Realms of Light (15 page)

I thought of an answer to that one. If what
you were trying to hide was an unconscious human being, then a
dreamtank would be perfect. I didn’t know exactly why you would
want to hide someone, but there could probably be some interesting
reasons.

I wondered whether it might be worth checking
the city’s missing persons database against the DNA of the people
in Seventh Heaven’s tanks. Seventh Heaven might have kidnap victims
stashed away somewhere without realizing it.

And that was the other thing Seventh Heaven
had, of course—people. Hundreds, or thousands, or maybe even tens
of thousands of them, tucked quietly away in Trap Under, dreaming
their lives away undisturbed. Nobody ever visited dreamers, nobody
checked on them; anyone might be in those tanks, and no one would
ever know. Was there someone in there that somebody wanted?

Well, there was my father, and I wanted to
get him out of Nightside City, but was there anyone
else
?

It didn’t seem very likely. People who had
something to do in the real world didn’t buy the dream and
disappear into the tanks. That took a loser like my father, and
nobody but me had ever gone looking for
him
, not even my
brother or sister. His wife, my mother, had left him there to rot
while she took off for Achernar or somewhere.

Of course, she had also left her three kids.
Not exactly a perfect avatar of maternal concern, nor an
advertisement for ancestor worship. Maybe there were other
families, families less buggy than ours, where someone had bought a
permanent dream but his family still cared what happened to
him.

But in a family like that, would the parents
have done the dump? If I were still legally family, I could have
gotten Dad’s location legitimately, without using the old man’s
back door into the company.

No, I couldn’t see any reason anyone else
would be looking for a specific dreamer the way I was—and if
someone
was
looking for a dreamer, why would she have needed
an
hour
looking through the back door? I was done in ten
minutes.

So it wasn’t someone trying to find an old
friend, or a member of the family.

But what else did Seventh Heaven have? They
had dreams, and tanks, and dreamers, and that was about it. The
dreams weren’t worth stealing, I didn’t see what anyone would want
with the tanks—what did someone want with dreamers if he
wasn’t
looking for a particular person? A couple of hundred
years ago they might have been worth something as medical supplies
and spare parts, but now? Doctors have better sources. Synthetic
organs are better than anything you can get used.

Could there be some particular dream in
Seventh Heaven’s inventory that was somehow special? Was there some
other use for a dreamtank besides stashing people no one cared
about?

I didn’t know, and I didn’t think I would
find out here in the New York’s office suite. I stood up.

“I hope you have enjoyed your stay, Mis’
Hsing,” the room said, as the image of waves faded away and the
door slid open.

“So do I,” I said.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the room
said, but I didn’t bother to explain.

“Tell Mis’ Vo thank you,” I said, as I headed
out into the corridor.

The floater that took my gun was waiting for
me by the door, tray extruded. I picked up the HG-2 and stepped out
onto the roof.

“The car will take you back to your ship,”
the floater said from over my shoulder.

I hesitated. Did I want to go back to the
ship, where the newsies were probably still snooping around? I
would be more or less trapped there, but I would also be able to
chat with Yoshio-
kun
. It might be able to tell me something
useful about Seventh Heaven, or about who might be poking around in
their system.

I definitely wanted to go back to the ship
eventually, and when I did I would want to talk to the upload, but
I had come here to fetch my father and ’Chan.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I just need a lift
down to street level. I have business in the Trap.” I turned back
to the door. “In fact, an elevator would be fine, I don’t need the
car.”

“You are armed,” the floater said.
“High-powered weapons are not permitted in the casino.”

I looked down at the gun I still held. “Oh,
right,” I said.

“The car will take you to any legal
destination within a three-block radius,” the floater said.

I nodded. “Fair enough,” I said, heading for
the car.

