Infoquake (38 page)

"Perfection, Natch," said Margaret, with a slight bow. "What a
great environment." She rapped her knuckles on the illusory table, and
gave a wan smile at the SeeNaRee-generated knocking sound.

"We're just wrapping up a few details here," said Natch, his voice
laced with SmoothTalker 142. "Why don't you go ahead and take a seat? I'm sure a few of these chairs are real."

Margaret shook her head quietly. On closer inspection, Jara realized that this was not the same serene woman who had confidently
faced down legions of Defense and Wellness Council troops last night
in front of 700 million people. The bodhisattva looked as if she had
been eviscerated. She had not changed clothes since the speech, and
from the diminished sparkle of her eyes, it looked as if she had not
slept either. "I'm afraid I can't," she sighed, making a noticeable effort
at nonchalance. "There's so much going on. All that trouble out in the
orbital colonies ..." Margaret's voice cracked, and for a minute Jara
could have sworn she was fighting back tears. "Len Borda is furious."

Natch chuckled. "He'd be even more furious if he knew you were
here with me."

"That's a chance I'll have to take. I ... just came to tell you that,
if you're ready, my people will be sending out a release to the drudges."

"Ready as I'll ever be."

"Outstanding." Margaret exhaled loudly. She looked as if she
might melt into the ground right then and there. "We can iron out the
details over the next few weeks."

"So you've spoken to Quell then?"

"Yes. He has decided to stay with the MultiReal project. He's busy
getting everything prepared; he'll be here Saturday at noon."

"With access to the program, I assume."

"Naturally."

Jara was growing irritated at this light exchange. So many pleasantries, so little content. Natch and Margaret Surina could very well
be reciting memorized lines.

"Then Perfection to you, Margaret," said Natch, rising and giving
a deep bow. "It's a pleasure doing business with you, as always."

"And you, Natch. Sheldon Surina once said, There are no ends, only
means. So here's to a long and fruitful partnership."

And with that, she turned and walked away.

"A partnership," said Merri, as her PokerFace morphed into a look of
concerned perplexity.

Natch nodded and made a motion like someone stifling a yawn. He
had replaced his inscrutable mask as soon as Margaret had turned her
back. "The Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp," he said. "Surina/Natch
with a slash. But don't worry, it's mostly a silent partnership. Margaret's handing over all the day-to-day operations to me."

"Suring/Natch!" Horvil bellowed with glee, then pounded out a
drum fill on the table. "Surina/Natch! I can't wait to hear what Aunt
Berilla thinks about that."

"So Margaret provides the product and the capital-" began Merri.

Natch cut her off. "Not the capital. Not all of it, anyway."

"Then where did that come from?" asked Jara, leaning forward to
project her venom as close to Natch as possible.

"A third party."

"What third party? One of those loopy capitalmen you and Merri
reeled in at your fundraising pitches last week?"

"It doesn't matter," snapped Natch, suddenly annoyed. Jara congratulated herself on derailing his train of thought, if only for an
instant.

"So Margaret provides the product, and an apprentice, and
meeting space," continued Merri, shrugging off the interruptions.
"Not to mention a name with four hundred years of history. I don't
mean to be presumptuous, Natch ... but what do we bring to the
table?"

The fiefcorp master sat back with fingers intertwined and raised
one eyebrow. Jara could practically hear the ominous trumpets blaring
out notes of suspense inside Natch's head. "Me."

Jara threw up her hands. "You?" she spat out.

But Natch would not be thrown off-track again; like a mutating
virus, he had already adapted to her caustic attacks. "You're missing
the point," he said calmly. "Margaret is scared. You all saw her standing
there a few minutes ago. She looked like a fucking ghost. She needs to
get MultiReal out to the public, and she needs to do it quickly, before
she becomes a victim of another assassination attempt."

Horvil's eyes went wide and his jaw plummeted. "Assassination
attempt?"

"Why do you think those Council troops were there last night?
And for process' preservation, what do you think the infoquake was? It
was a distraction. It was Len Borda's attempt to create pandemonium
so he could do his dirty work while no one was looking. Except he
made a few miscalculations, and Margaret managed to slip away. Come
on, you didn't really believe that bullshit about a simple bottleneck of
information, did you?"

"I did," muttered Benyamin, blushing furiously. Jara remembered
Sen Sivv Sor's words in that morning's editorial: Wherever you find such
poisonous medicine, there's a human hand nearby administering the dose.

"Well, it's nonsense. Borda wants MultiReal to disappear. He
wants Margaret dead. And the only way to prevent that is to spread
MultiReal far and wide before Borda gets a chance to strike. Because
once everyone from here to Furtoid is swimming in multiple realities,
the Council won't be able to stop it.

"So Margaret needs a good product, and she needs it quickly.
People around her are dying. The Council has already proven they'll
march right into her compound without a second thought. She's never
had to work under pressure before, and she just doesn't know how to
take a product to market on a tight deadline. What does Margaret
need? She needs the best programmers in the world to put together
something marketable now.

"That's where we come in.

"You want quality? The Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp is the best in the business. We've got the best analyst and the best engineer and the best channel manager around. You want fast? We climbed
to number one on Primo's faster than anyone in history. We know how
to work under pressure and we won't be intimidated by anyone."

