Realms of Light (14 page)

Unless, of course, they
couldn’t
follow. I needed a place the floaters couldn’t go, and to anyone
who knew Nightside City there was an obvious possibility. Outside
floaters weren’t allowed in the casinos without prior clearance;
there were too many ways to use them to cheat. I could lose the
newsies, at least temporarily, though they would pick me up again
when I left the casino. I could probably lose any human reporters
who might try to follow me, too.

But I needed a casino where I wouldn’t be
watched by the management. That meant the IRC houses were out. It
meant
most
of the casinos were out. But there was one that
might cooperate.

“All right,” I said, “is there some way we
can make a private call to Vijay Vo at the New York, and
keep
it private?”

“Oh, of course. Mis’ Nakada has a dedicated
encrypted link.”

Of course.

“Set it up. He knows you?”

“Yes, Mis’.”

He knew me, too, at least slightly. We had
met when I was investigating Sayuri Nakada’s real estate scheme. I
didn’t know whether he liked me—he hadn’t given me any sign either
way—but he knew who I was, and he had connected me with Grandfather
Nakada.

I told the upload to be quiet. We didn’t need
anyone else knowing it existed. Then I crossed to the main com
console and activated a privacy field, surrounding me and the
console with a soft blue fog.

I knew Perkins could listen in if he wanted
to, field or no field; the upload probably could, too. The field
was just skin, just for looks.

The holo field blinked on, and Vijay Vo’s
image appeared. He smiled pleasantly at me, his hands folded across
his belly.

“Carlisle Hsing,” he said. “What can I do for
you?”

“Mis’ Vo,” I said. “Good to see you
again.”

“I’m a busy man, Mis’ Hsing. What do you
want?” The smile was still there, but wasn’t quite as welcoming
now.

If he didn’t want to waste time being polite,
that was fine with me. “There are half a dozen floaters watching
this ship, trying to get a story about Grandfather Nakada’s death,”
I said. “For my current investigation I need full net access where
they can’t listen in.”

“You are suggesting we provide this for you
here at the New York?”

“Yes.”

“Why should we?”

“I am working for the Nakada family, Mis’ Vo.
You work for Nakada Enterprises. A little cooperation doesn’t seem
like an unreasonable request.”

“Professional courtesy for a fellow
employee?”

“If you like, yes.”

“Just ordinary net access?”

“And privacy.”

“You
are
working for the Nakadas?”

“I think I am. If I’m not, someone back on
Prometheus did one hell of a good job spoofing me. And Perkins,
too.”

Vo nodded. “Come to the hotel, then. We’ll
escort you to a secure com.”

“Could you send a car for me, perhaps? I
would prefer not to be harassed en route.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Thank you.”

“The car should be there in about twenty
minutes.”

“That’s fine.”

“I probably won’t attend to it personally,
you understand.”

“Of course.”

“Goodbye, then, Mis’ Hsing.”

Before I could answer the image blinked out.
I stared at the empty air for a second, then killed the privacy
field.

There was one possible flaw in my plan; I
knew that. The New York Games Corporation would undoubtedly keep a
record of everything I did with their equipment. They would know I
was breaking into Seventh Heaven.

I was putting my trust in them to not care.
Seventh Heaven operated out of the Ginza’s sub-basement, and the
Ginza was an IRC operation; IRC was the New York’s chief
competition. I hoped that meant that no one in authority at the New
York would feel any need to tell anyone at Seventh Heaven
anything.

If they did decide something should be done
about someone using their equipment for illegal purposes—well, that
was a risk I was willing to take. The old man could bail me
out.

I gathered up a few things, including my gun,
and ate a little more. I was trying to think whether I had
forgotten anything when Perkins announced, “Your car’s here.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I headed for the
airlock.

There were more floaters than I had seen when
I arrived. There was an entire swarm. I put one hand on the butt of
my gun, just in case some of them got aggressive.

