Natch slipped the still-warm rings onto his fingers. He hadn't realized quite how large Quell's hands were. When he finished donning the programming rings, he felt like a child playing dress-up with his mother's jewelry. Even the notoriously thickset Islanders couldn't have standard ring sizes this big.
Natch stepped up to the workbench and raised his hands. The code floating in MindSpace seemed to exert a slight magnetic pull on his fingers, much as it did on a set of programming bars.
As Quell, Horvil, and Vigal looked on, Natch began conducting a data symphony with his digits. It started as a delicate tune that hovered in the middle registers. But as the fiefcorp master gradually gained confidence in his technique, he began to make more daring moves. Sudden staccato bursts all over the imaginary orchestra, glissando stretches from one end of the scale to the other.
After fifteen minutes, Horvil began to grow restless. "If you don't need me," he said, "I think I'll get back to work...."
"Not yet," barked Natch. The engineer stayed put. Serr Vigal retreated to the chair in the corner and parked himself anxiously upon it.
Natch zoomed in on the peculiar bee-shaped structure and began twisting at it with his fingers, over and over again. The coil spun around like a lump of clay under the hands of a skilled potter. Every few spins, Natch would stab at the coil with his fourth finger.
"What's he doing?" mumbled Horvil, leaning in until his face was neatly bisected by the edge of MindSpace and took on a pinkish glow.
Quell squinted at the bubble dubiously. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he said. "If you keep doing that, you might-"
"Break it?" Natch grinned like a demon and made one final stab with four fingers at once.
And then the darkness spilled out.
Natch didn't know how long he lay there before the refreshingly prosaic voice of Horvil came meandering out of the blackness. "I can look after him for a bit, Vigal. You really need to get some sleep."
He tried to sit up, to respond, but his eyelids felt tied down and he could not open them. His body simply would not respond to his commands.
"I'm not leaving until I know he's okay," said Vigal. The neural programmer was almost within arm's reach. "When is Quell leaving?"
"Dunno. I keep telling him he should go to Andra Pradesh already if he's going to go, but you know how stubborn he is. I think he's trying to put it off." Horvil emitted a long, rattling noise of impatience through his sinuses.
Natch attacked the thorny thicket around his eyelids with every gram of strength he had. Pain flooded down his spinal cord and then abruptly subsided. He bolted upright to find the concerned faces of Horvil and Serr Vigal staring down at him on the living room sofa. Vigal's expression was clouded with gloom, while Horvil looked like he had aged a year. Natch noticed that the sun had almost disappeared behind the jagged Shenandoah skyline. How long had he been under?
"You okay?" said Vigal gently.
The fiefcorp master struggled with the snares around his tongue. After a few minutes, he managed to croak out a reply. "I don't think I'll be doing that again for a while."
Horvil plopped down on the chair-and-a-half. "I'm sorry, Natch," he muttered. "We were hoping to find some answers about the black code. But looks like we just made things more complicated."
"Complicated doesn't bother me," said Natch, stretching his neck muscles in an effort to unstiffen them. "I don't mind a complicated answer, as long as I have the answer. Is MultiReal the black code? Or are they separate programs?"
Horvil shook his head despondently and said nothing.
"Come on, Horv!" yelled Natch. "No clues? Nothing at all? Vigal, you know neural programming. You have to have some idea."
His old mentor frowned from the kitchen, where he was running his finger aimlessly across the countertop. Natch noticed the remains of a dinner that the three of them must have eaten while he was unconscious. "I don't think they're the same thing. I think there's another illicit program hidden in your OCHRE system. But that's just an opinion."
Natch, petulant: "So how did the MultiReal code get there?"
"I don't know," replied Vigal.
"Then what's it doing?"
Vigal rubbed his chin and stared at the wall, pensive. "Well, we know that it can put you to sleep for several days...."
"There's got to be more than that!" shouted Natch, pounding his fist on one of the couch's throw pillows. "Why would someone put together a strike team just to slip me a sleeping pill? If all they wanted to do was prevent me from delivering that demo at Andra Pradesh, the fucking code would have self-destructed by now."
Serr Vigal slid into a weary silence.
