Nightside City

Chapter Three

COM SECURITY VARIES. SOME PEOPLE DON'T BOTHER with it on anything, since everybody's known for centuries that anything one person can set up another person can crack. Other people put their damn grocery lists under sixteen layers of alarms and horse and counter-virus.

The people I was after seemed to all be the second kind. I ran a customized parasite search-and-trace pyramid program that could run through all the unshielded open-system data anywhere in Nightside City in under an hour, and except for the official records I'd already scanned, I didn't find a single one of the fifteen names, not once-at least, not that the program managed to report back about before a watchdog or scrubware cut the feet out from under that piece. Parasite programs are weak on self-defense; they have to be to run in other people's systems uninvited. They need speed and stealth, not strength. This one, though, had a lot of redundancy built into the pyramid building, so I doubt I missed much.

It wasn't sentient; I don't trust sentient software to do what it's told and never use it if I can help it, because anything complex enough to be self-aware is complex enough to be untrustworthy. Even if it doesn't glitch or get moody, it can be duped or sabotaged. That's why I used a pyramid instead of a net. My pyramid wasn't even close to consciousness levels, but it was fast and sneaky and did what I wanted.

And it came up empty.

But that was in unshielded, open systems. The names were out there somewhere; they had to be. Not unshielded, though-and the truth is that I hadn't really expected to find anything unshielded. It just didn't feel like that sort of case. So for most of the time that my parasite was running out there on its own with no connection to my system except its destination address, I was plugged into my desk, doing a little slip-and-grab on a couple of the casino systems.

As I think I said before, I don't like running on wire-I know too damn well that every connection is two-way, and I don't like the idea of giving anybody, human or com or otherwise, access to my head. I like my personality the way it is, and I like my memories to stay mine. So I don't like wire.

When you're tackling good security, though, wire helps. Helps, hell, it's essential. A com operates a zillion times faster than a human brain, but most coms are pretty dumb and need a human to tell them what to do when something new comes along. We humans build them that way on purpose, so they don't get uppity. When you're running on wire, if you're any good, you can come up with new stuff faster than any program can handle it, and you can usually get through, in, and out before a human on the other end can get his act together enough to stop you-or rather, to tell the com how to stop you. Sometimes, by the time the com realizes it's in trouble and tells a human you're there, you're gone.

But that's on wire. Try it by voice or codefield or keypad, and you can't give the orders fast enough to do anything, can't get information either in or out fast enough to do any good at all.

So I plugged in, making my brain into another interactive terminal on the com network, and there I was, perceiving the casino security systems as layered synesthetic tangles, and picking holes in them wherever I could and shooting in retrievers. I wasn't programming, really; I can't think that fast in machine language. I had interface software translating for me, so I was doing everything in analog, looking for flaws not by analyzing programs, but by studying the surfaces of those tangles, looking for any unevenness, anywhere that didn't feel tight and solid, and ramming the retrievers at whatever weak spots I found.

The retrievers were like sweet little buzzes. They went where I pointed them. If you've never been on wire, I can't explain it any better than that. If you have, you know what I mean.

I stayed away from anything really touchy, never went in too deep, and made sure that any retriever that didn't get out destroyed itself before it got nailed. I didn't want anyone analyzing the programming style; the stuff I was using came from one of the standard black market jobs, but it had been modified by a friend of mine and touched up a bit by me, so it might have been traceable.

The retrievers had the fifteen names as guides, of course, and when they got out-if they did-they showed either positive or negative. If it was negative, I erased them completely; if it was positive, I sent them back for storage.

Twenty minutes of that and I had watchdogs looking for me, I was exhausted and sweating, and I had a couple dozen retrievers tucked away. I pulled out, pulled the plug, and got myself a bulb of Coke III to suck on until the shaking stopped.

When I unplugged, my system went into high-security mode automatically, and I watched the screens to see if anyone was coming after me successfully.

Nobody was, or if they were they were eluding my own stuff. I figured they just weren't coming.

People pick at the casinos all the time, hoping to find some way to beat the odds, or bleed off a bit of the daily take, or turn up something juicy in the way of gossip, so the watchdogs are usually on short tethers; it's not worth pursuing every nibbler, especially when she might just be a decoy for someone else. I hadn't touched anything basic, so I figured I was out clean and safe. As long as I was alive the casinos would probably never even know I'd been there.

Of course, when I die, if the news reaches anyone on Epimetheus, the complete records of everything I ever did on my business com, legal, or otherwise, go to the city cops, both the port watch and the Trap crew, or whatever law enforcement there is at the time-maybe by then it'll be on Prometheus. That comes with a detective license in Nightside City; it's a requirement for the job. Try and duck it and you lose the license, or maybe worse.

You want to see real security? Check out the city's in-the-event-of-death files. The whole ITEOD system is semi-closed, supposed to be input only-though I already told you what I think of that. They don't count on that closure, though; they've got full-range security. Go at it on wire and you'll get a scream that'll rip your hearing up for weeks, even though it doesn't touch your external ears, and you'll hit a glare of white that'll bum you alive. It tastes of acid and stinks of burning corpses. You'll be blind and deaf, and you won't want to eat for a week when you unplug.

Yeah, I tried it once; of course I did. Who could resist?

I never even got close, but at least I didn't get caught; you can get yourself sent up for reconstruction if you tamper with ITEOD stuff.

The casinos are nothing by comparison. I could handle anything they threw at me, as long as I was careful, and I'd been careful. I read what my retrievers had brought me.

The nine casino names had all turned up, as I expected. I hadn't managed to tag any real names; that was in a lot deeper, behind at least one more layer of security than I wanted to tackle. They were all legitimate names, though -and they were all first registered at the New York. Bond James Bond S4S63 had also played the Starshine and the Excelsis, and Darby O'Gill 34 had spent a few nights at the Delights of Shanghai, and so on, but five of the nine had only played at the New York, and they'd all started there and played there more than anywhere else.

