Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  So my parents did the dump and saved up for a couple of years, and with the juice they saved my father bought himself a permanent dream somewhere in Trap Under, where the sunlight will never shine no matter what happens above, and my mother shipped out for parts unknown and hasn't been heard from since.

  Sayuri Nakada's parents didn't go anywhere. The only thing they were tired of was Sayuri. So they dumped her, but the whole family stayed right there on Prometheus.

  Of course, she was still a Nakada, and they couldn't cut all her connections. Legally she wasn't their problem anymore, but they couldn't kick her out of the extended family completely; she was still a Nakada, genetically and emotionally. And despite screwing around with her life for five or six years she still had a pretty good opinion of herself, too, which always helps; self-assurance can be better than family or even money, under the right circumstances. She wasn't about to let herself rot. She used her name to get credit at a bio outlet, cleaned up her act in a couple of weeks, and applied to her great-grandfather, old Yoshio Nakada himself, for a job.

  The old man had an old-fashioned sense of family, I guess. He took her on as a dickerer in the out-system trade, and for a while she surprised everyone and did all right at it. She kept out the gritware well enough, and kept things running smoothly-usually. She did mess up sometimes, bought or sold things on her own little whims, but never anything serious until she got bored and decided to impress dear old Grandfather Nakada with how smart she was by buying a big shipload of novelty genens that he had already turned down. Big genens, not microbes, from the size of your hand up to the size of a cab, but too stupid for skilled labor; they were meant for pets, or servants, or whatever. Little Sayuri had had a few around over the years, as I mentioned, and maybe that's why she went for them. She figured she knew better than the old man did-she'd turn a quick profit on her own and amaze all and sundry with her brilliance.

  Well, she wasn't smarter than he was, after all; the genens didn't sell, or they died while still under warranty, or they broke things and ran up liability suits. One of the smarter ones even got hold of some legal software and applied for citizenship, but it failed the qualifiers and left Nakada with its bills.

  Grandfather Nakada was still big on family, though-I guess he can afford to be. Sayuri got bailed out and given another chance.

  Then a year or two later she suddenly decided the bottom was about to drop out of the market for psychoactive bacteria and she refused to buy a big incoming batch of prime stock; she simply wouldn't take them, not even at straight shipping cost. Word got out, and the other big buyers panicked and cancelled orders, but the street market was still just as good as ever, so the stuff that stayed on the market went at triple price-and everybody had it, except Nakada Enterprises.

  After that, the old man decided that little Sayuri might do better elsewhere, and he sent her to Epimetheus to oversee the family business in Nightside City. Except that the family business in the city consisted of the New York and a few simple trade and supply runs, and maybe an occasional experiment, and the New York, with Vijay Vo in charge, pretty much ran itself. And they didn't let her mess with anything else much, either.

  It was exile, of course, but only temporary, since everybody knew that the city was going to fry, and that she'd get shipped back to Prometheus when the New York first saw the light of day. I figure they thought they were giving her a chance to calm down, to settle in.

  It seemed to work, too. She'd behaved herself for a long time, doing only an occasional small-scale deal of her own, and some of those actually made money.

  It looked to me, though, as if it hadn't worked forever; to me this West End deal looked one hell of a lot like one of her big, splashy, show-the-system projects, like the genens or the psychobugs. I figured she had some scheme up her ass that was supposed to make her rich enough that she could tell her family to eat wire and die, something she was doing entirely on her own so she could come home from Epimetheus a hero instead of a penitent.

  But I still didn't know what the hell the scheme really was. I'd run searches for anything any Nakada ever said about the West End-and I'd come up blank. I'd run searches for anything the West End ever said about her, and got nothing that beeped, just the ordinary gossip I'd get anywhere. I'd run searches for a connection between the West End and genens or psychobugs, and got nothing except cop reports on breeders, bootleggers, poachers, and valhallas, same as you'd find anywhere in the city. I couldn't see anything special about the West End except the very, very obvious-it was worthless because it was about to fry.

  I got myself some paté and tea for lunch and sat down to think about it, still jacked in so I could follow up quickly if anything resembling an idea came to me. I was jacked in, but I wasn't out on wire; I was staring into my teacup.

  Maybe, I thought, it is the obvious that's at work here. Maybe she's buying the West End because it's cheap. Maybe she wants to buy the whole damn city and started with the West End because it's what she can afford.

  That was grandiose enough for her, the idea of buying the whole city. It felt right. And maybe she was taking the trouble to try to squeeze rent out of the squatters to help finance buying more; her own money must be running low, and she wouldn't want to use too much of the family money for fear of having her little scheme uncovered too soon.

  But the city was still worthless, in the long run, because what made it worth living in was its location on the nightside. When it passed the terminator it would be soaked in hard ultraviolet, which meant scorched retinas and blistering sunburns, not to mention a dozen sorts of skin cancer, more than most symbiotes could handle. The temperature -which was already warmer than I liked-would start inching up toward the unlivable. Sunlight would also let the pseudoplankton in the water supply go totally berserk, clogging everything-and those damn things are toxic. Not to mention that every kilometer farther east took the city a kilometer farther from the rainbelt that was the only source of safe water on the planet.

