Lawrence Watt-Evans - Nightside City

He dropped the friendship display. He nodded and agreed, and we broke the connection.

I called a cab, and half an hour later I met the muscle Mishima had sent me on the street at the entrance to Orchid's apartment tower-three of them, all big. Any one of them must have weighed over twice what I did, and they all wore slick armor, the transparent tight-bond monomolecular stuff. The woman had retractable claws. The bigger, darker man had fangs that gleamed as bright as the wires in his face. The smaller man was heavily cyborged, half his face rebuilt with chrome. Serious muscle. You don't go in for the surgical stuff for fun.

Maybe the cyborg had gone into it because he had to be rebuilt anyway, but the other two, they'd done it just for business.

They were all armed with light little pieces, street-legal in the city.

They were perfect.

Using a voice distorter and no image, I called up to Orchid's apartment, saying I was collecting contributions for a campaign to outlaw gambling on Epimetheus. Rigmus answered.

I gave him my story, and he told me to eat wire and die. I was polite; I asked if anyone else was around who might be more generous.

He offered to feed the wire up my ass personally.

I asked if there was anyone else there I could talk to, more generous or not, and said I'd been told Paulie Orchid lived there. I made it sound like Orchid had been sold to me as the savior of the downtrodden.

Yeah, Rigmus told me, Orchid was in, but he was busy, and of course he wasn't interested.

I just needed to know he was there. I shut up and exited the call.

The four of us went up the tower together, the muscle and me, and I stood back with my gun in my hand while the cyborg took out the door security.

But the cyborg wasn't the first one in. The instant the door opened I was through and into the room.

It was a big apartment, and a good address, but those two hadn't done it justice. The place was all done in maroon and red, with flat golden walls and no holos anywhere except a cheap vidset hanging in one corner. The furniture was strictly inert-no color shifts, legs holding everything up-and there wasn't much of it. What there was didn't look new, either. I figured Orchid and Rigmus had blown away all the juice they could spare in getting the place, with nothing left to furnish it decently.

Or maybe they figured it wasn't worth the trouble, since it was temporary. They were both bound for Prometheus when their little scam had played out.

The best piece there was a big maroon sofa, pushed back hard against one wall. Rigmus was sitting on it, holding a jackbox.

I dove for him. He dropped the jackbox and dodged, leaning awkwardly sideways, and I twisted around and took him in the throat with the side of the hand holding the gun.

He grunted and then grabbed for me. I think he figured he'd just break me in half, small as I am.

I don't break that easy.

I got him under the jaw, bent his head back, and rammed it against the wall. Hard.

He got an arm around my waist and tried to pull me away, and I rammed his head back against the wall again, then drove the butt of the HG-2 into his larynx. I felt something give. His stomach growled, which seemed weirdly inappropriate, and I wondered whether it had anything to do with my blow.

The cyborg was coming up behind me, but I waved him back. This was personal. Rigmus had tried to kill me.

He was flailing about, not connecting. I put a finger into his left eye and pressed down.

He was lucky my fingernails hadn't really grown back yet.

He tried to scream, but he couldn't because of what I'd done to his throat and because I was stuffing a hand into his mouth, choking him with my fist.

He didn't even have the wits to try and bite me, and I just pounded his head back against the wall until he collapsed.

I'll tell you, it was pretty damn satisfying to finally be able to do something that simple and direct and to have it work. I have some pretty serious moral reservations about using any more violence than necessary-but I forget them sometimes. I shouldn't, but I do.

When he slumped I got off him and let him fall. He landed sprawled across a corner of the couch, which managed to reshape itself enough to keep him from falling to the floor.

He lay there, less than half conscious, and his stomach growled again. I almost laughed.

The female muscle took over with him, sitting on him with a claw at his throat, while the cyborg opened the bedroom doors.

The first bedroom was empty, just a white bed floating in the center unmade and a wardrobe dispenser in one corner-nothing else.

Orchid was in the second. This one was done in red and gold, and any juice he'd saved on the rest of the place he'd blown here. The walls were holos, running erotic vids on all four sides, but I didn't let the movement distract me. I knew holos from real, and I knew Orchid when I saw him.

He was on the bed, with a woman and his pants down, and a privacy field up so he hadn't heard us coming. I ran in and grabbed him before he saw us.

He was too surprised to resist. I shoved him over onto the floor, and when he opened his mouth to protest I stuck the muzzle of the HG-2 in it and flicked the power switch.

I felt the gun tick to life. Orchid saw the pilot light glow red, then green.

The woman started to scream, but Mishima's muscle pulled her off, and one of them, the one with the fangs, held her quiet in the corner while I negotiated with Mis' Orchid. He let her straighten her outfit, a mess of frills and drifting colors that could have hidden almost anything, but he kept his gun at her throat.

The cyborg took the apartment door for his post, first watching out, then watching in, in quick, steady alternation; good, solid work.

"Now, Mis' Paul Orchid," I said. "We have a few things to get straight."

He didn't say anything. He couldn't, with the gun where it was. His eyes widened a little, though, and I think it was only then, when he heard my voice, that he recognized me. I looked pretty different with just a thin fuzz on the top of my head, instead of real hair, and with hardly any eyebrows.

Besides, he'd thought I was dead.

"First off," I said, "I know why you tried to kill me. I know all about the scam you're running on Sayuri Nakada. I know you wanted to keep me from telling her it was a con. But you screwed up, grithead. It wasn't any of my business; I don't owe Nakada anything. If you hadn't tried to kill me, you fucking idiot, I wouldn't have cared, but you-you made it my business by dumping me on the dayside. That makes it very personal." I shifted the gun, so he could hear the mechanism working as it compensated for my movement. An HG-2 hasn't got room for soundproofing, which was fine with me-it added a bit to the effect.

He made a noise, but I wasn't finished.

"Now, you may be recording this. You may think you've got me on charges of trespassing, and assault, and terroristic threatening. You may even be right. But, you stupid son of a bitch, I've got you for kidnapping and attempted murder even if I don't give Nakada the code on your program. Did you really think I was so dumb I didn't have any security you didn't bypass? I have full-spectrum authentic vid of you and Bobo carting me out to the cab and sending me east over the crater wall. I have witnesses. I won't even mention that I have all the evidence I need in my head and in the cab itself. And it's all on record in a dozen places where you can't get at it."

He made a sort of a squeak. I rammed the gun against his teeth. "Now," I said, "if we've got it all very clear as to what the basis for negotiation is-which is, that I'm in charge, I know what's going on, and I've got you a hell of a lot tighter than you've got me-then I can let you up and we can talk business. What do you say?"