Realms of Light (10 page)

That shouldn’t be possible.

A human being couldn’t do it unassisted, I
was sure of that; some pretty powerful software would be needed to
monitor and control all the communications between Epimetheus and
Prometheus well enough to catch any reference to whether Yoshio
Nakada was alive or dead. Software that powerful was more likely
than not to be an intelligence in its own right.

Maybe there really was a conspiracy here, and
maybe some of the conspirators weren’t human.

And there I was, with my brain plugged into
the nets, my consciousness roaming a domain where software was more
at home than we mere mortals, poking into places this theoretical
intelligence probably did not want me poking.

I had just had that unpleasant thought when
one of my retrievers came buzzing back to me to say that it had
found Yoshio Nakada’s ITEOD files, including the access records,
and was fetching me a copy of everything. I just had to keep it
active long enough.

I called my watchdogs in to guard it, let my
other retrievers shut down one by one as they reported in, and
waited.

And I saw it coming, saw it and felt it and
heard it through the synesthetic web link, I even
smelled
it, and tasted smoky copper. Something big and blue-black and
screaming was searching for... well, I didn’t really know what it
was searching for, but my best guess was that my retriever had
disturbed it, tripped some sort of warning that had brought this
thing swooping down on me. It felt like hot melting velvet as it
flashed past me down into the police records, and smelled of
vinegar and burning styrene.

Three of my watchdogs just vanished, erased
down to the last bit. I erased the retriever myself, to reduce the
chances of being traced, and then got the hell out of there. I
pulled the plug from the back of my neck and was back in my office
on Juarez, sitting in the dark—I hadn’t reactivated the walls or
lights, only the desk. The windows faced east, and I had them
dimmed but not opaque, so I could still see the seething, squirming
colors of the Trap, but that was the only light in the room—the
desktop had gone dark.

I rebooted the desk and took a look. The
retriever had downloaded 93% of Yoshio Nakada’s ITEOD files,
including the complete access log; the odds were that I had gotten
whatever was there that I wanted to get.

There was a
lot
there to get; the desk
had partially crashed because it had run out of memory and hadn’t
been able to swap data offsite fast enough. It would have been fine
if I had let it slow down, or if the security had been a bit
looser, but I’d been in a hurry.

What the hell was in there, that took that
much memory? That desk could hold a dozen human minds without
straining, right down to suppressed childhood memories, but
Nakada’s files had filled every last gigabyte.

If I could have talked to the old man just
then I would have had some pretty pointed questions to ask, but he
wasn’t even on the same planet, and communications between the two
were not to be trusted.

I had some other questions I didn’t think
Nakada could have answered. For one, what was that thing that
chased me off? That wasn’t standard cop security. That wasn’t
anything I had ever seen before. I didn’t know what it would have
done to me if I’d let it, and I didn’t want to find out. I’d had
hostile software in my brain before, and had no interest in
repeating the experience.

Did the cops even know it was there? To have
the effect it did that thing must have huge bandwidth; it would be
hard to miss. Whoever programmed it hadn’t been going for subtlety.
But if the cops knew it was there, wouldn’t they do something about
it?

Had it been prowling the nets at random? Was
it guarding the old man’s ITEOD file? Had it been looking for me?
It might be doing any of those, or it might be something else
entirely. Maybe I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Maybe it was guarding something else, or chasing someone else.
Maybe it was after something else in the police net.

Lots of questions, not enough answers.

I had to admit, though, that it looked as if
I was onto something. Whether it really was a conspiracy to murder
Yoshio Nakada I didn’t know; why anyone would
want
to murder
Yoshio Nakada I didn’t know.

But I was definitely onto
something
.

The access log I’d snagged with Grandfather Nakada’s
ITEOD files wasn’t exactly long, nor was it hugely informative.
There were only three entries.

An officer named Hu Xiao had accessed the
files under the direction of the court, and had copied portions. A
note indicated that the copying was for later analysis, and that
Mis’ Hu had filed a report of his findings. The report was not
available to the public.

