Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  I half expected some security gadget I had never heard of to turn me into bubbling protoplasm, but instead a voice announced, "Mis' Nakada is being consulted. Please stand by."

  I stood by, feeling the gun quiver as it searched for a target and didn't find any.

  After thirty seconds that seemed like a year or so, another voice spoke, one too nasal for a machine.

  "I'm Sayuri Nakada," it said. "Who the hell are you and what do you want here?"

  I let the gun sag a little. "Mis' Nakada," I said. "If that's really you, what I want is to talk to you quietly somewhere, in private, about your plans for buying up city real estate cheap and then stopping the sunrise so that it's actually worth something. I'm going to either talk it over with you, or I'm going to put everything I know on the public nets-I've got it all on my com programmed to go out if I don't override by a particular time." I wished I had thought of that back home and actually done it, instead of using it as a last-minute bluff like this. All the incoming data I'd used were in the ITEOD files, of course, but the guesses I'd made weren't anywhere but inside my head-and I had never been able to afford to have backup memory implanted, so if I died those guesses died with me.

  Of course, Nakada had no way of knowing I was bluffing. And if I lived long enough to get back to my office, I promised myself, the next time out I wouldn't be.

  I gave her a moment to let my words sink in, then turned off and holstered my gun and resealed my jacket. "What'll it be?" I called.

  She was silent so long I thought I'd crashed it somehow, and I began to worry about what would happen if some pedestrian or patroller came by while I was standing there uninvited on somebody's unlit front terrace, very much private property in a very exclusive neighborhood.

  Then the voice that had claimed to be Nakada demanded, "Who the hell are you?"

  "My name's Carlisle Hsing, Mis' Nakada," I said. "For more than that I'd prefer someplace more private, where I can see you and I don't have to shout." Not that I was actually shouting; I had faith in the quality of her security equipment.

  "All right, then," she said. "Get in here." A door suddenly opened in the wall, not at all where I'd have expected it, and a light came on behind it.

  I considered the possibility that I would be walking into a trap or some other form of serious trouble, trouble that would be more than I could handle, and then I shrugged and walked in. Faint heart never won fair wager, or however that goes.

  The entryway was lush but amorphous; I suppose that if I'd been company, rather than a nuisance, she'd have had it shape up a little, into something more presentable. Even in its unformed state, though, I could see the fine textures in the walls, the graceful curves to the base forms, the rich reds and greens, and of course it was as spacious as anyone could ask. Programmed, I figured it would be on a par with the honeymoon suite at the Excelsis, which was the classiest room I'd ever been in.

  And why I was once in the honeymoon suite is none of your business, but it sure wasn't a honeymoon.

  A door peeled back from an inner wall, and I stepped through into a hard-edged little chamber done in black and silver, with a holo on one side of a planet seen from space -not Epimetheus, because it was turning. A silky black divan drifted over to me, and I settled cautiously onto it, sitting upright. The music was something old-fashioned and rather boring, but of course I didn't really listen to it.

  A moment later another silky black divan appeared, sliding through a blackness I'd taken for a wall, but this one had a woman sprawled on it.

  This was either Sayuri Nakada or one hell of a good imitation; I'd seen her recorded from every angle when I studied up on her, and this person looked exactly right. She had black, straight hair, like most people, but she wore it very long and completely natural, with no slicking or shaping at all. Her skin was a warm, golden color, and she had epicanthic folds that looked as natural as her hair. She was lovely-with her family's money, she ought to be.

  Of course, when I say that her hair or eyes were natural, I'm guessing. They looked natural, but for all I know she was born blonde and round-eyed.

  She was wearing a semisheer housedress with a color scheme that did nothing for me-it was mostly shifting blues and gold linework. I was wearing scarlet and double white, myself, on static setting-worksuit and jacket. I was working; I didn't need frills like color shifting.

  Besides, in a place like the Trap, something bright that didn't move caught the eye, and I didn't mind if people were distracted from my face.

  Her legs were long and her feet were bare and she was eyeing me as if my gun were pointed at her face, instead of neatly tucked away under a sealed jacket.

  I wondered if it was really Nakada. She could afford a good imitation, if she wanted one. I could be looking at a holo, or a sim, or even a clone.

  But I didn't really think it mattered. Whoever was in charge, whether it was the original Sayuri Nakada or not, whether it was the woman in front of me or not, had to be listening.

  We watched each other for a while, and I hoped my face wasn't as openly hostile as hers was.

  "You wanted to talk to me," she said.

  "Yes, Mis' Nakada," I said. "I did."

  "Here we are," she said, waving a hand. "Talk."

  I grimaced. "I'm not sure where to begin," I said. "What I need to know is just how you plan to stop Nightside City from reaching the dayside."

  "Why?" she demanded, glaring at me. "What business is it of yours? And what makes you think I plan anything of the sort?"

  Right there, I had all the confirmation I needed that she really was planning on it, because if she hadn't been, that last question would have come first.

  Hell, if she'd had any sense, that last question would have come first in any case, so I'd also confirmed that her personal software wasn't completely debugged.

