"It doesn't matter," snapped Natch, suddenly annoyed. Jara congratulated herself on derailing his train of thought, if only for an instant.

"So Margaret provides the product, and an apprentice, and meeting s.p.a.ce," continued Merri, shrugging off the interruptions. "Not to mention a name with four hundred years of history. I don't mean to be presumptuous, Natch ... but what do we bring to the table?"

The fiefcorp master sat back with fingers intertwined and raised one eyebrow. Jara could practically hear the ominous trumpets blaring out notes of suspense inside Natch's head. "Me."

Jara threw up her hands. "You?" she spat out.

But Natch would not be thrown off-track again; like a mutating virus, he had already adapted to her caustic attacks. "You're missing the point," he said calmly. "Margaret is scared. You all saw her standing there a few minutes ago. She looked like a f.u.c.king ghost. She needs to get MultiReal out to the public, and she needs to do it quickly, before she becomes a victim of another a.s.sa.s.sination attempt."

Horvil's eyes went wide and his jaw plummeted. "a.s.sa.s.sination attempt?"

"Why do you think those Council troops were there last night? And for process' preservation, what do you think the infoquake was? It was a distraction. It was Len Borda's attempt to create pandemonium so he could do his dirty work while no one was looking. Except he made a few miscalculations, and Margaret managed to slip away. Come on, you didn't really believe that bulls.h.i.t about a simple bottleneck of information, did you?"

"I did," muttered Benyamin, blushing furiously. Jara remembered Sen Sivv Sor's words in that morning's editorial: Wherever you find such poisonous medicine, there's a human hand nearby administering the dose.

"Well, it's nonsense. Borda wants MultiReal to disappear. He wants Margaret dead. And the only way to prevent that is to spread MultiReal far and wide before Borda gets a chance to strike. Because once everyone from here to Furtoid is swimming in multiple realities, the Council won't be able to stop it.

"So Margaret needs a good product, and she needs it quickly. People around her are dying. The Council has already proven they'll march right into her compound without a second thought. She's never had to work under pressure before, and she just doesn't know how to take a product to market on a tight deadline. What does Margaret need? She needs the best programmers in the world to put together something marketable now.

"That's where we come in.

"You want quality? The Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp is the best in the business. We've got the best a.n.a.lyst and the best engineer and the best channel manager around. You want fast? We climbed to number one on Primo's faster than anyone in history. We know how to work under pressure and we won't be intimidated by anyone."

As Natch's words p.r.i.c.ked Jara's skin and sizzled her hormones to a white-hot intensity, she felt a sudden charge of electricity in the room. He actually called me the best a.n.a.lyst in the business, she thought. An hour ago, she was ready to submit to the doldrums of a government desk job. Jara looked around and noticed that Benyamin and Merri both had an excited gleam in their eye, and Horvil was actually fidgeting in his chair like an eight-year-old boy. How in the world does he take control of a room like that?

"So how long do we have?" said Jara.

"Ten days," replied Natch. "We make our first presentation at seven p.m. on December 11th, Andra Pradesh time. MultiReal goes on sale the next day."

Silence descended upon the bio/logic apprentices and s.n.a.t.c.hed the breath from their lungs. It was already late evening here in Andra Pradesh. a.s.suming that Margaret's apprentice arrived with the MultiReal program by Sat.u.r.day at noon, that would leave them approximately eight days. Eight days to learn a brand-new technology that promised to revolutionize the world; to adjust to the parameters of a new company structure; to go through the entire product conceptualization and development cycle; and to perfect that product for release to billions of voracious consumers. Jara felt like crying. For such a huge project, eight weeks or even eight months would have seemed too short a time.

"And what about the Council?" piped in Benyamin.

"What about them?" replied Merri.

"Well, if Len Borda was prepared to murder the richest woman in the world to get his hands on MultiReal ... what makes you think he'll hesitate to come after us?"

