Multireal (49 page)

"MultiReal will flow freely, whether you wish it or not. That decision
is not yours to make. What you have to decide is whether to swim against
the tide or to take the more practical approach and work with it.

"I thank you, and may you all move towards perfection."

32

Serr Vigal stayed on the floor of the auditorium to answer the Prime
Committee's questions for almost two hours, but Jara found it difficult
to concentrate. The neural programmer's speech had jolted the fiefcorp
from its stupor of pessimism and given them a faint taste of hope. By
the grins on their faces, Khann Frejohr and his libertarian cronies
tasted it too. The city that had seemed like a bloodthirsty circus this
morning suddenly felt like a place of rational discourse and negotiation; in short, like a center of government.

"Ridglee's gloating," said a jubilant Horvil to the rest of the fiefcorpers over ConfidentialWhisper. "Who would have thought that the
greatest surge of momentum the libertarian movement has seen in years would
come from a soft-spoken code pusher from the memecor ps?"

Robby Robby was taming stray tufts of perm with his fingernails.
"What'd I tell ya, Queen Jara?"

"You're right," 'Whispered Jara. "You did tell me. I just didn't
believe Vigal had it in him." She looked down at the neural programmer with new respect. He was responding to a diatribe by the
Vault representative with reserve and polish.

"Well, don't start celebrating just yet," said Benyamin. "Vertiginous is still pretty sour about our chances. Serr Vigal pitted the soft sentimentality of freedom' against the hard-edged realities of safety and security.
I think the libertarians will find soon enough that the Blade is more than
capable of slicing through those arguments. "

Merri: "Anybody catch Natch's reaction?"

There was a glum silence as the fiefcorpers took turns glancing at
the entrepreneur, who appeared not to have moved or even blinked in
the last hour. He might have been a marionette propped up in his
chair, eyes fixed on nowhere and nothing.

"Well, we have one thing to be thankful for," said Horvil a little
while later as the company arose as one to stretch. The Prime Committee had just thanked Serr Vigal for his testimony and adjourned the
hearing for the day.

"What's that?" said Jara.

"We're not going to get any more grief from those MultiReal exposition lottery winners. Captain Bolbund's just been arrested. Practicing
law without a license."

After observing the change of the guard at the Defense and Wellness
Council's Melbourne complex, after annotating the transcript of Serr
Vigal's remarks to the Prime Committee, after examining and reexamining the black code in his dart-rifle, after scouring through the voluminous document that was the Council's budget for the new year,
Magan Kai Lee finally admitted he had nothing to do.

He looked around the office-his home base in Melbourne-where
he had chosen to while away the evening hours. It was a cramped space,
an ill-advised and hastily constructed partition of an executive office
meant for three. Moreover, the prospects for expansion were grim, considering there was no collapsible infrastructure here and you had to
actually find people to move furniture. Rearranging stone walls was out
of the question.

And yet Magan much preferred this office to his more commodious
quarters at Defense and Wellness Council Root. In Len Borda's fortress,
you never knew precisely where you would find yourself when you
stepped outside the door; things moved, walls moved, people moved.
But here in Melbourne, geography was firm and unyielding. Stable.
You could plan where you were going and expect that plan to stick.

Magan turned his attention back to the budget document still
floating on the window. It was the perfect example of the Bordaesque worldview, a labyrinth of ambiguously worded codicils and provisos,
unnavigable to all but the initiated, designed to shift at a moment's
notice.

But the Prime Committee's attentions were focused on the MultiReal situation at the moment. So the budget had sailed through all the
requisite subcommittees, and no one at the Congress of L-PRACGs
had given it much scrutiny either. Thus the high executive's budget
would go into effect without delay, as Borda had predicted, and the
escalation of troops and materiel on the border of the Islander territories would continue unnoticed, as Borda had predicted. Even if
someone wanted to object at this point, it was too late. Tomorrow was
already January 15, the first calendar day of the new year's budget.
Credits would start flowing to the designated Council Vault accounts
in just over an hour.

Lieutenant Executive Lee waved his hand and blanked out the
window display. An empty stone courtyard embossed with a giant
yellow star stared back at him.

January 15.

I give you until the fifteenth of January to take possession of MultiReal,
Borda had told him, standing in that accursed naval SeeNaRee of his.
If you do, we have an agreement. If you don't ...