The car was waiting for me at the foot of the
steps, sleek and gleaming white. A door slid open as I approached,
and I climbed in.

The door closed as I settled onto the dark
red upholstery. “You’re armed,” the car said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I was not informed.”

“No one asked.”

“May I speak to the weapon?”

“It doesn’t have wireless or speech. It’s not
very bright.”

“What model is it?”

“Sony-Remington HG-2.”

“Are you the only authorized user?”

“Yes.”

“I will need to inform Mis’ Vo and the
security system at the New York.”

“You do that.” I leaned back, and the seat
adjusted itself to support my head.

“I appreciate your cooperation.” With that it
finally took off and headed for the Trap.

The main entrance to the New York was on
Fifth; in the past I’d usually used the entrance around the corner
on Deng that led directly into the Manhattan Lounge. The car didn’t
go to either of those; instead it took me to the business entrance
on the roof, where it sailed through a holo of a twenty-meter
showboy and set down at the door.

I’d come in this way once before, but this
time I was expected. The scanners had finished their inspection
before I was even out of the car, and the door was already
open.

A floater was waiting just inside, as I’d
expected. “Leave the gun,” it said.

I slid the HG-2 onto its tray. It printed a
receipt and rose up out of my way, and a swarm of flitterbugs
appeared to guide me.

The last time I had come this way they took
me to Vo’s office, but this time they led me around the corner to a
small room with walls glowing a deep, restful blue. A desk extruded
itself from one of those blue walls as I stepped in, and a chair
presented itself, rolling out of the corner to a position behind
me.

I sat down and leaned over the desk, my hand
in the sensor field. I didn’t want to ride wire here; even if Vo
and the upload were both being completely honest with me, it was
possible that some time in the past four years Seventh Heaven had
found the back door and put some defenses with teeth in it. Hand,
voice, and screen would be slower, but much safer.

I followed the instructions Yoshio-
kun
had given me, and sure enough, the back door was there—if Seventh
Heaven had found it, they hadn’t shut it down.

But they might have booby-trapped it.

I had some of my own software with me, of
course, so I set out half a dozen watchdogs and sent a probe in to
see if I was stepping in something I didn’t want to.

Nothing. It looked clean. It looked as if no
one had found it. I could access Seventh Heaven’s entire network,
their entire database, without showing up on their system at all.
If I disturbed anything, or drew a noticeable amount of power or
bandwidth, it would be reported as internal maintenance.

I entered my father’s name, and got the
coordinates of his dreamtank—Guohan Hsing, Tier 4, Row 6, Station
31. While I was at it I got the maintenance logs for his tank, the
dream schedule, the medical read-outs, and everything else handy,
all downloaded to my wrist com.

With that information I could find him, and I
could get him out of the tank without killing him.

That was all I wanted. If I could get him and
’Chan onto the ship we could get off Epimetheus for good, and once
I was back on Prometheus I could finish up the investigation the
old man had hired me to do. I was pretty sure that everything I
needed to learn about the assassination attempt was back in the
Nakada compound in American City; the phony death reports were just
a peripheral, a subroutine.

I wiped the inquiry record, and did a quick
check to make sure I hadn’t left any obvious traces that would show
up when Seventh Heaven looked everything over—and I knew they
would
look everything over once I had kidnaped my father. I
didn’t want to make it easy for them to find the back door; someone
might need it again someday.

Then I got ready to close the door, put
everything back the way I found it. The whole thing had taken maybe
ten minutes, start to finish, and I was feeling pretty pleased with
myself as I started the shut-down routine.

But then I saw the log, and I stopped
everything right where it was, and all of a sudden I wasn’t feeling
pleased at all.

This back door was something Yoshio Nakada
had had installed about eleven years ago, when he was thinking of
buying Seventh Heaven. According to the upload, he had never told
anyone else about it. The recording of the old man knew about it,
of course, and it had told me, and there was the woman who had
installed it in the first place, Mei-Li Gussow, but that should be
all.

