Realms of Light (6 page)

My father I had to
find
first. And
getting him aboard the ship would be easier without ’Chan trailing
along.

That meant starting in Trap Under. Do the
hard part first. I waved, and a cab zipped up, door opening.

I got in, and the cab asked, “Where to,
Mis’?”

I didn’t have an answer for that right there
and ready to run.

Most of Trap Under isn’t exactly open to the
public; they don’t want the tourists wandering in, getting in the
way. The tourists are supposed to stay up top, where everyone can
skim off their money, not get down there in the maintenance
corridors. I couldn’t just walk in.

The obvious way into the Seventh Heaven
dreamtank was through the Seventh Heaven sales office in Trap Over,
wherever it was, but that didn’t look as if it was going to work
too well—if it were that easy, Nakada could have done it and at
least presented me with half the deal. Sure, Nakada was a
competitor and I was family—but I wasn’t
legally
family any
more, not since my parents did the dump on me more than twenty
years back, and competitors on Epimetheus weren’t all armed camps.
Doing a favor for Grandfather Nakada wasn’t unthinkable.

So I wasn’t going to be able to do this the
easy way. I’d have to get into Trap Under somehow, and either scam
or bribe or threaten my way to my father.

I tried to remember where the dreamtank was.
I’d never visited it—there’s no point in visiting dreamers—but I’d
had a pretty good map of Nightside City in my head once.

And I’d lost it. Oh, I still had my natural
memory, but I hadn’t kept it up, hadn’t thought about Trap Under in
a year or so, and the old artificial-memory back-up had gotten
fried when I took a little unscheduled vacation on the dayside,
courtesy of the walking gritware who’d been conning Sayuri
Nakada.

But the dreamtanks were mostly right under
the casinos, to make it easy for big-time losers to cash out
permanently; I remembered that much. And maybe I could beep ’Chan,
let him know I was back on Epimetheus for the moment.

So maybe I wasn’t going to start with my
father after all. Maybe my brother
did
come first.

“The Ginza,” I said. “Service entrance.”

The cab didn’t bother to answer, it just
zipped up into traffic, headed for Trap Over. I sat back, thinking,
and hoping the cab didn’t decide to get chatty.

I hadn’t really planned anything out; I had
wanted to see the situation first-hand before I hit enter. Now I
had to decide what I would run at the Ginza. I looked out the
window, hoping for inspiration, but just saw twenty-meter ads for
nude dancing at the Jade Club.

There was something oddly comforting about
those glimmering holographic ecdysiasts glowing against the dark
sky. I couldn’t have told you just how they were any different from
some of the ads in Alderstadt or American City, but they were. They
meant I was
home
.

It was a home I could never live in again, I
knew that, but it was still home.

Once we were in the Trap I spotted the Ginza,
with its distinctive bronze-green tower and dragon banners, but the
cab didn’t head for the fancy overhang; I’d told it the service
entrance, so it looped around and dived down through the traffic,
almost hitting a knot of giggling pedestrians as it veered into a
tunnel mouth and jigged its way down.

When the cab finally settled to the plastic
flooring I still hadn’t debugged anything, but I paid the fare and
a fat tip—it was Nakada’s money, not mine, and the cab hadn’t
bothered me—and I got out.

The Ginza’s service entrance was one level
below the streets—technically, the top level of Trap Under. For all
I knew, my father might have been just the other side of a wall,
though it was more likely he was somewhere deep down, a hundred
meters or more below anywhere open to the public.

I still hadn’t come up with anything but the
obvious, so I walked up to the door and told it, “I’m here to see
one of your employees, Sebastian Hsing. It’s family business.”

“You know you aren’t welcome here, Mis’
Hsing.”

I should have realized it would recognize me.
I’d known from my treatment back on Prometheus that IRC still
hadn’t forgiven me for my moment of folly a few years back, when
I’d given a welsher a chance to get away from them, and of course
they’d keep everything in the system up to date. Their software
wasn’t inclined to be helpful where I was concerned.

