Natch had retreated back to the safe fortification of his workbench, where he stood silently and wondered how much of this he could take before he severed Brone's multi connection. Why hadn't he done so already? Horvil stood in the corner and watched their tete-a-tete with a miserable look on his face.

"Natch, when are you going to realize that you're in over your head?" continued Brone in a completely even tone of voice. "You must know by now that Margaret isn't dealing with you in good faith. I can see it in your eyes. You don't know what she's up to, do you? What makes you think you're not being made a fool of?

"And here sits Brone, the man whom you wronged all those years ago. He is angry. Yes. He hates you and would love to see you dead. Yes. Indisputable facts. But when you get into a tight spot, Brone shows up with Creed Tha.s.sel money to bail you out, and offers you a loan at Vault standard rates. He may insult you, but at least he puts all his cards on the table.

"I cannot be any more forthcoming, Natch. I want to throw the past aside and start a new business. You should be asking yourself one question now: Why trust your fate to a woman whose motivations you don't know, instead of trusting your fate to an old enemy whose intentions are written all over his face?"

Natch tightened his grip on the metal bar and slowly advanced towards his old enemy. A miasma of fury was radiating from his every pore, clouding his vision and blocking out the sound of Horvil's whimpers from the corner. "I don't trust my fate to anyone but me," he said.

He reached the chair and took a crushing swing at it with his bio/logic programming bar. But it was too late; Brone had already cut his multi connection and vanished.

"You lied to me," Natch growled like a hunted tiger.

"I was planning to tell you about it when things calmed down," replied Margaret.

The words Brone had spoken a little over an hour ago still burned in the pit of his stomach. What makes you think you're not being made a fool of? "Don't split hairs with me, Margaret. You should have told me everything from the start."

The bodhisattva merely yawned and continued sorting through her notes for the presentation she was about to give to Creed Surina. The presentation had nothing to do with MultiReal or business mergers or bio/logics; it bore the aggressively mundane t.i.tle Revised 4th Quarter Budget for Diss Technology Distribution Program. Even a fleeting glance over Margaret's shoulder at the formation of integers lining the spreadsheet columns was enough to make Natch drowsy. He looked out into the audience of the small auditorium, where a few sluggish creed bureaucrats had begun to take up residence. In the fifth row sat an old woman who had dozed through the ending of the last meeting and looked like she might snore through this one too. Margaret was handing control of MultiReal over to Natch so she could conduct tedious seminars like this?

"I'm waiting for an answer," said Natch.

Margaret frowned. "An answer to what? Would it have made the least bit of difference if I had told you all about the Patel Brothers' license in the first place? No, it would not have. If you hadn't reacted so strongly to Len Borda's involvement, I might have told you at the beginning." She tapped on a header in the spreadsheet and then craned her neck as a video clip of a lethargic diss child filled the viewscreen behind her.

"The least you could do," he said under his breath, "is tell me the details of your agreement."

"Frederic and Petrucio have a limited license. They can release MultiReal products, but they will be subordinate to yours."

"Subordinate how?"

"The Patel products will have a limited number of choice cycles, whereas yours will be infinite."

"And exactly what is a 'choice cycle'?"

Margaret sputtered out a sigh and rubbed her forehead. "It's complicated. Quell will explain everything to you."

Natch crossed his arms petulantly over his chest. He paced to the edge of the stage from which Margaret would be delivering her soporific report in half an hour. Everyone from here to 49th Heaven was discussing this mighty new technology and speculating about the kinds of secrets Margaret and Natch were exchanging; in reality, however, Natch could barely catch her attention.

"So you didn't tell me because you thought I would back off," he grunted.

"It occurred to me, yes."

"That means you basically lured me into this deal on false pretenses, knowing I wouldn't say no, that I would have to jump at this kind of opportunity. And now that the word is out, you know I won't back down."

Margaret turned towards the fiefcorp master with haunted eyes. "You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices," she said, as if she had been condemned to watch a gruesome execution over and over again.

"Tell me why," Natch demanded. "You owe me that. Why Frederic and Petrucio Patel, of all people? You had to know they hate me with a pa.s.sion."

The descendant of Sheldon Surina leaned her elbows on the podium and delicately parked her chin on her palms. "I went to Pierre Loget first. But he was evasive and I didn't trust him. So then, almost nine months ago, I approached the Patel Brothers. They sat down with me and swore up and down that they wanted to bring MultiReal to the public, that they could see a glorious new age of opportunity arising."

