Nightside CIty (15 page)

I pointed the HG-2 at a random spot in the
middle of the facade, turned it back on, and said, loudly but not
shouting, “This thing’s loaded with armor-piercing explosive
shells, and they can do one hell of a lot of damage. I need to talk
to Sayuri Nakada. You get her out here, or let me in, and I’ll put
down the gun; you give me an argument and I start blowing expensive
holes in the wall. If she’s not home, you let me in and I’ll wait.
What’ll it be?”

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 back-up 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, but she had epicanthic folds that
looked as natural as her hair. She was lovely—of course, 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 more than one. 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.” She 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
freeform 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 asked, “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 this 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 unforgiveable
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.”