He stared at me for a moment, then said, “Soyou think-you think that someone in my own family tried tokill me, just to get control of a copy of my most recentupload, as part of this scheme to use dreamers as a source of newbodies?”
“Yes, I do,” I said, “if you consider uploadsto still be family members. Remember, to an upload, that copy maybe you. She wouldn’t really be killing you at all, justswitching you to her own form of life, and even that might only betemporary.”
“An incarnationist? You think one of myuploaded relatives is an incarnationist?”
I hadn’t heard the term “incarnationist”before, but I understood right away what it meant, and what thetone of voice Nakada was using meant, as well. I had never seen theold man so flustered-in fact, until now I had never seen himflustered at all. Now, though, he seemed thoroughly scrambled. Heclearly found the idea that a member of his own family couldbelieve in the transferability of identity repulsive.
“There might be other motives as well,” Isaid.
“And there are two active copies ofme?”
“I don’t know whether theirs is stillactive,” I said. A thought struck me at the mention of the copies.“I’ll bet that… well, I didn’t find any record of any humansuspects visiting Epimetheus lately, but I’ll bet one of youruploads transmitted a copy there, and that’s who’s been running theSeventh Heaven negotiations.”
“You think there’s a duplicate of one ofthem, too?”
“And you can probably find out which bychecking transmission records.”
He blinked, and his jaw sagged slightly, andI remembered that he was still jacked in. I could guess where inthe nets he was going.
Then he was back, his face hardening.“Shinichiro,” he said. “My son Shinichiro.”
I knew the name from the family records; hiswas the most recent of the three deaths among the old man’schildren, and he had been dead for about twenty Terran years. Ididn’t know much beyond that, so I didn’t say anything.
“A copy was transmitted, just as yousaid.”
“Then I think he’s your assassin,” I said.“Or at least the ringleader.”
“But you have no proof.”
“I have no proof,” I agreed.
“Then you have not completed the job to mysatisfaction.”
“I’ve identified the assassin.”
“You’ve named a likely suspect. That’s notgood enough. To accuse my own son, I need more than this web ofsuppositions and guesswork.”
“It’s not your son,” I said. “It’s an uploadthat thinks it’s your son.”
The old man’s face froze at that, and thentook on a new expression.
I don’t ever want to see anyone look at melike that again. Usually the old man hid his emotions, kepteverything under strict control, but I’d cracked that reserveearlier, and right then it broke completely. Despair and rage werewritten in his eyes and on every feature.
Maybe it was an act. Maybe he was reallystill as cold and controlled as ever, and pasted that look theredeliberately.
I don’t think so, though. I think I hadtouched something he really cared about, said something he didn’twant to hear-and something that he knew was true.
“I talked to the copy of you aboardUkiba,” I said. “It knew what it was. It knew it wasn’t you.It knew an upload isn’t human, no matter what it’s copied from, andthat means you know it. You know that’s the truth.That upload isn’t your son. It’s an imitation, a softwareemulation.”
“It’s all I have left of him,” the old mansaid.
“But it’s not him,” I insisted. “It’ssoftware, not wetware.”
“It’s all that’s left,” he repeated, “and ifyou’re going to accuse him of trying to murder me, I need moreproof than you’ve given me so far.”
I wasn’t really surprised. He had told me hethought it was a member of the family, and he had seemed to acceptthe idea, but that was when it was theoretical and non-specific.Now that it was a particular individual, one who he apparentlyloved, it was different.
“I need access to your family networks,then,” I said. “And I’d like to interview Chantilly Rhee, andKumiko Nakada, and the upload you call Shinichiro, in thatorder.”
“I’ll arrange it.” His voice was coldagain.
Something about the way he said it beeped forme. “You know Shinichiro did it,” I said. “You just wantproof.”
“I believe that’s what I said, Mis’Hsing.”
He had obviously recovered from his moment ofshock.
“Fine. I’ll get you your proof. Maybe notenough for the law, but enough for you to be sure.”
“That is all I ask.”
“How soon can I see Mis’ Rhee?”
“I believe she should be at her desk; wouldyou prefer to speak to her in private?”
“I’d prefer to speak to her somewhere I knowthe Shinichiro upload isn’t listening.”
Even as I said it, though, I realized it wasprobably too late to keep it from learning what was going on. WhileI was sure the old man had a dozen layers of security on the officewe were in, Yoshio-sempai had checked on the medicals and onthe transmission logs, and there were probably a dozen other beepsas well-the upload might not know we had narrowed it down to asingle entity, but it must know we were getting close. It hadalready tried to kill the old man once, and just as I said, itwouldn’t even see it as murder-as far as Shinichiro was concernedhis father was safely backed up in a couple of places, and shuttingdown his original meatware was just a maintenance issue; he’d berebooted as soon as possible.
As for me, I wasn’t family, I wasn’timportant, I wasn’t anyone. Killing me was just debugging thesituation. If I was lucky it might try to buy me off instead, butif it really had access to a running copy of the Yoshio upload asimple question would tell it that wasn’t going to work.
At least, I certainly hoped the old man’sback-up would have that much respect for me; Grandfather Nakada hadcertainly claimed to when he hired me.
That brought up an interesting question,though-was Shinichiro’s copy of Yoshio-kuncooperating? Did it agree with what Shinichiro was trying to do?From what I knew of the old man’s character, I didn’t think itwould, but it might play along until it had control of itssituation.
It didn’t really matter, though; that copy ofYoshio-kun was back on Epimetheus, and I was here in theNakada compound in American City.
A lot of things were fitting together. Itmust have been a copy of Shinichiro that sent those black floatersafter me in the Trap; the copy here on Prometheus probably hadfloaters, too. It must have access to a lot of things. Ididn’t know how much control it might have over the household’senvironment-could it override the normal protocols? It had gottenat the old man’s dream enhancer, so it had obviously hacked atleast some of the systems beyond what it was supposed to be capableof using. There was no way to be sure anywhere in AmericanCity was entirely safe-or anywhere on the entire planet, really.This office might be secure, but if the old man had beenassuming a human saboteur he might have missed a way in. Ordinarilysoftware was written so that it couldn’t harm people and didn’twant to, but uploads-well, that was part of why they wereillegal most places. Uploads could do things artificials couldn’t,could go places humans couldn’t. They didn’t need to eat or sleep,and could be invisible and silent. Most of them didn’t go hackinginto secure systems, but if they wanted to, they’d be hard tostop.
If Grandfather Nakada got through this alive,he was going to need to run some serious purges.
For now, though, I was supposed to beinterviewing suspects, to demonstrate to the old man thatShinichiro was responsible for the attempted murder.