Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams Page A

hears the etching belt begin to roll, the grind of the communications head that she’s forgotten to lubricate, and then there’s Gil’s voice. There’s a lot of noise in the background, clattering and loud music. Gil sounds bewildered and lost.
    “I’m calling from a club, and I don’t know why because it’s costing a fortune . . . but I miss you so much that I can’t stand it, and I just wanted to tell you that . . .”
    Now, in the silence of her black glass tower, Aiah feels free to go to pieces.
     

CHAPTER 7
     
    Next day Aiah can barely move. One side of her face is so swollen that the ballooning flesh seems a part of someone else. Only the pain reminds her that this disfigurement is hers. Deep purple bruises bloom over her body. Her ribs feel as if they’re displaced an inch to the left. When she tries to walk a bolt of pain shoots up her leg; she takes off her sock and finds someone has stomped on her right foot: two toes are swollen and black, and the nails broken. She doesn’t even remember it happening. She doesn’t think the toes are broken, but she can’t be sure.
    Aiah limps toward the bathroom mirror. She can’t even look at herself: she’s like a member of the twisted, one of the grotesque ones. And, she remembers, she’s supposed to spend the prebreak leading her team through tunnels under Old Parade.
    Aiah hobbles to the plasm batteries, returns to the mirror, hesitates. She’s apprehensive about tampering with herself this way, of making actual physical alterations.
    How did the twisted get twisted? Just this way, some of them.
    But still, healing is the most common plasm art. How much talent does it take? Aiah puts a hand on the battery, feels her heart lift with the onrush of the goods. She raises her metal charm to her swollen cheek, touches it lightly to the sensitive skin. Tries to will the pattern into herself, compel the tissue to heal, edema to flush from the torn tissues. The mummified face of the plasm diver floats into her mind, and she resolutely banishes it. Slowly , she thinks, gradually .
    The battery empties partway through the procedure. Aiah looks at herself, sees the swelling noticeably reduced, the purple bruise lightened. She seems to be on the right track.
    Aiah reaches for another battery.
    A few minutes later the two-tone chime of her array interrupts her. She decides to ignore the call, but when she hears the first grind of the communications head she realizes it might be Gil, and she leaves the battery and limps to the array. She picks up the headset and holds an earpiece to one ear, and hears her mother’s voice. “Here’s what I thought,” Gurrah says, and Aiah doesn’t need to hear any more. She returns the headset to its hook and goes back to the bathroom.
    The communications head grinds on as Aiah continues her attempts at healing — apparently Gurrah’s remembered to keep the message key depressed this time. Aiah’s cheek warms as plasm flows through it. She straightens, takes her hand off the battery, brushes the skin with her fingertips. Acceptable, she thinks.
    There’s an abrasion she can’t seem to heal entirely, and a little bruising around the eye, but she can cover these with cosmetics. The grotesque swelling has faded entirely.
    And now the rest. She treats her foot, her bruises. Skill grows with practice. As a finale she pours energy into her body, banishing the after-effects of pain and fatigue.
    Better. The battery indicator glows purple, so there’s still a half-charge in it. Aiah puts on her jumpsuit and hardhat and leaves for work, arriving late to find Lastene and Grandshuk waiting. She leads them off on the day’s assigned search. Far underground she finds an isolated, uncharted pipe with a small plasm potential, and she notes it on her charts and marks it with a red tag.
    Making the city a little richer.
    After lunch bought from a street-corner vendor Aiah returns to the Avenue of the Exchange. From a hardware store she buys a