Nightside CIty (17 page)

There was no attempt at symmetry or grace in
any of it; it was big and ugly and squat, and the entire place was
layered with dirt.

The main entrance was under a blackened
overhang more or less in the middle of the side facing me—the
building didn’t really have a front or back. No one was going in or
out. I walked up to it.

The Institute’s logo hung, glowing dimly,
above the door. Scanners glittered from shadowy corners. As I
approached, that synthetic voice that I’d heard on the com said,
“We’re sorry, but the Institute for Planetological Studies is
closed to the public until further notice.”

“Why?” I demanded.

“Due to the present financial condition of
our supporting foundation, it has been necessary to cut back on
administrative, maintenance, and public relations staff and
equipment. We hope that these conditions will improve shortly.”

“I’m not a damn tourist,” I said. “Paulie
Orchid sent me; I’ve got a message from Sayuri Nakada I’m supposed
to deliver.”

The voice changed tone, from mechanically
polite to downright snotty, and said, “May I ask who you wished to
see?”

“I didn’t get the name,” I said, feigning
exasperation. “Paulie just told me to bring it to the Institute,
and here I am.”

“Just a minute, please,” it said. “I will
consult with my superiors.”

I knew that I was talking to some really
simple gatekeeping software, probably hardwired into a cultured
fungus grown somewhere in those shadowy corners, or maybe just
resident in the building’s internal com net. A goddamn rat was
probably its superior, as far as intelligence or decision-making
capability went. I waited.

A new voice spoke, one that could pass for
human.

“What’s this message?”

“It’s on a bug, and Paulie told me to bring
it here and see that somebody got it. This stupid software you’ve
got out here isn’t my idea of somebody.”

“Just a minute,” the new voice said.

I unsealed my jacket and waited.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll send someone down
for it. Come on in, and she’ll meet you in the central lounge. It’s
straight ahead.”

“Right,” I said. I knew where it was.

The door opened, lights and music came on,
and I marched in, my right hand a centimeter or two from the grip
of my gun.

I walked down a corridor with bare stone
walls and with plastic conduits webbing the ceiling, past a few
doors, across another corridor, and into the lounge, which had
full-depth holos of smoky green seascapes for walls, and a soft
blue carpet underneath. Music kept time with the holographic surf.
A golden haze hid the ceiling; blue bubbles of variable furniture
drifted lazily by.

I snared a small one and leaned on it,
waiting; it formed into a comfortable grip and hovered right where
I wanted it, without a single dip or bob. The Ipsy wasn’t
too
badly off, I decided, if they kept the furniture so
nicely tuned. The music and the holos weren’t the latest styles,
but they weren’t bad, either.

A woman who was either older than hell or
didn’t believe in cosmetic restoration stepped out of one of the
holos; her hair was white, her skin wrinkled, her hands withered
and claw-like.

“What’s this message?” she asked. “Why didn’t
Orchid come himself, if it’s important?”

“I lied about that,” I said, taking my elbow
off the floater and standing up straight. “I don’t have a message.
I just need to talk to some of you people about this work you’re
doing for Sayuri Nakada.”

She stopped and stared at me through narrowed
eyes. Then she said, in a tone suitable for talking to a
particularly dumb machine, “The IPSE is a private, non-profit
organization, and we aren’t affiliated with Nakada Enterprises. If
you want to know anything about work done for Sayuri Nakada, ask
Mis’ Nakada. We can’t tell you anything.”

So they still weren’t talking.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I
did
talk
to Mis’ Nakada, and I wasn’t happy with what she told me. I know
what you people are doing, roughly, but I have some questions that
I need answers to. If I don’t get those answers I may have to go
elsewhere with my questions, and I don’t think you or Mis’ Nakada
would like that. Now, could we discuss this a little?”

“No,” she said. “We couldn’t. Get out.” She
started to turn away.

I wasn’t happy about my next move, but I
didn’t see what else I could do. They wouldn’t even talk to me
enough for me to make convincing threats, and I desperately needed
to know what was going on, and when. For all I knew, they were
getting reluctant to talk because the big day was coming soon. For
all I knew it might be just hours away.