I wasn’t sure just what I was going to do,
but I knew part of it: I was going to find Tier 4, Row 6, Station
31 and make sure my father was really there. I might get him out, I
might not; it would depend what I found down there. I thought it
was just barely possible that he
wasn’t
there, that someone
or something else was hidden away in that dreamtank, and the
dreamers who were supposed to be there had been quietly disposed
of, but I didn’t think it was likely. I expected to find Dad right
where he ought to be.

But I intended to check, and while I was
there I intended to keep my eyes and ears open and try to figure
out what they might have down there that would be worth breaking
into Seventh Heaven’s system to get.

In particular, a strange possibility had
gradually worked its way into my thoughts. Could it be that someone
had faked Yoshio Nakada’s death
solely
so he could get a
copy of the old man’s brain, and that he had wanted a copy just so
he could get at the back door to Seventh Heaven?

It didn’t seem likely; in fact, it didn’t
make any real sense at all. But the only tangible thing to come out
of the false reports of Grandfather Nakada’s death, the only real
result I had yet found, was that someone had gotten into the back
door at Seventh Heaven. If it really
was
the only result,
then it must be the point of the whole thing.

If someone was going to run that much code
just to break into Seventh Heaven, then there must be one hell of a
reason, and maybe, just
maybe
, I would see some sign down
there of what that reason was.

It was far more likely that the chance to get
in there and look around was just a little extra, not the primary
goal at all, but it
was
the only real effect I had seen so
far.

I settled onto the car’s upholstery, which
was now a few shades lighter but still red, and looked at the gun
in my hand.

Vo’s people had probably bugged it.
I
would have, certainly. I flicked the switch to turn it on.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” the car said.
“Where to?”

“Street level,” I said. “Near an entrance to
Trap Under.”

“Could you be more specific, Mis’? There are
no public entrances to the service levels.”

“The nearest entrance that won’t require any
clearance.”

“Would the northeast delivery entrance of the
New York Townhouse Hotel and Gambling Hall suit you?”

“That sounds fine.”

“I would appreciate it if you turned off your
weapon.”

“I’m not going to shoot you. Just get me down
off this tower. The sooner I’m on the ground, the sooner I’ll get
my gun out of your cabin.”

“Yes, Mis’.” Then it finally got moving, and
I could turn my attention to the read-outs on the HG-2.

The Sony-Remington HG-2 is a fine weapon,
designed for use on high-gravity worlds. Epimetheus is not a
high-gravity world; I’d had a friend bring the gun in from
out-system for me, and it probably wasn’t legal in Nightside City,
but sometimes it was very handy to have. It could put a hole in
pretty much anything I was likely to want a hole in. The recoil
knocked me on my ass just about every time I fired it, but if I was
ever up against something where I needed a second shot I was
buggered anyway. It had all the power I wanted.

But it wasn’t very bright. It understood
spoken instructions, at least as far as being told what to target,
but it didn’t talk, not by sound and not by wireless. If I wanted
to know whether anyone had tampered with it I had to rely on its
diagnostic read-outs, which were not exactly detailed surveillance
holos.

They weren’t totally worthless, though, and
they reported an unexplained power drain. It
was
bugged.

Which meant there were probably at least two
bugs—the one I was expected to find and remove, thereby convincing
me that I was once again clean, and the serious one they didn’t
think I would notice. If they thought I was really cautious there
might be a third, but I doubt they thought I was sufficiently
paranoid to justify a fourth.

In fact, I wasn’t going to remove any of
them. I couldn’t be sure I’d get them all. Even just worrying about
hardware, if I did a mass check and made sure there wasn’t any
added weight that still wouldn’t prove anything; they could have
drilled out the exact weight of the bug somewhere.

And of course, they might have used software
and planted a bot somewhere in the gun’s pitiful excuse for a
motherboard, though that would be tricky, given how little
processing capacity it had and its complete absence of
networking.

There wasn’t any point in worrying about it.
I wasn’t going to do anything with the gun that Vijay Vo or the
Nakadas would care about; I was going to get my father back. I
expected to break several laws in the process, but Vo and the
Nakada family weren’t cops.

