Multireal (53 page)

Jara seemed to be the only one who noticed they were not really in
any danger. The Council soldiers were busy firing darts at Natch, and
while the fiefcorpers' mental foundations might have been shaken by
the infoquake, the foundations of the Tul Jabbor Complex remained
solid. Jara's job at this point was simple: keep everyone calm, prevent
them from doing something stupid, and get them the fuck out of
there.

"Shut down as many programs as you can," she announced to the
others. "It helps with the vertigo."

"What about MultiReal?" said Ben.

"Especially MultiReal."

They had made half of the Sisyphean trudge back up the stairs
when the first man in black robes slipped into the auditorium. Others
soon followed. They looked exactly as Natch and Benyamin had
described: cloaked head to toe in robes of midnight, laced with
crimson Oriental lettering. Upon later reflection, Jara would realize
they had arrived too soon after the beginning of the infoquake to have
run all the way from the building's street entrance.

The figures in black drew dartguns and began firing.

Not at Natch. At the officers of the Council.

Magan could tell that the assailants in black robes were not battlehardened. Although they were decent marksmen, their playbook was
limited; they seemed to be executing the same maneuver over and over
again. Aim, shoot, drop, crawl. Aim, shoot, drop, crawl. As a longhaul strategy the maneuver was seriously deficient, but in the middle
of all this chaos, it just might distract Borda's troops long enough for
them to accomplish their objective.

Which was ... what? To assassinate members of the Prime Committee? To kill or incapacitate Natch? To make a political statement that
would hit tonight's drudge reports with a bone-crunching impact?

Borda's officers, caught off guard, began to go down.

This is insane, thought Magan. Defense and Wellness Council officers were firing black code darts wildly at Natch; anonymous lunatics
in black robes were picking off Council officers; and Magan's group
hunkered down in the middle, targeting both the mysterious wouldbe assassins and the occasional Council officer who swung a gun in their direction. Audience members were fleeing in every direction and
occasionally getting caught in the crossfire. Bodies from all sides lay
twitching around the auditorium. And the accursed fiefcorper now
stood in the middle of the tumult, untouched.

Obviously this impasse would be short-lived. The black-robed
assailants had apparently deployed their full strength, which numbered
about twenty; meanwhile, Council reinforcements would be washing in
by the hundreds any minute now. MultiReal or no MultiReal, the fools
in black would soon be eradicated, and Natch would find himself either
dead or the permanent resident of an orbital prison cell.

Magan watched the former fiefcorp master carefully for some hint
to his intentions, but his face was impossible to read. Natch might
have been some alien species' fledgling effort to piece together a
human being with a random assortment of mental states. Anger, determination, triumph, melancholy, resolve-all seemed to roll across the
entrepreneur's face at once. Darts were clattering against stone all
around him. Through it all, Natch's eyes remained steadfastly closed.

And then, with no warning, he began stumbling for the exit.

It was the reeling gait of a drunkard. First a step this way, then a
step that way, followed by two hops in a third direction altogether. But
this walk was anything but aimless, Magan realized; it was a carefully
calculated path that kept him free of black code darts.

"He's running away!" cried Rey Gonerev, tugging at Magan's
elbow. "What the fuck do we do now?" Her voice was tinged with
anger and not a little fear. Magan realized that few lawyers ever found
themselves on real, live battlefields.

Lieutenant Lee watched the entrepreneur's progress across the floor,
helpless. Nobody but Natch could survive that hailstorm of darts
whizzing in every direction. For a moment, he was prepared to just let
the man go. After all, what did Natch still possess that Jara didn't?
Then he remembered that meeting at the Tul Jabbor Complex. The way
this man had turned the tables on Magan, the pure ferociousness of him.

And then he knew what to do.

"Petrucio!" he shouted. "Where's Petrucio?"

The Blade was having trouble hearing, or concentrating, or both.
"What?" she said, confused. Papizon, meanwhile, yanked the lieutenant's sleeve and pointed him across the auditorium. Petrucio Patel
was sitting on the floor there with his back to the lowest stair, looking
somewhat dazed but very much alive.

Without a word, Magan sprang out from the protective curtain of
loyal Council officers, narrowly missing both a cowering bureaucrat
and one of the black-robed assailants' darts. He fired up a classified
bio/logic adrenaline boost program called 2539i. Then he was
sprinting as fast as his feet could carry him around the perimeter of the
floor, trying not to hug the wall to avoid giving his enemies an easy
reference point. In some distant antechamber of consciousness, he
could hear darts striking the stone around him.

Close to twenty Council officers were firing at Natch now, though
as a moving target he was much harder to hit. Three times that
number were futilely clinging to the idea of crowd control. Maybe a
dozen figures in black robes remained.

Natch was getting close to the doorway.

Magan Kai Lee skidded to a halt in front of Petrucio Patel, who
watched his approach with almost maniacal calm. "MultiReal," barked
the Council lieutenant. "Use it!"

The businessman regarded the Council lieutenant with a bemused
stare. "Use it how?" he said.

"On Natch! Hurry, before it's too late." Magan tossed his dartgun
into Petrucio's lap. "We're only going to get one shot at this."

Petrucio arose and brushed off his bloody lapels, letting the gun
clatter to the ground. The nosebleed was ancient history by now, but
it had done significant damage to what Magan suspected was a very
expensive suit. At the moment, the suit appeared to be the fiefcorper's
primary concern. "Why me? You do it."