I hoped, as I pulled the HG-2 from its
holster and flicked it on, that they weren’t paranoid enough to
have heavy security or to go armed in their own building. They’d
never had any need for security until now, after all; they’d never
had any secrets before this deal with Nakada.

“Mis’,” I said, “you’re going to have to talk
to me.”

She saw the gun, and she stopped and turned
back and looked at me.

“Are you crazy?” she said. “This is private
property! You can’t bring that thing in here!”

I smiled. “I already did,” I said. “It’s
loaded with heat-seeking, armor-piercing high explosive, with added
boost during trajectory, so that it can track you even if you’re
cyborged to the eyeballs and trying to dodge. You talk to me, or I
blow off a leg, at the very least.” I pointed the gun at her crotch
and tapped a switch with my thumb—which didn’t do anything, the gun
was fully self-regulated, but I thought it looked like a convincing
gesture.

“This is insane,” she said, but I saw her
eyes focused down tight on the barrel of the gun, and she didn’t
move anything but her mouth when she spoke. The green seascapes
rolled smoothly behind her, and her stiff immobility made quite a
contrast.

“I never said it wasn’t insane,” I said,
keeping my tone light. “I just said it was happening. I might be a
complete whacko, loose from wherever they keep us nowadays. I might
be a sim or a genen or a construct. What I am doesn’t matter a
damned bit. What matters is that I’m here with a loaded gun pointed
more or less at your belly. Now, can we talk about this little job
you’re doing for Sayuri Nakada, or do I pull the trigger?”

“What do you want to know?” she asked, and I
could see a drop of sweat at her hairline.

I love the HG-2. It looks intimidating as
hell. And with good reason, too.

“First off,” I said, “are you people really
planning to stop the entire planet’s rotation with a single fusion
charge?”

Her throat worked. “I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s not my department. I’m in charge of estimating the
environmental impact of halted rotation, not figuring out how to
make it happen.”

“Environmental impact?” That sounded
interesting. “So just what will the environmental impact be?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “We were still
working on it.”

“What’s the added heat going to do to the
planetary core?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said again. “I do surface
environment—possible disruption of weather patterns, water supply,
oxygen production by pseudoplankton, that sort of thing.” That drop
of sweat rolled slowly down her forehead.

“What’s going to happen with those, then?” I
asked.

“I told you,” she said. “We’re still working
on it.”

“I heard you,” I said, “but you must have
some idea.”

She swallowed, and said, “So far, it doesn’t
look like there will be any serious disruption. After all, the
atmosphere’s
already
moving much faster than the
surface.”

The bead of sweat broke against an eyebrow,
but another one had formed above it, back at the hairline.

It’s amazing how you notice things like
that.

“But you’re working on the basis of a sudden
stop in rotation?” I asked. “Not a gradual one, or anything
localized?”

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t nod.

I figured that she was giving me a pretty
fair readout. “All right,” I said. “I need to talk to whoever’s in
charge of the actual stop. Who is it?”

“That... that would be Doc Lee.” She pointed
vaguely to her left, moving her hand as little as possible.

I nodded. “Is this room private, or on open
com?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, and it occurred to
me that there was a hell of a lot she didn’t know.

“Well, if it’s on open com,” I announced, “I
want this Doc Lee to get down here and talk to me.”

“I’m already here,” a man’s voice said, and a
whole section of seascape vanished.

He was standing against the gray stone wall,
tall and plump, with a scraggly black beard, and more importantly,
with a gun in his hand. They
did
go armed in their own
building, or at least had weapons on hand. It wasn’t an HG-2, just
a little home security job, local manufacture; I knew the make,
sold under three or four different names. It was not bright at all,
even for a gun, and it usually carried tranks instead of anything
fatal. I couldn’t count on that, of course; it could use several
kinds of ammunition. And it was a gun, pointed at me—other details
weren’t that important.

