Multireal (43 page)

All stand and wait for a presence, a person of gravitas worthy of
honoring the last daughter of the Surinas.

That person emerges from the gates of the Surina residences, following the path recently cleared by the pallbearers. He is a short man
by Western standards, an African with a nose like a miniature fist. His
skin is black enough that the folds on his black-and-white-swirled
robe might be a form of camouflage, while his kink-curled hair is
white enough to match. The crude metal scepter in his hand marks
him as the bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv.

The bodhisattva makes his way to the platform containing the
coffin. All present give him a wide and respectful berth. He bestows a
beatific smile on the assembly and clears his throat to speak.

The world is clouded, but never more so than today. Today our tongues are
confused, and we stand on queer geography. We are here to mourn this woman,
Margaret Surina. This woman, this beacon. Seeker of truth, inventor of miracles. But today we are here to mourn something more. We mourn the Surinas,
whose direct line ended a few days ago. The Surinas brought us not only science
but enlightenment. Their coming heralded the dawn of a new age. Where do we
go from here? To soar or to fall? Will their passing signal an end to the
Reawakening? Will the human spirit slumber once more, or will it rise to glorious deeds?

Natch feels the words bounce off him like rubber. He cannot move
or speak.

Standing before him is Margaret Surina, and she is alive.

She's ghostly, almost insubstantial. She floats through the bodies in
the crowd and comes to rest a meter away, occupying nearly the same
space as a fat man who wears the Plugenpatch uniform. Her hair is
slightly darker than the corpse on the platform, but her eyes are as
luminous as they ever were. She is staring at Natch; she is trying to
speak. No words come from her mouth.

Natch closes his eyes and flees.

He feels himself sinking into the travertine. Sinking through it. Passing down through the rock and soil of the mountain, the flesh of the
Earth. There are civilizations down there in the rock, civilizations completely oblivious to the travails of the Surinas and Andra Pradesh, volcanic races of the almost-was and never-were. Natch passes through them.

Farther, farther down.

He emerges in an endless subterranean network of pipes. Pipes that
form the core of the world. They are just tall enough for a man to stand
in. Natch stands there in a crossroads, a nexus of pipes that extend in
a million directions. Somehow he knows, he sees that these tunnels
extend throughout the Earth. They extend into every city and every
home, into the orbital colonies, through time and space, in universes
alternate and improbable. And down here in the nexus, there is a hatch
for each tunnel, clearly labeled with the names of every man, woman,
and child who has ever, or will ever, live.

Spiderlike creatures scramble in the shadows. They have the hands
and heads of men, which they use to dig, dig, dig. Always digging.
They are constantly at work building these tunnels in a never-ending
construction project. Natch hears them snickering at him.

He picks a hatch at random and draws it open, if only to escape the
infernal laughter. The tube sucks at him like a pseudopod, and he flies
through the roots of the world. Hours it seems he is flying. Then
finally, an ending. A door. Natch opens the door.

It's a gathering. An L-PRACG building outside of Vladivostok, a
center of civic activity and urban planning. There are raised voices. A
memo floats in the air above the floor, its sentences underscored and
highlighted by many different hands. The L-PRACG administrator
stands and raises her fist in defiance, shouting the official government
slogan over and over until the assembled lawmakers join her. A resolution is proposed calling for the immediate resignation of Len Borda
from the Defense and Wellness Council; it passes unanimously.

Natch dives down and secures the hatch behind him. He travels many
kilometers to another door (he hears the spiders' laughter) and opens that.

The financial exchange in Beijing. A man in a crisp gray suit sitting at a desk and examining a long string of facts and figures. There
are distressing rumors, conflicting reports. The analysis programs and
pattern-recognition algorithms he employs advise caution. He consults
with his human partners, and they agree as well. And if the memo really
is a forgery? he asks. It doesn't matter, answers his partner. We get paid to
safeguard our clients' money, not to play politics. If you think the company's
headed for a fall tomorrow, it's headed for a fall tomorrow. The man in the
gray suit nods, sighs. Sells off a cornerstone of the portfolio with a wave
of his hand.

Yet another door.

Transportation workers for TubeCo, underpaid, underutilized,
their jobs insecure. Multi has become ubiquitous and taken away their
livelihood. They stand in a tube train depot, yelling their displeasure
at the labor boss who stands atop a parked tube car above them. Is Len
Borda going to seize the tube or isn't he? one yells. What's that mean for our
jobs? shouts another. The man atop the tube car makes placating gestures, urges calm. Calm? says the workers' resident agitator. Fuck calm!
You've got assurances from the company-but what if they're wrong? We could
have a government takeover in a matter of days. If you're not going to do something about it-we will. Moving as one, a large chunk of the uniformed
workers marches out of the building.

An uneasy Defense and Wellness Council officer, patrolling the
streets in the orbital colony of Allowell. A pack of private security
guards following. Jeering. A tense confrontation in an alleyway. Darts
fired-

Laughter.

Men and women in a station near Sao Paulo, donning the white
robe and yellow star in a panic. Snatching loaded dartguns and disruptors off the racks, along with canisters of black code needles. Positioning themselves on the balcony in a phalanx and aiming weapons at
the approaching mob-

An engineer on the underground transfer system lifting a metal
wrench in the air, striking down at a hollow pipe that plummets into
the bowels of the Earth. He strikes again and again until the pipe
cracks. The conveyors shudder to a halt; a cheer arises from his colleagues-

Then Natch is back in the courtyard at Andra Pradesh.

The bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv is long gone now, and the
litter carrying the dead woman has been taken to the ceremonial grave
inside the Revelation Spire. The crowd is surging in every direction at
once; the blue-and-green Surina security officers are on the move. A
brawl has broken out somewhere, and the group of Islanders is at the
center of it. A trio of white hoverbirds can be seen in the distance,
heading this way.

Stones. There is a mob gathered outside the Center for Historic
Appreciation, and they are throwing stones at the representatives of
the Defense and Wellness Council. The Council contingent forms a
tight phalanx and shoves its way toward the gates of the city.

Natch stifles a smile and runs for cover.

28

January 12,Year 360 of the Reawakening

Natch,

I will try to make this message relatively brief, though you must be aware
such a feat is beyond my means. Plan accordingly. One might suppose that
during the course of a rigorous education in brain stem programming and
engineering, a certain prestigious Lunar university might have endeavored
to teach its pupils how to write-but alas, they did not.

However, I digress. (You smile knowingly. Perhaps fear of my digressions is
what's caused you to ignore my messages for the past few days. Perhaps
you will ignore this one as well. All I can do is press on and assume that I
am reaching you on some level.)

Let me get my typical sententious blather out of the way first.

Natch, you have won many victories in your life. Digging yourself out of
the troubles at initiation and climbing to number one on the Primo's
bio/logic investment guide was quite an achievement. Arranging the transition of MultiReal from Margaret's fefcorp to yours was another. Surely
the popular outcry during the past few days over this disputed Defense
and Wellness Council memo counts as a third.

(Yes, despite what the drudges have called the largest spontaneous outbreak of public protest since the Melbourne riots" [John Ridglee, January
I I], this unrest certainly does not seem spontaneous to me. It has not
escaped my attention that the major events of this crisis-the street
protests in Beijing, the government walkouts in Cape Town, the formal
statements of dissent by the creeds and the L-PRACGs-were coordinated very closely with the drudge news cycles. Your new friend Khann
Frejohr denied any involvement, of course, but his denial arrived just in
time to make Sen Siw Sors evening report. Yet the most incriminatory
piece of evidence is the fact that the tube line between Cisco and Seattle
through the redwoods remains operational, despite an ongoing TubeCo
operators' strike in North America. Quod erat demonstrandum.)

So you have won another victory. The Prime Committee has called for a
special session to resolve the question of MultiReal and promises to debate
the issue for as long as it takes"They have issued subpoenas to you, the
Council, and the Congress.The public, at least, seems willing to put its ire on
hold for a few days and submit to the judgment of the Committee.

But like all your victories, Natch, this one brings you no resolution. It only
qualifies you for a more intricate challenge.

I hardly need tell you the Defense and Wellness Council should not be
underestimated in any circumstance, and especially not when they have
been backed into a cornerYou have already met Len Borda's chief solicitor, Rey Gonerev, but I'm afraid you have never seen her in front of an
audience. I had the misfortune of witnessing a public hearing on orbital
colony subsidies several months ago in which Gonerev proceeded to
slash her opponent's sensible and practical arguments to shreds.There is
a reason the drudges call her the Blade.The Prime Committee will allow
Borda to choose someone to provide an opening statement for the governmentalist position, and I have no doubt that Rey Gonerev is the one
whom the high executive will call.

Now I don't mean to sound defeatist-I have every confidence in your
ability to sway a crowd-but you must be aware that you are fighting an
uphill battle to regain control of this technology. In fact, matters may be
more precarious than everThe Prime Committee is effectively the final
court of appeal, beyond which there are no more legal avenues to which
you can turn. Moreover, I'm sure you know that the governmentalists still
hold a substantial majority on the Committee, and governmentalists rarely
contravene the word of High Executive Borda.

So it's an uphill battle, you tell yourself. It's always been an uphill battle, from
the very beginning.

But there is no such thing as an ordinary battle for you.You tend to wrap
your feelings of self-worth into your battles, Natch. I've observed you
doing this ever since you were a child, and perhaps if I had been better
schooled in the art of parenting I might have done something about it
when I still could.You believe that the outcome of this fight for MultiReal
will determine the success or failure of your entire life just as you believed the same thing about your quest to achieve number one on
Primo's, and your fight to win in the ROD coding market, and so on.

I know I risk sounding like a tedious public service announcement from
Creed Conscientious when I say this, but I will say it anyway: you are not
the work you do in life.

I shall repeat this and isolate it in a separate paragraph, like a professor
emphasizing an important point before final exams.YOU ARE NOTTHE
WORKYOU DO IN LIFE.

We do not often get to declare victories, Natch, and most of them do not
remain victories for very long. Ultimately when you reach my age you
realize that victories are temporary, and in all the years of human history
there is one final battle which nobody has ever won.Time has a way of
changing the terms of your victories over the years, until you begin to
wonder precisely what it was you fought for so viciously, so uncompromisingly. You begin to see that victory and defeat are but alternate reflections from the same prism.You see that the measure of a person really
might be the integrity with which he fought his battles and not their ultimate dispensation, just like your elders have been telling you all along.