Realms of Light

Chapter Seventeen

“I am listening,” Yoshio said.

“I believe that this woman Hsing may havemisled you.” The face on the desktop moved as if speaking, but wasvery slightly out of sync with the words we heard. I guessed thatthe upload only had limited bandwidth to work with; presumablyGrandfather Nakada had strictly controlled access to thedevice.

The old man threw me a quick glance. “In whatway?”

“I suspect she may have cast a false lightupon my situation in hopes of coaxing money and perhaps otherconcessions from you.”

“What situation is that, Shinichiro?”

“There is an experiment I hope to conduct,and I have been pursuing the means to perform it. This involvespurchasing a controlling interest in Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery.Since I am at present inconvenienced by my physical nature, I havebeen forced to make this purchase secretly, throughintermediaries.”

“You refer to the legal insistence thatsoftware cannot own stock, or control corporations.”

“Yes, Father.”

“What does this have to do with CarlisleHsing?”

“It appears, Father, that Mis’ Hsing haslearned of my intentions-I do not know how, but she is, as we know,a talented and experienced investigator. I believe she hasmisinterpreted my plans. She kidnaped Guohan Hsing from SeventhHeaven, and I assume she did so because she thought his life mightbe in danger. I take it she has come here to tell you of hermisapprehensions, and ask that I be prevented from continuing myactivities.”

“Her business with me is not yourconcern.”

“As you please, Father. But I want to assureyou, I do not intend to harm anyone.”

The old man looked at me questioningly. Ilooked back blankly and shrugged slightly. I had no idea where thiswas going.

“I note that you have interfered with thehousehold systems,” Yoshio said.

“Only so that I might defend myself fromslander, Father!”

“Go on, then. What is this experiment? Whatdo you want with Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery? You know I declinedto purchase it some time ago; what makes it worth your whilenow?”

“The contract terms for the clients, Father.They granted Seventh Heaven a great deal of control over theirphysical well-being, and as I read the terms, this allows SeventhHeaven to make arrangements that would not be legal under othercircumstances.”

“Let us dispense with pretense and delay,Shinichiro,” the old man said wearily. “What is this experiment youwant to attempt? What do you hope to do with Seventh Heaven’sclients? Explain it to me.”

The tone of the voice from the desktopchanged, from formally polite to forceful and direct. “These peoplehave human bodies they aren’t using, Father, while I, and otheruploaded personalities, would very much like to be human again-thelegal restrictions on us are surprisingly onerous. I want to beable to own property and conduct business without a slew ofartificial constraints. I want to be able to go places that aren’ton the open nets or the family’s systems. I want to have a discretebody again. I can’t just grow myself one; you know about that. Ifit has a functioning brain, then it’s a person in its own right,and I can’t download myself into it without being charged withmurder. If it doesn’t have a functioning brain, there’s no way todownload me into it at all. But these people, Father, have brainsand bodies they’re barely using, and have signed away half theirrights to the company. As I read the contracts, I think it would belegal to remove them from their bodies completely, and putus-myself and other uploads-in those bodies instead.”

“Remove them?” Yoshio asked.

“Upload them,” the desktop said eagerly.“Just the way you uploaded me. They’ve signed away so much controlthat I believe Seventh Heaven can legally remove them from theirbodies entirely.”

“Against their will?”

“No, no, of course not! We would askthem, and offer them a choice-stay in the dreamtanks until they dieof old age or systems failure, or transfer to electronic form wherethey can live forever, where they can, if they want, be removedfrom Epimetheus entirely so that they don’t need to worry aboutwhat will happen if Nightside City is abandoned and left derelict.And they can go right on dreaming-we would transfer their dreamlibraries with them, and set those up in the same nets that theirminds would be in. They wouldn’t need to interact with the outsideworld at all, any more than they do now; they could have dedicatedsystems. They could exist in their imaginary worlds, in realms oflight, worlds of bliss, untroubled by any lingering concerns abouttheir original flesh.”

My skin crawled slightly at that idea; thesedisembodied intelligences would be so isolated, sopointless.

I didn’t say anything, though; this wasbetween the two of them.

“But they would be dead,” Yoshio said.

“What? No, they would be just as alive as Iam, living electronically, and their bodies would be inhabited byme, and Shigeru, and Momoko, and Hideo, and Kazuo-and you,if you want. You could be younger, Father-you’re two hundred yearsold, and even the best doctors can’t keep you alive as you areforever, but you could start over in a younger body, one theoriginal owner doesn’t want anymore.”

