Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  He hesitated, and the gun lowered slightly. "Not now. I need to think about this, talk it over with the others."

  "All right," I said. "I can wait."

  "I don't know how long it will take," he said.

  "I'm in no hurry." I smiled at him.

  "Listen," he said. "I can't leave you loose in the Institute, with that gun and your present attitude. Get out of here, go back to where you came from, and we'll call you, within… within twenty-four hours. If we don't, you go ahead and put whatever you want on the nets."

  I considered that, and I didn't much like it. Anything could happen in twenty-four hours. They could fire off the big one and make all my questions moot. They could all be off-planet in an hour.

  But it didn't look as if I was going to get him to tell me anything right there, and somebody might have called the cops already, or put something in the air that would take me right out, not to mention that he was quite right about what would happen if any triggers got pulled. I figured I could still dicker a little, but I couldn't fight.

  "Two hours," I said. "And nobody leaves the city."

  He glanced at the woman. "All right, two hours."

  I nodded and backed out toward the street, with the HG-2 easy in my hand. "Nobody leaves the city," I repeated.

  He nodded. "Nobody leaves."

  I nodded back, and then I was out in the corridor; I turned and struggled not to run as I hurried to the door, feeling very, very exposed.

  It wasn't a run, but it wasn't all that dignified, either. All the same, I got out before any cops or security machines got me, and that was the important part. I remembered to stop at the door and turn off the Sony-Remington and shove it back in its holster; then I stepped out of the shadows into the red glow of the night sky, and I called a cab.

  Chapter Fourteen

  BY THE TIME THE CAB LIFTED I WAS HAVING SECOND thoughts. I couldn't flag exactly where I'd screwed up, but I knew I had somewhere along the line. I didn't have enough control. I'd given Doc Lee and whoever else was involved two hours to come up with something, and that was at least an hour and fifty-five minutes too long.

  But I didn't see what else I could have done. I hadn't had any time to waste, because the charges might already have been set, despite what Nakada said. I'd had to get into the Ipsy fast, and I hadn't seen any other way than with the gun. If I'd tried going in on wire I'd have hit high security-wouldn't I?

  Maybe not, but I'd thought I would. I hadn't stopped to see if I was right, and maybe I should have.

  Of course, maybe all the work was being done in human skulls and other closed systems, in which case I wouldn't have found anything even if I had gone in on wire.

  Going in in person had seemed the only way. Using the gun to get answers had seemed the best way. Nobody had ever called my bluff quite so completely before.

  That made me wonder about this Doc Lee. I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard of him or not; he might have been on a couple of public affairs feeds, but I couldn't swear to it. Just who the hell was he? Was this idea of stopping the planet's rotation his? What was his position at the Ipsy?

  I didn't know, and I knew that I should. I would have used the cab's terminal to see what I could get on him if I had had anything left on my card besides last-line bank credit.

  Instead I forced myself to stop worrying about that particular detail for a moment while I looked around.

  The Trap was big and bright and a million vivid colors out the cab's window on the right, the burbs mostly low and in dim shades of gray on the left. A line of advertisers squealed past overhead, but didn't target me; a spy-eye looked in, then turned away, obviously after someone else. The city was going about its business, just as it always had, and except for a handful, everybody in Nightside City was still expecting the city to die a slow, steady death with encroaching dawn.

  I wasn't sure whether it was going to die slowly, or live, or die a fast and horrible death that would take me with it.

  Worse, I wasn't sure whether I'd live to see whatever happened. If Lee was a hotshot at the Ipsy he might very well have some way of stopping my files from hitting the nets, even from the ITEOD banks. If he did, he'd have no reason to keep me alive, and although I'd never heard of Paulie Orchid doing anything as big-time as a permanent murder, I didn't think the little bastard would balk if Lee sent him to take me out. After all, Orchid was doing a lot of things now that I'd never have expected.

  And even if Orchid did balk, there was the other muscle, the big guy-Rigmus, or whoever he was.

  Suddenly I was scared as hell. I had screwed this one up bad, worse than when I let that welsher go.

  Of course, it might all work out, I told myself. They might come through and tell me their whole plan, and it might be good and clean, and I might just settle down peacefully. Or it might be a disaster about to happen, and I might accept a little money to keep my mouth shut, enough to get off-planet, and then I might blow the horn on them anyway once I was clear-I didn't mind committing either blackmail or betrayal when the victims were planning mass murder.

  But I was scared all the same that I had screwed up badly, and that I was going to pay for it.

  I was right, too, but I didn't find that out right away.

  The cab dropped me at my door, and I stepped out into the wind and looked around, just in case.

  It looked clear. I didn't have anything with me that would scan much outside the visible, but it looked clear. The wind stung my eyes, and I blinked and opened the door.

  Upstairs in my office I noticed that the window was still black, and I cleared it. If something came at me that way I wanted to see it-not that I expected any approach that obvious.

  I also didn't mind looking out at the city again, seeing the flickering of the Trap and a swarm of meteors that drew golden clawmarks across the deep blue of the sky, hearing the hum of the traffic and the howl of the wind.

