Nightside City

Chapter Sixteen

I DON'T REMEMBER WHEN I FINALLY FELL AND COULDN'T get up. I don't know when it happened, or how far I'd gone. I know I was blind by then, and that my skin had peeled off in layers leaving me raw and red on every exposed surface, and that my feet were numb and the slippers of my worksuit were full of blood. I assumed that my symbiote had suppressed most of the pain for as long as it could, but I was in agony all the same-but numb at the same time. After a certain point, physical pain doesn't have any real effect anymore; the emotions overload and just tune it out.

I don't remember the fall, but I was face down in that hard gray sand, and I knew that this time I wouldn't get up again. I was beyond trying. I couldn't face the wind again.

But I still couldn't let go and die.

I tapped my wrist, wincing at the pain of my own touch on the raw flesh, and tried to call for a cab; I don't know if I really thought I might be back in range, or whether I just didn't know what else to do.

It doesn't matter; I couldn't get the words out. My throat felt choked with sand.

And after that I don't remember anything at all from my stay on the dayside. My next memory is of lying on my back on something cool and slick that shaped itself to my body. I couldn't see anything, but my skin felt cool and moist and nothing hurt. I heard music instead of wind. I remember lying like that for a long moment and then falling asleep.

When I woke up-and I don't know if it was the next time, or if there had been other wakeful periods that never made it into long-term memory-my eyes stung and felt curiously clean and spare, as if all the accumulated gunk had been blasted away, leaving only the live tissue. I opened them and discovered that I could see as well as ever.

I was looking up at a beige ceiling. Soft music was playing, almost subliminal.

"Whoo," I said, not a word, just a noise. My voice worked, though it was dry and thin.

I heard someone move, and I tried to turn my head, and that made me woozy for a moment. When I could focus again I saw my brother's face.

Sebastian Hsing was looking down at me with that same irritating perpetual calm he'd always had.

"Hello, Carlie," he said. "What the hell did you get yourself into this time?"

He was the one person on Epimetheus who could still call me Carlie if he wanted, and I wouldn't mind a bit. I think I smiled at him-or tried to.

I swallowed some of that dryness in my throat and raised a hand to gesture. "Nothing serious," I said. I swallowed again and then added, "It's good to see you, 'Chan."

He made a bark of amused a

"I suppose so," I said. "Where am I, anyway?"

"You're in the hospital, stupid," he retorted. "Where'd you think?"

I tried to shrug, but it didn't work very well.

"I don't know," I said. I tried to change the subject. "Heard anything from Ali lately?"

He shook his head. "Not much. She made it to Earth, I guess; at least, I got a datatab from her postmarked on Earth, but it was blank. Don't know what happened to it; maybe it got wiped, maybe she forgot to record anything in the first place, maybe she mailed the wrong tab."

I didn't know what had happened either, but whatever it was didn't surprise me. Our kid sister Alison was never very good at staying in touch-but then, none of us were. At least Ali had gotten off Epimetheus.

I hadn't managed that, but I'd gotten off the nightside.

"How'd you find me?" I asked.

"I didn't," he said. "They called me because I'm your next of kin, but it wasn't me who found you."

I waited for him to go on, but he didn't. I pushed myself up on my elbows and demanded, "Well, then who the hell did find me?"

'Chan smiled and pointed. "Him," he said.

I turned, and there in a doorway opposite the foot of the bed was a huge, ugly man. For a moment I thought it was Bobo Rigmus, that he'd had an attack of contrition or something, but then I saw the black hair and smooth face and the three silver ante

"Who-" I began, and then something about that face registered. "Mishima?"

He nodded. It was Big Jim Mishima, all right. I'd seen him on the com half a dozen times during the years we'd both worked the detective racket in the city. We hadn't met in person, not even over the Starshine Palace case, but here he was.

"Hello, Hsing," he said. "You owe me a lot of money. A lot of money. You shot my eye, and even after you did that, out of the kindness of my heart, I brought you back to the city. And I paid your bills here at the hospital, too."

"What the hell did you do that for?" I demanded.

"Because if you died, you wouldn't pay me back for the eye," he said, with a big fat smile on his big fat face.

I started to say something else, but one of my elbows slipped, and I fell back on the bed and decided against continuing the conversation.

Nobody argued with that decision, or if they did, I was too out of things to notice.

I woke up again feeling almost intact, but this time nobody human was in the room.

I wondered if I'd dreamed my chat with 'Chan and Mishima. I pushed myself up into a sitting position; the bed came up after me, so I figured I wasn't disobeying hospital orders.

The room was standard issue-four walls, a door, a nice relaxing holo of a park somewhere covering one wall, soothing music, and an assortment of display screens and gadgetry covering the wall at the head of the bed, all done in restful beige and cream.

I was about to call for word on my status when the door opened and Mishima came in.

"Hello, Hsing," he said again.

"Hello, Mishima," I answered.

"Before you ask," he said, "they tell me that you're fit to be released, but that you should take it easy for a while. And there's something important you should know, before you go anywhere." He paused, uneasily, I thought, and then finished. "Your symbiote's dead."

"It is?" I asked, startled. I hadn't expected that. Symbiotes are hard to kill, after all; they thrive on toxins of every sort. That's one reason people have them.

"So they tell me," Mishima said. "I guess the radiation got it."

I put a hand up, pla

Mishima noticed the gesture. "You took a lot of radiation, Hsing," he told me. "Not just the ultraviolet or the rest of the solar spectrum, either. You walked across some very hot ground, including the debris from your cab's power plant. They've flushed and rebuilt everything, so you're clean now; they regrew your skin, your bone marrow, just about everything that was damaged. Your hair and nails will grow back, and everything else already has, but it wasn't cheap, and I wasn't going to spring for a new symbiote on top of everything else. That's your problem."

I nodded. I could accept it. He didn't have to apologize for anything. Hell, the important thing was that I was alive; I'd never exactly been buddies with my symbiote. I'd been glad to have it, certainly; it had been comforting knowing it was there, but it wasn't sentient-some are, but mine wasn't-and I could get another. "Fair enough," I said. "Now would you mind explaining just how I got here, and why you're here talking to me?"

He pulled a chair from the wall; it shaped itself up and he settled onto it. "I'll tell you the whole thing," he said, "but I'll want some answers in exchange."

"What sort of answers?" I asked.

"Everything," he said. "Everything you were doing, how you got out on the dayside, all of it."

I guess I should have expected that, but I hadn't. I had to think it over for a moment.

It didn't take long. Whatever his reasons or methods, Mishima had saved my life. We were stuck with each other until that got balanced out somehow. "All right," I said, "You first."