Realms of Light (26 page)

For half a second I thought I might have
died, but then my eyes adjusted, and I saw the glow from the
read-outs on the HG-2. I lifted the gun and checked the status
display.

It was perfectly normal. Whatever the old man
had done hadn’t affected my weapon.

“What’s going on?” Singh called from behind
us, his voice unsteady. “What did you
do
?”

“I cut the power,” Yoshio said.

“To what?” I asked.

“To everything. The entire compound.”

I blinked at the darkness and tried to look
around, but everything was black. I listened, trying to orient
myself, but I couldn’t locate anything. I could hear
my own
breath
; I could hear my worksuit rustling when I moved. I
thought I might even be hearing my heartbeat.

My wrist com still worked, though; it ran off
my own body’s energy, not an outside source, and a glance at it
showed a flurry of red alarm signals—the absence of normal data
traffic had upset it. The HG-2 had its own power source, so it was
still active, as well.

“This is really creepy,” Singh said, and his
voice seemed very loud in the stillness.

“The floaters will still be functional,” the
old man said calmly, “but they will no longer be receiving orders
from the household nets.”

“There’s no back-up system?” I asked.

“Of course there is. I shut that down, as
well.”

“You can
do
that?”

“This entire compound was built to my
specifications; I had this cut-off designed to stop
everything
. Those sounds you heard after I threw the switch?
Those were relays, shutting down every circuit and system.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Why?” I asked.

Yoshio sighed, the sound unnaturally loud in
the quiet gloom. “When I came here, more than a Terran century ago,
there was some doubt about how artificial intelligences would
evolve. There were concerns that they might someday rebel, or
perhaps merely transform themselves in incomprehensible ways. This
was derided as a foolish worry, and given the derisive name
‘Frankenstein syndrome,’ and I gave it little credence, but at the
same time, I saw no reason
not
to take precautions. I had
this breaker, and the system of relays, installed for such an
eventuality.”

My symbiote fed me a referent for the name
“Frankenstein.” I was a bit surprised something like that was still
in my data banks. The Shinichiro upload didn’t bear any resemblance
to Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, and it wasn’t exactly an evolved
artificial intelligence, but I could see the correlation.

“I guess they were right to be worried,” I
said. “I mean, here we are.”

“So you shut down all the computers in the
entire compound?” Singh asked.

“I shut down the entire power grid,” Nakada
replied grimly.

I had been starting to relax, but at that I
tensed up again. “
All
the power?” I said. “Then how can we
breathe?” I finally made the connection with the utter silence.
“Nothing’s circulating the air! We’ll
smother
in here—if we
don’t freeze first. There’s no heat? No light anywhere?”

“Nonsense, Mis’ Hsing. We can function
without machines. Our ancestors did not evolve among generators and
circuit boards.”

“They didn’t evolve on this planet, either.
This isn’t Earth.”

“Nonetheless, we will not smother. There is
plenty of air in this tunnel to live for hours without artificial
ventilation. We will return to the surface long before we are in
any danger of suffocation.”

“But how will we see? How will we... oh,
that’s why the doors work like that. And those stairs... you really
did
plan
for this.”

“Yes. Though I had not imagined it would be
my own family that turned against me.”

The old man tried to keep his voice even, and
mostly succeeded, but I thought I heard bitterness and anger in his
words. I considered saying something, telling him that the upload
wasn’t really Shinichiro, but I kept my mouth shut—he knew
everything I might say, and I respected him enough not to try to
tell him what he already knew.

“What about the floaters?” Singh
demanded.

“You have your gun?” Yoshio asked me.

“Of course,” I said, raising it.

“I doubt we will need it; I expect they will
be paralyzed, awaiting orders. Just in case, though, be ready.”

I checked the gun, and told it, “Four
floaters. Minimize collateral damage.” Then I pointed it and
waited.

“Open the door,” the old man called.

