"There's one more topic we need to cover," Natch said with an abrupt change of tone. Either he was suddenly being sincere, or he had made new strides in his mask of personableness. "The Defense and Wellness Council is out there, and they don't want this demonstration to go forward. You all saw what happened at Margaret Surina's speech. When this meeting is over and I send out the announcement of our demo, we've got seventy-two hours til showtime-and once Len Borda knows that, he might resort to something desperate."

"What about the Patels?" said Jara. "Are they going to come after us too?"

Natch scratched his elbow thoughtfully. "I don't know. I can't see the angle in them resorting to violence. And Frederic and Petrucio never do anything without an angle."

Horvil eyed a pack of hyenas in the distance as if they might be Council informants. "So what do you want us to do? Lock our doors? Hire bodyguards?"

"Maybe we should just lie low until Tuesday," suggested Ben. "Find somewhere the Council can't get to us."

Merri gave the young apprentice a dark look. "Like where?"

There was a long pause. Somewhere in the distance, a cl.u.s.ter of African bats shrieked. The Defense and Wellness Council had a presence in every city on the globe, every chartered settlement on Luna and Mars, every jerrybuilt outpost orbiting the sun from Earth to the asteroid belt. Was there anyplace in the whole of human civilization where Borda couldn't find them?

Natch leaned forward, balancing his chin on the tips of his two index fingers. "All right, then," he said. "Everyone's going to come out here to Andra Pradesh. The Surina compound's got plenty of accommodations and the best programming facilities in the world-not to mention armed security."

"What good is that going to do us?" said Jara with a grimace. "The Council marched right inside the gates the other day while Surina security just sat there and watched. What makes you think they'll stop Borda this time?"

The entrepreneur closed his eyes once more, and Jara realized he had explored this situation a thousand times already in his head. "Where else can we go? Any place that's primitive enough to escape the Council's notice is too backwards for us to put together a demo in. And I've looked everywhere ... the Islands, the Pharisee Territories, OrbiCo s.p.a.ce freighters. It's the same wherever you look. At least in Andra Pradesh we'll see them coming."

"What-what about Serr Vigal?" stuttered Horvil.

"Vigal will be all right. He's got his own private security team at the conference, and everyone knows he doesn't have much to do with our day-to-day operations. He promised he'd show up for the demo."

"Natch, what about me?" Merri's tone of voice was distraught, almost tearful. "I don't think there's any shuttle that can get from Luna to Terra that fast. The presentation will be over while I'm still in transit."

"I haven't forgotten about you. I've made you a reservation at TeleCo later this afternoon."

Jara's eyes went wide with disbelief. "Teleport-from the moon? Are you kidding? Do you know how expensive that is? That's like our entire third quarter budget right there."

"Not as expensive as replacing a dead channel manager at the last minute," said Natch.

n.o.body could argue with that.

Ten minutes later, Natch cut his multi connection. He stood on the red square tile in his hallway and took stock of preparations for Tuesday's performance. All the pieces were set on the board: the auditorium s.p.a.ce had been reserved, the proper doc.u.mentation had been filed with the Meme Cooperative, the press release had been blasted to every corner of the Data Sea. He gave the drudges another fifteen minutes before they started a blitzkrieg of their own.

He consulted the time and shook his head. Precious seconds were ticking away, time disappearing forever into the void. He would need to drive his staff hard in order to complete this ma.s.sive undertaking. He would need to thrash a little sloppiness out of Horvil; to wink and cajole a little extra effort out of Jara; to give Merri that zone of comfort that allowed her to produce consistently excellent work. Benyamin's motivations were still a mystery to him, as were those of the Islander Quell. But Natch felt confident he would find their hooks before this crunch was through.

The fiefcorp master made a quick list of things he would need at the Surina complex. His satchel of bio/logic programming bars. A few shirts. An extra pair of pants. The gabardine suit he had purchased for important events. Natch tucked the hermetically sealed packets of clothing into his satchel, wolfed down a sandwich, and was on his way. As he left the building, he imagined he could hear his apartment breaking down and compressing into its component pieces.

November afternoons in Shenandoah were dreary affairs. It would not be unusual to expect a dusting of early snow, but Natch's LPRACG weather service was predicting rain. Indeed, a group of ominous dark clouds had a.s.sembled on the city's western edge, trying to decide whether to advance downtown or move on to riper targets. The threat of rain was enough to empty the streets. Why slog through the rain when you could multi to some sunny locale halfway around the globe?

