Natch could see the light of the sun receding. He could feel the tug of the nothingness below, which was his final destination. His struggles and his worries seemed so petty once the Null Current had pulled him in. Down here, desire was irrelevant, because the undifferentiated mass of nothingness that was his destination allowed no changes, accepted no arguments, admitted no standards by which to measure and compare. In the deeps, there was nothing to want because there was nothing to gain, nothing to fix because there was nothing to break.
He stopped struggling as the darkness closed in, as the surface became a distant memory, as he was sucked down by the vortex that had no end, the vortex that spiraled down infinitely until it was no longer a vortex, until he and it and everything else melted together and merged into one endless eternal line, a vector pointing nowhere, a vector whose beginnings were irrelevant and improbable, and whose end was forever unreachable.
The apartment building was not much to look at by West London standards, but for Shenandoah, it had style in abundance. One might have said the building jutted out from the side of a hill, if not for its sine-wave shape that architects often used to camouflage the constant structural flux. A more appropriate description would have been that the building rippled or undulated from the hillside. Not the kind of thing you found crammed amidst the pointed abbeys at Bishopsgate.
Horvil had been inside the building a thousand times, of course, at all hours of the day and night. But he usually skipped the exterior view and multied straight to the network gateway in Natch's foyer. Funny how you could spend so much time embedded in a place that you didn't really know what it looked like from the outside.
From the ground, the engineer looked up the side of the tenement and saw several balconies like the one where he, Natch and Jara had stood and tested NiteFocus 48. It seemed like a million years ago, during a vanished era of innocence. Now all the building's balconies were occupied by strangers.
Horvil walked inside the front doors, nosed around the atrium for a few minutes, then ascended the lift to Natch's flat. He hesitated at the fiefcorp master's door for a few seconds. If Natch wasn't here, the apartment security program would probably let a trusted presence like Horvil invoke emergency protocols and enter. But that would trigger warning messages to Natch and possibly the building management as well. He didn't mind Natch receiving such a message-the entrepreneur might actually respond and put an end to this madness-but how much could you really trust a landlord these days? A series of gloating drudge headlines flashed in Horvil's brain: BREAK-IN LEADS TO MASSIVE MANHUNT FOR MISSING FIEFCORP MASTER.... NATCH LEAVES APPRENTICES HIGH AND DRY.... MISSING ENTREPRENEUR `A WORTHLESS HUMAN BEING,' SAYS LANDLORD.
Horvil entered, stood in the foyer and counted to twenty. Nothing happened.
It took Horvil only a few minutes to determine there was no bloody corpse stinking up the premises. No scattered debris on the counters, no slack body standing on the red tile, no sign of a struggle. But he could see no evidence the place had been inhabited the past few days either. Not that Natch's messes could compare to the colossal disasters Horvil usually left for his cleaning bots, but a few half-drunk cups of chaff or nitro could usually be found on his table at any given time. Today, however, nothing.
Horvil knew the real test was not in the common areas, but in the office. That was where Natch spent most of his time anyway. The engineer poked his nose into the room and made a major discovery: Natch's bio/logic programming bars were gone. Of course, they could be lying in one of the drawers under the workbench, drawers that a multi projection could not physically open. But in all the years Horvil had known him, Natch had never set his programming bars anywhere but the top of the bench or on a side table within easy reach.
Wherever Natch went, he took his biollogic programming tools with him, thought Horvil. So what does that mean?
The fiefcorp apprentice wandered to the window and tuned it transparent. Natch would have headed northeast past the billboard (BANDWIDTH CONSERVATION IS PEOPLE PRESERVATION: A message from Creed Conscientious), towards the main city, towards the TubeCo station.
Towards the small cluster of officers in white robes now pointing in Horvil's direction.
Horvil instantly flipped on the window's sunblock and ducked out of the officers' line of sight. Don't be so paranoid, Horv, the engineer scolded himself. Just Council officers doing a routine patrol. They weren't pointing at you.
