Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  I like Lui's; they don't discuss anybody's quirks there.

  "Hsing," Cheng said. "All right." Her tone might have been a shade hostile, but I still didn't want her calling me anything but Hsing.

  I smiled. "I was hoping, Mariko, that you could tell me something about Westwall Redevelopment. Anything at all."

  She studied my face for a moment, so I tried to look sincere and harmless-which I hope I'm not, but at times it's a good way to look. Then she glanced around at the neighboring tables.

  I had picked a quiet corner; the only human within natural earshot was an old man wearing an antique videoset, and with the plugs in his ears and patches on his eyes he wasn't going to be listening to us. He was leaning back in his chair, up against a black upholstered wall, and from the look on his face he was watching himself battle monsters in some classic thriller. I could see his hands twitch.

  He could have been acting, I suppose, but if so he was damn good. And of course, any number of machines or synthetics or cyborgs could have been listening, but that's true just about anywhere.

  Cheng apparently decided it was private enough. She turned back and looked at my face again.

  "You don't know who they are?" she asked.

  "Nope," I said. "They've made a pretty good job of staying low."

  She nodded. "I don't really know, either," she said. "But I handled the sale for the bank, so I talked to them. I don't suppose you've ever bought real estate, have you?"

  I hadn't. My family owned a place once, just north of the Trap, and after it went for unpaid taxes the city couldn't find a buyer, so my brother still lived there when he wasn't working, and I was still nominally welcome there, but I'd never bought any myself. I shook my head.

  "Well, the law says that only humans can buy land. Nothing artificial. If it's a corporation, then it's got to be a human officer that carries out the final transaction and accepts the deed. No software, no machines, no genens, no cultured biotes, nothing modified from other stock, just human. I mean, it can be cyborged or customized from here to Cass B, and we don't care if it was born or micro-assembled, but it's got to be human within the legal definition of the term."

  I nodded; I knew that, of course, but I was letting her tell it her way.

  "Ordinarily that's no big deal, y'know? We do all the screenwork, and then the buyer stops by the office in person to verify it and pick up the hard copy, and we get a look and see that she's human. We don't need any gene charts or blood samples or anything, we just take a look and check the door readings. It's no big deal." She paused.

  I nodded again to encourage her.

  "It's no big deal," she repeated, "except that for this Westwall outfit it apparently was. Their software did all the negotiations, took care of all the screenwork, but that wasn't any problem, we've done that before; we told it we couldn't close without a human principal, and it didn't miss a byte. But then, when we asked for someone to come and pick up the deed, all of a sudden you'd think we were demanding wetware rights and all progeny. 'We represent a human,' it insisted. 'Why can't we send a floater?' I finally just had to insist that it was bank policy, and if they wanted the property, a human had to come and get the deed, and if they couldn't manage that, we'd forget the whole thing. I mean, it's not like this was going to affect the bank's solvency; it wasn't a major transaction." She shook her head, remembering.

  "So what happened? Did a human show up?"

  "You saw the deed, didn't you? Of course a human showed up, a little wire-faced slick-hair the door identified for us as Paul Orchid. He thought he was something, I guess, but if he had the money to buy even that dump on West Deng, then he won it upstairs here-the Excelsis wouldn't have let him in, and he sure couldn't have earned that much. I figured that the real buyer sent him. Whatever, it wasn't my problem, so long as he was human and an officer of Westwall Redevelopment."

  "Was he?"

  "It's funny you should ask that-so did we. Ordinarily, we don't worry about it, we take the buyer's word that he's who he says he is, but this time, because of all the argument the software gave us, I had the door run a full-scale background check."

  She paused, watching my eyes, and I tried to look innocently fascinated.

  "Hsing," she said. "This guy Orchid is scum. He turned up on Epimetheus illegally, to begin with, after jumping bail on Prometheus on a charge that wasn't worth the trouble of extradition-some sort of minor assault charge. He was on the edge from then on, for three years-and then he disappeared from the records, went completely invisible to the public com, for about a year and a half, until a few weeks ago, when he turned up as a vice president in Westwall Redevelopment.

