Realms of Light (20 page)

“Do you have a dream booked?” Dad asked.

“No.” I saw the disapproving look on his face
and said, “I’m improvising.”

“You should have left me in the tank.”

“Yes, I probably should,” I agreed, “but I
didn’t trust Seventh Heaven to keep you alive in there once the
Trap is in daylight.”

“I hate this, Carlie,” he said. “Everything
hurts, and sometimes it’s boring, and it seems dangerous. Someone
could have shot at that cab, or at this ship.”

“Run it,” I said. “We should have you saved
in a new tank in a couple of days.”

“You know, you made a real mess back there,”
’Chan said. “Kidnaping and extortion and an unauthorized launch and
probably a lot I don’t know about. You better keep the Nakadas
really
happy; they’re going to need to pay off a lot of
people to clean that up.”

“I intend to satisfy my client,” I said.

’Chan heard the certainty in my voice. “So
you think you know who killed Grandfather Nakada?”

I grimaced. “Nobody did,” I said.

’Chan couldn’t move his legs, but he threw up
his hands at that. “Then what did they hire you for? If he died of
natural causes, what do they need with a detective?”

“He didn’t die,” I said. I started to explain
further, then stopped; it wasn’t any of ’Chan’s business.

“What, he faked his death? Why would he do
that?”

I shook my head. “It’s complicated,” I said.
“You don’t need to know. All you need to know is that I got you out
of Nightside City.”

“With my legs locked up and my accounts
probably frozen.”

“We’ll get that fixed. We’ll get the implant
out, and we’ll get your money to Prometheus. You’ll be fine.”

“The Ginza is going to be furious if I don’t
go back.”

“Screw the Ginza and IRC. We’ll take care of
it.”

He stared at me. “You’re running that smooth
with the Nakadas?”

“I hope so.” I looked at Singh. “You haven’t
been saying much.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have much to say. I
wanted a ride off Epimetheus, and I’m getting one; I’m happy.”

“A man of simple code,” I said. “I like
that.”

“I may need some help with a breach of
contract suit from Seventh Heaven.”

“If they bother,” I said.

“I said ‘may.’”

I nodded.

Singh started to say something else, then
took a look at my face and stopped; I guess he realized I wasn’t
listening any more.

I was thinking.

I was thinking about what Seventh Heaven
might do about a stolen customer and poached employee, and that led
me to the conclusion that it depended on the personalities
involved, which led to me wondering exactly who the locals were who
owned the Eta Cass franchise of Seventh Heaven, and that led me
back to the back door into their systems, the back door that old
Yoshio had had installed, but which someone else had recently been
using.

Yoshio had the back door installed when he
was thinking of acquiring the company, or at least the local
division—I didn’t know whether he’d been interested in the home
office on Mars. Well, what if whoever had used the back door just
before me had also been thinking about buying up the Eta Cass
franchise of Seventh Heaven? With the dawn maybe a year away, the
whole thing was probably available cheap.

In fact, maybe the original Yoshio had
reconsidered and was taking another look. Yoshio-
kun
wouldn’t know that, and the old man probably wouldn’t have bothered
mentioning it to me, since so far as he knew it was just another
byte of business and had nothing to do with the tampering with his
dream enhancer. Grandfather Nakada himself wasn’t on Epimetheus and
hadn’t been lately, and I didn’t think he could have used that back
door over interplanetary distances; the delay in response time
between Epimetheus and Prometheus was about eighteen minutes at the
moment, and you couldn’t sustain a connection with a break like
that in it. He could have had one of his agents checking it out,
though.

But if that was the case, then whoever used
the back door hadn’t needed the old man’s ITEOD files to get
access.

So maybe our little corporate explorer and
the party who faked the old man’s death weren’t the same person at
all; maybe it was just a coincidence, and the fraud had been after
something else in the ITEOD files. Or maybe there was a connection
I was missing.

Or maybe Yoshio had nothing to do with the
intrusions, and I’d been right the first time. Or this was all part
of some complicated corporate espionage that the old man might or
might not know about.

I would have to ask him a few questions once
we were safely back in American City.

