Lawrence Watt-Evans - Nightside City

"Nothing," I said, opening my eyes. "But if somebody's going to wreck the city, I want to know about it." It struck me that he was worrying about all the wrong details. I'd gotten beyond worrying about the squatters; I was only concerned with whether Doc Lee and his buddies were going to crash the whole city.

"The city's doomed anyway," Mishima pointed out.

"Yeah," I said, getting a little annoyed. "But if I'm still here when they wreck it, I could get killed."

"True enough." He settled back to think some more.

I was doing a little thinking of my own, and I thought I had an idea. I was remembering some of what I'd been thinking back in my office when I got horsed, and again on the dayside. I thought I saw why they might have done what they did-the silent treatment and the attempted disappearance both. If I was right, it would be a relief in some ways, but a bit anticlimactic.

Mishima interrupted my chain of thought. "Hsing," he said. "It seems to me that you've got a big edge on them now. They tried to kill you. That's illegal."

The illegality of attempted murder was not exactly hot news to me, and I was not impressed. "So?" I said.

"So you can get Orchid and Rigmus put in for reconstruction. We've got your testimony, we've got my tapes from the sky-eye, and there's got to be other evidence. Charge them with attempted murder. I'll back you up."

"Yeah," I said. "But where does that get us? It may keep them from trying again, but I'm not even sure of that; I think it might be Doc Lee who's running the whole program. And while I can see how revenge might be fun, I hadn't figured you'd care about it. Are you developing a civic consciousness or something, trying to get criminals off the streets?"

"Hey, no, don't you see?" he said. "It gives you leverage. You've got a hold on them. Maybe you can pry what you want out of them with it."

I couldn't see using the attempted murder as a bargaining chip until I knew just what the hell was going on. Yes, it ought to work, but then, I had thought that threatening to put everything on the nets should have worked, too. "And maybe I can't," I said. "Or maybe I don't want to. Look, Mishima, I appreciate what you've done for me, and I can definitely see working for you-"

" With me," he interrupted, and I accepted the correction.

"With you, then. I can see that. But not on this case. We're going at it from different angles, and I can't work your way on it. It's too important. You seem to keep missing what I consider the real central issue here. You ask about the squatters, and you suggest getting Orchid and Rigtnus put away, and ordinarily, that would be fine- you're protecting the client, concerned with my safety, and on most cases that would be great, but on this one my priorities are a little different. My first priority is the future of Nightside City. That's more important than squatters are, or than I am. If the city's destroyed, we're all dead anyway. Who cares about the rents in the West End if there's no West End?"

He considered that for a minute. "I see your point, I guess, but I'm not used to thinking in those terms. Just what is it you think these people are planning? I know you said something about a fusion charge, but I didn't follow that. When you said they might wreck the city, I thought you were talking about bankrupting it, or knocking down buildings after it's evacuated."

I shook my head. "No, that's not it at all. Nakada says that they intend to secretly rig and set off a fusion charge big enough to halt the planet's rotation, before the sun rises. Before the sun rises means no evacuation. That means there will still be people in the city. And a fusion charge big enough to do the job is enough to do one hell of a lot of damage if something goes wrong, and I don't see how a scheme that simple could go right. Look, if there were any economically sound way of saving the city, don't you think the casinos would be trying it? They've talked about it for years now, but they've never come up with anything. You think Sayuri Nakada and Paulie Orchid are smarter than the best the casinos can do?"

"The casinos weren't figuring on buying the whole city up cheap beforehand," he pointed out.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "If it can make Nakada rich, it could have let a consortium break even, at the very least."

He didn't argue with that. "So what do you think is happening? Is this all just a front, and they tried to kill you before you found out what's really going on?"

I nodded. He'd hit my little idea pretty squarely- maybe it was obvious, and I'd been too close to the case to see it before. "I think that just might be it, yeah. But you're getting off the track again. It's the city I'm worried about."

"Go on," he said.

"Look," I said. "Just because the fusion charge can't work, just because it's probably going to leave the whole city flat as that desert you found me on, that doesn't mean these people aren't going to try it, and try it while there are still people here. Or even if they do wait until the city's been evacuated, there are still going to be miners scattered all over the nightside who could get killed." I didn't mention the possibility of a meltdown. That seemed too damn melodramatic; I didn't think Mishima was the kind of person who thought in those terms. He'd just about said he wasn't.

That didn't mean I thought a meltdown was impossible; it just meant I didn't think Mishima would take it seriously.

Overkill from a botched fusion charge, though,- that he could accept.

"Yeah," he said. "I see that."

I nodded. "So, I have got to find out what they're really doing. And if they're really going to flatten the city, I've got to stop them. That's more important than anything."

"I see that, too," he said.

I waited, and he went on. "Hsing, you were right. I'm out of my depth here. I came in in the middle, and I don't know a damn thing about all this fusion-charge stuff. You handle it, you do it all your way, and I'll back you up. You need muscle, I've got three good people on retainer. You need com service, I've got some nice stuff. You need an in anywhere, I'll see what I can do. You just keep me updated, and I won't interfere. And when it's done, we're partners, all right?"

"Either that," I said, "or you can try and collect what I owe you from my estate."

I was joking, but I was also puzzled. Did Mishima really think I was that valuable? Why was he going along with all this? Why was he so eager to take me on as a partner?

But as I'd just told him, Nightside City was the important thing. I would worry about just what the Ipsy was really planning for the city, and when that was settled I could try and figure out Big Jim's program. Once I knew whether the city was about to be reduced to radioactive debris or not I could worry about loose ends like Orchid and Rigmus.

I was tired of talk. I was ready to get back to work.

the hospital let me go without an argument, and I got a cab home. I'd borrowed a couple of hundred credits from Mishima to make sure my card would keep working. That put me a notch deeper into the hole, but I couldn't see any way around it.

My Sony-Remington was still lying on my desk where Orchid had dropped it, and the holster was somewhere on the dayside; I got an old shoulderbag and put the gun in that. Then I sat down at my desk and got the com up and running.

The first step was to kick all my security into high, and to hell with the cost. The next step was worse.

I stopped for a minute to fight down trembling before I plugged myself back in, but I knew I'd need to run on wire for what I had to do next, so I held myself still and jacked in. I wasn't expecting any more horses. I just had to hope that Mishima was playing straight, and that he'd sent the protection he'd promised. The high eye was back overhead, another normal-field spy-eye was on its way, and tracer microintelligences were all over the area-but not on me, because without a symbiote the damn things might kill me if I picked up enough to clog an artery. The hospital had given me a little anti-invasive treatment that was supposed to last a week or so-one more item on the bill Mishima was paying-but I was still eagerly avoiding micros of any description as much as I could. It could have been my mind playing tricks, but I had a constant reminder of my unprotected status-I itched, and I hadn't really itched since I was a little girl. Even the cheap symbiote I'd had had taken care of itches.