Or maybe it’s just that he didn’t think I was listening, because I was hauling Dad out of the rear compartment. Dad was helping me as much as he could, but that wasn’t much.
Grandfather Nakada’s doctors were going to have some work to do getting my family back in shape, I thought. Assuming anyone bothered to do anything with Dad other than stick him back in a dreamtank.
The cab was settling down right next to the Ukiba—I mean, close enough that my feet wouldn’t have to touch the plastic pavement at all, I’d step straight from the cab onto the metal steps. I heaved Dad onto my shoulder and got ready to jump, but paused long enough to com Perkins two words—“Open up.” I knew the cops would intercept that, but I was hoping they might not realize I was talking to the ship rather than the cab, or that they simply wouldn’t react quickly enough.
The cab opened up first, but only by a second or two. By the time I was solidly on the steps and trying to climb with my old man on my shoulder the airlock door was sliding aside.
I was relying on the fact that the cops were human, and had only human reaction times; the pause while they decided whether to shoot or not gave us time to get aboard the ship.
But only barely. Singh was right on my heels, with ’Chan on his shoulder, and the first trank bounced off the steps where his foot had been an instant before while I was still staggering into the airlock.
We made it, though, and the airlock closed up behind us, and the ship began moving the instant the outer door had a good seal.
If we’d been using a commercial vessel that would have been it, the authorities would have shut it down before it got off the ground, but I was pretty sure Yoshio Nakada wasn’t the sort of person who would allow that. I’d gambled that the Ukiba did not have any of the standard police or port overrides—or at least, that they didn’t actually override the ship’s own systems.
The warning sirens were howling; we could hear them through the hull until we got through the inner door of the lock. I hoped the newsies and cops would all realize we meant it, and that the overrides weren’t going to stop us; I didn’t want anyone to be hurt by the launch.
I dumped Dad on the vibrating floor as soon as we were in the ship; he might only weigh half what he ought to, but that was still more than I was accustomed to carrying, and the ship’s acceleration made any movement more difficult.
Singh lowered ’Chan to the deck, too, and we both sank down as well, and sat there leaning against the wall and panting as the roar of atmosphere past the hull peaked, and then began to fade.
“Mis’ Hsing?” Perkins asked over the intercom.
“Right here,” I said. “Everyone’s aboard and alive.”
“We’re clear of the crater and heading for space,” Perkins said. “I’m ignoring a lot of questions and demands from the ground.”
I nodded, not that I thought he could see it. “Good.”
“What’s our destination?”
“American City,” I told him. “The Nakada compound.”
“Thank you. May I ask who our passengers are?”
I glanced around. “The one with the working legs is Minish Singh,” I said. “He’s a passenger—I promised him a ride off Epimetheus in exchange for his help with the others. The skin and bone near-corpse is my biological father, Guohan Hsing; we want to make sure he’s healthy, then get him settled into a dreamery on Prometheus. And the last one’s my brother Sebastian, who needs to have an implant removed before we can let him go.”
“An implant? So we’re being tracked?”
I sighed. “Perkins, we’re staying in-system. They don’t need an implant to track us.”
“Oh. Of course not.” There was a click; I didn’t know whether he had really broken contact, but he seemed to be done talking.
“I assume you’ve got a surgeon lined up to take it out,” ’Chan said.
“Not yet,” I said. “We can take care of it when we get to Prometheus.”
“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.
Chapter Fifteen
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 h
ad 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.
“Yes, Mis’ Hsing,” it said. “They will be seen to immediately.”
Floaters aren’t exactly known for accurately simulating emotions such as surprise, but I still thought this one seemed to be prepared for my request. The ship had probably been in communication with the planetary networks before we landed.
“I expect you to be discreet,” I said.
“We have strict instructions that everything about you and your activities is to be treated as confidential,” it assured me.
“Good.”
Realms of Light Page 15
