"But it's not only future members of the Prime Committee that we have to worry about.

Because while we al molder in the dust and our children's children's children play their political games, the water in those casks continues to struggle towards freedom. It wants to flow to freedom, remember? And so every year, despite your most careful stewardship, precious droplets evaporate into the air and back to the common wel of knowledge. Every year, the enemies of the state work to steal that magic draft away from you. Enterprising programmers work to re-create and reverse engineer that wel of information. Al it takes is a single misstep, a single misplaced al egiance, and those barrels of information wil come crashing to the floor and spil into the lowest sewer.

"That is what the world wants. And if I have learned one thing in my long and il ustrious career, it is that you cannot stop the wants of the world.

"Let me put the clever metaphors and the verbal puffery aside for a moment and state plainly what should be obvious by now. The government wil eventual y lose control of MultiReal. You cannot keep it secret forever."

Solemn, unblinking eyes regarded the neural programmer from around the chamber. Not a sound could be heard from the crowd. Jara looked at the rest of the fiefcorpers to find them nodding gravely, snared deep in thought. Robby Robby was studying Vigal's every movement like a dance master critiquing an especial y intricate bal et.

Serr Vigal clasped his hands behind his back and walked a slow, steady track around the floor. "Now let's look at another alternative," he said. "Let us imagine that after long and careful deliberation, the Prime Committee decides that the draft is not to be bottled up.

"No, I'm not suggesting we immediately pipe MultiReal code into the public trough for anyone to gulp down. I suggest something much more practical. I suggest the Committee cal an end to the vendetta that the Defense and Wel ness Council has executed against Natch and his apprentices. Restore this fiefcorp master to his fiefcorp. Let the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp-and the Patel Brothers Fiefcorp as wel , natural y-let them continue to refine their distinctive brews of MultiReal and sel them to the public. With a healthy amount of safeguards and government oversight, of course.

"What would happen in that scenario?

"We don't need a crystal bal to see that. Let me tel you what is happening right now, even as this hearing proceeds in Melbourne. At this very moment, tens of thousands of L-PRACG politicians are sitting in meeting hal s, locked in heated debate. Governmentalists and libertarians and every flavor in between are furiously writing bil s. Speaker Frejohr's office informs me that four hundred L-PRACGs have already banned their citizens from using MultiReal. The Islanders have been preparing a Dogmatic Opposition to the technology for weeks now.

"And perfection sustain them al for doing so! What did the great Sheldon Surina say?

Progress is the expansion of choices. If the bottle of knowledge pa.s.ses your way and you choose not to drink, so be it. That is your right and your privilege as a citizen of a modern, rational civilization. n.o.body wishes to force this knowledge on you.

"So, as with any new technology, we have the doubters and the slow adopters. Some wil choose to sit back and sip this new brew cautiously until it finds its way into the mainstream. Undoubtedly some wil engorge themselves until they're sick, causing trouble for themselves and everyone around them.

"And some? I wil not lie to you. A sul en few wil choose to poison the wel for everyone else. They'l use this intoxicating draft to further their selfish schemes, to break the law, to take advantage of others. This has been the way of human nature since the beginning, and we cannot pretend that it wil change overnight.

"So how do we deal with such scofflaws? Why, the same way we've always dealt with them. By punishing the guilty. By protecting the innocent. By using the laws of the Congress, the Committee, and the L-PRACGs as our shields, and the officers of the Council as our swords.

"Distinguished members of the Prime Committee, let me conclude by saying this.

"The democratization of MultiReal is not something you should consider because the libertarians believe in it, or the governmentalists don't. Do not believe the chatter that this is a question of politics or a clash of personalities. Len Borda's desires are irrelevant. Natch's desires are irrelevant. You should al ow private businesses to sel MultiReal to the public because that's what the world desires.

"MultiReal wil flow freely, whether you wish it or not. That decision is not yours to make. What you have to decide is whether to swim against the tide or to take the more practical approach and work with it.

"I thank you, and may you al move towards perfection."

32.

Serr Vigal stayed on the floor of the auditorium to answer the Prime Committee's questions for almost two hours, but Jara found it difficult to concentrate. The neural programmer's speech had jolted the fiefcorp from its stupor of pessimism and given them a faint taste of hope. By the grins on their faces, Khann Frejohr and his libertarian cronies tasted it too. The city that had seemed like a bloodthirsty circus this morning suddenly felt like a place of rational discourse and negotiation; in short, like a center of government.

