"What's going to happen to MultiReal? Did you sel it to the Council?"

"If you don't have anything to hide, why are you taking money under the table from Creed Tha.s.sel?"

Jara gaped at the last question. The Tha.s.selians? How had they gotten involved in al this?

She thought back to the bizarre fundraising pitches Natch had undertaken last month when the fiefcorp was frantical y trying to prepare for the unveiling of Margaret's thenmysterious Phoenix Project. Natch had made some elusive comments about borrowing money from an unnamed "third party,"

and Horvil later hinted that an old acquaintance from the hive had stepped forward with the cash. Jara had shrugged it off. Was Natch so desperate he would take funding from a discredited creed? And not just any creed, but a notoriously shady one with a secret membership roster?

The a.n.a.lyst flailed around in vain for an answer. She gave the subtlest of glances in Merri's direction, but the channel manager's mien was impenetrable. "I'm real y not at liberty to discuss the company's finances right now," Jara replied lamely.

With a notoriously unethical creed as grease, the press conference began to slide down a dangerous slope toward the paranoid. The drudges began launching personal attacks on Natch's character, or personal attacks on Jara's character, or far-flung theories about MultiReal that bordered on the insane.

It was al Jara could do to simply keep up with her canned responses. Someone even tried to pin the disappearances of Pierre Loget and Bil y Sterno on Natch, to which Jara could only shake her head.

Just when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse and even Robby Robby was showing traces of unease, a misshapen lump of a man stepped to the front of the line. He had shifty eyes and an oily dab of mustache.

"A hundred and twenty violations of the Meme Cooperative bylaws!" squawked the man.

"Isn't it convenient that in al the hul abaloo surrounding Margaret's death, everyone's forgotten about that?"

Jara stared at the drudge, certain she had seen him before. She lobbed his picture at the public directory, but his profile had been careful y scrubbed clean. Jara searched her memory and came up blank there too. "The Meme Cooperative gives out twenty thousand citations every year," she said. "If you read through the list, you'l see that ninety-five percent of them are political y motivated.

Once Natch gets his day in front of the arbitration board, I'm sure he'l be vindicated for most of them."

"Most of them? Most of them?" The man emitted a squeal that might have pa.s.sed for amus.e.m.e.nt and gave the woman behind him a conspiratorial elbow in the gut. Jara hoped the other drudges would hustle this odd person out of the queue so she could draw the conference to a close, but instead they were clearing a s.p.a.ce for the man's grandstanding. "So what would you say if I told you I'm filing a whole new set of charges against the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp for breach of contract?"

Jara was starting to get a major headache. "Breach of whose contract?"

"I'm glad you asked," said the man with a queer smile. Then he turned his back to the stage and lifted his hands with a flourish, like a prophet signaling to his people that they had arrived at the Promised Land.

A smal band began to march through the crowd from the back of the auditorium. Amused smiles percolated across the faces of the drudges. Jara counted eighteen people in the group that came to a halt behind the grandstander. It was as random a group as one could possibly a.s.semble, and Jara didn't recognize any of them.

"What are you doing up there?" came a frantic ConfidentialWhisper from Benyamin.

"Cal security before this guy hijacks the whole press conference!"

Jara fidgeted and turned to look at an equal y perplexed Robby Robby. What could she do?

"I give you Natch's latest victims!" brayed the lumpy man. "I give you the victims of the cra.s.s pyramid scheme cal ed the MultiReal exposition lottery!

Eighteen suffering souls who entered into a Faustian bargain with your boss Natch!

Eighteen souls promised a chance at fame and fortune, under legal contract, mind you. A legal contract that was broken without a second glance by your scheming, manipulative fiefcorp master!"

That was when Jara final y placed him.

Captain Bolbund.

Something rancid and congealed in Jara's gut made an effort to creep back into her throat.

It had been years since Natch's little altercation with Captain Bolbund in the ROD coding business, years since she had endured his putrid poetry. The last Jara remembered, Bolbund's business license had been suspended for impersonating a Meme Cooperative official. And yet here he stood, flaring his nostrils and stirring mischief. How long had this bottom feeder been festering in his anger, waiting for an opportunity at revenge? Was the list of Natch's enemies truly endless?

