like an object securely swathed for
mailing.
'Greetings to the glorious and immortal Metropolitan Constantine.'
Aiah's nape hairs crawl as the eerie disembodied voice rises from behind the
boat's counter. The hard first consonant of Constantine's name is pronounced
as an inhaled click.
Constantine walks to the stern counter and peers over. His burly upper body is
bare, with his diving suit jacket dangling above his waist, but still he
carries himself with a strangely formal dignity.
'Felicitations, Prince Aranax,' he says. 'Your illumination expresses a
magnificent sense of condescension in deigning to speak to me without an
intermediary.'
There is a splash from behind the boat. The voice, Aiah concludes, can't be
anything human. 'It is best to undertake certain tasks in person,' the voice
says, 'in order that certain matters may be communicated in such a manner as
to felicitate perfect understanding. We must speak, thus-and-so, concerning
this-and-that, and without misapprehension.'
'Your illumination's wisdom surpasses that of the immortals,' Constantine says
gravely. 'Surely your brilliance and enlightenment will not be exceeded in ten
thousand decades.'
'My pitiful understanding is but a reflection of the glory and the wisdom of
Constantine,' the voice says. 'The radiance of your genius illuminates the
world as an incandescent ball irradiates the darkness beneath the water,
attracting to its magnificent light such unworthy beings as myself.'
'The courtesy that your illumination displays in affording me such a
description is exceeded only by your greatness.' Constantine straightens,
looks at Aiah. 'Please allow me to introduce to your illumination my
colleague, Miss Aiah, whose consummate knowledge shall guide us to our
inevitable success.'
Aiah walks dry-mouthed to the stern of the boat. She feels huge as an airship
in her thick porous suit, and as clumsy.
And Constantine of course had not prepared her for this. Another of his little
surprises.
The dolphin sits in a pool of halogen light, regarding her with small dark
pebble eyes sunk deep beneath a bulging forehead. His skin is a pinkish albino
white, with scars and blotches and a few open running sores. He seems to be
strongly hunchbacked. The nose has been shifted back to the top of the head.
His lower jaw is prognathous, hard and beaklike, fixed in a cold, unkindly
grin.
Once, she knows, the dolphins were the enemies of humanity, rulers of the
world's seas and the belligerents in a ferocious war for domination of the
world. Since their defeat the dolphins have been confined to a diminishing
role in the world's affairs, and humanity has encroached on their world [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]