The large viewscreen down the road from Natch's building had long since moved on from its ChaiQuoke advertis.e.m.e.nt. Now it showcased a bosomy woman with a l.u.s.tful gaze that followed everyone who pa.s.sed by. Above her shoulder were the words: I'LL BE WAITING FOR YOU IN 49TH HEAVEN.

Vacation packages for all ages and income brackets.

But Natch paid as little heed to the sign as he did to the mounting rain. His head was already inside Minds.p.a.ce at the Surina Enterprise Facility, toying with the intricate code stored in the MultiReal databases. By the time he made it halfway to the TubeCo station, his hair had drooped mopstyle onto his forehead, bogged down by the afternoon drizzle.

He leaned forward to shake off the watery acc.u.mulation, causing the first dart to whizz past his right ear.

Natch snapped his head up and saw a small needle embedded in the side of the building he had been walking past. Undoubtedly, the dart's payload of OCHREs was discharging harmlessly into the concrete.

Darts ... OCHREs laden with ... black code!

Natch's animal instincts took over as he sprinted for cover. He caught a glimpse of a figure in a black robe flecked with crimson, shouldering a dart-rifle. Firing.

Thwip! Thwip! Two more projectiles slammed into the wall mere centimeters away, sending miniature starbursts of rainwater into the air.

Natch dove around the corner into an alleyway of sorts, a temporary opening between buildings that did not need the s.p.a.ce. An avenue of shadows that would be gone long before anyone got around to naming it. Natch dimly realized that ending up here was no accident; this a.s.sault had been well planned.

He risked a glance back across the street, where he had seen the figure in the black robe. If the man was a Council officer, he was not wearing any of the standard issue uniforms. The robe draped him from head to toe, and the red formed some kind of pattern-Chinese characters, perhaps. Illegible at this distance, in any event.

The man was making brusque hand signals in several directions. He was not alone.

Two figures went tearing past the alleyway in an attempt to establish a flanking position on the other side. In one fluid motion, Natch drew a bio/logic programming bar from his satchel and hurled it like a discus.

The bar hit home, and one of the black-robed figures went down with a grunt. Definitely human, definitely male, and definitely not a multi projection. He doubted he had used enough force to cause major damage, but a solid metal bar in the gut was enough to bring anyone to the floor for at least a few minutes.

Natch could see more scrambling motions in the shadows, and more figures in identical black robes. He swung his head around wildly, looking for someone on the street to yell to, some method of escape. But the street was empty and the only way out of the alley lay some fifty meters ahead of him. Natch bolted down the corridor, frantically trying to think of a bio/logic program he could use for selfdefense. Forty meters to the end of the alley ... thirty meters ... almost halfway there ...

And then Natch felt the pinp.r.i.c.k of a needle in his back, near the base of his spine, and the black code slammed into him.

He flopped around and saw one of his mysterious pursuers standing at the end of the alleyway, dartgun mounted on his shoulder. Before Natch could react, he was. .h.i.t twice more in the side and the right forearm.

As the malevolent dart tip OCHREs flowed into his bloodstream, he felt surprisingly little pain. All the same, he knew it wouldn't be long before the insidious machines had nullified his defenses and reprogrammed his internal systems. The rules of the Meme Cooperative, the strictures of Dr. Plugenpatch, the protective matrix of OCHREs, and the red blood cells in his body-all could be circ.u.mvented, given time and expertise and direct access to the major arteries carrying cellular traffic.

Natch tried one last desperate ConfidentialWhisper request to Horvil, but it was too late. He collapsed face first into a puddle of rainwater and continued down below street level into darkness.

The apprentices, conscious of the press of time, cut their multi connections and made arrangements to cart their bodies to Andra Pradesh. Only Jara stayed behind at the Enterprise Facility to await Quell's arrival.

Horvil's tube ride to Andra Pradesh was uneventful. No Council officers in white robes lurking around, no strange looks from fellow tube pa.s.sengers other than the ones Horvil was used to getting. The engineer had ascended halfway up the steep hill inside the Surina compound gates before it occurred to him that a three-day stay at Andra Pradesh might require more than his bio/logic programming bars and a thermos of nitro.

