Lawrence Watt-Evans: Realms of Light

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 already was 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 is my 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.

I missed most of the conversation betweenYoshio- sempai and Yoshio- kun , but I probably couldn’thave followed it anyway. They understood each other in a way no oneelse ever could. They didn’t need explanations, they didn’t evenneed sentences-a single word or gesture would carry all theassociations they needed. By the time I got back with the HG-2powered up in my hand, Yoshio- kun was talking to theShinichiro upload over the ship’s regular com channel, negotiatingterms for a surrender.

I knew that surrender wasn’t going to happen,though, not the way they were discussing. It was a decoy.Shinichiro didn’t know we had a copy of the old man running; hethought he was talking to Yoshio- sempai , and as long as theywere talking, the upload wouldn’t expect to find the old mananywhere else.

“Clever,” I said, as Yoshio- kun arguedwith Shinichiro about which members of the family would be allowedto remain in the compound. “But it’s going to figure it outeventually. We need to get out of here, get you somewhere safe. Itknows you shut down those floaters, it knows you’re up tosomething…”

The old man raised a finger. “It is notcertain of the floaters. The ship’s firewall recorded their lastsecond or so of output and looped it, so my false son is stillreceiving transmissions, even if those transmissions don’t makesense. It can’t be sure of what happened; it is receiving errormessages, not silence.”

“That’s clever, too,” I acknowledged. “But itstill controls everything outside the ship; are you planning tolive in here indefinitely?”

“No,” he said. “I am going to take back myhome.”

“How?”

“Mis’ Hsing,” he said, “do you think Isurvived this long without learning to take precautions?”

“I know that whatever precautions you took,that piece of gritware seems to have gotten past them and hackedthe whole place.”

“Shinichiro has indeed compromised the familynets. That can be dealt with.”

“How? You can’t shut off access the way youwould for an outside attack; it lives in the net! And it’snot stupid-it must be distributed all through the place, withback-ups everywhere, you can’t just cut its server out of thesystem.”

“Nonetheless, I can deal with it.”

“How?”

“You will see. I dare not be too specific,lest Shinichiro might somehow overhear. Now, can you spare me someclothing? I prefer to be less recognizable.”

I still had no idea what he was up to, but itwas obvious I wasn’t going to talk him out of it. I decided to goalong for the moment.

My spare worksuit was small even forGrandfather Nakada, and he asked whether perhaps Minish Singh mighthave something he could wear. I explained that none of mypassengers had had an opportunity to pack anything, that all threehad come aboard with nothing but what they were wearing-which wasnothing, in my father’s case.

“Then this will have to do,” he said,starting to pull on the garment.

I left the cabin, ostensibly to give him someprivacy, but then headed to the control deck to talk to Perkins,and convince him to get us the hell out of there.