The original Yoshio was in American City.
Mei-Li Gussow, as of four years ago, was working for a medical
research unit of Nakada Enterprises in South Tarnauer, on
Prometheus, and even if she had moved on from that, she had no
reason to be in Nightside City, poking around Seventh Heaven.
Really, there was no reason anyone but me should have used that
back door for at least a decade.

Mis’ Gussow had been thorough when she put it
in, though, and had provided it with an automatic log. Every access
was listed, with time and date. There were nine of them.

Seven of them were over a period of a couple
of weeks eleven years ago, when old Yoshio had checked the company
out. One of the nine was still open, with an entry time but no
exit—that was me.

But the other one was dated just the day
before, and had lasted over an hour.

I checked it again, to be sure. Seven
entries, then an eleven-year gap, and then two more, about sixteen
hours apart. Someone else had been in here.

But who? Why?

What on Epimetheus did anyone want with a
dream company’s records?

Maybe I wasn’t as done in Nightside City as
I’d thought.

I finished logging out and shutting down, and then I
sat for a moment, staring at a desktop image of rolling ocean.

This wasn’t a coincidence. Oh, technically, I
suppose coincidence was a possible explanation, but it wasn’t one
I’d run. Even the stupidest gambler in the Trap wouldn’t play those
odds. There had to be a connection between my visit to the Seventh
Heaven system, and that hour-long probe a day earlier.

And the connection was pretty obvious. I got
my access to the back door from a recording of Yoshio Nakada that I
got from the old man’s ITEOD file, and I wasn’t the only one to
look at that file. One of the others must have booted up a copy,
just as I had, and found out about the back door from it.

That gave me three suspects: officer of the
court Hu Xiao, an intelligence named Dipsy 3, and the anonymous
user who had used a Nakada Enterprises corporate account. I knew
which one I’d bet on, given a choice—the one who’d had a connection
with Grandfather Nakada all along.

But that left another question—what was the
connection with Seventh Heaven? Why would my mystery person (or Hu
Xiao or Dipsy 3) want access to a dream company’s records? I knew
why
I
wanted it, but somehow I doubted that some member of
the Nakada clan was searching for a particular wirehead in the
storage tanks of Trap Under. Why would
anybody
be looking at
dreamer files?

Whoever it was presumably wanted something
Seventh Heaven had. I wanted my father; what did this other person
want?

What did Seventh Heaven
have
?

More specifically, what did they have that
other companies didn’t? If the intruder had been going through
multiple companies looking for credit or information, I didn’t
think she would have gotten to Seventh Heaven this quickly; a dream
company wouldn’t rank very high on
my
list of targets for
the usual sort of exploitation.

So what would a dream company have that other
companies wouldn’t?

Dreams, of course—millions of hours of
interactive imagery ready to be fed into a client’s brain without
being filtered through actual eyes and ears. Imaginary kingdoms of
light and color, lands of bliss, bedrooms where no matter how
energetic or inventive you got, you never had to worry about
tugging on hair or twisting an ankle. Thrilling adventures, willing
harems, transcendent scenery.

But you could get that kind of thing
anywhere. Hell, a lot of it was public domain, and you could
download it free from the city’s public service. Sure, some of the
best stuff was the dream companies’ proprietary material, but was
it really worth this much trouble?

What else did Seventh Heaven have?

Row upon row of dreamtanks—enclosed
life-support systems that could keep an unconscious human being
alive and reasonably healthy indefinitely without any external
supervision, while a hardwired link fed pretty pictures into his
brain. Was there some use for dreamtanks that I wasn’t seeing,
something that made them valuable?

You could hide things in them, I supposed,
but so what? They didn’t go anywhere, so that wouldn’t help much
with smuggling, and really, what would you need to hide in
Nightside City that would be worth the trouble of finding an empty
dreamtank to stash it in? There were dozens of abandoned buildings
in the West End where you could hide things; why bother with a
dreamtank?