I’d clean the gun eventually, when I got it
back to someplace with the equipment to do the job right, but for
now I didn’t mind if people listened in.

I turned the gun off and tucked it away just
as the car settled to a stop and opened a door.

I looked out at the gleaming wall of a
service tunnel, where news headlines, traffic reports, and casino
inventories were scrolling past in various colors. I didn’t
recognize it, but my wrist com gave me my position.

I stepped out, and the car closed up and
glided away, leaving me alone in the tunnel. I could see a service
entrance for the New York ahead, and to one side was the access
tunnel where the car had come in; Seventh Heaven was somewhere
behind me, a few blocks and three levels away. I turned around and
started walking.

Trap Under wasn’t exactly open to the public,
and there weren’t any city streets, but the service tunnels and
access corridors and passageways linked up to form a web under the
entire Trap, and most of it wasn’t guarded or patrolled. Getting
around wasn’t a problem as long as you stayed clear of the
high-security areas. Oh, there were cameras everywhere, but nobody
ever bothered to check out most of what they picked up; they were
for backtracking after an incident, not keeping an eye on everyone
who took a shortcut through the tunnels.

I didn’t expect any trouble getting to an
entrance to Seventh Heaven’s tank farm, and I didn’t have any—a few
minutes’ walk, a ride down an open freight elevator, then another
short walk, and there I was, standing in a black plastic corridor
at a yellow door that had “Seventh Heaven Service Access T5”
stenciled on it. No one bothered much with any sort of variable
imaging on the basic labels down here; it was just paint, and
didn’t change at my approach.

The door didn’t open, either.

I stood there for a moment, looking
impatient, but if the door was watching me it didn’t care; it
didn’t say anything. “Got a delivery,” I said.

The door still didn’t answer.

I frowned, and took another look—maybe it
wasn’t that smart a door. I didn’t see any lenses or speakers, but
that didn’t mean anything. There was a big steel handle; I leaned
on that, but it didn’t budge.

There was also a red panel with white
lettering that said “Emergency access—alarm will sound.”

I considered that for a moment, and then
decided I didn’t care about setting off any alarms. It would mean I
wouldn’t have much time to explore before trouble showed up, and I
might need to go ahead and get Dad out now instead of waiting,
maybe make a run for it, but I was here, and I wanted to know if he
was really in there. I slid the panel up, and found a single big
red button behind it. I pressed it, hard, with my thumb.

Sure enough, an alarm sounded—a sort of
hooting. I ignored it, and watched as the door shook slightly; then
the latch released and the door slid open.

It had opened less than halfway when I
slipped sideways past it into the tank farm.

The alarms were hooting in here, too, and red
lights were flashing, though the regular lights were on, too.

“Please identify yourself,” something
said.

“Hu Xiao,” I said. “Officer of the court, on
city business.” I was in a corridor, with rows of black panels set
with video displays on either side—dreamtanks, I assumed. I had
never seen one up close before.

The hooting stopped, but the red flashes
didn’t. “Please state the nature of your business.”

“I’m investigating a reported kidnaping,” I
lied, trotting down the corridor.

At the first intersection I stopped and
looked around for some indication of where I should go, and saw
that the passage I was in was labeled T5, while the corridor
crossing it was R1. I headed straight on.

At the next intersection Corridor T5 crossed
Corridor R2. I smiled; that seemed straightforward enough, and
picked up the pace.

“Please explain the nature of your
investigation,” the voice said, startling me. It had been quiet for
so long I thought it had given up.

“Classified,” I told it.

R3, R4...

“Human personnel have been contacted, and are
on their way to discuss the situation,” it said. “Please have your
city ID ready.”

“Of course,” I said, and I drew the HG-2.

“Officer Hu, your appearance and voice do not
match the information on file.”

“Rejuve surgery,” I said as I got to the
corner of R6 and hesitated. “I need to update that.” I picked a
direction at random and turned right.