"So what happened?"

"Someone bought them off."

Natch inhaled sharply. Everywhere he turned, he saw a place someone else had long since scouted out and claimed for his own. "How do you know?"

"I suppose I don't really know at all," said Margaret with a weary, far-off look. "The Patels deny that they're in collusion with anybody. But sometimes we can just sense these things, can't we? Too many coincidences, too many nosey questions, too little fear of the consequences. The entire Patel Brothers Fiefcorp got onboard a hoverbird a few weeks ago and disappeared for two days, I don't know where. They've clearly been bought by someone."

"So why don't you just break the license? Cancel the agreement."

"Believe me, I've tried." She pulled one hand out from under her chin and extended a bony finger off to the east. "Dozens of legal experts have been working around the clock in the Enterprise Facility trying to find loopholes in the contract. We've got lobbyists rubbing elbows with the Prime Committee, and delegates in the Congress of LPRACGs pushing legislation. That contract is ironclad."

Natch shook his head in disbelief at the mora.s.s Margaret had made out of the whole affair. Did this woman completely lack an imagination? "Listen, Margaret," he said, "it's just a contract. They're just words. Cut the Patel Brothers off from the MultiReal databases and put the burden of proof on them. They'll have to file something with the Meme Cooperative or the L-PRACG courts. Getting a final decision could take years."

The bodhisattva sighed and turned back to her presentation. "And give Len Borda the perfect excuse to send another legion of Council troops here? I don't think so."

Natch threw his hands up in the air, a despondent plea to the halfempty auditorium. Down in the fifth row, the old woman flopped over with a loud snort while Natch looked on in contempt. Margaret had foisted her problems off on him, but he had no such luxury. If someone needed to take action to keep the Phoenix Project out of the Council's hands, that someone would have to be Natch.

You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices.

On Sat.u.r.day morning, Natch was the first to arrive at the Surina Enterprise Facility, and so his mood dominated the conference room SeeNaRee. The fiefcorp apprentices found themselves sitting at a table in the middle of the African veldt. But this wasn't the modern veldt any of them knew, that bustling metropolis crammed full of autonomous business cl.u.s.ters, tube tracks and Sudafrican suburbs; it was the veldt of some mythical African past. Giraffes chomped at lofty tree limbs. Lions roared their displeasure through a thin tissue of mist. Ghosts and spirits floated past in ethereal majesty.

By a quarter past noon, there was still no sign of Quell or the MultiReal programming code. Horvil and Ben would have been content to gossip about family business all day, but Natch had no use for idle time. "Let's just get started," the fiefcorp master snapped. "We can't afford to wait for Quell anymore. Has everyone seen the Patel Brothers' promo?"

His question was met with an uncomfortable silence. All the apprentices had seen it, but their critical faculties were so dulled by weeks of constant surprises that n.o.body knew what to make of it.

"I don't understand, Natch," began Jara. "Margaret just unveiled this MultiReal technology three days ago. And now the Patel Brothers are already selling it?"

"They had a nine-month head start," put in Merri.

Jara let out a guttural curse. "Nine months-that's when everyone started catching up with them on Primo's," she said. "I just knew there had to be a reason why their programs were such easy targets."

"I don't understand this whole f.u.c.king thing!" cried a frustrated Horvil, banging his fist on the table hard enough to send a flock of marabous scurrying. " 'Multiple realities' ... 'safe sh.o.r.es' . . . It sounds like voodoo to me! Does anybody understand this MultiReal stuff? What the heck would you need an alternate reality for? Has the whole world gone entirely offline?"

"Well, apparently Frederic and Petrucio understand it," muttered Benyamin.

Natch had been listening to his apprentices' jabber with eyes closed, as if partic.i.p.ating in an internal dialogue with an unseen consultant. "How do you know?" he said.

Jara felt her mental gears grind to a halt. The rest of the apprentices sported dumb looks as well.

"Petrucio didn't say they were going to launch a MultiReal product on Tuesday," Natch continued. "All they're doing is holding a demo. As far as we know, the Patel Brothers are months away from launching anything that'll float on the Data Sea."

"Which means-"

"Maybe Frederic and Petrucio don't understand this technology any better than we do. Maybe they never got much cooperation from Margaret, and now they're frantically trying to put together something that will look halfway decent for their demo. A good channeler can make lots of deals before there's anything to sell. The Patels could be trying to shut out the compet.i.tion before anyone else realizes there's something to compete over."

