I'd done this sort of thing before; com records can be amazingly useful, and the city was amazingly sloppy about guarding them. I suppose they weren't considered important, since they didn't carry any juice. Or maybe the city figured anyone who wanted them could get them somehow, so why bother with fancy security?
Whatever the reasons, I didn't really have much trouble in getting the records I wanted. I didn't even need all of the precautions I took; only one decoy program caught any flak at all. It was in, out, and I had the names.
I unplugged and looked over the list.
A hell of a lot of calls were to Paulie Orchid. That was the first thing I noticed. Others were more interesting, though.
There were a good many to the New York, which made sense, but a high percentage of them were to a particular human clerk in the accounting department; I suspected that something was going on there that great-grandfather wouldn't have approved of. That could well be where those megabucks spent on the West End came from. That was interesting, but it wasn't what I was after at the moment.
Plenty of calls were person-to-person stuff that looked like chitchat rather than business, and I noted the names on those for future follow-up.
Most interesting of all, though, were a dozen calls to an office at the Institute of Planetological Studies of Epimetheus, listed by room number rather than name. Half of them were conference calls with Paulie Orchid.
That looked very much as if Nakada really did have some scheme in mind for somehow keeping Nightside City worth living in. Really, what else would a Nakada scion want with the handful of biologists and planetologists at the Ipsy, as we natives called the Institute?
I sat back and considered my next step. I could call the Ipsy, of course, but that might not be wise. After all, if Nakada's scheme were all open and aboveboard, I wouldn't have hit those dead ends. The whole plan, whatever it might be, was obviously supposed to stay secret. Letting someone know that you know a secret you aren't supposed to know is asking for trouble, and I couldn't afford trouble. Hell, I couldn't really afford the tea I was drinking.
Better to stick with my original intentions and nibble at the edges a bit more, then see what fell into my lap. I put a call through to Qiu Ying Itoh, whom Nakada had called three times in a week three weeks back.
It didn't take much to get past his guardian software; practically all I had to do was say it was a personal matter, human affairs, and the program patched me right through.
Itoh was a looker, and I could guess what Nakada had been calling him about. They'd probably had a good time in bed for a few nights, then gone on to other things. I wished I'd taken time to pretty myself up a little more; nothing I could afford could make me look really hot, but I could look decent enough when I tried. My symbiote kept my color healthy, and I had semi-intelligent dye implants on my eyes and lips that I'd gotten for my fifteenth birthday-they were long out of style but still functioning- but I hadn't touched my hair since my little talk with Mariko Cheng.
Well, I'd already decided to play it distraught, so I just hoped he'd accept that as a sign of distress.
I also hoped he wouldn't take a close look at the background; my office wasn't exactly the Ginza. I had my scrambler on line to block the call origination signal, as usual, and once again I'd rerouted the call, but Nakada's friends weren't likely to be calling from anywhere as rundown as that office.
"Mis' Itoh," I said in as silky a voice as I could manage. "I'm calling because I need to talk to someone about Sayuri, and she was talking about you last time I saw her."
"Sayuri?"
"Sayuri Nakada."
"Oh, of course, Mis'…"
I didn't pick up the cue, on the off chance he'd let it drop.
He didn't. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I don't know your name, and the com says you're logged on at a public terminal."
"Yes, I am," I said. "I didn't want anyone else at home to overhear."
He nodded. "I still didn't get your name," he said.
I gave up and lied. "I'm Carlie Iida," I said. "Didn't Sayuri ever mention me?"
"No," he said.
"Well, she mentioned you," I said before he could ask for any more details. "And that's why I'm calling. I'm worried about her."
"You are?" he asked.
"Yes, I am, very much!" I said, rushing it out as if I'd been holding it back for weeks, waiting until I found a sympathetic ear like his. "She won't talk to me, and it's obvious that something's got her really worried, but I don't know what it is and she won't tell me, no matter what I ask her. Can you tell me what it is, Mis' Itoh?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mis' Iida," he said. "But I don't really know Mis' Nakada very well."
"Oh, but you must!" I insisted. "I mean, I know why she saw you, and I know it wasn't anything, you know, serious, but she must have talked to you, didn't she? Didn't she say anything that might give you an idea what she's worried about?"
He shook his head again. "She talked, but it was just pillow talk, how we were going to screw until the sun came up, that kind of thing. She made some joke about how, if that was what we were going to do, then she wouldn't let the sun come up, and I said something about in that case I'd need to be cyborged so I wouldn't wear out, and… you know the sort of talk. She never said anything about being worried. She didn't seem worried; if anything, she seemed ready to celebrate something, but I never knew what." He shrugged. "I'm sorry I can't help."
I pouted, but it was pretty clear he wasn't going to tell me anything more. "Well, thank you anyway, Mis' Itoh," I said. "You've been very sweet, talking to me about this. Thanks, and I hope you have a good day." I exited the call and sat there looking at the screen for a moment.
That joke about not letting the sun rise-I didn't like that.
I picked another of her friends from my list of calls and started to punch in codes, but then I cancelled and took a minute to brush out my hair and tidy up a bit.
Then I punched in codes.
Her friends weren't all as pleasant as Qiu Ying Itoh. Some I never got through to, some cut me off, some argued. I used different lies, as I judged appropriate for each case-since I usually had nothing to go on except appearance and how tough it was to reach each person, I probably took some wrong approaches, but I did my best. Whatever my story, I tried to nudge the conversation toward the impending sunrise each time-not that hard to do, since it was always in the back of everybody's mind already.
I got enough evidence to satisfy myself what she was doing, even though I didn't think the lot of it would count for anything in court. Besides her pillow jokes with Itoh, there were two other incidents that convinced me.
Nakada had gotten sloppy drunk one night and, among other boasts, had told a friend that she was going to stop the sunrise and send the city back where it belonged.
Another time, while she was wired with something-I wasn't clear on what and didn't ask-she told her supplier that the scientists were wrong, that Epimetheus was a lot closer to stopping its rotation than they thought, and that dawn would never break over Nightside City. He'd just thought she was crazy.
Those three were the clearest, but she'd made veiled references about it to half a dozen people. Somehow or other, Sayuri Nakada intended to stop Nightside City from crossing the terminator.
In itself, I thought that was a great idea.
Unfortunately, I didn't believe she could do it safely. Her past record wasn't very encouraging. Botching the job could easily be worse than not trying at all; at least the natural sunrise would be gradual and predictable.
She'd been talking to people at the Ipsy, which was encouraging, but she had that grithead Orchid in on it, which wasn't.
If she had a plan that would actually work, that would keep me and my hometown safe on the nightside, then I was all for it, and I didn't care if she bought the whole damn city for ten bucks and a tube of lube. I could give the squatters back their money, tell them it was out of my league, and stop worrying about the fare off-planet or a future spent scraping at radioactive rocks. I might even make a deal that I'd keep my mouth shut and help her out in exchange for giving the squatters a break and giving me the price of a few good meals.