Multireal

by David Louis Edelman

  "Well, think of it this way. These rules are just for the exposition. We still have plenty of time to change our minds before we launch Possibilities on the Data Sea."

  "That's not the point. The point is-"

  Horvil rolled his eyes and reached out to pinch his cousin's lips shut. "The point is, Ben, Natch isn't here. Somebody needed to make a decision. Jara made it." And without waiting for a reaction, the engineer was out the locker room door and heading for the field.

  Jara didn't want the haze of multivoid to end. She wanted to grab onto the nothingness and embrace it tightly. Some days she remained on the red tile in her hallway for several minutes, filtering out the sights and sounds of the apartment with a Cocoon program until she could bear to look at the world again. Today, she merely stood on the tile with eyes shut.

  It's been a good day, she thought.

  The drudges were well pleased with the lottery results. Her fellow fiefcorpers had performed admirably: Merri had looked stoic, Horvil knowledgeable, Vigal calm and unruffled. Benyamin had stayed out of the way. Best of all, Jara had already anticipated most of the drudges' questions, and so the fiefcorp was able to stay on script most of the afternoon.

  Nobody paid much attention to what Merri labeled the Equitable Choice Cycle Model, but Jara had not expected them to. The public simply didn't have enough information about MultiReal to comprehend the issues at stake. But Jara knew that it was only a matter of time. The words she scripted would resonate long and loud for decades to come. All that mattered was that the Patel Brothers would understand. Frederic and Petrucio would get the message that the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was willing to be reasonable. (Still, Jara was careful to emphasize that the Equitable Choice Cycle Model would be in effect only for the exposition. She didn't want the Patel Brothers to get too comfortable.)

  Six more days to the MultiReal exposition, she thought. Six more days until the public gets a real taste of multiple realities. After that, there's no telling.

  She opened her eyes and absorbed the mundanity of her East London flat once more. Open surfaces, bare countertops, white walls. The first faint sketches of her future were drawn there, but the lines were still too indistinct for her to make out.

  14

  There were no redwoods on the long tube route that snaked halfway around the globe to Andra Pradesh. For most of the journey, there was nothing for Natch to look at but sea and sky-and the Council officers who had been tailing him since Shenandoah.

  Watching Quell work the viewscreens on the window proved an interesting diversion. Natch didn't know if the Islander possessed the neural equipment necessary to give a window direct commands; his understanding was that the Islanders had most standard OCHRE machines implanted at birth but simply kept them turned off. How else could Quell run a program as complex as MultiReal? Whatever the reason, he was navigating the Data Sea with his fingertips via an onscreen maze of buttons. Natch fell into a light sleep wondering how many other systems had hidden unconnectible interfaces built into them.

  "They're comparing you to Marcus Surina," said Quell a few hours later.

  The QuasiSuspension program had Natch awake and alert before the Islander even finished the first syllable. He glanced out the window just in time to see the shores of Sicily hurtling past. "Who is?" said the fiefcorp master.

  "The drudges at the MultiReal lottery." Quell gestured at the window, which was showing an opinion piece by some obscure pundit named Vermillion. "This guy says that if Marcus couldn't put together a feasible plan for teleportation, you won't do any better with MultiReal. He thinks Marcus turned out to be mostly hype, and you're headed the same way."

  Natch shrugged. "Doesn't matter. The drudges don't know anything. They're just blowing smoke." He scanned the first few para graphs of the story, picking out the standard descriptors: reckless, neurotic, maniacal. Natch supposed he should give the article a closer look, make sure the lottery went off without any major gaffes. But right now the only things he could focus on were black code and MultiReal.

  The entrepreneur settled back into his seat. "They could've chosen someone worse. Marcus Surina was the richest man in the world in his day."

  Quell frowned. "Yeah, but he came to a bad end."

  "Most good things do," said Natch as he drifted back into QuasiSuspension.

  From the moment the tube train pulled into Andra Pradesh, they could see that the Surina compound was in disarray-guards rushing everywhere, trash piling up, a little boy lost screaming for his mother and nobody giving him a second glance. The man checking identities at the bottom of the hill gave Natch and Quell no more than a cursory scan before admitting them through the gates.

