Realms of Light (8 page)

I wondered what other programs the old man
was running. Surely, I wasn’t the only one.

But whether I was the only one or not, I’d
been hired to do a job, and I was going to do my best to do that
job.

I wished I had my old office com, in my
office out on Juarez. It had all the software I’d need to root
through half the data on Epimetheus. I’d brought a selection of my
best wares with me from Alderstadt, but that wasn’t the same as
having the network I’d spent years building up here in Nightside
City.

I swung open the door and stepped out onto
the casino floor, where a flood of sound and color flashed over me.
The slap of cards on felt, the buzz and clatter of a hundred
different randomizers, and the hum of voices filled the air. So did
glittering visual come-ons of every sort, stardust swirls and
images of naked women and flashing holograms of personal cards
showing million-credit balances, bouncing balls and playing cards
and tropical beaches.

It made me homesick. Oh, Alderstadt and
American City had their share of advertising, but it wasn’t the
same as the Trap—Alderstadt closed down at night, and American City
seemed to do everything in pink and silver. Nightside City had its
own style. I’d had a glimpse of it during the cab ride from the
port, but it hadn’t really sunk in the way this view did. The
casino was like a miniature version of the view of Trap Over I’d
had from my old office.

But I wasn’t allowed to diverge from my
route, so I couldn’t stop and take it in. I couldn’t poke around. I
kept moving.

As I made my way toward the elevator I
wondered what had become of the place on Juarez after I left.

Then I told myself I was being an idiot. I
knew what happened to it—nothing. Juarez was in the burbs west of
the Trap, and sunlight was already crawling down the western rim of
the crater that sheltered the city. Most of the west end was
already abandoned and empty. There was no way my old landlord had
found another tenant.

I stopped in my tracks as a thought hit
me.

There was no way my landlord had found
another tenant. My old office would be standing empty. Had he even
bothered to change the codes, or clear out my old furniture? That
com system I had been missing might still be there. Oh, I’d shut it
down when I left, but I hadn’t taken the time to wipe it properly;
there wasn’t much on it I’d cared about enough to make sure it was
erased.

That was something I might want to check out
while I was in town.

Right now, though, I was headed down into
Trap Under to find Seventh Heaven and my father’s still-breathing
remains. I started walking again, ignoring the floaters that were
starting to cluster around me, offering free drinks, or a buy-in
bonus for the tables, or discounted admission to the private
shows.

The elevator was feeling chatty when I
stepped in, but I didn’t listen as it started telling me about all
the delights Nightside City had to offer. “Down,” I said. “Level
B3.”

The doors closed, and once it heard that I
was headed lower the ads changed mood. “Rough night?” the elevator
asked. “We’ve got options—credit on easy terms, service contracts,
a dozen ways to get back in the game.”

“I’m here on private business,” I said. “Shut
up.”

“Yes, mis’.” Then it shut up. Some places the
elevators would have kept talking, but the Ginza was a class
outfit.

The door opened on a quiet corridor carpeted
in a restful shade of blue, with walls that shimmered gently. A
display hung in the air, directing me to the Ginza’s financial
center and personnel offices, an organ broker or two, and Seventh
Heaven Neurosurgery. I reached up and tapped that last one, and it
turned orange. Orange arrows appeared in the carpet, as well.

I followed the arrows, and found my way to a
door that showed a scene out of some ancient fantasy, with men and
women wearing wisps of pastel gauze as they cavorted amid white
marble columns and red and gold tapestries. The name “Seventh
Heaven Neurosurgery,” in golden letters, drifted through the sky
visible between the columns.

I walked up to it; the images faded away, and
the door slid open. I stepped through into a sunlit forest glade,
and a gentle voice said, “An attendant will be with you shortly. A
bench is available to your right.”

Ordinarily I don’t need to be told where the
seats are, but the bench was half-hidden by the images, which
covered every available surface. Knowing where to look saved me a
second or two. I took a seat.

Birds flitted through the trees, green and
red and blue amid the golden sunlight and green leaves. It was
pretty, but I wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it.