"Justice for the MultiReal exposition lottery winners!" thundered Bolbund, swinging his fist back and forth in an attempt to wrench the words into a rhythmic chant. "Justice for the MultiReal exposition lottery winners! Justice! Justice!"

Vigal openly buried his face in his hands, and Merri looked like she had been turned to stone. Robby and Frizitz were making clipped gestures to the channelers in the crowd, but what kind of message they were trying to send was unclear.

Jara made a few stumbling attempts at imposing order, but the genie would not be forced back into the bottle. Objectivv security officers rushed forward to apprehend the miscreant, but now he was darting through the crowd like a fat gremlin. Laughter spurted out of the drudges at the obscene spectacle. Someone even stuck a foot in front of the Objectivv officers, sending them crashing to the floor like a row of black-and-white-swirled dominoes.

The a.n.a.lyst rubbed her temples in frustration. A nightmare.

Jara wanted to bury her face in the soft refuge of her mother's bel y. Beril a's couch made a poor subst.i.tute. The microfibers on the pil ows wouldn't even absorb her tears, but left them to dribble down to the crook of the couch instead.

Someone tapped on the door. "Come in," said Jara softly.

The door slid open and admitted Horvil. He took in the a.n.a.lyst's misery and parked himself backward on a spindly chair. "You look upset," said the engineer, once again demonstrating his penchant for either stating the obvious or blundering right past it.

"I am upset," replied Jara. "I can't believe our own contest winners are suing us. On top of everything else going on right now."

Horvil made a sour face. "Bolbund," he said. "Never thought I'd see that idiot again.

Don't worry about it. The whole exposition is yesterday's news.

Those lottery winners'l just disappear into the woodwork, you'l see. If nothing else, that lawsuit's put more drudges at the front gates. There must be six hundred people out there now."

Jara craned her neck toward the window, but the couch's armrest blocked her view. "I should have listened to Ben," she said after a moment's reflection. "I shouldn't even have held that f.u.c.king press conference. You don't think I made things worse ... do you?"

"Al I know is that you stood up and did something," said Horvil. "Somebody needed to."

The headache that had begun during the press conference had now captured Jara's frontal lobes. She felt a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic urge to just let it rampage for a while. "Listen, Horvil, I ... There's something I think you should know."

Horvil sniffed and shrugged at the same time. "If you're going to tel me about Natch's little threat to ruin my career, don't bother. Aunt Beril a already told me. It's not real y anything to get upset over. I know he didn't mean it."

"Didn't mean it?" The pain lanced through the back of Jara's neck as she sat up abruptly.

"How can you say that?"

"Hey, I'm not the one who just stood up and told a mil ion drudges what an ethical businessman Natch is."

"That's for the good of the company. It's different."

Horvil nodded and slumped his chin down onto his folded arms. "Natch is stressed out, Jara. He's losing it. Have you noticed al that twitching, al those strange looks? I've-I've never seen him this bad before. That black code is tearing him up. He's running out of options. He wouldn't have made that threat to Aunt Beril a unless he had no other choice."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this," said Jara, aghast. "You're making excuses for him. Of course he had other choices."

"Real y?" Horvil asked. "If someone put a gun to your head and said it's either you or Natch-what would you do?" The engineer rose and walked to the window, where he stood in plump silhouette against the moonlight. Jara could see that the drudges were definitely there, camped right outside the gates.

She was glad she could see out the windows but they couldn't see in. "Natch didn't walk out just because of me, did he?" asked the engineer.

Jara shook her head. "No, it's much more complicated than that. You want to know the real reason Natch left?" She took a breath. "It's because of me,"

she said. "It's because of what I'm doing to the company."

Horvil pursed his lips skeptical y. "What do you mean?"

"Listen, Horv ... I haven't heard anything from Magan Kai Lee or Rey Gonerev since that meeting at the Kordez Tha.s.sel Complex. Not a single word.

Why do you think that is?"

"Wel , there's a lot going on right now," said Horvil. "Infoquakes popping up al over the place, Margaret's death. I hear that the Islanders are stepping up their border raids-"

"No, come on. That doesn't explain anything. Lee has more than enough people to deal with al that.... You want to know what I think? I think the Council's leaving me alone because I'm doing exactly what they want. Why did Magan Kai Lee arrange al this in the first place, Horv? Why did he give me control of MultiReal, and what was he preparing to do at the Tha.s.sel Complex?