  I got myself paté and crackers and a Coke III and I sat down at my desk and tried to think of what I could do with my two hours that could possibly be of use.

  The obvious item was to run up a file on Doc Lee, so I touched keys.

  His name was Mahendra Dhuc Lee, he was just over a hundred in Terran years, he'd been born on Prometheus, and he was assistant director of research in physical planetology, with a degree from Prometheus and a doctorate from Earth-I'd never heard of either university, so I won't name names. There was more, but it was dull as dirt; like most scientists, he'd never done anything but science and office politics, and either one is boring as hell to outsiders. He appeared to be good at both. Whether it was because he was good enough at both to offend people, or whether there was truth in it, I couldn't be sure, but there was a rumor that he'd been less than completely honest in some of his work-adjusting results to please backers, borrowing other people's work, the usual array of scientific misbehavior.

  It looked to me as if he was someone who thought a lot of himself and always had, despite any evidence to the contrary. I figured that he'd gone into science not because he was good at it, or enjoyed it, but because he'd bought the line about science being the key to the future, the field for someone who wanted to really accomplish something.

  Of course, he should have gone into polyspatial physics or something, then, instead of planetology; I'd bet that he picked planetology just because it had been his best subject.

  I couldn't prove my guess, though, because his educational records weren't open.

  I had another guess to make, which was that whatever he was working on for Nakada was intended to be his big score, his way of making his name and fortune, just the way it was for Nakada. Except he didn't have family and money supplying him with second chances; if he crashed on this one, that might be it for him.

  I called for anything on his most recent work, but came up blank. I had his basic biography, but details wouldn't come, just the outline.

  That much, and a whole string of tedious interviews, were on the public records, availab
le to anybody who asked. I wanted more than that, but I hesitated to go after it. I didn't know what security I might hit. I didn't know what might come after me. I didn't want to plug into the com when there might be somebody at my door any minute; it's hard to maneuver quickly with a wire fastened to the side of your head.

  I put it aside and I finished my meal and I waited, and about fifteen minutes before the two hours would have been up I got a message beep.

  I tapped keys, and Doc Lee's face came up on the screen.

  "We've talked it over," he said, "and we've decided to trust you. We'll give you the full schematics for the whole project. In exchange, we want your word, with legal penalties attached, that you won't put any of this on the net until either full dawn or a halt in the city's sunward rotation, whichever comes first."

  I stared at him. I couldn't believe it. Nothing had gone wrong after all. It seemed too good to be true.

  "And no trespassing or assault charges?" I asked.

  "No charges, either way," he said.

  "All right," I said. "You've got a deal." I smiled at him to show that everything was running smooth and sweet. I felt good. I felt a rush of warmth, but I tried not to let it overwhelm me completely. I still thought there had to be a bug in the program somewhere.

  "Here it comes, then," he said, and the screen filled with gobbledygook.

  I tried to scan it, but it was moving too quickly, and I couldn't follow it.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "Let me patch in some analysis. I can't read this that fast."

  "If you'll jack on line," he told me, "we can feed everything right in with all the interpretation, and you can go through it and see if you have any questions."

  I should have stopped to consider that, but I didn't. The cold little worm of disbelief was too deeply buried in all that warmth. I just nodded and jacked in and said, "Ready."

  You've seen it coming, haven't you? Yeah, you're right. I got horsed. A classic Trojan horse.

  I got the initial feed, good hard data on Epimetheus, Nightside City, all their various motions, the vectors needed to stop the city-and then I hit the neural breaker that cut my body out of the circuit and left me hooked into the system with no way to move my hand and unplug.

  They left the sensory input alone; nothing went but motor control. The bastards knew just what they were doing.

  I'd always known that running on wire was dangerous. That was what I was telling myself, over and over, but it didn't do any good. They had me locked on data reception, on an indefinite hold awaiting transmission, and of course they weren't sending any transmission.

  That sudden cooperation had been too good to be true, all right. Something that seems too good to be true is a pretty sure sign of a con, and I've always known that. I'd fallen right into it, all the same, because I had wanted it to be true.

  I sat there like that, staring at the gigo on the screen, for maybe ten minutes; then the door buzzed as somebody ran an override on it. It opened, and the muscle came in.

  Big and little, just the way the squatters had described them, and yes, the little one was Paulie Orchid. He was smiling and rubbing his palms together.

  The big one was some guy I had never seen before, huge and middling ugly, with a face like a potato that had flunked the port health check, and dirty blond hair that had been hacked off short and left for dead. He looked worried, and when he stepped closer I heard his stomach growl. He had a coil of cable in one hand.

  Orchid took the cable, then bent down and kissed my cheek. I'd have spat at him if I'd been able to move.

  "Hello, Carlie," he said. "Didn't I tell you to mind your own business?" He smiled. "No answer? Feeling shy? Here, give me your hand."

  He reached down and picked my right hand off the keyboard, and I felt my stomach heave. On top of the emotional sine curve I'd been riding, from terror to the relief of Lee's lies and then back into terror when I got horsed, just seeing these two in my office was enough to make me sick. Having that piece of grit touch me and move me around like a toy was too much. Antiperistalsis is not under the control of the voluntary nervous system; I threw my lunch up on his arm.

