Multireal (64 page)

With his right hand, Natch reached into his pocket and pulled out
the black felt bag he had been carting with him for weeks now. He
yanked open the drawstring and shook out the bag's hidden treasure on
the workbench: ten glimmering circlets of gold, the bio/logic programming rings Quell had lent him. Natch slid them whisper-quiet
onto his fingers. As soon as the rings passed the borders of MindSpace, strings of programming code leapt to his fingertips and formed an
intricate pattern in the air.

The entrepreneur raised his left hand again and spread his fingers
wide. The MindSpace bubble quickly filled with the swollen treble
clef, the black code that had been afflicting him since that fateful night
on the streets of Shenandoah.

Natch attacked.

The treble clef buzzed and whirred while the minutes passed.
Mindful of what had happened the last time he tried to bombard a subroutine too quickly, Natch took absolute care with Brone's black code,
only making tentative sorties at first to test the program's defenses.
The rings felt more comfortable now than when he had tried them in
Shenandoah. They had adapted to his movements, his pace, his style.
He could have sworn they had even shrunk a size or two. Gradually,
minute by minute, he began to make more complex maneuvers.

Finally, one of his attacks penetrated the program's surface, and the
treble clef exploded into a thousand pieces with a deafening crash.
Natch stepped back, surveyed the jagged guts of the black code.

And realized that this was definitely not a cloaking program.

Natch had never actually built a cloaking routine before, but he had
spent long hours studying their ilk in dark corners of the Data Sea. He
knew the shapes and contours to expect, and he had an idea of where the
hooks should be. But this program, this black code, didn't match the
profile. Links in the treble clef pointed to obscure OCHRE subsystems
that would be of little use if the program did what Brone claimed.
Natch wished he had paid more attention to Serr Vigal's neural programming lectures all those years ago, because most of the treble clef's
nodes appeared to be tied to machines along the brain stem.

Natch stood on the lowest platform of the atrium, gazing at the
stalks that jutted into the air around him like stalagmites. He felt the
internal fury boil over. His suspicions had been justified; Brone had
lied to him, and now he had proof.

Do you know why we're not dodging Council missiles right now? the bodhisattva had said. Because that black code floating in your bloodstream renders you invisible to Len Border's tracking mechanisms. Do you understand me?
The Council has no way to find you.

If the black code was not a cloaking mechanism to keep him
hidden from the Defense and Wellness Council, then what was it?
Why was Brone so adamant about refusing to disable it? Had Pierre
Loget been faking all his efforts to tune out the code's insidious side
effects? And if Brone was lying to him about the black code software,
what else was he lying about?

Natch combed frantically through the MindSpace schematic
looking for a way to disable the software, but it was too well crafted
for the simplistic tricks that would cripple most works of black code.
He remembered how skillful a programmer Brone had been even years
ago at the Proud Eagle; now he was witnessing the end product of that
ruthless and cunning intellect. No, even with the program's innards
splayed open in MindSpace, it would take Natch hours, possibly days,
to dislodge it from his skull. Could he afford to call Brone's bluff?
Could he even afford to wait for Brone to discover that he had found a
way inside?

Natch shut off the workbench, pocketed the felt bag with the programming rings, and ran out the front door without a backward
glance.

41

I can't let you leave, Natch. Certainly you must realize that.

Faces stare from the windows of Old Chicago as Natch runs pellmell through the streets. Past the four-wheeled fossils that were stripped
to the bone hundreds of years ago. Past the untidy rubble of a tower that
might have dwarfed even the Revelation Spire before it was struck down
by the Autonomous Minds. To the very banks of the Great Diss Lake
itself, still silted with the metal droppings of ancient warplanes.

He has been running for at least an hour when he notices that the
diss have come out of their ruined towers to look for him. It's not quite
dawn. Electric lights strung along the debris are still illuminating the
streets. Yet there's a palpable presence, a stirring through the city as
the echoes of shuffling feet fly through the alleyways. Whispered
voices. He can't see anybody, not yet, but every few blocks he turns a
corner and sees fresh footprints in the snow.

Somehow Brone has already discovered that he's left the old hotel.
He's put the word out among the diss that Natch is a wanted man.
Natch remembers Brone's overblown gesture of throwing his synthetic
arm on the table in that underground cafe, and now he realizes that that
was more than just a gesture. It was a signal. Natch has been marked.

Brone chose well when he picked Old Chicago as the launchpad for
his Revolution of Selfishness. The diss are good trackers: too fiercely
independent to band together for an organized pursuit, and therefore
almost impossible to predict. This is the city of barter, and with Brone
the diss have struck the mother lode of bargains. Keep the Thasselians
safe; keep them hidden and protected; do the occasional odd job. And
in return, Brone will deliver them their Shangri-la. The ability to
eliminate all social boundaries, the ability to bring themselves up to
the connectibles' level-or bring the connectibles down to theirs.