Horvil snorted. "What about us?"

"Us?" said Jara, starting to comprehend the vector of Natch's thoughts. "Horv, Margaret never said anything about products in that speech of hers. She called MultiReal a scientific breakthrough. As far as the public knows, we could be planning to hold on to the core technology and collect licensing fees. Or we could be some kind of charitable technology bank."

"So you think the Patels are bluffing," said Merri. "Putting up a a smokescreen to scare everyone else out of the MultiReal business." As a devotee of Creed Objectivv, she seemed to find the entire possibility distasteful.

"More or less," said Natch.

Silence briefly engulfed the room. Natch's eyes remained closed. Jara could hear the cawing of vultures overhead, the rustling of amorphous beasts out in the brush. n.o.body ever said that SeeNaRee had to be subtle, she thought.

"Well," said Benyamin faintly, "why can't we do the same thing?"

Natch's eyelids snapped open, and the blue orbs beneath emitted a ghoulish glow. The virtual sun dipped below the treeline as if on cue and cast them all in shadow. "That's exactly what we're going to do," he hissed through a fierce grin. "The Patel Brothers made the first strike by releasing this promo and scheduling a demo so quickly. But on Tuesday, we're going to beat them at their own game-because we're going to demo our products first."

Jara groaned. "And how do you expect us to do that?" she cried, her hands balled into miniature fists. "It was bad enough when you wanted us to create an entire industry in eight days. Now you want us to do it in three?"

The fiefcorp master did not even pause. "Yes."

"Natch, who knows how long the Patels have been preparing for this demo? Days, weeks, months! Horvil's right-we barely even know what this program is. None of us had even heard of MultiReal this time last week. How are we supposed to get started? We don't have the code, we don't have the expertise, we don't have anything to work with."

"Not true," Natch replied tersely. "We have all the bio/logic code we need."

Merri ran her fingers through her blonde hair quizzically. "Natch, I thought you started liquidating all our bio/logic programs this morning."

"All the released programs, yes. But not the old ones we've taken off the market. Not the Routines On Demand."

"RODs?" yelped Horvil, springing up from his chair. "I don't believe this. You're pitting us against the Patel Brothers with some of your s.h.i.tty old ROD programming?"

Natch smiled cruelly. "Not my old programming, Horvil. Yours."

All the color drained from the engineer's face. He sat down gingerly, not even bothering to put on a PokerFace to mask his dismay. "Oh no, Natch. You're not talking about Probabilities 4.9, are you? Man, that program is in sorry shape. It's nowhere near ready for production."

The fiefcorp master nodded. "That's the one."

Horvil whimpered incoherently.

Jara cut in. "Natch, I don't see any record of Probabilities 4.9 on the Data Sea." She narrowed her eyes, casting her mind out in a wider net. Primo's ratings, fiefcorp launch schedules, Meme Cooperative filings, drudge reviews, InfoGathers-all came up empty. "As far as I can tell, this program was never released. It doesn't even look like it's been run through Dr. Plugenpatch."

"Well, of course," said Natch, irony oozing from his pores. "Do you think we'd put the code to our top-secret weapon out on the Data Sea, where anybody could see it?"

"You wouldn't let me release it," whined Horvil. "You said it was s.h.i.t."

Merri interposed a hand into the middle of the table, attempting a peacemaking gesture. "Horvil, if our MultiReal demo is riding on this program-"

"And all our contracts too," snarled Jara.

-then maybe you'd better tell us what it is."

Horvil gathered his breath and sucked in his voluminous gut. He started reciting a sales pitch that had long since calcified in memory. 11 'Probabilities 4.9 is designed to take chaotic real-world events and quantify their random elements into a meaningful array suitable for prediction. Its intended audience is any person looking for an array of random elements on which to place a wager. For instance, Probabilities 4.9 might track the number of dust motes in a particular square meter and determine the odds of any one dust mote hitting the ground first ..."'

"It's a gambling calculator," said Jara, shaking her head. "We've quit the bio/logics business to sell a gambling calculator?"

"Actually, it's more like a statistical distribution engine that-"

"Probabilities 4.9 is absolutely not a gambling calculator!" said Natch, rising from his chair and waving his fist like a tin-pot dictator. "It's the turbine that powers Possibilities 1.0, the first in a revolutionary line of MultiReal products based on the principles of Margaret Surina! It will quantify and order multiple realities! It will find the patterns within the chaos!"