“Seems to me it’s bad psychology, doing the
waiting room up like this,” I said to the room. “Doesn’t it remind
customers that they can live in whatever setting they want without
having the whole thing fed straight into their brains?”

“Oh, no,” that soothing voice replied. “These
are just images. You can’t touch them, or smell them, or taste
them, and your options are limited to what’s already in memory.
They’re nowhere near as immersive as the dream experience we offer.
A quick sample will demonstrate the difference; just five minutes
and you’ll see just how unsatisfying these mere images of colored
light really are. Shall I set a trial session up for you?”

I shuddered. “No. I’m here on family
business, I’m not a customer.”

“I see. Here’s Mis’ Wu to help you.”

A handsome young man appeared, striding
through the trees toward me, with a unicorn close on his heels. His
deep-gray worksuit looked incongruous in that fantasy setting, so I
wasn’t surprised, when the image skipped slightly as the real Mis’
Wu stepped through the projection into the room, to see that he was
really wearing exactly that suit.

That skip—you’d think they could avoid that,
adjust the image on the fly so that it matched the real man. Maybe
they just didn’t care about such details; after all, everyone who
came here knew perfectly well these trees weren’t real, the
sunlight wasn’t real, the birds and unicorn didn’t exist.

In fact, I wondered whether they left that
tiny flaw in there deliberately, just to remind you that this
was
a cheap illusion, and they could sell you a much better
one.

“May I help you?” Mis’ Wu asked, smiling.

I stood up. “I’m looking for Guohan Hsing,” I
said.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize the name.”

“Mis’ Hsing is a long-term customer,” the
office voice said. “He has been with us almost twenty years.”

“Ah, that was before my time,” Mis’ Wu
said.

In most businesses, I’d expect a front-office
type like this to have the complete client specs somewhere in his
own head. For a dreamtank, though, what was the point? Generally
once someone bought a permanent contract, the only people who had
to worry about her were the techs who maintained the tank and kept
the customer’s body alive. The salespeople didn’t need to know who
was stashed away in back.

At least, ordinarily they didn’t, but here I
was, looking for my father.

“What’s your interest in Mis’ Hsing?” Wu
asked.

“It’s a family matter,” I said. “I’m his
daughter.”

Wu frowned.

“At the time of his contracting with us, Mis’
Hsing had no children on record,” the office said.

I sighed. “He emancipated us,” I said.
“Genetically, he has three children.”

“Legally, he has none.”

“This isn’t a legal matter; it’s a family
concern.”

“Mis’ Wu?” the office said, indicating that
it had reached the limits of its programming.

“A family is a legal entity,” Wu said.

“A family is
also
a genetic network,”
I said.

“What do you want with Guohan Hsing?”

“I want to be sure he’s all right. Certain...
genetic issues have arisen.”

“Mis’ Hsing is in perfect health,” the office
said. “His life chamber is functioning properly in every way.”

“I’m sure it is,” I said, smiling. “But as I
say, we have reasons to be concerned about his continued health
that have nothing to do with Seventh Heaven’s no doubt excellent
service.”

“Are you saying there’s some sort of
hereditary defect involved?” Wu asked.

“There might be, yes.”

“I believe we test our customers for such
things,” Wu said.

“Indeed we do,” the office agreed.

This was not going as smoothly as I had
hoped. I thought for a moment, looking at Wu’s manly face, then
decided that it might be worth giving the truth a try.

“I’m also concerned,” I said, “about what’s
going to happen to him once the sun’s above the crater wall, and
Nightside City gets bathed in hard ultraviolet.”

“Oh,” Wu said. “Well, as you can see, we’re
safely below the surface here. We’ll continue our operations
uninterrupted.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Of course! We have contracts.”

“You won’t transfer your clients to
Prometheus, or one of the mining colonies?”

“We have no plans to do so. The Eta
Cassiopeia division of Seventh Heaven is based right here in
Nightside City, in Trap Under, and we expect to stay.”

“Do
you
, personally, intend to stay?”
I asked.

Wu looked uneasy. “I... haven’t decided,” he
said.

“I don’t mean any offense, Mis’ Wu, but my
brother and sister and I would feel more comfortable if our father
was housed on Prometheus, rather than here in Nightside City. We
would, of course, be happy to pay the cost of transferring
him.”

