Face it, Jara, she told herself. You want to fail.

The thought surprised and angered her. She wanted to fail. She wanted Natch's latest business venture to go down in flames. The a.n.a.lyst conjured a mental picture of herself: a small, fluttering, frightened thing, cowering at the feet of marble goliaths, men and women with minds and hearts and wills of stone.

And suddenly something inside of her rebelled. That's not me, she thought. I can't be like that. To settle for failure-that's like accepting death. If I just sit back and let things happen, I might as well have never lived in the first place.

Jara took a deep breath, counted to twenty, and flipped off the Coc.o.o.n. She had made her decision.

At just that moment, a familiar figure came barreling around the corner. He screeched to a halt in the middle of the room as soon as he saw the a.n.a.lyst, but the tub of jelly around his gut obeyed the laws of inertia and kept going. The statue of Isaac Newton looked on with amus.e.m.e.nt as Horvil toppled to the ground in accordance with the good scientist's theories.

"Oh, thank goodness!" bellowed the engineer, crawling his way across the floor to Jara's side. "I've been looking all over for you."

Jara gave her fellow apprentice a look of steely determination. "Horv, I'm going to deliver the presentation."

Horvil's mouth gaped open. "No luck with Margaret?"

She shook her head. "Quell was right. Margaret's gone totally offline. She ran to the Revelation Spire with a dartgun. I think she's going to make some kind of last stand up there. So with Natch gone and Margaret out of the picture, I guess it's up to me."

The engineer's face turned white. "Jara, there are Council officers out there. Thousands of 'em."

"I don't care. I'm not just going to sit here and do nothing."

"Before they let you set foot on that stage, they'll stick you with black code darts like a pincushion."

"Then they'll have to do it in front of a billion people."

Horvil's face took on a look of panic. His eyes tilted upwards as if beseeching the Father of Bio/Logics for an infusion of sanity. "Listen to me," he said, grabbing Jara's tiny hands and clutching them tightly within his own. "We can delay the presentation. Nothing says we have to do ours before the Patel Brothers do theirs. We can just lay low and do the whole show some other time."

"Are you completely deranged? If we put this off, the Patel Brothers will eat us for lunch. They'll pounce on us, and we'll have to spend the next month digging ourselves out."

"So what? Is it really worth it, Jara? Maybe Margaret's right. Just let it go."

"Horvil, these are our lives we're talking about here. This is our business. Don't you care about the fiefcorp and MultiReal and-and everything we've worked for in the past five years?"

"No."

Jara blanched, momentarily struck dumb. "No?"

The engineer's face blossomed into a shy smile completely devoid of irony. "All I care about is not losing you."

Jara sat stunned, unsure what to say. Was he trying to put her off her guard? Or maybe this had something to do with their unspoken rivalry for Natch's favor? Certainly the big lummox couldn't be sincere. In the three years she had known him, Horvil had barely uttered a single word that wasn't laced with sarcasm. Jara sighed. Why was it that as soon as she found her own moment of mental clarity, everything else had to slide out of focus?

"Horvil," she said gently, bundling her hands inside the warm nest of the engineer's palms. "I hope you can understand this. But I have to make that presentation. I just have to. This isn't about the fief corp or Natch, or-or product release schedules. It's about me. It's about ... not backing down. Not failing."

The engineer considered this for a moment. Jara couldn't imagine what thoughts were running through his head. Could a rich boy from the other side of London who had never had a moment of financial instability in his entire life still understand a crisis of conscience? "You have to promise me you'll be all right," he said.

Jara smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not up to me."

There was no burst of comprehension, no sudden epiphany behind Horvil's eyes. But finally he nodded and clenched the a.n.a.lyst's hands tightly. "Okay," he said. "So how can I help?"

"You can help me navigate. Do you know if there's a back entrance to the arena?" She gestured through the window at the now-familiar sight of Council officers roaming freely around the Surina courtyard. Their ranks ringed the Revelation Spire like a white crown, and lined the boulevard to the arena's front doors as well. The Surina security guards were nowhere to be found. "Obviously, we can't go that way."

Horvil jutted his chin out with determination, and the two of them rose to their feet. "As a matter of fact," he said, "there's a side entrance, through the museum here. Quell took me past it yesterday."

