Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  It was my turn to sit back and stare for a minute.

  "All right, Mishima," I said. "Suppose you tell me how you think it ran."

  He gave me a look like I'd just offered to buy his firstborn child at an offensively low price.

  "All right," he said. "I think you went in there and told Nakada that she was being taken, that Orchid and Rigmus and Lee were running a scam on her that had made her look like a complete fool. I think she probably suspected it all along-I mean, the whole thing is so obviously too good to be true. I think you mentioned that her greatgrandfather might be interested in knowing what she'd been doing with her money. I think you suggested that you might tell him, if the circumstances arose. I think she took the hint and asked what it would cost to be sure the circumstances never arose, and I think that the two of you dickered out a specific amount. Since she was a pro once, I suppose it wasn't all that much, but half of it's mine, Hsing. Now, how much was it?"

  I shook my head. "You've got it wrong, Mishima. Right from the start."

  "Then you tell me how it went," he demanded.

  "You tell me something first," I said. "How'd you know it was all a scam?"

  He paused, and I could see he was thinking back and realizing that I'd never told him that. He could say he figured it out for himself, but he was awfully damn sure that I knew it was a scam.

  I guess he decided on the truth.

  "I tapped into your com," he said.

  "Hey, partner," I said. "Wasn't that a sweet thing to do! Hey, what rare trust between partners we have here!"

  "Come on, Hsing," he said. "You were busy. We're partners. You owe me. I just saved us some time and argument."

  "I'll tell you, Mishima," I said. "I don't think the team of Mishima and Hsing is going to make it. Sorry about that."

  "Oh, come on," he said. "Give me a break!"

  "I will," I said. "Don't worry. I know what I owe you. I just don't think that this partnership will run. I'm not going to screw you over if I can help it, Mishima, but I don't think I can work with you, either. I'm telling you that right now, up front."

  "Hell," he said. "Just forget the partnership, then. I don't need you. But you owe me, Hsing, so tell me what you got from Nakada."

  "I did tell you," I said. "Hey, how is it you didn't manage to listen in at the breakfast bar? Then we wouldn't be arguing about it."

  I was being sarcastic, but Mishima took me seriously. "Nakada had privacy fields up," he said. "Those floaters of hers were loaded. I couldn't get anything through. And those three gritheads I loaned you didn't bother to try and hear; they figured I'd get it all from the machines. Even Jerzy."

  "That the one with the chrome face?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  "You know," I said, "maybe they heard and just didn't want to tell you, figured it wasn't your business."

  He spat, offscreen. "Don't give me that," he said. "Of course it's my business, and those three work for me. They didn't hear. You did."

  "Right," I said. "And I told you what I got."

  "So tell me again, and maybe add a few details," he said.

  I nodded. "I'll do that," I said. "First off, you started off well with your little guessing game. I did tell Nakada the scheme was a fake. But you got her reaction wrong. She didn't believe me. Didn't believe a word, thought that I was the one running a con on her, trying to cut her out of the deal. They've got her clipped down tight."

  "Oh, come on," he said. "Don't give me that shit."

  "True," I said. "I swear it. Put it on wire, on oath, on stress-triggered plague test, I tell you she did not believe me."

  "Hsing, nobody is that dumb!" he insisted.

  "You ever met Nakada?" I asked. "She isn't exactly dumb, but she only believes what suits her. Stopping the sunrise suits her right down the line, and she wasn't taking any argument, so I didn't argue."

  "That's crazy," he insisted.

  I just shrugged.

  It wasn't all that crazy, but he couldn't see it. He was Epimethean, like me-except maybe without as much imagination. I could dream about stopping the dawn, but to him, the sunrise was inevitable. He'd lived with it all his life. The idea of stopping it was just gibberish, like turning off gravity. He didn't realize that Nakada looked at it differently. To her, cities were permanent things, and the idea that this one was going to fold up and die, and that there was no way to stop it, was anathema.