Natch lurched to his feet, balancing himself against the edge of the sofa until he was confident he would not fall down. Vigal and Horvil both offered him a helping hand, but the fiefcorp master waved them away. "Where's Quell?" he grunted.
Horvil pointed wordlessly toward the balcony door. Natch clasped his hands behind his back and strode in that direction. The balcony door swished open as he approached.
Quell the Islander stood outside with his hands firmly clenching the railing, as if he were about to rip it loose and hurl it into space. His gaze was fixed on a small group of Council officers standing across the road, exchanging hand signals with other teams in the vicinity. They were clearly watching Natch's apartment, or at least pretending to. One of the officers went so far as to brandish a dart-rifle ostentatiously in Quell's direction, as if he might fire it at any moment. His fellows laughed.
"Sorry," said the Islander to Natch under his breath. "I know you want answers. But I don't have them."
Natch shrugged. "I believe you." He lifted his right hand up, waving the glinting programming rings under Quell's nose. "Mind if I keep these for a while?"
The Islander rubbed his chin for a moment, and Natch could see he was trying to decide if he should ask why. Finally he nodded. "Go ahead. I've got another set back at Andra Pradesh." He reached into the pocket of his breeches and withdrew a small black felt bag, which he handed to Natch. Natch deposited the rings one by one in the bag and then cinched its drawstring closed.
"Listen, Natch, I need to make something clear," continued Quell, lowering his voice. "Everyone in this fiefcorp seems to think I understand everything about MultiReal. But I don't. Of course, I know a lot more than you do ... but even sixteen years ago, MultiReal was already bigger than any piece of bio/logic programming on the market. Some of the pieces of that program are over a hundred years old, Natch. I've seen routines in there dating back to Prengal Surina. I wouldn't be surprised to find shit written by Sheldon Surina. The Surinas, they invented bio/logic programming. One family, unlimited resources, three hundred sixty years. Does anyone really know what they're capable of?"
Quell shook his head, angry at everything and nothing at once. The taunting of the Council officer across the street caught his eye once again. The Islander hefted an imaginary dart-rifle to his shoulder and fired off a single round, with a click of his tongue as sound effect. His white-robed adversary rattled his very real dart-rifle in the air and shouted something insulting, unintelligible at this distance.
"You have to understand, Natch," continued Quell with more than a little bitterness in his voice. "Those Surinas, they don't let you in. Not even me, not even after twenty years."
Natch frowned. He knew the feeling all too well. Sometimes it seemed like the entire world was nothing but a vast edifice designed to keep him out. He caught a quick glimpse of Horvil and Vigal out of his peripheral vision, still deep in conversation.
"Listen, Quell," said Natch. "I need answers soon. This can't wait. The MultiReal exposition's a week from today, and I've still got Magan Kai Lee breathing down my neck." He made an angry gesture at the squads of Council officers below.
"So what are you going to do?" asked Quell.
"You're going to Andra Pradesh to see Margaret?"
The Islander nodded.
"Then I'm coming with
you. No, don't say it-I've already tried to multi there half a dozen times. Her idiotic security force won't even let me in the compound. But if I show up there in person, with you, they'll let me in. Then you're going to take me to the top of the Revelation Spire, and I'm going to get some answers from Margaret."
"What if Margaret still refuses to see you?"
"Oh, she'll see me," replied Natch, his voice venom. "She'll see me, or I'll tear that whole bloody compound down brick by brick."
12
Jara strode through the crooked hallways of the Kordez Thassel Complex cursing the chill. The Thasselians did this on purpose, she thought bitterly, wondering if some fiefcorp with a warmth-generating program had thrown the creed a few credits to lower the thermostat. I don't care if it is January in the Twin Cities-there's no excuse.
The analyst closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. Fiefcorp greed was a fruit that ripened in all seasons and could be found by the bushel anywhere you looked. She needed to stay focused on the subject at hand: the Patel Brothers.