An analytical program named Dipsy 3 had
accessed the files. What Dipsy had done with them wasn’t listed.
Dipsy was presumably pointed at the files by the courts, same as Hu
was.

And finally, someone using a Nakada
Enterprises corporate account had downloaded a complete copy of the
files. No further details were included.

That third one—if the faked death had been
done to get at the ITEOD files...

Well, no. I couldn’t rely on that. Someone
might have been subtle and gotten what he was after by cracking
Hu’s storage, rather than the original the cops had. Or maybe Dipsy
had been tagged for it. Or maybe the original Nakada download was
legitimate, but then our interplanetary liar had gotten at it
somewhere in the corporate nets.

But the third one was worth a look, so I
plugged back in and started doing a trace on the account.

I’d expected it to be used by the New York
Games Corporation, the subsidiary that ran the casino and most of
the other Nakada businesses on Epimetheus, but it wasn’t. It was a
high-level account for officers of Nakada Enterprises itself, or
members of the Nakada family.

I unplugged again and stared at the display
on my desk.

This was too easy.

Grandfather Nakada thought a member of his
own family had tried to kill him. I had guessed that the motive
might be connected with his ITEOD files, and here was someone who
might be a member of the Nakada family accessing those ITEOD
files.

It couldn’t be that simple. I was good at my
job, but I wasn’t
that
good—or rather, I couldn’t believe
any Nakada could be that
bad
at covering her tracks. Even
that grithead Sayuri would probably have done better than this.

Of course, that assumed there was a
reason
to cover those tracks. Maybe whoever this was hadn’t
had anything to do with the attempted murder, or the fraudulent
reports of Yoshio’s death.

It also assumed that I could identify which
family member it was. That wasn’t a sure thing.

I had looked over the Nakada family tree
during the flight from Prometheus, but now I pulled it up and
looked again.

Yoshio Nakada was the oldest surviving member
of the clan. His two siblings, both younger, were long dead. Yoshio
had married three times and sired five children—at least, five he
acknowledged—over a period of about a century, ending roughly a
hundred years ago. There had been eleven grandchildren, twenty-six
great-grandchildren (including my old friend Sayuri), thirty-three
great-great-grandchildren, and forty-seven great-great-great
grandchildren, so far. I didn’t bother counting up the three
youngest generations; half of them were just kids, and all of them
were so low on the corporate ladder that I couldn’t take them
seriously as any sort of threat.

A lot of these people were dead, and there
were dozens of spouses, ex-spouses, and concubines in the mix, of
course.

And then there were the two collateral
branches. Yoshio’s sister Hinako had one daughter, Narumi, who was
childless, twice widowed, and still alive, but at last report was
on Earth, not in the Eta Cassiopeia system at all.

The Wheeler Drive could have gotten her here
quickly enough, but why would she bother? So far as I knew, she had
nothing against her Uncle Yoshio.

Yoshio’s brother Masanori had been a little
more prolific. He had fathered fifteen children on eight wives
before he finally died. There were a couple of hundred descendants
on that side, but most of them had no real ties to the corporate
clan; in fact, most of them were working for New Bechtel-Rand or
ITD or other interstellars, not for Nakada Enterprises at all.

I thought I could safely ignore Narumi and
most of Masanori’s brood, but that still left quite a crowd.
Figuring out which of them had a motive to do in their ancestor
would call for some processing. So would figuring out which ones
had the capability. Jiggering the old man’s personal com with a
fatal dream enhancement program wasn’t something everyone could
do.

I frowned. You didn’t need to get in there
with your own hands to set that up, but you did need real-time
access to the family net, which meant you had to be on Prometheus
at some point—not necessarily the night it went off, but at some
point before that. I could eliminate anyone who had never set foot
on Prometheus.

