Infoquake (26 page)

Natch skipped ahead to the section that detailed Margaret's business interests:

Surina has been the subject of gossip and speculation over the past twenty
years since she founded the memecorp that bears her name. To date, the
company has released no products and purportedly receives 100% of its
funding from Creed Surina. Partisans of the Surinas believe the memecorp
is at work on another technological breakthrough on par with such previous
family accomplishments as bio/logics and teleportation. Surina supporters
have even given this undefined new technology a name: "The Phoenix Project." Detractors, however, suspect that no such project exists and that Margaret Surina is instead using her memecorp to funnel money into libertarian
and pro-Islander political causes.

Natch leaned forward and tried to cajole InfoGather into providing
him more about this mysterious Phoenix Project, but no tangible
details were forthcoming. Pundits on the Data Sea had been scrutinizing Margaret's every move for years now, gossiping about every new
visitor to her compound in Andra Pradesh in ancient India, seeking
evidence of some iibertechnology that might or might not exist. So far,
they had come up empty.

The pressure on her must be enormous, Natch reflected. At Margaret's
age, Sheldon Surina had already written his seminal paper, Towards the
Science of BiolLogics and a New Direction for Humanity, the work that
jolted the world out of its post-Revolt stupor and signaled the beginning of a new age. Sheldon's grandson Prengal Surina had already published the Universal Law of Physics at this stage of his life. Even Margaret's father, the poor doomed Marcus, had become a worldwide icon
and pioneer of teleportation by the time he was fifty. The public was
growing restless. What would Margaret's contribution to the world of
science be?

The entrepreneur remembered his days of infamy following the
Shortest Initiation and grimaced. Why does she need to make any contribution? he thought. What if she just wants to be left alone?

Natch studied the image of Margaret Surina carefully. The photog rapher appeared to have taken Margaret by surprise; she seemed frozen
in the act of turning towards the camera. But there were no surprises
written in those unnaturally large blue eyes. Margaret's eyes showed a
woman in complete control of her surroundings, a woman capable of
swallowing life's surprises whole without the least bit of discomfort.
Natch finally had to admit to himself that this woman had him
intrigued.

And could this Phoenix Project be that thing just beyond the
horizon that he had been waiting for his entire career? Was that why
the very words tugged at his soul like a magnet?

He sent a terse reply to Margaret's invitation:

I would be honored to accept your invitation and make your acquaintance.

Towards Perfection,

Natch, Master of the
Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp

The city of Andra Pradesh had few municipal building codes. Tenement high-rises and office buildings hobnobbed with parks and shopping areas and even farmland, all jumbled together without regard to
style or function. Andra Pradesh was a city that had rolled down from
a mountaintop and sprouted haphazardly out of the wreckage.

On that mountaintop were the Surinas.

Natch saw the massive Surina compound as soon as he stepped off
the tube. Even a kilometer away, it dominated the skyline. He could
easily make out the austere buildings of the Gandhi University of
Andra Pradesh where Sheldon Surina had taught and the absurd towers
of the Surina family's private residence. Somewhere below his level of
sight were the administrative offices of Creed Surina, the Surina Enterprise Facility, and the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation. Above
them all, a lone spire jutted obscenely into the clouds from the middle
of the compound. Natch had heard somewhere that this was the tallest
man-made structure built since the Reawakening. Down in the city
below, dozens of buildings competed for the right to claim second
place.

The tube could have deposited Natch right at the gates of the
Surina compound, but he wanted the full effect of approaching it from
a distance. I've already wasted several hours on the tube, he thought. Why
not a few more minutes on foot?

Natch hustled through the crowded streets and tried to keep his
mind blank. The people of Andra Pradesh rushed about at a frenetic
pace as if galvanized by the presence of the Surinas in their midst. Conversations were louder, clothing more vivid. People of all colors, classes
and creeds seemed to blend in here, much like the buildings that surrounded them. L-PRACG security guards, street performers, vendors of exotic fruits and vegetables, businesspeople, assembly-line programmers, hoverbird traders and cargo haulers, rambunctious children: here
in Andra Pradesh, distinctions blurred.

Finally, he reached the base of the mountain. A dozen guards stood
before the gate wearing the green and blue uniforms of Creed Surina.
Was it just a figment of Natch's imagination, or were they fingering
the triggers of their dartguns with a little too much anxiety?

After a few minutes of identity checking, the guards waved Natch
through the gate. Two grim-faced women in uniform motioned for
him to follow them up the steep mountainside road to a courtyard
large enough for a small army procession. They found their way to the
Center for Historic Appreciation, a squat pentagonal building in the
classic Greek style. It was a scientific museum of sorts, full of haphazardly arranged curio tables and marble statues of the Surina dynasty
laid out in solemn, self-important poses. There was even a statue of
Margaret as a child sitting rapturously at the feet of her father.

Security guards were everywhere, dartguns drawn and signaling to
one another with choppy gestures that Natch could only assume was a
form of battle language. The complex appeared to be devoid of visitors,
however. Finally, the two guards led Natch down a long hallway and,
without a word, deposited him at the door at its end. He opened the
door, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

Natch immediately found himself on a floating platform in a massive library. There was no sign of the exterior hallway; the door he had
come through stood by itself with no visible means of support.

