Rohder’s look is intent. “What is my part in all this? Can’t you do this yourself?”
“I am Minister of Resources,” Constantine says, “which in our local political cant means plasm. Resources I have, but not all those I would wish, and my greatest need is for minds. Minds such as yours do not come along every day.”
“I do not think,” Rohder says, “that quite answers my question.”
“I will create a new department within Miss Aiah’s division,” Constantine says. “I think I have enough credit with the triumvirate to be able to do that, particularly when I explain how, and to what degree, our nation may be enriched by such an action. You will be the head of it, though unless you have some strange, unfulfilled desire to be involved with personnel matters, funding, and so on, I will make an effort to find some sympathetic deputy, agreeable to you, to take that business off your hands.” He leans forward and looks close into Rohder’s eyes, searching for understanding.
“I want you to devote yourself to working your theories out in practice. I will provide you with all necessary support, with aerial surveys and as much computer time as you deem necessary.”
Rohder draws on his cigaret as he absorbs this, and lets the cigaret dance in the corner of his mouth as he replies.
“And what do you plan to do with this plasm if I can generate it for you?”
“Ah…” A laugh rolls out of Constantine’s massive chest. “That is the critical question, isn’t it?” He leans even closer, lowers his voice in intimacy. “If it’s made available to other departments, then it will simply be diverted into fulfilling the other ministers’ agendas. I wish to preserve any plasm generated by your theories for other work—other transformational work.”
Rohder absorbs the word transformational with a little frown. “What sort of work do you have in mind?”
“Have you read my book Freedom and the New City?” “Sorry. No.”
“Are you familiar with Havilak’s Freestanding Hermetic Transformations?”
“Yes.” Rohder nods. “Improving the plasm-generating efficiency of structures that already exist by altering their internal structures through magework. It’s an old idea, far older than Havilak.”
“Of course.” Conceded with a smile. “That part of my work is just a popularization.”
“But even after the hermetic transformations, all you get is more plasm. What do you plan to do with the surplus?”
“Plasm is wealth,” Constantine says, and then shrugs. “What does one do with wealth? Spend it, if you’re a fool—and most governments are foolish in the long run. Invest it, if you’re conservative, in such a way as to live off the dividends and never disturb the principal. But if you’re very wise, and possess a certain daring in your spirit, you use it to generate more and more wealth. The very existence of such a stockpile of wealth is transformational, especially in a place like Caraqui, which is so poor.”
Rohder leans back and contemplates Constantine from amid a cloud of cigaret smoke.
“You have a habit of not fully answering my questions,” he says. “Assuming all this comes to pass, and assuming you manage to keep your job, you will have an enormous reservoir of plasm, and you will be in charge of it—so what do you intend to do with it?”
Constantine holds out his hands, smiling gently. “Truly, I am not trying to be evasive,” he says. “The fact is that all actions have unforeseen consequences. It will be decades before this pool of plasm even exists, and in that time Caraqui will, I hope, have changed for the better. I can answer your question only in the most general terms.”
Rohder regards him from unblinking blue eyes.
“Very well,” Constantine says. “I will speak generally, then—I would use this fund to accomplish what the political transformation, by that time, had not. Sell plasm to provide education and housing and medicine for our population generally, clean and replenish this abused sea on which we sit, perform other work of…” He smiles. “Of an exploratory nature. Transformation is very difficult in our world—it takes tremendous resources to build anything new, because one must disrupt the life of the metropolis by settling everything and everyone that is displaced, and tear down the old thing and build the new. But with plasm—with enough plasm—all things can be done. And the geography of Caraqui makes it easy—slide an old barge out, a new barge in, and the disruption to life and the economy is all the less.” His face turns stern, like one of the Palace’s bronze eagles sniffing the wind. “I confess that my ambition is such that I will not leave the world in the same condition as I found it. Reading your Proceedings, I sensed a similar scale of thought. Will you not join me in uniting our dreams and bringing them to reality?”
“I will give it consideration,” Rohder says, and reaches in his pocket for another cigaret.
Constantine produces an envelope and slides it across the table. “This is my offer. I hope you will do me the courtesy to consider it.”
Rohder picks up the envelope and looks at it as if he does not know what it is. Then he crumples it absently, and puts the ball of paper in his pocket with one hand while he lights the cigaret with the other.
Constantine watches this, the gold-flecked eyes glittering with amusement. “If you have finished your meal,” he says, “perhaps you would like a tour of the city on my boat? You may see these barges for yourself, observe how you can transform our entire world with a few engineers, some cranes, and a handful of workmen…”
CRIME LORD DENOUNCES “NEW CITY TYRANNY”
Aiah says good-bye to Rohder and then watches as the man shambles to the waiting aerocar. Wind flutters Aiah’s chin-lace. Constantine leans close, speaks over the whine of turbines. “I hope I may be optimistic.”
“I hope so, too.”
She had enjoyed watching the two operate, Constantine seductive and manipulative, Rohder alternating intense interest with total, blank-eyed opacity. Aiah had found herself wondering if Rohder’s detachment, his total withdrawal from the world, was a strategy. A way of not acknowledging the things he didn’t want to deal with.
How would the Cunning People rate this? she wonders. Who is the passu, and who the pascol?
Turbines whine as they rotate in their pods. Suddenly there is the presence of plasm, crackling in the air like ozone, and Aiah’s nape hairs stand erect as the aerocar springs from the Palace’s pad and jets toward the Shield. The aerocar is a wink of silver in the distance before its trajectory begins to arc toward Jaspeer.
“Now,” she says, “we will find out how bored he truly is.”
Constantine looks at her. “Bored?”
“If he is bored enough in Jaspeer—if he is fed up enough with the pointlessness of his life there—he will come.” Her eyes follow the aerocar on its way across the world. “He only chased criminals with me because he was bored,” she says.
Constantine’s eyes narrow as he absorbs this. “I wish you had told me. It would have made it easier to deal with him.”
“I only realized it just now.”
“Ah.” There is an amused glint in his eye, and he puts an arm around her. His laugh comes low in her ear. “That is your gift, I think, to drive away the boredom of old men. Where was I before I met you? Stewing in my penthouse, occupying myself with trivialities—writing my memoirs over and over in my head, as old men do when there is nothing else to occupy them. And then”—he laughs again, a rumble she feels in her toes—“and then here was Miss Aiah, in the expensive new suit she’d bought just to impress me, with her plans to sell me a treasure trove of plasm she’d just happened to acquire, in hopes I would use it to make her rich and myself the master of the world…”