Multireal (10 page)

"I'm back," agreed the entrepreneur.

"For real this time, right?" The engineer poked him in the collarbone
with one grubby finger. "Not just another five-minute stop-by in multi?"

"For real."

"About time," grumbled a voice from the back of the atrium.
Horvil shuffled aside to reveal his cousin Benyamin, who was rising
from one of the stiff-backed chairs that lined the building's front hall.
"Your apartment won't let us in," he said, stretching his arms up in the
air with fingertips clasped.

"Well, that's not completely true," said Horvil with a frown.
"Vigal, Jara, and me, we can all override the security just fine. But you
never approved everyone else for emergency access."

"So we've been stuck working out here," continued Ben.

"At least the building management was nice about it," said Horvil.
"They could've kicked us out. But they didn't. They even let us drag
the workbench out here once or twice."

"You can thank her for that." The young apprentice tilted his head
slightly to the left, indicating another roomier chair where the channel
manager, Merri, had taken up residence. Merri struggled to stand, suppressed a yawn, then switched on a stim program to suffuse her with
some energy.

Natch took in the blonde woman's disheveled dress and the backpack propped slantwise against the leg of an end table. Suddenly he realized that, unlike Benyamin, Merri was here in the flesh and probably
hadn't been home since the demo at Andra Pradesh. "Why are you still
here?" Natch asked incredulously. "Why didn't you go back home?"

Merri shrugged with embarrassment. "I know how expensive it is to
teleport to Luna," she said. "It's just not worth wasting the company's
money. And I'm not up to one of those long shuttle rides right now."

"Someone else would've put you up. Horvil's Aunt Berilla has a
fancy estate in London. They must have a thousand spare bedrooms."

"It's not a big deal, Natch. The local Creed Objectivv hostel works
just fine."

"But you've got a companion on Luna," Benyamin retorted. "Bonneth needs you, you said. She can barely get across the apartment by
herself-"

"Bonneth," said Merri with an air of tired finality, "will be fine."
Natch sensed undercurrents of tension between the two fiefcorpers, but
decided this was something he could deal with another time. He shook
his head, stepped around the pleasantly befuddled Horvil, and strode
down the hall to his apartment with three apprentices in tow.

Jara seemed to have anticipated Natch's arrival before he even made
it in the door. The tiny fiefcorp analyst was perched on the arm of
Natch's sofa, contemplating an ornate holographic calendar floating in
midair. "We need to talk scheduling, Natch," she announced without
even looking up, as if continuing a conversation already in progress.

The fiefcorp master paused a moment and let the comfortable trappings of home flood his senses: the windows showing bar charts of the bio/logic markets, the workbench in his office with a trapezoidal structure bobbing above it in MindSpace, the sprightly patch of daisies in
the apartment's precise geometric center. A cup of tea on the kitchen
counter gave mute testimony to Serr Vigal's presence. "Where's
Vigal?" asked Natch.

"Here I am," came the voice of the neural programmer as he wandered in from the balcony. Natch thought he spotted a few more gray
hairs in his old guardian's goatee and an unusual amount of concern
written on his wrinkled forehead. Serr Vigal surprised the both of them
by taking Natch into a tight embrace.

"I'm glad you're back," mumbled Vigal.

"Me too," said Natch.

The moment was brief. There would be plenty of time later for
sentimentality; right now Natch had business to attend to. He stepped
free of the neural programmer's arms and began his normal hectic pace
around the living room. Benyamin and Horvil hustled to find seats.
"Everybody here? Someone's missing. Where's Quell?"

Merri settled into a quiet corner on the floor next to the balcony
and sat with her legs crossed. "Quell went to get a bite to eat," she said.
"He kept complaining about the food in your building, so we found
him an Indian restaurant down the street. He should be back in a few
minutes."

"Where's he been sleeping?"

The channel manager shrugged her shoulders. "I think he rented a
room somewhere."

"Fine," said Natch with a flip of his hand. "Okay, Jara. Scheduling.
Go."

