Nightside City

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  I'd had an idea that maybe Nakada just wanted to blackmail the squatters into doing something for her, but the only thing they all had in common was that they were all losers and no good to anybody. They were fat, thin, short, tall, dark, pale, male, female, young, old-and stupid, ugly, dirty, and disagreeable. A couple were visibly diseased, with stuff clogging their noses or their pores-if they'd ever had decent symbiotes, the symbiotes were obviously dead. These people couldn't possibly be of any value to Nakada or anyone else. I wasn't sure they were even of value to themselves.

  I began to see how Zar Pickens, with his runny eyes and clogged jack and dead worksuit, had been chosen to come talk to me-he was the best of the lot. What I didn't see was how they'd managed to collect even the pitiful fee they'd promised me.

  And I didn't see any commercial potential, except maybe if they were deposited in front of the Ginza and the Excelsis and the Luna Park and everywhere but the New York, to drive customers away from the competition and into Nakada's place just by being there.

  Not that that would work. Even if the tourists were bothered by the squatters, which I doubted they would be, there were always roofports.

  I couldn't see anything, land or buildings or people or anything, that was really worth the ride out from the Trap, let alone a hundred megacredits.

  The West End was just what I had thought it was-a dead end. I wasn't learning a damn thing worth learning. I strolled down Wall for a few final minutes, looking for some clue, but when I kept my eyes on the streets instead of the sky all I saw was dirt and shadows and that stupid spy-eye following me.

  I called a cab. It took a good ten minutes for a sleek new Hyundai, a Q.Q.T. unit, to come and take me home.

  And that blasted glitching bug-ridden floating eye was there every centimeter of the way, following the cab, and me, right back to my doorstep.

  At least it didn't say anything.

  Chapter Nine

  BACK AT MY OFFICE AND OUT OF BETTER IDEAS FOR THE moment, I tried the obvious and discovered that Sayuri Nakada was not taking calls.

  First I tried a direct human-to-human signal, on a non-business code, and said it was a personal call for Nakada. I got some chekist software that practically wanted my goddamn gene pattern before it would even tell me whether I had touched the right keys.

  I answered its questions, and I tried very hard to be polite about it, and eventually it told me that yes, I had touched the right keys, but Mis' Nakada did not talk to strangers.

  Then I tried it clever, calling a different number at the house, a general service one, and trying to convince the software that answered that I needed to talk to a human about a real-estate deal. It told me to leave a name and number and the details of the transaction, and it would consult someone human-but only when I was off-line.

  I wasn't about to give a name or number on that, since I had on the other line; I didn't want to make it obvious what I was doing. I'd blocked the standard call origination signal and rerouted my call so it registered as being made anonymously from a public com, so the software couldn't just see for itself who was calling.

  Instead of leaving a name, I asked if I could call back, and it got huffy on me, so I exited the call.

  Then I tried the honest approach, just to see what would happen. I called the household's main business number and said, "My name's Carlisle Hsing, and I have a personal message for Mis' Sayuri Nakada in regard to recent land purchases. Could I speak to her, please?"

  This software was polite when it turned me down, anyway.

  "Could you tell her I called, please?" I asked, playing it as humble as I could without gagging. "And mention specifically that it's in regard to West End real estate?"

  "I'll see that Mis' Nakada is informed, Mis' Hsing," it said. Before I could decide whether I wanted to say anything more, it exited.

  I stared at the desk for a minute and then said the hell with it, at least for the moment. I didn't have any more simple, legal approaches to try over the com, and I wasn't ready to try anything illegal with someone like Nakada- my life was rough enough already. I decided to just wait and see what happened.

  For one thing, a look at the status readout told me it was after 23:00, and I was keeping worker's hours at that point; I'd been awake since 6:30. I needed my rest.

  For another, I had all those recordings I'd made out in the West End waiting for analysis, and that would take a while. I hadn't seen anything worth a buck, but in theory I might have missed something the recorders caught.

  I took the com out of interactive, to make it a bit harder for anyone to watch what I was doing, and then I loaded the data in, told the com I wanted anything anomalous, valuable, or presenting significant commercial potential, and I let it run.