“Shinichiro…” The old man lookeddesperately unhappy. He stared at me for a second before saying,“No. Shinichiro is dead. You are a recording. You are not myson.”

“Father, what are you saying?” The desktop’stone was quite convincingly shocked. “I am Shinichiro!”

“You are a piece of software thatthinks it’s my son. And if you were downloaded into a newbody, even one cloned from your own genes, you would stillnot be my son. My son is dead. You would only be a copy.”

“But Father, what difference does that make?”The desktop’s voice was baffled and angry-and, I thought,frightened. “I’m still me. A copy is as good as theoriginal.”

Yoshio shook his head. “If I scan something,the copy may be indistinguishable from the original, but it is notthe original.”

“But there’s no difference! I remembereverything, and what makes us who we are, but our memories? Iremember growing up with Kumiko and Shigeru, and you came to see usevery night and put us to bed, and I made you tuck in my bunny-howcan I remember that if I’m not your son?”

Yoshio did not answer immediately; he sat inhis big black chair, staring at me, with the desktop floating byhis shoulder.

“Father, I am Shinichiro, and I wantto be human again. I want my rights back.” It sounded desperate.“Your shielding worked, so I don’t know what Hsing has told you,and I don’t know how she found out something was going on withSeventh Heaven, but I promise you, I don’t mean anyone any harm. Ijust want to be human again, and I couldn’t think of any other wayto do it. It’s her fault I even thought of this one-I gotthe idea when I did a background check on her for you, when shefound out what Sayuri was doing. I found out where her father was,and that it was the same company you had looked at, and I realizedthat there were all those bodies going unused, zipped up inNightside City where no one would ever notice if they wererecycled. I wasn’t going to steal them; I would ask for volunteers,and trade eternal life for humanity. I wasn’t doing anythingterrible. I wasn’t going to hurt Guohan Hsing.”

“You hacked his medical exam.”

“It was a perfect chance to see just whatcondition the dreamers are in!”

“You faked my death.”

“I… no, I didn’t.” I had never heardan electronic intelligence hesitate like that before; it was themost human thing the Shinichiro upload had done in the entireconversation.

“A copy of you did,” the old man said.

Something here didn’t yet fit, I realized. IfShinichiro had been the power behind Corporate Initiatives, whichintended to buy Seventh Heaven, why had it used the back door toexplore the company files? Why not just wait until it had legalcontrol? It had just said that it knew the old man had looked atSeventh Heaven, so it did know the back door was there and that aYoshio-kun could get it in, but why bother? Why was it worthfaking Grandfather’s death?

Why bother hacking my father’s exam, insteadof just demanding medical data as a condition of the plannedpurchase?

And why had it been our attempt to talk toChantilly Rhee that forced the upload to hack in and talk to theold man?

The upload talked about wanting human rights.It hadn’t said a thing about wanting a body for its own sake. Ithadn’t mentioned wanting to feel human again. It hadn’t saidanything about food or sex or physical sensations of any kind, andthose were the things that the other uploads I’d talked to or heardabout associated with being human, the things they thought they hadlost. Shinichiro had been dead for twenty years; it might not evenremember those. Yes, it remembered the bedtime bunny, butdid it remember lust or pain or hunger? It hadn’t mentionedthem.

It had talked about the right to own stock,instead. But what did it want to own? Seventh Heaven was just ameans to an end, not the ultimate goal-buying Seventh Heaven inorder to be able to buy Seventh Heaven didn’t make any sense, sothere had to be more.

And it had apparently tried to murder the oldman first, before it started hacking into SeventhHeaven.

It didn’t want Seventh Heaven; it wantedNakada Enterprises. I was sure of it. When I first heard thatsomeone had tried to kill Grandfather Nakada, and that he suspectedhis own family, that was the obvious motive.

But an upload couldn’t inherit anything; itwasn’t human.

If Shinichiro had been behind the entirething, you might think he wouldn’t have wanted the old man deaduntil after he was human again, and able to inherit-but thatassumed that Yoshio would have named the new Shinichiro as hisheir, and I knew he wouldn’t have. The upload must have known it,too. There was no legal link between Grandfather Nakada and somedreamer’s corpse with a new personality imprinted on it; anyinheritance would need to be set up by Yoshio himself, and hewouldn’t have done it.

But someone else might have. Someone mighthave agreed to help take over Seventh Heaven, and help putShinichiro into a new body, and even share control of NakadaEnterprises, in exchange for disposing of Yoshio.

