Quel crept up to the double doors, then cracked them open and lobbed something into the atrium, grenade-style. There was a dul fwump. The Islander counted to three under his breath and then pushed inside, yanking Natch through the doors with him.

Natch saw white-robed figures lying al over the floor, hands clutched to their faces. A few were actual y mewling in pain like puppies. It wasn't as large a contingent of Council officers as Natch had expected, but stil more than enough to hold up the party of Surina troops until backup arrived. An eggshaped device was rol ing on the floor, not too far from the marble statue of Marcus Surina. The thing was burning heat circles in Natch's vision even now during its cooling cycle.

"Did you blind them?" cried the entrepreneur incredulously. He glanced at the pockets of Quel 's jacket, wondering what other thaumaturgic surprises the Islander had stowed away there.

"For about ten more seconds," said Quel . "Hurry."

They weren't heading for the staircase Natch had ascended the other day. Instead, Quel was making for an inconspicuous side door behind one of the museum exhibits. THE AUTONOMOUS MINDS AND THEIR KEEPERS, read the holographic sign hovering over a group of mannequins in paisley uniforms. The nearby Council officers were just beginning to claw the floor for their dart-rifles when Quel , Natch, and a dozen other officers streaked through the side door and barricaded it behind them.

A narrow staircase, awash in the red glow of emergency lighting. Another door, invisible to the naked eye, that glided open at the touch of Quel 's hand. A lift large enough to fit fourteen.

n.o.body said a word during the long, drab climb up the interior of the spike. This clandestine elevator car didn't offer an interior view of the Spire's scaffolding like the one Natch had ridden the other day, so there was nothing to see but shuddering wal . Instead he watched the Surina officers slide new canisters of black code darts into their guns. Quel had chosen his crew wel . These were hardened professionals, seemingly unafraid of a dustup with the Defense and Wel ness Council.

What if this is al just an elaborate ruse to get me alone? thought Natch. What if Magan Kai Lee is preparing to do me in here, away from the rest of the fiefcoa p?

The elevator slipped into its berth at the top of the shaft. Quel was snorting like an angry bul . The doors opened.

Natch had no idea what a real murder scene looked like. The entire concept belonged in the realm of things only seen on viewscreens. He half expected to see overturned furniture or shattered gla.s.s or copious amounts of blood, but nothing of the kind was in evidence. The room looked exactly as it had less than a day ago. The same elegantly cushioned seating bookended by priceless sculpture; the same windows letting in the glum c.u.mulus of the Indian sky; the Venus de Milo.

Magan Kai Lee and several of his officers were there, along with a number of unarmed officials from different government agencies. They displayed no hint of surprise at seeing Quel and the rest of his party, and despite being outnumbered, Magan's face showed total unconcern. The tal , awkward officer who had interrupted them at the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex was sniffing at the furniture like a bloodhound. A distraught woman in a serving uniform was being questioned at the far end of the room; Natch could only a.s.sume she was the one who had discovered the body. There was no sign of Rey Gonerev or Ridgel o, or of Len Borda for that matter.

Quel stepped forward. His eyes blazed hot crazy. "You had no business forcing us into the auditorium like that," he said through gritted teeth.

One Council officer gave an inquiring look in Magan's direction and made the slightest of gestures toward his wel -stocked rifle. The diminutive lieutenant shook his head. "I'm sorry," said Magan, though his face exhibited no such emotion. "We had to make sure the people who did this weren't stil up here."

"What did you do with-?" Quel didn't finish his sentence. His jaw rocked back and forth uncontrol ably as he caught sight of the desk across the room and the inert figure slumped in a chair before it.

Margaret Surina.

The Islander bounded to her on unsteady legs, letting his shock baton drag on the floor in the process. He slumped to his knees and buried his face in the dead woman's tunic. The bodhisattva's shoulder m.u.f.fled his sobs.

Natch sidled toward the window and found an un.o.btrusive spot where he could observe the body. There was no sign of violence that Natch could see.

It looked to him like Margaret had just slumped over in place with no provocation. Her luminous eyes of opal blue were stil open and staring back as if across an unimaginably vast distance.

I was foolish to have held on to it for so long, she had told him. I am not my father. I'm not strong enough to make these decisions. But you ...

The world is new each day, every sunrise a spring and every sunset a winter. I know you'l understand this. You wil stand alone in the end, and you wil make the decisions that the world demands. The decisions I can't make.

"Any sign of a dart, Papizon?" Magan asked the ungainly Council officer.