  Things did not improve when they climbed the hill and found their way to the compound's central courtyard. Figures in blue-and-green livery scurried around the square with little semblance of order, as if struggling to obey confusing or even contradictory orders. The entrances to the Center for Historic Appreciation and the Enterprise Facility were sparsely guarded, and a small platoon of Council officers could easily have snuck into the absurd castle that contained the Surina family residences. The security force was concentrated around the half-kilometerhigh thorn known as the Revelation Spire. Margaret had exiled herself to the tip of that spire several weeks ago, when the Defense and Wellness Council marched in before Natch's last demo. And now, it seemed, she had decided to make it a permanent arrangement.

  Quell pointed disdainfully at a pair of guards who were attempting to haul a disruptor cannon across the courtyard by the barrel. "I knew things were bad," growled the Islander, "but I didn't know they were this bad."

  Natch shuddered. He had seen how effortlessly Len Borda's troops took control of the compound last month, when Surina security was still in relatively good shape. If Magan Kai Lee sent a few legions of his officers here today, what kind of resistance could the Surinas possibly offer?

  The Islander snatched the arm of a passing officer. The woman yelped and reached for the dartgun in her holster. Then she saw who had seized her and let the free arm drop to her side. Apparently Quell's reputation still carried a lot of weight in this place. "You," he barked. "What's going on? Where's the security chief?"

  "He-he left," stuttered the officer.

  Quell yanked the woman's arm almost hard enough to dislocate her shoulder. "What do you mean, he left?"

  "Suheil dismissed him," whimpered the guard. "Sent him home. The bodhisattva just ... let it happen."

  "So who's in charge here?"

  The woman gave him such a pitiful look in response that Quell let her go. She tore across the travertine and disappeared into the Surina Enterprise Facility without a backward glance.

  "Suheil," muttered the Islander, half to himself.

  "Isn't that Margaret's cousin?" said Natch.

  "Second cousin. Or third, I can never remember which. I should've known.... Suheil and Jayze probably started taking advantage of her the instant I left."

  "Taking advantage? Taking advantage how?"

  Quell pursed his lips, and Natch got the impression he had said more than he intended. "I shouldn't have brought you here. This is insane. I don't think you're going to get what you came for."

  Natch folded his arms across his chest. "I just wasted half a day on a tube train to get here," he said. "You're not going to scare me away. I came to get some answers from Margaret, and I'm not leaving until I get them."

  The Islander tilted his head back and let his gaze wander up the slim shaft of the Revelation Spire to the summit, hidden high in the clouds. "You won't like what you see."

  Natch made a noncommittal noise, squared his shoulders, and headed for the entrance to the Revelation Spire. After a moment, Quell sighed and followed.

  The guards who had barred Natch's entrance to the Spire before were still in evidence today, but this time they let him pass. Quell's influence, no doubt. The Islander thrust open the large set of double doors at the tower's base and strode through them
.

  The inside of the Revelation Spire did not resemble the picture that had lodged in Natch's head all these years. He expected to see a utilitarian space filled with offices and Surina functionaries. Instead he saw a structure that served no useful purpose at all; an ornamentation, a gilded trophy.

  The world's tallest building was almost completely hollow. A central column of air extended up through a jungle of structural supports to the limit of Natch's eyesight. Even using Bolliwar Tuban's Telescopics 89d, he could see no sign of the top. One long stairway made a dizzying spiral up the wall, interrupted at periodic intervals by wide platforms cantilevered off the side. Sculptures, statues, and paintings were strewn about everywhere with some avant-garde principle of decoration that eluded Natch. In the middle of it all stood a very lifelike marble representation of Marcus Surina, pointing confidently up into the aether.

  So it's a museum then, thought Natch. But if it was a museum, why weren't there any civilians within eyeshot? Why were there only Surina security guards by the dozen, with dartguns drawn and ready? This was a different breed of guard altogether than the ones fumbling around the courtyard; these troops would fire first and ask questions later, if at all.

