"Wait a minute," said the a.n.a.lyst. "I understand now. The Patel Brothers. They were trying to tel us something with that demo."

Benyamin's mouth curled into a sal ow frown. "Like what?"

"They're trying to tel us that there's another way," Jara continued. "A more egalitarian way. What if we give everyone, say, ten thousand choice cycles a month? Or fifty thousand? Whether you're a Lunar tyc.o.o.n on Feynman or just some L-PRACG bureaucrat in Beijingwhether you bought Possibilities 1.0 from Surina/Natch or SafeSh.o.r.es 1.0 from the Patels-you get the same number of alternate realities as everyone else. And you can't buy any more, under any circ.u.mstances."

Ben wasn't mol ified in the slightest. "So you're saying we should handicap our product so the Patels can compete with us?"

"I'm saying we should prevent MultiReal from turning into an endless arms race of who can stockpile the most choice cycles." Jara stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. "I suppose it works to Frederic and Petrucio's advantage. But that's not why we would do it."

"Natch isn't going to like this at al ," said Ben, walking around the a.n.a.lyst to confront her face to face. "I don't like it. You're putting an artificial cap on a system that doesn't need one. That won't work. It never works."

Jara shook her head. "This isn't sociology cla.s.s, Ben. MultiReal is dangerous. Haven't you figured that out yet? We can't afford to make a reckless decision here. People's lives could be at stake."

"Don't be so melodramatic," interrupted Ben, throwing up his hands. "I get the point already. But these things have a way of working themselves out.

They always do. The Lunar tyc.o.o.ns would waste al their choice cycles trying to one-up each other. They wouldn't care what goes on down here."

Merri climbed to her feet and eyed the conflict between the two apprentices with unease.

Ben and Jara were standing toe to toe now, glaring at one another with a hostility that the Patels had only pantomimed this morning. The SeeNaRee noticed the discord and hurled a strong wind along the sh.o.r.eline, kicking up bits of sand and shel to nip at their ankles.

"This is just wrong," said Benyamin, a contentious frown on his face. "Crippling MultiReal won't help anyone. It'l only help Frederic and Petrucio drive us out of business. Once we're gone, the Patels wil own the program outright and start sel ing unlimited choice cycles anyway."

"I don't think so," replied Jara. "You didn't see that presentation at the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex. Frederic and Petrucio agree with me."

"What if the Patels only want you to think they agree? How do you know Magan Kai Lee didn't put them up to this?"

Jara's brow furrowed. The very mention of that name was enough to spike her blood pressure and make her sweat. "Why would he do that?"

Benyamin put a hand on her shoulder. "Because once we bring our version of MultiReal down to their level, the Council can use the Patels' version to get to us-and we won't be able to stop them."

Jara opened her mouth, nonplussed, but the pat response she was waiting for to leap to her rescue did not come. She was ashamed to admit that such a tactic had never even occurred to her. Everything always came back to the Council in the end, didn't it? "I guess that's just a chance we'l have to take," she said under her breath.

13.

January 2: the day the fiefcorp was scheduled to unveil the winners of the MultiReal exposition lottery. The day that twenty-three lucky citizens would be given an appointment to experience the wonders of multiple realities firsthand.

The morning dawned bl.u.s.tery and brutish, with a fresh a.s.sault of hail in Shenandoah, a barrage of rain in London-and news of another infoquake in central Asia.

The Defense and Wel ness Council managed to suppress the news for forty-eight hours.

But even Len Borda's agents couldn't keep such a scoop hidden from the drudges forever. By midmorning, details were splashed across the headlines of every gossipmonger on the Data Sea. This infoquake was not nearly as severe as the last one, which had left hundreds dead and thousands wounded from Earth to the orbital colonies. The computational blizzard was centered in Tibet, though flurries were observed as far away as Andra Pradesh and Vladivostok. The death tol hovered at a mere two dozenbut the details of their demise were almost gruesome enough to eclipse the MultiReal exposition lottery. Drudges pounded the Council with questions about the cause of the infoquakes, but al the Council flaks could do was utter bureaucratic euphemisms for we don't know.

Forty thousand drudges, channelers, and capitalmen wedged themselves into a sunny Sao Paulo soccer stadium that morning to witness the lottery drawing. It was the same venue Natch had rented for the exposition itself, and with its newly reupholstered seats and dizzying array of giant viewscreens, the stadium made quite a spectacle. Merri worked the crowd with the help of Robby Robby's merry band of channelers, salting the cognoscenti with a heavy coating of marketing buzzwords. By midday, chatter about the latest infoquake had died down to a whisper, and the drudges were ready for Natch.