  The truth lay somewhere in between, I was pretty sure. With time and money and competent people, Nightside City could probably be saved-but it wasn't worth what it would cost. It would be one of the biggest engineering projects of all time, up there with the terraforming of Venus, but with only a city for payoff instead of an entire planet. A bad investment-but not unthinkable.

  "You believe what you want," I said, "but Nakada doesn't think it's a scam. She still doesn't want the word spread, though, so we drew up a little agreement-I keep quiet, and she leaves the squatters alone. That's all. That's all I asked for."

  He went back to that disbelieving stare.

  "Hsing," he said, "I think I believe you. But if it's true, I've got to ask what the hell is wrong with you, passing up a chance like that!"

  "I don't work that way." Then I exited the call.

  I half expected him to call back, but he didn't, so I didn't have to explain it any further.

  It was all clear to me, plain and simple. I'm a detective. I was then; I am now. I find things out. I sell people information. I keep quiet when I'm paid to.

  But I'm not a blackmailer. Nakada hadn't hired me to find out anything, so she couldn't pay me to keep it quiet.

  I'd stolen that information from her, because I needed it for my client. Information isn't like most property-you can steal it from someone without them ever knowing it's gone, and without depriving them of it. There's no law of conservation of information. You can multiply it from nothing to infinity.

  But it was still Nakada's information. I had no right to spread it any further than I had to. If I took money from her to shut me up, I'd be stealing it.

  And yeah, this is all hypocritical as hell. I did blackmail her, when I made her leave the squatters there. I'm not above selling information that isn't mine. I'm not above a little quiet blackmail. I do what I need to survive.

  But I try and keep my self-respect. I try to stay inside my own limits. They aren't the limits the law sets, but they're limits. Sayuri Nakada had enough problems, what with her blind belief in the gritware Orchid and Lee were peddling her. I couldn't see taking her for all she could afford; that was too cold, too sharp for me.

  Nakada hadn't done anything to me.

  And there's another, more pragmatic point. Blackmailers tend to have a short life expectancy. What I'd taken, she could afford. It was no problem. We could draw up a nice, clear, binding contract without ever saying what I was selling her, and she could be pretty sure that I wouldn't come back for more.

  But if I'd gone for money, how could she know that? What good would a contract be? People get illogical when money comes into the picture. She might worry about whether I'd come back for more, whether people might trace my money back to her and wonder what I'd done for it-any number of things, until one day I was back on the dayside, or maybe in a ditch somewhere with pseudoplankton growing on my tongue.

  And she hadn't done anything to me.

  If it had been Orchid or Lee or Rigmus, if they had Nakada's sort of money, things might have been different. They owed me, just as I still owed Mishima. But I knew how much they had tucked away, and it wasn't enough to tempt me yet. I knew that if I took all of it, they'd find a way to get me-they'd be cornered, and cornered vermin aren't reasonable about these things. If I left enough for them, there wouldn't be enough to be worth the trouble.

  I don't know, maybe there would. If I took a piece off the top of all eight shares, I could put together my fare off-planet-but I'd have eight bitter enemies, all of them also bound for Prometheus.

  I don't kn
ow. I didn't sit down and work out all the ups and downs. I went by instinct, same as I usually do, and I didn't blackmail anyone.

  But I didn't know how to explain that to Mishima.

  He didn't call back. I didn't have to explain anything.

  I did have something to do, though. I'd done my job; it was time to get paid. Zar Pickens owed me a hundred and five credits.

  Reaching him by com was clearly hopeless. I called a cab.

  Chapter Twenty

  The West End stank. I hadn't really noticed it before, but it stank-an ugly, organic smell, a composite of a hundred different things.

  Sunlight sparked from the tops of the towers, brighter than ever, and I winced at the sight of it.

  I reached the address Pickens had given me; the signaller was out, so I knocked on the wall and shrieked, "Anyone home?"

  An overweight woman leaned out a window. "Whad-daya want?" she shouted back.

  "I'm looking for Zar Pickens," I said.

