Seven of them were over a period of a coupleof weeks eleven years ago, when old Yoshio had checked the companyout. One of the nine was still open, with an entry time but noexit-that was me.
But the other one was dated just the daybefore, and had lasted over an hour.
I checked it again, to be sure. Sevenentries, then an eleven-year gap, and then two more, about sixteenhours apart. Someone else had been in here.
But who? Why?
What on Epimetheus did anyone want with adream company’s records?
Maybe I wasn’t as done in Nightside City asI’d thought.
Chapter Eleven
I finished logging out and shutting down, and then Isat for a moment, staring at a desktop image of rolling ocean.
This wasn’t a coincidence. Oh, technically, Isuppose coincidence was a possible explanation, but it wasn’t oneI’d run. Even the stupidest gambler in the Trap wouldn’t play thoseodds. There had to be a connection between my visit to the SeventhHeaven system, and that hour-long probe a day earlier.
And the connection was pretty obvious. I gotmy access to the back door from a recording of Yoshio Nakada that Igot from the old man’s ITEOD file, and I wasn’t the only one tolook at that file. One of the others must have booted up a copy,just as I had, and found out about the back door from it.
That gave me three suspects: officer of thecourt Hu Xiao, an intelligence named Dipsy 3, and the anonymoususer who had used a Nakada Enterprises corporate account. I knewwhich one I’d bet on, given a choice-the one who’d had a connectionwith Grandfather Nakada all along.
But that left another question-what was theconnection with Seventh Heaven? Why would my mystery person (or HuXiao or Dipsy 3) want access to a dream company’s records? I knewwhy I wanted it, but somehow I doubted that some member ofthe Nakada clan was searching for a particular wirehead in thestorage tanks of Trap Under. Why would anybody be looking atdreamer files?
Whoever it was presumably wanted somethingSeventh Heaven had. I wanted my father; what did this other personwant?
What did Seventh Heaven have?
More specifically, what did they have thatother companies didn’t? If the intruder had been going throughmultiple companies looking for credit or information, I didn’tthink she would have gotten to Seventh Heaven this quickly; a dreamcompany wouldn’t rank very high on my list of targets forthe usual sort of exploitation.
So what would a dream company have that othercompanies wouldn’t?
Dreams, of course-millions of hours ofinteractive imagery ready to be fed into a client’s brain withoutbeing filtered through actual eyes and ears. Imaginary kingdoms oflight and color, lands of bliss, bedrooms where no matter howenergetic or inventive you got, you never had to worry abouttugging on hair or twisting an ankle. Thrilling adventures, willingharems, transcendent scenery.
But you could get that kind of thinganywhere. Hell, a lot of it was public domain, and you coulddownload it free from the city’s public service. Sure, some of thebest stuff was the dream companies’ proprietary material, but wasit really worth this much trouble?
What else did Seventh Heaven have?
Row upon row of dreamtanks-enclosedlife-support systems that could keep an unconscious human beingalive and reasonably healthy indefinitely without any externalsupervision, while a hardwired link fed pretty pictures into hisbrain. Was there some use for dreamtanks that I wasn’t seeing,something that made them valuable?
You could hide things in them, I supposed,but so what? They didn’t go anywhere, so that wouldn’t help muchwith smuggling, and really, what would you need to hide inNightside City that would be worth the trouble of finding an emptydreamtank to stash it in? There were dozens of abandoned buildingsin the West End where you could hide things; why bother with adreamtank?
I thought of an answer to that one. If whatyou were trying to hide was an unconscious human being, then adreamtank would be perfect. I didn’t know exactly why you wouldwant to hide someone, but there could probably be some interestingreasons.
I wondered whether it might be worth checkingthe city’s missing persons database against the DNA of the peoplein Seventh Heaven’s tanks. Seventh Heaven might have kidnap victimsstashed away somewhere without realizing it.
And that was the other thing Seventh Heavenhad, of course-people. Hundreds, or thousands, or maybe even tensof thousands of them, tucked quietly away in Trap Under, dreamingtheir lives away undisturbed. Nobody ever visited dreamers, nobodychecked on them; anyone might be in those tanks, and no one wouldever know. Was there someone in there that somebody wanted?
Well, there was my father, and I wanted toget him out of Nightside City, but was there anyoneelse?
It didn’t seem very likely. People who hadsomething to do in the real world didn’t buy the dream anddisappear into the tanks. That took a loser like my father, andnobody but me had ever gone looking for him, not even mybrother or sister. His wife, my mother, had left him there to rotwhile she took off for Achernar or somewhere.
Of course, she had also left her three kids.Not exactly a perfect avatar of maternal concern, nor anadvertisement for ancestor worship. Maybe there were otherfamilies, families less buggy than ours, where someone had bought apermanent dream but his family still cared what happened tohim.
But in a family like that, would the parentshave done the dump? If I were still legally family, I could havegotten Dad’s location legitimately, without using the old man’sback door into the company.
No, I couldn’t see any reason anyone elsewould be looking for a specific dreamer the way I was-and ifsomeone was looking for a dreamer, why would she have neededan hour looking through the back door? I was done in tenminutes.
So it wasn’t someone trying to find an oldfriend, or a member of the family.
But what else did Seventh Heaven have? Theyhad dreams, and tanks, and dreamers, and that was about it. Thedreams weren’t worth stealing, I didn’t see what anyone would wantwith the tanks-what did someone want with dreamers if hewasn’t looking for a particular person? A couple of hundredyears ago they might have been worth something as medical suppliesand spare parts, but now? Doctors have better sources. Syntheticorgans are better than anything you can get used.
Could there be some particular dream inSeventh Heaven’s inventory that was somehow special? Was there someother use for a dreamtank besides stashing people no one caredabout?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t think I wouldfind out here in the New York’s office suite. I stood up.
“I hope you have enjoyed your stay, Mis’Hsing,” the room said, as the image of waves faded away and thedoor slid open.
“So do I,” I said.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the roomsaid, but I didn’t bother to explain.
“Tell Mis’ Vo thank you,” I said, as I headedout into the corridor.
The floater that took my gun was waiting forme by the door, tray extruded. I picked up the HG-2 and stepped outonto the roof.
“The car will take you back to your ship,”the floater said from over my shoulder.
I hesitated. Did I want to go back to theship, where the newsies were probably still snooping around? Iwould be more or less trapped there, but I would also be able tochat with Yoshio-kun. It might be able to tell me somethinguseful about Seventh Heaven, or about who might be poking around intheir system.
I definitely wanted to go back to the shipeventually, and when I did I would want to talk to the upload, butI had come here to fetch my father and ’Chan.
“Thanks,” I said, “but I just need a liftdown to street level. I have business in the Trap.” I turned backto the door. “In fact, an elevator would be fine, I don’t need thecar.”