"Ridglee's gloating," said a jubilant Horvil to the rest of the fiefcorpers over ConfidentialWhisper. "Who would have thought that the greatest surge of momentum the libertarian movement has seen in years would come from a soft-spoken code pusher from the memecor ps?"

Robby Robby was taming stray tufts of perm with his fingernails. "What'd I tel ya, Queen Jara?"

"You're right," 'Whispered Jara. "You did tel me. I just didn't believe Vigal had it in him."

She looked down at the neural programmer with new respect.

He was responding to a diatribe by the Vault representative with reserve and polish.

"Wel , don't start celebrating just yet," said Benyamin. "Vertiginous is stil pretty sour about our chances. Serr Vigal pitted the soft sentimentality of freedom' against the hard-edged realities of safety and security. I think the libertarians wil find soon enough that the Blade is more than capable of slicing through those arguments. "

Merri: "Anybody catch Natch's reaction?"

There was a glum silence as the fiefcorpers took turns glancing at the entrepreneur, who appeared not to have moved or even blinked in the last hour.

He might have been a marionette propped up in his chair, eyes fixed on nowhere and nothing.

"Wel , we have one thing to be thankful for," said Horvil a little while later as the company arose as one to stretch. The Prime Committee had just thanked Serr Vigal for his testimony and adjourned the hearing for the day.

"What's that?" said Jara.

"We're not going to get any more grief from those MultiReal exposition lottery winners.

Captain Bolbund's just been arrested. Practicing law without a license."

After observing the change of the guard at the Defense and Wel ness Council's Melbourne complex, after annotating the transcript of Serr Vigal's remarks to the Prime Committee, after examining and reexamining the black code in his dart-rifle, after scouring through the voluminous doc.u.ment that was the Council's budget for the new year, Magan Kai Lee final y admitted he had nothing to do.

He looked around the office-his home base in Melbourne-where he had chosen to while away the evening hours. It was a cramped s.p.a.ce, an il advised and hastily constructed part.i.tion of an executive office meant for three. Moreover, the prospects for expansion were grim, considering there was no col apsible infrastructure here and you had to actual y find people to move furniture.

Rearranging stone wal s was out of the question.

And yet Magan much preferred this office to his more commodious quarters at Defense and Wel ness Council Root. In Len Borda's fortress, you never knew precisely where you would find yourself when you stepped outside the door; things moved, wal s moved, people moved. But here in Melbourne, geography was firm and unyielding. Stable. You could plan where you were going and expect that plan to stick.

Magan turned his attention back to the budget doc.u.ment stil floating on the window. It was the perfect example of the Bordaesque worldview, a labyrinth of ambiguously worded codicils and provisos, unnavigable to al but the initiated, designed to shift at a moment's notice.

But the Prime Committee's attentions were focused on the MultiReal situation at the moment. So the budget had sailed through al the requisite subcommittees, and no one at the Congress of L-PRACGs had given it much scrutiny either. Thus the high executive's budget would go into effect without delay, as Borda had predicted, and the escalation of troops and materiel on the border of the Islander territories would continue unnoticed, as Borda had predicted. Even if someone wanted to object at this point, it was too late. Tomorrow was already January 15, the first calendar day of the new year's budget. Credits would start flowing to the designated Council Vault accounts in just over an hour.

Lieutenant Executive Lee waved his hand and blanked out the window display. An empty stone courtyard embossed with a giant yel ow star stared back at him.

January I give you until the fifteenth of January to take possession of MultiReal, Borda had told him, standing in that accursed naval SeeNaRee of his. If you do, we have an agreement. If you don't ...

With al that had happened in the interim-the infoquakes, the protests, the death of Margaret Surina, Natch's change of fortunewould Len Borda insist on holding to this arrangement? Would he take such a narrow-minded interpretation of their agreement even now, when the Council was a mere handful of votes away from legal control of MultiReal?

And if so, what would he do?

Magan fired off a secure ConfidentialWhisper to Ridgel o. Ridgel o, the dependable.

