Nightside City

Mishima considered that for a long minute. "Either I missed something, or that's just crazy," he said. "Why'd they try to kill you? Hell, why didn't they just tell you what you wanted to know? Didn't they try and buy you off first, or anything?"

"Nope." I shook my head emphatically. "Never offered me a buck."

"But that's haywire!"

"I know it is," I said.

Mishima sat back to think matters over. I lay back to let him. I was tired; I might be healed, but that didn't mean I was healthy. I was horribly aware of the absence of my symbiote; without it, I could catch diseases, I could be seriously injured in stupid little accidents, I'd take weeks to heal up if I damaged myself. And I didn't have much of a reserve of strength of my own anymore.

I closed my eyes and rested for a moment. Then Mishima cleared his throat, and I looked up at him again.

"So you blew my spy-eye down to keep me from seeing you talk to Nakada?" he asked.

I nodded. I hadn't mentioned that, but he was smart enough to work it out for himself. It didn't seem important.

"I don't know about that, Hsing. I mean, yeah, you were probably smart to try and keep me from finding out Nakada was involved, but shooting the eye just got me mad."

I shrugged. "I had a point to make. I don't take kindly to that sort of harassment."

"Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I can see that. Okay. I still don't like it, but I see your point." He went on considering my story, and I rested a little more.

"So why were you after all the details of Nakada's little scheme?" he asked. "I mean, all that stuff at the Ipsy- what did that have to do with the squatters' rents?"

"Nothing," I said, opening my eyes. "But if somebody's going to wreck the city, I want to know about it." It struck me that he was worrying about all the wrong details. I'd gotten beyond worrying about the squatters; I was only concerned with whether Doc Lee and his buddies were going to crash the whole city.

"The city's doomed anyway," Mishima pointed out.

"Yeah," I said, getting a little a

"True enough." He settled back to think some more.

I was doing a little thinking of my own, and I thought I had an idea. I was remembering some of what I'd been thinking back in my office when I got horsed, and again on the dayside. I thought I saw why they might have done what they did-the silent treatment and the attempted disappearance both. If I was right, it would be a relief in some ways, but a bit anticlimactic.

Mishima interrupted my chain of thought. "Hsing," he said. "It seems to me that you've got a big edge on them now. They tried to kill you. That's illegal."

The illegality of attempted murder was not exactly hot news to me, and I was not impressed. "So?" I said.

"So you can get Orchid and Rigmus put in for reconstruction. We've got your testimony, we've got my tapes from the sky-eye, and there's got to be other evidence. Charge them with attempted murder. I'll back you up."

"Yeah," I said. "But where does that get us? It may keep them from trying again, but I'm not even sure of that; I think it might be Doc Lee who's ru

"Hey, no, don't you see?" he said. "It gives you leverage. You've got a hold on them. Maybe you can pry what you want out of them with it."

I couldn't see using the attempted murder as a bargaining chip until I knew just what the hell was going on. Yes, it ought to work, but then, I had thought that threatening to put everything on the nets should have worked, too. "And maybe I can't," I said. "Or maybe I don't want to. Look, Mishima, I appreciate what you've done for me, and I can definitely see working for you-"

"With me," he interrupted, and I accepted the correction.

"With you, then. I can see that. But not on this case. We're going at it from different angles, and I can't work your way on it. It's too important. You seem to keep missing what I consider the real central issue here. You ask about the squatters, and you suggest getting Orchid and Rigtnus put away, and ordinarily, that would be fine- you're protecting the client, concerned with my safety, and on most cases that would be great, but on this one my priorities are a little different. My first priority is the future of Nightside City. That's more important than squatters are, or than I am. If the city's destroyed, we're all dead anyway. Who cares about the rents in the West End if there's no West End?"

He considered that for a minute. "I see your point, I guess, but I'm not used to thinking in those terms. Just what is it you think these people are pla

I shook my head. "No, that's not it at all. Nakada says that they intend to secretly rig and set off a fusion charge big enough to halt the planet's rotation, before the sun rises. Before the sun rises means no evacuation. That means there will still be people in the city. And a fusion charge big enough to do the job is enough to do one hell of a lot of damage if something goes wrong, and I don't see how a scheme that simple could go right. Look, if there were any economically sound way of saving the city, don't you think the casinos would be trying it? They've talked about it for years now, but they've never come up with anything. You think Sayuri Nakada and Paulie Orchid are smarter than the best the casinos can do?"

"The casinos weren't figuring on buying the whole city up cheap beforehand," he pointed out.

"Doesn't matter," I said. "If it can make Nakada rich, it could have let a consortium break even, at the very least."

He didn't argue with that. "So what do you think is happening? Is this all just a front, and they tried to kill you before you found out what's really going on?"

I nodded. He'd hit my little idea pretty squarely- maybe it was obvious, and I'd been too close to the case to see it before. "I think that just might be it, yeah. But you're getting off the track again. It's the city I'm worried about."

"Go on," he said.

"Look," I said. "Just because the fusion charge can't work, just because it's probably going to leave the whole city flat as that desert you found me on, that doesn't mean these people aren't going to try it, and try it while there are still people here. Or even if they do wait until the city's been evacuated, there are still going to be miners scattered all over the nightside who could get killed." I didn't mention the possibility of a meltdown. That seemed too damn melodramatic; I didn't think Mishima was the kind of person who thought in those terms. He'd just about said he wasn't.

That didn't mean I thought a meltdown was impossible; it just meant I didn't think Mishima would take it seriously.

Overkill from a botched fusion charge, though,-that he could accept.

"Yeah," he said. "I see that."

I nodded. "So, I have got to find out what they're really doing. And if they're really going to flatten the city, I've got to stop them. That's more important than anything."

"I see that, too," he said.

I waited, and he went on. "Hsing, you were right. I'm out of my depth here. I came in in the middle, and I don't know a damn thing about all this fusion-charge stuff. You handle it, you do it all your way, and I'll back you up. You need muscle, I've got three good people on retainer. You need com service, I've got some nice stuff. You need an in anywhere, I'll see what I can do. You just keep me updated, and I won't interfere. And when it's done, we're partners, all right?"