Multireal (14 page)

After Len Borda's aggressive posturing of late, the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp's
announcement of a MultiReal exposition is not only brilliant, it's courageous. It puts Natch and his apprentices out in the open when a lesser
man would seek the shadows. It's a bold and clear statement to the
Defense and Wellness Council: we are not afraid of you.

And the symbolism of twenty-three lucky lottery winners playing MultiReal soccer shouldn't be lost on anyone either. Let's hope the twentythree members of the Prime Committee are watching these soccer
players carefully.

Sen Sivv Sor, meanwhile, was covering another promising development: the burgeoning membership of a creed called Libertas. The organization had been skulking around the periphery of the libertarian movement
for years. But suddenly, with the election of Khann Frejohr as speaker of the
Congress of L-PRACGs, the membership ranks of Creed Libertas were
exploding. And the match that had set off the powder keg was nothing less
than Magan Kai Lee's raid on Natch's apartment. In the past few days alone,
the creed had pledged another fifteen to twenty million devotees.

There was plenty more, but Jara was suddenly interrupted by a
multi request. Horvil.

She leapt out of bed, darted into the breakfast nook with the speed
of a panther, and began a frenzied effort to straighten the countertop.
What are you doing? the analyst scolded herself. It's Just Horvil. She
abandoned the breakfast nook to its sloppery ten seconds later and
accepted Horvil's multi request. It had to be pretty important for the
engineer to be up this early in the morning.

Horvil sidled in from the foyer, managing to look both furtive and
transparent at the same time. His left hand was clenched tightly in his
vest pocket, while his right nervously raked through rows of black
hair. "I need to talk to you about something," he said.

Oh no, thought Jara, suddenly realizing why she had reacted the
way she did. This was the first time the two of them had been alone
since that awkward scene in the Center for Historic Appreciation. All
I care about is not losing you, Horvil had told her as they crouched
between the toes of the Sheldon Surina statue, waiting for their doom
at the hands of the Defense and Wellness Council.

Jara looked in that chubby face now and auditioned a series of emotions-embarrassment, unease, gratification, reticence-but none of
them seemed to fit the part. Finally she sat down in an easy chair and
braced herself for whatever Horvil might have to say. "What is it?" she
managed finally.

Horvil threw himself down on the couch opposite her and exhaled
loudly from one side of his mouth. "It's-it's about Benyamin."

The analyst blinked rapidly in surprise. "Benyamin?"

"He's being blackmailed."

It took Jara a few seconds to refocus her mental lenses. Who could
possibly be blackmailing Ben? The answer leapt into her mind after a
moment's study. "That woman at Berilla's assembly-line shop. The one
who manages the programming floor."

Horvil nodded ruefully. "Greth Tar Griveth," he said. "She's asking
for credits. Lots of credits."

"Just to keep things quiet from your Aunt Berilla? This is ridicu lous, Horv. After all that's happened in the past month, can't Ben just
tell his mother he's hired her shop to do the assembly-line work on
MultiReal? It's not like we won't pay her. Would she really shut down
the programming floor?"

"You don't know her," replied the engineer with a sad shake of the
head. "Berilla hates Natch. She's trying to mobilize that whole creed of
hers to pass these official statements condemning him. If she finds out
one of her shops is doing barwork for our fiefcorp-fuck yeah, she'll
shut down the programming floor. In a heartbeat."

Jara made a dismissive gesture with the flick of a wrist. "Why are
you even bothering me with this?" she said. "There's a thousand good
assembly-line shops out there. Ben really shouldn't be contracting his
mother's company anyway. Tell Ben to go solicit some competitive
bids. He's still got a few days before we need to pass off the final templates. They're just doing low-level work right now. That should be
plenty of time."

"He's tried. He put together three new deals, but they all fell
through."

"Why?"