  Quell had obviously been here a million times before and didn't give the pomp and pageantry a second glance. Natch followed him to the foot of the stairway. Half a dozen guards in blue and green blocked their path, and for a second Natch expected some of those dartguns to swivel in his direction. But the guards took a single look at the Islander and dutifully stepped aside. Natch allowed himself a slight sigh of relief.

  Stair after stair disappeared behind them. Banners and ceremonial plaques and eclectic sculptures marched by. Natch assumed there had to be an elevator somewhere along the way; not even bio/logically enhanced legs could be expected to climb half a kilometer of stairs unaided.

  It wasn't aching muscles that caused him to stop for a breather ten minutes later but the glacial cold permeating the soles of his feet. Natch supposed he should be grateful that the magic of modern architecture kept the Spire from turning into a giant wind tunnel. He scowled, not feeling grateful for anything today. "How do you stand the cold?" Natch complained.

  "You get used to it," grunted Quell in response.

  The fiefcorp master reached out to the Data Sea and located a program called NumbSoles 85. The program was prefaced with a lengthy warning about the dangers of nerve-enhancing software, which Natch ignored. He quickly revved up the bio/logic code until he could sense his toes again, and the two pressed on.

  Finally, some ten stories up, Natch and Quell found themselves standing in front of a bank of elevators. Translucent shafts extended from the top of the elevators into the distance like the pipes of some massive organ. Natch couldn't begin to guess which one led to the Spire's summit, and the troops stationed nearby weren't volunteering any information. Quell strutted into the third elevator from the left without hesitation. Natch followed.

  The ride up was a fifteen-minute exercise in tedium. After the first couple dozen floors, the building's architects had abandoned any pretext of utility; the upper levels of the Spire were all but empty, except for the occasional platform of troops aiming heavy weaponry out the windows.

  Just when the monotony was growing unbearable, a sixth sense prompted Natch to look up. He saw a large gray mass approaching through the elevator's glass ceiling, a mass that could only be the underside of the Spire's top floor. Carved on that surface was an enormous basrelief sculpture showing an emaciated figure with impossibly long fingers clawing at the elevator shaft. Natch took in the supercilious stare and the hawkish nose, and realized that this was Sheldon Surina. THERE IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE SOLVED BY SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION, read the inscription beneath him. Natch shivered as the elevator capsule slid between the talons of the father of bio/logics and came to a stop.

  The door opened. Natch, overwhelmed, let out a gasp.

  An enormous observation deck with space for perhaps sixty or seventy people. Sofas and divans spread languorously about the room. Several original Topes in all their psychedelic glory; the armless and legless torso that was the last remaining piece of the Venus de Milo perched precariously on a display table. Walls and ceiling made completely from flexible glass, giving the impression that the room floated in the clouds.

  "Is he gone?" came a timorous voice from the other side of the room. "Is it safe?"

  Margaret Surina.

  Natch replayed their last encounter in his mind. It had been a month ago, shortly after the first infoquake and shortly before his runin with the black-robed assailants. He remembered the bodhisattva of Creed Surina as a nondescript woman with raven-black hair and fierce blue eyes. A bio/logic scion struggling to maintain her grace under pressure. But now-

  Now Margaret, inventor of MultiReal and heir to the Surina fortune, huddled in a cavernous chair with a dart-rifle in her trembling hands. The gray that had been making slow inroads on her hair had become the dominant color. Her preternaturally large eyes loomed even larger through black rings of sleeplessness that tested the limits of OCHRE technology.

  "Is who gone?" said Quell gently, threading his way across the room toward the bodhisattva.

  Margaret double-checked that her rifle was cocked and loaded. "Gorda," came her hoarse reply.

