Metropolitan Read Free Page A

concentrate or direct it to one place or another. The metal structures of buildings, reaching down into bedrock and up toward the Shield, gather and concentrate that power, make it available for use and broadcast.
    And the power — plasm — resonates within the human mind. It is susceptible to control by the odd little particules of human will, and once controlled, can do almost anything — on the small, microcosmic end, plasm can cure illness, alter genes, halt or reverse aging, create precious metals from base matter and radioisotopes from precious metals. On the macrocosmic end plasm can create life, any kind of life a person can think of, can invade a target mind, destroy a person’s will and make him a puppet for the manipulator, can burn out nerves or turn living bones to carbon ash, turn hatred to love or love to hate, can wreak death in any number of obscene forms, can fling missiles or bombs or people anywhere in the world, all in a snap of the fingers. Can blow buildings down in a tornado wind, carry skyscrapers through the air for a thousand miles and set them down feather-light at the point of destination, create earthquakes to shiver a hundred structures to the ground, can grant earthly power beyond the wildest dreams, can do anything except punch a hole through the Shield that the Ascended Ones set between the world and whatever exists outside of it.
    But you have to get the stuff first. And it’s collected, distributed, metered, taxed. There’s never enough. Governments require colossal amounts of plasm as a foundation for their own power. Complexes like Mage Towers or Grand City charge their tenants horrific sums, all because their buildings are constructed so as to concentrate and transmit plasm efficiently, and the tenants — geomancers of astounding wealth and power — live there because they can afford it. Because they can afford to call for power tfn , to let the meters run.
    Never enough. But buildings are always going up, or tearing down, or going higher, or remodeling, and the configurations are always changing, mass achieving new balances with mass, producing new potentials. That’s why plasm divers burrow through the foundations of the world, through abandoned cellars and long-forgotten utility mains and rubble-filled inspection tunnels, all in hope of finding a source that’s off the circuit, that hasn’t been metered yet, a source of plasm that can be tapped or sold or used to fulfill the diver’s uttermost dreams.
    And if it goes wrong, Aiah thinks, if the diver takes on more power than she’s trained to handle, maybe you have hundred-foot-tall flaming women wailing down the street, burning off a hundred years’ chance accumulation of plasm in one horrifying, burning instant.
    At Rocketman Plasm Station it takes a while to establish Aiah’s credentials. Mengene never made the promised call. The archives are kept in a room below street level, and are reached through the wide Battery Room where the station’s power is contained in huge plasm accumulators and capacitors, three times human height, gleaming copper and brass layers with shining black ceramic. Controlling them is a black metal wall filled with switches, dials, and levers that monitor and control the vast power stored here, that cause it to flow and surge at the drop of a contact. In the corner, near the control bank, is an icon to Tangid, the two-faced Lord of Power. The two controllers sit in comfortable chairs in front of the control board and spend their days reading magazines. Their job is almost entirely automated, but the union insists they have to stay here in case of an emergency, and their contract even gets them hazard pay, just in case terrorists burst in the door waving machine-guns and demanding a dose of power.
    Aiah is escorted to the archives. Lastene and Grandshuk follow like obedient hounds. She’s back in the Battery Room a few minutes later, she and her team carrying bundles of maps, transparencies,