Infoquake (13 page)

"Sheldon Surina said that," Vigal continued gently.

"What did he mean?"

"Well, if you believe your proctors, Surina meant that everyone
should experience the struggle of humanity from darkness to light.
They think that Surina would have wanted you to see what life was like
before the Reawakening. Make you appreciate the modern world
more."

"And what do you think?"

The man stared off into the distance and tugged at his peppery
goatee. "I don't know. I think maybe Sheldon Surina just wanted
everyone to keep an open mind and be nice to each other."

Natch tried to refrain from rolling his eyes. It was typical of the
advice he received from Serr Vigal: pleasant, inoffensive, and mostly
useless. "I thought you couldn't come," he said. "I thought you were
speaking at a conference."

Vigal frowned. "Yes, that's right. But I convinced one of my
apprentices to cover for me. At least, I think she said she would cover
for me...." Vigal's eyes searched the ground as if he might find
answers woven into the Aztec patterns on the carpet. Finally, he gave
a self-deprecating shrug. "Well, there's nothing I can do about it now."
Natch noticed the neural programmer's baffled expression and stifled a
smile. It was impossible to get mad at Serr Vigal. He might be hopelessly out of touch, but at least he had a sense of humor about it.

"Come," said the older man, clapping a virtual hand on Natch's
shoulder. "Let's take a walk in the garden, and I'll give you the last bit
of sentimental nonsense you'll have to endure for the next twelve
months."

The Proud Eagle's garden was the envy of metropolitan Cape Town.
Gargantuan sunflowers sat alongside lush poppies and forbidding
cacti, all growing in the shadows of redwoods, bonsai and elm. Natch
had been training himself for initiation by trying to identify things
that would not exist without Sheldon Surina's science of bio/logics, and
this improbable congregation of plants was one of them. It was easy to
forget that bio/logics dealt not only with the programming of the
human body, but with other organic structures as well.

Serr Vigal kept his silence for several minutes. Natch could feel the
hair on the back of his neck standing at attention as his guardian gave
him one of those world-weary stares. The boy put his hands in his
pockets and did his best to ignore it.

Natch wondered for the millionth time what kind of relationship Vigal had really had with his mother. Had he loved her? Had they
slept together? Would they be bonded companions now if Lora had not
been infected by that epidemic in the orbital colonies? It was a pointless exercise. All Natch ever managed to pry out of Vigal was the
skeletal structure of a life story. Sometimes Natch suspected the neural
programmer was really his father, but Genealogy Sleuth 24.7 concluded that the differences in their DNA made such a relationship
unlikely at best.

"I hear some of your hivemates are starting their own fiefcorps after
initiation," said Vigal abruptly.

Natch nodded. "A few of them."

"Your friend Brone among them, I suppose."

A flurry of emotions washed through Natch's mind as he considered the visage of his hated rival. The two had spent most of their
childhood warily circling one another like fencers, always testing and
probing for weaknesses. Over the past year, Natch's competition with
Brone had turned into full-scale war. "Krone is not my friend," he said
through gritted teeth.

Natch's malice passed right over Vigal's head. "What about
Horvil?"

"He doesn't know."

"And you? After the hive, after initiation, what then?"

There was a pause. "I've had ... a few meetings."

Vigal exhaled softly and pretended to study a hanging grapevine.
"I see."

Another period of silence followed. Serr Vigal seemed to be marshaling the courage to say something. Meanwhile, Natch could see
through the hothouse windows that the commotion in the hive
building was dying down. Families were giving their sons and daughters one last virtual embrace before cutting their multi connections.
Natch and his fellows would be on their way to initiation in just
eighteen hours.

"Listen, Natch," said his guardian finally. "I'd like to give you
some advice before you head out to initiation. It's just ... I'm not very
good at this kind of thing. As you know, raising a child wasn't something I planned. It sort of fell in my lap by accident.... And now,
after all this time, I'm not sure how to begin...." Vigal stopped and
collected his thoughts, aware he had not exactly gotten off to an auspicious beginning. "Natch, I have tried to give you the education your
mother would have wanted you to have. She believed her hive did not
adequately prepare her for the world. And now I wonder if the same
thing will prove to be the case with you, here at the Proud Eagle."

"That's ridiculous," snapped Natch, instantly on the defensive.
"Everybody knows that this is one of the best hives in the world."

"And how does one measure that?"

"Well, the capitalmen seem to think so. Do you know how many
programmers from last year's class got funding for their own fiefcorps?"

"Too many, if you ask me."

Natch shrugged. He would not be lured into one of these pedantic
Vigalish dialogues today. "Things are different now. The economy is
exploding, and there's too much opportunity out there to waste time
on an apprenticeship. Two years ago-"

The neural programmer shushed him with a raised hand. His face
bore a pained expression. "I hear that nonsense from the drudges every
day. I'm surprised that you, of all people, don't know propaganda when
you read it. But it's not just you-your hivemates, the proctors, Brone,
Horvil-everyone is falling for this drivel." Vigal wrung his hands as
if trying to cleanse them of a foul and noxious liquid.

Natch searched his mental catalog of conversations with the neural
programmer, but this outburst of emotion from Vigal was unprecedented. Natch never imagined that Vigal had given much thought to
his education, much less had any passionate convictions about it.

