City on Fire (Metropolitan 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

in acres of cloth, and wishes Charduq had not mentioned it.
    “What new school? I haven’t seen that uniform.”
    “Miss Turmak got me a scholarship. I have to take the trackline to Redstone District.” She holds up her plastic trackline pass.
    “The little bird flies far.” Charduq raises his eyebrows. “Miss Turmak is a longnose, ne?” he says. “It’s a longnose education they’ll give you in Redstone.”
    Aiah shrugs. “It’s a longnose education they have in the state school, too. It’s just not as good an education.”
    “But if you don’t go to school in Old Shorings, you’ll be away from the Children of Karlo.”
    Aiah has heard this argument before, mostly from her own family. “You’ll forget who you are,” they tell her. “You’ll grow up a longnose and lose all your cunning.”
    She looks around the bustle of Old Shorings— the crazy old buildings propped up by metal scaffolds, the street stalls and liquor stores, the jobless young men lounging on street corners and the Operation bagman making his collections— and wonders what is so great about this place that she should have to stay here for the rest of her life.
    “I’ll still live here,” she tells Charduq. “How can I forget who I live with?”
    Charduq smiles down at her benignly. “The little bird will not forget her nest.” He cocks his head. “You’re an Old Oelphil family, aren’t you?”
    Charduq, Aiah figures, is the sort who would care about this kind of silly superstition. The Old Oelphil families are supposed to be the guardians of the Barkazil people, reincarnating from generation to generation rather than continuing on to paradise.
    They seem not to have done the Barkazil much good the last few generations, though, Aiah muses. Where were the Oelphil, she wonders, at the Battle of the Plastic Factory?
    “I’m supposed to be Oelphil on my mother’s side,” Aiah says. “I don’t know about my dad.”
    “I remember your father,” Charduq says. “He looked Oelphil to me.”
    Charduq has been on his pillar so long that he knows practically everybody in Old Shorings. And he’s a relentless gossip as well, always happy to retail the latest scandals.
    “When you’re in Redstone,” Charduq says, “you remember that you’re one of our people’s guardians. You learn that longnose education now, but remember that it’s for our benefit, so we can grow in our cunning.”
    “I’ll remember,” Aiah promises, becoming restless. “I need to catch the trackline now.”
    She opens her satchel and drops her lunch into Charduq’s plastic collection bucket—she knows that once she is in her new school she will be too excited to eat— and Charduq hauls the bucket to his perch with his rope. “You’re generous, little bird,” he says. “A blessing on you, and a curse on your enemies.”
    “Thank you.” Politely.
    Her thoughts are already on the trackline, away from Old Shorings, toward her new life.
    *
    Item #1: Get commo array fixed.
    Item #2: Arrange for cleaning re living quarters. New mattresses, new linen.
    Item #3: New office furniture.
    Item #4: Resign from Plasm Authority.
    Item #5: Gil?
    Item #6: Family?
     
    Items 1 through 3 are the easy tasks, though they take almost until midbreak. Item 4 proves more difficult than she expected—she had been raised on the dole, in apartments provided by the Jaspeeri government in a shambles of a district called Old Shorings. Aiah’s grandparents were refugees from the war that had destroyed the Metropolis of Barkazi, and Aiah had been raised among a people that had lost almost everything: family, tradition, culture, security, hope.
    The Plasm Control Authority had been a route out of Old Shorings and all that it represented. Despite its sloth and ineptitude and pointlessness, the civil service provided security, which was of prime importance to a Barkazil girl who had no stability in her young life.
    Resigning from the Authority was saying farewell to all the