  The fiefcorp master exploded. He could barely restrain himself from kicking a meticulously crafted vase that might have been ancient even in the days of the Autonomous Revolt. "Is he gone?" shouted Natch. "Len Borda's been gone for a fucking month, Margaret. If you would answer my messages, you'd know that. While you've been sitting up here doing nothing, we've been putting on demos and planning expositions and trying to appease everyone who's expecting a fully functioning product next week." He gestured wildly out the window at the somnambulant clouds. Their indolence seemed like part of a conspiracy against him. "Of course, it's not going to be a fully functioning product, is it? No. Because I've been dodging the Defense and Wellness Council for the past four weeks, and you've been up here, refusing to help us."

  Quell reached Margaret's side and slowly untwined the bodhisattva's fingers from the rifle. The gun slipped to the floor and made a muffled thump on the Persian rug. "Are you okay?" he said in a low voice.

  Margaret twitched her nose and blinked in confusion, as if she had been unaware of the Islander's presence until that exact moment. "Is it-is he-is everything okay?" she said, desperation mounting with every syllable. "Why did you come back? Tell me everything's fine. Please, Quell. Tell me he's okay."

  The Islander clasped one of her hands between his gargantuan paws. Natch had never imagined that Quell was storing such tenderness inside that bricklike exterior. Once again, the fiefcorp master found himself wondering exactly what kind of relationship the Islander and the bodhisattva had shared for all those years. "Everything's fine," said Quell. "Everything's okay."

  "You're-you're sure?"

  "Yes." A pause. "Margaret ... have Jayze and Suheil been up here?"

  Margaret gave a hesitant nod. "Yes, they're-they're helping out. Just for a bit, until things ... calm down."

  Quell fired a murderous look out the window at the Indian sky, and Natch was very glad he wasn't Jayze or Suheil Surina at that moment.

  But Natch had enough to worry about without getting ensnared in Surina family politics. A half-operational product, the high executive on his back, renegade MultiReal code in his head. He could spare no pity for this cowering shell of a woman. Natch marched across the room and grabbed a straight-backed chair. Then he dragged it in front of the bodhisattva and sat down. Quell shot him a look of disapproval, but Natch would not be deterred. He stared intently into Margaret's face. "I need some answers," he rasped.

  Lucidity sparked in Margaret's face. "Natch," she replied evenly. "You're still-Borda hasn't taken control of MultiReal, has he?"

  "No, of course not."

  "He's going to put pressure on you. You know that, Natch, right?" Margaret's wor
ds were slow, methodical, as if she were struggling to remember how to use them. "He'll do to you what he did to my father. Or worse. Borda, he's on some kind of crusade against my family and everything we've touched ... But Natch, you need to know this-he can't take MultiReal away from you. He can't. I've made sure of that."

  Natch grabbed hold of himself, realizing that he was dangerously close to the point where rage overcomes reason. He switched on Soothelt 121.5 and waited a few seconds for the mild sedative to buff over his rough nerve endings. "I'm not afraid of Len Borda," he said. "I can handle him. But I need to know why there's MultiReal code in my head, Margaret. I need to know what you did to me. "

  "That's what I'm trying to tell you." Margaret's hands were waving in the air in ever-widening circles. Quell watched those hands like a bird guarding its chick, ready to lash out the instant she got too close to the rifle on the floor. "MultiReal is becoming a part of you. You're not just its owner anymore, Natch-you're the guardian and the keeper."

  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

  The Islander clasped both of the bodhisattva's hands to his own. "You're afraid of something, Margaret. What is it?"

  Margaret collapsed in on herself, despondent. "The nothingness at the center of the universe," she muttered. "The decisions I need to make. I-I'm afraid to make them."

  The entrepreneur shot up and began pacing in tight concentric circles of his own, around the chair he had dragged across the room. Quell let go of her hands and made his way to the nearest window, where he glared at the outside world with scarcely concealed contempt. Every few seconds, he would turn back in Margaret's direction to make sure she hadn't picked up the rifle again.

  "Listen," said Natch to the bodhisattva. "Let me explain something to you. I can't have mystery code hiding in MultiReal. If the program's interacting with something in my head, I need to know that. This is a scientific discipline, Margaret-we need to have the ground rules. You can't expect my engineers to ignore all these questions."