  And I, for one, didn't want to live in perpetual blinding glare. I knew that humans are supposed to be adapted to it, that Eta Cass seen from near-dawn Epimetheus is nominally no worse in the visible range than Sol from Earth's equator, but I didn't believe it, not really. Maybe other people could learn to see in sunlight, but I didn't think I could. I'd spent my life at night; I didn't want to try day.

  Not to mention what the ultraviolet and the solar wind might do to all the electronics. I mean, killer sunburn and skin cancer and burned retinas and a mutation rate measured in percent instead of per million are bad enough for humans, but I suspected that dawn meant a nasty death for unshielded software. Not that I actually know anything about it, but all that random energy pouring through a system has got to do something, doesn't it? Don't they keep everything shielded on planets with normal rotation?

  Domes and shields and protective suits weren't worth the trouble. Everyone knew that. When Nightside City passed into full sunlight it would all be worthless, and Sayuri Nakada knew that as well as anyone, didn't she?

  She had to know it. When the city hit the dayside it would be worthless.

  I swallowed a lump of paté and as I did a thought occurred to me. Maybe, I thought, she saw it a bit differently. Her record back on Prometheus made it obvious that she had her own ways of thinking. Maybe she didn't think of it as "when the city hit the dayside."

  Maybe she thought of it as "if the city hit the dayside."

  Chapter Ten

  I SIPPED TEA AND THOUGHT ABOUT IT. GOING BY HER earlier life, Nakada had a way of not seeing what she didn't want to see, and seeing things she needed even if they weren't there. She certainly still had the knack of ignoring things she didn't like, judging by my attempts to call her.

  I wondered about just what long-term effects her misspent youth might have had on her. The official story is that any decent symbiote will prevent drugs or current or psychobugs or practically anything else from doing permanent damage, and of course Nakada wou
ld have had the best symbiotes and implants that money could buy, but I still wondered if her brain might have had a few circuits shorted-subtle little things that scans and symbiotes could miss, but with a cumulative effect of making her a little stupid, a little bit out of touch with reality.

  Of course, she could have been born a little stupid, too. That can happen to naturally bred kids no matter how rich their parents are. And a childhood like hers didn't exactly force one to face the harsh realities of life.

  Could she be ignoring the approach of dawn?

  That would be a hell of a good trick, with the light glinting off the towers she'd just bought in the West End, and the sky over her home turning blue, but just maybe she could do it.

  Maybe she was misjudging again, I mused, the way she had with the psychobugs. Maybe she thought that people would stay, that the city would be domed and carry on.

  Maybe that, or maybe she had something else in mind. Or maybe I was off on the wrong path entirely; I was writing programs without data, after all.

  I felt that I needed a little bit more, something that would provide a tinge of evidence, one way or the other, and it occurred to me that maybe she had said something to somebody that would give me the clue I needed to put it all together-not anything as obvious as explaining her plans, but just some little indication of how her thoughts were running on the matter of dawn. I had those gigabytes of data to search, and I knew ways to get more.

  I keyed on dawn, long-range planning, and real estate values, and started the searchers out again.

  While I was doing that, it also occurred to me that other humans might already have the information I needed and be able to retrieve it for me more efficiently than the com could. Nakada and Orchid might be doing their best to keep quiet, but they might have slipped up in an unrecorded conversation somewhere. People do that.

  My next search was a bit illegal, therefore, and I knew I was in serious trouble if Nakada caught me at it, but I figured it was worth the risk. I had to go in on wire, watching ten ways at once and with decoy programs riding beside me, but I got into the city's com billing records and got a list of all calls to or from Sayuri Nakada's home in the past ten weeks.

  I'd done this sort of thing before; com records can be amazingly useful, and the city was amazingly sloppy about guarding them. I suppose they weren't considered important, since they didn't carry any juice. Or maybe the city figured anyone who wanted them could get them somehow, so why bother with fancy security?

  Whatever the reasons, I didn't really have much trouble in getting the records I wanted. I didn't even need all of the precautions I took; only one decoy program caught any flak at all. It was in, out, and I had the names.

  I unplugged and looked over the list.

  A hell of a lot of calls were to Paulie Orchid. That was the first thing I noticed. Others were more interesting, though.

  There were a good many to the New York, which made sense, but a high percentage of them were to a particular human clerk in the accounting department; I suspected that something was going on there that great-grandfather wouldn't have approved of. That could well be where those megabucks spent on the West End came from. That was interesting, but it wasn't what I was after at the moment.

  Plenty of calls were person-to-person stuff that looked like chitchat rather than business, and I noted the names on those for future follow-up.

  Most interesting of all, though, were a dozen calls to an office at the Institute of Planetological Studies of Epimetheus, listed by room number rather than name. Half of them were conference calls with Paulie Orchid.

