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so, her anima will be dissolved once she touches it - harmless to her real
body, other than through disorientation to her senses.
So far as she knows there's no way to find out except by trying. She
visualizes herself a pair of arms, invisible bone and muscle animated by
plasm, and reaches down into the hole, touches elements of the metal web.
Nothing. At least the structure isn't hostile to her.
Aiah doesn't know the type of hard alloy used here, and doesn't know enough
chemical geomaturgy to find out, but she reasons that at the very least she
can melt the stuff, so she calls for an increase in plasm flow along her
sourceline from Mage Towers, and directs the power as heat energy along the
arms of her anima.
For the longest time nothing happens. But the metal finally blackens, then
begins to burn with a dull red heat, and then at last glows white. Little bits
of flame lick up. Drops of liquefied alloy spill from the exposed rebar. Aiah
pulls the liquefied metal upwards with a tug of her mind, pulls it out of the
concrete, and sees it settle like bright quicksilver in low places in the
fractured concrete. She wants to get rid of it altogether, so she lofts it
up, a reverse waterfall of bright liquid metal, out the lip of the pit and
along the floor of the room. There it can cool and harden for all she cares.
She visualizes herself more arms, each one touching a piece of exposed rebar,
and then calls for more power. The concrete cracks with sharp popping sounds
as the metal within expands. She extracts more and more of the alloy, then
reaches downward with her arms, into the concrete itself, and gathers more
metal into her incorporeal fingers. Her awareness reaches out into the
structure and she can see the whole alloy web, feel the weight of the
concrete, sense, below this layer, the huge beams that support its weight.
Aiah digs into the structure like a burrowing animal, ripping up concrete with
her claws, throwing it back into the room behind her while she fountains
molten alloy upward. Her awareness effortlessly encompasses the workers who
have seen, or probably heard, the activity and are watching with interest
while keeping a wary distance. Aiah punches through the concrete layer into
the soft layer below, then one of her plasm-fingers touches a support beam.
Aiah feels herself light up like a neon display. The liquefied metal shoots
white-hot through her veins. The support beam is a part of what they're
looking for, the glory hole, and the huge sleepy well of power leaps instantly
to life, the power awesome and inexorable, like a reservoir of energy suddenly
burst into flood.
Aiah laughs, and it seems as if all Jaspeer trembles to the sound. Aiah draws
her fingers upward, drawing the power up after her, concrete shattering at the
force of her power, whirling out of the pit, the remaining rebar twisting at
her force, snapping like licorice.
The pit is clear, and the workers can set up their tap now. Her anima hovers
over the hole, in a billowing cloud of concrete dust, and she feels herself
inflate with power, become a giant with a heart of blazing fire. It occurs to
her that she ought to tell the workers that the beam below is part of the
plasm well, and that they shouldn't touch it, but she knows they can't see her
anima, and she doesn't know how to communicate to them.
She creates a wind to blow the dust away, and tries to fashion a body for
herself out of her thoughts; imagine it, the lines of it, the skin and sinew
and structure, a heart that pumps glowing plasm through its veins. Aiah wills
the plasm-skin to fluoresce, become visible to the workers. She sees them
react, throwing up hands to shield their eyes from the light she can see her
red-gold radiance reflecting from the pillars, glowing in the clouds of dust
that she's pushed out to the limits of the room. She tries to give herself a
mouth, a tongue, a breath, a voice that she can speak with.
'The iron beam at the bottom of the pit is live,' she says. 'You must insulate
yourself from it. Nod if you understand me.'
Some of the stunned figures clap hands over their ears, but they all nod. Aiah
laughs at her triumph, at the energy that floods her, leaps at the very touch
of her will. More hands clap over ears.
Her task is done, but Aiah finds herself reluctant to leave. The energy that
floods her mind is exhilarating, a liberation greater than anything she's
known. Nothing seems beyond her capabilities. She considers going for a stroll
in her current anima - flying into the sky, righting a few conspicuous wrongs,
inscribing a poem across the sky, something dazzling.
But no. The workers need to get into the pit, and it would be dangerous to
have a live sourceline, charged with plasm, running out of the pit to Aiah's
anima. Aiah decides to compel her second sourceline to shrivel, to close off
the tap of power, but a few reluctant seconds pass before she can will it to
happen. The radiance reflecting off the brick pillars fades to a dull orange.
Even though her original sourceline to Mage Towers is still alive, Aiah feels
diminished. To avoid disorientation she prepares herself mentally to return to
Mage Towers, then slowly turns the other tap, the Mage Towers sourceline, and
allows her anima to shrivel, her plasm-senses, so brilliant and alive, to fade
away, to be replaced by the diminished reality and shrunken perceptions of a
young woman sitting in someone else's apartment many radii away. 13
LOTTERY SCANDAL ALLEGED! DETAILS ON THE WIREl
Work has ended for the day. Aside from a pair of guards, Aiah is alone with
Sorya in the big building. Their heels clack loudly in the narrow spaces
between the looming accumulators.
'A flaming woman,' Sorya says. Her long forest-green dress swirls about her
ankles; ruby earrings and necklace glow in the shadows with a smoky light.
'You astounded our crew,' she says. 'I must say, Miss Aiah, that you have a
greater dramatic sense than I'd given you credit for.'
Surprise tingles ominously along Aiah's nerves as she walks with Sorya along
the factory floor.
'A burning woman?' Aiah says. 'Is that what I looked like?'
Amusement glitters in Sorya's green eyes. 'Didn't you know?'
i wanted my anima to fluoresce. I didn't know what I really looked like.'
Sorya gives a tigerish grin. 'You nearly scorched the eyebrows off a couple of
them.'
'Ah.' Aiah is absorbed by thoughts of the burning woman. Is this how it
starts? she wonders. If she hadn't turned the tap when she did, perhaps she
would have become a flaming giant stalking the streets of Jaspeer.
Sorya pauses, lips tilted in a smile. 'Not that the crew would look away,'
she adds, 'since you forgot to give your anima any hint of clothing.'
'Ah.' Aiah glances down at her gangly body and is embarrassed to consider its
defects magnified by plasm, skinny legs and pointed elbows and every rib
visible more humiliating, really, than the mere fact of nudity. Now, she
thinks enviously, if she'd really wanted to give the workmen an eyeful, she
should have thought to clothe her anima in Sorya's body, with its abundant
curve of hip and breast, narrow waist and legs of whipcord muscle.
Sorya reaches out, touches the black ceramic surface of an accumulator. It's
so polished that Aiah can see the blue eddies of the other woman's reflection
in its surface. 'At least we're tapping the stuff now,' Sorya says. 'No more
monsters, no more strange effects to call attention to what we possess. Since
we won't be needing it, we'll want you to lead a work party down into the
pneuma station to seal off that old toilet.'
Entombing the plasm diver's mummy, Aiah thinks. If only remembrance was buried
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