Wu’s uneasiness turned to misery. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Under the terms of his contract, Seventh
Heaven Neurosurgery is Mis’ Hsing’s legal guardian,” he said. “We
are obligated to ensure his safety. We cannot entrust it to anyone
else.”

“Yes?”

“We’re only on Epimetheus. We can’t take him
elsewhere.”

“You don’t have a branch on Prometheus? Or
Cass II, or out-system?”

“I regret to say we do not.
All
our
life chambers are right here in Trap Under.”

Life chambers—who thought up
that
euphemism for dreamtanks? “Can’t you transfer guardianship to
us?”

“No, Mis’ Hsing, we can’t. Our contracts are
very firm about that; many of our clients are quite insistent on
it. The idea of being passed from hand to hand—they find that very
disturbing. Our guardianship is non-transferrable.”

“But we’re his
family
!”

“Legally, you aren’t.”

“Can’t you wake him up and
ask
him if
we can move him to Prometheus? I’m sure we can arrange matters with
a company in Alderstadt, and do it in such a way that Seventh
Heaven doesn’t lose any credits.”

“The potential liability in a situation like
that—no, we can’t. We can’t wake him without a court order, in any
case, and even if we did, he wouldn’t be legally competent. We have
a contract and legal precedents that say as much.”

“I don’t believe this,” I said. “There must
be
some
way he can be moved.”

“No, I don’t think there is.”

I stared at him for a moment, and that
handsome face of his seemed much less appealing than it had when he
first entered.

“Fine,” I said at last. “I’m sure he’ll be
safe here with you.”

“I’m sure he will, Mis’ Hsing. Honestly.”

“Could we at least get a tissue sample to
check for genetic disorders?” I didn’t really have any use for one,
so far as I knew, but I thought I might as well maintain my cover
story.

“I think we can do that. Give us forty-eight
hours, and we can bring it to you. Where are you staying?”

I grimaced. “Never mind,” I said. “Thank you
for your time.” I turned to go.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t be more help,” he
called after me as I stepped out of the glade and back into the
corridors of Level B3.

“So am I,” I said.

Because it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get
Dad out. It just meant I wasn’t going to do it legally or
easily.

A casino cop was waiting for me in the elevator,
ready to escort me out of the Ginza. She didn’t seem particularly
hostile about it; I wasn’t being thrown out, IRC was just keeping
an eye on me.

I couldn’t blame them. After all, I had tried
to steal one of their employees. This wasn’t about that welsher
years ago; this was about ’Chan. I went peacefully.

As I walked I thought matters over, and
wondered whether I really had any business here at all. Mis’ Wu and
the office AI had seemed pretty confident that they could keep my
father alive and well in his tank after the sun rose, and maybe
they could. Up until Grandfather Nakada had made his pitch, I’d
been perfectly willing to leave Dad in their hands. I tried to
remember just why it had seemed so urgent to get him and ’Chan
out.

Well, ’Chan—he
did
need to get out. I
knew how to do it, too, though I hadn’t said so where IRC could
hear me. I’d need to do it quickly, and it would leave a mess for
Nakada to clean up, but I didn’t see that as a real problem.

The need for speed did mean I had to leave it
until last.

I had come to Nightside City with three jobs
to run—get ’Chan out, get Dad out, and see what I could learn about
Nakada’s assassin. As I told ’Chan, I hadn’t really thought I would
get anywhere with that third one, but unless I thought of a better
algorithm I had to leave ’Chan until last, and getting my father
out wasn’t running smooth, so maybe I should take a look at the
Nakada case.

’Chan thought Yoshio Nakada was dead. That
was interesting. Did everyone on Epimetheus think so? I wanted a
com. My wrist terminal didn’t have enough screen space for some of
what I wanted to do, and I didn’t entirely trust the systems on the
ship—the ship was Nakada property, and even if it was old Yoshio’s
personal yacht, that didn’t mean his family couldn’t have tampered
with it. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be doing, but I
didn’t think it was all going to be stuff I wanted the entire
Nakada clan to know.