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 acknowledgment. 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 called him.
Zar Pickens had said that the new rent collector was a slick-hair, but that didn't mean much; you'll always find faddies around, whatever the current bug is, and slick hair had been hot among the city's faddies for months. Pickens hadn't said anything about a wire job, but still, Orchid might be the rent collector. If not, then maybe Westwall had a thing about slick hair.
My own hair's always been strictly natural finish, but that's more for lack of funds than anything else. I wondered who made the best hair slickers, and whether they had any connection with Nakada Enterprises.
I caught myself. That, I told myself, was going off on a random vector. I might throw the question at the com when I had time, but it wasn't worth my own mental electricity.
Something flashed white overhead; I looked up, too late to tell if it was an exploding meteor or some sort of floater or some idiot hot pilot buzzing the city on his way into port. Another advertiser cruised up, saw the direction of my gaze, and projected a little phallic imagery above the cab as an attention-getter.
I'd seen enough of that back at the Manhattan Lounge; I leaned back and closed my eyes and stayed that way until the cab announced, "Your destination, Mis'."
"Thanks." I slid my card in the reader, and when the fare registered I pulled it back out and put it away. This cab didn't give any hints about tips-it just opened the door, and I stepped out into the wind, right on my doorstep.
The door recognized me and opened, and I went on up to my office. When I got there I saw Mishima's spy-eye doing a silent hover outside my window; I bared my teeth at it, gave it the three-finger curse again, debated making a privacy complaint, then shrugged, sat down at my desk, and looked at the screen.
Nothing had changed. No mysterious stranger had zipped me the fare to Prometheus. No messages had registered at all.
I hadn't expected any, of course, unless Mishima had decided to make some clever comment.
I hadn't expected the damn spy-eye to stick with me, either; it had said I wasn't welcome in the Trap, but I wasn't in the Trap anymore, I was back in the burbs. So what the hell was it doing hanging outside my window?
I turned my chair to face it. "Hey, you hear me?"
"Yeah, Hsing, I hear you," it said, over a chat frequency that I heard by wire instead of ear-it knew my hearing wasn't as good as its own, and with that window between us I needed the help. I had the standard emergency receivers in my head, of course, even if I couldn't afford a decent wrist unit.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked.
"Just keeping an eye out," it said.
"Spying on me, you mean."
"Hey, it's my job," it said, but the phrase didn't sound right in the eye's flat machine tone. "I can't help it," it said.
"I thought you were only going to watch me while I was in the Trap," I argued. "Out here isn't Big Jim's turf, it's mine."
"I got a change of orders," it said. "I'm supposed to stick with you until I find out what you were doing in the Trap in the first place."
"You're breaking the privacy laws," I pointed out.
"No, I'm not, because I'm not a legal person; I have no free will. My boss is breaking the law."
"Well, somebody is, and we can't have that, can we?" I blacked the window and turned on the full-spectrum shielding.
I waited a moment, then opened a peephole.
The spy-eye was still there, not doing anything, just hanging outside my window, waiting.
Mishima owed me for this, I decided, but this wasn't the time to worry about it. I'd take one problem at a time, and right now my problem was the West End.
I typed Paul Orchid's name into my personal search-and-retrieval net and got back a file headed "Paul (Paulie) Orchid."