It had talked about the right to own stock,instead. But what did it want to own? Seventh Heaven was just ameans to an end, not the ultimate goal-buying Seventh Heaven inorder to be able to buy Seventh Heaven didn’t make any sense, sothere had to be more.
And it had apparently tried to murder the oldman first, before it started hacking into SeventhHeaven.
It didn’t want Seventh Heaven; it wantedNakada Enterprises. I was sure of it. When I first heard thatsomeone had tried to kill Grandfather Nakada, and that he suspectedhis own family, that was the obvious motive.
But an upload couldn’t inherit anything; itwasn’t human.
If Shinichiro had been behind the entirething, you might think he wouldn’t have wanted the old man deaduntil after he was human again, and able to inherit-but thatassumed that Yoshio would have named the new Shinichiro as hisheir, and I knew he wouldn’t have. The upload must have known it,too. There was no legal link between Grandfather Nakada and somedreamer’s corpse with a new personality imprinted on it; anyinheritance would need to be set up by Yoshio himself, and hewouldn’t have done it.
But someone else might have. Someone mighthave agreed to help take over Seventh Heaven, and help putShinichiro into a new body, and even share control of NakadaEnterprises, in exchange for disposing of Yoshio.
And that someone might have changed her mindwhen the first attempt failed. She might have lost her nerve, ordecided that Shinichiro wasn’t as competent as she had thought.
And then the Shinichiro upload would have hadto act on its own, trying to get control of Seventh Heaven, ormaybe just get enough data to convince its co-conspirator to comeback on screen.
If I was right about this, then copyingitself to Epimetheus, faking the old man’s death, and breaking intoSeventh Heaven had all been a back-up plan, something it didbecause the assassination failed and its partner backed out.
I had looked at Grandfather Nakada’s will, ofcourse. It was a complicated thing, befitting the patriarch of oneof the great corporate clans, but it had also been very traditionalin some regards, and one of those was that it left control ofNakada Enterprises, along with holdings worth billions of credits,to the old man’s surviving children.
Three of his five children were dead. Thesurvivors were Kumiko and Hideo, and Chantilly Rhee worked forKumiko.
She must have been in on it all initially,but dropped out and left Shinichiro on its own. Theneverything fit. The upload must have diverted Rhee out of fear thatshe would tell the old man of Kumiko’s involvement, and Kumikowould try to clear her own name by incriminating her uploadedbrother. By popping up with its own version of events the uploadwas forestalling that-or trying to.
It occurred to me that maybe Kumiko haddropped out not because of any doubts, but because she simplydidn’t have the money to buy Seventh Heaven without thatinheritance. A little check into Kumiko’s financial situation mightbe in order once we were out of this room and the old man was backin control of the household systems.
“It was a mistake, Father,” the upload said.“I am most heartily sorry for it.”
I thought the old man was going to askwhether hacking the dream enhancer was a mistake, too, but hedidn’t.
“We will need to issue a correction,” hesaid.
“Of course,” the upload agreed.
“You will need to release control of thehousehold systems.”
“In due time, Father, but I’m sure you’llunderstand if I wait until I’m certain we have reached agreementabout my future.”
The old man frowned. “I suppose that’sacceptable for now.”
The door behind me suddenly slid fully open,and the black floaters backed away. “I regret holding you this wayuntil we could talk,” the desktop said. “Now that we understand thesituation better, though, perhaps it’s time for Mis’ Hsing togo.”
I certainly understood the situation.The upload wanted me out of the way so it could kill Yoshio.
It hadn’t killed him while I was onEpimetheus because he was on guard, and besides, it didn’t want togive Kumiko everything she wanted without some assurance that shewould hold up her end of their bargain. It had been keeping itsoptions open. Now that it had been beeped, though, and the old manknew who was responsible, the risk of leaving him alive was toogreat.
Killing him while I was there, though, meantit would need to kill me, too, which was too suspicious. If itcould get me to leave, then it could go ahead and dispose of theold man, and take care of me later. I didn’t know whether it mighttry to bribe or blackmail me, or whether it would go straight toassassination, but I knew that it would want me out of the way, andmy life expectancy would plummet.
That was how I read the situation, anyway.Oh, it was pretending to believe that kindly old Grandfather Nakadawas willing to make peace, to forgive its little peccadillos, but Iwasn’t buying it. Shinichiro knew his father, surely, and knew whatthe old man was capable of, how hard he could be. It had beenwilling to kill him before, when he had been completelyunsuspecting, so why would it hesitate now? To the upload, afterall, it wasn’t really death-Yoshio was backed up on several coms.Losing his human body wasn’t the end, merely a temporaryinconvenience, and that body couldn’t last much longer anyway.
The old man, of course, saw it differently,and had no intention of dying any time soon. He was playing alongwith the upload, but I knew he didn’t believe it-he hadn’t askedabout the dream enhancer, or about a dozen other things that hewould have wanted explained if he really thought the upload wassincere.
I was pretty sure he knew it intended to killhim, too.
“Perhaps, Mis’ Hsing, I might haveUkiba fly you back to Alderstadt?” he said.
“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “My stuff isaboard the ship; I can pack it up on the way.”
“I will accompany you to the ship, then,” theold man said, getting to his feet. “I have a few matters to discusswith Captain Perkins, in any case.”
“I can provide a link,” the desktop said.
“I think I prefer to speak to him in person,”Yoshio insisted.
“Honestly, Father, I won’t interfere with theconnection. I won’t even listen in.”
“Thank you, Shinichiro, but the exercise willdo me good.” He waved to me, and to the blue-and-silver floater.“This way.”
I knew the way; I don’t need a guide for aroute I’ve followed once. I didn’t say that, of course. I let theold man take the lead as we made our way back out to the landingfield.
Shinichiro let us go; a direct attack wouldbe too obvious, and he didn’t know what defenses we might have. Thefloaters made no move to stop us, or interfere at all as we walkedback out to the field together.
I barely knew what to expect when we emergedinto the open air and that ghastly sunlight, but everything wasmuch as I’d left it. The field was mostly deserted. The ship wasstill there, and the airlock’s outer door was open.
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.