  "And that's the damnedest part, he really was a vice president. No doubt about it, everything in order up and down the line, this little piece of organic grit was third in command at Westwall Redevelopment." She shrugged. "Can you explain that?"

  "No," I said. "Can you? Did you look into it any further?"

  "Hell, no!" she said, sitting up straight. Her hair caught a beam of brilliant green light. "It wasn't my business. I gave him the deed and waved good-bye and then put on file that I had a personality clash with Westwall Redevelopment and didn't want to handle them if they came back. I mean, it's pretty clear to me that there's a bug in the program somewhere, but it's not my program, and I'm no detective anyway."

  "But I am, right?" I smiled and shook my head. "Sorry, Mariko, but I don't know any more about Westwall than you do-at least, not yet. I've just started on this." I leaned back. "This is a big help, though, and I appreciate it-it gives me a place to start. If you like, I can keep you posted on what I find out." I gulped liquor and then thought of something. "The payment was okay? The money came through, and the transfer fees got paid?"

  "Of course," Cheng said, obviously surprised that I could even think of questioning that. So much for the idea that somebody had a way of faking title transfers. I'd narrowed my original four possibilities down to one: somebody really was buying property in the West End.

  I'd originally thought that anybody doing that had to be pretty badly glitched somewhere, and I still didn't see any other explanation. I just couldn't see what was worth buying in the West End.

  I wondered if the mystery buyer was this Orchid character. That bit about not wanting to come by the office sounded like something needed debugging.

  "Did you ever ask him what the problem was with having a human pick up the deed?" I asked.

  "Oh, yeah, certainly," Cheng said, "And he said something about how the management software thought it was inefficient. Then he made a pass at me." She grimaced.

  I made a sympathetic coo. I could see why she hadn't wanted to tell me this over the com; it was gossip, really, and saying unkind things about a customer isn't good for one's career in banking. The useful parts, for me, were eliminating the possibility of faked transfers, and having a name, a real name, that I could work from.

  I was eager to get back to my office, where I could get back into my com nets, but I didn't want to just walk right out-after all, I was supposed to be the hostess of this little get-together. I could plead a remembered appointment or the press of business, but the proper etiquette then would be to tab another drink or two on my card for Cheng, maybe a meal or her cab fare, as well, and I couldn't afford that. So I sat back and watched the show for a minute.

  Cheng watched with me.

  The couple was face-to-face, doing a slow spin, speed changing with each thrust as the center of mass shifted. Little globes of sweat were drifting away on a thousand tangents and vanishing as they reached the edges of the cylinder of light.

  There was a certain fascination to it, I had to admit.

  I watched, and Cheng watched, and after a moment Cheng pushed back her chair. "I think I better go," she said. "Thanks for the drink." Her voice was a little unsteady.

  I nodded. "Thank you," I said. I watched her go.

  I had hoped for that reaction. I knew she had a man at home, and watching
people screw does tend to make people horny, particularly after a drink or two. I knew that well enough.

  I finished my own drink, paid the tab, and left.

  Chapter Seven

  BIG JIM'S DAMN SPY-EYE WAS WAITING OUTSIDE; I DON'T know whether it had been there all along and I hadn't noticed when I came in with Cheng, or whether it had left and come back, but it was there now. I did my best to ignore it.

  It didn't say anything; it just watched and followed as I marched down the block.

  I was trying to think if there was anywhere else I should go while I was in the Trap, any business to attend to or old friend I should look up, and by the time I reached Fourth I had decided there wasn't. Nobody had looked me up out on Juarez, after all, and I do my business over the com, for the most part. I tapped my wrist and said, "Cab, please."

  The transceiver beeped an acknowledgment. Simple-minded gadget; I couldn't afford a good implant. I mentioned that, didn't I, that I'd hocked my wrist terminal? All I had was the implanted transceiver. I think it knew maybe twenty commands, and it couldn't talk at all, just beep. It had its uses, though.