  With that running it was time for a little user downtime. The shielding was still up on the window, and I left it that way when I pulled out my bed, plugged in for the night, and went to sleep, with the program set for no compression. I figured my body could use the rest, and I wasn't in any hurry to get through my dreaming. Besides the necessary stuff, I had some very pleasant dreams lined up featuring someone I lived with when I was about twenty-in real life he turned out to be a jerk and we broke up, but I liked dreaming about him the way I'd thought he was when we first got together. I've had twenty years of learning better, but at the time I still believed in true love, and it makes for pretty dreams.

  I didn't bother checking for the eye; I knew it was still out there. If you want the truth, in a way it was almost comforting, knowing that it was watching over me. Nobody else was anymore.

  About 7:00 I got a buzz and rolled out; the message code was flashing. I didn't even bother with any damn keys, I just called over my downtime wire for a playback. I plugged in when I slept mostly for the sake of the dreams, but the wire was hooked into the main system all the same, just in case of emergency.

  "Carlisle Hsing," the message said, in what didn't even pretend to be a human voice. "Mis' Sayuri Nakada is not interested in anything you might have to say, on any subject. She does not deal with losers. You made three calls, to three different codes; call any of those again, or any other com access in this household, and you will be charged with harassment. If further clarification is needed, you may contact, once and once only, the customer affairs program of the New York Games Corporation."

  That wasn't a damn bit of help. It was a safe bet that my IRC file had been checked, going by that line about losers, but I didn't even know if Nakada had been consulted; software can take a hell of a lot on itself if a user isn't careful. I had that call to the New York I could make, but I decided to hold off; I might need it later. Except for that narrow crack, it seemed I was at another dead end.

  That reminded me of my little stroll out by the crater wall. I got up, unplugged, got myself a cup of tea, and took it over to my desk, where I punched for the results on the West End data.

  Nothing. No anomalies, no commercial potential, nothing of value at all. Everything I saw there was just what it was supposed to be-a lot of decaying, abandoned real estate no good to anybody once the sun came over the crater rim. If anything was hidden there, it was hidden very well indeed, and shielded, as well.

  The thought of shielding reminded me of my faithful companion; I cleared the window and looked out.

  The spy-eye was still hanging there, blocking half my view of the Trap's glitter. A couple of advertisers were buzzing around it, trying to feed their pitches to anyone who might be monitoring, but it seemed to be doing a good job of ignoring them. It was also ignoring the wind, and the traffic on the street below, and just about everything else. When it saw the window change its main lens swiveled up from the door to my face, but other than that it didn't move a millimeter. I waved hello, then blacked the window again.

  I hoped the poor thing wasn't capable of boredom. Since it said it had no free will, I figured it probably wasn't.

  I went back to thinking about the case.

  I'd had three appro
aches, and two of them were blocked, at least temporarily-or rather, learning anything from Nakada was blocked by all that flapper software, and though the approach through the West End wasn't really blocked, it just didn't seem to go anywhere.

  That left Paulie Orchid.

  I knew he wouldn't be awake at 7:30, or at least I thought I knew it, but I punched in his code anyway, and what the hell, he surprised me. He answered. No software, either-I got his own face, first beep.

  His hair was black and slick and polished, his eye-sockets were neatly squared, and tidy little rows of silver wire gleamed on his cheekbones. If he'd ever had facial hair he'd had it removed, and more wires sparkled along the line of his jaw, every fifth one gold.

  I couldn't say for certain that his nose and lips weren't natural, but if they were he'd hit it lucky in the genetic lottery-assuming he wasn't tailored, that is, and for all I know he was, though in that case it's a mystery how he ever wound up a small-time operator on Epimetheus.

  I've got to admit that his appearance caught my interest. I'd seen him before, but I hadn't paid much attention, and besides, he'd changed some-the wire job and hairslick were both new, and I wasn't sure about some of the rest. He looked slick now, very smooth and polished-not just his hair, but his whole manner. He'd definitely moved upscale-probably not as far as he wanted, or even as far as he thought he had, since he was obviously still something of a faddie, but he was several steps above anything in my neighborhood. You don't see slicks in Lui's.

