Nightside City

"How do I know you won't make more demands?" she asked.

"That's in my end of the agreement," I said. "If I spread the word, or if I demand anything more, then I'm in breach of contract-and you and I both know what the penalties are for that in Nightside City. I'm not interested in a term of indenture, or in selling body parts."

She thought for a minute, then nodded. "All right," she said.

That little golden floater had all the necessary equipment for the contract, and in fifteen minutes we had shaken hands and left.

I don't know where she went. I went home to my office. I thanked Mishima's muscle and let them fend for themselves; I didn't see that I needed them anymore.

The case was over, as far as I could see. I sat at my desk and ran through the records, making notes, seeing if I'd missed anything. I didn't see that I had. My contract was to stop the new owner from evicting the squatters; I had Nakada's agreement recorded and sealed. Side issues had been to find out who was doing what, and why, and I had all that figured out. Orchid and Rigmus had tried to kill me, but I had it set so they wouldn't try again.

It looked smooth. I started clearing everything out of the com's active memory.

Then the com beeped and I touched keys, and Mishima's face appeared.

"Hello, Hsing," he said.

"Hello, Mishima," I replied.

"So how'd it go?" he asked.

"How did what go?" I said.

"Your little talk with Sayuri Nakada-how'd it go?"

I wasn't terribly happy to hear him ask that. I was begi

I still appreciated the loan of the muscle, not to mention the medical bills and the detail that Mishima had ventured out onto the dayside to rescue me, and I could see virtues in the arrangement, but I didn't like being called to account like that.

"It went all right," I said, trying to think how I could put my concerns.

"What did you get?" he asked.

"What do you mean, what did I get?" I said.

"I mean, what did you get from Nakada?" he said. "How much did she pay you to keep quiet?"

"She didn't pay me anything," I said. "She just agreed to leave the squatters alone."

He stared at me for a minute. "Listen, partner," he said. "I don't want to get this relationship off to a rough start. Let's just keep the bugs and glitches to a minimum. Let's not hold out on each other, okay?"

"Sure," I said. "I'm not holding out."

"Oh, get off it, Hsing," he said. "You went there with all the details of this scam, with everything you needed to prove to Sayuri Nakada's old man back on Prometheus that she's a complete idiot, and you came away without a buck? You expect me to believe that?"

It was my turn to sit back and stare for a minute.

"All right, Mishima," I said. "Suppose you tell me how you think it ran."

He gave me a look like I'd just offered to buy his firstborn child at an offensively low price.

"All right," he said. "I think you went in there and told Nakada that she was being taken, that Orchid and Rigmus and Lee were ru

I shook my head. "You've got it wrong, Mishima. Right from the start."

"Then you tell me how it went," he demanded.

"You tell me something first," I said. "How'd you know it was all a scam?"

He paused, and I could see he was thinking back and realizing that I'd never told him that. He could say he figured it out for himself, but he was awfully damn sure that I knew it was a scam.

I guess he decided on the truth.

"I tapped into your com," he said.

"Hey, partner," I said. "Wasn't that a sweet thing to do! Hey, what rare trust between partners we have here!"

"Come on, Hsing," he said. "You were busy. We're partners. You owe me. I just saved us some time and argument."

"I'll tell you, Mishima," I said. "I don't think the team of Mishima and Hsing is going to make it. Sorry about that."

"Oh, come on," he said. "Give me a break!"

"I will," I said. "Don't worry. I know what I owe you. I just don't think that this partnership will run. I'm not going to screw you over if I can help it, Mishima, but I don't think I can work with you, either. I'm telling you that right now, up front."

"Hell," he said. "Just forget the partnership, then. I don't need you. But you owe me, Hsing, so tell me what you got from Nakada."

"I did tell you," I said. "Hey, how is it you didn't manage to listen in at the breakfast bar? Then we wouldn't be arguing about it."

I was being sarcastic, but Mishima took me seriously. "Nakada had privacy fields up," he said. "Those floaters of hers were loaded. I couldn't get anything through. And those three gritheads I loaned you didn't bother to try and hear; they figured I'd get it all from the machines. Even Jerzy."

"That the one with the chrome face?" I asked.

He nodded.

"You know," I said, "maybe they heard and just didn't want to tell you, figured it wasn't your business."

He spat, offscreen. "Don't give me that," he said. "Of course it's my business, and those three work for me. They didn't hear. You did."

"Right," I said. "And I told you what I got."

"So tell me again, and maybe add a few details," he said.

I nodded. "I'll do that," I said. "First off, you started off well with your little guessing game. I did tell Nakada the scheme was a fake. But you got her reaction wrong. She didn't believe me. Didn't believe a word, thought that I was the one ru

"Oh, come on," he said. "Don't give me that shit."

"True," I said. "I swear it. Put it on wire, on oath, on stress-triggered plague test, I tell you she did not believe me."

"Hsing, nobody is that dumb!" he insisted.

"You ever met Nakada?" I asked. "She isn't exactly dumb, but she only believes what suits her. Stopping the sunrise suits her right down the line, and she wasn't taking any argument, so I didn't argue."

"That's crazy," he insisted.

I just shrugged.

It wasn't all that crazy, but he couldn't see it. He was Epimethean, like me-except maybe without as much imagination. I could dream about stopping the dawn, but to him, the sunrise was inevitable. He'd lived with it all his life. The idea of stopping it was just gibberish, like turning off gravity. He didn't realize that Nakada looked at it differently. To her, cities were permanent things, and the idea that this one was going to fold up and die, and that there was no way to stop it, was anathema.

The truth lay somewhere in between, I was pretty sure. With time and money and competent people, Nightside City could probably be saved-but it wasn't worth what it would cost. It would be one of the biggest engineering projects of all time, up there with the terraforming of Venus, but with only a city for payoff instead of an entire planet. A bad investment-but not unthinkable.