Jara brushed off her trousers and gave the Surina statue a respectful nod. "Let's go then."

The fiefcorp apprentices zipped past the statue of Tobi Jae Witt and down the hall. They dodged their way through a warren of curio tables and around a variety of large metal contraptions that had once housed Witt's experiments in artificial intelligence. The halls were now mostly empty of people. The few stragglers they did see were either terrified tourists looking for an escape route or Surina security forces hustling back towards the square.

Something about the conversation in the atrium had completely changed Horvil's demeanor. Minutes ago, he had been fearful for Jara's safety. But now he was taking the lead, lumbering into corridor inter sections as if preparing to use his belly to shield her from a barrage of darts. Jara looked at the engineer with a broad smile on her face. She wondered whether Horvil planned on taking the stage with her, and whether she would try to stop him if he did.

Horvil and Jara crossed over a walkway that bridged the Center for Historic Appreciation with the auditorium. They tried to keep low to avoid attention, but most of the soldiers below were fixated on the Revelation Spire anyway. Hundreds of dart-rifle barrels poked from the notches in the Spire walls, daring the Council troops to come any closer.

"The arena's just past that door," said Horvil. "The stage entrance is down the stairs."

Jara opened the door to the arena and found herself confronted with a sea of white robes.

The gathering crowd still stood at half a billion strong, but their ranks now included a large number of Defense and Wellness Council troops. The officers surrounded the stage and lined every aisle in the place. Just like last time, they silently shouldered their dartguns, their faces sculpted of stone.

Horvil gulped. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

They galloped down the stairs, opting now for speed rather than stealth. The two reached the bottom and rounded the last corner. Sure enough, the corridor angled upwards and ended in a single metal door that would lead them directly onto the arena stage. Jara had not expected this last approach to the stage to be unguarded. But when she saw the three people standing in front of the door, she gasped and snapped on a PokerFace 83.4b.

Serr Vigal, the preeminent neural programmer.

Len Borda, High Executive of the Defense and Wellness Council.

And Natch, master of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp.

Jara took an awkward step backwards, tripped, and fell neatly into Horvil's arms.

She didn't realize that Len Borda was so tall. He towered over the rest of them like a thin rock pillar, his bald head its capstone. Anywhere in the world, she would have recognized his dour face instantly, whether or not he wore the Council's white robe and yellow star.

Jara tried but could not shake her head clear of historical vertigo. Standing before her was the High Executive of the Defense and Wellness Council himself. The man who had led the world's most feared military and intelligence organization for fifty-seven years and counting. The man who had personally sparred with giants like Lucco Primo, Kordez Tha.s.sel and Marcus Surina. The man who had singlehandedly defeated the Economic Slump of the 310s. The man who had mastered the intricacies of his post long before Jara was born.

She thought of all the wild and unverifiable rumors she had heard about Len Borda over the years. The secret interrogations ... the hidden fortresses ... the pitiless military strikes ... the all-pervasive network of spies and snooping programs. And now that face was directly in front of her. Were the firm grooves on the man's brow a manifestation of evil intent, as the libertarian drudges contended, or merely the chiseled remnants of nature's implacable forces?

The High Executive barely noticed her presence. "I will speak to the crowd," he said to Natch in a gravelly ba.s.so profundo. "You have ten minutes."

Jara glanced at the fiefcorp master. At first glimpse, Natch appeared calm and collected, dressed in a sharp navy-blue pinstripe suit. Only someone who had studied his every pore and wrinkle ten thousand times could tell he was tottering on the brink of collapse. She detected traces of the stimulant program QuickPrep 49q on his face. "I need twenty," Natch said firmly.

"Twenty then." Borda's tone of voice left the impression that twenty minutes was what he had been after all along. He waved a hand, and the door to the arena stage slid open, bathing him in the spotlight.

Jara mustered all of her courage and spoke to the retreating high executive. "What about all those troops out there?" she cried.

Borda paused and gave her an unyielding look. The look of a man who could pinpoint her precise location, down to the minutest degree, in the orgchart of the universe.

The a.n.a.lyst felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Serr Vigal. "Jara, the Council is here for our protection," he said gently. "It was Natch's idea."