  From what I knew of his history I'd have expected him to wind up in the West End, but he'd clearly been moving in the opposite direction. I wondered if he'd had the brains to buy himself a little implant education, or maybe some personality work.

  He smiled at me, showing perfect teeth.

  I wanted to gag. He was slick, but something nasty still showed through. I could see that whatever he wanted me to believe, he still knew he was bad news. Polished slime is still slime.

  "Yes, mis', what can I do for you?" he asked, still showing those teeth.

  "Hello, Mis' Orchid. I'm calling in regard to Westwall Redevelopment. I was hoping…"

  I stopped there, because the smile was gone. His face was flat and expressionless.

  "What were you hoping?" he asked.

  "I was hoping you could tell me something about your plans for the company," I said.

  "I don't have any. Who are you, anyway? Your origination isn't registering."

  That was because I didn't want it to, of course; I had a scrambler on line, blocking it, and was rerouting the call to make doubly sure it didn't register.

  Before I could say anything, though, he said, "Wait a minute, I know you-you're Hsing, the detective, right?" The smile was back, but it wasn't as friendly this time. A mean streak was showing. "That was your software that got busted on me yesterday, right?"

  I smiled. He didn't look quite as smooth anymore.

  He looked predatory, instead. That I knew how to deal with.

  "Hey, I'm glad I stayed up late," he said. "I wouldn't want to have missed your call."

  "Oh?" I said.

  "That's right, Hsing-Carlie, isn't it?" I didn't answer, and he went on. "Whatever, I've got something I wanted to tell you."

  "Oh?" I said again. "What's that?"

  "To leave me alone. I'm more than you can handle, lady. Maybe I wasn't before, but I am now."

  I didn't believe that, but I didn't argue, because I didn't want him to try to prove anything on me just then. I just smiled again.

  We were smiling all over, weren't we? And neither of us meant any of it, not if you consider a smile anything pleasant.

  His smile disappeared.

  "Listen," he said. "I mean it. I don't want you anywhere near me on Westwall Redevelopment. You just stay out of my affairs, or you're likely to get seriously damaged." He paused, looking at me, and added, "At least, stay out of my business affairs-I won't say I wouldn't mind meeting you in person some time. That won't get you damaged, just bent." He leered, and I blanked the screen. I don't like leers. I don't figure I deserve them; I'm no beauty. I mean, I'm not a hag, either, but I just don't see my face as an incitement to lust at first sight. People don't leer at me much, not anymore. Anyone who leers at me without provocation is either faking it, has perverse tastes, or has no discrimination at all. I figured Orchid for the last, and for a probable case of satyriasis.

  After a second's thought, before he said anything more, I exited the call entirely.

  That was my third dead end. I'd had three approaches on the case, I'd tried them all, and they'd all died.

  Sometimes when you hit a wall, you back up and try another route. Other times, you just have to knock a hole in the wall. Well, it was time to start banging away.

  Paulie Orchid was alert and ready for me. He'd warned me off, and he'd be watching; he wouldn't really expect me to lay off. I had a better rep than that-or at least I hoped I did. That meant that going after him really might be dangerous, and I wasn't in any hurry to be damaged.

  Besides, I couldn't believe he was anything but hired help.

  The West End was dead, and poking the bones wasn't going to do any good. I just couldn't see any way to get anything more there.

  That left Sayuri Nakada.

  She had real possibilities. Someone with that much money, that many connections in business and family and everywhere else-she would leave traces, stir things up and leave ripples I can read. I could see a dozen ways to get at bits and pieces of her without even trying. If I got enough bits, maybe I could put together enough to recognize what sort of a program was running. This business in the West End might not have been her idea, but she was sure as hell involved somehow, buying up that property. Even if I couldn't get at it directly, I could get an idea as to how her mind worked.

  She couldn't possibly keep everything private; she'd be a fool to try. I didn't think she was that foolish. She'd drawn a line that said strangers couldn't contact her personally, but I'd gotten my calls through to intelligent software easily enough. I'd gotten her address from public records-tax records, not directory, it's true, but public records all the same. There were data.