  "Well, you won't find him here," she said. "He moved back east about two days ago, after he got his job back. Those machines they got to replace him couldn't take the work and all broke down. What did you want him for?"

  "He owes me money," I said. "Or someone does."

  She looked down at me. "Hey, you're that detective he hired, aren't you?"

  "Yeah," I said. "Carlisle Hsing, that's me. And I did the job, too. I found out who bought this place, and I have a contract that says you stay rent-free until sunrise-when I get my money."

  She stared. "Well, shit," she said. "I don't have it."

  "Who does? Where can I get it?"

  "Shit, I don't know." She ducked back in, then popped back out. "But hey, thanks for taking care of it!"

  I knew, right then and there, that I was going to get stiffed for the bill-at least until Orchid and Rigmus came around again, which I had already made sure they weren't going to do.

  I wasn't about to go back to them and say, "Hey, boys, one more rent run, please, so I can collect my fee." They'd have laughed themselves sick. Hell, they'd have gone, and I'd have gotten my money-but it wasn't worth it. I wasn't going to let them know I got stiffed.

  I walked on, prowled on, really, cruising through the West End talking to squatters.

  Nobody knew where Pickens was. Nobody knew anything about my fee. Nobody knew anything.

  I gave it about ninety minutes, then said the hell with it and called a cab and went home.

  I ran Pickens through the city directory and got an address. I put through a call.

  He answered.

  "Hello, Mis' Pickens," I said.

  "Oh, hello, Mis' Hsing," he said, and I could see he was nervous.

  "I've got a contract on file here that might interest you. It's an agreement not to evict squatters from property in the West End."

  He looked even more nervous, and it took him two tries to say, "What's that got to do with me?"

  "Mis' Pickens," I said. "This is what you hired me to get. I got it. You owe me a hundred and five credits."

  "Not me," he said. "Hey, Hsing, it's not me. I'm not even out there anymore. I'm working again; I've got a room here in the burbs where the sun don't shine. I'm no squatter."

  "You're the one that hired me, though."

  "No, lady, I'm not, either. I was the messenger, that's all."

  "Yeah, well, then let me give you a message, messenger. I've got what you wanted. I damn near got killed getting it, and it's cost me one hell of a lot more than the lousy hundred credits you gave me as a down payment. Somebody owes me some money."

  "Hey, Hsing, it wasn't me, I swear it. Look, I'll go back out there when I've got a free off-shift; I'll tell them, and they'll pay, all right?"

  "Oh, right," I said, and I exited.

  I figured I might get money a few hours after dawn, if I was lucky. I was mad as hell, and just to annoy myself still more I ran up an account on the case.

  Com charges. Cabfare. Drinks at the Manhattan. Medical bills. The cost of one spy-eye. The cost of the bullet I used to shoot it down.

  I didn't know how to figure the cost of that murdered cab, the one that was weathering away on the dayside, since it had owned itself. But at least, by god, no matter how lousy I felt about it, that wasn't really my fault. I put it in a separate category, off to the side.

  That muscle I'd borrowed from Mishima hadn't come free, I was sure. I estimated what I owed on that.

  Even without the cab, without the eye, without the medical bills, it came to a lot more than two hundred and five credits-and I'd only gotten a hundred on account.

  With everything figured in, cab and all, it was almost half a megabuck.

  I was sitting there staring at that when the com beeped. I punched, and the screen tucked the figures down at the bottom, out of the way, and showed me Sayuri Nakada.

  "Hello, Mis' Nakada," I said, hiding the fact that I was seriously puzzled and a good bit worried by the sight of her. "What can I do for you?"

  She didn't bother with any polite preliminaries. "Who the hell is this man Mishima?" she demanded.

  "Jim Mishima?" I asked.

  "That's the one," she agreed. "He says he's your partner."

  I saw it all pretty clearly. I hadn't blackmailed her, so Mishima had decided to take care of it himself.