"Krone believes he is ready to start his own business," Vigal con tinued firmly. "Let him. He is a vicious person headed for a vacuous
career, and he will be sorry he turned down a few extra years of study
without the pressures of the marketplace. But you, Natch, you're better
than that. You are not ready to run your own company. If you jump into
the fiefcorp world too quickly, you will regret it."

Natch reeled back, stunned, and sat on the edge of a stone planter.
He had never received a reprimand from Serr Vigal, and now it stung
like a jolt from Brone's static electricity program. "So, what would you
have me do?" he spat out bitterly.

"Natch, I can't have you do anything," said Vigal. Already his concentration was beginning to dissipate, to fade into everyday melancholy. "Once you return from initiation, you'll be old enough to make
your own choices. You can subscribe to your own L-PRACGs, pledge
to whatever creeds you choose. You can solicit capitalmen for funds and
start your own fiefcorp, if you want. But ... if I could wish anything
for you, it would be that you would take an apprenticeship somewhere
close ... somewhere I can keep an eye on you." His face turned an
embarrassed red.

So that's what this is all about, thought Natch. He hadn't expected a
sermon from his legal guardian-in fact, he hadn't expected Vigal to
show up today at all. But now that the sermon had become a referendum on his parenting skills, things were starting to make sense.

Serr Vigal exhaled deeply and stretched his arms out behind his
back, as if he had just removed a heavy weight from his back. Natch
realized his guardian had been rehearsing this speech for some time. "I
can see the look in your face," said his guardian softly. "I've seen your
scores on the bio/logics exams, Natch. Best in your class."

"Second best," the boy whispered venomously. Brone's smug face
leered at him from the corners of his mind.

"It doesn't matter. The point is, I know you are expecting lots of
offers from the capitalmen. No, you don't have to tell me about your
meetings-I already know. I'm not asking you to make any decisions right now. We'll talk about it again in twelve months. All I ask for
now is that you keep your eyes and ears open, and consider the idea of
taking an apprenticeship-any apprenticeship-after initiation. And
be careful out there."

The boy frowned and kicked at the moss growing between the
flagstones. "You don't have to baby me. I know how to take care of
myself."

"Yes," sighed Vigal under his breath, "and sometimes I am afraid
that is all you know."

Natch was used to prowling the hallways of the Proud Eagle alone at
night. He had learned to move in total silence, not out of any fear of
punishment, but so he could concentrate on the staccato language of
settling floorboards and restless insects. The kinds of noises only heard
in places built prior to the invention of self-compressing buildings.

On the night before initiation, the halls were packed. Teenagers
roamed from room to room in blatant violation of curfew, saying
tearful goodbyes, pledging their undying love, settling old scores.
Natch saw at least a dozen couples sneak behind closed doors for one
last romp on the Sigh. Nervous giggles abounded. He took a furtive
glance down the hallway to the proctors' wing. They were following
the time-honored tradition of looking the other way and getting
drunk.

Over the past week, Natch had been studiously reading the drudge
forecasts of the bio/logic market. This year, the demand for fresh programming talent had reached a critical mass. The Meme Cooperative's
rules forbid fiefcorps and memecorps from signing on apprentices or
providing start-up capital before graduation from the hive. But Len
Borda's post-Plunge economy was churning out opportunity much
quicker than warm bodies, and so many companies were willing to risk the Cooperative's tepid penalties.

Natch had studied the laws of supply and demand. What better
time to raise money for a fiefcorp than the night before initiation?

Downstairs, he stretched out on a sofa in the atrium to await the
arrival of the capitalman Figaro Fi. It was the fifth late-night rendezvous Natch had arranged this week with the power brokers in the
fiefcorp world, and the most important yet. The rich and eccentric Fi
had bankrolled some of the most spectacular successes on Primo's.
Lucas Sentinel and the Deuteron Fiefcorp both owed their laurels to
Figaro's generous assistance, as did the Patel Brothers, the rising young
stars of the bio/logic scene. Natch was surprised to get a meeting with
the capitalman at all, and readily agreed to his conditions-a meeting
in the middle of the night, when Figaro was halfway through his
working day in Beijing. Natch explained that the network was offlimits to students so late. He took it as a good omen that Fi agreed to
multi to Omaha instead.

At three minutes after midnight, when the ruckus from the upper
floors had settled to a low rumble, a multi projection materialized in
the atrium.

The person who had coined the phrase Don't judge a book by its cover
might have had someone like Figaro Fi in mind. The great capitalman
stood almost a head shorter than any of the proctors on staff-shorter,
even, than many of the boys-and he was almost as wide as he was tall.
His robe, of vivid gold, silver, and copper, made a bold proclamation
of idiosyncrasy. Each stubby finger was adorned with a ring; some
boasted three or four. Figaro endured the boy's respectful bow and gave
a feeble nod in return.

Natch looked the capitalman straight in the eye. "I invited you
here tonight," he said, "because I'm interested in your money."

Fi appraised him coolly, like a rancher surveying his lands. "Is that
so?" His voice was a low rasp, rich with irony.

"If you're not prepared to open your Vault account, then you'd better cut your multi connection right now and not waste any more of
my time. Otherwise, follow me." And with that, Natch wheeled
around and headed down the hallway.