  I touched keys, checked my credit balance to make sure I could afford it-I couldn't really, but it wouldn't actually put me over any limits right away-and then I began calling up every data bank I could get at, free or charge, and running full-scale searches for any mention of Nakada.

  The stuff just poured in, gigabytes of it. Sayuri Nakada was a big name in the economy and in the general high life on Epimetheus, and that meant that people took an interest in her and recorded a lot about her.

  I routed it all to a sort-and-file program that would pull up what I needed on demand, and then I just let it all pile up.

  Once I had the searches running, I took a moment to pull some of the basic biodata onto a screen and read it off.

  Sayuri Nakada was born on Prometheus, on October 30, 2334, by the standard Terran-ealendar, which made her not quite thirty-two-younger than I was. That surprised me. I had known she was young, of course, and that she wasn't one of the founders of Nakada Enterprises, just one of the horde of heirs, but I still hadn't realized she was that young. I would have guessed that the family would have wanted someone a bit more mature and experienced in charge of things on the nightside.

  I called for selection of news stories-or rumors-regarding her arrival in the City, and got a few dozen entries; I picked a few and read on.

  After a little of that I backtracked to Prometheus; coverage of events there was spottier, since not everything gets transmitted to Epimetheus, but it was still pretty extensive.

  I got interested in what I was reading-I tend to do that. After an hour or so of tiring my eyes I plugged in, to take it all in more quickly.

  By 13:00 I thought I had a pretty good idea of what sort of code Sayuri Nakada ran, but I still didn't know what she wanted with the West End. Not in any detail, anyway. I figured it was probably some grand
scheme that wouldn't work. That seemed to be in character.

  Catch was, I didn't know what kind of a grand scheme.

  I ran back through the relevant stuff quickly.

  She was born rich, really rich; her parents were second cousins and both major heirs to the original Nakadas, with dibs on something like twelve percent of Nakada Enterprises between them. Sayuri was their only kid, and they spoiled her rotten; human babysitters, unlimited com and credit access, implant education, toy personas-the whole cliché.

  Then they dumped her.

  Oh, not without reason, and it's not as if she didn't have any warning. She'd been hell since she hit puberty, totally out of control, burning her brain out with guided current and psychoactives of all sorts, reprogramming her personality every few days, growing or building illegal sex partners for herself, screwing up any family business she could get at, bringing assorted street-sleaze into the family compound, and all the rest. Reportedly she'd once fed an illegal intelligence into her bloodstream and spent a week doing nothing but communing with her own interior, then had killed the poor thing. She'd used synesthesia, painwir-ing, neural taps-everything.

  Her parents had tried all the usual stuff to level her out, but she'd refused anything more intrusive than counseling -stood on her rights as a natural human, which was pretty ludicrous given some of the stuff she'd done to her brain just for entertainment. She did do sessions with a counselor; she had to put up with that, to keep the juice flowing-but she'd com the counselor with a genen toy between her legs and plug straight into the jackbox when she exited the call.

  Finally, when she turned eighteen-Terran years, not Promethean; she was six by local time-her parents told her they'd had enough and threw her out.

  Some of this had a pretty familiar ring, you know. My parents did the dump on me, too. That sort of soured me on ancestor worship for quite some time.

  Their reasons were completely different, of course. I was never into self-destruction; I like my mind just fine in its natural state, and I saw enough sleaze on the streets without bringing it home. Besides, I never had the juice for the sort of flamboyant decadence that Sayuri Nakada went in for. In fact, that was what got me dumped, a shortage of juice. My parents were tired of supporting me and my sibs, and tired of Epimetheus, with its nonexistent long-term prospects. They wanted to use their money on something besides their three kids. So they did the dump on us all when the oldest, my brother 'Chan-Sebastian Hsing-hit eighteen. I was fifteen, either Terran or Epimethean- there's only twelve days a year difference, and I'd just turned fifteen locally. I hadn't caused anyone any real trouble; I just cost money. My kid sister Alison was twelve Terran, eleven local; she hadn't had a chance to cause trouble, but she cost money, too, and with a sib over eighteen, twelve Terran is old enough. At least, that's what the law says on Epimetheus.