  "Going somewhere?" the spy-eye asked.

  "Wait and see," I said, without looking up.

  Then I changed my mind and I did look up-not at the spy-eye, but at the maze of advertising overhead. Directly above me a woman was lifting her skirt enticingly while Stardust sparkled gold around her; I listened and heard a throaty murmur but couldn't catch the words-if there actually were any. Floaters drifted through her thighs.

  Nearby, laser lines flickered in abstract patterns that coalesced every so often into piles of chips. Above the New York an ancient skyline was etched in black and yellow, and floaters cruised its miniature rooftops like tiny cabs.

  A carful of tourists cruised overhead, faces pressed against the transparent sides, and I heard the droning of the tourguide blossom, then fade.

  A diamond of four red crystal advertisers had spotted me and was circling in, as if in a decaying orbit around my head, waiting to see if I would give them any cue, any clue to my intentions. A gleaming silver-blue messenger buzzed past them, close enough to shatter their formation.

  Behind it all the sky was weirdly blue, deep blue streaked with reddish brown, and all but the brightest stars were lost in the light.

  I looked for a hint amid the lights and images, a hint as to what anybody wanted with the West End, and how this Orchid was involved, and how the New York tied in, but it was all just the same old siren song. Nobody was advertising sunrise tours or anything else that hadn't been advertised all my life.

  Of course, this one street was hardly the entire Trap, let alone the whole city, and advertising was carried by a hundred other media as well as the city's skies.

  The cab, gleaming yellow, cruised in to a silent landing at my feet, and the door slid aside.

  This one was far from new; the upholstery showed wear and the seat's shaping mechanism whirred as it worked. It was still a Hyundai, of course. Not Q.Q.T., though-Midnight Cab and Limo. Not that it mattered; I was just hypersensitive because of my conversation with the new one from Q.Q.T.

  "Where to, Mis'?" it asked.

  I gave my address and settled back.

  The crystal advertisers surrounded the cab, singing antiphonal praise for some new pleasure shop, but I didn't care; it was easier to ignore them than to ask the cab to lose them, as I actually had something to think about.

  Several things, really.

  Big Jim Mishima was still carrying a grudge; that was bad news. I glanced out the back, and there was the spy-eye, hanging right on the cab's tail, close below the trailing advertiser.

  Westwall Redevelopment was extraordinarily secretive and employed people that the ever-respectable Mariko Cheng called "scum." That might or might not be bad news, but at least it was news.

  Paul Orchid-that name seemed ever so slightly familiar. A wire-faced slick-hair, Cheng had called him.

  Zar Pickens had said that the new rent collector was a slick-hair, but that didn't mean much; you'll always find faddies around, whatever the current bug is, and slick hair had been hot among the city's faddies for months. Pickens hadn't said anything about a wire job, but still, Orchid might be the rent collector. If not, then maybe Westwall had a thing about slick hair.

  My own hair's always been strictly natural finish, but that's more for lack of funds than anything else. I wondered who made the best hair slickers, and whether they had any connection with Nakada Enterprises.

  I caught myself. That, I told myself, was going off on a random vector. I might throw the question at the com when I had time, but it wasn't worth my own mental electricity.

  Something flashed white overhead; I looked up, too late to tell if it was an exploding meteor or some sort of floater or some idiot hot pilot buzzing the city on his way into port. Another advertiser cruised up, saw the direction of my gaze, and projected a little phallic imagery above the cab as an attention-getter.

  I'd seen enough of that back at the Manhattan Lounge; I leaned back and closed my eyes and stayed that way until the cab announced, "Your destination, Mis'."

  "Thanks." I slid my card in the reader, and when the fare registered I pulled it back out and put it away. This cab didn't give any hints about tips-it just opened the door, and I stepped out into the wind, right on my doorstep.

