Realms of Light (17 page)

“Surveillance, can you confirm?”

“Minish Singh, confirmed. However, this
person does not match city records of Hu Xiao.”

“I told you, rejuve,” I said. “My files need
updating.”

“She’s Officer Hu,” Singh said.

“She threatened Mis’ Singh with what she
called a heavy-gravity handgun loaded with homing incendiaries,”
the room said. I thought it sounded... miffed, maybe. Or pettish.
One of those strange old words that shouldn’t apply to a
half-witted piece of software.

“Fine, my weapon isn’t standard issue,” I
said. “Is that any of your concern?”

“You threatened him?” the lead cop asked.

“What?” I tried to look innocent. “No, I
didn’t
threaten
him, I just told him to hurry.”

The second cop spoke for the first time.
“Who’s the corpse?” he asked.

“I’m not...” Dad said. Then his voice gave
out, and he coughed instead of finishing the sentence.

“Guohan Hsing,” Singh said.

“He’s a potential witness in a kidnap,” I
said, trying to reconcile the story I’d given the room with the
story Singh had made up.

“I’m not dead,” Dad said. This time he got
the whole thing out, but so quietly I’m not sure the cops heard
him.

They didn’t care, in any case. To them he was
a body Seventh Heaven had been storing, and whether he was alive or
dead was a technical detail that didn’t interest them.

“His tank glitched,” Singh said.

“Or was hacked,” I said.

“Surveillance, who’s the hostage here?” the
less-talkative cop asked.

“The intruder calling herself Hu Xiao was
holding Mis’ Singh at gunpoint.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “I was just trying to
hurry him a little. Who wrote this piece of gritware, anyway? I’m
sorry to drag you two down here, guys—I guess this surveillance
system’s a little buggy.”

“Mis’ Singh, was this woman threatening you?”
the lead cop asked.

“No,” my father and Singh said in unison.

The second cop smiled at that, and lowered
his gun a little.

“May we please get this man out of here to
someplace he can get medical attention?” Singh demanded. “This is
all a misunderstanding, but that tank
did
almost kill
him.”

“I did not detect any malfunction,” the room
said, and I had to agree it wasn’t a very good piece of software—it
made this statement in a flat tone, neither sulky nor defensive.
That trace of emotion I thought I’d detected before was gone.

“Well, I have eyes, not just a datafeed,”
Singh said. “Something glitched his tank. We need to get him out of
here.”

“And after that Mis’ Vo wants to question
him,” I said. I thought whoever was listening to the bugs in my
gun, assuming someone was, might be amused by that.

The lead cop glanced over his shoulder at the
floater. “Any advice? Orders?”

“Neither account is entirely consistent or
believable,” the floater said in a pleasant alto

“So
everyone’s
lying?”

“Or mistaken.”

“You think it’s all a misunderstanding?”

“We have insufficient evidence to conclude
otherwise.”

“I don’t want to get mixed up in a
kidnaping,” the second cop said.

“Look, I’m the ranking representative of
Seventh Heaven here,” Singh said. “I’m telling you there’s no
problem. Go on back to the Ginza and forget about it.”

“What the hell,” the lead cop said,
holstering his pistol. “That runs smooth enough for me.”

“Want us to file a bug report?” the second
asked Singh.

“I’ll take care of it,” he replied.

A second floater had arrived, I noticed. I
didn’t say anything, and tried not to let anyone see I had noticed
it; it was stealthed, hiding itself in a holo that blended with the
ceiling.

Except it had set the holo up as a
compromise, angled as best it could to fool all three of us—Singh,
Dad, and me. And I was shorter and closer than they were, so my
angle was different, and the image wasn’t aligned perfectly for
me.

“Good enough,” the cop said. He holstered his
weapon, as well, and the two of them turned away. The big floater,
the visible one, kept a lens trained on us to make sure we didn’t
try anything, and followed the two humans as they headed back the
way they had come.

For a second or two Singh and I watched them
go; then Singh said, “Come on,” and started walking again. He
shifted my father around into a more comfortable position; it
really looked as if my old man didn’t weigh more than a dozen
kilos.

