Realms of Light

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “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 bas
tard,” 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.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  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.

  I holstered the HG-2 and climbed in after them. The door was closing behind me when a Ginza floater, exactly like the one that had accompanied the cops—in fact, it probably was the one that had accompanied the cops—came dropping down toward us.

  “Transparency,” I told the cab. “I want to see this.”

  The roof seemed to vanish, and there was the Ginza floater, swooping down toward us—and then the black floaters were moving again, as well.

  But they weren’t moving toward the cab; they were diving in to cut off the Ginza’s floater.

  “Get us out of here,” I said.

  “I don’t want any trouble with the casino,” the cab protested.

  “Neither do we,” I said, “but it looks as if someone else does.” The black floaters had blocked the cop’s approach.

  I couldn’t see the Ginza floater anymore, since the black floaters were easily twice its size and there were two of them between us, but the cab had its external audio on, so I could hear it. “Hu Xiao!” the Ginza floater called. “You are charged with the destruction of casino property!”

  “I don’t want any trouble with the casino,” the cab repeated.

  “And I told you, we don’t either,” I said. “None of us is this Hu Xiao person. See for yourself.” I slid my card in the slot.

  “Thank you, Mis’ Hsing,” it said. “And these others?”

  Singh threw me a glance, then fished out his own card and tabbed it in.

  “Thank you. And the last of you?”

  “That’s my father, Guohan Hsing,” I said. “He doesn’t have his card with him, but if you’re set up for a DNA check you can verify it.”

  “I’m Guohan Hsing,” Dad agreed. “You can check my voiceprint if you can’t do a genetic scan.”

  I wasn’t any too sure his scratchy whisper would match any old voiceprints the cab might have access to, but apparently the cab was convinced somehow; it began rising.

  “I notice the elder Mis’ Hsing is naked and does not appear entirely well,” it said, as it cleared the lip of the shaft. “Is medical attention desired?”

  I was watching the floaters and almost didn’t hear it; the Ginza floater was still trying to get at us, and the black floaters were blocking it, forcing it back. “Who are those things?” I asked.

  Then the cab’s question registered, and I quickly added, “Thank you, but no medical attention is needed. Just get us to the port asap.”

  “The blue floater is a security unit owned by the Ginza Casino Hotel,” the cab said, answering my question. “The other two are refusing all requests for identification, but the specifications match descriptions of high-level units owned by the New York Townhouse Hotel and Gambling Hall.”

  “Carlisle Hsing!” the Ginza floater called. “You are charged with destruction of casino property and giving a false name to security personnel!”

  They’d ID’ed me. I was a bit surprised it had taken that long, but I wasn’t really thinking about that. I was thinking about the black floaters. They belonged to the New York?

  That meant they belonged to the Nakadas. Had Grandfather Nakada sent them to protect me? It didn’t seem likely. It didn’t seem like his style, and besides, everyone on Epimetheus thought he was dead. He couldn’t just give orders and expect them to be carried out without any explanation of his reported demise.

  But who else could have sent them? Obviously, someone who’d been listening in—maybe through my gun, maybe through datafeed from Seventh Heaven or the casino cops—but who would have cared enough to send this pair?

  I didn’t understand what was happening, and I didn’t like that. I wasn’t going to take any more big risks until I had a better idea what was running.

  “The port,” I told the cab. “Hurry!”

  “But the Ginza...”

  “We aren’t in their jurisdiction,” I said. “Go!”

  “I’m go
ing.”

  It was; we soared up out of the shaft, and up Sixth Street, then diagonally over the rooftops toward the port.

  “Oh, gods!” my father said.

  I turned, thinking something was wrong, thinking maybe his heart was giving out without the steady stream of meds and fluids he’d had in the tank, but no, if anything he was looking better than ever. He was sitting up and staring out at the city.

  Specifically, he was staring at the western wall of the crater, where the morning sun was gradually creeping downward from the rim, and at the higher towers, where sunlight was gleaming from their top few floors..

  “It’s the dawn,” he said. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Not yet,” Singh told him.

  “Soon, though,” I said. “That’s why I’m getting you out. I expect Seventh Heaven to declare bankruptcy the minute that light hits the streets of Trap Over. Maybe they won’t just leave all the dreamers to rot in their tanks, but I didn’t want to take the risk.”

  “How long was I in there?” Dad asked.

  I glared at him. “I was sixteen, almost seventeen, when you went in,” I said. “Look at me now.”

  “It’s horrible,” he said. “So bright!”

  I almost laughed. I’d spent a year on Prometheus. I’d even been stranded on the Epimethean dayside once. To me, Nightside City was still an island of comforting darkness, even if the sky was no longer black. “What, none of your dreams were out in the sun?” I asked.

  “Some of them were, yes, but those weren’t real. I always knew that. And they weren’t in Nightside City, in my home.”

  “Your home is about to get hit with hard ultraviolet,” I said. “The temperature’s already climbed at least ten degrees, and it hasn’t rained since you bought your dream. You knew that was coming.”

  “I... I knew it, but I didn’t believe it.”

  I snorted. “So you ran and hid in a dreamworld where you wouldn’t have to see it,” I said. “You know, when I pulled you out, I wasn’t sure whether you would wake up or not, but I’m glad you did, so you could see this.”

  “I don’t like it,” he said. “I want to go back.”