I didn't want it to come to this. But you've forced my hand. I can't risk
Borda finding you and taking MultiReal away.

The words float through his consciousness like a memory of something he once said, yet Natch is fairly certain that he never said them.
Yet it's his own voice he's hearing, his own interior monologue. What's
going on?

He makes a quick left at the next intersection and goes looking for
cover, only to find himself at a dead end. An impassable cul-de-sac of
rusted metal and petrified wood that might once have served as a barricade during the Autonomous Revolt. He scrambles into the corner,
thinking he sees a way through the morass, but it turns out to be only
a deceit of the night. Natch knows that he can't continue running like
this with no direction, but he's still too addled by rage and black code
and exhaustion to keep track of where he's going.

Sprinting through the city at top speed temporarily distracted him
from the pain and the quivering, but now both are returning with a
vengeance. And the cold ... It's frigid as death out here. Even the
winter of initiation wasn't this bad, and he didn't have the artificial
insulation of bio/logics back then either.

Natch backtracks, finds a deserted storefront, and stops to catch his
breath. He huddles inside the empty store next to rusted metal racks
that might once have contained household products. He needs to
figure out some strategy for how to proceed. Where is he going?
Where can he go? Connectible territory is off-limits with the Defense
and Wellness Council on the hunt for him; and now unconnectible territory is as well. What does that leave?

He summons a map of the city from the Data Sea and tries to get
his bearings. But apparently no one has made a systematic effort to
scope out Old Chicago in decades. The schematics he finds hail from a
more idyllic time when the streets weren't as cluttered with detritus
and more of the old landmarks were still standing. He looks at the
most recent map and tries to figure out which building his mother lived in. Vigal once told him that Lora lived on the thirty-fourth story
of a rotting skyscraper, and even an hour ago Natch had been naive
enough to think he might locate the building on that description
alone. But there are a dozen such structures within walking distance,
and more dot the horizon to the south and east.

A pair of young men come jogging by, leading a vicious-looking
mongrel on a chain. They're peering into the shadows. Any second
now they'll notice his footprints in the snow, which he's stupidly forgotten to cover up. Natch flips on MultiReal, wondering if he can use
Horvil's mind control trick to divert their attention without alerting
them to his presence. Thankfully, he doesn't have to worry about it,
because at that moment something metal crashes to the ground a few
blocks away, and the diss trackers go tearing off to investigate.

MultiReal isn't going to do you any good. You might as well save yourself
the effort.

Natch leaps out from his hiding place, taking care to step in the
footprints of his pursuers as much as possible. He can't last much
longer out here. He's worn out, not just from the cold, not just from
the incident at the Tul Jabbor Complex, but from weeks of ceaseless
wandering, from years of pressing on through the maze of fiefcorpery.

He finds himself in an empty intersection and surveys the crossroads
before him. North, south, east, west-which way should he turn?

But his feet will not obey him. The prospect of taking a step in any
direction seems like the most difficult thing in the world. He tries to
peer into the future, but he can't see beyond the next five minutes.
Running, and then running, and then-

I'm sorry, Natch.

The sun finally climbs over the horizon and showers Natch with its
cold light. Before he can react, the blackness is upon him.

Unmoving, unspeaking.

It is a completely desolate and dimensionless universe, a blackness
without blackness. There is no more Old Chicago, no more snow, and
no more diss. The very Earth and sky have dissipated away. Corporeality of any kind is nothing but an abstraction, and the constant
chatter of the five senses is nothing but a memory.

And yet Natch is here.

He feels that he is present, even if there's nothing to be present in.
But the central core of his being, the identity, the I that fills the pronoun, is there. Natch. His existence may actually be the only thing possible in this place.

He stretches his nonexistent arms and tries to reach for somethingbut there is only Nothing within reach. His legs: he kicks out with
them too, expecting to find ground, or a bed, or at the very least air.
But those things, too, are gone. In fact, he can only take it as an article
of faith that he himself is still here, since he can't see anything. Natch
pats where his torso should be: nothing.

MultiReal. Even in this place, so far removed from everything, he
is aware that the program is out there somewhere. He remembers the
sense of limitless potential, the flush of power. But as he stretches his
mind out like he has done a million times since he was a child in the
hive, he knows it's useless; the Data Sea, MindSpace, even his own
OCHRE systems lie in a different continuum altogether. And even if
he could somehow reach and activate MultiReal, were there any possibilities for him to choose from in this nonspace?