Realms of Light

Chapter One

I’m a creature of the night, born and raised ineternal darkness-except the darkness on Epimetheus wasn’t aseternal as I might have liked. That was why I left Nightside City,where I’d lived my entire life up to then, and came toPrometheus.

And on Prometheus the darkness isn’t evenclose to eternal. What little darkness there is ends every eighteenhours at sunrise, then comes back again at sunset.

What’s more, the normal Promethean businesshours are during daylight, two days out of every three. Some peoplego as far as adjusting their circadian rhythms to an eighteen-hourcycle, but most people use a twenty-four hour day, where three daysequal four cycles. Office hours come when daylight coincides withthe normal waking cycle, on two of those three days.

I didn’t like it. I’d had bad experienceswith daylight, and didn’t care for it much, even when the sun wasso small and dim compared to what almost killed me back onEpimetheus.

And this whole optical illusion of the sunmoving across the sky made my skin crawl. I knew Eta Cass A wasn’treally moving any more than it ever had, that it was the planet’srotation, but that didn’t help; it made me dizzy to think about it.I couldn’t handle working with the sun overhead, so just about assoon as I’d found myself a residence office I liked I bought a nicepiece of software to play receptionist, and figured I’d do my workat night, when everyone else was off. I slept away as many of thedaylight hours as I could, and stayed away from windows as much aspossible for the rest of them.

At least I’d landed in a city that wasn’tright under the moon; I don’t think I could have lived with thatthing hanging directly above me every time I went out in theopen.

A lot of offworlders complained about theearthquakes, but they didn’t bother me; we’d had a few onEpimetheus, too. You get used to them. And the lava glow in thedistance wasn’t any worse than the dawn above the crater rim backhome.

The heavier gravity was tiring, and the airsmelled strange at first, but I got used to those things, too.There were other ways Prometheus differed from Epimetheus, dozensof them, the algae and the oceans and the rest, but the only onethat seriously glitched me was daylight.

One thing hadn’t changed. I was still callingmyself a detective, a private investigator; it was all I knew.Having office hours that didn’t match anybody else’s had its goodpoints and bad, in that line of work.

Being on an unfamiliar planet, though-thatwas all bad for my job. I didn’t know my way around the urbansoftware, didn’t have any contacts, had no word of mouth bringingin work. I had enough money to live on for a while-about the onlypleasant surprise I got when I landed on Prometheus was thelower prices-but I needed an income.

I put notes out on the net, looking for work,of course; I billed myself as an expert consultant on my home worldof Epimetheus as well as pitching the investigative work. I talkedto some of the software in city hall-this was in Alderstadt, nearthe north end of Terpsichore in the Nine Islands, which was wheremy flight in had landed-and tried to learn the circuits.

Strange set-up they had there. The policysoftware wasn’t permanent; every few years they ran a sort ofpopularity poll called an election, and whoever won got to plug herown software in until the next election. It was something like areferendum, except instead of asking a question they asked you topick a person. And chances were the only names on the ballotwere people you didn’t even know. Seemed like a stupid system tome, but the people I asked about it argued that it acted as a sortof automatic debugging.

Nightside City always did fine withtraditional debugging-you catch a mistake, you rewrite it. Youdon’t pull the whole system off-line and put in a new program.

This election thing confused me. What was thepoint in learning my way around the master program when in a yearor two it might get pulled and replaced? It took away some of myincentive, and I didn’t really get the hang of Alderstadt cityservices beyond the basics.

Banks and corporate data and nets are prettymuch the same everywhere, though. So are people. I figured I couldfunction, even in Alderstadt.

Then I got my first case, tracking down adata pirate for an off-planet shipping line that picked me becausethey were in a hurry and my name came up first in a random search.I pulled it off-not as easily as I could have back in NightsideCity, but well enough. This artist in margin retailing had figuredthat knowing what cargos went in and out would give her an edge inpricing, and I found her for the shippers.

