Nightside CIty by Lawrence Watt-Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

used to build a new city, domed or buried,
further back on the nightside?
    I wished I had a wrist terminal, so I could
run some figures, but I’d had to hock mine months before, just
leaving the base implant. The implant didn’t even have a readout,
and could only handle a few simple functions; it couldn’t tap data
or calculate.
    The cab had a terminal, of course, but I
didn’t want to use anything that public. Besides, the cab would
have charged me for it.
    The thought occurred to me for the first time
that maybe there was something valuable tucked away somewhere in
the West End, and the entire scheme was an attempt to find it.
    I snorted at my own foolishness—a hundred
megacredits? What could be hidden away that would be worth that
much?
    What about a combination of all three? Could
the combination of tourism, salvaged materials, and some sort of
hidden valuables be worth a hundred megacredits?
    Maybe, but I doubted it. Besides, the cab was
descending, cutting south on Fourth, and the next intersection was
Kai. A right turn and a short block and I’d be there.
    The bank’s holosign glowed soft green in the
air ahead, hung low over the street with a golden sprinkle of
Stardust™ spiraling back and forth around the letters. I watched it
make the jump from the N in Epimethean to the C in Commerce.
    That green looked a lot better a few years
back, when the sky was darker. The glow overhead was an ugly
contrast.
    The streets below were crowded, just as the
cab had told me, and the people there mostly wore the gaudy dress
of off-worlders on holiday. I saw a woman with wings, who had to be
from out-system; there isn’t anything around Eta Cass with enough
atmosphere and low enough gravity for wings that size to work. Some
of the others had their little peculiarities of color and shape
that marked them as out-system trade, too. Business was good, for
the moment.
    The cab set down gently, and I fed it my
transfer card; the fare lit the screen, but the cab paused, still
holding the card.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Business is bad; no tip. If
you want to code the card with your number for later, and I do well
tonight, I’ll see if I can kick in something.”
    I wasn’t planning on playing the casinos, but
I didn’t need to tell the cab that.
    Cabs don’t sigh or shrug; it gave back my
card without any comment at all, however subliminal. I took the
card, but it was my turn to pause.
    “You’re sentient?” I asked.
    “Yes, mis’.”
    “Trying to buy free?”
    “Hoping, anyway.”
    “Sorry I can’t help. You’re young; you’ve got
time.”
    “I’ve also got a hell of a debt, mis’;
they’re billing me for my shipment from Earth.” The tone was calm,
but that doesn’t mean much with someone artificial.
    I didn’t say what I wanted to say, that the
whole idea of freedom for an artificial intelligence is a cruel
cheat. What would a free cab do any differently?
    Oh, sure, it could save up its money and have
itself transferred to different hardware, but then what? Its entire
personality was designed for driving a cab; it could never really
be happy doing anything else. And something like a cab isn’t
complex enough to make it in wetware, where it might be able to
adapt itself to a wider role. So if it works its way free, it’s
trading away security and getting nothing in return. Oh, it can’t
be shut down on the owner’s whim any more, and it won’t be retired
when it’s obsolete—instead it gets to die slowly when it can’t
compete in the marketplace. Some great improvement.
    Giving software a desire for freedom is
sadistic, if you ask me. I preferred the older cabs, despite the
complaints some people made about how awkward it was dealing with a
“slave mentality.” Isn’t it better to build your slaves with slave
mentalities than to make them miserable by giving them an urge to
be free?
    Some people claim that the drive to buy free
makes for greater productivity, but even if it’s true, it’s a