He was the first one back at the safari SeeNaRee. Quell had still not arrived. While Jara tried to wrap up the first draft of a speech outline before she fetched her body from London, Horvil made camp at the antiseptic conference table. He conjured up a diagram of Probabilities 4.9 and began poring over the details, trying to familiarize himself with a program he had unceremoniously discarded five years ago. It was like reading old hive poetry; the coding was sloppy, the connections strained and amateurish. Probabilities 4.9 would not even have pa.s.sed muster at Dr. Plugenpatch five years ago, and the bio/logic standards had evolved so much since then. He couldn't wait to find a workbench and tear into this program in Minds.p.a.ce.

Suddenly, a shadow fell across the table, obscuring the holograph. Horvil looked up in irritation. Not another one of those SeeNaRee elephants It was no elephant. An immense man stood before him, possibly fifty years old but with the physique of someone half that age. A pale blonde ponytail slunk down one shoulder and splayed out over his great barrel chest. The man could have cracked Horvil's head like a walnut between his biceps and forearm, but his demeanor was calm, almost sardonic. "I presume you're Horvil," he said.

Horvil balked, his mind a blank. "And you are?"

"I'm your new apprentice," replied the man. "Quell." He extended a hand in Horvil's direction at precisely the same time Horvil arose and started to bow. The plump engineer stared at the calloused and manyringed hand in confusion.

"You're supposed to shake it, you idiot." Jara walked up and placed her tiny palm in Quell's. To do so, she nearly had to get up on her tiptoes. "Towards Perfection. I'm Jara, Natch's bio/logic a.n.a.lyst. Don't mind Horvil-not everybody here is that clueless about your customs." The big man enclosed her virtual hand in his flesh fist, and they went through the awkward mechanics of a handshake. Finally, she pulled her hand away in frustration. "Maybe you can see why we bow instead."

Quell did not miss a beat. "And maybe you can see why I insist on shaking anyway."

All at once, comprehension came flooding into Horvil's head. He caught sight of the plain tan breeches and the thin copper collar suspended from the man's neck. The breeches were cinched tightly around his waist with a snakeskin belt that looked like it was actually made out of snakeskin. "Y-you're an unconnectible!" the engineer exclaimed in surprise.

"Yeah," replied Quell, "although I think the term you're looking for is Islander."

Horvil was so fascinated with the man's collar that he completely missed the faux pas. He had seen plenty of Islanders at a distance, of course-they did sometimes venture beyond the borders of their little demesne in the South Pacific-but actually meeting one in person was a different matter altogether. Horvil tried to picture what this room would look like to Quell if he removed that collar. No SeeNaRee, no Jara, no multi projections of any kind.

"I thought you were a bio/logic engineer," he said, thoroughly baffled. "Weren't you supposed to bring us the MultiReal code?" Horvil peeked around the Islander as if he expected to see a string of Minds.p.a.ce blueprints bobbing behind him on a string.

"I am an engineer," said Quell with scarcely masked impatience. "And don't worry, I have the access to the code."

Horvil peered up and down the big man doubtfully. "If you're an engineer, where's your bio/logic programming bars?" He patted his own neatly folded knapsack and felt the rea.s.suring heft of the metal inside.

The Islander let out a breath. He had obviously dealt with such skepticism many times before. "Let's just get this over with," he groused in a dangerous tone of voice. "We don't have time to f.u.c.k around. Follow me." He pivoted on one heel and stomped towards the metal doorframe standing incongruously in the middle of the veldt. Horvil and Jara looked at one another, shrugged, and set off in pursuit. All at once, the African SeeNaRee was replaced by the blue stretchedstone walls of the Surina Enterprise Facility.

Quell strode through the halls as if the Facility had been constructed solely for his benefit. None of the Surina security guards seemed eager to contradict this impression. They parted dutifully for the Islander with deep, respectful bows, while casting suspicious glances at Jara and Horvil. Throngs of businesspeople hustling to and from meetings stepped aside because of the Islander's intimidating presence. Finally, Quell led them to a door surrounded by Surina security people and walked into the most gorgeous works.p.a.ce Horvil had ever seen.

The room's four walls bore no SeeNaRee or decorations of any kind, not even one of those extendable programming bar holsters that Horvil had seen in so many offices lately. Quell's workbench, however, was anything but shabby: a four-sided metal monstrosity with a sliding panel that allowed access to its center. The Islander snapped his fingers and conjured up a gigantic Minds.p.a.ce bubble, large enough to hold three or four of Horvil's programs simultaneously. A serpentine block of bio/logic code wended partway around the bubble in hues of gray, brown and violet.