When I gave them her name and com code I’dsuggested that they just make a deal with her and split her take,but they were having none of it. I got the impression they didn’tthink much of my morals. Anyway, they got all flashed and turnedher in to the Procops, and the whole thing got out on the net.

I figured that wouldn’t hurt me any, thoughit didn’t do the margin artist any good and she only missedreconstruction by about half a stop-bit. Yeah, my name hit thenet-and it was big enough news that IRC caught it.

The Interstellar Resorts Corporation has beenpissed at me for years, ever since I let a welsher skip out, andthey put the word out on the net that I was still on theirgritlist. IRC isn’t as big on Prometheus as they were back home,where the casinos owned about half the planet, but they’re bigenough that people don’t like to annoy them. I’d thought I’d gotaway from them when I left Epimetheus, but now it looked as if Ihadn’t.

I was back in the detective business, but Iwasn’t exactly top of the market. Just like old times.

I got work, though. Sometimes I got peoplewho figured that if IRC was warning them away from me, then thatwas a point in my favor. I kept eating, and a lot better than I didback in Nightside City, thanks to the lower prices, and I did itwithout even bleeding my savings, such as they were.

I’d been in Alderstadt for almost a year,gotten myself settled in pretty well, gotten to know the locals,made a few friends, when I got this call. I was there and awake andnot doing much of anything, so my software put it through.

“Carlisle Hsing?” a voice asked, and I knewfrom the sound it was synthesized, which meant I was dealing withsoftware or with someone who wasn’t interested in beingrecognized-and in either case they didn’t mind if I knew it. Youcan synthesize undetectably if you want to pay for it.

“Yeah?” I said, leaning back in my chair-afloater, a nice one. Came with the office. Beat the hell out of theplace I’d had back home on Juarez Street.

“I represent someone who wishes to hire yourservices. Would it suit you to be in the lobby of the Sakaibuilding on First Street in American City at 22:00 tomorrow? Yourexpenses will be reimbursed.”

I reminded myself where in the cycle we wereand where on the planet American City was, and figured that 22:00would be comfortably dark, not to mention well after businesshours.

That part sounded all right.

“Do I get a name?” I asked.

“No,” it said.

“Then I’ll need an advance,” I told it.“Buzzfare to American City’s gotta be four hundred credits, easy.”I was guessing, but since American City wasn’t on Terpsichore buton one of the little collateral islands out to the south, it was aneasy guess.

“One kilocredit will be posted to youraccount immediately,” it said, without missing a tick.

I smiled. I liked that. I never got this sortof thing back home, and although I’d had a couple of respectableclients in Alderstadt, I wasn’t really used to it.

A kilobuck wasn’t exactly going to let meretire, or even take a vacation, but it would coverround-trip fare to American City, I was pretty sure.

“Any conditions?” I asked.

“You must come alone,” it told me. “It wouldbe appreciated if you would allow the installation of a watchdogprogram in your office com, but this is not an absoluterequirement. You must be punctual and discreet.”

“No watchdog,” I said, and my smile wasn’tthere any more. This was beginning to sound dangerous. “I’ll bethere.”

“Alone,” it reminded me.

“Alone,” I agreed.

I meant it, too, if you only counted humans,but I wasn’t going to walk into a completely unknown set-up withouta little back-up. I intended to have plenty of hardware on me, andof course I carry a symbiote, like everybody else, but mine’s agood one, with optional intelligence, and I figured I’d wake it upand have it on the lookout while I was there.

I’d had another symbiote back on Epimetheus,a dumb one. It saved my life and died in the process, so when I gotto Prometheus I’d spent a good piece of my savings on getting abetter one to replace it.

That was something else that cost about halfwhat it would have on Epimetheus. There were serious advantages tobeing on a primary colony instead of a secondary one.

“You will be met,” the voice said, and thenthe connection broke.

I sat and I considered that.

