Nightside CIty (18 page)

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
did
go 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 grey 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, available 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 never saw before,
huge and middling ugly, with a face like a potato that 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 it was there, because
without looking he said, “Shut up, Bobo.” 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 and said, “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 and said, “Okay, that’s got
it.”