She gaped at the neural programmer, uncomprehending. "And ... Margaret?"

"She'll be fine," replied Borda. "Unfortunately." The high executive continued through the doorway and disappeared onto the stage. The door closed behind him.

Natch was already huddled with Horvil, listening intently to the engineer's instructions on how to operate the MultiReal program. There was no time to break down all that complexity into bite-sized pieces; Horvil was speaking pure calculus at this point. Natch gave no sign he understood the formulas his old friend was reeling off.

Jara turned to Serr Vigal. The neural programmer looked exhausted, and his eyes were full to the brim with concern for his protege.

"Natch was. .h.i.t with black code," said the neural programmer in response to her unspoken question. "He just woke up a few hours ago."

"The Patels?"

"Maybe, maybe not. He doesn't remember very much."

The fiefcorp master and the engineer were now dashing around trying to find a conference room with SeeNaRee capabilities. Quell happened to show up at that precise moment, and he quickly led them to an out-of-the-way door under the stage. Natch, Horvil, Jara, Quell and Serr Vigal rushed in and found themselves standing at home plate on the baseball diamond again. Horvil conjured up a ball and a Kyushu clubfoot, then tossed them to the fiefcorp master. Natch took a deep breath, threw the ball skywards, and swung.

He missed.

He picked up the ball, chucked it in the air, and missed again.

On the fifth attempt, Natch finally connected. But the bottom edge of the bat barely nicked the ball, causing it to limp towards first base and roll to a stop in the infield.

"I can't get this f.u.c.king thing to work, Horvil!" cried Natch, flush with rage. "Didn't Ben's people hook those programs together? What the f.u.c.k have you all been doing these past few days?"

"Benyamin's team got the job done," said Quell, doing his best to ignore the fiefcorp master's slight. "I tested the program myself."

The engineer patted his boss's virtual shoulder. "Just as you begin the swing, you've got to reach out with your mind towards the Possibilities interface and make sure you don't-"

"Never mind," Natch said gruffly. "There's no time. I'll figure it out. Jara, show me the script."

She did. Let me do the presentation instead, she almost said. I'm ready, I've had a chance to experiment with Possibilities 1.0 in the past few days. But Jara could see the iron resolve in Natch's eyes, the single-minded insanity that kicked in whenever he was backed into a corner. Her little catharsis at the museum withered, wormlike, into the dust. It was inevitable. Natch would never turn down a chance to perform in front of an audience of this size. As she had predicted, he would either deliver a perfect presentation, or die trying. Jara wondered fleetingly how the living, breathing audience upstairs compared to the invisible audience Natch had been playing to in his head all those years.

"Jara, tell me whether the auditorium can handle all these calculations," said Natch suddenly. His eyes were yellow and coyote hungry. "Tell me we're not going to cause a hundred more of those infoquakes."

"Well, the Surina people think that-"

"I don't want to hear it! Tell me yes or no."

The bio/logic a.n.a.lyst pursed her lips for a full three seconds in thought. She had never hated Natch more. She had never found him so irresistibly s.e.xy. "Yes."

"Good! Now go find Ben and Merri. The three of you comb the crowd and find the most sickeningly sweet little girl on the face of the earth. I'm talking five years old, pigtails, the whole thing."

"They don't allow anyone younger than eight on the multi network, remember?"

"Fine, eight years old then. But not a day over eight. Tag her spatial coordinates with a beacon so I can find her. Horvil!" The engineer saluted briskly, looking as if he were ready to give his life for the cause. "Go find a workbench. I need you to do the quickest programming job you've ever done in your life. We've got a couple of alterations to make."

"What did you have in mind?"

Natch spouted off a few polynomials. Horvil turned to the Islander, who nodded. "It can be done," muttered Quell. "Maybe." Seconds later, the three of them bolted out the door and down another hallway.

"I've never seen him so frightened, Jara," said Serr Vigal, as the two of them walked back towards the stairs and a door that would take them into the audience. "I don't think I've ever been so frightened for him either."

Jara wrapped a comradely arm around the neural programmer's waist. n.o.body would have mistaken Vigal for a young man, but he seemed to have aged twenty years in the past few weeks. "I'd be frightened too if I got shot full of black code," said Jara. "But don't worry, Vigal. He's already survived one attack, and with all those Council officers swarming through the arena, I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to try another."