  "It's my business because I live here, Mis' Nakada," I said. "I was born here in Nightside City, I grew up here, and I've never been outside the crater walls in my life. The city's important to me, and anything that concerns its future concerns me. That's why, and what my business is, and as for what makes me think you're up to something, I found out while I was on a case."

  "A case?" An instant of puzzlement seemed to flicker across her face. "Oh, you're a detective." From the way her eyes moved when she said that, I didn't think she figured it out; I thought she'd gotten the word over an internal receiver. She'd have one, of course, or more likely several. She probably had more control over the com when she was just lying there than I did when I was jacked into my desk.

  "Yeah, I'm a detective," I said.

  "But how did you find out? And however you found out, don't you already know what I'm planning?"

  She was trying to be slick, I think, trying to find out what I knew and what I didn't know by playing dumb. I didn't mind playing along; the best way to get information out of someone, short of a brain-tap or drugs or torture or otherwise doing things that I couldn't do to someone like Nakada, is to make her feel good, make her think she's outwitting you, so she gets careless.

  "I found out that you're buying up city real estate," I said. "I found out that you've been making secret calls to the Ipsy that they won't talk about. I talked to people and found out that you've got people at the Ipsy working for you to keep the city out of the sunlight, so that your real estate will be worth a fortune. But that's all I found out, so far, and I don't like it. I want to know just how you plan to keep the sun off. I want to be ready for it."

  "The Ipsy?" She looked puzzled for an instant again, and then her eyes twitched again, and she said, "Oh, the Institute!"

  I wondered how in hell anyone could live on Epimetheus as long as she had and not know that it was called the Ipsy. This woman, I realized, was badly out of touch with the city and probably the rest of the world around her.

  "Yes, the Institute," I said.

  "They wouldn't tell you anything?"

  "No," I said.

  "Well, good for them." Sh
e almost smiled.

  "Mis' Nakada," I said. "They wouldn't tell me anything because it's not their place. They're working for you. But if you don't tell me, then I'll have to tell the whole city everything I know. I don't know everything, but I know enough to convince people that you're planning something. How much real estate do you think you could buy cheap if that happened? You've got to tell me what you're doing, or I'll crash the whole deal." I tried to make it very intense, very sincere.

  She waved that away. "What if I just run some free-form scrubware through your com instead, Mis' Hsing? And then kill you, of course."

  It was my turn to wave away nonsense. "You must know better than that, Mis' Nakada," I said, with maybe a hint of a reproving tone. "I'm a licensed detective, and I'm in good health and still young enough. If I die, the city's got copies of all my files in the high-security event-of-death section, and they'll give them a good, close going over. I don't think even you can get into the ITEOD files without causing more trouble than you want and probably giving the whole show away."

  "All right, then," she said. "How do I know you won't put it all on the nets anyway, even if I do tell you?"

  "You don't," I said. "Not really. But why should I? Look, I don't want to see the dawn any more than you do. My whole life is here. If you're really going to save Nightside City, I'm all for it, and I don't give a damn if it does make you richer than your old man and leave you running the city for the next century. That's none of my business. My business is staying alive, and knowing whether I really need the fare to Prometheus or not, or whether there's a particular time that might be a good time to go visit the mines, or whatever. I wouldn't be adverse to maybe picking up some investment advice, for that matter, but that's strictly on the side; it doesn't affect the basic issue."

  "So you're just worried about when I'll do it?" she asked, and it seemed as if she was a bit calmer, less angry.

  "That, and how," I said. "Because for all I know what you have in mind might make the neighborhood unpleasant for a while. After all, the real estate is still valuable even if half the city gets knocked around."

  She nodded. "That's right, that's exactly right."

  I nodded back and waited.

  She smiled.

  "So tell me," I said.

  She sighed a little, or maybe just pouted. "All right," she said. "I'll tell you. It's simple enough. My people are going to set off a directed fusion charge that will stop the planet's rotation dead. Nightside City won't go anywhere after that; it'll stay right where it is now." She smiled again.

  I waited for her to go on, but she didn't. I considered what she'd just said.

  "One charge?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  "You're planning to stop the entire planet with one charge?" I asked.

  "That's right," she said, with a big, stupid, self-satisfied smile.

  "That's all?" I was having trouble controlling my face.

  "What else do you want?" she said, exasperated. "It's simple enough."

  I chewed on my tongue for a minute to keep from screaming and calling her an idiot. That was the problem; it was much too simple.

  I wasn't ready to say that straight out. Instead I asked, "But isn't that likely to cause a lot of damage?"

  She looked puzzled. "Why?"

  "Because," I said, "if you stop the entire planet all at once, there's going to be something of a bump, isn't there?"

  That was a truly unforgivable understatement, but she was so calm about it all that I couldn't bring myself to say anything more. I thought that, if I did, I'd start shrieking at her.

  "Oh, I suppose so," she said. "But not too much. The planet's already moving so slowly that it should be easy to stop."

  "Are you sure?" I demanded. It didn't sound right.

  "Of course I'm sure!" she insisted.

  "The people at the Ipsy all agree with this?" I persisted. "They don't think it's risky?"

  She waved that away. "Of course they agree."

  "All of them?"

  "They aren't all involved. What business is it of yours, anyway?"