I heard the click of the latch, and the sound
of hinges, and then a faint grayish light appeared, and the
corridor walls were visible again. I peered up the passage, where
Singh was a great black shadow against the gray doorway.

There were no floaters in sight.

Cautiously, gun ready, we moved back up the
passage, through the door, and up the stairs, the light growing
brighter with each corner we turned. Finally we emerged back out
onto the landing field, where Eta Cass A had dropped below the
western horizon, but its light still painted the sky in gold and
pink almost as bright as the sky above the Trap. The air was a
little chilly, but entirely bearable, even without any artificial
climate control.

The old man’s yacht was ablaze with light, as
well; someone had apparently turned on every emitter aboard. Ads
for the New York were writhing across the hull. And every floater
that could still fly was hanging motionless in a neat array around
it, about three meters off the ground.

“It would seem they got new orders,” I
said.

“Indeed,” Grandfather Nakada said. “Let us go
aboard and see if we cannot give them better ones; I have no doubt
there are a great many frightened people in this place, waiting for
rescue.”

I started to say something about the manual
emergency releases on every door, then stopped. The Nakadas and
their employees were inside, in rooms that had gone dark and dead,
breathing air that was still and silent, with no idea what had
happened. Most of them wouldn’t think to use the emergency latches;
hell, most of them might not know there
were
emergency
latches, let alone how to use them in the dark. I remembered my own
moments of near-panic in the service tunnel, and tried to imagine
something like that happening without any warning at all, striking
me in my own home, a place I thought I was safe.

They were probably
terrified
.

“Hurry,” I said.

The clean-up wasn’t really all that bad; the sudden
shut-down had set off alarms all over American City, and emergency
services had been on the way before we were out of the tunnel. No
one died, despite the power outage; the worst injury was a
concussion where a masseuse had tripped over a box in the dark and
hit her head on the table. Ordinarily the table would have been
soft enough to avoid serious injury, but without power the flexion
fields had vanished and the internal mechanisms had locked in
place, creating hard spots.

Ukiba
became Grandfather Nakada’s
personal fortress; he refused to let anyone aboard except himself,
me, and Captain Perkins. Even Singh was no longer welcome. I was
pretty sure he didn’t want anyone to find Yoshio-
kun
.

It had been the old man’s upload that took
charge when the power went out, using the link that had been set up
so it could keep Shinichiro distracted; it had lit up the ship to
serve as a sort of beacon, and had sent orders to the floaters to
assume formation and await further instructions. We didn’t tell
anyone that; when outside floaters and rescue workers started
arriving they were directed to ignore the ship and attend to the
compound buildings.

The city immediately offered to run temporary
lines in to restore power, but Grandfather Nakada rejected the
offer. He also refused to say how the outage came about, but he did
tell the authorities that it was his problem, on his property, and
he would take care of it.

We had the ship, but the rest of the
household would have to find temporary quarters elsewhere—the old
man said power wouldn’t be restored for days. He watched as the
compound’s inhabitants and guests were brought out of the lightless
buildings one by one, into the glare of the big emergency lights
the city had sent and set up on all sides. They were guided out by
floaters, and by rescue workers carrying small lights and coms. The
old man acknowledged each refugee and directed each of them to
safety, pointing some to a line of waiting cabs, sending others to
the medical station the city had set up, and leaving a few to their
own devices.

He let Singh go off to help with the rescues,
but he kept me close at his side, and I stood there, feeling
useless, as the buildings were emptied of humanity and the sky
overhead faded to black. Eta Cass B rose in the east balefully red,
changing the color of the shadows, and I was still kept
waiting.

I would have been happy to help get people
out, or clean up damage, but Grandfather Nakada wouldn’t allow it,
and I was fairly sure it was because he didn’t trust me to keep my
mouth shut about his family secrets.

And then came the moment the old man had been
waiting for—an old woman emerged from one of the family residences,
a young man from the city holding one arm, a floater watching her
closely from above and behind her head. She was unsteady on her
feet, her expression a mix of terror and confusion.

