Nightside City

Chapter Eleven

WHEN I STEPPED OUT MY DOOR INTO THE WIND I remembered something that had slipped my mind- something that had hovered outside my window all night. I looked up and there it was, hanging there just the way I'd seen it last.

"You're still here?" I asked.

"Yeah, Hsing, I'm still here," the spy-eye said.

I stood there looking at it for a minute, thinking this over.

Sayuri Nakada, I was sure, would not take kindly to having a spy-eye hanging around anywhere near her. What's more, I wasn't any too thrilled about letting Big Jim Mishima know I was visiting Nakada. I wasn't any too thrilled about letting anyone know that. I wasn't too sure just what I was getting into, after all, and that made me that much less eager to let anyone else know what I was getting into.

Besides, could I really be sure that that eye was Mishima's? That was what I'd figured all along, but I didn't really know. Maybe Orchid had found out about me right from the start, when Zar Pickens showed up on my doorstep, and had sicced an eye on me and let me think Big Jim was carrying a grudge.

It wasn't likely, but I couldn't say it was impossible.

Now that I thought I was getting somewhere, and it was somewhere that might be dangerous, that eye wasn't comforting at all. It was a serious nuisance. It was bad enough worrying about what might turn up if someone broke into my com system without having to deal with this sort of petty harassment-and that's what it was, I realized. Harassment. After all, if anybody really seriously wanted to keep an eye on me, me specifically and not a particular location or whoever just happened,by, the way to do it would be with a mircrointelligence or three, planted on me and breeding messages to be picked up later, not with a damn floater following me around.

And yeah, I've heard all the jokes about how microintelligences are dumber than dirt, and their messages all sound like sneezes, and all the rest of it, and some of it's true, but they'd do the job better than this flying chunk of chrome and silicates. A spy-eye is great for watching whatever comes along, and it's reusable, but it's easy to shake, the way I'd done at the Manhattan, and it's easy to keep outside, and to shield against, and even to shut down if you have to. A microintelligence is invisible, just about impossible to spot, and rides along anywhere; it can't be shaken or shielded without some pretty fancy preparation.

But maybe Mishima-if it really was Mishima-was just working with what he had on hand, and wasn't really trying to harass me. If he'd really just had the eye cruising the Trap, with my stats somewhere on file, and it had picked me up by accident, then he might not have bothered to switch to micros. It might just be sloppiness, not harassment.

I decided I'd give whoever had sent the eye the benefit of the doubt and assume it wasn't malicious. I'd give it a chance to play it sweet.

"Hey," I said. "Get lost. I'm going out on business now, and it's my business, but it's not yours. It's not in the Trap, and I don't want you along."

"Sorry, Hsing," it said. "I just do what I'm told, and I was told to follow you." The main lens was locked right on my eyes.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "But you might want to check in and see if your boss might reconsider. Warn him I'm getting pissed off."

"Okay, I'll ask," it said. "But don't get your hopes up."

I didn't. I stood and waited for my cab.

It settled to the curb in front of me, a battered old independent with an old Casino Cruiser logo still showing faintly on the side, and I got in. I gave an address on the East Side-not Nakada's, just one I pulled at random.

The cab took off, and the spy-eye followed, and a swarm of pocket-sized advertisers swooped in from somewhere. I settled back for the ride and watched the lights flash by.

The advertisers peeled off when we came out the eastern edge of Trap Over, and a flitterbug that had slipped into the cab without my noticing beeped and self-destructed when it realized it was outside its legal range. I don't know what it thought it was doing there in the first place, since I'd never had any business with flitters and it could have extended its range if it were hired. Maybe it had been a friend of the cab's, but if so it was pretty damn careless. It left a spot of hot orange plastic on the seatcover beside me, and I felt like spitting on it to cover the smell, but I figured the cab wouldn't like that.

Instead I turned and looked out the back.

The spy-eye was still there, cruising along a meter behind us, its main lens fixed on me.

A couple of minutes later the cab landed at the address I'd given, and I paid up, told it to wait a minute, and got out. Then I stepped back and looked up at the eye.

"So what's the program?" I asked. "Are you going to log off, or are you asking for trouble?"

It beeped and said, "I've got my orders, Hsing. No change. Sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," I said. I waved to the cab, and the door opened again and I got back in.

"Privacy," I said. "Full privacy all around, up and down."

"Yes, Mis'," it said, and the windows went black. The glow from the screens gave me all the light I really needed, but it put in a glowfield anyway. "Where to?"

I gave it an address on East Deng and unsealed my coat. Then I hesitated for a moment. Was I sure about this?

There were alternatives, after all. I could shield. I could use a jammer. I could just lose the eye for a while, though of course it would find me again eventually.

But yes, I decided, I was sure. Whether or not it turned out to be vital on this case, I had to let Big Jim, or whoever it was, see that I couldn't be pushed around. I had a point to make, an important one. Dodging or shielding or jamming wouldn't do it-not emphatic enough. If I pla

I could feel the electric vibration in my hand as it came alive.

"One target," I told it. "A floater. I need to take it out completely with one shot. Don't know if it's armed; it says it isn't."

I wasn't sure if it knew all those words, but I figured it would get the gist of it. It knew its job, and that was all that mattered.

I had to let the gun do most of it, because I knew that the eye would have reactions much faster than mine. I'll go up on even terms against a human just about any time, but against a machine I need a machine of my own.

"Put me down here," I told the cab. "I'll walk."

"Mis', is that a weapon you're carrying?" it asked. The voice was smooth, but I suppose the cab was pretty worried; as a free machine, its costs all paid off, it didn't have any owner to protect it if it were caught violating city law. And a machine convicted of a felony in Nightside City wasn't just sent for reconstruction; it was scrapped.

"Don't worry about it," I lied. "It's licensed. And I'm not trying to bugger you for the fare." I held the gun in one hand while I pulled my transfer card with the other and slid it in the slot. "There, see?" I said.

"Yes, mis'," it said, like a good little machine. I took my card back and then took a deep breath and held it as the cab set down sweetly on East Deng and slid the door back.

The instant the door opened I spotted the eye, pointed the gun, and squeezed the trigger.

I felt a jerk as the Sony-Remington targeted the eye; then it went whump, a deep sort of sound that I felt in my hands and the base of my skull, as well as my ears. A fine spray of gunk hissed around me from the recoil damping, and I was thrown back onto the seat by the recoil anyway-the HG-2's just a handgun, after all; it hasn't got room to be truly recoilless with a heavy-gravity charge. My right arm felt like I'd rammed it against a wall, felt like the shock bruised all the muscles right up to my shoulder. By the time I hit the upholstery I heard the bang as the spy-eye was blown to splinters- a good loud bang, like a two-meter balloon popping. Fragments whickered and whistled away in every direction, and I heard them rattle across pavement and on the cab's outer shell.