Realms of Light (3 page)

I wasn’t there for the meeting yet, I just
wanted to scout out the place, see if there really was any chance
for an ambush. I figured I’d look it over, get some dinner, look
around town a little more, and still be at the meet a few minutes
early.

Didn’t happen.

I strolled up the black glass corridor
between a bughouse and a gene boutique and found the lobby—big room
with blue carpet, pink ceiling, and more of the black glass walls.
A line of floaters was hanging along one side, right up by the
ceiling.

The minute I set foot in the room one of them
beeped me—a slick blue and silver one, general purpose, very
glossy. The rest ignored me, just hung there, but this one zipped
over.

“No names,” it said, “I know who you are.
You’re early.”

“Damn it, I’m not here at all,” I said. “Not
yet.” I looked over at the line of floaters; they were shifting a
little, closing up the gap my buddy had left.

“Don’t confuse me,” my glittery little friend
said.

“Then don’t talk to me,” I told it. I turned
to go.

It fizzed for a second, then called,
“Wait!”

I gave it the three-finger curse. “The hell I
will,” I said, and started walking.

It followed me. I’d half expected that.

My hand wasn’t too far from the butt of the
HG-2, but I didn’t really have any intention of drawing on the
little buzzer. You can’t outdraw a floater unless it lets you.

I didn’t really have a good reason for being
so hostile to the little machine; I just didn’t like how little
control I had over the situation. It knew who I was; I didn’t know
a thing about it. It could follow me; if I tried to follow it, it
could just sail up out of reach, or probably outrun me on the
level. And it could shoot me, if it was armed, but I wouldn’t be
able to shoot it unless it was ordered to let me, or unless I
caught it totally off-guard.

I blew a floater apart once, more or less by
both those methods, and it felt pretty good at the time, but I
didn’t care to try to do it again.

And besides, I didn’t really have anything
against this one.

Yet.

So I let it follow me, and I didn’t say
anything. I just walked back out into the mall and down a few
storefronts and ducked into a bank.

The human staff was off-duty, but the tellers
were up and running, and a few customers were wandering about. One
or two glanced up at the floater, but nobody said anything.

I paused and looked about, and reconsidered.
Banks are big on security. Not a good choice.

I turned and went back out on the mall, and
this time I found a clothier.

“I’d like a private booth,” I told the entry
clerk. “I need to check some measurements.”

It gave me a cheerful little chirp and said,
“Certainly, Mis’. We’ve coded Number Four just for you.”

“I’m taking my floater in with me,” I told
it.

“I’ll tell the door,” it said. “Catalog’s all
set on the big screen, any time you’re ready.”

Damn thing sounded like it was smirking. I
hate that sort of smart-chip clerk.

I looked up to be sure Ol’ Blue-and-Silver
was still there, which it was, and I beckoned for it to follow me,
then I marched across the display floor to the fitting rooms.

The door to #4 had a pink stardust aura
around it, just to make sure I could find it. It itched a bit when
I walked through it; I think my symbiote must have been sensitive
to the static field.

The door waited until the floater was inside,
then it slid shut. The big holoscreen was showing a montage of
models in fancy gowns, any of which would have looked like a tent
on me.

“Privacy,” I told it. “And kill the display
for a moment.”

I don’t know if it was smarter than the entry
clerk, or what, but the room’s software didn’t say a word, just
blanked the screen and lit up an aura around the measuring chip.
The screen over the door displayed the word PRIVATE in flowing pink
script.

I picked up the chip for the sake of
verisimilitude, and then asked the floater, “What the hell were you
doing there so early?”

“I could ask you the same question,” it said.
“I was told to go there and wait for you when I finished my regular
duties for the day. I got done at 16:48. Waiting doesn’t bother
me.”

Its tone made it quite clear that it wanted
an answer to the question it hadn’t actually asked.

“I was checking the place out,” I said.
“Wanted to see what it was like. I didn’t expect anyone to be there
waiting for me.”

“Shall we return there now?” it asked.

“No,” I said.

It thought that over for a second, and then
asked, “Why not?”