“I’m not here to play or solicit customers,”
I said. “I just need to talk to my brother. It’s a private
matter.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No,” I admitted. “I haven’t been able to
reach him by com.”

I hadn’t actually tried, since I assumed IRC
was monitoring everything he saw or heard.

“I can give him a message,” the door
said.

That was probably the best I could hope for,
so I said, “Tell him Carlie needs to talk to him about an urgent
family matter.”

“He will receive the message at his next
break.”

“I’ll wait.” Human croupiers only did
half-hour shifts—the casino didn’t want them getting distracted,
thinking about the hot player a few seats down, or when dinner
might be, or a full bladder. Even more important, they didn’t want
them watching enough play to start noticing bias in the equipment,
so every table changed staff every thirty minutes, and ’Chan would
have ten minutes to play his messages and get a drink and whatever
before heading to his next position. I could wait that long.

The door didn’t say anything. “Should I wait,
Mis’?” the cab asked from behind me.

“No,” I told it. I almost started to explain
that I didn’t know how long I’d be there, but then I remembered it
was a cab. It didn’t care why.

“Thank you,” it said, and then it was gone,
swooping away at an acceleration that would have been nasty for a
human passenger.

I leaned against the wall by the door; the
plastic was warm against my back.

I didn’t like that I hadn’t done any
planning. I should have skimmed background from the nets before I
landed. I hadn’t because I was used to having the data I needed
right there waiting any time I bothered to ask for it, but this
time I couldn’t trust everything I pulled down. I didn’t have my
old office com that knew everything about Nightside City anymore. I
didn’t have my new office com from Alderstadt, either. All I had
was the public nets and what I carried with me. I wasn’t carrying
much, and if Grandfather Nakada was right, I shouldn’t believe
everything I found on the public nets. So I was scrolling blind,
seeing what came up the screen.

As I said, I wasn’t really looking for
Nakada’s conspiracy of assassins. I had to assume that if they’d
gotten at the old man’s dreamware, they were smart enough to spot
anyone who went poking around after them. I was just running my own
errands, and keeping all ports open for data about the Nakada clan.
If anything beeped, I’d take a look. If it all looked smooth, then
I’d go back to Prometheus and work that end.

For now, though, it was all family. With Mis’
Perkins waiting for me on the ship I could get ’Chan and our father
off-planet without any tickets—if I could get them to the port.
’Chan shouldn’t be too much trouble, but pulling a wirehead out of
the dreamtanks was another program entirely. The only way I had
ever heard of a wirehead coming out of the tank alive was if the
cops needed her as a witness—city cops or casino cops, either one.
If the wirehead survived, she went back in the tank afterward.

I’d seen vid of a wirehead witness once. She
looked like walking gritware, and wanted nothing more than to get
back to her dreams. She told them whatever they wanted to hear, so
she could get it over with and climb back in the tank, and the
whole time her eyes were flipping back and forth, trying not to see
boring old reality.

If I did get Dad out, the kindest thing I
could do would probably be to plug him into a new dreamtank on
Prometheus. If Grandfather Nakada froze at paying for that, I’d
call it a medical expense.

I didn’t think he’d freeze. The money
involved wasn’t enough to matter to the Nakadas.

But first I had to get Dad out, and to do
that, first I had to
find
him. The location of a particular
wirehead was proprietary information, not something Seventh Heaven
gave out to anyone who asked—an amazing number of wireheads had
left enemies behind who might like a chance to cut a few leads on a
particular dreamtank, just for old times’ sake. After all, people
who had a happy life and a lot of friends in the real world didn’t
buy the dream in the first place.

’Chan might know something. We might be able
to run the family pack on some flunky, even though the law said we
weren’t family anymore.

The door suddenly said, “I have a message
from Sebastian Hsing for Carlisle Hsing.”

“I’m Carlisle Hsing,” I said. I held up my
card where the scan could read it, just in case it had decided to
need proof beyond whatever it had used to recognize me before.