“Just a moment,” I said. “Let me check the
safety.” I looked down at the HG-2, and at the image of the ceiling
reflected on the inert diagnostics screen.

The stealthed floater was still there. I
activated the gun’s targeting system, hoping it could find the
floater and lock onto it. Then I hurried after the maintenance
worker.

I had to be careful what I said, since I knew
we were being watched. I couldn’t even safely
tell
Singh we
were being watched, not with both the stealthed floater and the
bugged gun listening in.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Hey, if you can really...”

I interrupted him. “You aren’t happy here?” I
said.

He glanced back at me, puzzled. Then he
looked thoughtfully along Row 6.

He might not see the floater, but he knew we
could be heard. The surveillance system might be stupid, but it was
probably bright enough to record everything, and sooner or later it
would send those recordings to someone or something that
wasn’t
stupid.

It probably had enough recorded already to
get us both sent for reconstruction if anyone decided to push.
There was no point in pretending we were complete innocents.

But we didn’t want to say anything that would
get us moved to the top of the priority list, either.

“No, I’m not happy,” he said. He waved at the
dreamtanks around us. “Look around. You know what people call us,
all of us who work here?”

I knew. “Corpsefuckers,” I said.

“That’s right,” he said angrily. “You look at
this son of a bitch I’m carrying. Never mind that he’s not dead,
you think anyone would want to screw that?”

I didn’t want to look at him. I wanted to
remember my father as a human being, not a dessicated ruin. “I
don’t think anyone means it literally,” I said. “It’s just... it
seems creepy, working with all these comatose dreamers.”

“It
is
creepy,” Singh agreed. “Not to
mention boring—no one’s buying dreams anymore, not when the city’s
about to fry, and I’m nothing but a back-up system, watching the
machines tend a bunch of losers nobody cares about. You know
something, Mis’ One-With-the-Gun? I’ve had enough of it. If you can
get me somewhere I can find a better job, I’ll do whatever you want
with this Guohan Hsing. Do you know where you’re taking him?”

“I’m headed for American City on Prometheus,”
I said. “Or maybe Alderstadt.”

“Either one sounds good to me.”

“What...” The voice was a dry whisper, but we
both heard it. “Who are you people?” my father asked.

“My name’s Minish Singh,” the paunchy guy
said, without stopping. I hoped he knew where he was going. “Until
maybe five minutes ago I was the second shift maintenance crew for
Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery.”

“What are you doing with me? This is
real
, isn’t it?”

“As real as it gets,” Singh replied.

“Why? I paid for a lifetime contract!”

“Ask her,” Singh said, nodding over his
shoulder toward me.

Dad struggled to turn his head to look at me,
but the neck muscles weren’t strong enough. Singh shifted his hold
to help, and my father stared at me.

“You look familiar,” he said at last.

“Good to know,” I answered.

“You look... how long has it been?”

“Long enough,” I said.

“You’re Carlie, aren’t you? Or... Ali? Or a
granddaughter?”

“Right the first time,” I told him.

“Carlie?” There was a sort of wonder in his
voice—and apprehension. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Why the hell would I do that?” I snapped.
“Seems to me you already did it for me!”

“You... you might want revenge for dumping
you,” he said. “I thought... I’ve...” He began coughing again, and
Singh thumped him on the back as if he was burping a baby.

Then we were at a door, and Singh pressed his
thumb on the screen and the door slid open, and we were in a
service corridor, black plastic all around. I glanced up where I
thought the stealthed floater probably was, but I couldn’t spot
it.

I’d want to do something about that.

I tapped my wrist to call for a cab, then
told Dad, “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. If I wanted you to
suffer, you’d be suffering. You think no one can tamper with the
software here?
Anything
can be hacked, you know that.”

“We need to find street access,” Singh said.
“The cabs can’t get in here.”

“So get us out,” I told him.

“Where are you taking me?” my father asked,
as Singh turned left and trotted down the corridor. Dad’s voice was
still weak, every word coming with an effort.

