Nightside City

My situation was not exactly an endless scroll of delights, and my prospects were a good bit less rosy than the sky I saw behind the Trap. That sky looked a little brighter every day, even when Eta Cass B was out of sight somewhere below the horizon. Which it wasn't, just then, when this case first came up. It was out of sight of my window, but I knew that Eta Cass B was high in the west, and I could see its glow reddening the dark buildings just across the street, while its big brother reddened the eastern horizon and washed half the stars out of the sky above with a blue that looked paler every day.

The sky used to be black, of course, and was still black and spattered with stars in the west, but the first hint of dark blue was starting to creep up from the eastern rim even before I left the Trap, and there were fewer stars to be seen every time I bothered to look.

Every time another star vanished, so did another chunk of the City's population; anyone who could afford to leave did, and those who couldn't afford it were saving up. That was cutting into what little business I had-I didn't have a single case going, and hadn't for two days. I was sick of watching the vids, and with no income I couldn't afford to go out, not even to Lui's.

So I sat there, watching the glitter and sparkle of the city try to drown out that insidious coming dawn, and I wasn't any too happy about my life. Getting out of the Trap was probably good for my soul-I suppose my ancestors would know for sure; I can only guess-but it wasn't any good for my mood or my credit line. The distance and the window fields kept the city's noise down to a murmur, but I could still hear it, and I was listening to it so hard just then that at first I thought the beep was coming from outside.

Then the com double-beeped, and I knew it wasn't outside. I hit the pad on the desk-the place had had pressure switches when I moved in, and I couldn't afford to convert to voice, so I roughed it. I guess an earlier tenant liked his fingers better than his tongue-or maybe he was some kind of antiquarian fetishist. It wasn't even a codefield, but an actual keypad. Before I took that office I'd never seen one anywhere else except history vids, let alone used one, but I got the hang of it after a while. It gave the place a certain charm, an air of eccentricity that I almost liked. It was also a real pain in the ass to use, no matter how much practice I got, but I couldn't afford to do anything about it.

So when the com double-beeped I hit the accept key. My background music dimmed away and someone asked, "Carlisle Hsing?"

The voice was young and male and belonged to nobody I knew. I could hear the wind muttering behind him, so I knew he was outside, probably on my doorstep from the sound of it. I didn't bother to check the desk's main screen yet.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm Hsing."

"I-uh, we want to hire you."

That sounded promising. I flicked on the screen.

He didn't look promising. He was a good three days overdue for a shave-either that, or three days into growing a beard, with a long way to go. His hair hadn't been washed recently, either. He was pale and round-eyed and wore a battered port worksuit, one that hadn't been much when it was new-low-grade issue, built, not grown, and all flat gray with no shift. A cheap com jack under his right ear looked clogged with grease, and I wasn't sure about the workmanship on his eyes. He wasn't anybody I'd seen before, not in my office or in Lui's or on the streets, and sure as hell not in the Trap.

Judging by the view behind him, he was indeed on my doorstep. In my business I do get callers in person, not just over the com.

At least, I got this one in person, and he said he wanted to hire me, so I let his looks go for the moment.

"For what?" I asked.

"Ah… it's complicated. Can I come in and explain?"

Well, I wasn't doing much of anything. I'd just finished off the final details on my last case, finding a missing kid who had holed up in Trap Under for a week-long wire binge; the fee hadn't done much more than pay the bills. I couldn't afford to turn down much, so I said, "Yeah," and buzzed the door. I didn't turn on the privacy, though, so it logged in his face, voiceprint, pheromone signature, and all the rest.

Any security door will do all that, but most people don't much care, they just let the data slide; me, in my line of work, I'd cleared it with the landlord and had everything tapped straight into my personal com system. The landlord didn't mind-as I said, I generally paid my rent-so I always knew who I had in my office. If this guy tried anything, I was pretty sure I'd be able to find him.

A few minutes later he inched into the office as nervous as a kid going through his first neuroscan and tried not to stare at me. He wasn't that much more than a kid himself; I guessed him at eighteen, maybe twenty, no more. Maybe twenty-one, if you want to use Terran years.

He looked okay-grubby, but not dangerous-and none of the sca

Owning it was probably good for a fat fine, but only if somebody made a point of it, and I wasn't about to walk past the port watch with it out. I'd drawn it in public a few times, in the Trap, but casino cops don't hassle anyone who might be a player without a better reason than flashing an illegal weapon. Casino cops can be very good at minding their own business.

"Sit down," I said, and the kid sat, very slowly. I had three chairs and a couch; the chairs were floaters, and he took the couch, which had legs. Cautious, very cautious. The cushions tried to adjust for him, but he kept shifting, and one of the warping fields had burned out long ago, leaving a band a few centimeters wide that stayed stiff and straight as a motherboard and screwed up the whole system.

He didn't seem to be in any hurry to talk. He just looked around the place, everywhere but at me. If his eyes were natural, he wasn't in great shape and might have something eating at his nervous system; if they were replacements, he got rooked. The com jack under his ear obviously hadn't been used in weeks. His worksuit was so worn and patched that the circuitry was showing, and I could see that some leads were cut; it was probably stolen.

I felt sorry for any poor symbiote that had to live in the guy-assuming there was one, which I did not consider certain.

But then, my own symbiote wasn't exactly in an ideal environment for the long term.

"So," I said. "Who are you?"

He gave me a sharp look.

"Why?" he asked.

This was looking worse all the time; I hit some keys I knew he couldn't see-with my left hand, because my right had the gun-and started ru

He didn't like that. He gave me a look and a silence.

"If you don't tell me who you are, I don't work," I said.

He hesitated, then gave in. "All right," he said. "My name is Wang. Joe Wang."

I nodded and glanced down at one of the desk's pull-out screens. His name was Zarathustra Pickens. He was about a month short of nineteen years old, Terran time. Born on Prometheus, came in-system to the nightside at sixteen- probably looking for casino work, but it didn't say-and did a few short pieces here and there. Last job, cleaning pseudoplankton out of the city water filters. Got laid off a week earlier when the city brought in a machine that was supposed to do the job. Again. They'd been trying machines on that since I was a girl, and they never worked right-sooner or later the pseudoplankton got into the cleaning machines, same as it got into everything else anywhere near water, and screwed them up. Machines that didn't screw up would cost more than people. An organism that could deal with the situation would probably cost even more and might be dangerous if it got out, since the whole planet lives and breathes off pseudoplankton; it's the only significant source of oxygen on Epimetheus.