Papizon scuttled to the desk and leaned over to scrutinize Margaret's pale face. He seemed to either not notice Quel 's anguish or not understand it.

"No," he replied. "Not that I can see." He might wel have been studying bacteria under a microscope.

"Dissolving dart?" one of the government officials chimed in.

Papizon narrowed his eyes and sniffed gingerly in the air. "Usual y leaves a faint trace of sulfur. Could be, but I don't smel anything. The forensic team can verify when they get here."

"Everything locked down until then?" said Magan.

Natch had read something once about a special polymer the Council used to keep forensic evidence in place. It was supposed to be only molecules thick and practical y invisible, some kind of miracle coating that kept every hair and dust mote from drifting off. That would explain why n.o.body was protesting Quel 's handling of the body. "Al locked down," confirmed Papizon, eyeing the Islander with suspicion.

Unsure what to do, the fiefcorp master took a seat next to the limbless Venus de Milo.

Council officers fanned around the room with their noses to the ground, looking for evidence, but what they were hoping to find Natch didn't know. The Surina troops, meanwhile, had gathered near the window, where they were muttering to themselves.

Quel 's tears continued unabated for several minutes, but despite Papizon's obvious concern for the sanct.i.ty of the evidence, n.o.body made any move to pry him away. Natch watched the Islander with amazement. Ever since that first tour of the Surina compound several weeks ago, he had known that Margaret and Quel were more than just master and apprentice. But he had never expected a display like this.

Magan Kai Lee clasped his hands behind his back and stepped to the window, where he confronted the enormity of Andra Pradesh laid out before him. From where he was sitting, Natch could see the lieutenant executive's face reflected in the gla.s.s. His expression was aggressively neutral, a study in forced calm.

"Don't worry," he said quietly. "We'l find out who did this." It was unclear who he was speaking to.

"Find out?" whispered Quel , raising his head slowly, dangerously. "We don't need to find anything out. We already know who murdered her." He gingerly laid the bodhisattva back down on the desk and got to his feet. Natch noticed that the shock baton had not left his grip. "Who had the most to gain by Margaret's death?" said Quel , voice steadily rising. "Len Borda. The man who'l stop at nothing to get his hands on MultiReal."

Lieutenant Executive Lee raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The other government officials began to slowly back toward the Council troops and their dartguns. Someone quickly escorted the serving woman to the elevator and sent her on her way.

"Don't give me that look," said Quel . He was addressing Natch, though Natch wasn't quite sure what look he was supposed to have given. "Do you real y think Borda would hesitate to murder a Surina? Then you don't know your history."

The Islander began swishing the bar back and forth, like a buccaneer testing the tensile strength of his blade. "Didn't you know? Len Borda kil ed Marcus Surina"-swish-"because Marcus refused to let the Council take control of teleportation." Swish swish. "You think a ruptured fuel tank blew up his shuttle? No." He came to a halt in front of Margaret's desk, brandishing the crackling baton before him with both hands. "That was Council sabotage.

It was f.u.c.king Len Borda. And now ... and now ..."

The Islander slipped into a pause as Magan turned from the window to face him. Officers on both sides of the room were tensing up, sliding fingers uneasily into the triggers of their guns. Electricity from the baton flared up to the gla.s.s ceiling like a bolt of lightning in reverse.

It happened in an instant.

One of the bureaucrats backed up and stumbled into a vase. The vase shattered. A finger tensed, a muscle twitched, a Council dart came whizzing across the room.

Quel charged.

Natch saw a blur of motion streak past him, knocking over the Venus de Milo in the process. The entrepreneur reached out instinctively to catch the hunk of stone before it hit the ground. He watched as the sculpture pa.s.sed through his virtual hands and landed on the Persian rug with a thunk.

The Islander was quick, but not quick enough. Magan Kai Lee dropped into a street fighter's crouch and lunged out of the way just as Quel came rushing in. The lieutenant executive did a clumsy rol on the ground and pul ed himself up to his feet by the lip of an end table.

A canopy of dart fire covered the room. Natch ducked to the floor, forgetting momentarily that he was here in multi and these darts could not hurt him.

Council officers slid into textbook military formations, while Surina troops huddled behind furniture with guerril a instinct.

Quel and Magan Kai Lee were circling around each other in the center of the room, where the furniture was not so dense. By al rights, Magan should have been terrified. The Islander towered over him by more than half a meter. But Natch took one look at the cool detachment in Magan's face and the ferocious desperation in Quel 's, and he knew this would not end wel .