Ridgel o, the ant.i.thesis of mercurial Borda-ism. "Double the guard at the Tul Jabbor Complex," said Magan. "I need you ready for anything tomorrow."

The commander responded within seconds, despite the late hour. "It's done. What should I be antic.i.p.ating?"

"Anything."

Natch, lying on the mattress of some anonymous Melbourne hotel, slick with sweat, fighting a turbulent battle against sleep with half a dozen invigoration programs as confederates. Grappling with slumber and exhaustion.

The guardian and the keeper.

You'l resist Len Borda to your dying breath. You wil resist the winter and the void.

Hack the body, and the mind wil fol ow.

He flailed himself out of bed, threw on a dressing gown as insulation from the world, and reeled over to the red square tile in the corner. The lights instantly shifted to candle strength, throwing the shadow of the desk onto the tile and turning it a harsh crimson.

Then he was on the tile. Then he was fal ing, plummeting into multivoid.

His apartment looked different somehow through the prism of the multi network. Al his accoutrements were precisely where he had left them, down to the bio/logic programming bar that had fal en on the floor and the partial y fil ed gla.s.s of water he had set on the counter two days ago. Stil , there was some indefinable thing missing: an aura, a presence, an element that lay just below the threshold of corporeality.

No time.

Natch stumbled into his office and waved his hand over the desk to summon the Minds.p.a.ce bubble. It expanded out from the tabletop at not-quiteinstantaneous speed until it had swal owed up the desk, swal owed up him. Hovering in the middle of it, as always, the stray MultiReal code Horvil had found in his neural system. The yel ow jacket.

Black code, sucking out his life blood ounce by ounce. MultiReal, warping his mental facilities. The one either sheathed or entombed within the other.

The nothingness at the center of the universe.

He reached for the rings, Quel 's golden rings, the programmers' pick and shovel, math's household staff. Buried in the confines of his robe pocket.

Impossible for a multi projection to reach? Not tonight. Natch felt his ethereal multied fingers take on essence and solidify in the crisp night air, motes of dust made flesh. He clasped the programming rings, and they responded.

Thaumaturgic energy crackled inside the bubble as his ringed fingers entered Minds.p.a.ce.

Threads of data leapt to his fingertips.

Natch attacked.

He bombarded the blob of code with sudden swoops and dives, contorting his fingers into torturous configurations. The data strands obeyed his commands. Arcane formulas pounded against the surface of the yel ow jacket like flak as Natch sweated on, minute after minute, hour after agonizing hour. Day cloaked itself in night, night burst from day's coc.o.o.n, over and over again. And then, as he was on the verge of losing hope, it happened ... the slightest hairline crack in the surface of the mysterious code... .

Blackness.

He came to on the floor of the office, dazed, angry. Stil in multi, or maybe he wasn't-what did it matter anymore? Day/night, meat/multi, awake/asleep: he no longer had confidence in such dualities.

The il icit code mocked him from Minds.p.a.ce. It mocked him with the voice of Petrucio Patel, tel ing him he was not worthy to join the elite ranks of Primo's. It mocked him with the voice of Captain Bolbund, tel ing him he did not have the finesse to attract customers. Brone, pitying him for lagging so far behind in the fight for MultiReal. Margaret, tricking him into signing a defective contract.

Magan Kai Lee, brushing him off as irrelevant.

Standing behind the workbench was a boy. Sandy hair. Ocean blue eyes.

Who are you? Natch asked the youth. How did you get in here?

The boy shook his head and smirked. Physical y he was on the cusp of adulthood-perhaps fifteen years old-yet he carried an air of childish vulnerability that belied the c.o.c.ksure expression on his face. Come on, even you can figure this one out.

Natch found his feet and brushed himself off. So what do you want?

The boy made a slow, sweeping gesture around the office as if unveiling a key exhibit at a crucial juncture in trial. Natch fol owed the fingertips and took in the st.u.r.dy bio/logic programming bars sprawled across the workbench where he had dropped them the other day; the stool with the notch on one leg, lol ing drunkenly in the corner; the viewscreen with its permanent display of chaotic financial exchanges; the ersatz Persian rug that Horvil had solemnly presented to him as a housewarming gift.