"Natch knows exactly why. Magan Kai Lee put the program in my hands because he knows I'm easy to manipulate. I won't be able to take the pressure, and sooner or later I'l give in. I'l hand MultiReal right over to the Council.

That's why Natch left when I told him to leave.

"So the question now is, who can destroy the fiefcorp faster-me or Natch?"

24.

Natch's left hand was twitching.

He tried to convince himself that the spasms were just a paranoid delusion, the product of an overactive imagination. And for the past few days, that strategy had worked. The very act of a.s.serting his wil against the jittering al owed Natch to take control of it, and he began to wonder what other problems he might conquer with this method.

His victory was brief. By Friday, the twitches had returned with reinforcements. Now his hand fluttered even when he walked or carried something heavy like a satchel of bio/logic programming bars, and no act of wil could stop it.

Black code, thought Natch miserably.

There was no other feasible explanation. The hammer and anvil of Dr. Plugenpatch and the OCHRE system had stamped out al but the most obscure neurological dysfunctions over the past hundred yearsand those few that stil resisted the powers of science were at least diagnosable. No, only human programming code could wreak such havoc.

Natch stayed indoors on Friday and watched the day waft by in slow motion. He spent hours in front of the mirror trying to figure out a way to hide his clenched fist behind his lapels, Napoleon-style. It wouldn't fool anybody in the long term, but it might be sufficient for short bursts of public exposure.

He received several messages from Serr Vigal and spent long minutes debating whether he should answer or even open them. Jara's betrayal he could deal with, but the prospect of Vigal's disapproval flared in his mind like a salted wound. It felt like the culmination of a long dialogue of failure and disappointment they had been conducting for the past twenty-five years. In the end, Natch filed Vigal's messages away unopened.

Numb to the world and unable to concentrate, he tuned in to Jara's press conference. He started flashing back to the confrontation in Beril a's office the other day. The huge mistake he had made giving Jara core access to MultiReal, thinking that would mol ify her. A horror show of images echoed through his skul without context or explanation; not even the reappearance of Captain Bolbund on the viewscreen could rouse him from his stupor. He snapped back to sentience some hours later in a darkened apartment, wondering what he had missed.

Natch looked in the mirror at the quivering mess he had become. What would Brone say if he saw you like this? he thought.

Khann Frejohr wanted to hold the meeting at the Congress of LPRACGs, but Natch wouldn't budge. "I'm not going to Melbourne," he told Frejohr's executive a.s.sistant over ConfidentialWhisper. "No way. The speaker wil just have to come to Shenandoah."

"Perhaps you don't understand the protocol," said the a.s.sistant. "You don't just pet.i.tion the speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs for an audience and then insist that he come to you...."

"Then tel him to find an office that's not right down the street from the Defense and Wel ness Council."

The a.s.sistant emitted a strangled noise of exasperation. "If it's safety you're worried about ... don't you think you'd be better off at a heavily guarded compound in Melbourne than at some apartment building in Shenandoah?"

"No," grunted Natch. "I know how to defend myself here."

There was an annoyed silence from the flunky's end of the connection as he went to consult a higher echelon of public servant. Natch realized he was being unreasonable; he also knew that he could il afford the Congress's wrath on top of the Council's. But these were not times for mindlessly hewing to social niceties. With the shadow of the infoquake hanging over them al -five thousand people had died in the wake of the last one-Natch felt there was no paranoia too great.

Besides which, Frejohr needed him. The libertarian caucus had fal en into a peculiar schizophrenia after Margaret's death, veering between unfocused indignation at Len Borda one moment and mawkish nostalgia for the Surinas the next. Meanwhile, the markets were engaged in a mad dance of their own as second-tier fiefcorps began sabotaging each other left and right. The drudges were in a frenzy. And the number of Creed Libertas devotees had literal y doubled again in the past forty-eight hours. Frejohr needed to take a strong stand in the MultiReal crisis, and he knew it. Natch might not have legal claim to the program at the moment, but he was stil its public face.

The flunky returned to declare that the speaker would come to Shenandoah after al . In multi. Ordinarily, conducting an important meeting in multi would be considered an insult, but Natch knew there was no point harping about it now. These days he took his triumphs where he could.