The rest of the guards quickly reached a detente. A handful of troops from each side lay paralyzed and twitching on the ground with needles protruding from their torsos. But the rest stood stock-stil , eyes riveted on the confrontation in progress. Papizon had one finger suspended in the air, as if gesturing to some invisible third combatant, while the unarmed bureaucrats had fled to the safety of the elevators. Natch was on the floor behind the downed (yet intact) statue.

"Don't do it," said Magan. "It's not worth it."

"Worth it to me," roared Quel . And then he was in motion once again.

Darts streaked across the room from the Council officers' gun barrels, heading straight for the Islander's chest. Natch gaped in astonishment as Quel made an elegant pirouette and swatted the darts aside with two rapid swings of his truncheon. It looked as slick and effortless as a ch.o.r.eographed dance maneuver.

MultiReal.

For the second time in their brief acquaintance, Natch saw some distant relative of fear and uncertainty behind the Council executive's eyes. Magan scurried backward as fast as he could, tearing down pottery and knocking over chairs in an attempt to flee. Surina guards, meanwhile, started methodical y taking out the Council troops, who were wasting their ammunition on the Islander. Poison needles littered the floor. One ricocheted off the Islander's club and pa.s.sed straight through Natch's insubstantial forehead.

"Quel !" cried Natch, not sure if he was trying to encourage the big man or dissuade him.

The Islander pounced with a yel and struck Magan ful in the chest with the baton. Sparks sparked through the air. The lieutenant went flying back against the window, where his head thumped against the gla.s.s. But Natch's cry must have penetrated the Islander's cloak of rage, because he had pul ed the blow at the last possible instant.

In spite of the blood trickling from his nose and the visible indenture in his chest, Magan Kai Lee clearly realized he should be dead right now. "Fool,"

he croaked between ragged breaths, "don't you realize I'm the only one standing between you and Borda?"

The Islander hesitated. His eyes swiveled back and forth from Magan to the corpse of Margaret Surina, stil lying on the desk where he had left it. He seemed to reach some decision. His shoulders quivered, then slackened. The shock baton slid from his fingers and hit the carpet.

And just at that moment, the elevator doors opened and two dozen officers in white robes and yel ow stars swept into the room. They quickly formed a perimeter and relieved the remaining Surina officers of their weapons. Natch caught a movement from the corner of his eye, and whipped his head around to see a pair of military hoverbirds levitating right outside the window. He could only guess what their cannons were loaded with, but they were aimed right at him.

Magan Kai Lee slumped to the floor. He coughed, then spat blood. "Invest your forces in ultimate sacrifice," he said in the timbre of command, motioning toward Quel . "Make sure you've covered al reasonable supply requisitions."

The lieutenant executive was obviously speaking in some kind of Defense and Wel ness Council code, and he didn't appear to be in any mood for translations.

Natch climbed shakily to his feet, trying his best to ignore al the concentrated pandemonium in the room. The remaining Surina guards were dragging their limp comrades one by one to the elevator under the Council's watchful eyes. The officer named Papizon, meanwhile, was staring at the remnants of the battle with horror. Natch supposed that the destruction of priceless art meant less to him than the despoiling of precious evidence. Not even high-tech polymers could insulate from this kind of havoc.

Half a dozen Council officers wrestled the Islander to his knees, even though he was only offering token resistance. The MultiReal program had obviously sapped his strength to some degree, but more than that, he seemed to have lost the wil to resist. One of the officers brutal y wrenched the Islander's thin metal col ar off his neck, leaving a shal ow tributary of blood.

"I don't care," shouted Quel . "I'm never wearing one of those f.u.c.king things again. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?"

Magan Kai Lee simply shook his head. His breathing had already resumed something close to its normal rhythm, and the patch of blood on his chest was beginning to evanesce into the air. But this was one injury that would need more than OCHREs to heal. Magan gave Quel one last angry look and swiped an arm wildly toward the elevators. The Council officers dragged him away.

Natch stood as straight as his trembling knees al owed. He looked around and realized that al of the friendly forces were now gone. "So what are you going to do with me?" he said.

"You?" The question only seemed to irritate the lieutenant executive. "You are irrelevant.

Go home."

And then Natch consulted the messages that had been piling up in his mental inbox. The citation from the Meme Cooperative suspending his business license was there, and it had taken effect a scant four minutes ago. Also present was the court order demanding that Natch transfer MultiReal core access to Jara.

