Infoquake (39 page)

The tube hurtled underground for the nearly two-hour trip across
the continent. As daylight gave way to the tunnel's artificial glow, Natch watched his name take over the Data Sea.

Within twenty minutes, the delegates at the Congress of LPRACGs were already quarreling over his partnership with Margaret.
The Sarinas are a public treasure! cried the Speaker on a viewscreen half
a meter from Natch's head. Are we just going to sit back and let this man
peddle their works all over the Data Sea like a common ROD? Dozens of
glum representatives nodded in agreement.

The dour voice of Khann Frejohr broke in from the libertarian side
of the chamber. It's just like the governmentalists to suggest it's our duty to
interfere in the workings of a free marketplace...

Primo's began advertising a special supplement that promised to
analyze Natch's professional career in depth.

At the first opportunity, Sen Sivv Sor weighed in on the crisis,
denouncing the young fiefcorp master in ways Ridglee had only hinted
at. All of the other major players in the biollogic industry are devotees of the
creeds, even the despicable self-serving ones like Creed Thassel, wrote Sor. But
I have looked Natch directly in the eye, dear readers, and saw no evidence that
he possesses any morals or ethics at all.

On the viewscreen, the hooknosed Speaker was crazily waving her
index finger around in the air. We have plenty of precedents for government
intervention in the markets, Khann. Didn't the Prime Committee break up the
OCHRE Corporation?

The libertarian snorted. That was two hundred fifty years ago,
Madame Speaker. Besides which, the Committee was acting to disband a
monopoly. Sounds like democratization to me.

Then how do you explain Dr. Plugenpatch's success? A quasi-governmental entity with open standards that has gloriously extended life
expectancy ...

Natch leaned his head back and let out a deep-belly laugh. The
fools, the fools! He was climbing the peaks of tall mountains, and
down below the Powers That Be could do nothing but scramble
around and bicker over the pebbles. He could see the paradise that awaited him at the top now: lunar estates, immutable wealth, the
stewardship of an entire industry.

And what an industry it would be! Natch didn't know precisely
the shape a MultiReal business would take-an egalitarian product
sold to the masses? A technology channeled to the L-PRACGs? Military licenses to the Council and the Prime Committee? No matter
what path the business took, it would inevitably lead him to the same
glorious future.

Natch laughed again. Three more riders in the tube gave him
peculiar looks and rose to find other seats.

Natch's good mood lasted through the morning, until Horvil began
flinging panicked multi requests in his direction. Natch knew his old
hivemate was in a panic; that was the only logical explanation for
Horvil being awake and alert before noon.

"Drop everything," said the engineer, materializing in Natch's
foyer and lumbering his way towards the office. "Drop everything,
everything, everything."

Natch was in MindSpace, stacking chunks of recursive code on a
ledge of NiteFocus 50 like a boy lining up dominos. After fifty iterations, he would have expected the program to be perfect, but the more
mindpower he devoted to NiteFocus, the more problematic it seemed
to become. "What is it, Horv?"

Horvil emitted a harrutnph and sliced his left hand through the line
of dominos to catch his boss's attention. "You're going to want to turn
off the bubble for this, Natch," he said. "Trust me." The fiefcorp master
looked on skeptically as Horvil waved his hand at a viewscreen on the
opposite wall.

A holographic projection of Petrucio Patel appeared in front of the
screen. He was by far the handsomer of the two Patel brothers, and actually cut quite a dashing figure in his triple-buttoned suit and
wispy black mustache. The projection was a recording, of course;
Natch knew from experience that his hated rival was much taller in
real life.

"Towards Perfection," said Petrucio Patel in a rich baritone. "We
say that all the time to one another, for hello, for goodbye, for peace,
for health. `Towards Perfection.' But do we really know what it means?
Well, Sheldon Surina knew. The Father of Bio/Logics said that Perfection is a safe shore in the tempest. "

"Slick bastard," Horvil mumbled under his breath.

"Shhh."

"Isn't a safe shore what we're all looking for?" continued Petrucio
Patel. "But as the events of last night have clearly shown us, we live in
a time without charted waters or safe shores ... unless you're using
one of the Patel Brothers' new MultiReal programs, under direct
license from Margaret Surina herself."

Natch could feel a hole open up in the small of his back, out of
which slithered a host of hidden anxieties. The Patels with a license to
sell MultiReal? How was that possible? He turned off the MindSpace
bubble and sank onto a stool.

Petrucio waved his brown-skinned hand and summoned forth a
typical programming floor. Behind him in the shadows, half a dozen
apprentices toiled away in their MindSpace bubbles, while the portly
silhouette of Frederic Patel waddled from one workbench to the next.
"PatelReal 1.0 will bring you a whole set of practical applications for
multiple realities that are safe enough to use in your own home," said
Petrucio. As soon as the word safe passed from his lips, a second
Petrucio materialized on his left. Same triple-buttoned suit, same
debonair smile.

"PatelReal easily keeps track of the confusion and complexity of
multiple realities," said the second Petrucio. And with a nod, he
brought forth a third clone. "PatelReal can help you navigate the troughs and waves of multiple realities ... and bring you to a safe
shore! "

Finally, the third Petrucio Patel snapped his fingers, causing the
rest of the display to vanish. "The Patel Brothers: a safe shore in the
tempest," said the lone remaining Patel. "Now, we know you have
questions-and we have answers! Come attend the world's first demonstration of MultiReal technology next Tuesday, at the Kordez Thassel
Complex near the Twin Cities. See PatelReal 1.0 in person! Until then,
Towards Perfection-and a safe shore!"