And accessing the ITEOD files—again, you
didn’t need to be there at the time, but I didn’t see how that
could be done safely from off-planet. The fake death reports, yeah,
those could be done from Prometheus, though it would be tricky to
keep the cover on the hoax for very long, but the ITEOD download
had been done through the Nightside City nets. Someone had logged
on here.

Which members of the Nakada family had been
on Epimetheus recently?

Akina Nakada, for one. She was the only one
who had been here openly on family business.

But all the tourists in the Trap—there might
have been a few Nakadas in that crowd.

And I didn’t really know it was a family
member who had accessed the ITEOD files; it could have been some
other corporate officer. There were plenty of trusted people who
weren’t part of the clan—Vijay Vo, for one, or Grandfather Nakada’s
aide, Ziyang Subbha.

Or maybe someone had been acting as an agent
for someone higher up, someone who could tell her how to access
that account. Any of the older members of the Nakada family could
have arranged that, from the old man’s surviving children—there
were two of the five still alive, a son named Ryosaku and a
daughter named Kumiko—all the way down to the dozens in Sayuri’s
generation.

Agent or principal, if I could find out who
was using that particular corporate account when the ITEOD files
were accessed, I might have a real lead on the assassin—or I might
not.

I did what I should have done sooner, and
beeped Nakada’s ship. “Incoming data,” I told it. “Store it and
back it up, maximum security, for access only by myself or Yoshio
Nakada.” I hoped that would keep it away from any back doors that
other Nakadas might have installed, but I wasn’t really all that
very concerned, since after all, most of what I was sending was
stuff my mysterious conspirators presumably already had. I told my
desk to transmit its entire content, old and new. A spaceship would
have enough capacity for that, I was sure.

Now I’d have everything somewhere relatively
safe, and if I managed to get my head blown off, or found myself on
the dayside again, at least Grandfather Nakada would have something
to show for his investment, even if most of it was his own ITEOD
files.

While that was transmitting I sat back and
tried to think, which was what I was doing when the front door
beeped and I heard someone say, “Damned squatters.”

I sat up. I hadn’t heard that voice in over a
year, but I knew who it had to be. I must have tripped an alarm
somewhere, and my old landlord, George Hirata, knew someone was in
his building.

He should have known who I was, though. The
door knew. That’s why it let me in.

I tapped a command, and as the door’s vid
feed appeared on the desk I said, “Hello, Mis’ Hirata.”

He looked up at the cam, scowling. It was
definitely Hirata.

He had two cops with him, though; I hadn’t
expected that.

I’d left my gun on the ship, since I hadn’t
thought I could take it into the Ginza with me. One cop had a
weapon in his hand, though I couldn’t tell whether it was a stunner
or something more lethal. This was not going to be a situation
where I could play tough.

“Who the hell are you, using Hsing’s ID?” the
landlord demanded.

“I’m Carlisle Hsing,” I said. “It’s my
ID.”

“Hsing is on Prometheus,” Hirata said. “Or
off-planet, anyway.For all I know she’s on Cass II or Earth or
Fomalhaut II. Who are you really?”

He could hear me, but he couldn’t see me; the
entryway didn’t have a proper screen. And of course, I could have
faked the image if there
were
one.

“It’s really me, Mis’ Hirata,” I said. “I
came back for my brother.” Before he could say anything else, I
added, “I know I don’t have any right to be here, but I needed a
com, and you didn’t change the codes. I’ll be happy to pay you half
a month’s rent.”

I love expense accounts.

“Now I
know
you aren’t Hsing,” he
said. “She wouldn’t have offered more than three days.”

“I’ve done well on Prometheus, Mis’ Hirata.
Come on up and see for yourself.”

“We’ll do that.” He stormed up the stairs,
out of range of the door cam.

I opened the door between the office and the
corridor, to make it clear that I was being open and honest, and a
few seconds later there was my old landlord with two city cops,
charging in to confront me.

I wasn’t exactly being confrontational,
though; I was standing there with my hands over my head, and my
transfer card in one hand, ready to tab the rent.