That staff included a varying number ofhumans, typically half a dozen, and at least three AIs, soaltogether I had more than thirty possibilities to work with. Thatwas too damn many.
I hadn’t really intended to seriouslyinvestigate this yet; I wasn’t even on the right planet. I had cometo Epimetheus to collect my brother and father as the down-paymenton my fee, not to start looking for the assassin. If ’Chan hadn’tmentioned that everyone here thought Grandfather Nakada was dead, Itold myself, I wouldn’t have been doing any of this. I wouldn’t betalking to a simulacrum of the old man. I wouldn’t have recordingsof almost a dozen other people I could interrogate, if I wantedto.
But then I remembered the newsies hoveringoutside the ship, and I realized that I would have beeninvestigating, in any case. ’Chan had been the first to mention it,but I would have found out about Yoshio’s phony death soonenough.
And if the would-be assassin was one of thosethirty-odd intelligences in the Nakada compound back on Prometheus,who had faked the death reports here in Nightside City? Had thatbeen the same person, taking command of reports going out fromPrometheus, or had it been someone on this end, controllingincoming news? I had thought it had to be someone on Epimetheus,since there hadn’t been any news about his death back onPrometheus, but that would mean I was dealing with two people,rather than one…
Or would it? Could the assassin have plantedthe virus in the dream enhancer, then immediately left forPrometheus, and been here in time to spread the word of the oldman’s death?
“Ukiba,” I said, “I want the trafficreports for the Nightside City port, dating back, oh, let’s sayfour hundred hours.”
The ship gave me the list. It didn’t help;with the tourist traffic coming to Nightside City to watch thesunlight scroll down the crater wall, there were half a dozen shipsmy theoretical target could have been on. There weren’t any NakadaEnterprises ships or private yachts to worry about other than theUkiba itself, but that didn’t mean anything.
I might be after one person, or an entireconspiracy, and if it was only one person, she might behuman or might be artificial. What’s more, she could be anywhere inthe Eta Cass system. There was no reason to think she was still inNightside City, assuming she had been here at all. She might wellhave gotten what she was after and left.
But there was reason to think that theassassination attempt had been carried out by one of theinhabitants of the Nakada family compound in American City. If oneof those people had visited Nightside City immediately after theincident, that would be… well, let’s just say it would arouse mycuriosity.
But I couldn’t just call and ask.Interplanetary communications couldn’t be trusted. If I wanted toinvestigate further I needed to go back to Prometheus.
I could do that, of course. I had the ship. Ihad most of the ITEOD files, for whatever part they might have inall this, and I had Yoshio-kun activated and cooperating. Ididn’t see anything else in Nightside City I really needed for myinvestigation.
But I didn’t have my brother or my father,and if I left them here to go back to Prometheus I might not haveanother chance to get them out.
Well, I would just have to get them,then. I knew where ’Chan was, and I could get him to the ship byforce if I had to.
Finding our father, though, wasn’t quite sosimple.
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything aboutSeventh Heaven Neurosurgery, would you?” I asked the old man’supload.
“The dreamery? I considered buying it once-orrather, the original Yoshio Nakada did.”
That was an interesting coincidence. Not atremendously unlikely one, given how many businesses the Nakadaclan scanned, but interesting. “But you-he didn’t?” I asked.
“The company’s long-term prospects werepoor,” the upload replied.
“Why?”
“Oh, come, Mis’ Hsing. Its entire operationis in Nightside City.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Somethingoccurred to me, though. “Grandfather Nakada is two hundred andforty years old. Why would you care about the longterm?”
“I may be old, Mis’ Hsing, but I am in nohurry to die. Modern medicine can accomplish miracles, and is stillimproving; I may… or rather, Yoshio Nakada may yet surviveanother century or two. I, of course, may be around evenlonger.”
“Yes, but…”
It hadn’t finished. “More importantly,” itcontinued, before I could make my protest, “I care about myfamily.”
That answered my question, so I clicked backto the important subject. “So you didn’t buy it.”
“I did not, either in my human incarnation ormy present one, though of course I don’t know everything that’shappened since I was recorded.”
“So you don’t have access to itsrecords.”
It did not respond immediately; then it said,“I didn’t say that.”
That got my full attention. “Oh?”
“Naturally, when I was considering it as aprospective acquisition, I thought it advisable to learn as much aspossible about the company.”
“You aren’t just talking about the publicrecords, are you?”
“Oh, it was possible to learn far morethan was in the public records!”
“You got into their private systems?”
“I was able to explore their records, yes. Orrather, Yoshio Nakada explored them; I didn’t yet exist. I find itintriguing to think that now, were I to access those records, Iwould be ‘getting into them’ in a rather more literal way than inmy previous incarnation.”
“Could you do it again?”
“I don’t yet know, Mis’ Hsing. I paid anemployee of Seventh Heaven Neurosurgery to provide a back door intotheir systems, and I have no way of knowing whether that back doorstill exists.”
“Tell me about it.”
It told me.
“Mis’ Perkins,” I called, whenYoshio-kun was done, “can we use the nets from the shipunobserved?”
“No,” Perkins said. No hesitation, nouncertainty, just “No.”
That was inconvenient. I didn’t want a bunchof snoopers watching me break into Seventh Heaven’s files. If I didit from the ship, they’d monitor the whole thing. If I left theship, they’d follow me. If anyone left the ship, the newsieswould follow her.
Unless, of course, they couldn’tfollow. I needed a place the floaters couldn’t go, and to anyonewho knew Nightside City there was an obvious possibility. Outsidefloaters weren’t allowed in the casinos without prior clearance;there were too many ways to use them to cheat. I could lose thenewsies, at least temporarily, though they would pick me up againwhen I left the casino. I could probably lose any human reporterswho might try to follow me, too.
But I needed a casino where I wouldn’t bewatched by the management. That meant the IRC houses were out. Itmeant most of the casinos were out. But there was one thatmight cooperate.
“All right,” I said, “is there some way wecan make a private call to Vijay Vo at the New York, andkeep it private?”
“Oh, of course. Mis’ Nakada has a dedicatedencrypted link.”
Of course.
“Set it up. He knows you?”
“Yes, Mis’.”
He knew me, too, at least slightly. We hadmet when I was investigating Sayuri Nakada’s real estate scheme. Ididn’t know whether he liked me-he hadn’t given me any sign eitherway-but he knew who I was, and he had connected me with GrandfatherNakada.
I told the upload to be quiet. We didn’t needanyone else knowing it existed. Then I crossed to the main comconsole and activated a privacy field, surrounding me and theconsole with a soft blue fog.
I knew Perkins could listen in if he wantedto, field or no field; the upload probably could, too. The fieldwas just skin, just for looks.