Somebody was going to a lot of trouble todeal with me. Somebody in American City, presumably-but I’d neverbeen in American City, never met anyone there, knew nothing aboutthe place beyond the standard stuff in the Prometheographyprogramming I’d jacked in aboard ship.

Why would anybody want me to come to AmericanCity?

When somebody wanted to meet me somewhere, itwas usually because she wanted privacy-unless it’s a closed system,totally closed, anything you do over the com can be tapped, andanyone with any sense knows that. But even so, most people came tomy office in that case.

When somebody wanted to meet me somewhereelse, it was usually because he was seriously worried or scared,afraid that he’s being followed or that I’m beingwatched-and what the hell, maybe I was being watched. Iwouldn’t have put it past IRC to have had an eye on my office, ahigh-altitude one I couldn’t spot, or maybe a bunch ofmicrointelligences reporting back. Or if not IRC, which after allhas bigger programs to run, then maybe one of IRC’s competitors orsubcontractors, trying to figure an angle.

And when somebody insisted on completeanonymity and insisted on meeting me not just outside my office,but in another city a thousand kilometers south of Alderstadt, atthe other end of the archipelago, then we’re talking about someonewho was downright paranoid-or else, just possibly, somebody who wasconcerned with something other than privacy.

For example, getting me out by myself, aloneand relatively defenseless.

Now, I didn’t know that there wasanybody out there who wanted me dead just then, though there hadbeen a few people who might hold grudges. IRC held a grudge, butwhat I’d done to them wasn’t any big spike, really, just a bit ofgrit.

And there was a fellow back on Epimetheus bythe name of Big Jim Mishima who might not be very fond of me-butthe exact details got wiped, so he wouldn’t know why.

There was that margin player who’d missedreconstruction, but I wouldn’t expect her to have the nerve to tryanything after a close cut like that.

There were a few people I thought had gone infor reconstruction who might be after me if they hadn’t-but I wassure that most of them had gone in, and after reconstructionthey weren’t going to be bothering me, not unless the job had beenbotched.

There was Sayuri Nakada, a spoiled rich bratI’d crossed up; I didn’t know where the hell she was or what shewas doing, and she had the juice to be anywhere in human space. I’dprobably done her a favor, whether she knew it or not, but she wascrazy enough that I had no idea what she thought of me.

So I had potential enemies out there, but Icouldn’t see that any of them would have been behind this. Mishimawas still back on Epimetheus, as far as I knew, and even if he’dgotten off he wasn’t the type to come after me without knowing morethan he did.

Nakada was petty and vicious enough, but itdidn’t seem like her style, and besides, she was dependent on therest of her family, and they wouldn’t have allowed it.

If they knew about it.

The thought of the Nakada family beepedsomewhere in the back of my brain. I leaned forward and gestured atthe com.

The first screen told me that yes, a kilobuckhad been credited to my account, from a numbered account at abrokerage house. I could probably trace it back if I had to, but itwouldn’t be easy.

The second screen told me that American Citywas just about where I thought it was, and that Sayuri Nakada nolonger had any significant interests there.

But Yoshio Nakada, her great-grandfather,head of the Nakada clan and chief stockholder in NakadaEnterprises, was based there.

Grandfather Nakada knew who I was, all right.He’d paid my way off Epimetheus in return for what I’d learnedabout a little scam that was being run on great-granddaughterSayuri. As far as I knew, he had nothing against me, and Sayuricouldn’t push him around.

So maybe it wasn’t a trap. Maybe GrandfatherNakada wanted to talk to me about something. Certainly he was richenough to throw kilobucks around like that, and I could see whysomeone like him wouldn’t want to be seen coming to Alderstadt toconsult me.

Or maybe it was someone else, lower down inthe hierarchy, who had been impressed with my deal with old Yoshioand needed a detective.

Whatever it was, I’d find out soon enough.I’d be there, in the Sakai building at 22:00. I’d be alone-with mySony-Remington HG-2 loaded and active, with my symbiote on alert,and with every scanner and guard system I could get into myworksuit up and running.

Just in case.