"Don't you understand? Natch is using MultiReal. You've got MultiReal. You're the only one here who has any chance of hitting him."

Patel considered this for an agonizing moment, a moment that
saw Natch stumble ever closer to the door. "I don't know if I really
have a chance or not," he said finally. "I don't know if Jara's made the
switch yet."

"Listen," hissed Magan. "Once Natch gets out of this building, we're
never going to find him again. Do you want that man on the loose out
there? Do you think he's going to let Jara make that switch after he's
gone?" Magan had no idea what he was telling Petrucio, didn't know
what kind of switch lay in the balance here, but figured he had nothing
to lose by bluffing. "You've got those MultiReal-D programs. Don't play
dumb, Petrucio, I know you have them-you were supposed to demo
them to the Prime Committee today. Now load them up and use them."

Whatever he had threatened seemed to have worked. Petrucio nodded.
He picked Magan's gun up off the ground. "Should I hit him here?"

Magan looked around at the Council officers, the fleeing spectators,
the observing drudges. Then he was struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. "No. Wait ... These people in black robes. How did they get
in? And how do they intend to get out?"

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He can see it, pantomimed a thousand times on the private stage
of his mind, acted with an eerie verisimilitude. A Defense and Wellness Council officer takes aim and pulls the trigger on his rifle. A sliver
of OCHRE-laden doom careens toward the floor of the auditorium,
pierces clothing, bites flesh. He stiffens and the Null Current pulls
him into its icy depths.

Natch sees himself die. Hundreds of times. It's a vast panorama of
his mortality, visions of his death stretched out on an infinite grid.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He observes each scenario, interprets it, rejects it. The choice cycle
is discarded; he moves on to new possibilities; the memory fades. He
dies and dies again. And each rejection costs him an infinitesimal act
of willpower; each assertion of his raw desire to live must be explicitly
stated in the language of the neuron, synapse, axon, and dendrite. Each
time, there will come the eventual reprieve like the answer to a prayer.
A missed shot. A hesitation. A finger twitched too soon or too late.

And so Natch claws his way, alive, through another fraction of a
second. Every time it feels like luck. He watches his mental Data Sea
video feeds and sees the tiny figure that is him inching closer to the
door, a lowly pawn on a vast chessboard loaded with enemy knights.

Flash.

The figures in black robes aren't firing at Natch, and for some
reason that makes total sense. He has spent much of the past month
dreading these black figures and speculating on their identities. But
their presence doesn't feel quite so alarming as it did in that Shenandoah alleyway. So much has happened since that attack. Death, suspension, protests, riots. Natch knows that death is his eventual destination
now, the last stop on the track. But he'll make it there on his own
timetable. He will not be hurried.

It feels like months have passed when Natch finally makes it to the
door and the passageway beneath the Committee members' ring. He
opens his eyes, busts through the door, and leaps up the stairs to the
auditorium exit.

The exhaustion begins to choke him. He wants to collapse. He
needs to collapse. He pushes on.

There are still Council officers in the hallways, of course, and Council officers close on his heels. But now he's only one man in a
throng of people clamoring for the exits. The officials out here are more
concerned with shepherding the sheep to safety than with plugging
Natch with black code. Some of the figures in white robes and yellow
stars are actually firing at each other, an oddity Natch does not have
the energy to ponder right now.

He runs as fast as his feet can carry him. He doesn't particularly
care where he's headed. Occasionally he cuts his way through the
crowd with the scythe of MultiReal, but it's mostly unnecessary here.
Fleeing, infoquake-panicked pedestrians make for better camouflage.

The central atrium. The imposing holograph of Tul Jabbor, his
mien a dour judgment against all manner of chaos and disorder.

Standing in Jabbor's shadow are three figures in black robes, beckoning Natch toward a side hallway that he wouldn't have otherwise
noticed. A service exit of sorts. Dartguns are in their hands, but
nobody is threatening Natch. One of them has actually pulled his hood
back, but it's nobody the entrepreneur recognizes: some random Caucasian male, heavily muscled, perhaps in his midthirties. "This way,
Natch!" he beckons. "Hurry!"

Natch pauses. Go with them? Exactly how stupid do they think I am?

And then he catches a glint of something from the corner of his
eye. Natch peers around Tul Jabbor and sees a veritable battalion of
white robes and yellow stars headed this way. Scores of Defense and
Wellness Council officers with dart-rifles drawn, reinforcements
rushing from the building's front doors. They don't see Natch or his
would-be benefactors yet, but they will. Soon. The men in black robes
beckon him again.

Natch whips around and heads in their direction.

The men in black robes form a tight phalanx around him and haul
ass down the narrow hallway. There's a metal door ajar there, and a
hoverbird parked just outside with its boarding ramp extended. The
vehicle is painted white with the yellow star on its side. The sub terfuge is convincing from a distance, but as he draws closer Natch sees
that it's a counterfeit.

A familiar voice. "Natch!"

He turns around. Sees, at the far end of the corridor, Lieutenant
Executive Magan Kai Lee and Petrucio Patel. There are two or three
Council officers with them, but it appears that the mass of troops
Natch saw a minute ago have been given the slip. Magan is making no
move to summon them this way. In fact, he looks just as anxious to
avoid attention.