They walked into the bedroom, where the boy performed a similar clockwork motion at the tasteful portraits of Very Influential Persons arranged neatly on the wal s; the window tuned in to a gentle Himalayan snow; the armoire that held the smal a.s.sortment of clothing he had purchased over the years.

The living room was next, with its familiar chair-and-a-half and sofa; its luxurious garden of daisies and b.u.t.tercups dividing the room like a moat; its gla.s.s balcony door facing the snow-carpeted hil s; its Tope and Pulgarti paintings bracketing the smal foyer and front door.

Final y came the kitchen, scene of a thousand late-night mugs of nitro and early-afternoon bottles of ChaiQuoke; the camouflaged white tile of the sink; the access panel to the building's communal larder and its high-cla.s.s variety of foodstuffs; the smal range he had purchased, at great expense, for the sole purpose of heating pots of Serr Vigal's peculiar British tea.

Natch turned to the youth, wondering if there was some lesson to be learned here. His apartment bore no mysteries, and he liked it that way. If there was an epiphany to be found taking inventory of life's unremarkables, it had bypa.s.sed Natch entirely.

So what was al that for? he said.

Hope you got a good look, replied the boy, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead.

You're never going to see any of it again.

33.

Jara slept wel that night, for the first time in who knew how many weeks. The rest of the fiefcorpers apparently did too. Serr Vigal's surprising performance hadn't completely reversed their fortunes in the struggle for MultiReal-for their company-but at the very least, the neural programmer had put the brakes on their downward momentum.

Things aren't worse today than they were yesterday, Jara reflected as she led the Surina/Natch contingent past the giant holograph of Tul Jabbor. Not much of an accomplishment, but I'l take it.

They arrived early and took the same seats in the pet.i.tioners' ring they had occupied yesterday. While they waited, Jara consulted the drudge alerts, which were predictably fragmented in tone this morning. Benyamin and Horvil discussed soccer scores.

The partic.i.p.ants to the hearing trickled in over the next fifteen minutes. On the libertarian side of the ring, there were smiles, laughs, and the occasional back slap. Frejohr and his supporters were ruddy with confidence as they congratulated Serr Vigal on his speech yesterday; the delegation even took the extraordinary step of scooting a few seats closer to Natch. Vigal made sure to deliver a warm wave in the fiefcorp's direction, which Jara returned.

So if things are going so wel for us, thought the a.n.a.lyst, how come the Council doesn't look worried?

Jara swept her gaze through the auditorium at the officers in the white robes and yel ow stars. There seemed to be more of them today, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. It wasn't the att.i.tude of the rank-and-file that bothered her, but the att.i.tude of their superior officers. Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee didn't look perturbed in the slightest by the libertarians' jovial mood. On the contrary, Magan remained as mysterious and aloof as ever.

The tactician Papizon lurked behind his right shoulder, ungainly as a heron, with his head tilted and his mouth splayed open. Only Rey Gonerev expressed any recognizable human emotion-and that emotion, Jara noted with a shudder, was pure disdain.

As for Natch, his demeanor was even more vacant than yesterday, like a man standing on an active multi tile. He neither saw nor acknowledged Jara's tentative wave hel o.

Moments later, the lights dimmed as the twenty-nine members of the Prime Committee solemnly filed in to their exclusive ring with retinues in tow. After a smattering of ceremonial niceties, the moderator stepped forward and cal ed the Defense and Wel ness Council's chief solicitor, Rey Gonerev.

The quiet rustle of audience noise died as the Blade stepped into the center of the auditorium. She stood in the floor's exact focal point for a moment and gathered her thoughts, looking as slim and deadly as a needle. And then she opened her mouth and let the words march out like some rumbling army of justice.

"My word is the wil of the Defense and Wel ness Council, which was established by the Prime Committee two hundred and fifty-three years ago to ensure the security of al persons throughout the system. The word of the Council is the word of the people."

Perhaps it was Rey Gonerev's height, which al owed her to address the Committee members without craning her head too far; perhaps it was the fifteen years of security and intel igence briefings that had taught her the nuances of the auditorium; perhaps it was a genetic trait common to al highranking Council officials. Whatever the reason, the Blade took to the floor of the Tul Jabbor Complex as if it were her natural habitat.

"The libertarians say they want to give you freedom," began the Blade, her diction precise, her words careful y crafted. "What you wil get is madness."