With all that had happened in the interim-the infoquakes, the
protests, the death of Margaret Surina, Natch's change of fortunewould Len Borda insist on holding to this arrangement? Would he
take such a narrow-minded interpretation of their agreement even
now, when the Council was a mere handful of votes away from legal
control of MultiReal?

And if so, what would he do?

Magan fired off a secure ConfidentialWhisper to Ridgello.
Ridgello, the dependable. Ridgello, the antithesis of mercurial Borda-
ism. "Double the guard at the Tul Jabbor Complex," said Magan. "I
need you ready for anything tomorrow."

The commander responded within seconds, despite the late hour.
"It's done. What should I be anticipating?"

"Anything."

Natch, lying on the mattress of some anonymous Melbourne hotel,
slick with sweat, fighting a turbulent battle against sleep with half a
dozen invigoration programs as confederates. Grappling with slumber
and exhaustion.

The guardian and the keeper.

You'll resist Len Borda to your dying breath. You will resist the winter
and the void.

Hack the body, and the mind will follow.

He flailed himself out of bed, threw on a dressing gown as insulation from the world, and reeled over to the red square tile in the corner.
The lights instantly shifted to candle strength, throwing the shadow
of the desk onto the tile and turning it a harsh crimson.

Then he was on the tile. Then he was falling, plummeting into
multivoid.

His apartment looked different somehow through the prism of the
multi network. All his accoutrements were precisely where he had left
them, down to the bio/logic programming bar that had fallen on the
floor and the partially filled glass of water he had set on the counter
two days ago. Still, there was some indefinable thing missing: an aura,
a presence, an element that lay just below the threshold of corporeality.

No time.

Natch stumbled into his office and waved his hand over the desk to
summon the MindSpace bubble. It expanded out from the tabletop at
not-quite-instantaneous speed until it had swallowed up the desk, swallowed up him. Hovering in the middle of it, as always, the stray MultiReal code Horvil had found in his neural system. The yellow jacket.

Black code, sucking out his life blood ounce by ounce. MultiReal,
warping his mental facilities. The one either sheathed or entombed
within the other.

The nothingness at the center of the universe.

He reached for the rings, Quell's golden rings, the programmers'
pick and shovel, math's household staff. Buried in the confines of his
robe pocket. Impossible for a multi projection to reach? Not tonight.
Natch felt his ethereal multied fingers take on essence and solidify in
the crisp night air, motes of dust made flesh. He clasped the programming rings, and they responded.

Thaumaturgic energy crackled inside the bubble as his ringed fingers entered MindSpace. Threads of data leapt to his fingertips.

Natch attacked.

He bombarded the blob of code with sudden swoops and dives,
contorting his fingers into torturous configurations. The data strands
obeyed his commands. Arcane formulas pounded against the surface of
the yellow jacket like flak as Natch sweated on, minute after minute,
hour after agonizing hour. Day cloaked itself in night, night burst
from day's cocoon, over and over again. And then, as he was on the
verge of losing hope, it happened ... the slightest hairline crack in the
surface of the mysterious code... .

Blackness.

He came to on the floor of the office, dazed, angry. Still in multi, or
maybe he wasn't-what did it matter anymore? Day/night, meat/multi,
awake/asleep: he no longer had confidence in such dualities.

The illicit code mocked him from MindSpace. It mocked him with
the voice of Petrucio Patel, telling him he was not worthy to join the
elite ranks of Primo's. It mocked him with the voice of Captain Bolbund, telling him he did not have the finesse to attract customers.
Brone, pitying him for lagging so far behind in the fight for MultiReal. Margaret, tricking him into signing a defective contract. Magan
Kai Lee, brushing him off as irrelevant.

Standing behind the workbench was a boy. Sandy hair. Ocean blue
eyes.

Who are you? Natch asked the youth. How did you get in here?

The boy shook his head and smirked. Physically he was on the cusp
of adulthood-perhaps fifteen years old-yet he carried an air of
childish vulnerability that belied the cocksure expression on his face.
Come on, even you can figure this one out.

Natch found his feet and brushed himself off. So what do you want?

The boy made a slow, sweeping gesture around the office as if
unveiling a key exhibit at a crucial juncture in trial. Natch followed
the fingertips and took in the sturdy bio/logic programming bars
sprawled across the workbench where he had dropped them the other
day; the stool with the notch on one leg, lolling drunkenly in the
corner; the viewscreen with its permanent display of chaotic financial
exchanges; the ersatz Persian rug that Horvil had solemnly presented
to him as a housewarming gift.