Jara quietly tallied up in her head all the Council officers she had seen wandering around this week, prowling the narrow sidestreets of Andra Pradesh, the avenues of Shenandoah, the cobblestone paths in front of her London apartment. She usually paid them little heed, the soldiers in white robes. Keepers of the peace, minions of High Executive Borda and his Javertian obsession with public safety. To be on the run from such a ubiquitous enemy-it was simply unthinkable.

Natch was grinning that feral grin of his. His eyes had focused on an invisible spot in the middle of the room, a place where n.o.body else was looking. "You still have a choice," he said. "Until midnight tonight Shenandoah time, you are all still apprentices of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp. You can either jump on board the new company with both feet or bail out while you have the chance."

Horvil let out a squeak. Natch swiveled his way. "Gorda?" whimpered the engineer.

"Len Borda," said Natch contemptuously, grinding his teeth as if chewing his words. "The high executive might have scared Margaret out of her wits, but he's never dealt with me."

The two men in the tube car were trying very hard to be nonchalant. Too hard. The taller one with the mole on his cheek completely avoided looking in Natch's direction, while the short, dark one swept his attention past the fiefcorp master at precise metronomic intervals. Neither of them took more than a token sip from his mug of nitro.

Natch expected better surveillance tactics from the Defense and Wellness Council.

The entrepreneur spent the dark hours bouncing between Cisco and Seattle staring at redwoods. He expected Jara's notice of resignation at any minute. But midnight Shenandoah time arrived with no message traffic of consequence, just the usual jumble of political propaganda and L-PRACG-sanctioned advertising. He gave one last glance at the Council spooks and allowed himself to fall into a light sleep.

Natch awoke at three in the morning to find the strange men gone. He wondered how long it had been since he had actually slept horizontally in a bed rather than vertically on a contoured tube seat. No matter. He still had plenty of time to make his way back east and prepare the fiefcorp's catalog of bio/logic programs for sale before Quell arrived with the MultiReal databases. Once the sale of their catalog hit the market, Natch would have boldly marched across the Rubicon; there would be no turning back. Had a general ever led his troops into battle with such nebulous weapons?

Then he stepped off the tube at Cisco station, only to be confronted by an image of his own face.

On the viewscreen, Natch recognized the three-meter-high photo from the media blitz following his ascent to number one on Primo's. He stood and watched his doppelganger tick off a few important points on his fingers to an unseen interviewer. His face showed that stern look of concentration he got while pacing and talking business.

Superimposed over the image: SOLD TO THE LOWEST BIDDER!.

Margaret Surina Enters into Partnership with Unscrupulous Fiefcorp Master; Future of Groundbreaking MultiReal Technology in Doubt (Read about it in this morning's John Ridglee Update) Natch hustled through the tube station, an act he could have performed blindfolded by now. Five minutes later, he left the local line behind and boarded a larger express train that would take him across the continent to Shenandoah station. A young man with a purplestriped goatee elbowed his friend in the side at Natch's approach. The two gave him mute looks of disgust and vacated the cabin as soon as the fiefcorp master sat down.

Must be quite an article, he thought.

Natch projected the story onto the faux leather chair in front of him. Compared to Sen Sivv Sor's curmudgeonly countenance, Ridglee's was young and foppish, with left eyebrow so far aslant that it was almost in orbit. His commentary was similarly skewed. The article contained little news beyond that contained in the Surinas' press release, relying instead on a grab bag of fictional anecdotes and unattributed rumors. Yet the drudge had certainly done a thorough job of digging up the details of Natch's past. Everything was there: the Shortest Initiation, the confrontations with Captain Bolbund, the citations from the Meme Cooperative, the hardball tactics he had used over the years against the Patel Brothers.

The tube hurtled underground for the nearly two-hour trip across the continent. As daylight gave way to the tunnel's artificial glow, Natch watched his name take over the Data Sea.

Within twenty minutes, the delegates at the Congress of LPRACGs were already quarreling over his partnership with Margaret. The Sarinas are a public treasure! cried the Speaker on a viewscreen half a meter from Natch's head. Are we just going to sit back and let this man peddle their works all over the Data Sea like a common ROD? Dozens of glum representatives nodded in agreement.

