Free Nightside CIty by Lawrence Watt-Evans Page A

two. I knew that well
enough.
    I finished my own drink, paid the tab, and
left.
     

Chapter Seven
    Big Jim’s damn spy-eye was waiting outside; I don’t
know whether it had been there all along and I hadn’t noticed when
I came in with Cheng, or whether it had left and come back, but it
was there now. I did my best to ignore it.
    It didn’t say anything; it just watched and
followed as I marched down the block.
    I was trying to think if there was anywhere
else I should go while I was in the Trap, any business to attend to
or old friend I should look up, and by the time I reached Fourth I
had decided there wasn’t. Nobody had looked me up out on Juarez,
after all, and I do my business over the com, for the most part. I
tapped my wrist and said, “Cab, please.”
    The transceiver beeped an acknowledgement.
Simple-minded gadget; I couldn’t afford a good implant. I mentioned
that, didn’t I, that I’d hocked my wrist terminal? All I had was
the implanted transceiver. I think it knew maybe twenty commands,
and it couldn’t talk at all, just beep. It had its uses,
though.
    “Going somewhere?” the spy-eye asked.
    “Wait and see,” I said, without looking
up.
    Then I changed my mind and I did look up—not
at the spy-eye, but at the maze of advertising overhead. Directly
above me a woman was lifting her skirt enticingly while Stardust™
sparkled gold around her; I listened, and heard a throaty murmur,
but couldn’t catch the words—if there actually were any. Floaters
drifted through her thighs.
    Nearby, laser lines flickered in abstract
patterns that coalesced every so often into piles of chips. Above
the New York an ancient skyline was etched in black and yellow, and
floaters cruised its miniature rooftops like tiny cabs.
    A carful of tourists cruised overhead, faces
pressed against the transparent sides, and I heard the droning of
the tourguide blossom, then fade.
    A diamond of four red crystal advertisers had
spotted me and was circling in, as if in a decaying orbit around my
head, waiting to see if I would give them any cue, any clue to my
intentions. A gleaming silver-blue messenger buzzed past them,
close enough to shatter their formation.
    Behind it all the sky was weirdly blue, deep
blue streaked with reddish brown, and all but the brightest stars
were lost in the light.
    I looked for a hint amid the lights and
images, a hint as to what anybody wanted with the West End, and how
this Orchid was involved, and how the New York tied in, but it was
all just the same old siren song. Nobody was advertising sunrise
tours or anything else that hadn’t been advertised all my life.
    Of course, this one street was hardly the
entire Trap, let alone the whole City, and advertising was carried
by a hundred other media as well as the city’s skies.
    The cab, gleaming yellow, cruised in to a
silent landing at my feet, and the door slid aside.
    This one was far from new; the upholstery
showed wear and the seat’s shaping mechanism whirred as it worked.
It was still a Hyundai, of course. Not Q.Q.T., though—Midnight Cab
and Limo. Not that it mattered; I was just hypersensitive because
of my conversation with the new one from Q.Q.T.
    “Where to, Mis’?” it asked.
    I gave my address and settled back.
    The crystal advertisers surrounded the cab,
singing antiphonal praise for some new pleasure shop, but I didn’t
care; it was easier to ignore them than to ask the cab to lose
them, as I actually had something to think about.
    Several things, really.
    Big Jim Mishima was still carrying a grudge;
that was bad news. I glanced out the back, and there was the
spy-eye, hanging right on the cab’s tail, close below the trailing
advertiser.
    Westwall Redevelopment was extraordinarily
secretive, and employed people that the ever-respectable Mariko
Cheng called “scum.” That might or might not be bad news, but at
least it was news.
    Paul Orchid—that name seemed ever so slightly
familiar. A wire-faced slick-hair, Cheng had