But there were things I could check right
here. “
Ukiba
,” I said, “research request—I want to know the
exact ownership of the local franchise of Seventh Heaven
Neurosurgery, including any recent changes in ownership, or bids
for purchase or control.”

“Working,” the ship replied. “How would you
prefer the data to be presented?”

“Text display.”

“Available.”

We were clearing atmosphere by then, or at
any rate the noise and vibration had subsided, so I was able to
make my way to a terminal and look at what the ship had pulled off
the nets—or maybe it had the information in its own files all
along, for all I know; it might be something the old man liked to
keep current.

As I suspected from its location, about
thirty-four percent of Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery of Eta
Cassiopeia was owned by IRC. Another eleven percent was owned by
New Bechtel-Rand. The rest was spread across dozens of small
investors, all based in the Eta Cass system, some in Nightside
City, some on Prometheus.

And someone was trying to negotiate a
takeover. An investment group calling itself Corporate Initiatives
had approached IRC, New Bechtel-Rand, and several of the other
shareholders with a tender offer—or rather, looking at the times,
someone was approaching them right now.

I pulled up everything available on Corporate
Initiatives. There wasn’t much. Most of the listed contacts were
software, the legal filings were all as vague as possible, the
addresses were all just mail drops.

I knew there had to be a human agent listed
somewhere, and eventually I found her. Her name was Chantilly Rhee,
and at least legally, she was a resident of American City.

That was a surprise; I’d expected the whole
thing to be based in Nightside City, or at least somewhere on
Epimetheus. I asked for her background.

She was nine going on ten in Promethean
years—twenty-six Epimethean, twenty-seven Terran. That was too
young to be the real power here, I was pretty sure. Born in
Muriel—that was a mining town on a caldera island just off the Nine
Islands archipelago, a couple of hundred kilometers west of
American City. That didn’t tell me anything. Her parents weren’t
anyone special, a roomscape artist and a tactile therapist. Two
younger sisters. Standard online education, got her checkmark when
she was just five—sixteen Terran. Took half a year to travel, then
found a job and settled in American City.

But then I saw what that job was, and Mis’
Rhee got very interesting.

She was personal assistant to Kumiko
Nakada—Yoshio Nakada’s only surviving daughter.

Of course, Chantilly Rhee’s involvement
didn’t mean that Yoshio’s daughter was the one behind the
assassination attempt; for one thing, if this was all connected and
Kumiko was really the villain of the piece, I’d expect her to do a
better job of hiding it. This could be coincidence, or
misdirection, or one corner of a conspiracy.

Whatever it was, though, at least I finally
had a suspect. When I got to American City I intended to have a
chat with Grandfather Nakada, and then a little talk with his
daughter. I doubted I would be able to get within twenty meters of
her ordinarily, but with her father’s backing I thought I ought to
be able to arrange a conversation.

And one thing I wanted to know was what the
hell she wanted with Seventh Heaven. Dream companies weren’t
exactly a hot item, last I heard; most people preferred real life.
A dream company based in Nightside City seemed like an especially
bad investment.

I remembered the case that got me off
Epimetheus in the first place, when Sayuri Nakada had been conned
into buying up worthless real estate by convincing her there was a
way to keep the sun from rising and cooking Nightside City. What
was it with Nakadas making stupid investments in a doomed city? Was
Kumiko being conned, the way Sayuri was?

I knew it wasn’t the same people; Sayuri was
suckered by a group operating out of the Ipsy, the Institute for
Planetological Studies of Epimetheus, and Grandfather Nakada had
put a very definite stop to that. Those scammers were gone, sent
for reconstruction.

But maybe they had friends. I frowned. Maybe
the attempt on Grandfather Nakada had been an act of revenge, or
maybe it had been intended to make sure he didn’t do to these
people what he did to Paulie Orchid, Bobo Rigmus, and Doc Lee.
Maybe someone
was
running a con on Kumiko Nakada.

I wouldn’t expect someone her age, in her
position, to fall for any such scheme, but maybe they had a better
pitch this time than the grit Sayuri bought into.