“Because I don’t like that place,” I told it.
“That line of floaters makes me nervous. Who put ‘em all there? Are
any of them armed? Look, I wasn’t expecting to talk to a floater,
and I certainly wasn’t expecting to talk to anyone anywhere that
public; I figured whoever it was would meet me there and we’d go
somewhere else to talk. So I met you, and we came here, and it’s
still a couple of hours before our appointment, but I’ll talk to
you here if you want.”

“You’re being paranoid,” it said. “I like
that.”

“Fine,” I said. “Then talk.”

“I’m not your client, Hsing,” it said. “I
don’t even know what he wants you for. I was told to meet you and
look you over, and if I approved to bring you to him. I’ve met you
and looked you over, and I approve.”

“So you’re going to take me to him?”

“If you’ll come, yes.”

“Then let’s go,” I said.

We went, back to the Sakai Building, and up
to the tenth floor.

Then I waited in a lounge, watching waves of
green and blue chase each other across the furniture, while the
floater went on into the inner sanctum. No holoscreen. No attendant
software. No floaters. I sat.

It was maybe ten minutes before the floater
reappeared through a holographic wall.

“Hsing,” it said, “you’ll have to leave your
gun.”

I didn’t say anything for a minute, just
stared at it.

“You’re not the only one around here who’s
paranoid,” it added helpfully.

“Hell,” I said with a shrug. I pulled out the
HG-2 and laid it on a table. I considered turning it on, with
orders to refuse handling by anyone but me, but decided that was
pushing it. It was just a gun. If it got nervous and blew someone’s
hand off I could catch some serious grit.

I did say, “It better still be here,
untouched, when I get back.”

“It will be,” the floater said.

I wasn’t particularly happy about leaving the
gun, but it wasn’t any great disaster to give it up. I still had
plenty of other gadgetry on me.

The big difference—which my mystery man was
probably well aware of—was that almost everything else I carried
was defensive, rather than offensive. And the rest of my offensive
arsenal, such as it was, was relatively easy to defend against,
while stopping an armor-piercing round from the Sony-Remington
could be a challenge.

Taking the gun and leaving the rest was a
pretty fair balance between courtesy and caution on my host’s part,
and I could live with it.

Then at last I was shown into the other
room.

It was a small room, maybe three meters
square. The walls were covered with shielding—not built-in stuff,
but the heaviest portable shielding I’d ever seen in my life. They
weren’t passing anything I could see—certainly no visible light,
and nothing that registered on any of the pocket equipment I had
jacked in. My symbiote wasn’t telling me anything, either. The
floor and ceiling were shielded, too. I was inside a black box.

Once I was inside the floater extended a
grapple and slid shut another panel, closing the box. I was
completely sealed off from the outside world. Some of my
transponder-based stuff objected; I overrode it.

The only illumination came from the floater,
which had stepped itself up from running lights to moderate output
and shifted from monochrome to full spectrum; the effect was
eerie.

In the box with me were two chairs, two of
the strangest chairs I’d ever seen, rigid and angular, and made of
a material I didn’t identify at first—wood. With seats of some kind
of woven string.

They looked, and presumably were, positively
ancient. Antiques. Real second-millennium stuff. They looked out of
place in that box of shielding.

Sitting on one of the chairs, and the only
other thing in there besides the floater, the chairs, and myself,
was an old man. A very old man. He went better with the chairs than
with the box, but not very well with either one. He wore a simple
red robe, and I could see no equipment at all. A dimple under his
ear had to be a com jack, but it was camouflaged beautifully. His
hair was white and thinning, his face wrinkled—if he’d ever
bothered with cosmetic surgery, he was past that point now. No
ornamental wiring, no colorants, not so much as an earring.

I’d seen that face before, on the holo and in
stills, but I’d never met him before, never spoken with him
directly. This was Yoshio Nakada. Grandfather Nakada, head of the
Nakada clan, chairman of Nakada Enterprises.

“I am honored, Mis’ Nakada,” I said,
bowing.