But Natch was not there.

Jara couldn't believe the entrepreneur would put everyone through this c.r.a.p yet again. It had to be foul play, a clandestine strike by the Council, a mugging, black code. Then a fl.u.s.tered Serr Vigal rushed in at the last minute with news from Natch. He was on a tube train with Quel heading for Andra Pradesh and would not attend the drawing. A stunned Horvil spattered the freshly painted wal s of the stadium's locker room with a mouthful of ChaiQuoke.

Panic had yet to set in when the apprentices received another surprise guest. Robby Robby oozed into the locker room, leading by the hand the worldrenowned soccer star Wilson Refaris Ko. The man was rugged and handsome, with trol -sized hands and a chin the size of a graveyard shovel. "So where do I pick 'em?" grinned Ko.

"Pick them?" said Jara, feeling like her head was ful of yarn. "Pick what?"

Ko, confused, scratching his a.s.s: "There's usual y a barrel with little plastic tags in it."

Horvil laughed. "You got a barrel that holds three bil ion plastic tags?"

"We've already got a program to pick the lottery winners," explained Jara. "Al you need to do is read the names. Right?" She looked to the other fiefcorpers for backup, but n.o.body else had any idea what Ko was supposed to do. Jara shrugged. "Right. I'l go out there and introduce you, and you just read the names."

"Oh." The man was crestfal en.

Ko might not have had the keenest intel ect, but what he lacked in brainpower he made up for in star kinetics. His panther strut caused men and women of al s.e.xual orientations to drop their jaws, and his husky reed of a voice could mesmerize even the sourest drudge. Jara never knew for certain whether Natch had hired him directly or if his appearance was the work of Robby Robby, but it didn't real y matter. When Ko walked onto the field, there was not a murmur to be heard from the crowd.

The soccer player cleared his throat and prepared to recite the names fed to him by Horvil's algorithms. Jara could sense a bil ion necks arching forward in front of viewscreens across the world. "And the winners of the Surina/Natch MultiReal lottery are ..."

A leukocyte specialist from Dr. Plugenpatch. A mother of four pledged to Creed Bushido.

An OrbiCo technician who spent most of his time jetting between the colonies of Al owel and Nova Ceti. A bio/logic programmer in Beijing ...

The names rol ed on. Jara breathed a sigh of relief, although she couldn't say why. You could tel precious little about someone from a name and job description; any one of those lottery winners could easily be on Len Borda's payrol . Or Khann Frejohr's, or Creed Tha.s.sel's, for that matter. But the names were out there now, and it was time to sit back and let the Data Sea journalists do their detective work.

His task completed, Wilson Refaris Ko cut his multi connection and vanished back to the Neverland of self-important celebrities. Merri took his place on the platform at the end of the field, smiling, her boldest Creed Objectivv pin riding high on her chest.

Ben tried to convince his cousin not to go out there, to wait until they had gotten Natch's explicit approval before announcing the exposition rules.

"You're real y upset about this, aren't you?" said Horvil.

The young apprentice shoved his hands in his pockets and gave a sal ow nod. "I'm not upset because I don't agree with the decision," he said. "If Natch decides we should give MultiReal users limited choice cycles, that's fine. It's just Jara hasn't even talked to him about it. She made up her mind without consulting anybody."

"She consulted Merri and Vigal. They both agree."

"Do you?"

The engineer bobbed his head back and forth slowly like the pendulum of a fat grandfather clock. Did he believe that MultiReal should be released with limited or unlimited choice cycles? He didn't know. Usual y Horvil was content to wal ow in the numerology and let Natch make the policy decisions.

But like a black hole, MultiReal warped the very moral and ethical dimensions around it.

Horvil could feel the program's infinite density tugging at strings inside him that he had never realized he possessed. This program demanded that he abandon his neutrality and pick a side.

But not quite yet. "I dunno if I agree or not," Horvil said at length. "I think I do. But I haven't real y given it enough thought."

Ben was clearly disappointed. "Wel , Natch's opinion is the only one that counts, unless Margaret decides to come down from that tower. I wish he'd answer his f.u.c.king Confidential Whisper requests." The apprentice kicked an empty bottle on the locker room floor and watched it ricochet off the concrete wal . "Come on, Horvil. You know what Natch would say. You know what he's going to say when he hears about this. He'l agree that the market should set the number of choice cycles."

