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"I never said it wasn't insane," I said, keeping my tone light. "I just said it was happening. I might be a complete wacko, loose from wherever they keep us nowadays. I might be a sim or a genen or a construct. What I am doesn't matter a damned bit. What matters is that I'm here with a loaded gun pointed more or less at your belly. Now, can we talk about this little job you're doing for Sayuri Nakada, or do I pull the trigger?"

"What do you want to know?" she asked, and I could see a drop of sweat at her hairline.

I love the HG-2. It looks intimidating as hell. And with good reason, too.

"First off," I said, "are you people really planning to stop the entire planet's rotation with a single fusion charge?"

Her throat worked. "I don't know," she said. "That's not my department. I'm in charge of estimating the environmental impact of halted rotation, not figuring out how to make it happen."

"Environmental impact?" That sounded interesting. "So just what will the environmental impact be?"

"I don't know yet," she said. "We're still working on it."

"What's the added heat going to do to the planetary core?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said again. "I do surface environment-possible disruption of weather patterns, water supply, oxygen production by pseudoplankton, that sort of thing." The drop of sweat rolled slowly down her forehead.

"What's going to happen with those, then?" I asked.

"I told you," she said. "We're still working on it."

"I heard you," I said. "But you must have some idea."

She swallowed. "So far, it doesn't look like there will be any serious disruption. After all, the atmosphere's already moving much faster than the surface."

The bead of sweat broke against an eyebrow, but another one had formed above it, back at the hairline. It's amazing how you notice things like that.

"But you're working on the basis of a sudden stop in rotation?" I asked. "Not a gradual one, or anything localized?"

"Yes," she said. She didn't nod.

I figured that she was giving me a pretty fair readout. "All right," I said. "I need to talk to whoever's in charge of the actual stop. Who is it?"

"That… that would be Doc Lee." She pointed vaguely to her left, moving her hand as little as possible.

I nodded. "Is this room private, or on open com?"

"I don't know," she said. It occurred to me that there was a hell of a lot she didn't know.

"Well, if it's on open com," I announced, "I want this Doc Lee to get down here and talk to me."

"I'm already here," a man's voice said, and a whole section of seascape vanished.

He was standing against the gray stone wall, tall and plump, with a scraggly black beard and, more importantly, with a gun in his hand. They did go armed in their own building, or at least they had weapons on hand. It wasn't an HG-2, just a little home security job, local manufacture; I knew the make, sold under three or four different names. It was not bright at all, even for a gun, and it usually carried tranks instead of anything fatal. I couldn't count on that, of course; it could use several kinds of ammunition. And it was a gun, pointed at me-other details weren't that important.

"You're Carlisle Hsing, aren't you?" he asked.

I was beginning to think that altogether too many people knew who I was. I decided not to answer.

"You must be," he said. "Paulie said you were poking around."

I still didn't answer, but I could see how he knew, anyway. There aren't that many people my size in the city.

Doc Lee, if that's who he was, shifted his grip on the gun and cleared his throat.

"Hsing," he said, "I think you'd better get out of here. You're trespassing, and I'm sure you're committing some sort of crime by pointing that thing of yours at this woman."

"I'm also getting some answers," I said.

"Not anymore. You fire that, and I'll drop you. You point it at me, and I'll drop you. I'll be acting in defense of myself and the Institute's property if I shoot you; if you fire, you're committing murder. Now, you get out of here peacefully and leave the Institute alone, and we'll forget all about this."

"I'm not forgetting about anything," I said. I put on my sincere approach. "Look, I need some answers from you people, and the gun's just the fastest way I could think of to pry them loose. Could we put away the hardware and just talk?"

"We've got nothing to talk about," he said, and he said it contemptuously. I didn't like that.

"I think we do," I said harshly. "Unless you want everything I know about the plans you and Nakada have for stopping the planet's rotation to be slapped onto every net in the city."

His gun wavered slightly, and I didn't think it was a software check.

"Want to put away the armament?" I asked again.

"No," he said, tightening up again. "If you put this on the nets, we'll ruin you."

"So what?" I said. "What the hell have I got to lose? If you know who I am, check out where and how I live, and how I got there, and what the hell, break into my financial records and take a look at those. You can't do anything to me that I can't do one hell of a lot worse to you. Now, are we going to talk?"

He hesitated, and the gun lowered slightly. "Not now. I need to think about this, talk it over with the others."

"All right," I said. "I can wait."

"I don't know how long it will take," he said.

"I'm in no hurry." I smiled at him.

"Listen," he said. "I can't leave you loose in the Institute, with that gun and your present attitude. Get out of here, go back to where you came from, and we'll call you, within… within twenty-four hours. If we don't, you go ahead and put whatever you want on the nets."

I considered that, and I didn't much like it. Anything could happen in twenty-four hours. They could fire off the big one and make all my questions moot. They could all be off-planet in an hour.

But it didn't look as if I was going to get him to tell me anything right there, and somebody might have called the cops already, or put something in the air that would take me right out, not to mention that he was quite right about what would happen if any triggers got pulled. I figured I could still dicker a little, but I couldn't fight.

"Two hours," I said. "And nobody leaves the city."

He glanced at the woman. "All right, two hours."

I nodded and backed out toward the street, with the HG-2 easy in my hand. "Nobody leaves the city," I repeated.

He nodded. "Nobody leaves."

I nodded back, and then I was out in the corridor; I turned and struggled not to run as I hurried to the door, feeling very, very exposed.

It wasn't a run, but it wasn't all that dignified, either. All the same, I got out before any cops or security machines got me, and that was the important part. I remembered to stop at the door and turn off the Sony-Remington and shove it back in its holster; then I stepped out of the shadows into the red glow of the night sky, and I called a cab.

Chapter Fourteen

BY THE TIME THE CAB LIFTED I WAS HAVING SECOND thoughts. I couldn't flag exactly where I'd screwed up, but I knew I had somewhere along the line. I didn't have enough control. I'd given Doc Lee and whoever else was involved two hours to come up with something, and that was at least an hour and fifty-five minutes too long.