“Carlisle Hsing,” he said. “Please sit
down.”

I sat on the other chair; it creaked as it
took my weight, and the seat felt rough and unyielding beneath me,
not reshaping itself at all, though the woven stuff gave very
slightly. It was like sitting on some random object, rather than a
chair.

“My floater tells me you are a cautious
woman,” Nakada said.

I gestured at the shielding. “I see you’re a
cautious man.”

“I need to be,” he said, “in my position.
Mis’ Nakada, last year you became involved with my
great-granddaughter Sayuri.”

He didn’t say it like a question, but I
treated it as one.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Naturally,” he told me, “I had you
thoroughly investigated after that.”

“Naturally,” I agreed. I hadn’t really
thought about it, and I certainly never noticed any investigation,
but it made sense, and he had the resources to do the job right,
without buzzing me.

“I would like to ask you a question,
though.”

I noticed the floater gliding forward, so
that it could get a good look at my eyes when I answered whatever
it was I was about to be asked. I didn’t say anything.

“Have you ever had any contact with any
member of my family, other than Sayuri and myself?”

That was not the question I had expected, but
it was an easy one.

“Not that I know of,” I said.

“Another question, then. Have you ever had
any contact with Sayuri other than during that unfortunate affair
on Epimetheus?”

“No.” I’d have liked to have given a more
interesting answer, but the single syllable really covered the
whole thing.

“Have you ever before had any contact with
me
?”

“Not directly,” I said. “I tried to contact
you about Sayuri last year, but I wound up dealing entirely with
flunkies.” I wondered if he were worried about clones, frauds,
mindwipes, or what, that he didn’t know himself whether we’d been
in touch before.

I wondered if Ziyang Subbha would have
resented being called a flunky. I suspected he was pretty high up
in Nakada’s organization.

“Are you carrying any recording devices or
microintelligences?” Nakada asked.

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t see any point in
lying.

He glanced up at the floater.

“She’s either telling the truth or she was
ready for this,” it said.

The old man sighed.

“Life is so complicated,” he said, “and there
is so little we can trust. Everything we do, there is some way to
interfere. Everything we think we know, there is some way it could
be faked, or some way it could be changed. Mis’ Hsing, you did me a
service last year—for reasons of your own, I know, and I would
hardly expect otherwise. You did me a service in regard to little
Sayuri, and I saw no purpose there beyond the honest and
straightforward.”

“I did it for the money,” I said. I didn’t
want the old man to think I was some kind of idealist. I have some
standards, but I’m no philanthropist.

“Is anything more straightforward?” He almost
smiled. “And yet you did not betray our secrets in pursuit of more
money. You kept your word. You live a simple life, by my standards,
and you have shown yourself to be of use. I have decided to trust
you.”

“Thanks,” I said, not without a hint of
sarcasm.

“I need to trust someone,” he went on, “and I
cannot trust anyone in my family, nor in all my corporation, nor
anyone associated with them. I cannot trust anyone who has lived
long on Prometheus, for my family and Nakada Enterprises are
everywhere here. Even picking someone at random, from all those on
this planet, the odds are that she would be tainted. So I have
turned to you, an Epimethean and an outcast who has shown herself
to be a competent investigator.”

“Fine,” I said, “so that’s why you picked me.
So what’s this problem that you can’t trust anyone with?”

He hesitated, and then said, “Mis’ Nakada,
someone is trying to kill me.”

That was not really very startling, given his
position, and I was about to say so when he added, “Someone in my
own family, I think.”

This theory was obviously supposed to be a surprise
to me, but I didn’t really look at it that way.

After all, when you get right down to it,
there aren’t that many possible motives for murder. Sex, money,
revenge, and defective programming are the big ones, and all four
of those are likely to get tangled up with family matters,
particularly when you’re talking about a very big, very rich, and
very complicated family like the Nakada clan.

If anyone was going to try to kill
Grandfather Nakada, a member of his own family would have both the
best reasons and the best chances. And any time anyone’s that rich,
that powerful, that famous, and that old, he’s likely to be a
target.