As Natch's words pricked Jara's skin and sizzled her hormones to a
white-hot intensity, she felt a sudden charge of electricity in the room.
He actually called me the best analyst in the business, she thought. An hour
ago, she was ready to submit to the doldrums of a government desk
job. Jara looked around and noticed that Benyamin and Merri both had
an excited gleam in their eye, and Horvil was actually fidgeting in his
chair like an eight-year-old boy. How in the world does he take control of a
room like that?

"So how long do we have?" said Jara.

"Ten days," replied Natch. "We make our first presentation at
seven p.m. on December 11th, Andra Pradesh time. MultiReal goes on
sale the next day."

Silence descended upon the bio/logic apprentices and snatched the
breath from their lungs. It was already late evening here in Andra
Pradesh. Assuming that Margaret's apprentice arrived with the MultiReal program by Saturday at noon, that would leave them approximately eight days. Eight days to learn a brand-new technology that
promised to revolutionize the world; to adjust to the parameters of a
new company structure; to go through the entire product conceptualization and development cycle; and to perfect that product for release
to billions of voracious consumers. Jara felt like crying. For such a huge
project, eight weeks or even eight months would have seemed too short
a time.

"And what about the Council?" piped in Benyamin.

"What about them?" replied Merri.

"Well, if Len Borda was prepared to murder the richest woman in
the world to get his hands on MultiReal ... what makes you think
he'll hesitate to come after us?"

Jara quietly tallied up in her head all the Council officers she had
seen wandering around this week, prowling the narrow sidestreets of
Andra Pradesh, the avenues of Shenandoah, the cobblestone paths in
front of her London apartment. She usually paid them little heed, the
soldiers in white robes. Keepers of the peace, minions of High Executive Borda and his Javertian obsession with public safety. To be on the
run from such a ubiquitous enemy-it was simply unthinkable.

Natch was grinning that feral grin of his. His eyes had focused on
an invisible spot in the middle of the room, a place where nobody else
was looking. "You still have a choice," he said. "Until midnight
tonight Shenandoah time, you are all still apprentices of the Natch
Personal Programming Fiefcorp. You can either jump on board the
new company with both feet or bail out while you have the chance."

Horvil let out a squeak. Natch swiveled his way. "Gorda?" whimpered the engineer.

"Len Borda," said Natch contemptuously, grinding his teeth as if
chewing his words. "The high executive might have scared Margaret
out of her wits, but he's never dealt with me."

The two men in the tube car were trying very hard to be nonchalant.
Too hard. The taller one with the mole on his cheek completely avoided
looking in Natch's direction, while the short, dark one swept his attention past the fiefcorp master at precise metronomic intervals. Neither
of them took more than a token sip from his mug of nitro.

Natch expected better surveillance tactics from the Defense and
Wellness Council.

The entrepreneur spent the dark hours bouncing between Cisco
and Seattle staring at redwoods. He expected Jara's notice of resignation at any minute. But midnight Shenandoah time arrived with no
message traffic of consequence, just the usual jumble of political propaganda and L-PRACG-sanctioned advertising. He gave one last glance
at the Council spooks and allowed himself to fall into a light sleep.

Natch awoke at three in the morning to find the strange men gone.
He wondered how long it had been since he had actually slept horizontally in a bed rather than vertically on a contoured tube seat. No
matter. He still had plenty of time to make his way back east and prepare the fiefcorp's catalog of bio/logic programs for sale before Quell
arrived with the MultiReal databases. Once the sale of their catalog hit
the market, Natch would have boldly marched across the Rubicon;
there would be no turning back. Had a general ever led his troops into
battle with such nebulous weapons?

Then he stepped off the tube at Cisco station, only to be confronted
by an image of his own face.

On the viewscreen, Natch recognized the three-meter-high photo
from the media blitz following his ascent to number one on Primo's.
He stood and watched his doppelganger tick off a few important
points on his fingers to an unseen interviewer. His face showed that stern look of concentration he got while pacing and talking business.

Superimposed over the image:

Margaret Surina Enters into Partnership
with Unscrupulous Fiefcorp Master;
Future of Groundbreaking
MultiReal Technology in Doubt
(Read about it in this morning's
John Ridglee Update)

Natch hustled through the tube station, an act he could have performed blindfolded by now. Five minutes later, he left the local line
behind and boarded a larger express train that would take him across
the continent to Shenandoah station. A young man with a purplestriped goatee elbowed his friend in the side at Natch's approach. The
two gave him mute looks of disgust and vacated the cabin as soon as
the fiefcorp master sat down.

Must be quite an article, he thought.

Natch projected the story onto the faux leather chair in front of
him. Compared to Sen Sivv Sor's curmudgeonly countenance, Ridglee's
was young and foppish, with left eyebrow so far aslant that it was
almost in orbit. His commentary was similarly skewed. The article
contained little news beyond that contained in the Surinas' press
release, relying instead on a grab bag of fictional anecdotes and unattributed rumors. Yet the drudge had certainly done a thorough job of
digging up the details of Natch's past. Everything was there: the
Shortest Initiation, the confrontations with Captain Bolbund, the citations from the Meme Cooperative, the hardball tactics he had used over
the years against the Patel Brothers.