The dour voice of Khann Frejohr broke in from the libertarian side of the chamber. It's just like the governmentalists to suggest it's our duty to interfere in the workings of a free marketplace...

Primo's began advertising a special supplement that promised to a.n.a.lyze Natch's professional career in depth.

At the first opportunity, Sen Sivv Sor weighed in on the crisis, denouncing the young fiefcorp master in ways Ridglee had only hinted at. All of the other major players in the biollogic industry are devotees of the creeds, even the despicable self-serving ones like Creed Tha.s.sel, wrote Sor. But I have looked Natch directly in the eye, dear readers, and saw no evidence that he possesses any morals or ethics at all.

On the viewscreen, the hooknosed Speaker was crazily waving her index finger around in the air. We have plenty of precedents for government intervention in the markets, Khann. Didn't the Prime Committee break up the OCHRE Corporation?

The libertarian snorted. That was two hundred fifty years ago, Madame Speaker. Besides which, the Committee was acting to disband a monopoly. Sounds like democratization to me.

Then how do you explain Dr. Plugenpatch's success? A quasi-governmental ent.i.ty with open standards that has gloriously extended life expectancy ...

Natch leaned his head back and let out a deep-belly laugh. The fools, the fools! He was climbing the peaks of tall mountains, and down below the Powers That Be could do nothing but scramble around and bicker over the pebbles. He could see the paradise that awaited him at the top now: lunar estates, immutable wealth, the stewardship of an entire industry.

And what an industry it would be! Natch didn't know precisely the shape a MultiReal business would take-an egalitarian product sold to the ma.s.ses? A technology channeled to the L-PRACGs? Military licenses to the Council and the Prime Committee? No matter what path the business took, it would inevitably lead him to the same glorious future.

Natch laughed again. Three more riders in the tube gave him peculiar looks and rose to find other seats.

Natch's good mood lasted through the morning, until Horvil began flinging panicked multi requests in his direction. Natch knew his old hivemate was in a panic; that was the only logical explanation for Horvil being awake and alert before noon.

"Drop everything," said the engineer, materializing in Natch's foyer and lumbering his way towards the office. "Drop everything, everything, everything."

Natch was in Minds.p.a.ce, stacking chunks of recursive code on a ledge of NiteFocus 50 like a boy lining up dominos. After fifty iterations, he would have expected the program to be perfect, but the more mindpower he devoted to NiteFocus, the more problematic it seemed to become. "What is it, Horv?"

Horvil emitted a harrutnph and sliced his left hand through the line of dominos to catch his boss's attention. "You're going to want to turn off the bubble for this, Natch," he said. "Trust me." The fiefcorp master looked on skeptically as Horvil waved his hand at a viewscreen on the opposite wall.

A holographic projection of Petrucio Patel appeared in front of the screen. He was by far the handsomer of the two Patel brothers, and actually cut quite a dashing figure in his triple-b.u.t.toned suit and wispy black mustache. The projection was a recording, of course; Natch knew from experience that his hated rival was much taller in real life.

"Towards Perfection," said Petrucio Patel in a rich baritone. "We say that all the time to one another, for h.e.l.lo, for goodbye, for peace, for health. 'Towards Perfection.' But do we really know what it means? Well, Sheldon Surina knew. The Father of Bio/Logics said that Perfection is a safe sh.o.r.e in the tempest. "

"Slick b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Horvil mumbled under his breath.

"Shhh."

"Isn't a safe sh.o.r.e what we're all looking for?" continued Petrucio Patel. "But as the events of last night have clearly shown us, we live in a time without charted waters or safe sh.o.r.es ... unless you're using one of the Patel Brothers' new MultiReal programs, under direct license from Margaret Surina herself."

Natch could feel a hole open up in the small of his back, out of which slithered a host of hidden anxieties. The Patels with a license to sell MultiReal? How was that possible? He turned off the Minds.p.a.ce bubble and sank onto a stool.