"This was the day of our presentation at Andra Pradesh," said Jara,
pointing to the holographic calendar. The square marked Tuesday,
December 6 popped off the calendar like a kernel of corn on the flame.
"And here's today." December 28 leapt up, causing the previous three
weeks to cascade off the surface of the holograph. "The public hasn't heard a peep out of us in three weeks. No press releases, no timetables,
no demos, nothing."

"Natch's been a little busy," snorted Horvil, who had appropriated
the chair-and-a-half for his ass and the matching ottoman for his feet.

"Granted," said Jara. "But the public doesn't know that. Three
weeks is an eternity in bio/logics. It's a good thing the Council pulled
that little stunt yesterday, because people were wondering if he was
still alive."

"Don't even joke about that," muttered Vigal, balancing his cup of
tea on one palm as he found a place on the couch between Ben and Jara.

"Magan Kai Lee swoops down here with dartguns blazing, and you
call that a little stunt?" said Horvil. "If Natch hadn't warned us to stay
clear, we could've all been killed."

Jara did not back down. "Come on, Horv," said the analyst. "The
Council just wanted to scare him. They weren't planning on killing him."

Ben let out a harrumph. "How do you know that?"

"Because," replied the analyst as calmly as a proctor explaining
arithmetic to a hive child. "Natch can't hand MultiReal over to the
Council if he's dead, now can he?"

Benyamin's mouth clamped shut. Silence enveloped the apartment.

Jara continued. "Listen, Ben. We're talking about basic Data Sea
networking principles. Len Borda can't just steal the MultiReal code
from Natch. He needs core access, or Natch could just lock him out of
the program whenever he felt like it. And core access on the Data Sea
isn't something the Council can fake. They'd need the matching signatures tied up in Natch's OCHRE system. It's practically impossible
to crack."

Serr Vigal nodded sagely. "She's right," he said. "Even the Defense
and Wellness Council can't circumvent Data Sea access controls."

The young apprentice refused to give up. "They could get core
access from Margaret."

"Sure," said Horvil, picking at a loose thread on his jacket. "But think of it this way. There're two people in the world with the master
key to MultiReal. One of them's holed up in a tower with five thousand armed guards, and one of them's just hanging out in an apartment
building. Who would you go after?"

"This is all beside the point," continued Jara. "Without Natch's
cooperation-or Margaret's-Borda wouldn't even be able to find the
code. You can't just trace subaether transmissions. He'd have to search
every qubit on the Data Sea with pattern recognition algorithms. Even
using the fastest computational engine in existence, that'd take ..

Arithmetic fluttered behind Horvil's closed eyelids as he yanked
the string on his jacket free. "Two thousand one hundred twenty-nine
years. No, wait. Maybe four hundred eighty-eight years. Or ..."

Jara raised her eyebrows and extended an open palm in the engineer's direction. "A long time, at any rate."

"But if the Council couldn't find MultiReal, then nobody could find
it," protested Ben. "It would just float on the Sea forever with all the
other useless crap. If Len Borda's trying to get rid of MultiReal,
wouldn't that suit him just fine? Get rid of Natch and Margaret, and
then nobody has core access."

"Yes, but what if Borda wants to keep MultiReal for himself?" said
Jara.

Benyamin leaned forward on the sofa and ran one hand through his
inky black hair. "I must be missing something," he said. "This doesn't make
any sense. If Borda can't take MultiReal away, and he can't kill Natch,
then all he can do is threaten, right? What are we so worried about?"

Horvil put a hand on the young apprentice's shoulder. "Do I really
need to spell it out for you, Ben?" he asked in a throaty whisper.

All conversation came to a halt. Bio/logics could do much to shield
the human body from pain, but in the wrong hands it could also be
used to cause pain. Over the years, unscrupulous groups had devised
OCHREs that injected painful toxins directly into muscle and bone,
nightmare SeeNaRees that tapped into their victims' darkest fears, and programs that directly stimulated the pain centers of the brain. Who
could say which of these techniques the Council used?

Natch stopped midpace in front of the window, silhouetted by the
Shenandoah morning. "The Patel Brothers are giving another demo
this Sunday."

The rest of the company blinked in surprise. Nobody had noticed that
Natch hadn't said anything for several minutes. Merri gulped uneasily and
gave Horvil a sidelong glance. "I was going to mention that," she said.
"How did you know, Natch? The Patels haven't even announced it yet."