But was it really so implausible to think Len Borda's goons might be scoping out Natch's apartment? Especially now, when he was mere hours away from demonstrating MultiReal to an audience of billions?
Horvil scurried out of the apartment and down the lift, whether to hide from the officers or to follow them, he could not say. He stood in the atrium and looked out the window, still vacillating between courses of action, when his eye caught a glint of metal on the ground reflected from the just-risen moon, past the billboard in the gutter on the side of the road. Horvil launched NiteFocus 50c and fine-tuned his vision with Bolliwar Tuban's TeleScopics 88 to make sure. Yep, definitely a bio/logic programming bar.
Eventually, the coven of Council troops moved westwards toward the hoverbird facilities. The engineer thrust his head outside the front door and scanned the horizon, left to right and back again. None of the officers carried bulky, shoulder-mounted disruptors, but who knew which of the surrounding buildings contained one the Council could summon at a moment's notice? When the coast was clear, he darted northwest as fast as his feet could carry him.
Horvil kneeled to the ground and examined the object closely, wishing his multi projection could solidify long enough for him to pick it up. A thin rod of burnished metal, nondescript but for the Roman letter S embossed near one end and a small dent in one corner. The kind of dent a tightly wound programmer might make by repeatedly whacking the bar against a hard workbench.
If this was indeed Natch's bio/logic programming bar, then what were the odds of Horvil finding it here? The fact that the municipal LPRACG had not swept it up by now was a pretty astronomical coincidence in itself.
And if it was Natch's-how did it get here? And what did its presence mean?
Jara had the same questions.
"I'm not saying it means nothing," said the analyst, looking drawn and haggard from lack of sleep. "I'm not saying the bar doesn't belong to Natch. But there have to be hundreds of people who walk by that spot every day carrying programming tools. Anybody could have dropped that bar."
"But the dent," protested Horvil. "The fact that the bars weren't in his apartment ..."
"Circumstantial evidence. And besides, what if you're right? What if that was Natch's stuff lying on the street? It's useless information. Unless Natch left a trail of metal bars leading across town like breadcrumbs, it won't help us."
Benyamin rocked back and forth in his seat impatiently. "The least we can do is send someone to go get it."
"No," said Jara. "Multi projecting to Shenandoah is one thing, but sending someone there in the flesh is another. What if someone's trying to use that bar to lure us away from the Surina compound? We came here to Andra Pradesh to keep safe. We need to stay here."
The young apprentice muttered something under his breath and arose from his chair with a look of defiance. "I'll go," he said.
"No, you won't," snapped Jara. "You need to ride herd on those assembly-line programmers and make sure we've got a product ready to show this afternoon. Now sit down." Blood rushed to Benyamin's face. He looked to Horvil, Merri and Quell for support, but found only awkward silence. Horvil gave an almost imperceptible gesture downwards towards the chair, and his cousin crumbled to his seat.
"I think we need to try contacting Serr Vigal again," said Quell.
Jara shook her head. "What's the matter with you people? We've been through this, Quell. We keep going round in circles, the same arguments over and over again for hours." The analyst scoped out the conference table for a suitable object to use as a projectile, found none, and pr
essed her fingertips to the mahogany all the harder. "Even if Vigal was returning my messages, we can't have him deliver the speech. He's just not a good enough huckster. Have you ever sat through one of his neural programming speeches? They're excruciatingly boring."
"I'm afraid to say it, but I agree with Jara," offered Merri.
"But Vigal's got a reputation in the programming community," said Quell. "He's got a following. He knows what he's talking about."
"And after the tenth time he stops mid-sentence to scratch his bald head, people are going to wonder where Natch is. They're going to think something has gone terribly wrong in the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp, and consumer confidence in us is going to plummet before we can even get a product to market. Blowing your first major company presentation is worse than not doing one at all."
"So why don't we cancel already?" mumbled Horvil, his head bowed to the table under the confining archway of his clasped hands, as if waiting for a guillotine to drop.