"Watch this," commanded Quell. And then he plunged his bare hands straight into the middle of the holograph.

Horvil gasped as connection strands rose like snakes charmed from a basket and wiggled their way to the Islander's fingers. Soon, Quell had ama.s.sed a bundle of data fibers in each hand, which he proceeded to weave in and out of the code blocks with astonishing alacrity. The connections looked just as well seated as if they had been stuck there with a pricey set of programming bars.

"I didn't even know you could do it that way," said Horvil. He thought of the clunky silver slabs roosted against his side and felt a rush of inferiority.

"How do you think people made code before bio/logic programming bars?" replied Quell. His noodling did not seem to have any purpose other than demonstration; he was tying and untying the same collection of strands over and over again. "With their bare hands, that's how. On the Islands, we remember such things."

"But-the connection strands-they're floating to your fingertips The big man's eyes twinkled with a craftsman's pride. Suddenly, he clenched his hands into fists, and the snakes drooped limply back to the desk. "The rings," he said, twitching his fingers in the air. "They each broadcast a unique signature, just like a programming bar."

Jara had been watching Quell's display with characteristic skepticism. "So what is this thing?" she said, gesturing at the roller coaster structure of the program. "That was a nice demonstration, but how do we know it even works?"

"This thing is EnviroSelect 14," retorted the Islander. "And you know it works because it's been choosing the SeeNaRee for you every time you've stepped into a Surina conference room."

Jara pursed her lips, embarra.s.sed. "Oh."

When they arrived back at the conference room, Benyamin was waiting for them. He didn't show the least bit of surprise at Quell's traditional Islander handshake, causing Horvil to wonder how his younger cousin could be so much more worldly than he. There was no sign of Merri yet, but that was to be expected; teleportation was challenging enough without the additional complications caused by 380,000 kilometers of s.p.a.ce. She would not be here for a few more hours yet. Jara took one last look at her notes, muttered something unintelligible but definitely not pleasant, and then cut her multi connection.

Horvil and Ben dutifully followed Quell back through the hallways to the workroom where the engineering would begin. The Islander seemed inclined to walk several meters ahead of the two cousins, but Horvil managed to hustle to the big man's side.

"I was hoping you could explain something," said the engineer. "Obviously, you can make bio/logic programs with those funky rings there, but how do you test 'em?"

Quell eyed his counterpart with scarcely concealed suspicion. "What do you mean?"

"I thought Islanders didn't run bio/logic programs because bio/logics is unholy, or something like that."

"You're thinking of the Pharisees. That's not us at all. We run bio/logic programs in the Islands every once in a while; people there install some of the basic OCHREs. Our Technology Board just discriminates a lot more carefully than your connectible governments."

"We discriminate pretty carefully," said Horvil in a wounded tone of voice.

Quell shook his head, and for a second the engineer thought he was going to burst out laughing. "How much code do you have floating around your system right now, Horvil?" he said.

Horvil thought carefully, trying to account for all the programs he activated w.i.l.l.y-nilly every minute, the background code created by his L-PRACG and the Prime Committee, the constant hum of molecular activity instigated by his OCHREs. Processes whose names he didn't know, routines that had been installed by hive technicians before birth and running constantly since then. "I don't know," he said. "Thousands, probably."

"And do you know who wrote them all? How do you know they're all going to work together flawlessly?"

"That's why we have governments. That's why there's Primo's and the Council."

"Governments. Primo's. The Defense and Wellness Council." The Islander spat out the words as if they were the names of particularly odious criminals. "Do you trust them?"

"Not entirely. But I'm not gonna sit around all day and weed through bio/logic programs either."

Benyamin, who had been listening a few paces behind, now came trotting up on Quell's right side. "But we have a system for opting out of these standard bio/logic programs," he said. "The Islander Tolerance Act of 146. High Executive Toradicus signed it."

"Spoken like a true governmentalist," said Quell, though his tone of voice was not unkind. "Create an opt-out provision, and put the onus on our taxpayers, on our governments. The Technology Board has a huge team that does nothing but register these 'Dogmatic Oppositions' twenty-four hours a day to keep your bots and data agents out of the South Pacific. And who do you think pays their salaries? Do you think your Prime Committee has ever sent a b.l.o.o.d.y credit our way to fund their Tolerance Act?"