  "We aren't exactly partners," I said, "except maybe on a trial basis. I owe him a lot of money-a lot of money, and other debts as well. I agreed to work it off as his partner, but we haven't settled the details. Why?"

  "He knows about that business we discussed," she said.

  "Yeah, I know," I told her. "He tapped my com."

  "You didn't tell him?"

  "Not intentionally."

  "Look, Hsing, if it's that easy to tap your com, maybe you ought to do something about it. I thought we had a deal."

  "We do," I said. "I'll take care of it; I've already cleared everything out of active memory. Mishima got to it before I did that, and I'd let him work on my security because of this partnership thing. The information's safe now-at least on my system."

  "Yes, and what about his?"

  "What about it?"

  "Are you going to clear it out?"

  "No," I said. "I can't. I'm sorry."

  "You said-look, is he your partner or isn't he?"

  I blinked, and considered that. "No, he isn't."

  "You don't feel any special attachment to him? He's not under your protection?"

  That was an odd way of putting it, I thought. "I owe him a lot," I said.

  I knew that wasn't what she was after. I knew what she had in mind.

  "That's all?"

  I hesitated, but finally I said, "That's all."

  I knew what I was doing-but Mishima had brought it on himself. He should have known better. He'd gotten involved uninvited again, and this was once too often.

  I knew, back when I got that skimmer at the Starshine Palace, that Mishima made mistakes, didn't always see the obvious.

  I owed him, but that didn't make me his keeper. I wasn't responsible for his mistakes.

  And I'd never asked him to come out looking for me or pay my medical bills.

  "That's what I wanted to know," she said, and I caught her just before she exited.

  "Hey," I said. "I won't stop you; you do what you need to. But please, remember that I owe him, and that I can't pay a debt to a memory."

  She looked at me out of the screen, then nodded. "I'll try," she said.

  Then the screen blanked for a second, and the numbers from the bottom surged up to fill it again.

  I erased them. I didn't want to think about it.

  The thought of warning Mishima crossed my mind, but I decided against it. Nakada wouldn't appreciate it-and he'd brought it on himself. I'd warned him, and he'd said he could take care of himself. Here was his chance.

  The thought of calling the cops also crossed my mind; after all, I had plenty of evidence against Orchid and Rigmus, and enough against Lee and the
others to at least start an investigation.

  I decided against that, too. I wasn't feeling suicidal. I knew that if I ever brought the cops into it, with Nakada on the other side I'd have the deck stacked against me. And most of my com evidence about the scam Orchid and Lee were running on Nakada had been acquired illegally. If I ever turned it over to anyone, I would be signing my own reconstruction order.

  And this doesn't even mention that the casino cops work under an IRC service contract.

  So I didn't call the cops, about Mishima or anything else.

  It was much later, when I was eating a bowl of rice and considering bed and staring at the negative balance in my primary credit account, that the com beeped again.

  I touched, and 'Chan appeared.

  "Carlie," he said. "I thought you ought to know. Big Jim Mishima's been arrested."

  "What's it to me?" I asked.

  "Oh, come on, Carlie," he said. "Don't give me that. I was there in the hospital. I saw you when he bought you in."

  "All right," I said. "Who's arrested him? What's the charge?"

  "The casino cops picked him up for cheating, at the New York. A security unit broke his jaw, and the management has him under heavy privacy seal. I hear that as victim's privilege they want to wipe his memory and files for the last ten days."

  That made sense. It was something that I could live with. I didn't like it, but I could live with it. It would make everything simple. I nodded.

  "Carlie," 'Chan said, "what's going on? Is this something of yours?"

  I shook my head. " 'Chan," I said, "if it is, do you really want to be involved?"

  He considered that. "No."

  "That's what I thought," I said. Something occurred to me. "Hey," I asked, "how'd you hear about it?"

  "It was on the casino grapevine," he said. "I'm at the Ginza now, and we get a lot of feed from the New York."

  "Oh." I couldn't think of anything more to say. 'Chan just stared out of the screen at me.

  "Thanks for calling," I finally said.