Vigal gave her a curious look. "I don't think you understand. Natch isn't afraid of another black code attack. He's still worried about the first one."

"You mean ... ?"

"Natch is still infected. The program didn't self-destruct after it knocked him unconscious. In fact, we think it was the code that woke him up."

"Well, what does the code do? What's it waiting for?"

"We don't know. That's what we're afraid of."

Anyone who might have suggested two weeks ago that half a billion people would be standing in the Surina auditorium awaiting a product demonstration from Natch-Natch the scoundrel, Natch the upstart, Natch the arriviste-would have been roundly denounced by the bio/logic pundits on the Data Sea who Clearly Knew Better. Now the drudges were asking themselves, if an unknown businessman could jump to the top of the hierarchy with such stunning swiftness, if one man could leapfrog generations of accepted practice and standard operating procedure, then was anything safe anymore?

High Executive Len Borda emerged from the stage door and the crowd went silent. The audience, which had just watched a second incursion of Council troops with good humor, suddenly clouded over with gloom.

The high executive marched to center stage and swept the auditorium with his piercing gaze. Half a billion onlookers waited expectantly without uttering a single word. A minute pa.s.sed.

Finally, the Council chief spoke in a voice like rolling thunder. Borda's words were unhurried, untouched by focus groups, and spoken with a formality that might have been labeled pompous if the labelers did not fear having their Vault transactions scrutinized to the last decimal point by men in white robes. "My word is the will of the Defense and Wellness Council, which was established by the Prime Committee two hundred and fifty-two years ago to ensure the security of all persons throughout the system. The word of the Council is the word of the people."

A shudder whipped through the crowd like electricity. Those words had rarely been known to precede a happy occasion.

"Last week, thousands of lives were lost in the orbital colonies due to a new computational disturbance on the Data Sea known as an infoquake," continued Borda gravely. "The Council and the Prime Committee have been studying this phenomenon but have yet to draw any conclusions as to its root cause.

"The epistemological implications of this phenomenon may be uncertain, but the duty of the government remains unchanged.

"It is the solemn obligation of the Defense and Wellness Council to prevent any such disturbance from happening again. Towards that end, the Council has proposed to the Prime Committee a number of temporary measures designed to curb the risks of computational disorder. I have just been informed that the Committee has unanimously approved those measures."

The crowd's silence was broken by a low murmur from contingents of hard-core libertarians. Even though the High Executive still followed parliamentary procedure, everyone knew that the final word belonged to Borda and Borda alone. Who could recall the last time the Prime Committee rejected one of the Council's military "recommendations"? Remember the statues in the Center for Historic Appreciation, whispered the dissidents in the crowd. Remember that flimsy excuse they conjured up last time to advance their agenda.

"These are the strictures that the Prime Committee has enacted into law as of eight p.m. Melbourne time," said Borda.

"Until further notice, multi attendance will be capped at 500 million persons in any one location.

"All persons a.s.sembled at tonight's event will have their access to the Data Sea severely limited.

"And in the case of an infoquake or another eruption of black code, the Council will enforce its right to shut down programs on the Data Sea at its sole discretion."

The murmurings of unrest from the libertarians flared into full-out yells of protest. High executives had always had the ability to shut down certain programs deemed harmful to the public welfare-as long as they ran their decisions through the Prime Committee and the Congress of L-PRACGs first. But now, had the infoquake given Borda license to act unilaterally, without consultation?

A vocal element of the crowd began stomping its feet. Dire headlines appeared in drudge columns throughout the Data Sea. Chants of Borda must go echoed in one corner of the arena, until a rash of Council officers stormed in that direction and began conspicuously fingering the triggers of their multi disruptors.

Borda was unmoved. He stood and waited for the commotion to simmer down before proceeding. "The mandate of the Defense and Wellness Council-the entire reason for its existence-is to preserve the safety of every citizen in the civilized domains, from the four corners of Earth to Luna, Mars and the furthest orbital colonies," said the High Executive dispa.s.sionately. "Should the infoquake be deemed a natural occurrence, then the Council will continue to take measures necessary to prevent it from happening in the future.