"Because we have an alternative," said Jara.
The Islander let out a brutish noise halfway between a grunt and a laugh. "Now you're the one who's going around in circles. How many times do I have to say this? Margaret won't do it. She's handed the project off to Natch-she's not going to jump back into this whole business again."
Jara frowned, brushing one finger slowly over her bottom lip. "I realize you've known Margaret longer than any of us-for process' preservation, I've never even met her except for that two-minute appearance she put in at the fiefcorp meeting the other day. But I'm just not convinced. We've got a first-rate demonstration. Merri's been working with Robby Robby to get the crowd fired up. The entire thing is laid out. All Margaret has to do is stand up and deliver it. How can she refuse?"
"The infoquake," said Quell. "She keeps saying the whole thing was her fault. She thinks those people died because of hear"
"Delusions of grandeur," muttered Ben.
Quell glared sharp slashing daggers at the young apprentice. "When you're the daughter of the Surinas," he snarled, "there's no such thing as a delusion of grandeur."
"That notwithstanding," said Jara, "I have to try to convince her. For process' preservation, Quell-this woman is a scientist. She'll listen to reason, won't she?"
Jara marched through the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation with her miniature fists clenched. Security guards haloed her like massive blue-green planets orbiting a small but furious star. She approached the atrium through an archway labeled Subaether Court. A score of disgruntled visitors glared at Jara when she passed, as if she were responsible for their being muscled out of the atrium.
But the fault lay with the nondescript woman in the center of the domed room gazing up at the statue of a skinny man with a large nose. He was not the largest of the scientific titans adorning the dome, but his stone effigy had an almost mythical presence. The man stood calmly with one hand extended, not offering a welcoming gesture so much as making a commanding sweep. At his feet were carved the words:
ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH PERFECTING
-Sheldon Surina
Next to the Father of Bio/Logics, Margaret Surina was a half-presence at best. She looked like she might disintegrate inside her bodhisattva's robes at any moment. Her face was solemn, even apologetic. An internal monologue flashed behind her eyes like distant lightning.
Jara could spare no time for pity. She shook herself loose from the Surina guards and stalked to the bodhisattva's side. The guards established a perimeter around the room and kept their distance. "I've been trying to find you for almost two hours," said Jara.
Margaret did not even acknowledge Jara's presence. "The Texan governments tried to assassinate him," said the bodhisattva, her gaze never leaving that of her ancestor. Even carved in stone, Sheldon Surina bore a look of self-importance. "The public hated him for a long time too. People always forget about that. The Three Jesuses called him a devil, and the Pharisees slaughtered thousands of his supporters for sport. He came up with the idea for MindSpace sitting in a cave in the Himalayas."
"Natch has disappeared," said Jara.
"I know."
The bio/logic analyst took a step back in surprise. Margaret knew? Then why hadn't she answered all the messages and Confidential Whispers Jara had been flinging her way? As one of the firm's senior partners, why hadn't she immediately called a meeting to discuss alternative plans for the presentation? Jara felt like crying at the unfairness of it all. Why does it feel like I'm the only one willing to fight for this fiefcorp? Why is it that when push comes to shove, Natch disappears, Serr Vigal prives himself to all communication, and Horvil just falls apart? And yet I'm the one who's trying to get out of this whole nightmare. I'm the one who wants to put this MultiReal shit behind me and get on with my life.
"If you want to honor Sheldon Surina's memory," Jara said in a slow and deliberate tone of voice, "then you'll stop feeling sorry for yourself and help us figure out an alternate course of action."
Margaret recoiled as if she had just been slapped. "I have no idea where Natch is. I didn't do anything to him."
"I'm not suggesting you did. But you're the one who set this whole thing in motion."
"Indeed?"
"Come on, Margaret! You created this fucking program, you dragged Natch and the rest of us into this business. You stood up there in front of billions of people and announced a bold new era of multiple realities. It's too late to back out now. You have a responsibility-no, an obligation-to see it through."