  He jumped back, and I saw the big one smother a smile.

  Orchid must have known the smile was there, though, because without looking he said, "Shut up, Bobo." He snarled it, more than said it; it sounded like bad brakes on a matatu. "Damn, now we have to clean this up." He slapped me across the face but pulled it at the last instant-I guess he didn't want to leave a permanent mark, though I don't know why he'd worry about that. It still hurt like hell.

  "I'd been thinking of having a bit of fun with you, while you're out of service," he said. "Something to make this more enjoyable for both of us. But you-you've spoiled my appetite for that." He grimaced. "I didn't think anything could do that."

  "Besides, Paulie," the other one, Bobo, said, "if she could still puke while she's under, think what her cunt might do. I've heard about stuff like that, involuntary stuff."

  Orchid glanced at him. He didn't answer, but he'd obviously heard about stuff like that, too.

  Knowing I wasn't about to be raped did damn little for my peace of mind, though.

  They ignored me for a few minutes while they found the necessaries and got the mess tidied away. When that was done they didn't waste any more time on talk; Orchid yanked me out of my chair by my hands, dumped me on the floor, then pulled my hands behind me and tied them together. He tied my legs, stuffed a gag in my mouth, then reached inside my jacket and got my gun out. He dropped it on the desk. That left me pretty helpless even if I could move; he reached down, pulled the plug out of my socket, and stood back.

  I flexed, glad to be back in control of myself, but Orchid had known what he was doing when he tied me up; I couldn't feel any slack anywhere.

  Bobo picked me up and slung me over his shoulder.

  I was wondering, the whole time, just what they had in mind. They obviously weren't just going to shoot me, or they'd have done it already instead of tying me up.

  I also wondered how thorough they'd been in taking out my security systems. Not that I had anything high-powered, you understand, but I wondered what was going to happen to my files, both on site and in the ITEOD banks. I wondered whether the overridden door had recorded their entry.

  I wondered if I'd be around to find out.

  Bobo hefted me. "She don't weigh much of anything." His stomach growled again, and I thought he winced a bit-I wondered if he had some sort of digestive problem, something his symbiote couldn't deal with.

  Not that I really cared if he fell dead from internal bleeding, you understand, but I'm just that sort of person, curious by nature.

  They took me down to the street and dumped me into a cab they had waiting there. It didn't say a word, and the upholstery felt dead. I twisted around for a look at it.

  The cab was an old one, not very well kept up, and they clearly hadn't just picked it at random on their way in. The core access panel was open, and I could see that the motherboard had been cracked across, right through the crystal at the center; they'd killed the cab's brain. I hoped that it hadn't been one of the more self-aware ones; bad enough that my mistakes were getting me shut down, without taking innocents with me.

  Poor maintenance, though, usually meant an independent, and a cab can't buy itself free unless it's sentient. I decided not to think about that any further, not just then. I had enough to worry about on my own account.

  Bobo held me down on the seat with one hand while Orchid leaned over and poked at the exposed circuitry. He made a connection, then pulled back. "Okay, that's got it."

  Nodding, Bobo pulled a needle from his pocket and jabbed under my jaw with it.

  I felt it go in, and then I felt a spreading numbness. I didn't know if it was a bug or a drug or what, but it was obviously something designed to put me out for a while.

  I wondered why they hadn't dosed me back in my office, and decided that it was pure sadism on Orchid's part. He wa
nted me awake and aware of my helplessness for as long as possible. Maybe he even wanted me to see what they'd done to the poor cab.

  I was starting to get fuzzy, but I felt Bobo cut the cables from my ankles and wrists, and I thought I saw him throw them out on the street. I started to turn, but I was fading fast, and before I could get myself running clean the door had closed, with me still inside. I tried to fall against the door, and maybe I did, but it didn't open.

  Then I lost it completely, and I don't remember a damn thing of what happened for a long time after that.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I WOKE UP WITH A HORRIBLE YELLOW GLARE IN MY face; the instant my eyes opened I reconsidered and closed them again. Even then, the darkness was blood red instead of cool black, and I realized I was looking at the insides of my eyelids.

  My skin felt dry and crawling, and the wind was screaming much more audibly than usual, and at a higher pitch. I'd never heard anything like it. It was the only sound; there was no music, no background hum at all. I had a gnawing suspicion that I wasn't in the city anymore.

  I didn't want to think about where I was instead. That blast of light was a pretty clear indication, but I didn't want to think about that.

  With my eyes still shut I felt around and discovered inert upholstery on all sides. I stretched and found that I could move freely; I wasn't tied, wasn't confined in anything very small. Something was in my mouth, though- the gag Orchid had stuffed in. I reached up, pulled it out, and tossed it aside.

  I flexed my right arm; it was still slightly sore from the recoil when I had taken out the spy-eye. My wrists and ankles were a bit chafed, and my mouth was dry. I thought I might still be feeling a trace of whatever had put me under, as well. Other than that, I seemed to be all there and reasonably sound.