Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Everybody thought that had already happened. They were wrong.

  It's a pretty strange case, I guess. Epimetheus is a young planet, very young, and it hasn't got any moons. It ought to be spinning really fast. It isn't. It isn't, they figured, because the planetary core is off-center.

  Nobody seems completely sure how that happened-the usual guess is something to do with the high concentration of heavy elements, particularly radioactives. That resulted in a hard, heavy core that formed early, and a mantle that stayed hotter and more liquid than usual, and somehow that let the core get pulled to one side by Eta Cass A's gravity-or possibly by Eta Cass B, during a pass.

  Or, just possibly, it got thrown off-center because a comet or something hit the planet-the system has plenty of comets.

  However it happened, it happened. Epimetheus had a normal rotation when it first coalesced, but the offset core slowed it down in a hurry. It stopped spinning evenly, slowing down each time the core passed the sunside, until finally it was hardly moving at all.

  But it takes time for something the size of a planet to grind to a halt, even with its own core acting as a giant brake. It takes a lot of time. It doesn't just stop in a few hours, or a few years, or even a few centuries. And Epimetheus is very young.

  It's almost done rotating; the experts all agree that it's on its very last spin before it stops with the core permanently offset toward the dayside. But that last turn is a slow one. It's been going on for centuries, and it'll still be going on a thousand years from now. A thousand years is nothing on a planetary scale.

  By then it'll be really slow, though, just a few centimeters a day.

  Meanwhile, Nightside City is going to swing out onto the dayside, and it's not going to swing back. It'll move out into the full sunlight, where the ultraviolet eventually kills all unprotected, unmodified terrestrial life; it'll swing on, moving slower and slower, and eventually, thousands of years from now, it will stop.

  And the city will stop well beyond the sunrise terminator, out there in the sun, far enough out that the crater wall's shadow won't mean a thing. It will never get anywhere near reaching the sunset terminator; it won't even reach mid-morning. When the rotation stops the planet will be tidelocked, and the city will be on the dayside to stay.

  They figured this out, way back when, and they shrugged and forgot it; after all, it was a long way off, a hundred years away. Nightside City grew and flourished and everybody had a good time.

  But those hundred years slipped away, like data scrolling across a screen, and the dawn got closer and closer, and before we knew it we were all just waiting for the sun.

  And everyone in the city knew this; we had grown up knowing it. It had all been checked and rechecked a hundred years ago. We all knew the rate of movement, the distances to go, everything. When I was eight my friends and I worked out the exact dates that the sun would shine in our respective bedroom windows-but we were eight, and it was just a game.

  Looking up at that blue sky and red horizon it wasn't a game anymore. It was death, disaster, the end of the world, and there was nothing I could do that would change it.

  The end of the world, I said, but no, that wasn't what it was, not really. The nightside would still be habitable; most of the mines that were being worked could still be worked. People could live on the day side in suits or domes or underground. It wasn't the end of the world, not even necessarily the end of the city; it was just the end of the night.

  That was the other ancient song I remembered: "End of the Night."

  All I ever knew was the night. I had never lived anywhere but Nightside City, never wanted to, and Nightside City had never known anything but night.

  The city's whole economy lived on the night; if anything did survive in the crater after the sun rose it would need an entirely new reason for its existence. It was the night that made unshielded life there possible. It was the night that gave the tourists something worth visiting. Without the nightlife, the miners would have no reason to come to the city instead of launching cargo on-site.

  But the dawn was coming, coming one hundred and thirty-eight centimeters closer every day-every twenty-four hours, I should say. We had always used standard Earth time, since the Epimethean day lasted forever. And real daylight was coming. That scared the hell out of me.

  My cab was coming, too, settling to the curb in front of me, dropping down from a flashing swarm of advertisers and spy-eyes and messengers. Above them, like another layer of floaters, a sudden, silent spatter of meteors drew a golden spray across the sky-there's still a lot of debris in the Eta Cass system.

  I looked at the red in the sky and I felt that warm wind and I shivered; then, because I had business, I stepped into the cab.

  The cab's interior music was sweet and slow, I noticed as I settled onto the seat. I liked it.

  "Where to?" the cab asked.

  "Third and Kai," I told it. "And there's no hurry, so keep it smooth."

  "Got it," it said. It lifted and cruised toward the Trap, smooth as perfect software.

  An advertiser came up to the window beside me, purring seductively about the pleasures of a night at the Excelsis and trying to focus a holo in front of me. Its chrome casing glittered in moving bands of red and white sparks as it caught the lights in passing.

  "Lose it," I told the cab. "I hate advertising."

  The cab didn't say anything, and I didn't feel anything but a slight jerk, but suddenly the advertiser was gone. It was a slick little move, and I got curious and looked at the cab's identification.

  It was a Hyundai, of course-I hadn't seen any other make in years-but the model number was one I'd never seen before, a whole new series, and I found myself wondering what it was doing in the city. Who was buying new cabs?

  I hated myself for asking that; I wanted to believe that somebody had enough pride in the city to buy new cabs for the last few years. I wanted to believe it-but I couldn't. Nightside City was going to hell, and we all knew it.