That was interesting.

Whoever was buying up the West End apparently had some connection with the New York.

I sat back and sipped my Coke and waited until the parasite pyramid finished up and reported back empty. My chair wiped off the sweat from my wire run and massaged my back, and the holoscreen on the far wall ran some contemplative scenery.

I still had two hours. Should I go down to the Trap and drop in at the New York?

No, I decided, not yet. First I wanted some background on the place.

I'd never spent much time in the New York, not when I worked in the Trap, not as a kid, not even when I ran wild for a year in my late teens. I was never that fond of sleaze, and when I live dangerously it's generally for some better reason than a cheap thrill. I lost plenty of credits in the Starshine Palace and the Excelsis and the three IRC joints, but I'd stayed out of most of the others. I'm not real big, after all-a hundred and forty-five centimeters, forty kilos, and most casinos don't like their customers armed, so I'd be in serious trouble if I got in a fight with someone who knew what he was doing.

This isn't cowardice, just caution. I mean, even unarmed, I can take out your standard drunken miner easily enough, but I can't handle them in groups, and I can't handle them if they're sober and know how to fight, and I can't handle them if I'm drunk or otherwise mentally or physically unsound, so I always did my drinking and carousing in places where the bouncers knew their job.

The New York wasn't quite up to my standards.

Which is not to say the place was a dump; the New York was not like Buddy's Lucky Night, a dive down on North Javadifar that no tourist had ever come out of alive and even the smarter miners avoided. No, the New York was a serious Trap casino, living mostly off the tourist trade- though some miners did play there, and you never saw miners in the Excelsis or the Luna Park. Nobody had ever been killed in the New York so far as I knew, not even temporarily, and nobody ever caught the house cheating, but it played up a fantasy image of dangerous, decadent Old New York, which is supposedly an ancient, corrupt city back on Earth, and I avoided it because some of the customers got a little vague about the line between fantasy and reality, and the management, by all accounts, was willing to let things get fairly rough before intervening. It helped the image they wanted.

I knew that image, but I didn't know much more than that, so I punched in some orders and read what came up on the screen.

The New York Townhouse Hotel and Gambling Hall was owned by the New York Games Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nakada Enterprises, incorporated on Prometheus. I'd heard of Nakada, of course. Everybody had heard of the Nakada family. They weren't very active on Epimetheus, but they were sure as hell all over the rest of the Eta Cass system and probably every other inhabited planet I'd ever heard of, as well. They'd been one of the founding families on Prometheus.

I never heard that they had any connection with Old New York, or Old Old York, or much of anything else back on Earth, but that didn't mean much. Maybe they just liked the name, or maybe their marketing people suggested it; I didn't see anything about it on the files I was reading.

Getting back to the casino itself: the manager's name was Vijay Vo. I'd heard of him slightly, as he was active in assorted civic groups and reputed to be a damn good businessman, but I'd never met him; not my social circle, and sure as hell not my age group. He'd been working there since the place opened in 2258, so he wasn't exactly young anymore and probably knew one hell of a lot by this time. He answered to the Nakada family, as represented on Epimetheus by Sayuri Nakada, whose name I knew from celebrity gossip on the nets. She answered to old Yoshio Nakada himself, the head of the clan back on Prometheus, who made Vo look like a beginner.

The property had no liens against it. New York Games had no other assets on Epimetheus, and no other tangible assets reported anywhere-but reporting requirements were light. Stock in Nakada Enterprises was not presently available to the public, so I couldn't get at any reports to stockholders or other internal records. Reported crimes in the New York included hundreds of thefts, assaults, rapes, com violations, and so forth, back over the hundred and eight years the casino had been in business, but no more than most of the other casinos. The New York had been the second casino to offer its players false-name accounts on a formal basis, following the lead of the long-defunct Las Vegas III.

The Vegas-that brought back memories. When I was five I watched the salvage machines eat away the old shell of the Vegas; those things scared the hell out of me, the way they chewed through the plastic and cultured concrete like it was tofu. I had a horrible idea that the building's internal com systems might still be conscious the whole time.

Las Vegas-that was a weird name. There's only one Vega; I've checked the star charts. The casino was the Las Vegas III, though. I don't know any more about I and II than I know why the name's plural and the article Spanish. Nobody on Epimetheus speaks Spanish. I suppose some of the big intelligences must know it, but I've never heard it spoken, and it isn't available on any of the vids.

After the casino was gone they had made the site a park, though not much of one; the imported grass had all died pretty quickly, despite the fancy lights and watering system. I think the metals in the soil and water got to it.

Nobody had wanted to build there, since everyone knew that the sun was coming up. That hadn't been news since long before I was born.

I wasn't checking on the Vegas, though. I was checking on the New York. I've always had this habit of going off on tangents like that; sometimes it's useful. It distracts people. Sometimes it gives me an interesting angle to work.

This time it didn't seem to be helping, and I didn't see anything very interesting about the New York. I cleared the screen and thought.

Nothing came. Oh, there were still approaches I could make, but I didn't feel like trying any of them just then. I had a lead to work, with Mariko Cheng, and I wanted to see where that took me before I booted up anything else.

I did know, though, that the New York had something to do with the case, and that meant I knew where I was going to take Mis' Cheng for a drink.

I still had more time than I needed, but what the hell, I could always walk the streets, which beat just sitting around the office watching vids or something, which was just about all I'd been doing lately. I threw the empty Coke bulb down the chute, punched the com to call a cab and secure the office, checked the draw and ran a circuit test on the HG-2, then I got up and headed for the door.