  The door recognized me and opened, and I went on up to my office. When I got there I saw Mishima's spy-eye doing a silent hover outside my window; I bared my teeth at it, gave it the three-finger curse again, debated making a privacy complaint, then shrugged, sat down at my desk, and looked at the screen.

  Nothing had changed. No mysterious stranger had zipped me the fare to Prometheus. No messages had registered at all.

  I hadn't expected any, of course, unless Mishima had decided to make some clever comment.

  I hadn't expected the damn spy-eye to stick with me, either; it had said I wasn't welcome in the Trap, but I wasn't in the Trap anymore, I was back in the burbs. So what the hell was it doing hanging outside my window?

  I turned my chair to face it. "Hey, you hear me?"

  "Yeah, Hsing, I hear you," it said, over a chat frequency that I heard by wire instead of ear-it knew my hearing wasn't as good as its own, and with that window between us I needed the help. I had the standard emergency receivers in my head, of course, even if I couldn't afford a decent wrist unit.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked.

  "Just keeping an eye out," it said.

  "Spying on me, you mean."

  "Hey, it's my job," it said, but the phrase didn't sound right in the eye's flat machine tone. "I can't help it," it said.

  "I thought you were only going to watch me while I was in the Trap," I argued. "Out here isn't Big Jim's turf, it's mine."

  "I got a change of orders," it said. "I'm supposed to stick with you until I find out what you were doing in the Trap in the first place."

  "You're breaking the privacy laws," I pointed out.

  "No, I'm not, because I'm not a legal person; I have no free will. My boss is breaking the law."

  "Well, somebody is, and we can't have that, can we?" I blacked the window and turned on the full-spectrum shielding.

  I waited a moment, then opened a peephole.

  The spy-eye was still there, not doing anything, just hanging outside my window, waiting.

  Mishima owed me for this, I decided, but this wasn't the time to worry about it. I'd take one problem at a time, and right now my problem was the West End.

  I typed Paul Orchid's name into my personal search-and-retrieval net and got back a file headed "Paul (Paulie) Orchid."

  That beeped something somewhere, and I remembered him. I never heard him called just Paul, but Paulie Orchid I had encountered before. I hadn't paid much attention, never checked his background. He was your standard small operator who thinks he's going to be big someday, but who never makes it. A couple of years back I'd brushed up agai
nst him two, maybe three times, but never met him in person. I had no real gripes about him. The times I'd called him he'd had nothing to tell me except a come-on, but I never found any reason to think he'd held out. He just hadn't been involved.

  This time he was involved.

  I checked his address-the current one was better than I'd have expected, a tower apartment on Fifth. A crosscheck on the address told me he had a roommate by the name of Beauregard Rigmus, known as Bobo; I'd never head of Rigmus before, and I was a bit surprised to see a male name there. I'd have expected Orchid to have a woman; he'd made it obvious enough that his tastes ran in that direction. Even if this Rigmus weren't a lover, he might get in the way of overnight guests. Unless Orchid and Rigmus shared, which I suppose they might have. Or unless it was a bigger apartment than I thought.

  I touched keys and put in a credit search, just a basic one to begin with. It bounced off a privacy request, a serious one-no information to be given out without documented consent.

  I had another searcher on hand that carried a phony consent code-one that did extra stuff underneath while it was working, more than would be legal even if the consent were real. Like anything illegal it had risks, so I hadn't started out with it, but I tried it, with the more intrusive functions optioned back out.

  It vanished. Completely. Nothing came through, legal or otherwise. I couldn't get the name of his bank, or his employer, or personal references. No data, period.

  Not only that, the program disappeared on my end, as well; it just folded up and died, dropped out of the system as if it had never been there. I couldn't check for tampering, or whether anyone had seen it coming; it was just gone, and I didn't know who knew what.

  I didn't like that at all. Whatever Orchid was up to, he didn't want anybody asking questions. I was pretty sure, from what I'd read and what I'd remembered, that he wasn't bright enough to have programmed that himself, so I figured he must have bought some serious security somewhere.