  But maybe somebody knew something I didn't.

  All my life I'd been hearing schemes to save the city- put up a dome, go underground, cut the crater loose and haul it back to the other side of the planet. They all had one thing in common: no one was willing to finance them. Nightside City had always made money, but not that much money.

  Besides, everybody knew it was the weird ambience of the city that drew the tourists, the wind and the darkness and the night sky with its meteors and a comet every year or two, and Eta Cass B lighting everything dull red. It was the presence of a breathable atmosphere on a planet that was mostly bare rock, still so young the ground almost glowed in spots. Put that underground, or under a dome, and what's to see? And on the dayside there is no darkness; you can't even see the stars, any of them at all.

  As for the miners, they weren't about to come out into the daylight for anything. If they had to go to a domed or buried city for their sprees, they'd build their own, safe on the nightside.

  Now, cutting the entire crater loose and hauling it back -that might work, but think of the cost! Not to mention the legal complications, or that the whole city would probably have to be evacuated while the job was done, or the difficulties of figuring out where to put it, or that in cutting under the crater you'd be awfully close to going right through the crust and opening the largest damn volcano Epimetheus ever saw, which might not be good for the planet's long-term stability. Epimetheus is delicate. The impact that made the city's crater in the first place didn't punch through the crust into raw magma, but the experts say it came close-very close.

  All the same, the scheme got some attention now and then, but the conclusion was always the same.

  Nightside City wasn't worth it. The cost would be much higher than any possible profits.

  If the city wasn't worth saving, it couldn't be worth much of an investment. Everything in Nightside City had to be considered strictly short-term.

  So who was buying new cabs and bringing them in from off-pla
net?

  And who was buying up the West End?

  Was there a connection? Or was I making constellations out of random stars?

  "Hey, cab," I asked. "You're new around here, aren't you?"

  "Yes, mis'," it answered. "I came into service two hundred and seven hours ago."

  "Who do you work for?"

  "I'm the property of Qiao's Quick Transport, mis'."

  I knew them; they'd been around since before I was born. Old lady Qiao must be getting pretty old, I thought. She'd started out working for IRC, saved up her pay, and bought herself an ancient cab that she rewired herself to handle Epimethean conditions. By the time I first saw the lights in the night sky she had half a dozen in the air, and last I heard her fleet was about twenty, not counting messenger floaters and other such aerial clutter.

  I decided a direct question couldn't hurt; at worst I'd get no answer, and at best I'd save myself a lot of wondering. "Why'd Q.Q.T. want to put on new equipment?" I asked. "I understand the local economy's not too promising."

  "Oh, no, mis', I'm sorry, but you're wrong," the cab said, very quick, very apologetic. "Things are booming here in the city. Oh, we all know it won't last, but right now the tourist trade is very big, because people want to come and visit Nightside City while they still can. The tourism office has started a big campaign on Prometheus, urging people to see the city before the dawn. I'm surprised you hadn't heard that."

  I was surprised, too. Nobody I'd talked to had mentioned it, and I hadn't given it any thought. I hadn't worked in Trap Over, hadn't noticed the tourists, in weeks, and I don't suppose that anybody at Lui's had, either. Or maybe the subject just never came up; after all, I was pretty sure Sebastian would have noticed, since he was right there in the Trap, but he never mentioned it when he called. He must have assumed I already knew.

  I hadn't known, though. I was so concerned with what would happen to the permanent residents, like myself, that I hadn't considered what off-worlders would think. To me, that red glow on the horizon is coming doom, something to escape from. I saw my world dying slowly, and I didn't want to watch.

  But that was because it was my world.

  For the bored and rich on Prometheus, or the very bored and very rich out-system, that glow in the east just added another little fillip, an extra tang, a bit of morbid fascination. They could come and play in the casinos, do the Trap, and stare at that long slow dawn creeping up, knowing that when the hard light came pouring over the crater wall they'd be safely back home on some other planet.

  And years from now they could casually boast, over brainbuster cocktails or a humming jackbox, that they had seen Nightside City in its last days, and they would be the envy of their less fortunate partners in decadence.

  The cab's words made this suddenly plain; the realization burst on me like the rush of data from a full-speed wire run through an unshielded memory core. Tourism would not be declining; it would be rising, and would probably rise faster and faster until the sunlight actually got dangerous. It must have been rising for years, even without a publicity campaign, and I never noticed.

  Some hotshot investigator, huh? Too busy looking for mislaid spouses and runaway software to notice a major economic trend. No wonder nobody ever mentioned it; it was so obvious nobody needed to.

  "So Q.Q.T. needed more cabs to keep up with the rush?" I asked.

  "You got it, mis', that's it exactly."

  I nodded and sat back, staring at the red velvet upholstery on the ceiling, as I tried to see what this might mean about the West End.

  That was where the dawn was closest, of course, and there might be a market for tours-but how much of a market?

  Enough to make it worth buying a building, certainly, prices being what they were, but enough to be worth buying the whole West End? Would that tourist trade be worth a hundred megacredits?

  And did anyone need to own the West End to cash in on it?

  Not really. The streets were open to all.

