It wasn’t something I wanted to argue aboutwith Perkins, though, so I spoke as if I was absolutelycertain.
“So he’s still alive?”
“He was when we left, anyway. Now, what arethose floaters doing outside?”
“They’re reporters,” he said. “I’ve beentelling them I couldn’t talk to them, but they won’t go away.”
“Why are they there in the first place?”
He looked astonished, as if I had just saidsomething so spamming stupid he couldn’t believe it. “Mis’ Hsing,they think Mis’ Nakada is dead.”
“Yes, I got that.”
“This is his private yacht. It’s registeredin his name, and our flight path is on record. So far as they know,we took off in a dead man’s ship. They want to know why.”
I blinked.
“Oh,” I said, feeling slightly foolish. “Ofcourse they do.”
Chapter Nine
I should have thought of that. I should have thoughtof it the instant ’Chan told me that Grandfather Nakada had gone tojoin his ancestors. I hadn’t. The thought that the ship would benoticed had simply never occurred to me.
So now I was trying to conduct a sensitiveprivate investigation from a home base that was under the intensescrutiny of half a dozen newsfeeds, at least one of which hadundoubtedly recognized me by now. I had more or less shown theentire Eta Cassiopeia system that I was working for Yoshio Nakadaor his heirs.
Lovely. Running smooth, wasn’t I?
“Right,” I said. “You haven’t talked tothem?”
“No,” Perkins said. “I haven’t let the shiptalk to them, either. They’ve been asking me who sent us, and whoelse was aboard, and what we were doing here, and I just told themI was not at liberty to answer questions.”
“Good,” I said. “That’s good. You did theright thing. Keep doing it.”
“Your supper is over there,” he said,pointing across the lounge.
I’d forgotten that I had asked for it, butnow that I knew it was there I was hungry.
“I’m monitoring the situation,” he said,pointing at the wire below his ear. “You can eat, and I’ll keep aneye on things.”
“Thanks,” I said. I turned and went to fillmy belly-and to think.
As I ate the soba Perkins had prepared, anddrank lukewarm jasmine tea, I considered the situation.
I had intended to do my best to stay belowthe radar, to quietly poke around and see whether I could findanything that might relate to the case. Then I was going to grab mybrother and father, load them aboard the ship, and get the hell offEpimetheus before anyone even noticed I was there. I could figureout the next step when I was back on Prometheus.
That wasn’t going to happen. The radar had mepainted. If I set foot outside the ship again I’d probably have asquadron of newsies cruising behind me everywhere I went.
That meant a change of plans. I wasn’t surejust how drastic a change I would need; it depended largely onwhether I actually needed to set foot outside the ship again. Todetermine that I needed to see just what I had here.
I had access to most of Nightside City’snets, of course, but riding wire from here would be risky; thenewsies could trace it. I could pull up public information, butserious digging might be difficult.
I had everything I had sent to the ship frommy old office, including 93% of the old man’s ITEOD file. That wasthe obvious place to start; just what did he have in there?
I finished the bowl of noodles, washed itdown with more tea, then turned to look at Perkins. He was stillplugged in, and frowning. I waved to let him know I was stillthere, then found a plug of my own and jacked into the ship.
I could see and feel the defenses, bigbuzzing firewalls that kept out the newsies and any other snoops orintruders who might try to pry. I could see Perkins zipping around,checking systems, closing any holes he found.
And I could see the mass of data I haduploaded, sitting there like an unopened crate. I slid up to it andbegan doing a little inventory.
Right at the top were Nakada familyrecords-genealogy, accounts, comlogs, all the usual stuff. WhyGrandfather Nakada had thought he needed to stash a copy of this inNightside City I didn’t know-in case Prometheus blew up, maybe? Ormelted down, the way Cass II had?
All four of the rocky planets in the systemhad a lot of radioactives in their cores, but only Cass II hadreached critical mass and turned into molten slag; Eta Cass A I wastoo small, and the two planets farther out had been fairly stable.I didn’t see any reason for that to change, and if it did, Iexpected it would be Epimetheus that went. Epimetheus already hadsome strange stuff going on, with its off-center core and stalledrotation, while Prometheus was relatively ordinary, despite itsheat and its earthquakes. I didn’t think Prometheus was goinganywhere.
But Yoshio had copied all that data anyway.Maybe he hadn’t had anything specific in mind at all, and had justbeen playing it cautious; that would be typical of the old man.
The next layer down was corporate stuff,including confidential personnel files, presumably to help the oldman’s heirs keep things running when he was gone. That seemednormal enough.
But below that-remember I said there was roomin there for a dozen human minds? It looked very much as if that’swhat was there. I couldn’t be sure; the programs weren’t active,and I wasn’t about to start them up without giving it a littlethought. That was what it looked like, though-it looked as ifsomeone had copied a bunch of people into these files.
That would explain why Yoshio had kept thisin Nightside City; uploading human minds is illegal on Prometheus,and in most other places I know anything about. Not in NightsideCity, though; not much was illegal there.
But why was he uploading anyone? What did hewant with these?
Most people don’t understand uploading. Thereare all sorts of misconceptions about it. Some people think it’s aform of immortality. Some think it’s an abomination. I didn’tbelieve either of those, but I knew a few things.
I knew that an upload isn’t human. It maythink it is, but it’s not. Humans aren’t just data andprocess and flowing current. We aren’t software. No, I’m notgetting mystical and talking about the soul; I don’t know whetherwe really have souls, and I won’t until I go to meet myancestors-assuming I go anywhere at all when I die. No, I meanflesh and blood. Without our bodies, without hormones and glandsand a hundred different chemical mechanisms, we aren’t humananymore. The people who developed upload processing have tried tocompensate for the loss of all that chemical input with subroutinesand feedback systems, but they don’t really run the same way as aliving body. Uploads don’t eat, they don’t breathe, they don’thunger, they don’t sleep, they don’t lust. Some people think theycan’t love, but I wouldn’t go that far-that part does seemto transfer. But appetites don’t, and without those appetites theyaren’t human anymore.
They usually don’t believe that at first.They remember being human, they remember being hungry and horny andtired, and they think that’s enough, that they still understand.They’re wrong. You can tell. It’s subtle, and some people don’t seeit, but the difference is real right from the start, and the longerthey’re around the farther they drift away from what they used tobe.
Yes, I’ve known uploads. As I said, NightsideCity is one of the few places they’re legal. Even there, though,they aren’t common. Up until I started poking into Yoshio Nakada’sITEOD files I’d only ever met four, and three of them were uploadsof people who’d been dead since before I was born.
The fourth was a copy of a man who was stillalive, and that was an interesting case-he’d had the copy made eventhough he knew it wouldn’t be him, that he wasn’t makinghimself immortal, because he wanted a companion, and he thoughtthat if he became his own companion it would eliminate anycompatibility issues.
Wrong. Instead, he found out that he didn’tmuch like himself, and that it’s just as boring talking to yourexact copy as it is talking to yourself. There’s nothing tolearn from your own copy. You know all its secrets, all itsstories.