Petrucio waved his brown-skinned hand and summoned forth a typical programming floor. Behind him in the shadows, half a dozen apprentices toiled away in their Minds.p.a.ce bubbles, while the portly silhouette of Frederic Patel waddled from one workbench to the next. "PatelReal 1.0 will bring you a whole set of practical applications for multiple realities that are safe enough to use in your own home," said Petrucio. As soon as the word safe pa.s.sed from his lips, a second Petrucio materialized on his left. Same triple-b.u.t.toned suit, same debonair smile.

"PatelReal easily keeps track of the confusion and complexity of multiple realities," said the second Petrucio. And with a nod, he brought forth a third clone. "PatelReal can help you navigate the troughs and waves of multiple realities ... and bring you to a safe sh.o.r.e! "

Finally, the third Petrucio Patel snapped his fingers, causing the rest of the display to vanish. "The Patel Brothers: a safe sh.o.r.e in the tempest," said the lone remaining Patel. "Now, we know you have questions-and we have answers! Come attend the world's first demonstration of MultiReal technology next Tuesday, at the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex near the Twin Cities. See PatelReal 1.0 in person! Until then, Towards Perfection-and a safe sh.o.r.e!"

The slick programmer took a bow, and vanished.

Questions buzzed like hornets inside Natch's head, too many and too fast to handle. He sat paralyzed on his stool, feeling like he himself had wandered into some kind of alternate reality. Horvil collapsed in a quivering heap on the visitor's chair in the corner.

Just when Natch thought he had everything figured out, just when he knew who all the players were in this game, the rules had suddenly changed. How could he have agreed to form a new company with Margaret when his greatest enemies had already struck a licensing deal with her? Was this entire MultiReal project a trap? Who else had a piece of MultiReal?

Natch's mind flashed back to the bio/logics industry gathering before Margaret's speech and his confrontation with Frederic Patel. So that's the game you two are playing, eh? the engineer had said, and Natch had naively a.s.sumed that Frederic had been speaking to him.

Natch's legs began to ache; he climbed slowly to his feet and began marching back and forth across the office. He needed to explore the practical dimensions of this latest news, not to mention the legal and financial dimensions. It wouldn't be long now before word of this debacle reached the drudges. Merri, Jara and Benyamin would have questions. Vigal would be sending him an awkward message of condolence any minute now.

Two minutes later, a multi request did indeed click inside his head. But it was not from a fiefcorp employee. Natch grabbed a bio/logic programming bar off his workbench and clutched it like a samurai warrior as he accepted the request.

Brone.

"Gaaah!" shouted a distressed Horvil as the Tha.s.selian strode into the room. If the engineer had been present in the flesh, his recoil would have sent him tumbling backwards and probably smashed the chair to bits.

"Still the same after all these years, I see, Horvil," Natch's old enemy said with a minuscule trace of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"But-but you're ..."

"What? Dead?" said the bodhisattva with a dismissive snort. "No, not yet, I'm afraid, despite your friend's best efforts."

Natch eyed his old enemy frostily. The prosthetic arm, false eye and scars were still evident, but now Brone wore them as comfortably as he wore his expensive cream-colored suit. Horvil did not seem to have even noticed his handicaps yet.

Then Natch caught sight of the three vertical stripes pinned to Brone's chest, the emblem for Creed Tha.s.sel, and the tumblers in his mind began to turn. The Tha.s.selians ... Brone ... the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex ... Petrucio Patel's demo next week ...

"Did you have anything to do with this?" he snapped.

A puzzled Brone blinked several times in quick succession. "Did I have anything to do with what?" he replied calmly.

Natch looked his old hivemate in the eye and tried to penetrate that thick gauze of death. Could he actually be telling the truth? "Play it back, Horv," he said with a shrug. "I'm sure that promo's all over the Data Sea anyway."

Horvil had caught sight of Brone's rubbery right hand, and now couldn't stop staring at it. "Fffft," he said, tilting his head slightly in the direction of the viewscreen.

The Bodhisattva of Creed Tha.s.sel looked around for somewhere to sit, but his search only turned up the chair that Horvil had planted himself in and the stool Natch was zealously guarding. He turned towards the viewscreen, then stood in a dead-on imitation of politeness while the holographic Petrucio went through his spiel. A small smile gathered on Brone's face as he watched the performance.