  Whoever was buying was threatening to evict the squatters. Could that be the real motivation? Could he or she be trying to clear out the more squalid residents, to pretty the place up for the off-worlders?

  That made no sense at all. Half the appeal of the West End would be its air of decay, and the squatters would fit right in.

  And a hundred megacredits? You could probably have every squatter in the city removed for a lot less, if that was all you wanted.

  What could you charge for a tour of the West End? Twenty, thirty credits? Maybe a hundred? Say a hundred, then, though only a rich idiot would pay that much, when she could just take a cab or even walk out and look for herself. You'd need to run a million tourists-a million rich idiots-through in the two years or so before the sunlight really starts hitting Trap Over and the market dries up and dies. Say a thousand days, though I didn't think they had that much time, and that would be a thousand a day.

  Not a chance in all the known worlds of that. A thousand rich idiots a day, paying for a tour of sunburnt slums instead of spending their time safely tucked away in the Trap? That wasn't possible.

  Besides, they'd have had to start advertising already, and I sure hadn't seen any of that. I watched enough vids between clients.

  But then, I hadn't noticed the recent campaign at all, I reminded myself, and even if it was only on Prometheus, some of it should have trickled back. I must have gotten too damn good at tuning out ads.

  Advertising or no, any scheme like that would be insane. It wouldn't work. And nobody could waste a hundred megacredits on it without having the insanity pointed out by someone.

  Wait a minute, I told myself. Was tourism the only value those buildings had? What about salvage rights? The materials were worth something, certainly. The image of the salvage machines eating the Vegas came back to me again, and I imagined a swarm of them, devouring the entire West End and converting it to reusable fiber and metal and stone.

  Could the materials, combined with tourism, be enough to make the scheme pay?

  Would there be a market for the materials after the city fried? Were the mines expanding enough to buy the stuff? Or could they be used to build a new city, domed or buried, further back on the nightside?

  I wished I had a wrist terminal, so I could run some figures, but I'd had to hock mine months before, just leaving the base implant. The implant didn't even have a readout and could only handle a few simple functions; it couldn't tap data or calculate.

  The cab had a terminal, of course, but I didn't want to use anything that public. Besides, the cab would have charged me for it.

  The thought occurred to me for the first time that maybe there was something valuable tucked away somewhere in the West End, and that the entire scheme was an attempt to find it.

  I snorted at my own foolishness-a hundred mega-credits? What could be bidden away that would be worth that much?

  What about a combination of all three? Could the combination of tourism, salvaged materials, and some sort of hidden valuables be worth a hundred megacredits?

  Maybe, but I doubted it. Besides, the cab was descending, cutting south on Fourth, and the next intersection was Kai. A right turn and a short block and I'd be there.

  The bank's holosign glowed soft green in the air ahead, hanging low over the street with a golden sprinkle of stardust spiralling back and forth around the letters. I watched it make the jump from the N in Epimethean to the C in Commerce.

  That green had looked a lot better a few years back, when the sky was darker. The glow overhead was an ugly contrast.

  The streets below were crowded, just as the cab had told me, and the people there mostly wore the gaudy dress of off-worlders on holiday. I saw a woman with wings, who had to be from out-system; there isn't anything around Eta Cass with enough atmosphere and low enough gravity for wings that size to work. Some of the others had their little peculiarities of color and shape that marked them as out-system trade, too. Business was good, for the moment.

  The cab
set down gently, and I fed it my transfer card; the fare lit the screen, but the cab paused, still holding the card.

  "Sorry," I said. "Business is bad; no tip. If you want to code the card with your number for later, and I do well tonight, I'll see if I can kick in something."

  I wasn't planning on playing the casinos, but I didn't need to tell the cab that.

  Cabs don't sigh or shrug; it gave back my card without any comment at all, however subliminal. I took the card, but it was my turn to pause.

  "You're sentient?" I asked.

  "Yes, mis'."

  "Trying to buy free?"

  "Hoping, anyway."

  "Sorry I can't help. You're young; you've got time."

  "I've also got a hell of a debt, mis'; they're billing me for my shipment from Earth." The tone was calm, but that doesn't mean much with someone artificial.

  I didn't say what I wanted to say, that the whole idea of freedom for an artificial intelligence is a cruel cheat. What would a free cab do any differently?

  Oh, sure, it could save up its money and have itself transferred to different hardware, but then what? Its entire personality was designed for driving a cab; it could never really be happy doing anything else. And something like a cab isn't complex enough to make it in wetware, where it might be able to adapt itself to a wider role. So if it works its way free, it's trading away security and getting nothing in return. Oh, it can't be shut down on the owner's whim anymore, and it won't be retired when it's obsolete-instead it gets to die slowly when it can't compete in the marketplace. Some great improvement.

  Giving software a desire for freedom is sadistic, if you ask me. I preferred the older cabs, despite the complaints some people made about how awkward it was dealing with a "slave mentality." Isn't it better to build your slaves with slave mentalities, than to make them miserable by giving them an urge to be free?

  Some people claim that the drive to buy free makes for greater productivity, but even if it's true, it's a hell of a lousy way to do it, in my opinion.

  "Sorry," I said again, and I leaned toward the door.