"Wel , think of it this way. These rules are just for the exposition. We stil have plenty of time to change our minds before we launch Possibilities on the Data Sea."

"That's not the point. The point is-"

Horvil rol ed his eyes and reached out to pinch his cousin's lips shut. "The point is, Ben, Natch isn't here. Somebody needed to make a decision. Jara made it." And without waiting for a reaction, the engineer was out the locker room door and heading for the field.

Jara didn't want the haze of multivoid to end. She wanted to grab onto the nothingness and embrace it tightly. Some days she remained on the red tile in her hal way for several minutes, filtering out the sights and sounds of the apartment with a Coc.o.o.n program until she could bear to look at the world again. Today, she merely stood on the tile with eyes shut.

It's been a good day, she thought.

The drudges were wel pleased with the lottery results. Her fel ow fiefcorpers had performed admirably: Merri had looked stoic, Horvil knowledgeable, Vigal calm and unruffled. Benyamin had stayed out of the way. Best of al , Jara had already antic.i.p.ated most of the drudges' questions, and so the fiefcorp was able to stay on script most of the afternoon.

n.o.body paid much attention to what Merri labeled the Equitable Choice Cycle Model, but Jara had not expected them to. The public simply didn't have enough information about MultiReal to comprehend the issues at stake. But Jara knew that it was only a matter of time. The words she scripted would resonate long and loud for decades to come. Al that mattered was that the Patel Brothers would understand. Frederic and Petrucio would get the message that the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was wil ing to be reasonable. (Stil , Jara was careful to emphasize that the Equitable Choice Cycle Model would be in effect only for the exposition. She didn't want the Patel Brothers to get too comfortable.) Six more days to the MultiReal exposition, she thought. Six more days until the public gets a real taste of multiple realities. After that, there's no tel ing.

She opened her eyes and absorbed the mundanity of her East London flat once more.

Open surfaces, bare countertops, white wal s. The first faint sketches of her future were drawn there, but the lines were stil too indistinct for her to make out.

14.

There were no redwoods on the long tube route that snaked halfway around the globe to Andra Pradesh. For most of the journey, there was nothing for Natch to look at but sea and sky-and the Council officers who had been tailing him since Shenandoah.

Watching Quel work the viewscreens on the window proved an interesting diversion.

Natch didn't know if the Islander possessed the neural equipment necessary to give a window direct commands; his understanding was that the Islanders had most standard OCHRE machines implanted at birth but simply kept them turned off. How else could Quel run a program as complex as MultiReal? Whatever the reason, he was navigating the Data Sea with his fingertips via an onscreen maze of b.u.t.tons. Natch fel into a light sleep wondering how many other systems had hidden unconnectible interfaces built into them.

"They're comparing you to Marcus Surina," said Quel a few hours later.

The QuasiSuspension program had Natch awake and alert before the Islander even finished the first syl able. He glanced out the window just in time to see the sh.o.r.es of Sicily hurtling past. "Who is?" said the fiefcorp master.

"The drudges at the MultiReal lottery." Quel gestured at the window, which was showing an opinion piece by some obscure pundit named Vermil ion.

"This guy says that if Marcus couldn't put together a feasible plan for teleportation, you won't do any better with MultiReal. He thinks Marcus turned out to be mostly hype, and you're headed the same way."

Natch shrugged. "Doesn't matter. The drudges don't know anything. They're just blowing smoke." He scanned the first few para graphs of the story, picking out the standard descriptors: reckless, neurotic, maniacal. Natch supposed he should give the article a closer look, make sure the lottery went off without any major gaffes. But right now the only things he could focus on were black code and MultiReal.

The entrepreneur settled back into his seat. "They could've chosen someone worse.

Marcus Surina was the richest man in the world in his day."

Quel frowned. "Yeah, but he came to a bad end."

"Most good things do," said Natch as he drifted back into QuasiSuspension.

From the moment the tube train pul ed into Andra Pradesh, they could see that the Surina compound was in disarray-guards rushing everywhere, trash piling up, a little boy lost screaming for his mother and n.o.body giving him a second glance. The man checking ident.i.ties at the bottom of the hil gave Natch and Quel no more than a cursory scan before admitting them through the gates.