Magan Kai Lee had delivered on his promises. The Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was no longer under Natch's control.

3.

VARIABLES I N FLUX.

18.

The World Economic Oversight Board sensed a disturbance in the marketplace.

And so the powers that moved the financial levers of the world sent their agents to a secure location to make some decisions. Everyone with a stake in the process was represented: the Congress of L-PRACGs, the big businesses, the Defense and Wel ness Council, the labor organizations, the Meme Cooperative, the administrators of the Data Sea, the Prime Committee, al the thousands of inst.i.tutions running Vault protocols.

It might have made for a cramped meeting had its partic.i.p.ants been made of flesh and blood. But these were virtual ent.i.ties, data agents stored as quark color changes on the Data Sea. One could find no purer representatives of organizational wil , for strictly speaking these were not representatives at al but the things themselves, the essence as expressed in formulas and business logic.

The administrator of the World Economic Oversight Board gaveled the meeting to order, after a fashion. Rol was taken. Preliminary exchanges of information were made, micro-negotiations to determine place and order.

And then the administrator laid out the situation. A handful of unorthodox transactions had spiked the stock exchanges, causing ripples to flow far and wide across the economic spectrum, amplified in no smal measure by sudden troop movements from the Islanders and the Defense and Wel ness Council. VIP travel itineraries were fluctuating by the second. Information requests across the Data Sea were multiplying exponential y. Strange patterns abounded.

There was a flurry of conversation from the a.s.sembled crowd. Newly sp.a.w.ned data agents dashed across the Sea to fetch fol ow-up information and make detailed queries against private data stores. More micro-negotiations.

The administrator cal ed for a status report. Like ants piling grain before their queen, agents of the world's financial inst.i.tutions began depositing data points before the Oversight Board. Balance vacil ations in key Vault accounts. Interest rates being charged by various lending inst.i.tutions. The values of certain commodities in the global marketplace. Primo's ratings for a representative sample of bio/logic fiefcorps. The status of bel wether legislation wending through the various L-PRACGs. Each datum gave form and shape to the pile-a form that stretched through dimensions invisible to the human eye. Derivatives of derivatives of derivatives, probabilities and possibilities, vectors of a.n.a.lysis that stretched from the universe's putative beginning to its predicted end.

The administrator contemplated the shape arrayed before the a.s.sembly. The number of patterns stored in the Oversight Board's catalog was in the tril ions of tril ions, but this particular pattern fel into the spa.r.s.e category of unknowns.

More information, commanded the administrator.

A second wave of data began acc.u.mulating on the pile, refining its shape. The presence of certain buzzwords and warning signs on public financial boards. The heart rates and blood pressures of the Prime Committee's voting members.

Rainfal reports from the Environmental Control Board. OrbiCo shipping schedules, hoverbird flight patterns, TubeCo ridership figures. Membership and cancel ation numbers from the Jamm and the Sigh. The throughput of quantum channels between the orbital colonies. Len Borda's cholesterol level and platelet count. The reported whereabouts of the bodhisattvas of the major creeds.

If the administrator knew anything about Margaret Surina, it knew her as a convergence point of data on the eternal sea of information. A confluence of trends both macro-and microeconomic.

If the administrator knew anything about death, it knew that death was a transformation, a final resolution of variables that had heretofore been in flux.

The general economic pattern might not have been comprehensible to the administrator, but certainly there were scattered fragments it could grasp.

The sudden and unexpected death of a highly influential figure. Anger and distrust at governmental authority. Fear, agitation, change. The administrator took these fragments as it had been designed to do, a.n.a.lyzed them, cobbled them together like some mad virtual Frankenstein.

And now, what to do about it?

The administrator checked its core tables, the baseline values engraved in its memory by the Makers themselves. The goals were clear and succinct: preserve existing a.s.sets; encourage stasis; smooth the jagged edges of human activity into manageable probability curves.

The administrator began to put together a plan. Hurricanes could be ameliorated and tides could be manipulated. But so could human behavior, given enough time and sufficient data points.

Decision after decision flowed from the administrator to the ful body of the Oversight Board, and each decision required the okay of the ful board.

Haggling erupted among the a.s.sembly as data agents darted from member to member, carrying proposals and counterproposals, modifications and amendments and official objections. Conflicting agendas laid themselves out like stones on a Go board, with the administrator holding the final token.

A few bil ionths of a second later, the plan was ratified.

Make it so, the administrator commanded.