"An obligation to whom? To you?" The descendent of Sheldon Surina snorted haughtily. "I don't know you."
"You know Natch," said Jara. "You know Quell."
Margaret firmed up her jaw, looking again at the cool stone representation of her ancestor. Natch's name had produced barely a ripple on the bodhisattva's face, but mention of the Islander had obviously shaken her. "My obligation," she replied, "is to him." By him, clearly, Margaret meant the big-nosed stone statue and not anyone this side of the grave.
Jara stomped her foot and, only by sheer force of will, restrained herself from yelling at the venerable bodhisattva. Hadn't she been through this same scenario with Natch just a few weeks ago, when he all but announced his intention to frame his apprentices for that little black code scheme? Was there something inherent in the bio/logics trade that caused fiefcorp masters to lose their moral bearings? "So after sixteen years of working on this thing, you're just going to give up ,,
"Now who's playing the victim? You're not an invalid, Jara." Until that moment, Jara had not quite been sure the bodhisattva even knew her name. "I'm quite certain Natch didn't hold a dartgun to your chest and force you to sign an apprenticeship contract. When you start a new business, there always are risks. You didn't think Natch and I were going to take all those risks while you sat back and watched millions of credits pour into your Vault account, did you?"
Blistering words clawed at Jara's windpipe, struggling for release. But at that moment, a Surina security guard trotted up to Margaret with a fist raised chin-level in salute. The bodhisattva gave the man a sidelong glance. Then the color drained from her face in response to some word she heard over Confidential Whisper.
"Go ahead," rasped Margaret, stumbling towards the window with a hand clutching her stomach. "You might as well tell her."
The officer turned to Jara and saluted smartly. "The Defense and Wellness Council is coming."
"What?"
"Several hundred hoverbirds have been spotted on the outskirts of Andra Pradesh. Three or four legions of Council officers are heading this way."
Jara felt her knees buckle, and before she knew it, she was sitting on the ground, woozy, her back leaning against Sheldon Surina's toes. Was it going to happen this easily? Just like Margaret's speech last week, Len Borda's troops were going to surge into the Surina compound and disrupt the proceedings-maybe even seize MultiReal by force-in front of the entire world.
Margaret pressed her forehead against the glas
s. A look of doom washed over her face. "You see?" she cried. "He's never going to stop, not until I'm dead and MultiReal is under his control. And what can anybody do about it? What can anybody do about it?"
Jara said nothing. Words seemed quite beside the point.
"Nothing to say? I thought so." The bodhisattva cast a hateful glance back at Jara, reached into a gap in her robes, and drew a sleek silver dart pistol. "Well, don't worry. The high executive is about to find out that confiscating MultiReal won't be as easy as it looks.
"The Spire!" she roared to her security detail, then stormed out the front door into the courtyard. Her cordon of guards followed close behind.
Millions of spectators had already poured into the Surina auditorium to await the first public demonstration of MultiReal. Despite Creed Conscientious' pleas, nobody seemed deterred by the prospect of another infoquake. They wanted to catch a glimpse of the infamous Natch, to see if he really deserved his reputation among the drudges. They wanted to measure Margaret Surina's accomplishments against those of her ancestors. More than anything, they just wanted to bask in the glow of history.
A carnival atmosphere swirled through the arena. Drudges and politicians of every ideological stripe wandered around broadcasting their analysis of the spectacle to their constituencies. Fiefcorp apprentices flaunted product slogans on their shirts and foreheads in vivid glow-in-the-dark colors. Creed devotees multied into the arena dressed in full creed regalia, while bodhisattvas from fringe groups stood on chairs and preached to anyone who would listen. Groups of children clustered together under the aegis of their hives, accompanied by stern-faced proctors of business, programming, politics and ethics. A few dozen L-PRACG activists multied into the auditorium stark naked and began chanting a tepid protest of Vault lending practices. One by one, they were caught in the beam of the Surina security disruptors and their multi connections cut. Council officers were nowhere to be seen.
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