  I backtracked. "It isn't, it isn't. Sorry. I was just curious." I tried to look innocent. "So when's the big day? Why haven't you already done it? You've bought a good chunk of the city, haven't you?"

  "Not enough!" she said, suddenly surprisingly vehement. "Not hardly enough! Besides, the charge isn't ready. It's got to be calculated perfectly and set up in just the right places. I really don't want to hurt anything."

  I nodded. "So when will it be ready?"

  "I don't honestly know," she admitted. "My people at the Institute will let me know. They tell me it should be ready in a few weeks."

  I nodded again. I had to get out of there. "Mis' Nakada," I said. "You've been very kind, and I just have one more favor to ask. As soon as you have a definite date, could you let me know? Please? Just call my com and leave a message; it'll get to me."

  She smiled and gave me her best condescending-to-peasants look. "Of course," she said. "I'd be glad to."

  "Ah… I know how busy you must be," I said. "Could you put that in your tickler file now, while you're thinking of it?"

  The look wasn't quite as friendly now. "Of course," she said again. "It's done."

  "Thank you," I said.

  Then I left. I had to get out of there fast, before I lost control and shot her.

  Chapter Twelve

  DEPENDING ON WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT EPIMETHEUS and planetology in general, you may be wondering either why I wanted to shoot her, or, if you're a little more up on the subject, why I didn't shoot her. I'll take the second question first.

  I didn't shoot her because I knew that if I did, I would never make it out of the city alive. I probably wouldn't make it out of the house alive. And the idiots at the Ipsy might just be dumb enough to go on without her. I needed a less direct approach.

  As for why she deserved to be shot, just think about it for a minute.

  Epimetheus is about 9,056 kilometers in diameter, with a density of seven grams per cubic centimeter. A rough calculation on a unit in my head gave me a figure of twenty-six times ten to the twentieth tons for the total mass, but I probably messed that up somewhere. In any case, we're talking about trillions of tons of mass. We're talking about a very thin crust that's rotating at 138 centimeters a day at the city's latitude.

  Now, I admit, that's not very fast. If you were in a cab moving that fast, and it hit a stone wall and stopped instantly, you could probably just step out unhurt. The cab would probably be unhurt. But a cab is a solid piece of fibers and ceramics, designed to take a lot of stress and with a mass of maybe half a ton. A planet's a dynamic system, and there's just so much of it.

  Let's suppose that they set off a charge designed to exactly counter the momentum of the planet's rotation-exactly the right amount of energy. Where are they setting this charge off?

  On the surface, presumably, or just below.

  You think it's going to stop the core? Or the mantle, which isn't even completely solid to begin with?

  Hell, no; the crust is going to rip itself loose from the mantle and probably come apart completely. The crust is already pretty thin and delicate on Epimetheus, with volcanoes scattered all along a million fault lines; where most planets have maybe a couple of dozen continental plates, Epimetheus, because of its hot interior, has thousands.

  If you wanted to stop the planet from rotating, first you'd have to fasten it all together with something a bit stronger than the hot rock and gravity it has naturally. As it is, a big shaped fusion charge is just going to ram one or two plates back against the others and tear a big hole in the crust-if you're lucky.

  More likely it would just vaporize a piece of crust. I've never heard that shaped fusion charges are all that reliable to begin with.

  And then there's the meltdown factor.

  Let's consider that charge again. It's putting out one hell of a lot of energy, very quickly. Theoretically, most of that's going to be k
inetic energy, directed against the planetary rotation. Some of it is going to be light and heat, though; a lot of heat.

  And that kinetic energy is bumping right up against the kinetic energy the planet's already got. When you run those together, they don't cancel out; there's this little detail called the law of conservation of energy, which I know doesn't always apply, but it's still a good rule of thumb when you're working with large-scale, low-energy, normal-space systems like planetary surfaces. If the two kinetic energies are perfectly matched, the two moving masses do stop, all right, but the energy doesn't disappear. It just changes form. In this particular example, it mostly changes to heat.

  So you've just added who knows how much heat energy to Epimetheus, which is already a very young, hot, and radioactive planet, which is why the nightside is habitable.

  Epimetheus is Eta Cass A III. Ever hear of Eta Cass A II? They never agreed on a name for it, because the obvious one, Vulcan, was taken. I grew up calling it Cass II.

  It's molten. And that's not because of its proximity to the sun, either. It's a runaway fission reactor. While it was still liquid, still forming, enough of the radioactives settled down to the core to reach critical concentration. It wasn't enough to go bang, but the chain reactions are still going strong, and that whole planet's going to stay molten for a long, long time yet. Not to mention all those unhealthy fission products-though I suppose most of them never reach the surface.

  You add enough heat to Epimetheus, and it might melt down, too. Hell, the planet's laced with uranium and thorium and other radioactives-that's why they mine it. A little added heat and motion would stir those radioactives up; because they're heavy, they're already settling down through the mantle toward the core and collecting there. Add heat, and you'll speed that up, at the very least. You'll be adding energy to an unstable system, and you might just be accumulating critical mass in the core, and the whole damn thing could wind up as radioactive slag.