“Kumiko,” the old man called. “Come here,
daughter.”

She looked up and saw him, and trembled
visibly. She stopped in her tracks.

“Turn on your gun,” Yoshio told me quietly.
Then he called to the man helping her, “Bring her here,
please.”

I powered up the HG-2, but I wasn’t happy
about it. I’d never shot a human being. I’d threatened a few when I
was angry enough, but I had never pulled the trigger, and I had
never pointed a gun at one when I wasn’t awash with adrenalin.

I give the rescue worker credit; he asked
Kumiko if she wanted to come before he brought her over. She
obviously didn’t
want
to, but she knew she couldn’t avoid
it, and told him that she would speak to her father.

When she was a meter away he settled her onto
an equipment locker, and told the rescue worker to leave.

“You’re sure it’s okay?” he said, looking at
her.

“He’s my father,” Kumiko said. “I’ll be
fine.”

The man gave Grandfather Nakada an unhappy
look, then turned and headed back to see if he could find anyone
else.

When he was safely out of unaugmented
earshot, the old man said, “I am disappointed in you,
daughter.”

“I don’t understand, Father,” she said, eyes
downcast.

The old man gestured to me, and I raised my
gun, aiming it in her general direction. I didn’t lock it on,
verbally or otherwise.

“If you are going to conspire against me,”
Yoshio told her, “you should commit to it, and not abandon your
partner after a single failed assassination attempt.”

I watched, weapon ready, as she thought that
over, and considered various responses. I give her credit; she
never looked at the gun. Then she said, “I didn’t expect him to get
as close as he did, Father; you were always smarter than
Shinichiro. I agreed to help him to see what would develop. I could
see commercial possibilities in his scheme to use dreamers to
provide new bodies for uploads. Killing you for control of the
family—that was stupid, and I should have told him as much. I
assumed you would survive, and that we could then use the household
security staff to find a scapegoat—Shinichiro’s control of the
household systems should have made that easy. I didn’t expect you
to go outside, to hire this person, and send her to Nightside City
to investigate Seventh Heaven.”

Grandfather Nakada considered that, and
nodded thoughtfully. “You might be telling the truth,” he said.

She didn’t bother to insist on her story;
they knew each other better than that. She glanced back at the
residence behind her. “What happened?” she asked.

“I used drastic measures to remove Shinichiro
from control,” Yoshio said. “I could not tell where he had
penetrated and where he had not, so I shut down everything.”

“
You
did it? Not Shinichiro?”

“I did it.”

“Is Shinichiro...” She hesitated. The word
that had obviously scrolled up first was “dead,” but she knew her
brother was long dead. “Did you erase him?” she asked.

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“No.”

Startled, I turned, and swung the gun around.
“It tried to kill you,” I said.

“Nonetheless, it is all that remains of my
son,” the old man replied calmly, ignoring the HG-2 that was now
pointed directly at his belly.

“What
are
you going to do?” Kumiko
asked.

“Shinichiro had proposed to make uploads of
the dreamers, and run them in their own fantasy worlds,” Yoshio
said. “I think it would be fitting to allow my son’s memory to test
the feasibility of this idea. It should not be impossible for
Seventh Heaven’s programmers to create a fantasy version of
Prometheus in which I died in the service tunnel beneath my
residence, and my son was restored to human form.”

Neither of us knew what to say to that; after
a few seconds of awkward silence, Grandfather Nakada added
wistfully, “I will be able to visit with him in his dream-world,
playing the role of my own upload. I think it would be pleasant to
speak with my son in this fashion.”

I needed several seconds to absorb this. “The
dreamers know their dreams aren’t real,” I eventually pointed out.
“Do you think Shinichiro won’t figure it out?”

“I honestly don’t know, Mis’ Hsing,” the old
man said. “I don’t believe anyone has ever sold an upload the dream
before.” He waved a hand. “If he does realize the truth, I can
simply have him rebooted.”