The slick programmer took a bow, and vanished.

Questions buzzed like hornets inside Natch's head, too many and too
fast to handle. He sat paralyzed on his stool, feeling like he himself had
wandered into some kind of alternate reality. Horvil collapsed in a
quivering heap on the visitor's chair in the corner.

Just when Natch thought he had everything figured out, just when
he knew who all the players were in this game, the rules had suddenly
changed. How could he have agreed to form a new company with Margaret when his greatest enemies had already struck a licensing deal
with her? Was this entire MultiReal project a trap? Who else had a
piece of MultiReal?

Natch's mind flashed back to the bio/logics industry gathering
before Margaret's speech and his confrontation with Frederic Patel. So
that's the game you two are playing, eh? the engineer had said, and Natch
had naively assumed that Frederic had been speaking to him.

Natch's legs began to ache; he climbed slowly to his feet and began
marching back and forth across the office. He needed to explore the
practical dimensions of this latest news, not to mention the legal and
financial dimensions. It wouldn't be long now before word of this
debacle reached the drudges. Merri, Jara and Benyamin would have questions. Vigal would be sending him an awkward message of condolence any minute now.

Two minutes later, a multi request did indeed click inside his head.
But it was not from a fiefcorp employee. Natch grabbed a bio/logic
programming bar off his workbench and clutched it like a samurai
warrior as he accepted the request.

Brone.

"Gaaah!" shouted a distressed Horvil as the Thasselian strode into
the room. If the engineer had been present in the flesh, his recoil would
have sent him tumbling backwards and probably smashed the chair to
bits.

"Still the same after all these years, I see, Horvil," Natch's old
enemy said with a minuscule trace of amusement.

"But-but you're ..."

"What? Dead?" said the bodhisattva with a dismissive snort. "No,
not yet, I'm afraid, despite your friend's best efforts."

Natch eyed his old enemy frostily. The prosthetic arm, false eye
and scars were still evident, but now Brone wore them as comfortably
as he wore his expensive cream-colored suit. Horvil did not seem to
have even noticed his handicaps yet.

Then Natch caught sight of the three vertical stripes pinned to
Brone's chest, the emblem for Creed Thassel, and the tumblers in his
mind began to turn. The Thasselians ... Brone ... the Kordez
Thassel Complex ... Petrucio Patel's demo next week ...

"Did you have anything to do with this?" he snapped.

A puzzled Brone blinked several times in quick succession. "Did I
have anything to do with what?" he replied calmly.

Natch looked his old hivemate in the eye and tried to penetrate
that thick gauze of death. Could he actually be telling the truth? "Play
it back, Horv," he said with a shrug. "I'm sure that promo's all over the
Data Sea anyway."

Horvil had caught sight of Brone's rubbery right hand, and now couldn't stop staring at it. "Fffft," he said, tilting his head slightly in
the direction of the viewscreen.

The Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel looked around for somewhere to
sit, but his search only turned up the chair that Horvil had planted
himself in and the stool Natch was zealously guarding. He turned
towards the viewscreen, then stood in a dead-on imitation of politeness
while the holographic Petrucio went through his spiel. A small smile
gathered on Brone's face as he watched the performance.

"Quite clever," said Brone after Patel faded into nothingness. "The
whole world's in an uproar over this `infoquake' nonsense ... and now
the Patel Brothers of all people are going to show us the way to safety.
How disingenuous."

"You didn't answer my question," said Natch through gritted
teeth.

"Creed Thassel might be a small organization, Natch, and yes, I
am the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel. But there are still a few hundred
thousand devotees on the rolls. Even if I knew whether Frederic and
Petrucio have embraced our philosophy-which I don't-you certainly
can't expect me to know what they're up to twenty-four hours a day."

"They're holding a demo at the Kordez Thassel Complex."

"Creed Elan and the Vault directors and the Meme Cooperative
hold meetings there all the time," shrugged Brone. "You don't suspect
them of being Thasselian spies, do you?"

Natch growled vehemently and raised the programming bar in his
hands as if preparing to strike. Why did Brone always have to show up
when his head was so full of cobwebs? "So what the fuck are you doing
here?" he said.

"Business." Brone drifted over to the workbench and began
studying the bio/logic programming bars with his virtual fingers.

Horvil, his jowls flapping, whipped his head back and forth
between the two old rivals. Comprehension dawned on his face in a
sudden rush. "He's the `third party' that's financing us?"

"'Third party'?" said Brone mockingly, his gaze suddenly focused
on the engineer. "Your master and I are business partners now, Horvil.
Surely you know that already. Natch needs some quick cash to get in
on Margaret Surina's game. He goes looking for all those business associates who like him and trust him enough to make this kind of investment-and he can't come up with a single name. Certainly a mathematician like you can see the inevitable approach of consequence."

The engineer gave his master a wounded look. "You could have
come to me."

Brone walked over and regarded Horvil with an otherworldly stare.
The engineer flinched out of reflex. "Be realistic, Horvil. What would
your Aunt Berilla think? She'd start moralizing. Or worse, she'd start
asking for shares. No, Natch would rather go to a faceless organization
like Creed Thassel, where he can work strictly on a cash basis." Brone
knelt slowly on the floor and leaned forward until he was close enough
to kiss Horvil's nose. "And do you know why?"