“You’re Carlisle Hsing, aren’t you?” he
said.

I was beginning to think that altogether too
many people knew who I was. I decided not to answer.

“You must be,” he said. “Paulie said you were
poking around.”

I still didn’t answer, but I could see how he
knew, anyway. There aren’t that many people my size in the
City.

Doc Lee, if that’s who he was, shifted his
grip on the gun and cleared his throat.

“Hsing,” he said, “I think you’d better get
out of here. You’re trespassing, and I’m sure you’re committing
some sort of crime by pointing that thing of yours at this
woman.”

“I’m also getting some answers,” I said.

“Not any more. You fire that and I’ll drop
you. You point it at me and I’ll drop you. I’ll be acting in
defense of myself and the Institute’s property if I shoot you; if
you fire, you’re committing murder. Now, you get out of here
peacefully and leave the Institute alone, and we’ll forget all
about this.”

“I’m not forgetting about anything,” I said.
I put on my sincere approach. “Look, I need some answers from you
people, and the gun’s just the fastest way I could think of to pry
them loose. Could we put away the hardware and just talk?”

“We’ve got nothing to talk about,” he said,
and he said it contemptuously. I didn’t like that.

“I think we do,” I said harshly. “Unless you
want everything I know about the plans you and Nakada have for
stopping the planet’s rotation to be slapped onto every net in the
City.”

His gun wavered slightly, and I didn’t think
it was a software check.

“Want to put away the armament?” I asked
again.

“No,” he said, tightening up again. “If you
put this on the nets we’ll ruin you.”

“So what?” I said. “What the hell have I got
to lose? If you know who I am, check out where and how I live, and
how I got there, and what the hell, break into my financial records
and take a look at those. You can’t do anything to me that I can’t
do one hell of a lot worse to you. Now, are we going to talk?”

He hesitated, and the gun lowered slightly.
He said, “Not now. I need to think about this, talk it over with
the others.”

“All right,” I said, “I can wait.”

“I don’t know how long it will take,” he
said.

“I’m in no hurry,” I said, and I smiled at
him.

“Listen,” he said, “I can’t leave you loose
in the Institute, with that gun and your present attitude. Get out
of here, go back to where you came from, and we’ll call you,
within... within twenty-four hours. If we don’t, you go ahead and
put whatever you want on the nets.”

I considered that, and I didn’t much like it.
Anything could happen in twenty-four hours. They could fire off the
big one and make all my questions moot. They could all be
off-planet in an hour.

But it didn’t look as if I was going to get
him to tell me anything right there, and somebody might have called
the cops already, or put something in the air that would take me
right out, not to mention that he was quite right about what would
happen if any triggers got pulled. I figured I could still dicker a
little, but I couldn’t fight.

“Two hours,” I said, “and nobody leaves the
city.”

He glanced at the woman, whoever the hell she
was, and said, “All right, two hours.”

I nodded, and backed out toward the street,
with the HG-2 easy in my hand. “Nobody leaves the city,” I
repeated.

He nodded. “Nobody leaves.”

I nodded back, and then I was out in the
corridor, and I turned and struggled not to run as I hurried to the
door, feeling very, very exposed.

It wasn’t a run, but it wasn’t all that
dignified, either. All the same, I got out before any cops or
security machines got me, and that was the important part. I
remembered to stop at the door and turn off the Sony-Remington and
shove it back in its holster, and then I stepped out of the shadows
into the red glow of the night sky, and I called a cab.

By the time the cab lifted I was having second
thoughts. I couldn’t flag exactly where I’d screwed up, but I knew
I had somewhere along the line. I didn’t have enough control. I’d
given Doc Lee and whoever else was involved two hours to come up
with something, and that was at least an hour and fifty-five
minutes too long.

But I didn’t see what else I could have done.
I hadn’t had any time to waste, because the charges might already
have been set, despite what Nakada said. I’d had to get into the
Ipsy fast, and I hadn’t seen any other way than with the gun. If
I’d tried going in on wire I’d have hit high security— wouldn’t
I?