And that someone might have changed her mindwhen the first attempt failed. She might have lost her nerve, ordecided that Shinichiro wasn’t as competent as she had thought.

And then the Shinichiro upload would have hadto act on its own, trying to get control of Seventh Heaven, ormaybe just get enough data to convince its co-conspirator to comeback on screen.

If I was right about this, then copyingitself to Epimetheus, faking the old man’s death, and breaking intoSeventh Heaven had all been a back-up plan, something it didbecause the assassination failed and its partner backed out.

I had looked at Grandfather Nakada’s will, ofcourse. It was a complicated thing, befitting the patriarch of oneof the great corporate clans, but it had also been very traditionalin some regards, and one of those was that it left control ofNakada Enterprises, along with holdings worth billions of credits,to the old man’s surviving children.

Three of his five children were dead. Thesurvivors were Kumiko and Hideo, and Chantilly Rhee worked forKumiko.

She must have been in on it all initially,but dropped out and left Shinichiro on its own. Theneverything fit. The upload must have diverted Rhee out of fear thatshe would tell the old man of Kumiko’s involvement, and Kumikowould try to clear her own name by incriminating her uploadedbrother. By popping up with its own version of events the uploadwas forestalling that-or trying to.

It occurred to me that maybe Kumiko haddropped out not because of any doubts, but because she simplydidn’t have the money to buy Seventh Heaven without thatinheritance. A little check into Kumiko’s financial situation mightbe in order once we were out of this room and the old man was backin control of the household systems.

“It was a mistake, Father,” the upload said.“I am most heartily sorry for it.”

I thought the old man was going to askwhether hacking the dream enhancer was a mistake, too, but hedidn’t.

“We will need to issue a correction,” hesaid.

“Of course,” the upload agreed.

“You will need to release control of thehousehold systems.”

“In due time, Father, but I’m sure you’llunderstand if I wait until I’m certain we have reached agreementabout my future.”

The old man frowned. “I suppose that’sacceptable for now.”

The door behind me suddenly slid fully open,and the black floaters backed away. “I regret holding you this wayuntil we could talk,” the desktop said. “Now that we understand thesituation better, though, perhaps it’s time for Mis’ Hsing togo.”

I certainly understood the situation.The upload wanted me out of the way so it could kill Yoshio.

It hadn’t killed him while I was onEpimetheus because he was on guard, and besides, it didn’t want togive Kumiko everything she wanted without some assurance that shewould hold up her end of their bargain. It had been keeping itsoptions open. Now that it had been beeped, though, and the old manknew who was responsible, the risk of leaving him alive was toogreat.

Killing him while I was there, though, meantit would need to kill me, too, which was too suspicious. If itcould get me to leave, then it could go ahead and dispose of theold man, and take care of me later. I didn’t know whether it mighttry to bribe or blackmail me, or whether it would go straight toassassination, but I knew that it would want me out of the way, andmy life expectancy would plummet.

That was how I read the situation, anyway.Oh, it was pretending to believe that kindly old Grandfather Nakadawas willing to make peace, to forgive its little peccadillos, but Iwasn’t buying it. Shinichiro knew his father, surely, and knew whatthe old man was capable of, how hard he could be. It had beenwilling to kill him before, when he had been completelyunsuspecting, so why would it hesitate now? To the upload, afterall, it wasn’t really death-Yoshio was backed up on several coms.Losing his human body wasn’t the end, merely a temporaryinconvenience, and that body couldn’t last much longer anyway.

The old man, of course, saw it differently,and had no intention of dying any time soon. He was playing alongwith the upload, but I knew he didn’t believe it-he hadn’t askedabout the dream enhancer, or about a dozen other things that hewould have wanted explained if he really thought the upload wassincere.

I was pretty sure he knew it intended to killhim, too.

“Perhaps, Mis’ Hsing, I might haveUkiba fly you back to Alderstadt?” he said.

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “My stuff isaboard the ship; I can pack it up on the way.”

“I will accompany you to the ship, then,” theold man said, getting to his feet. “I have a few matters to discusswith Captain Perkins, in any case.”

“I can provide a link,” the desktop said.

“I think I prefer to speak to him in person,”Yoshio insisted.

“Honestly, Father, I won’t interfere with theconnection. I won’t even listen in.”

“Thank you, Shinichiro, but the exercise willdo me good.” He waved to me, and to the blue-and-silver floater.“This way.”

I knew the way; I don’t need a guide for aroute I’ve followed once. I didn’t say that, of course. I let theold man take the lead as we made our way back out to the landingfield.