"Nobody's saying." Horvil's face devolved from melancholy to fullfledged misery. "The assembly-line managers just tell him that they're
already running at capacity. But I think they're scared. Every time Ben
shows up somewhere to talk business, a squad of Meme Cooperative
officials shows up the next day and starts checking tax records. The
word's gotten out."

Jara groaned. "Magan Kai Lee." She felt nervous even saying the
lieutenant executive's name out loud, as if those words were a talisman
to release some infernal warrior from imprisonment. Magan had so
many arcane weapons at his disposal-taxes, regulations, laws, policies-and Natch had so many weaknesses. It just didn't seem fair. "So
what's Greth asking for that's so ridiculous?" said Jara.

Horvil listed a number that ventured past the ludicrous into the realm of the obscene. The analyst whistled. "I don't know if Natch
would fork over that many credits," said the engineer. "That's way too
much. Besides, it's too big of a number for Ben to transfer without
Aunt Berilla getting wind of it. Someone's bound to notice. Especially
with the Council and the drudges hanging over everyone's shoulders."

Jara rapped her knuckles hard against the chair's nailhead trim.
"Come on, Horvil, this Greth woman can't be that unreasonable. She's
got to see that if she keeps behaving like this, she'll kill the goose that
lays the golden eggs."

"That's the whole thing," said Horvil, slumping to a spinecracking position in the couch. "Greth's not being reasonable. Either
she's a loose cannon or she's just not very bright. She doesn't care about
killing the goose that lays the golden eggs-she wants one big egg
instead."

Jara sighed. She hated to admit it, but paying up was the only
solution that made sense. Natch would authorize the bribe without
thinking twice and find a way to carve it out of the woman's flesh later.
That was simply his way of doing things.

The analyst was feeling the preliminary sorties of a massive
headache and fired up Deuteron's Anodyne 88. "So what does Natch
have to say about all this?"

Horvil flapped his lips in irritation. "Benyamin's afraid to tell
him," he said, letting his head slump onto the back of the couch. "I
kind of agree. Relying on that woman in the first place was a major
fuck-up, and Ben knows it. He's convinced that Natch will kick him
out of the fiefcorp for this. So I ... I told him-"

"You told him you'd talk to me."

The engineer made a peculiar half-nod without actually taking his
neck off the back of the couch. "You're the-the most level-headed one
in the fiefcorp. You always keep your wits in these situations. I told
Ben you'd know what to do."

Jara folded her arms over her chest and frowned. "If I'm the level headed one," she grumbled, "then this fiefcorp is in bigger trouble
than I thought." Does Horvil have any idea how much time I've spent on the
Sigh with that idiot Geronimo? Does he have any idea that Magan Kai Lee
is recruiting me to betray Natch, and I haven't said no yet?

"Listen, Jara," continued Horvil, "Ben trusts you. We all trust you.
I mean, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be able to-"

Jara could sense a clumsy segue in the making, and she made a
slicing gesture to cut him off. "Okay, fine," she sighed. "It's probably
better not to pester Natch with this crap anyway. Here's what you tell
Ben. Have him transfer a piece of the money from our accounts, the
fiefcorp accounts. We've got it right now, and if we use the company
money it won't get on your aunt's radar. Have him tell Greth Tar
Griveth that this is all he could get on such short notice-but if she'll
wait until after the exposition, he'll give her the rest plus an additional
twenty percent."

Horvil gasped. "Twenty percent? I could buy a hoverbird with that
additional twenty percent."

"It doesn't matter. She won't get it. Greth's leverage evaporates
after the MultiReal exposition."

The engineer gave a judicious nod and rubbed his nose. "It sounds
reasonable coming from you," he said, "but what if Greth doesn't buy
it? She's going to suspect that Ben won't follow through."

"Not if she thinks this is all coming from Benyamin's head,"
replied the analyst. "No offense, Horv, but your cousin is kind of naive.
Ben can sell it to Greth if he really thinks we're going to pay her after
the exposition. Just tell him we don't have all that cash at the moment,
and it's going to take a while to get it."