Horvil blushed furiously. He had heard of Dogmatic Oppositions, of course, but to him the term had just been verbal dressing tossed around in Khann Frejohr's speeches. He had never met anyone to whom these things actually mattered. "Politics," muttered Horvil. "I hate politics."

At that, the Islander let out a t.i.tan-sized laugh of such gusto that all the security guards in the hallway instantly felt for their dartrifles. "If you hate politics," said Quell, "you're in the wrong fiefcorp."

"So how many programs do you have running in your system?" snapped Horvil.

The Islander looked at Horvil with an expression that hinted at fondness or amus.e.m.e.nt. "Twelve. And seven of them are for my asthma."

Horvil had started to drift into an interior monologue about the evils of politics when he was jarred back to reality by their arrival at Quell's workroom. The Islander made an obscure hand signal to a unit of blueand-green Surina security officers, and a dozen of them instantly marched up to the workroom door and formed a protective ring around it. This was no loose formation like the one Horvil saw here half an hour ago; these troops had their fingers on the triggers of their guns and were clearly ready to use them. "Thank you," said Horvil inanely as he stepped into the room with Ben and Quell and closed the door behind him.

Two dozen guards at the gates to the Surina complex, thought Horvil. And then more guards blocking the way into the Surina Enterprise Facility ... and now even more right outside the door ... You'd need an army to get past all those dartguns.

Then he remembered that Len Borda did have an army. Several armies, in fact. He shivered.

Quell was obviously used to the pressure. He marched into the center of the workbench and waved his hand around the table. Ben and Horvil jumped back in awe as a dozen interlocking modules of pink and blue appeared in the Minds.p.a.ce bubble. Horvil now understood the need for the large works.p.a.ce; the program took up every square centimeter and extended halfway to the ceiling like a Gothic castle. Connection strands stretched from module to module in startling and intricate patterns, some circ.u.mnavigating the whole ma.s.s several times. Even an observer who knew nothing about bio/logic coding could lose himself for hours studying the beautiful detail, the interplay of colors, the endless number of aesthetic themes that replicated across the surface of the program. Horvil had seen entire nervous system simulators that were less complex.

"So this is MultiReal," he gulped. Next to the Byzantine topography of the MultiReal program, Probabilities 4.9 would look like a pastel-colored pimple.

"That-that's amazing," stuttered Ben.

Quell's face showed a mixture of pride and sadness, the palimpsest of some epic experience that Horvil could hardly begin to imagine. "After sixteen years of work," he said, "it ought to be."

"Sixteen years?" said Horvil, his jaw hanging low. He couldn't imagine working on the same program for sixteen months.

"And that's just Margaret's part of it. Half of this code was pa.s.sed down by her father when he died-and she contracted out a lot of bits and pieces." Horvil nodded as if Quell's statement were self-evident. "Now are we ready to start coding?"

The two cousins nodded in sync, and they got to work.

Probabilities 4.9 did indeed look quite puny beside the gargantuan MultiReal engine. Its double helix shape was a child's trick in comparison, a second-rate sleight of hand. Horvil found the sight of the two programs side-by-side a big metaphor for the entire situation Natch had gotten them into. The Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp? thought the engineer, wishing he could just erase the Probabilities ROD and pretend it had never existed. This is the Margaret Surina MultiReal Fiefcorp, plain and simple. We don't belong here. We're completely out of our league.

Quell spent the first half-hour pointing out the MultiReal program's basic hooks to his fellow apprentices. There wasn't enough time for a more in-depth explanation. When the Islander wrapped up his brief overview, Horvil still had no idea what an alternate reality was or why you would want to create one. But now he felt confident he could at least steer this MultiReal vessel, even if the workings of its engine room remained a mystery.

Horvil was gratified to see that his original estimate of the work involved was accurate. Clearly, it would be madness for Quell, Horvil and Benyamin to attempt to make all those thousands of connections in less than seventy-two hours; even Natch would have to admit that. So the two senior engineers spent the next few hours making detailed blueprints for the a.s.sembly-line shop and marking up their code on templates even the greenest programmer could follow. There wasn't enough room inside the workbench for Ben to squeeze in, not alongside two men of such bulk. So he kept to the corner of the room, where he took notes on a holographic tablet and stared intently at Quell's finger-weaving technique. Horvil felt like an ancient relic swinging around his clunky bars of metal, but there was nothing he could do about it.