Infoquake (14 page)

Natch did not look back until he had reached one of the plush dens
that the Proud Eagle had set up for entertaining guests. It was the kind
of dusky room that might have once been lined with leather books.
Natch wasn't sure whether or not the capitalman would still be there
when he turned around, and he barely managed to restrain a grin of triumph when he saw that the little man had indeed followed him.

Figaro Fi planted himself in one of the overstuffed chairs. "You've
got balls, and I like that," said the capitalman sardonically. He pulled
a beefy cigar from his coat pocket and chomped on one end. "Go
ahead," he grunted.

Natch launched into the presentation he had already given a hundred times in his own mind. It was short and to the point. There were
holographs of Natch's programming work, a brief list of the accolades
he had won in academic competitions, and the outlines of a fiefcorp
marketing strategy. When he finished, he made no attempt at idle
chitchat, but rather waited patiently for a reaction from his audience.

Figaro wore an almost lecherous grin. "I like this," he said. "You've
been planning this whole thing for weeks, haven't you? Waiting until
the last minute. The little scene in the hallway out there. Clever, boy,
clever! "

Natch stood politely with his hands clasped behind his back and
said nothing.

"Of course, you know what I came here to see," continued Fi. He
apparently had no intention of lighting his cigar-a pointless act in
multispace anyway preferring instead to swing it between two fingers for emphasis. "You know I'm not here to see your test scores again.
I'm not here to see you perform your programming tricks like some
monkey or hear your little prepared speech about how you can benefit
society." The capitalman leaned back and let out a hearty laugh, as if he had just told an extraordinary joke. The gold sequins on his belly jingled sympathetically.

"I'm really here to see how you comport yourself," continued
Figaro. "To see if you really have that killer instinct I've heard so much
about. So tell me, Natch, what makes you think I'm going to put up
a single credit tonight?"

"Because if you don't," replied the boy, "someone else will."

"And you think I'm going to ruin my good name with the Meme
Cooperative by giving fiefcorp money to a hive boy before initiation?"

"Oh, please. You have enough money to pay them off ten times
over."

"True, true." Figaro seemed quite satisfied with himself, and Natch
wondered if he was about to dispense a few nuggets of gossip about
what it was like to live a life of privilege. Parties with the lunar land
tycoons, programmers catering to your every whim, teleportation on
command.

But the capitalman was on a different tack. He wedged the cigar
back between his molars and gave Natch a sly look. "I'm surprised you
even asked me here today," said Fi. "If you'd really done your homework, you would know that I like to spread my investments around.
It's not like me to risk my neck for two boys from the same hive."

Natch instantly felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. There was
only one other boy at the Proud Eagle who could have possibly caught
the attention of someone with Figaro Fi's clout. In his mind's eye,
Natch saw the last horrible smirk Brone had given him earlier that
evening. Horvil's not the only one that's going to be feelingpain. He clenched
his fists behind his back until his fingernails carved bloody crescent
moons into his palms.

"So why did you come here?" the boy snarled.

Figaro broke into a full-fledged smile. "Because it amuses me, of
course."

Wild thoughts scurried through Natch's head, baring their claws with fiendish fury. If Figaro had been sitting here in the flesh, Natch
might well have buried his fingers in the fat man's throat by now. He
could feel the growling in his gut and summoned an antacid program,
but it did nothing. The visions pranced around his mind. Brone's
smug face and Adonic figure, sipping fancy wine in a lunar villa. Brone
sitting at the head of a very long conference table lined with adoring
apprentices. Brone laughing at Natch's expense.

"And will it amuse you if I go to the Meme Cooperative and tell
them you're giving money to a hive boy?" hissed Natch. The words
came out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. He let
them vent. "Not just any hive boy-a spoiled rich one whose parents
probably paid you off. Or what if I go to the drudges? CAPITALMAN
ADMITS TO BRIBING MEME COOPERATIVE OFFICIALS-that
sounds like a good headline for Sen Sivv Sor."

Figaro Fi did not seem angry or surprised at Natch's sudden outburst. If anything, he became more serene, which enraged the boy even
further. "So now you're threatening me," said the capitalman matter-
of-factly.

Years later, Natch would cringe when he thought of that evening,
and wonder how he had fallen for such obvious bait. But caught in the
moment, he found himself hurling all his adolescent rage at the capitalman until he hardly knew what he was saying. "It's your choice. You
can invest in him and I'll turn you in to the Meme Cooperative and the
Defense and Wellness Council. I'll tell the drudges. You'll be sorry you
ever came here. Or you can invest in me."

The little capitalman actually seemed to be enjoying the boy's discomfort. His face bore the look of a mischievous child poking a frog
with a stick. "All right, all right, sit down, boy," he said abruptly. His
chubby hand delivered backhanded slaps through the air in Natch's
direction. "You can keep your threats to yourself."

"And why's that?"

"Because you have nothing on me. Yes, I already decided to give your friend funding. But I'm not foolish enough to do it before he
returns from initiation."

Natch could feel nausea swelling inside him and beating a tattoo
on the inside of his skull. He wondered if this was what it felt like to
throw up. In a daze, he reached for the armchair behind him and collapsed into the waiting cushion.

"The recruiters all told me about you," said Figaro Fi, plopping his
virtual feet onto an ottoman. "Brilliant but narrow-minded, they said.
Volatile. Unstable. But I just had to see it myself. Those bio/logics
scores of yours were too good to ignore.

"Now here's the good news, Natch. I like you. You've got that same
look in your eyes that I did forty years ago. Hungry! Vicious! Uncompromising! And by the way, much better scores than I ever got, even
in economics.