“Prometheus,” I said, hurrying to keep up.
“Where you can go right back into a dreamtank. Don’t worry, I’m not
trying to get you to take your life back; I just don’t trust
Seventh Heaven to keep things running after the city’s fried.”

“Is your mother there? On Prometheus?”

“What? Of course not. She’s been out-system
for years.”

“Then why?”

I wasn’t any too sure of that myself.
“Because someone offered to get you off-planet, and it seemed like
a good play at the time,” I said.

“But we
dumped
you.”

“I know that, you bastard,” I said. I could
feel my eyes welling up. “God damn it, I know that. But you never
asked whether
we
intended to dump
you
.”

We came out in a maintenance shaft—it wasn’t street
level, but it was open to the sky and a cab could get in. I beeped
for one. Then I looked at the HG-2 and checked the read-outs to see
if it had a fix on the invisible floater.

It did. I lifted the gun, pointed it in the
right general direction, and fired.

The recoil knocked me back against the shaft
wall, so I didn’t get a good view of the explosion, but what I saw
was pretty damned satisfying. Scraps of hot metal and melted
plastic rattled off the walls and floor, and sparking bits of
electronics spattered in all directions.

“What the
hell
...?” Singh said,
turning around fast. He dropped my father on the way.

“Spy-eye,” I said. “The Ginza cops set it on
us.”

“And you
killed
it?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t say anything more
than that aloud, but I was thinking that I really hoped it hadn’t
been sentient. I had quite enough to explain to my ancestors when
the time came without adding another murder.

“That blast is going to get the
city
cops after us!”

“
Pfui
,” I said. “When was the last
time you saw city cops do anything down here?”

“You’ve sure as hell pissed off the
Ginza!”

I shrugged. “I’ve been on their gritlist for
years.”

A weird hissing noise interrupted us, and we
both turned to see where it was coming from.

My father was lying sprawled on the floor of
the shaft, laughing at us.

“My Carlie,” he said. “Look at you!”

“I look a hell of a lot better than you do,”
I retorted.

“You... you’re living like one of my dreams,”
he said. “How did
that
happen?”

“My parents did the dump on me when I was
fifteen,” I said, and I knew I sounded bitter and sarcastic, and I
didn’t care. “I learned to do whatever I had to do to survive.”

“You’re... what, an assassin?”

“A private detective,” I said.

“And you’re taking me to Prometheus?”

“Shut up,” I replied. Something was moving
overhead, and I wanted to be sure it was our cab, and not a Ginza
enforcer.

Then it was sinking down the shaft with the
headlights blazing, a cloud of stardust forming the Midnight Cab
& Limo logo on its taxi-yellow belly. “Our ride’s here,” I
said.

“So are those,” Singh said, pointing.

I looked where his finger indicated, and
spotted two glossy black floaters—not stealthed, but not lit,
either. They were big ones, probably weighed more inert than I did,
and were heading directly toward us. I didn’t see a logo—not the
Ginza’s, not the city cops’ insignia, nothing but gleaming black.
They didn’t look like newsies; there were no visible lenses or
antennas.

I looked at my gun and thought about it, but
there were two of them, and they might be armed. I could maybe take
out one before they could react, but there was no way I could get
them both, and I didn’t know what the survivor would be capable
of.

They weren’t shooting at us, and they weren’t
shouting, so I decided we could ignore them for the moment.

Well, partially ignore them, anyway. They did
force me to change my plans. I had originally hoped to call ’Chan,
get him to the casino door, then grab him, maybe drug him, and haul
him along to the ship. That would have gotten everyone together,
one happy family, and we could have just taken off for American
City before the cops could stop us.

With those floaters there watching us, that
probably wasn’t going to work.

“Someone called for a cab?” the Midnight cab
called, its door sliding open as it hung a few centimeters off the
deck.

“Get him in,” I told Singh, pointing at my
father. While he loaded Dad into the cab I watched the black
floaters, but they had slowed to a stop. They were hovering
silently at the top of the shaft, noses toward us.

“You coming?” Singh called. He and Dad were
sitting in the cab, the door open.