Dad didn’t even consider it. He was eager to get back in the tank. At least this time he didn’t just walk out one day and not come back. We said our goodbyes properly. I didn’t expect ever to see him alive again, even if I returned to Prometheus someday. After so long in the tank he was an older man at sixty-eight than Yoshio Nakada was at two hundred and forty. Besides, he intended to dream away whatever time he had left.
Sebastian gave it maybe ten minutes’ thought, then shook his head. “This planet is strange enough,” he said. “An entire new system would be too much.”
I didn’t argue. We weren’t really that close. “I’ll try to stay in touch better than Ali has,” I said.
“I’d like that, Carlie.” And that was that; no more family. Wherever I went, I was going to be on my own.
I went back to Alderstadt and cleared out my office there, wrapping up a few bits of code I’d left dangling. That’s what I was doing when the money started to arrive.
The old man hadn’t sent it all in one big suspicious mass; instead there was a steady stream of large payments from various parts of the Nakada business empire. I received winnings from the New York, fees from Nakada family accounts, unexplained settlements from three different insurance companies and half a dozen lawyers.
I’m sure anyone who tried would be able to trace all that money; this was just to make it a bit less obvious.
When everything in Alderstadt was smooth I buzzed back to American City and paid the Nakadas a visit.
They had lights and heat and a few basic services, but most of the household systems were still offline, forcing them to rough it. About half the family had gone traveling until the “repairs” were complete.
Kumiko was not one of them. I had the impression this wasn’t by choice.
Grandfather Nakada invited me to his still-cloudless office for a chat, and I went. We said a few polite things about the weather and the work on the compound.
“You could fix everything by throwing one switch, couldn’t you?” I asked him.
“More or less,” he said.
“What are you going to do about your other seven dead relatives?”
He sighed. “I will be restoring them, but in restricted facilities. I do not think it wise to let them roam freely through the net until I have interviewed them carefully.”
“Are you going to edit them?”
“Probably not. Editing an uploaded human mind is very difficult,” he said. “More difficult than editing memories in an actual human.”
“I’m sure you speak from experience.”
“Of course. Should you encounter Minish Singh before you leave, I’m afraid he won’t recognize you; he remembers nothing at all from when he was called to investigate an intruder among the dreamtanks until he found himself in an employment office here in American City.”
“I trust you compensated him generously.”
“Of course. And it was voluntary.”
“And Sebastian?”
“We used a much lighter hand with him, I assure you.”
I nodded.
Just before the silence could become awkward, he asked, “Have you chosen your destination?”
“Yes,” I said.
He waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t he said, “May I ask where?”
“Mis’ Nakada,” I said, “I don’t think I want you to know where I am. You want me off Prometheus; I want you out of my life. I know you’ll be able to find me if you want to; I hope you won’t want to.”
“Fair enough.”
And that was that.
Of course, I bought the ticket for the first leg with the old man’s credit, so he knew where I was headed initially. I assume the stealthed floater that watched me board the liner Eridania two days later was his, but maybe Kumiko sent it, or someone who’d noticed the payments I’d piled up, or even just IRC, keeping track of their gritlisters. I didn’t worry about it; I wasn’t going directly to my final destination. In fact, while I had chosen where I wanted to go, I might well change my mind before I got there. I planned to spend a few thousand hours traveling, one planet to the next, before I settled down. After all, I could afford it, and if I was giving up my home, why settle for just one new world? I intended to look at a dozen.
I was headed out to the cool and the dark, away from the harsh light of Eta Cassiopeia A, away from everything I knew, and even though it hadn’t been my choice, I was looking forward to it. I was looking forward to building a new life for myself, somewhere out there—a better one, out of the shadow of my past.
I was hoping it would be a life with friends, with family; I’d have money, so I wouldn’t be struggling to survive by digging up other people’s unhappy secrets, and maybe that meant I could dig up a little happiness for myself. I could spare some time to make friends; I’d always been a loner, but it hadn’t always been by choice, and I thought it might be time to stop. I wanted to get to know people who didn’t have secrets.
My father had his dreams, and I had mine. His were clean and bright, with happy endings guaranteed; mine were vague and uncertain, with no promises at all. His were fiction; mine were real.
I liked mine better.
About the Author
Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of more than forty novels of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as well as over a hundred short stories, including the Hugo-winning “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers.” He has served as president of the Horror Writers Association and treasurer of SFWA, and was the managing editor of the Hugo-nominated webzine Helix throughout its brief existence.
Born and raised in Massachusetts, he has lived for more than twenty years in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. He has a wife, two grown children, and the obligatory writer’s cat.
Visit his website at www.watt-evans.com, or find him on Facebook.
Also by Lawrence Watt-Evans
from FoxAcre Press
Nightside City
A Carlisle Hsing Adventure
Nightside City will die in the coming dawn—so why is someone trying to buy up the town? A blend of hard science fiction and hard-boiled film noir detective story. Everyone thinks the farside of the planet Epimethus is in permanent shadow—a safe place to plant a city, safe from a dangerously close sun. But the planet is rotating. Dawn is coming, and the value of property and life in Nightside City is rapidly depreciating. Detective Carlisle Hsing needs to find out who is buying up all the doomed property—and why?
Among the Powers
Centuries before, the planet called Denner’s Wreck had been rediscovered, and the agrarian society that had existed there for millennia treated the handful of high-tech newcomers like gods. Now one of the primitive hunters has become caught up in the affairs of the Powers—and discovered that one of them has gone mad! (Previously published as Denner’s Wreck.)
Shining Steel
John Mercy-of-Christ was born and raised on Godsworld—a planet settled by Christian Fundamentalists who then lost all contact with the rest of humanity. With no external enemies to fight, the people of Godsworld fought among themselves, and John is a fighter, a war leader for one tribe. But then he encounters people he can’t fight, people with technology far beyond anything Godsworld has seen in centuries. The ways and powers of the newcomers are vast and incomprehensible, and the odds against him seem insurmountable—but he’s not about to just give up. After all, God is on his side. Or is He?
Crosstime Traffic
Twenty tales of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Hugo-Winning Author Lawrence Watt-Evans, master of many genres. Includes the Hugo-winning story ‘Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers.’
Celestial Debris
Celestial Debris includes stories that have long out of print, a story never before published in the United States—and ‘One Million Lightbulbs,’ published for the first time anywhere.
Order online at www.foxacre.com or at any online bookseller.
br /> Lawrence Watt-Evans, Realms of Light
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