Jara couldn't figure out what kind of playbook Frederic and Petrucio were working from. Obviously they had shifted tactics since their first MultiReal demo, which even the most Natchophobic of drudges called an overproduced, underimagined failure. Today's demo was an industry-only event. No creed officials or L-PRACG bureaucrats or curious onlookers would be on hand to provide distractions; not even the drudges were invited, unless they specifically covered the bio/logic programming beat.
What mischief were the Patels up to now? Were they really in league with the Defense and Wellness Council, as Margaret suspected?
Jara followed Robby Robby's beacon, which led her from the Thassel Complex's gateway zone through a drunken loop of frigid hallways and finally to a small clump of people outside the auditorium entrance. She hung back for a moment, checking Data Sea profiles. You never knew who was on the Council's payroll, and after her London encounter with Magan Kai Lee, there was no level of paranoia to which Jara would not sink.
The slick, square-jawed individual blathering away in the group's epicenter was, of course, Robby Robby. He had abandoned his cubed hairdo at some point this past week for a frizzy style that would have looked at home on a clown or a cultist. Next to Robby stood Phranco- liape, one of the Data Sea's most respected channelers, his distinguished white beard making a vibrant contrast with his rich African skin. Three quick pings to the public directory tagged the youths standing in Phrancoliape's shadow as his junior apprentices. So far, so good. Then Jara spotted the last member of the group and nearly bolted for the exit. Xi Xong, the Patel Brothers' dowager channeler extraordinaire.
Jara hadn't quite decided what to do when Robby Robby spotted her. "Watch out, Twin Cities!" bellowed the channeler in a voice loud enough to warp time and space. "The official Surina/Natch delegation is now assembled!"
Her cover blown, Jara walked up and gave a polite bow to the group. "Keep it down, Robby. I'm not supposed to be here, remember?"
"Eh, don't worry your pretty little head," replied Robby. "'Trucio knows you're here, and he doesn't care. Right, Xi?"
Xi Xong's face was painted as heavily as a Kabuki mask. "Of course, darling," she said in that faux high-society accent of hers. "The Patels always keep things aboveboard and out in the open. Not like Jara's boss." She turned toward the analyst with a vicious smile that revealed too many teeth. "Speaking of which ... tell me, how is Lucas Sentinel these days?"
Jara could feel the blood flowing to her face unbidden. "I-I work for Natch now, Xi," she stuttered. "I haven't had anything to do with Lucas for, what, almost five years." And you know it, too.
The Patels' channeler emitted a whooping crane laugh. "I'm sorry, dear, you're right. I always get those two confused. Natch, Lucas. They're so much alike, don't you think?" Robby bobbed his head idiotically, always on the lookout for a stray opinion to agree with. One of Phrancoliape's apprentices chuckled. "Well, duty calls," said Xong. "Perfection to you all." And then she whirled around on one knobbed stalk of leg and disappeared into the auditorium.
Jara bristled. How long were people going to browbeat her about her association with Lucas Sentinel? And what did she have to be ashamed about anyway? Lucas had been the one who demolished their working relationship with his fumbling attempts at seduction. All Jara had done was spurn his advances. So why did it still feel like a moral failure on her part?
Trying to regain her equilibrium, she turned to Phrancoliape. "So who're you shilling for these days, Phranc?"
"Oh, Pierre Loget, same as always," replied the channeler in a warm baritone. He either did not notice the tangled barbs on Xi's words or was purposefully ignoring them. "Now that you and the Patels have stopped worrying about Primo's, somebody has to keep Lucas and Bolliwar out of the top spot." The latter referring to Bolliwar Tuban, whose reputation for nastiness was on par with Natch's.
"So where is Pierre these days?" said Jara. "I read something about him on the drudge circuit the other day. John Ridglee says he's missing."
"Yeah, what do the drudges know?" one of Phranc's apprentices blurted out, a little too quickly.
The channeler himself let out a good-natured laugh. "Your boss has a tendency to disappear for weeks at a time too," he told Jara, waving his hand in dismissal. "Pierre likes his privacy, but the instant Sentinel gets within spitting distance of number one, he'll be back. Trust me."
And at that moment, a delicate bong echoed throughout the atrium of the Kordez Thassel auditorium, signaling the imminent start of the Patel Brothers' presentation. Phranc bowed to Jara and gave Robby Robby a comradely clap on the shoulder. Then he vanished along with his understudies.