Jara's temples were beginning to throb. She could feel panic lapping up against the seawalls of her mind, threatening to spill over and flood her synapses. All our contracts and our shares are riding on some tossedoff contraption of Horvil's...... So what's the plan then, Natch? Are we just going to go out there and pretend this Probabilities thing is MultiReal?"

"No, I'm afraid Horvil's right. It's a piece of s.h.i.t."

"Hey!"

"Probabilities 4.9 is really just going to be the front end for Margaret's MultiReal code. When Quell gets here, we'll hook the two programs together in Minds.p.a.ce. They operate in the same general field. There ought to be some similarities we can work with. Enough to get us through the demonstration, at least."

Merri had been watching the back-and-forth between Natch and Jara like a spectator at a duel. "I think I'm beginning to understand," she said. "Horvil knows the Probabilities code inside and out ... Presumably, this apprentice of Margaret's knows the MultiReal code inside and out ... So, if we can just build a bridge between the two, we can make this demo work."

"Precisely."

Horvil had already pushed aside the injury to his pride for the more pressing issue of an intellectual challenge. Using the tip of his finger, he was busy sketching lengthy equations on a virtual slate. The engineer ended up with a very large and unwieldy number at the bottom. "Totally impossible," he said.

"What?" asked Natch.

"This is going to take a lot of grunt work, Natch. A lot. If this MultiReal program is as complex as Margaret says it is, it's bound to have thousands of nodes we'll need to hook up. Tens of thousands, maybe. Even if you and me and Quell and Ben work on this nonstop, we couldn't get it done until"-Horvil scribbled his way through a maze of algebra-"December 19th."

"You see?" cried Jara. "There's no way we can do all this by Tuesday. No way."

The fiefcorp master flashed her the barest hint of a suggestive look, which Jara could feel right between the shoulder blades. Natch extended his finger towards Benyamin. "You've managed a.s.semblyline coders," he said. "Do you know a shop that can pull this off at the last minute?" The young man looked wide-eyed at his cousin, inhaled deeply, then nodded. "Good, then it's settled."

Jara felt the tingling between her shoulder blades diffuse down her back and into her spine. She remembered getting this feeling while playing chess against her grandfather, a professional who had jousted with the masters in the 49th Heaven tournaments. Inevitably, halfway through every game, she would discover that her grandfather had accounted for all of her two-dimensional feints, that the moves she had taken at face value were but the smallest strokes of an overarching blueprint that had been in place since the first tentative p.a.w.nstep forward. Natch possessed this same talent. Had he known where Benyamin would fit in the grand scheme when he hired him? Had he known all those years ago that Horvil's Probabilities code would one day prove useful? Did he have some hidden purpose reserved for her?

"So that still leaves Jara and me," said Merri quietly. "What should we be doing?"

"Yeah, I suppose we get to stay behind and keep the home fires burning," Jara snapped with a swagger she didn't feel.

Natch focused the full force of his sapphire orbs on Jara. "You have the most difficult job of all. You write the script."

"That's not difficult. I bleed marketing copy, Natch."

"But this isn't like any marketing copy you've ever written before, Jara. Those people out there-they hate me." He made a sweeping arc with one hand that encompa.s.sed nearly the entire veldt. "By the time I step out on that stage on Tuesday, the drudges will have convinced everyone I'm a public menace. You need to counter their propaganda-and explain a completely foreign technology-and get the audience revved up-all in fifteen minutes or less."

"Fifteen minutes?" the a.n.a.lyst yelped.

"Margaret's speech was too long. Much too long. Ours needs to be different. We need to get the audience keyed up in an emotional way. I don't want anybody thinking too much about this technology. I just want one simple demonstration that cuts to the chase. How simple? A four-year-old should understand MultiReal after I'm done speaking, that's how simple it's got to be."

Merri cleared her throat politely. "And me?"

"Work with Robby Robby and his channelers. Start warming up the leads. And then, the instant the presentation's over, bang! I want a f.u.c.king sales blitzkrieg out there. Take no prisoners."

Jara looked around and saw nothing but eager faces spiked with adrenaline. All the apprentices had feared this new fiefcorp was flailing around in the dark, aimlessly searching for direction. But Natch has a plan, Jara thought. We should have known. He always has a plan.