Horvil stood up from the chair, looking relieved and not a little
sheepish. "Thanks, Jara," he said. "I think you might have saved Ben's job."

Jara smiled wanly and waved a farewell at Horvil before he disappeared. She felt that nothing short of an industrial decontamination
chamber could wash away the stench of corruption oozing from her pores. She remembered Natch's words to her just last month. Everyone
who invests in biollogics knows what's going on. Things like this happen all the
time. Do you think the Patel Brothers got to the top without getting their hands
dirty? Or Len Borda?

Shaking her head, Jara arose and turned to take refuge in the bedroom. Suddenly she realized the window behind her was still tuned to
a drudge clipping she had read the other day. It was a piece by one of
the gossip drudges who made even Kristella Krodor seem like a paragon
of substance. Jara looked at the headline and blushed furiously, realizing
that Horvil must have seen it the whole time. If this ever got back to
Natch, she didn't know how she could live with herself.

Our Foolproof Guide to Figuring Out How He Feels

After stepping off the multi tile, Horvil tried to bury his warped emotions in MindSpace, using his bio/logic programming bars as shovel.

His arms whirled in MindSpace, making and breaking data connections at blinding speed. Every few seconds, he would slip a
bio/logic programming bar back into his satchel and slide another out
to replace it with a single uninterrupted motion. Finally he chugged
to a halt.

The engineer hitched back his thumb to survey the massive MultiReal castle before him. Horvil nodded and incremented the version
number a fraction of a point. It's ready, he told himself. But are you sure
you want to do this? He had been waiting for days to put the finishing
touches on the latest iteration of Possibilities so he could conduct this
experiment, but now he didn't feel so confident. Had anyone ever tried
to run MultiReal nonstop to see what would happen? What if he got
caught in some kind of unending choice cycle? Possibilities wasn't a typical bio/logic program that you could run through Dr. Plugenpatch
to weed out the fatal errors.

Admit it, Horv. This shit is dangerous.

Then Jara's words came floating to the top of his consciousness. If
I'm the level-headed one, then this fiefcorp is in bigger trouble than I thought.
He couldn't keep going to Jara every time he faced a tough decision;
he'd never get everything done in time for the exposition. Horvil
flipped off MindSpace, activated Possibilities 0.812, and hustled out of
the apartment before he could change his mind.

The first decision point came on the building's front steps. A large
puddle of rainwater sat right at the intersection of stair and street;
Horvil had been sloshing through it for days. But he could avoid
soaking his shoes altogether if he could only vault over the side railing
and land on that dry patch about a meter away-

Flash.

Horvil's consciousness slipped into a state of suspended animation
as soon as he activated Possibilities. And then there was an indescribable flash, a mental widening of view. The image of himself hurdling
onto the dry spot of concrete hung in his mind like a bead on a string,
in limbo. Some hidden inner sense showed him a line of alternate realities that stretched out to eternity in each direction, Horvils leaping
and bounding at every conceivable angle. He felt himself scrolling
among them, looking for a better possibility, a future in which-

Flash.

-Horvil sprang over the railing and made an acrobatic landing
just beyond the puddle of rainwater.

The fiefcorp engineer paused and ran an arm across his sweating
forehead. He had barely made it out of the building, and already he felt
giddy. Not too late to turn back, Horvil told himself.

He stood and thought for a moment. Fuck that. Then the engineer
hooked a right and headed toward Centurion Market Square, a place
that promised any number of interesting experiments.

Turned out the feeling was intoxicating, a high unlike any he had
ever felt. Horvil spent two hours in the West London tube station
alone, hopping on and off the trains. He made graceful sashays to avoid
jostling into passersby. He made improbable darts and zips to catch the
last free seat on the train. And in one ridiculous act of chutzpah, Horvil
even made a flying leap across the tracks right in front of a speeding
tube train. Possibilities made it all seem so easy.