Nightside CIty (26 page)

He gave me a look like I’d just offered to
buy his first-born child at an offensively low price.

“All right,” he said. “I think you went in
there and told Nakada that she was being taken, that Orchid and
Rigmus and Lee were running a scam on her that had made her look
like a complete fool. I think she probably suspected it all along—I
mean, the whole thing is so obviously too good to be true. I think
you mentioned that her great-grandfather might be interested in
knowing what she’d been doing with her money. I think you suggested
that you might tell him, if the circumstances arose. I think she
took the hint and asked what it would cost to be sure the
circumstances never arose, and I think that the two of you dickered
out a specific amount. Since she was a pro once, I suppose it
wasn’t all that much, but half of its mine, Hsing. Now, how much
was it?”

I shook my head. “You’ve got it wrong,
Mishima. Right from the start.”

“Then
you
tell
me
how it went,”
he demanded.

“You tell me something first,” I said. “How’d
you know it was all a scam?”

He paused, and I could see he was thinking
back and realizing that I’d never told him that. He could say he
figured it out for himself, but he was awfully damn sure that
I
knew it was a scam.

I guess he decided on the truth.

“I tapped into your com,” he said.

“Hey, partner,” I said, “wasn’t
that
a
sweet thing to do! Hey, what rare trust between partners we have
here!”

“Come on, Hsing,” he said. “You were busy.
We’re partners. You owe me. I just saved us some time and
argument.”

“I’ll tell you, Mishima,” I said, “I don’t
think the team of Mishima and Hsing is going to make it. Sorry
about that.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Give me a
break!”

“I will,” I said. “Don’t worry. I know what I
owe you. I just don’t think that this partnership will run. I’m not
going to screw you over if I can help it, Mishima, but I don’t
think I can work with you, either. I’m telling you that right now,
up front.”

“Hell,” he said, “just forget the
partnership, then. I don’t need you. But you owe me, Hsing, so tell
me what you got from Nakada.”

“I did tell you,” I said. “Hey, how is it you
didn’t manage to listen in at the breakfast bar? Then we wouldn’t
be arguing about it.”

I was being sarcastic, but Mishima took me
seriously. “Nakada had privacy fields up,” he said. “Those floaters
of hers were loaded. I couldn’t get anything through. And those
three gritheads I loaned you didn’t bother to try and hear; they
figured I’d get it all from the machines. Even Jerzy.”

“That the one with the chrome face?” I
asked.

He nodded.

“You know,” I said, “maybe they heard and
just didn’t want to tell you, figured it wasn’t your business.”

He spat, offscreen. “Don’t give me that,” he
said. “Of course it’s my business, and those three work for me.
They didn’t hear. You did.”

“Right,” I said. “And I told you what I
got.”

“So tell me again, and maybe add a few
details,” he said.

I nodded. “I’ll do that,” I said. “First off,
you started off well with your little guessing game. I did tell
Nakada the scheme was a fake. But you got her reaction wrong. She
didn’t believe me. Didn’t believe a word, thought that
I
was
the one running a con on her, trying to cut her out of the deal.
They’ve got her clipped down tight.”

“Oh, come on,” he said. “Don’t give me that
shit.”

“True,” I said. “I swear it. Put it on wire,
on oath, on stress-triggered plague test, I tell you she did not
believe me.”

“Hsing,
nobody
is that dumb!” he
insisted.

“You ever
met
Nakada?” I asked. “She
isn’t exactly
dumb
, but she only believes what suits her.
Stopping the sunrise suits her right down the line, and she wasn’t
taking any argument, so I didn’t argue.”

“That’s
crazy
,” he insisted.

I just shrugged.

It wasn’t all that crazy, but he couldn’t see
it. He was Epimethean, like me—except maybe without as much
imagination. I could dream about stopping the dawn, but to him the
sunrise was inevitable. He’d lived with it all his life. The idea
of stopping it was just gibberish, like turning off gravity. He
didn’t realize that Nakada looked at it differently. To her, cities
were permanent things, and the idea that this one was going to fold
up and die, and that there was no way to stop it, was anathema.

The truth lay somewhere in between, I was
pretty sure. With time and money and competent people, Nightside
City could be saved—but it wasn’t worth what it would cost. It
would be one of the biggest engineering projects of all time, up
there with the terraforming of Venus, but with only a city for
pay-off instead of an entire planet. A bad investment—but not
unthinkable.

“You believe what you want,” I said, “but
Nakada doesn’t think it’s a scam. She still doesn’t want the word
spread, though, so we drew up a little agreement—I keep quiet and
she leaves the squatters alone. That’s all. That’s all I asked
for.”

He went back to that disbelieving stare.

“Hsing,” he said, “I think I believe you. But
if it’s true, I’ve got to ask what the hell is
wrong
with
you, passing up a chance like that!”

I just said, “I don’t work that way.” Then I
exited the call.

I half expected him to call back, but he
didn’t, so I didn’t have to explain it any further.

It was all clear to me, plain and simple. I’m
a detective. I was then, I am now. I find things out. I sell people
information. I keep quiet when I’m paid to.

But I’m not a blackmailer. Nakada hadn’t
hired me to find out anything, so she couldn’t pay me to keep it
quiet.

I’d stolen that information from her because
I needed it for my client. Information isn’t like most property—you
can steal it from someone without them ever knowing it’s gone,
without depriving them of it. There’s no law of conservation of
information. You can multiply it from nothing to infinity.

But it was still Nakada’s information. I had
no right to spread it any further than I had to. If I took money
from her to shut me up, I’d be stealing it.

And yeah, this is all hypocritical as hell. I
did
blackmail her, when I made her leave the squatters
there. I’m not above selling information that isn’t mine. I’m not
above a little quiet blackmail. I do what I need to to survive.

But I try and keep my self-respect. I try to
stay inside my own limits. They aren’t the limits the law sets, but
they’re limits. Sayuri Nakada had enough problems, what with her
blind belief in the gritware Orchid and Lee were peddling her. I
couldn’t see taking her for all she could afford; that was too
cold, too sharp for me.

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 bucks.

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 signaler was out, so I knocked on the wall and shrieked,
“Anyone home?”

An overweight woman leaned out a window and
shouted back, “Whaddaya want?”

“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, and said, “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 and said, “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
bucks.”

“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
bucks 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 that 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 bucks—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.