Shinichiro let us go; a direct attack wouldbe too obvious, and he didn’t know what defenses we might have. Thefloaters made no move to stop us, or interfere at all as we walkedback out to the field together.

I barely knew what to expect when we emergedinto the open air and that ghastly sunlight, but everything wasmuch as I’d left it. The field was mostly deserted. The ship wasstill there, and the airlock’s outer door was open.

I didn’t think Shinichiro had compromised theship’s systems. I thought that if we could get aboard, we might getaway. I’d already made one illegal hot launch; another wouldn’tbother me.

I hadn’t dared call ahead, though; Shinichirowas almost certainly listening. The drive wouldn’t be run up. We’dneed a few minutes to get Ukiba spaceworthy.

There was also the issue of where we wouldland. The two copies of Shinichiro had probably infiltrated systemsall over Prometheus and Epimetheus, not just in Nightside City andAmerican City. That fake death report had been completelyconvincing. It hadn’t tripped any scam filters anywhere.That might mean Shinichiro had done a perfect job generating it andjust got lucky that no one wanted more details and was willing todig for them, or it might mean that it had subverted all thesystems that might have tried to verify the story. The latterseemed more likely.

So the two inhabited planets werecompromised, and Cass II wouldn’t work; we didn’t have theequipment to survive on the molten surface, and the pitiful littlecolony there wouldn’t have any room to spare for us, or anywhere wecould hide. Cass I wasn’t even as viable as Cass II-it was a tiny,airless ball of radioactive slag that barely qualified as a planet,too close to Eta Cass A to be any use to anyone. If we couldn’tfind a friendly port on Epimetheus or Prometheus, we’d need toleave the Eta Cassiopeia system entirely. Ukiba did have afull Wheeler drive, but I didn’t know whether it was ready forinterstellar flight.

I didn’t know whether I was ready forinterstellar flight, either; I’d never given it any seriousthought. I never had a reason to.

I didn’t know how long it would take to reachan inhabited system; I didn’t know Ukiba’s specs. Thepossibility of spending half a year with the old man and Perkinsand Singh, not to mention Yoshio-kun, was not appealing, butit might be the only way for Grandfather Nakada and me tosurvive.

Whether the old man could ever regain controlof Nakada Enterprises was another program entirely, and one Iwasn’t going to worry about yet. I had enough grit to dealwith.

At least Dad and ’Chan were off the ship.

I realized I didn’t know whether Singh andPerkins were still aboard or not. If Perkins had gone off duty,this might get complicated.

I smiled wryly at the thought. It alreadywas complicated; Perkins’ absence would just make it moreso. But the old man had said he was coming out here to talk toPerkins, so the roundeye was presumably still on the ship.

The old man’s blue-and-silver floater hadfollowed us, and an entire swarm of other floaters had collected aswell; I didn’t think any of those others were on our side.

We climbed the ramp with floaters all aroundus; in fact, a couple of small ones followed us right into theairlock. Apparently Shinichiro was not about to leave his fatherunattended.

We both saw them, but didn’t say anything.Any protest would either be ignored or make matters worse.

I hit the manual button to close the outerlock door-ordinarily I would have signaled the ship to do it, butright now I wasn’t trusting anything with a net link. I looked atmy client, hoping to improvise some sort of communication that thefloaters wouldn’t catch.

The old man wasn’t looking at me, though; hewas looking at a panel on the airlock wall. I hadn’t particularlynoticed this one before; the ship was full of panels and displays,and most of them weren’t any of my business.

It wasn’t my ship, though; it was Yoshio’s.He tapped something, and the three floaters that had accompanied usaboard the ship abruptly dropped out of the air to the metaldeck.

“It’ll notice,” I said. “We need to get offthe ground as fast as we can.”

“I’m not leaving,” the old man said. “This ismy home, and that feeble copy of my son is not going to takeit away from me.”

“I think it is,” I said. “It’s clearly hackedevery important system in the place. If we get out of here we cancome back later…”

“We are not leaving,” he said. “Is your copyof me aboard?”

I decided not to argue any further, at leastnot yet. I would be looking for a chance to get Perkins alone,though; if I pissed the old man off by kidnaping him he might ruinmy life, but if I stayed here that damned murderous upload wasalmost certainly going to kill me. “It’s here,” I said.

“Show me,” he said. “And then armyourself.”

When he said that I decided I was definitelygoing to get killed, but at least it would be interesting, and wemight do some damage first.

“This way,” I said.