’Chan’s voice came from the speaker. “I get
off after my next table. I can meet you in the employee lounge.
This better be important, Carlie.”

The door slid open. “Please follow the blue
light to the employee lounge, Mis’ Hsing,” it said in its own
voice. “Do not attempt to visit other areas.”

“Thank you,” I said. You never know whether
software’s advanced enough to appreciate the niceties, and it
doesn’t cost to use them.

Beyond the door was a drab corridor that led
to a door a dozen meters away; a ball of blue light hovered in the
air a few meters in. I followed it in.

It led through the door, which opened ahead
of me, then around a corner to the right and down another corridor,
then up a ramp to another corridor, but this one had thick
red-and-black fixed-color carpet and better-quality doors opening
off it. I could hear voices, human ones by the sound,
somewhere.

Finally the blue light stopped in front of a
door upholstered in red vinyl. The door didn’t open for me, and at
first I thought something had gone wrong, but there was the light,
and it
looked
like a lounge. I pushed on the door with my
hand, and it swung inward.

The room beyond was littered with discarded
plates and teacups. The red-and-black carpet was the same as in the
corridor, but more worn, and with several old, dark stains. One
wall shone with the gentle blue of a welcome screen. Two tables and
a dozen chairs were randomized; I settled onto a chair, let it fit
itself to me, then waved at the screen.

“Public access?” I asked.

“Available,” it replied.

“Tell me about Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery,”
I said.

After all, if I was going to have to wait, I
might as well put the time to good use.

Half a dozen images appeared, waiting for me
to choose—an ad for their services, a financial statement, customer
reviews, and so on. I pointed at a newsy.

At least, I thought it was a newsy, but it
was hype. “There are many companies offering neurological
services,” it told me, “but one stands out from the crowd. The name
may be Seventh Heaven, but these dreams are second to none.”

It went on to tell me that Seventh Heaven had
been around for over a century, and was based on Mars, in Sol
System. I asked a question at that, and found out that the
operation on Epimetheus was a franchise operated entirely by local
talent—they leased the name and the equipment from the parent
company.

So when Nightside City fried, what would
happen to their tanks? These people didn’t even
own
them,
and somehow I doubted corporate back on Mars was going to come
reclaim them if the locals packed up and left when the sun rose
over the crater rim.

The com I was talking to didn’t have any data
on that, of course. I was trying to decide what I could ask that
might be useful when the door opened and ’Chan stepped in. He
glanced at the screen, blinked, then looked at me.

“Carlie,” he said, “what are you doing here?
I thought you were on Prometheus!”

“I was,” I said. “I came back.”

“You did
what
?”

“I came back.”

“Why? Why would you do something stupid like
that?”

“Two reasons,” I said. “First, I got hired
for a job that includes poking around the old place a little.
Second, I wanted to get you and Dad off-planet before the sun comes
up.”

“Me... and
Dad
? Carlie, he’s in a
tank. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know that, but what I
don’t
know is what Seventh Heaven’s going to do with the tanks when the
dawn comes. So I want to transfer him to somewhere on
Prometheus.”

’Chan stared at me for a minute, and even
though he’s my brother I couldn’t read his expression. “Seventh
Heaven?” he asked. “Is that the company’s name?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You don’t remember?”

“I don’t
care
,” he said. “Carlie, they
dumped us, remember? They didn’t want us anymore.”

“He’s still our father. Genetically, if not
legally.”

“Even assuming he is, which I would not be
too sure of, so what? He threw us away. We don’t owe him
anything.”

This time I could see the hurt on ’Chan’s
face just fine. I’d seen it there before often enough. I’d thought
he’d be over it by now, the way I thought I was, but I’d obviously
misjudged the situation.

I wasn’t going to say that directly, though.
Instead I said, “I know. I want to get him out anyway.”

He stared at me for a few seconds more before
he answered, but eventually he said, “You’re more generous than I
am. Go ahead, if you want, but it’s got nothing to do with me.”

“I was hoping you could help me find
him.”

“Me? You’re the detective, Carlie. I’m just a
croupier.”