"No, I haven't changed my mind. I'm not giving you a single
credit from my Vault account. But I'm going to give you something
even more valuable.

"I'm going to tell you why."

The pudgy capitalman pulled his feet off the ottoman. He leaned
forward intently and stuck his elbows on his knees until he had nearly
curled himself up like a pill bug.

"Listen: all of us in the bio/logics industry, all the capitalmen, the
programmers, the channelers, the drudges, the fiefcorpers and
memecorpers and engineers and analysts ... we're slaves, Natch.
We're all slaves to want.

"Want. It drives the world! It moves mountains, it swallows cultures!

"You see it, don't you, Natch? Want is everywhere. It's in people.
It's in programming. In politics. In nature. The universe just won't
stay still. It wants to move; even its smallest particles want to be in
motion. Take bio/logics. Aren't bio/logic programs in a natural state of
incompleteness? We release version 1.0 of a program, and inevitably it is imperfect. Version 1.0s want a version 2.0, don't they? They practically beg for it. You toil for months on version 2.0, and you've still
barely tapped into its bottomless reservoir of want. Version 2.0 wants a
version 3, version 3.0 wants a version 4, and so on and on and on and
on and on-forever!"

The antacid program wasn't helping. Somewhere in the back of his
mind, Natch realized he would not follow through on his implied
threat to Figaro. He would not spend his last few hours at the Proud
Eagle shuttling desperately between second-rate capitalmen and
seeking illegal handouts. If only this interview could be over. If only I could
shrivel up inside my shell like a snail and never see Figaro Fi or Brone or Vigal
again.

But the capitalman continued on mercilessly. "You ever heard that
story about the Bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv and Lucco Primo? The
Bodhisattva asks Primo what the key to success is. Primo says, Three
things. Ability, energy, and direction. You have the ability, Natch, and you
definitely have the energy-maybe more ability and energy than I've
ever seen.

"But where's your direction? I don't need forty-five minutes to see
you haven't got any. You have endless wants, Natch! But want without
purpose destroys a person. Those who can't master their wants are loose
cannons. They bring companies down. They ruin lives. They may flare
brightly for a while, oh yes! But in the end, Natch, loose cannons fail.
They lose money.

"Now your friend Brone-"

"Please don't call him that," Natch croaked.

"Your friend Brone is a real sharp programmer, but I've seen better.
He's got a way with people, and he's a handsome kid, which never
hurts. But he's got one thing you don't. He knows exactly where he's
going, and what he's doing.

"I've seen it all before. You'll get to the top quicker than Brone,
but then you'll just get pulled down by some other kid who's hungrier and angrier than you are. That's just the way it works."

Figaro arose, looking well pleased with his little sermon. He put
the chewed cigar in his coat pocket, leaving Natch to wonder why he
had drawn it out in the first place. Just before cutting his multi connection, he turned back to the boy with an arched eyebrow.

"Now, about that story with Lucco Primo.... A couple years later,
this drudge asks Primo, So what's the most important element of success?
Ability, energy, or direction? Primo sits back and thinks about it for a
minute. Direction, he tells the drudge. Ability and energy you can buy. "

Figaro started chortling obscenely and prepared to cut his multi
connection.

"Good luck at initiation," said Fi. "You're going to need it."

Some of the boys heard their initiation would take place in the South
Pacific, on the edge of Islander territory. There were hundreds of
islands in the area that remained pristine and untouched by modern
technology. Other boys countered that an island wasn't remote
enough. No, they would be shuttled off to some orbital colony specially designed for this purpose, or maybe one of the lawless quadrants
of Mars.

Horvil decided (based on no evidence whatsoever) they were
headed to the bottom of the ocean to live in one of the bubble colonies
that the real estate developers tried to revive every twenty years or so.
"I knew I should have studied up on hydroponics," he fretted to Natch
as they filed out of the hive for the last time. "And I'm a terrible
swimmer. Can't even hold my breath for a minute. You'll take care of
me, right, Natch? You won't let me drown, will you?"

Natch hadn't spoken a word all morning. He found it pointless to
speculate about their destination. Countless initiation compounds littered the civilized world, from Earth to Luna to the asteroid belt, and
he never heard that any one was better than another. Besides, Natch
knew from long and painful experience that isolation has no geographic boundaries. Even if the proctors arranged to shuttle them out
to the remotest orbital colony-like one of those experimental stations
beyond Jupiter-that still wouldn't erase the shame he had suffered
last night with Figaro Fi. And Brone would still be there with his
insufferable smirk and the knowledge that he had bested Natch.

Horvil and Natch marched solemnly with the rest of the boys
towards the sleek hoverbird that would carry them to their destination.
The Falcon 4730 was the standard workhorse of the aerospace industry,
used for everything from cross-city transportation to inter-continental cargo hops. This craft could get them anywhere on Earth, or maybe
even to a low-hanging orbital colony-but not underwater, Horvil was
relieved to note.

Sixty-four boys boarded the hoverbird and settled into their seats
with little conversation. Some pressed their faces up against the glass
for a last wistful look at the beehive-shaped building they called home.
The hive windows were lined with the small noses of children curious
for a glimpse at their future.

"Goodbye, fucked-up childhood," sighed Horvil, waving manically at the children. "Hello, fucked-up adulthood!"

Natch wasn't listening. He was thinking about Figaro Fi's accusation: Where is your direction? The boy winced at the irony as the hoverbird levitated over the courtyard and winged away towards the
unknown. Wherever Natch was going, he was headed there fast.