Lawrence Watt-Evans - Nightside City

Then I punched in codes.

Her friends weren't all as pleasant as Qiu Ying Itoh. Some I never got through to, some cut me off, some argued. I used different lies, as I judged appropriate for each case-since I usually had nothing to go on except appearance and how tough it was to reach each person, I probably took some wrong approaches, but I did my best. Whatever my story, I tried to nudge the conversation toward the impending sunrise each time-not that hard to do, since it was always in the back of everybody's mind already.

I got enough evidence to satisfy myself what she was doing, even though I didn't think the lot of it would count for anything in court. Besides her pillow jokes with Itoh, there were two other incidents that convinced me.

Nakada had gotten sloppy drunk one night and, among other boasts, had told a friend that she was going to stop the sunrise and send the city back where it belonged.

Another time, while she was wired with something-I wasn't clear on what and didn't ask-she told her supplier that the scientists were wrong, that Epimetheus was a lot closer to stopping its rotation than they thought, and that dawn would never break over Nightside City. He'd just thought she was crazy.

Those three were the clearest, but she'd made veiled references about it to half a dozen people. Somehow or other, Sayuri Nakada intended to stop Nightside City from crossing the terminator.

In itself, I thought that was a great idea.

Unfortunately, I didn't believe she could do it safely. Her past record wasn't very encouraging. Botching the job could easily be worse than not trying at all; at least the natural sunrise would be gradual and predictable.

She'd been talking to people at the Ipsy, which was encouraging, but she had that grithead Orchid in on it, which wasn't.

If she had a plan that would actually work, that would keep me and my hometown safe on the nightside, then I was all for it, and I didn't care if she bought the whole damn city for ten bucks and a tube of lube. I could give the squatters back their money, tell them it was out of my league, and stop worrying about the fare off-planet or a future spent scraping at radioactive rocks. I might even make a deal that I'd keep my mouth shut and help her out in exchange for giving the squatters a break and giving me the price of a few good meals.

That was the best-case outcome, the absolute optimum short of a miracle. I didn't believe for a minute that it would happen.

No, the way I figured it, she had some scheme that wouldn't work and that might do the city a lot of damage when it went wrong. I knew that all the sensible ideas had been tried out in comsims, and that they either didn't work or cost far too much to even consider. Somehow I didn't think that a burnout like Sayuri Nakada, or a sleazy slick-hair like Paulie Orchid, had come up with a way around that. Even buying the entire city cheap shouldn't make that big a difference in the final line of the spreadsheets.

Bringing the Ipsy into it, though, made the whole thing uncertain. My best guess-and all it was was a guess- was that some planetologist there had a nifty idea he thought might work, some one-in-a-million shot he knew couldn't get respectable backing, so he got a hustler, by the name of Orchid, to find him a less-than-completely-respectable backer, like Sayuri Nakada. And I'd bet everything I ever owned or hoped to own that this theoretical son of a bitch, if he or she existed, had no intention of being on Epimetheus when Nakada actually tried this stunt he'd thought up.

The time had come to call the Ipsy, I decided, and see if I could get the story on just what they were selling Nakada. I touched keys.

The Institute's logo appeared on the screen, totally flat. "We're sorry," a synthetic voice told me, "but the Institute for Planetological Studies is closed to the public until further notice."

That was a surprise; for as far back as I could remember, they'd always been eager for any attention they could get. I'd toured the place once as a kid, and for a while they had run a constant holo feed as an "informational service."

If they were closed now, that just made me more suspicious than ever that something had skewed data somewhere.

"This is a personal emergency," I said. "I need to speak to a human."

There was a pause; then a voice that was either human or a good imitation came on the line, but the image on the screen didn't change.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"My name's Qing," I said, which was close enough to the truth that, if my identity came out, I could say it was a slip of the tongue, but which wouldn't let them track me down easily. "I need to talk to whoever's been doing the work for Sayuri Nakada. Something's come up."

She hesitated, then exited the call.

I hadn't expected that. I punched the code in again.

"We're sorry," the synthetic began, as the logo reappeared.

I interrupted it. "I was cut off," I said. "Reconnect me to whoever I was just talking to."

The com beeped, and the logo was replaced by a little message-contact rejected.

Then another message came through, not spoken, but on the screen: the ipse is a private, nonprofit organization, AND IS NOT AFFILIATED IN ANY WAY WITH NAKADA ENTERPRISES

There was a pause, and then it added: if you want to

KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT WORK DONE FOR SAYURI NAKADA, ASK MIS' NAKADA. WE CAN'T TELL YOU ANYTHING.

So they weren't talking, either. Nakada and Orchid had bounced me, and now the Ipsy, too.

And from their reaction, I didn't think that my best-case scenario was going to come true.

I didn't like this at all. Nakada and the people at the Ipsy might just figure that since Nightside City was doomed anyway, it didn't matter if they risked wrecking it in trying to save it.

They might even have had a point, really. So what if it was a gamble? What did they have to lose?

I didn't know what they had to lose, but I didn't like the idea that they were gambling with my home. I didn't like it, and I intended to find out just what the wager actually was.

I had to get somebody to talk to me, but I didn't know who to approach at the Ipsy, and I figured Orchid was probably just a flunky or a go-between, and besides, he was repulsive. I knew I could get him to talk to me if I had to, but I didn't want to, not yet.

That left Sayuri Nakada herself, and I decided it was time we had a little chat-in person, without a lot of intrusive software, or any worries about other people tapping into the com.

I got my gun and called a cab.

WHEN I STEPPED OUT MY DOOR INTO THE WIND I remembered something that had slipped my mind- something that had hovered outside my window all night. I looked up and there it was, hanging there just the way I'd seen it last.

"You're still here?" I asked.

"Yeah, Hsing, I'm still here," the spy-eye said.

I stood there looking at it for a minute, thinking this over.

Sayuri Nakada, I was sure, would not take kindly to having a spy-eye hanging around anywhere near her. What's more, I wasn't any too thrilled about letting Big Jim Mishima know I was visiting Nakada. I wasn't any too thrilled about letting anyone know that. I wasn't too sure just what I was getting into, after all, and that made me that much less eager to let anyone else know what I was getting into.

Besides, could I really be sure that that eye was Mishima's? That was what I'd figured all along, but I didn't really know. Maybe Orchid had found out about me right from the start, when Zar Pickens showed up on my doorstep, and had sicced an eye on me and let me think Big Jim was carrying a grudge.

It wasn't likely, but I couldn't say it was impossible.

Now that I thought I was getting somewhere, and it was somewhere that might be dangerous, that eye wasn't comforting at all. It was a serious nuisance. It was bad enough worrying about what might turn up if someone broke into my com system without having to deal with this sort of petty harassment-and that's what it was, I realized. Harassment. After all, if anybody really seriously wanted to keep an eye on me, me specifically and not a particular location or whoever just happened,by, the way to do it would be with a mircrointelligence or three, planted on me and breeding messages to be picked up later, not with a damn floater following me around.