Lawrence Watt-Evans - Nightside City

Nakada hadn't done anything to me.

And there's another, more pragmatic point. Blackmailers tend to have a short life expectancy. What I'd taken, she could afford. It was no problem. We could draw up a nice, clear, binding contract without ever saying what I was selling her, and she could be pretty sure that I wouldn't come back for more.

But if I'd gone for money, how could she know that? What good would a contract be? People get illogical when money comes into the picture. She might worry about whether I'd come back for more, whether people might trace my money back to her and wonder what I'd done for it-any number of things, until one day I was back on the dayside, or maybe in a ditch somewhere with pseudoplankton growing on my tongue.

And she hadn't done anything to me.

If it had been Orchid or Lee or Rigmus, if they had Nakada's sort of money, things might have been different. They owed me, just as I still owed Mishima. But I knew how much they had tucked away, and it wasn't enough to tempt me yet. I knew that if I took all of it, they'd find a way to get me-they'd be cornered, and cornered vermin aren't reasonable about these things. If I left enough for them, there wouldn't be enough to be worth the trouble.

I don't know, maybe there would. If I took a piece off the top of all eight shares, I could put together my fare off-planet-but I'd have eight bitter enemies, all of them also bound for Prometheus.

I don't know. I didn't sit down and work out all the ups and downs. I went by instinct, same as I usually do, and I didn't blackmail anyone.

But I didn't know how to explain that to Mishima.

He didn't call back. I didn't have to explain anything.

I did have something to do, though. I'd done my job; it was time to get paid. Zar Pickens owed me a hundred and five credits.

Reaching him by com was clearly hopeless. I called a cab.

The West End stank. I hadn't really noticed it before, but it stank-an ugly, organic smell, a composite of a hundred different things.

Sunlight sparked from the tops of the towers, brighter than ever, and I winced at the sight of it.

I reached the address Pickens had given me; the signaller was out, so I knocked on the wall and shrieked, "Anyone home?"

An overweight woman leaned out a window. "Whad-daya want?" she shouted back.

"I'm looking for Zar Pickens," I said.

"Well, you won't find him here," she said. "He moved back east about two days ago, after he got his job back. Those machines they got to replace him couldn't take the work and all broke down. What did you want him for?"

"He owes me money," I said. "Or someone does."

She looked down at me. "Hey, you're that detective he hired, aren't you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Carlisle Hsing, that's me. And I did the job, too. I found out who bought this place, and I have a contract that says you stay rent-free until sunrise-when I get my money."

She stared. "Well, shit," she said. " I don't have it."

"Who does? Where can I get it?"

"Shit, I don't know." She ducked back in, then popped back out. "But hey, thanks for taking care of it!"

I knew, right then and there, that I was going to get stiffed for the bill-at least until Orchid and Rigmus came around again, which I had already made sure they weren't going to do.

I wasn't about to go back to them and say, "Hey, boys, one more rent run, please, so I can collect my fee." They'd have laughed themselves sick. Hell, they'd have gone, and I'd have gotten my money-but it wasn't worth it. I wasn't going to let them know I got stiffed.

I walked on, prowled on, really, cruising through the West End talking to squatters.

Nobody knew where Pickens was. Nobody knew anything about my fee. Nobody knew anything.

I gave it about ninety minutes, then said the hell with it and called a cab and went home.

I ran Pickens through the city directory and got an address. I put through a call.

He answered.

"Hello, Mis' Pickens," I said.

"Oh, hello, Mis' Hsing," he said, and I could see he was nervous.

"I've got a contract on file here that might interest you. It's an agreement not to evict squatters from property in the West End."

He looked even more nervous, and it took him two tries to say, "What's that got to do with me?"

"Mis' Pickens," I said. "This is what you hired me to get. I got it. You owe me a hundred and five credits."

"Not me ," he said. "Hey, Hsing, it's not me. I'm not even out there anymore. I'm working again; I've got a room here in the burbs where the sun don't shine. I'm no squatter."

"You're the one that hired me, though."

"No, lady, I'm not, either. I was the messenger, that's all."

"Yeah, well, then let me give you a message, messenger. I've got what you wanted. I damn near got killed getting it, and it's cost me one hell of a lot more than the lousy hundred credits you gave me as a down payment. Somebody owes me some money."

"Hey, Hsing, it wasn't me, I swear it. Look, I'll go back out there when I've got a free off-shift; I'll tell them, and they'll pay, all right?"

"Oh, right," I said, and I exited.

I figured I might get money a few hours after dawn, if I was lucky. I was mad as hell, and just to annoy myself still more I ran up an account on the case.

Com charges. Cabfare. Drinks at the Manhattan. Medical bills. The cost of one spy-eye. The cost of the bullet I used to shoot it down.

I didn't know how to figure the cost of that murdered cab, the one that was weathering away on the dayside, since it had owned itself. But at least, by god, no matter how lousy I felt about it, that wasn't really my fault. I put it in a separate category, off to the side.

That muscle I'd borrowed from Mishima hadn't come free, I was sure. I estimated what I owed on that.

Even without the cab, without the eye, without the medical bills, it came to a lot more than two hundred and five credits-and I'd only gotten a hundred on account.

With everything figured in, cab and all, it was almost half a megabuck.

I was sitting there staring at that when the com beeped. I punched, and the screen tucked the figures down at the bottom, out of the way, and showed me Sayuri Nakada.

"Hello, Mis' Nakada," I said, hiding the fact that I was seriously puzzled and a good bit worried by the sight of her. "What can I do for you?"

She didn't bother with any polite preliminaries. "Who the hell is this man Mishima?" she demanded.

"Jim Mishima?" I asked.

"That's the one," she agreed. "He says he's your partner."

I saw it all pretty clearly. I hadn't blackmailed her, so Mishima had decided to take care of it himself.

"We aren't exactly partners," I said, "except maybe on a trial basis. I owe him a lot of money-a lot of money, and other debts as well. I agreed to work it off as his partner, but we haven't settled the details. Why?"

"He knows about that business we discussed," she said.

"Yeah, I know," I told her. "He tapped my com."

"You didn't tell him?"

"Not intentionally."

"Look, Hsing, if it's that easy to tap your com, maybe you ought to do something about it. I thought we had a deal."

"We do," I said. "I'll take care of it; I've already cleared everything out of active memory. Mishima got to it before I did that, and I'd let him work on my security because of this partnership thing. The information's safe now-at least on my system."

"Yes, and what about his ?"

"What about it?"

"Are you going to clear it out?"

"No," I said. "I can't. I'm sorry."

"You said-look, is he your partner or isn't he?"

I blinked, and considered that. "No, he isn't."

"You don't feel any special attachment to him? He's not under your protection?"