"Well, how did you know?" asked Horvil.

"Robby Robby," replied the channel manager. "It's his business to
know what's happening in the sales world. And it's my business to
know what he knows."

Natch could feel the stares of his fellow fiefcorpers, but he paid
them no mind. His eyes were locked on that pulsing square labeled
Tuesday, December 6, hovering menacingly near Jara's fingers like an
accusation. How was it possible for three weeks to slip through his fingers and vanish without a trace? Already those days on the tube were
becoming ghostly, indistinct, something from a dream. Jara was right:
three weeks was an eternity in bio/logics. What unspeakable malice
had the black code inside him unleashed during those three weeks?

"Natch ... ?" Vigal prodded gently.

The fiefcorp master blinked hard, trying to get his mind back into
balance. He focused on the holographic calendar. How did he know
about the Patel Brothers' demo? The same way he had known about
Magan Kai Lee's failed incursion into his apartment building. Some
might label it intuition or foresight, but to Natch it was simply algebra;
all you needed to do was to churn through the variables and eliminate
the cruft, and you would inevitably arrive at the solution. Couldn't
they see the reddish aura surrounding that square labeled January I?
Couldn't they tell the Patel Brothers were giving a demo that day just
by looking at it?

"So what did Robby find out about this demo?" Natch asked
Merri. "Any indication what they're doing?"

"Not really. Just vague rumors. They've booked an auditorium at
the Thassel Complex, but it's not one of the larger-capacity halls.
We're guessing it's an industry-only event. Robby thinks he can get
one of us in without too much trouble."

"I'll go," said Jara.

The fiefcorp master nodded and began to pace once more. "So how
do we respond?"

Horvil did some mental extrapolation of his own, then dropped his
face dramatically into the palms of his hands. "Shit," he said, nose poking
through his thick fingers, "you're not gonna put us through all that crap
again, are you, Natch? Another demo in less than seventy-two hours?"

Natch shook his head, and the rest of the fiefcorpers released their
breath simultaneously. "There's no point," he said. "The demo at
Andra Pradesh showed everyone that we're the standard bearers in this
business now. If we scramble to beat Frederic and Petrucio to the
punch again, it'll just look like we're being defensive. Better for us to
schedule something on our own timetable. Take a little time to get this
one right."

Jara gave a curt nod of agreement. "So, when?" She swept her hand
across the calendar, causing entire rows of dates to ripple smoothly off
the surface. Her fingers drifted down toward February in a transparent
effort to bring Natch's attention to a later date.

Natch studied the chunks of time floating in the middle of the
room and rubbed his chin. To Natch, each day had a unique flavor that
he could roll on his tongue like wine. Few recognized the distinctions
between weekdays and weekends anymore, and nobody but lawyers
and accountants observed the new year. But there were a few days that
seemed disturbingly rancid, for reasons he couldn't discern. January 15
stood out as a particularly bad day, and the whole following week
tasted as bitter as ash.

"January 8," he said at length. "A week from Sunday."

More relieved sighs. Given what the fiefcorp had gone through for
the last demo, eleven days felt like a century.

"It's too bloody quiet in here," came a gruff voice from the
doorway. "Let's hear some more noise."

Quell strode in, his breath stinking of saffron and bay leaves. The
Islander looked as if he could have curled the rest of the fiefcorp with
one massive biceps. The thin copper collar around his neck feeding
him the sights and sounds of the virtual world seemed more uncomfortable than ever.

"You're missing all the excitement," said Horvil to his fellow engineer. "It's demo time again."

"Fun," said the Islander, voice doused with sarcasm. "I can't wait."
He walked over to Natch and enacted his peculiar Islander custom of
clasping hands and shaking.

Natch stood before the window for a moment with his hands
behind his back. Staring. "No, not a demo," he said. "An exposition."

Benyamin let out a skeptical phfft. "What's the difference?"

"A demo is a preview. An exposition is a celebration." The fiefcorp
master's statement was greeted by a confused silence. He stepped back
and spread his arms toward the window as if unveiling a marquee.
"Picture this: a field of grass, a huge crowd. Two teams playing baseball, every single player using MultiReal."