"Quite clever," said Brone after Patel faded into nothingness. "The whole world's in an uproar over this 'infoquake' nonsense ... and now the Patel Brothers of all people are going to show us the way to safety. How disingenuous."

"You didn't answer my question," said Natch through gritted teeth.

"Creed Tha.s.sel might be a small organization, Natch, and yes, I am the Bodhisattva of Creed Tha.s.sel. But there are still a few hundred thousand devotees on the rolls. Even if I knew whether Frederic and Petrucio have embraced our philosophy-which I don't-you certainly can't expect me to know what they're up to twenty-four hours a day."

"They're holding a demo at the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex."

"Creed Elan and the Vault directors and the Meme Cooperative hold meetings there all the time," shrugged Brone. "You don't suspect them of being Tha.s.selian spies, do you?"

Natch growled vehemently and raised the programming bar in his hands as if preparing to strike. Why did Brone always have to show up when his head was so full of cobwebs? "So what the f.u.c.k are you doing here?" he said.

"Business." Brone drifted over to the workbench and began studying the bio/logic programming bars with his virtual fingers.

Horvil, his jowls flapping, whipped his head back and forth between the two old rivals. Comprehension dawned on his face in a sudden rush. "He's the 'third party' that's financing us?"

"'Third party'?" said Brone mockingly, his gaze suddenly focused on the engineer. "Your master and I are business partners now, Horvil. Surely you know that already. Natch needs some quick cash to get in on Margaret Surina's game. He goes looking for all those business a.s.sociates who like him and trust him enough to make this kind of investment-and he can't come up with a single name. Certainly a mathematician like you can see the inevitable approach of consequence."

The engineer gave his master a wounded look. "You could have come to me."

Brone walked over and regarded Horvil with an otherworldly stare. The engineer flinched out of reflex. "Be realistic, Horvil. What would your Aunt Berilla think? She'd start moralizing. Or worse, she'd start asking for shares. No, Natch would rather go to a faceless organization like Creed Tha.s.sel, where he can work strictly on a cash basis." Brone knelt slowly on the floor and leaned forward until he was close enough to kiss Horvil's nose. "And do you know why?"

The engineer was trembling. "Why?"

"Because he wants MultiReal all for himself," he rasped. "And he doesn't want anybody to get a piece of it-especially his old friend Horvil, who will understand how it works much better than he does."

Natch had had enough. He stalked around the workbench and stood toe to toe with his old rival, causing Horvil to scurry across the room for cover. Brone was at least ten centimeters taller than the fiefcorp master, but the ferocity in Natch's eyes lent him a presence that dominated the room. "All right, this little business arrangement ends right here," he hissed.

The bodhisattva arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I'm ready to pay off your loan in full, right here, right now. And then you can get the f.u.c.k out of my apartment and never set foot in here again."

Brone pursed his lips like a proctor considering the request of a dim-witted pupil, then sidestepped Natch's glare and took a seat in the chair that Horvil had so recently vacated. Within seconds, he had retreated back into his detached emotional fortress. "Margaret Surina's money."

"Of course."

"I predicted you would do this," said Brone, crossing one leg over the other. "But I will admit I did not expect you to hit Margaret up for money to pay me off so soon. I thought you would be smart enough to let bygones be bygones and recognize a potential alliance when you saw one."

"You really think I'm going to stay in debt to you one minute longer than I have to?"

Brone shook his head in that maddeningly supercilious way of his. Natch suddenly wished the man were here in the flesh so he could muscle him outside and toss him over the balcony. "Where is the mind I used to respect so? Where is the killer intellect Figaro Fi used to speak of? Natch, that pittance of a loan I gave you was an act of trust. It was a foundation on which to build.

"Think, Natch! You know how much trouble you had finding investors. The drudges despise you across the board, and you can certainly imagine what the Defense and Wellness Council thinks of you right now. What happens when Margaret Surina grows tired of you, as she surely will? Who will you turn to then? Or are you naive enough to think you can do all this alone?"