  That looked very much as if Nakada really did have some scheme in mind for somehow keeping Nightside City worth living in. Really, what else would a Nakada scion want with the handful of biologists and planetologists at the Ipsy, as we natives called the Institute?

  I sat back and considered my next step. I could call the Ipsy, of course, but that might not be wise. After all, if Nakada's scheme were all open and aboveboard, I wouldn't have hit those dead ends. The whole plan, whatever it might be, was obviously supposed to stay secret. Letting someone know that you know a secret you aren't supposed to know is asking for trouble, and I couldn't afford trouble. Hell, I couldn't really afford the tea I was drinking.

  Better to stick with my original intentions and nibble at the edges a bit more, then see what fell into my lap. I put a call through to Qiu Ying Itoh, whom Nakada had called three times in a week three weeks back.

  It didn't take much to get past his guardian software; practically all I had to do was say it was a personal matter, human affairs, and the program patched me right through.

  Itoh was a looker, and I could guess what Nakada had been calling him about. They'd probably had a good time in bed for a few nights, then gone on to other things. I wished I'd taken time to pretty myself up a little more; nothing I could afford could make me look really hot, but I could look decent enough when I tried. My symbiote kept my color healthy, and I had semi-intelligent dye implants on my eyes and lips that I'd gotten for my fifteenth birthday-they were long out of style but still functioning- but I hadn't touched my hair since my little talk with Mariko Cheng.

  Well, I'd already decided to play it distraught, so I just hoped he'd accept that as a sign of distress.

  I also hoped he wouldn't take a close look at the background; my office wasn't exactly the Ginza. I had my scrambler on line to block the call origination signal, as usual, and once again I'd rerouted the call, but Nakada's friends weren't likely to be calling from anywhere as rundown as that office.

  "Mis' Itoh," I said in as silky a voice as I could manage. "I'm calling because I need to talk to someone about Sayuri, and she was talking about you last time I saw her."

  "Sayuri?"

  "Sayuri Nakada."

  "Oh, of course, Mis'…"

  I didn't pick up the cue, on the off chance he'd let it drop.

  He didn't. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I don't know your name, and the com says you're logged on at a public terminal."

  "Yes, I am," I said. "I didn't want anyone else at home to overhear."

  He nodded. "I still didn't get your name," he said.

  I gave up and lied. "I'm Carlie Iida," I said. "Didn't Sayuri ever mention me?"

  "No," he said.

  "Well, she mentioned you," I said before he could ask for any more details. "And that's why I'm calling. I'm worried about her."

  "You are?" he asked.

  "Yes, I am, very much!" I said, rushing it out as if I'd been holding it back for weeks, waiting until I found a sympathetic ear like his. "She won't talk to me, and it's obvious that something's got her really worried, but I don't know what it is and she won't tell me, no matter what I ask her. Can you tell me what it is, Mis' Itoh?"

  He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mis' Iida," he said. "But I don't really know Mis' Nakada very well."

  "Oh, but you must!" I insisted. "I mean, I know why she saw you, and I know it wasn't anything, you know, serious, but she must have talked to you, didn't she? Didn't she say anything that might give you an idea what she's worried about?"

  He shook his head again. "She talked, but it was just pillow talk, how we were going to screw until the sun came up, that kind of thing. She made some joke about how, if that was what we were going to do, then she wouldn't let the sun come up, and I said something about in that case I'd need to be cyborged so I wouldn't wear out, and… you know the sort of talk. She never said anything about being worried. She didn't seem worried; if anything, she seemed ready to celebrate something, but I never knew what." He shrugged. "I'm sorry I can't help."

  I pouted, but it was pretty clear he wasn't going to tell me anything more. "Well, thank you anyway, Mis' Itoh," I said. "You've been very sweet, talking to me about this. Thanks, and I hope you have a good day." I exited the call and sat there looking at the screen for a moment.

  That joke about not letting the sun rise-I didn't like that.

  I picked anot
her of her friends from my list of calls and started to punch in codes, but then I cancelled and took a minute to brush out my hair and tidy up a bit.

  Then I punched in codes.

  Her friends weren't all as pleasant as Qiu Ying Itoh. Some I never got through to, some cut me off, some argued. I used different lies, as I judged appropriate for each case-since I usually had nothing to go on except appearance and how tough it was to reach each person, I probably took some wrong approaches, but I did my best. Whatever my story, I tried to nudge the conversation toward the impending sunrise each time-not that hard to do, since it was always in the back of everybody's mind already.

  I got enough evidence to satisfy myself what she was doing, even though I didn't think the lot of it would count for anything in court. Besides her pillow jokes with Itoh, there were two other incidents that convinced me.

  Nakada had gotten sloppy drunk one night and, among other boasts, had told a friend that she was going to stop the sunrise and send the city back where it belonged.

  Another time, while she was wired with something-I wasn't clear on what and didn't ask-she told her supplier that the scientists were wrong, that Epimetheus was a lot closer to stopping its rotation than they thought, and that dawn would never break over Nightside City. He'd just thought she was crazy.