Frejohr's security detail arrived late Sat.u.r.day and spent an hour combing through the apartment with bulky metal instruments that looked like panpipes.

They posted sentries in the hal way and on several neighboring balconies. One of the guards cast a suspicious look at Natch's clenched hand, and the entrepreneur was forced to hold the shaking lump of flesh out to prove he had nothing to hide.

Ten minutes later, Speaker Khann Frejohr materialized in Natch's foyer. The two exchanged polite bows.

"Let's just skip the Perfections," said the Congressional leader in a voice both gravel y and hypnotic. "I congratulate you on getting to number one on Primo's. You congratulate me on getting elected to the speaker's chair. Okay? Done."

"Fine with me," Natch shrugged. A promising start.

He sized up Len Borda's nemesis as they headed for opposite couches in the living room.

Frejohr was older and shorter than the images on the Data Sea suggested, but he had a rough-edged charisma that contrasted wel with Borda's stony diffidence. A man of the people, a leader even ... but a violent revolutionary? It hardly seemed possible. Natch wondered what kind of displacements had occurred in Frejohr's mind since the Melbourne riots forty years ago. Was he stil as hot-tempered and uncompromising as he had once been? Or had decades of government service mel owed him?

"The Council took my business away," Natch began, sitting on the edge of the sofa.

"They threw a bunch of trumped-up charges at the Meme Cooperative and convinced them to suspend my license. And now MultiReal's in the hands of my-"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Frejohr with a wave of his hand. Although he had only just sat down on Natch's sofa, he already looked like he owned it. "I fol ow the news, believe it or not, so I'm ful y aware of what's going on. And?"

"And?"

"Look, Natch," said the speaker with an air of impatience. "You know I've got no love for the Defense and Wel ness Council. I'm sympathetic to what you're going through, believe me. But I'm not sure the Congress has any business getting involved. It's a big world, and the high executive has a mil ion tentacles." He raised his bushy unified eyebrow in the direction of the window, indicating either the Council officers on the street or the Council hoverbirds in the sky or perhaps the totality of human s.p.a.ce from here to Furtoid. "You can't just expect the Congress to intervene every time Len Borda forces someone's company out of business," continued the speaker. "We'd never get anything done. We have to pick our battles careful y."

The entrepreneur scowled. "So why did you agree to talk to me then?"

"I said I'm not sure if we should get involved," replied Frejohr, tired. "Which means, I'm not sure." Natch could sense calendar appointments and to-do items flitting behind the speaker's eyelids. He wouldn't be surprised if Frejohr was mental y dictating correspondence as they spoke.

Natch arose from the sofa and stalked over to the window, clutching his fist so it was invisible from the speaker's perspective. Jara had warned him he wasn't ready for the political spectrum, and he had ignored her. He could hear the accusatory barbs from an entirely different conversation on some subvocal register, a conversation not with Jara or Khann Frejohr, but with the universe itself. Arriviste. Upstart. n.o.body. Pretender ... How long would it be until someone took him seriously? Would he have to wait until the shadows of Borda's hoverbirds were darkening every doorstep, when it was too late to do anything about it ... ?

Then he felt the speaker's hand on his shoulder. It was a firm yet avuncular grasp, the kind Serr Vigal gave when the mood struck him. Natch realized with a start that Frejohr hadn't used some stealth program to sneak up on him; it was he who had blanked out for an indeterminate length of time. He hoped it had only been a matter of seconds and not minutes.

"Come on," said the speaker, inclining his head toward the balcony door. "A little moonlight wil do us both good."

The balcony whipped out from the side of the building in a heartbeat, yet Natch was hesitant to step onto it. Magan Kai Lee might have declared him "irrelevant," but he had made no move to recal the Defense and Wel ness Council tails on the street. They didn't even bother to wear disguises anymore; they simply lingered in formation with fingers never more than a hair's breadth away from a dartgun or disruptor trigger. Khann Frejohr, however, seemed to have complete confidence in the bronze-robed men and women keeping watch from the neighboring balconies. So Natch muzzled his trepidation and fol owed the speaker outside.

The two stood at the railing for several moments and watched the city. Shenandoah was an important metropolis, but it was relatively smal in size.