Things did not improve when they climbed the hil and found their way to the compound's central courtyard. Figures in blue-and-green livery scurried around the square with little semblance of order, as if struggling to obey confusing or even contradictory orders. The entrances to the Center for Historic Appreciation and the Enterprise Facility were spa.r.s.ely guarded, and a smal platoon of Council officers could easily have snuck into the absurd castle that contained the Surina family residences. The security force was concentrated around the half-kilometerhigh thorn known as the Revelation Spire. Margaret had exiled herself to the tip of that spire several weeks ago, when the Defense and Wel ness Council marched in before Natch's last demo. And now, it seemed, she had decided to make it a permanent arrangement.

Quel pointed disdainful y at a pair of guards who were attempting to haul a disruptor cannon across the courtyard by the barrel. "I knew things were bad," growled the Islander, "but I didn't know they were this bad."

Natch shuddered. He had seen how effortlessly Len Borda's troops took control of the compound last month, when Surina security was stil in relatively good shape. If Magan Kai Lee sent a few legions of his officers here today, what kind of resistance could the Surinas possibly offer?

The Islander s.n.a.t.c.hed the arm of a pa.s.sing officer. The woman yelped and reached for the dartgun in her holster. Then she saw who had seized her and let the free arm drop to her side. Apparently Quel 's reputation stil carried a lot of weight in this place. "You," he barked. "What's going on? Where's the security chief?"

"He-he left," stuttered the officer.

Quel yanked the woman's arm almost hard enough to dislocate her shoulder. "What do you mean, he left?"

"Suheil dismissed him," whimpered the guard. "Sent him home. The bodhisattva just ...

let it happen."

"So who's in charge here?"

The woman gave him such a pitiful look in response that Quel let her go. She tore across the travertine and disappeared into the Surina Enterprise Facility without a backward glance.

"Suheil," muttered the Islander, half to himself.

"Isn't that Margaret's cousin?" said Natch.

"Second cousin. Or third, I can never remember which. I should've known.... Suheil and Jayze probably started taking advantage of her the instant I left."

"Taking advantage? Taking advantage how?"

Quel pursed his lips, and Natch got the impression he had said more than he intended. "I shouldn't have brought you here. This is insane. I don't think you're going to get what you came for."

Natch folded his arms across his chest. "I just wasted half a day on a tube train to get here," he said. "You're not going to scare me away. I came to get some answers from Margaret, and I'm not leaving until I get them."

The Islander tilted his head back and let his gaze wander up the slim shaft of the Revelation Spire to the summit, hidden high in the clouds. "You won't like what you see."

Natch made a noncommittal noise, squared his shoulders, and headed for the entrance to the Revelation Spire. After a moment, Quel sighed and fol owed.

The guards who had barred Natch's entrance to the Spire before were stil in evidence today, but this time they let him pa.s.s. Quel 's influence, no doubt. The Islander thrust open the large set of double doors at the tower's base and strode through them.

The inside of the Revelation Spire did not resemble the picture that had lodged in Natch's head al these years. He expected to see a utilitarian s.p.a.ce fil ed with offices and Surina functionaries. Instead he saw a structure that served no useful purpose at al ; an ornamentation, a gilded trophy.

The world's tal est building was almost completely hol ow. A central column of air extended up through a jungle of structural supports to the limit of Natch's eyesight. Even using Bol iwar Tuban's Telescopics 89d, he could see no sign of the top. One long stairway made a dizzying spiral up the wal , interrupted at periodic intervals by wide platforms cantilevered off the side. Sculptures, statues, and paintings were strewn about everywhere with some avant-garde principle of decoration that eluded Natch. In the middle of it al stood a very lifelike marble representation of Marcus Surina, pointing confidently up into the aether.

So it's a museum then, thought Natch. But if it was a museum, why weren't there any civilians within eyeshot? Why were there only Surina security guards by the dozen, with dartguns drawn and ready? This was a different breed of guard altogether than the ones fumbling around the courtyard; these troops would fire first and ask questions later, if at al .

Quel had obviously been here a mil ion times before and didn't give the pomp and pageantry a second glance. Natch fol owed him to the foot of the stairway. Half a dozen guards in blue and green blocked their path, and for a second Natch expected some of those dartguns to swivel in his direction.

But the guards took a single look at the Islander and dutiful y stepped aside. Natch al owed himself a slight sigh of relief.