Or maybe it wasn’t Kumiko after all; maybe
Chantilly Rhee was the one being conned. She was young enough to be
that dumb.

Or maybe she was part of the con, and Kumiko
had bought in because she trusted Rhee.

And all that assumed there
was
a con,
and this wasn’t something completely different. I didn’t actually
know what was going on at all. It was even possible that Chantilly
Rhee had been a front for Yoshio himself, and not Kumiko

But I intended to find out.

I called ahead, of course, to let Grandfather Nakada
know we were coming. I didn’t tell him exactly who “we” were,
though—I don’t care what encryption
Ukiba
used, I didn’t
think interplanetary communications could ever be secure. I didn’t
mention his daughter, or Seventh Heaven, or his own alleged death;
I just said I was returning with passengers and needed to talk to
him in person as soon as he could arrange it.

I got an acknowledgment that was even vaguer
than my own message, saying that my situation would be discussed
once we were on the ground.

I sent a follow-up, saying that some of our
business was urgent. I didn’t say what; I let him assume it was
something to do with the murder attempt.

Really, though, it was Dad and ’Chan. Dad was
starting to lose it, being out of his tank and no longer having his
health monitored; the ship’s medical banks could probably have
handled him just fine if he’d allowed it, but he didn’t trust me,
or the ship, or anyone else, and said he would wait until we’d
found him a new dreamtank. He insisted that the shaking hands and
coughing fits and occasional spasms, and his inability to keep food
down, were nothing to worry about.

And ’Chan was paralyzed from the waist down,
which was more serious than I had initially thought. It wasn’t just
that he couldn’t walk; there were other things he couldn’t do,
either. He was more cooperative than our father, so the ship was
able to catheterize him, but still, I knew we needed to get that
implant out as quickly as possible.

I thought about sending a message that we
wanted a doctor standing by, but decided against it. Grandfather
Nakada was two hundred and forty years old; it was a safe bet he
always
had doctors nearby, ready to work.

At least Singh was no problem. Now that we
were actually on the way to Prometheus he seemed subdued and
nervous, as if he was having second thoughts about his impulsive
decision to get off Epimetheus. He’d left his belongings behind,
and his friends, if he had any—he’d told me he didn’t have any
family, but not everyone we care about is related to us. I figured
we’d be able to turn him loose with minimal fuss, maybe give him a
few kilocredits to get started on his new life, and he’d be smooth,
despite these belated doubts.

Yoshio-
kun
was another matter. I had
no idea what I was going to do with him. I didn’t know whether his
existence was legal on Prometheus—I knew making a recording was
illegal, but bringing in an already-existing one was another
matter. The old man had done it more than once, but that didn’t
mean it was actually legal, and I wasn’t him, and it might make a
difference that Yoshio-
sempai
was still alive. I could have
asked the ship, but I didn’t actually care whether he was legal,
only about whether I would need to hide his existence, and hiding
him from his original was likely to be far more important than
hiding him from the law. The old man might not want a copy of
himself around, and not everyone thinks there’s anything wrong in
erasing artificial intelligences.

And it was the original Yoshio’s ship. I was
fairly sure the ship already knew Yoshio-
kun
existed, and
Perkins definitely knew, but I didn’t see any need to remind anyone
by asking about the laws.

Of course, Yoshio-
kun
probably knew
better than anyone else what Yoshio-
sempai
was likely to do,
so I could have just asked him, but I was busy with Dad and ’Chan
and I didn’t get around to it.

Perkins put the ship down on the private
Nakada field, where I was not happy to see daylight, and plenty of
it; we were back in the realms of light. My feet felt heavier in
Promethean gravity, as well, and the air that cycled in from
outside smelled of ocean and volcanic smoke.

By the time I got through the airlock a dozen
floaters were waiting for me, glittering in that horrible sunshine.
“I have two people here who need medical attention,” I told the
nearest one the moment I emerged; I was shading my eyes with my
hand and blinking, but I could see that it was a blue and silver
floater that looked like the one I’d talked with in the Sakai
building. It might have just been the same model, though.