SeeNaRee, thought Natch with distaste.

The hexagonal platform was merely one of a thousand identical
platforms Natch could see stretching off in every direction, each connected to its neighbors by narrow walkways, like beads on a string.
Bookshelves lined four walls of each platform. Thirty-two treepaper
books of equal size and weight filled each shelf, as if they were just a
small part of an unimaginably vast encyclopedia. Natch looked around in vain for some sign of his host, for any human presence at all. After
a few minutes, impatient, he reached for one of the leather-bound volumes and flopped it open on the large conference table in the platform's center.

FSLFJ WOPSF 0 SLJ!

Thwlk po sdl wopi fndvl fdgf poipwytpw, Wtlkd woir z pod. Lsdkf
wienhf sdflglsksgd sldkjf? Wogih spapapa slgihd. Qqq! Qqq!

"Never read your Borges, did you?" came a voice behind him.
Natch turned and found himself face-to-face with Margaret Surina.

Marcus Surina's daughter had aged quite a bit since that anonymous InfoGather image he had seen the other day. Not even bio/logics
could totally conceal the wrinkles on her forehead, the slight stoop of
her shoulders, the tinge of gray that permeated her once coal-black
hair. Only Margaret's eyes remained intense and unblemished, as if
they would remain brightly lit long after the rest of the flesh had withered away.

"Borges?" said Natch.

"Jorge Luis Borges," replied Margaret. "This library is his creation."

The name meant nothing to Natch, and a quick inquiry to the
Meme Cooperative fiefcorp listings came up with no results. "Never
heard of him," he said. "Is he a programmer?"

A smile descended onto Margaret's face as if from a great height.
"He was a writer. From antiquity, from before the Autonomous Revolt.
He talked about an infinite library with books that contained every
possible combination of words and letters. What you were reading was
just one of its countless permutations." She had a grating habit of
enunciating every syllable of every word, even those that typically
stayed silent or piggybacked on a neighboring phoneme. Ev-e-ry poss-
si-ble com-bin-nay-shun. Count-less per-me-yu-tay-shuns.

Natch shook his head in annoyance and slammed the book shut.
He enjoyed intellectual puzzles, but had little patience for artists. "So
why are we here?"

"It's a new innovation that we recently installed in all the Surina
conference rooms," said Margaret. "The room automatically gauges
your mood and chooses an appropriate bit of SeeNaRee. We have thousands of varieties in our data banks, virtual environments for every
occasion. This is a museum, after all." Vir-tu-al en-vi-run-ments for every
occ-ay-zhun.

Natch leaned over the railing and saw only stairs and platforms
without end. "I wasn't thinking about any library," he sniffed.

Margaret gave a coy smile as if sharing an inside joke. "Ah, this is
an ongoing complaint," she said. "People say that the program doesn't
always pick the moods and emotions that they expect. The programmer says we are not always aware of what is going on in our subconscious mind. Personally, I find that to be a rather charming and
unexpected benefit. However, if you prefer something more traditional
... With a flick of her wrist, the bodhisattva banished the library to
oblivion, to be replaced by a featureless dining room with angular furniture.

Natch felt a surge of irritation rise inside of him, and quickly
masked it with a PokerFace 83.4b program. Was Margaret trying to
test the limits of his patience, or was this just more paranoia?

"Perhaps you would like a tour of the facilities before we dine,"
said the bodhisattva.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Natch realized that he and
Margaret were not alone. He took a quick glimpse over his shoulder
and discovered that they were being shadowed by an imposing hulk of
a man with enormous biceps and a pale blonde ponytail slung over one shoulder.

"The atrium of the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation," said

Margaret as they walked into a vast domed space. "I don't know
whether you got a chance to see it when you came in." The room was
littered with bland statues celebrating the great pioneers of science:
Aloretus Monk, Tobi Jae Witt, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton. Sheldon
Surina had a prominent place in the canon, of course, as did his protege and sometime rival Henry Osterman. "We try to ease visitors in
to the deeper exhibits with something gentle on the eyes," she said,
though there were no visitors around to illustrate her point. She
motioned at the hallways behind each scientist, all clearly labeled with
his or her respective achievement: Relativity Hall. Subaether Court.
Gravity Way.

Natch gave a polite nod. The Surinas' inane tourist attractions did
not interest him, not when he had to figure out the mystery of this
towering figure with the blonde ponytail. The man stayed half a dozen
paces behind them like a bodyguard might, and gestured to the sentries lurking at every corner using a hand weighed down with an excessive number of gold rings. But if he were part of the security staff,
wouldn't he be wearing the standard green-and-blue Surina livery
instead of loose tan breeches and an open-necked shirt?

Then the three of them stepped out of the Center for Historic
Appreciation into the central courtyard, and Natch caught sight of a
thin copper collar suspended around the man's neck. An Islander!

Natch wondered how he could have missed the other signs: the
uneven muscles that sprouted from manual labor instead of electronic
OCHRE stimulation, the ruddy complexion from too much time in
the sun, the small scars running up and down his arms. Certainly, Margaret couldn't be depending on this man for physical protection. What
good were those tree trunk-sized arms without bio/logics?