But I didn't see what else I could have done. I hadn't had any time to waste, because the charges might already have been set, despite what Nakada said. I'd had to get into the Ipsy fast, and I hadn't seen any other way than with the gun. If I'd tried going in on wire I'd have hit high security-wouldn't I?
Maybe not, but I'd thought I would. I hadn't stopped to see if I was right, and maybe I should have.
Of course, maybe all the work was being done in human skulls and other closed systems, in which case I wouldn't have found anything even if I had gone in on wire.
Going in in person had seemed the only way. Using the gun to get answers had seemed the best way. Nobody had ever called my bluff quite so completely before.
That made me wonder about this Doc Lee. I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard of him or not; he might have been on a couple of public affairs feeds, but I couldn't swear to it. Just who the hell was he? Was this idea of stopping the planet's rotation his? What was his position at the Ipsy?
I didn't know, and I knew that I should. I would have used the cab's terminal to see what I could get on him if I had had anything left on my card besides last-line bank credit.
Instead I forced myself to stop worrying about that particular detail for a moment while I looked around.
The Trap was big and bright and a million vivid colors out the cab's window on the right, the burbs mostly low and in dim shades of gray on the left. A line of advertisers squealed past overhead, but didn't target me; a spy-eye looked in, then turned away, obviously after someone else. The city was going about its business, just as it always had, and except for a handful, everybody in Nightside City was still expecting the city to die a slow, steady death with encroaching dawn.
I wasn't sure whether it was going to die slowly, or live, or die a fast and horrible death that would take me with it.
Worse, I wasn't sure whether I'd live to see whatever happened. If Lee was a hotshot at the Ipsy he might very well have some way of stopping my files from hitting the nets, even from the ITEOD banks. If he did, he'd have no reason to keep me alive, and although I'd never heard of Paulie Orchid doing anything as big-time as a permanent murder, I didn't think the little bastard would balk if Lee sent him to take me out. After all, Orchid was doing a lot of things now that I'd never have expected.
And even if Orchid did balk, there was the other muscle, the big guy-Rigmus, or whoever he was.
Suddenly I was scared as hell. I had screwed this one up bad, worse than when I let that welsher go.
Of course, it might all work out, I told myself. They might come through and tell me their whole plan, and it might be good and clean, and I might just settle down peacefully. Or it might be a disaster about to happen, and I might accept a little money to keep my mouth shut, enough to get off-planet, and then I might blow the horn on them anyway once I was clear-I didn't mind committing either blackmail or betrayal when the victims were planning mass murder.
But I was scared all the same that I had screwed up badly, and that I was going to pay for it.
I was right, too, but I didn't find that out right away.
The cab dropped me at my door, and I stepped out into the wind and looked around, just in case.
It looked clear. I didn't have anything with me that would scan much outside the visible, but it looked clear. The wind stung my eyes, and I blinked and opened the door.
Upstairs in my office I noticed that the window was still black, and I cleared it. If something came at me that way I wanted to see it-not that I expected any approach that obvious.
I also didn't mind looking out at the city again, seeing the flickering of the Trap and a swarm of meteors that drew golden clawmarks across the deep blue of the sky, hearing the hum of the traffic and the howl of the wind.
I got myself paté and crackers and a Coke III and I sat down at my desk and tried to think of what I could do with my two hours that could possibly be of use.
The obvious item was to run up a file on Doc Lee, so I touched keys.
His name was Mahendra Dhuc Lee, he was just over a hundred in Terran years, he'd been born on Prometheus, and he was assistant director of research in physical planetology, with a degree from Prometheus and a doctorate from Earth-I'd never heard of either university, so I won't name names. There was more, but it was dull as dirt; like most scientists, he'd never done anything but science and office politics, and either one is boring as hell to outsiders. He appeared to be good at both. Whether it was because he was good enough at both to offend people, or whether there was truth in it, I couldn't be sure, but there was a rumor that he'd been less than completely honest in some of his work-adjusting results to please backers, borrowing other people's work, the usual array of scientific misbehavior.
It looked to me as if he was someone who thought a lot of himself and always had, despite any evidence to the contrary. I figured that he'd gone into science not because he was good at it, or enjoyed it, but because he'd bought the line about science being the key to the future, the field for someone who wanted to really accomplish something.
Of course, he should have gone into polyspatial physics or something, then, instead of planetology; I'd bet that he picked planetology just because it had been his best subject.
I couldn't prove my guess, though, because his educational records weren't open.
I had another guess to make, which was that whatever he was working on for Nakada was intended to be his big score, his way of making his name and fortune, just the way it was for Nakada. Except he didn't have family and money supplying him with second chances; if he crashed on this one, that might be it for him.
I called for anything on his most recent work, but came up blank. I had his basic biography, but details wouldn't come, just the outline.
That much, and a whole string of tedious interviews, were on the public records, available to anybody who asked. I wanted more than that, but I hesitated to go after it. I didn't know what security I might hit. I didn't know what might come after me. I didn't want to plug into the com when there might be somebody at my door any minute; it's hard to maneuver quickly with a wire fastened to the side of your head.
I put it aside and I finished my meal and I waited, and about fifteen minutes before the two hours would have been up I got a message beep.
I tapped keys, and Doc Lee's face came up on the screen.
"We've talked it over," he said, "and we've decided to trust you. We'll give you the full schematics for the whole project. In exchange, we want your word, with legal penalties attached, that you won't put any of this on the net until either full dawn or a halt in the city's sunward rotation, whichever comes first."
I stared at him. I couldn't believe it. Nothing had gone wrong after all. It seemed too good to be true.
"And no trespassing or assault charges?" I asked.
"No charges, either way," he said.
"All right," I said. "You've got a deal." I smiled at him to show that everything was running smooth and sweet. I felt good. I felt a rush of warmth, but I tried not to let it overwhelm me completely. I still thought there had to be a bug in the program somewhere.
"Here it comes, then," he said, and the screen filled with gobbledygook.
I tried to scan it, but it was moving too quickly, and I couldn't follow it.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Let me patch in some analysis. I can't read this that fast."
"If you'll jack on line," he told me, "we can feed everything right in with all the interpretation, and you can go through it and see if you have any questions."
I should have stopped to consider that, but I didn't. The cold little worm of disbelief was too deeply buried in all that warmth. I just nodded and jacked in and said, "Ready."