Jara turned to Robby, who seemed blissfully ignorant of the entire concept of subtext. "You ready?"
Robby lit up like a sparkler. "As I'll ever be, Queen Jara!" he crackled.
Standard procedure at an event like this dictated that all multi projections should materialize inside the auditorium and stay there. But this crowd was evidently too small to bother with such rules. Jara turned to walk through the double doors and was assaulted by a garish billboard advertisement across the way.
CHILL GOTYOU DOWN?
Try Woo/Coat 95 by the BolliwarTuban Fiefcorp
She scowled, and resigned herself to the cold.
Robby and Jara hustled through the crowd and found seats in the upper reaches of the auditorium, where they would be safely anonymous. Fearing another outburst from Robby, Jara covertly masked her lips with one palm in the manner of someone engaged in a ConfidentialWhisper. The channeler left her alone.
So the analyst sat and watched the audience file in. The carnival atmosphere that had plagued the first two MultiReal demos was distinctly absent today. This was an exclusive and drearily dressed gathering of bio/logic professionals: thirteen thousand of them, to be precise, crammed into a space that could have seated perhaps ten thousand live bodies. The crazies and the zealots were nowhere to be foundunless you counted the devotees of Creed Thassel, whose members were undoubtedly here under their cloak of secrecy.
And what about the officers of the Defense and Wellness Council, standing grim and barren of emotion? Jara didn't recognize any of the faces of the officers near her, but that didn't mean she wasn't being watched. After all, the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp's big exposition was in seven days. When would Magan Kai Lee make his move? What was he waiting for?
After a few minutes, the lights dimmed and a hush settled on the crowd.
Smoke began to curl around the foot of the stage until it covered the entire floor. A soundtrack heavy on the bamboo flute echoed across the auditorium. The spotlight speared a circular platform that rose about a meter out of the smoke. Standing atop the platform was the jowly Frederic Patel, forehead furrowed, a pair of dartguns at hand. Seconds later, another platform rose on the opposite side of the stage carrying a similarly decked-out Petrucio. His waxed mustache practically glistened.
"This rivalry has gone on long
enough," said the elder Patel with an exaggerated sneer.
"Yeah?" replied the younger. "I'd like to see you do something about it, 'Trucio."
"If you don't put down those guns, I will. I've been waiting for this a long time."
"You don't have the courage," snorted Frederic.
Jara felt Robby's elbow dig into her side. "Phantom Distortions," he said, sotto voce. For once, the analyst was glad for the interruption. She knew she recognized the Patel Brothers' banter from somewhere, but hadn't been able to place it. Jara had only seen Phantom Distortions once, several years ago, and thought it irritating and cliche-ridden. But the drama had won so many awards and penetrated so many strata of society that even she could recite its climactic scene from memory. This was the part where Juan Nguyen's character took careful aim at his traitorous brother and-
Petrucio fired the dartgun in his right hand. A sliver of poison vaulted across the stage and landed in the exact center of Frederic's belt buckle. "Aren't you glad I'm using SafeShores 1.0 by the Patel Brothers?" said Petrucio. And as Frederic stood there in slapstick dismay, the elder Patel proceeded to shoot a dozen more darts along his brother's belt line in quick succession.
The audience howled with laughter. It was a nice play on the real line: Aren't you glad I don't have the courage? delivered with maximum swagger. Jara allowed herself an appreciative smile. It looked like the Patel Brothers had finally figured out how to put together a decent marketing presentation, even if they were clinging to their lame "safe shores" motif with too much vigor.
Frederic made a cartoonish grunt of rage that seemed a little too convincing and then raised his own gun. "Well, so am I, Brother," he said. And let fire.
In the original Phantom Distortions, this was the moment where comedy mutated into pathos, where the brothers' long rivalry exploded into the open with ruinous consequences. But in the Patel Brothers' version, Petrucio was too quick on the draw. The dartgun in his left hand shot off with a reverberating thwing-and milliseconds later, there came the indescribable sound of two darts striking one another in midair and clattering to the stage.
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