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whole
deal down, but Nakada wasn’t finished.
    “Furthermore, I believe you have an older
brother, a croupier at the Ginza in Nightside City. Sebastian
Hsing, by name. And your father, Guohan Hsing, is currently a
permanent resident of Trap Under in Nightside City. A dreamer. A
wirehead in a Seventh Heaven dreamtank.”
    My mouth closed and I listened.
    “I have the names right?” he asked.
    I nodded. He knew he had the names right.
    “I am not threatening them, Mis’ Hsing,” he
said, raising a hand in a gesture that I suppose was intended to
calm me down. “I want you on my side, not as an enemy. But you know
what’s happening in Nightside City now.”
    I didn’t bother to nod again. I knew, and he
knew it.
    Nightside City was about to fry—and it was
doing the biggest business in its hundred and sixty year history as
the playground of the Eta Cassiopeia system, as all the tourists
crowded in to see the last days. Impending doom really appeals to
the thrillseekers, especially when it’s a nice, safe impending
doom, not anything that’s actually dangerous. The incredibly slow
planetary rotation that was carrying Nightside City out onto the
dayside was steady and predictable—tourists would have plenty of
time to get out.
    They were pouring in like data from a
wide-open search.
    That meant that the casinos and all the rest
of the Tourist Trap needed all their best employees.
    That meant they weren’t letting them leave.
Round-trip tickets to Epimetheus were selling three for a
buck, practically—the casinos wanted customers. But tickets off Epimetheus—those were not to be had. At least, not if
you were worth keeping. If one of the squatters out in the West End
tapped out a ticket somewhere no one would weep, but a croupier
like ’Chan—they weren’t going to let him go, not while the
customers were still coming.
    When the business finally burned out they’d
let him go—if there were still any ships running. He’d probably
wind up paying out his life’s savings for a steerage berth on an
ore freighter bound out-system. Or he’d rot in the mines out on the
nightside.
    And my father, down in Trap Under, he was
already rotting, plugged into dream central. He had a lifetime
contract. Once the city went down, though, would they keep up the
maintenance on the wireheads?
    I wasn’t all that fond of my old man, not
after the way he and my mother dumped ’Chan and Ali and me, but I
wasn’t real happy about the idea of him rotting away literally,
physically as well as mentally. And if the maintenance crews
checked out, that might be just what would happen.
    “I can get them both off-planet, off
Epimetheus,” Nakada told me. “When I have the assassin, I’ll do
it.”
    I stared at him for a moment, that ugly
wrinkled old face with the smooth white hair, white as death.
    He wasn’t going to let me say no. He probably
thought he’d already told me too much to let me turn the job down
and go home. He was accustomed to getting what he wanted, and he
wanted me to take this case.
    Which might get me killed. After all, anyone
who would try to take out Grandfather Nakada wouldn’t hesitate to
delete me along the way. In fact, if the would-be killer even found
out this meeting had taken place, I was probably dead.
    Or old Yoshio might decide to delete me
himself, once I’d finished the job—or given up on it. If I knew too
much now, how much worse when I’d learned more?
    But he had a reputation for dealing fairly
with his employees. I’d be safer doing what he asked, much safer, than I would be turning him down.
    So I had to take it, but if I was going to do
that, I was damn well going to get everything I could out of it.
The only question was how far I could push, how much I could
demand, before he got pissed.
    I looked up at the blue and silver floater,
hanging there motionless.
    “It’s recording?” I asked.
    Nakada nodded.
    “All right, here are my terms,” I said,
leaning forward. “You put this