Magan had commanded more missions than he could count. He had seen Council troops on good days and bad; he had seen horribly botched raids, officers in white robes twitching in their death throes with heads staved in by Islander shock batons. For half a dozen officers to fire on a stationary target less than thirty meters away and al miss ... it defied the laws of probability. Even factoring in the occasional jostled elbow, the steep angle, and the intermittent aftershocks of the infoquake, Magan had never seen a team of uniformed officers perform so poorly. MultiReal, he thought. Natch must be using MultiReal.

Lieutenant Executive Lee snapped into combat mode between one instant and the next.

He made sure the dartgun in his hand was c.o.c.ked and loaded with a variety of black code routines and felt the battle language algorithms slide over his mind like a glove. "Instant broker! Paral el!" he barked at the soldiers, waving his arms in the air. Stop! Stop, you fools!

But the rain of darts continued unabated. Eight officers, now ten, al firing, al missing.

Magan couldn't begin to guess how long Natch's MultiReal tricks would enable him to keep dodging projectiles. There were hundreds of officers within the building, and untold thousands more on the streets of Melbourne. Could MultiReal hold off a hundred dartguns? How about two hundred? How about ten thousand? What would happen when Len Borda decided to lob a missile on the whole complex?

Magan ran up the stairs and bolted toward the first Council officer he could find, a strapping African with a dart-rifle mounted against his shoulder and his eye squinting at the scope. "Mission detail! See to the transom!" yel ed Magan. Stop firing-that's an order!

The officer gave Lee a peculiar sidelong glance but did not take his finger off the trigger.

"Forward motion in an obscure trajectory," he muttered, then fired off another dart.

The lieutenant blinked at the man for a moment, adrift, waiting for the burst of decryption that never arrived. Could the battle language decryptors have somehow gotten scrambled by the infoquake? Had this computational chaos left the Defense and Wel ness Council unable to communicate on the ground-and if so, why hadn't anyone fol owed standard procedure and tried another protocol?

And then comprehension stabbed him in the gut. Someone had reseeded the algorithms.

The officers were communicating just fine; it was only Magan who had been cut off.

I give you until the fifteenth of January to take possession of MultiReal. If you do, we have an agreement. If you don't ...

Lieutenant Executive Lee's mind whirled, spun, gyrated. What could the old man possibly be thinking? People were dying from OCHRE failures right now al around the world. There were a handful of bodies right here in the auditorium, whether trampled or shot or simply fainted Magan couldn't tel . Why couldn't Borda see that ordering Defense and Wel ness Council officers to shoot black code darts into a crowd-in ful view of the drudges, no less-was nothing short of madness?

Before the lieutenant could decide on a proper course of action, he felt a hand grab his shoulder and spin him around.

Three guards in the white robe and yel ow star. The hulking man in the center of the pack was none other than Ridgel o. His dartgun was unholstered and its barrel aimed squarely at Magan's heart. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant," he said. Ridgel o's emotions had always been difficult to read, but behind his mask of duty, the soldier appeared to be genuinely apologetic.

The lieutenant executive felt his heart sink. Not now. Not Ridgel o.

Magan took a quick glance around the auditorium at the rapidly emptying seats, at the firing Council officers, at the Plugenpatch representative who had gathered a few wide-eyed drudges together for an impromptu statement of some kind. There were plenty of other drudges taking cover behind their seats to record the scene, but their attention was focused squarely on Natch. No one would notice or question an accidental death by friendly fire.

How long had Len Borda been playing him? How deep did his comprehension of Magan's plots go? He remembered the ruse he had pul ed on the high executive weeks ago when Ridgel o had held a dartgun to the back of his head. Had Ridgel o been in Borda's pocket even then? For a moment, Magan toyed with the idea that the infoquake itself was nothing but a premeditated device for decapitating a brewing rebel ion, a way to tidy some loose ends. But no, such a plan was too messy even for someone as choleric as Len Borda. Too ful of unknown variables.

Besides which, if Borda had given this operation careful thought, he would have instructed Ridgel o to shoot Magan in the back.

Short-term plans, long-term problems, thought the lieutenant. Your recklessness fails you once more, Borda.

Acting on instinct, Magan Kai Lee ducked and delivered a swift kick to Ridgel o's knee.

He could hear the tiny ving of a dart missing his right ear by centimeters. In one smooth motion, the lieutenant thumbed the selector on his gun, loading a more lethal variety of black code dart, then fired point-blank into the soldier's bel y. Ridgel o's eyes didn't even have time to widen before the Nul Current claimed him. Magan shoved the rapidly stiffening corpse at the officer on the left, causing him to stumble and shoot wide. But the third officerThe third officer col apsed with three black code darts sticking out of his torso. Magan snapped his neck around, fol owing the angle of impact back to its source, and saw a smal huddle of Council officers on the floor led by a taciturn Rey Gonerev. Papizon was there too. At least Borda hadn't gotten to everyone. There were stil some officers in the Tul Jabbor Complex who remained loyal to Magan.

The Blade gave him a stiff nod. Magan returned it, then swiveled around to plug Ridgel o's remaining compatriot with three darts of his own. The man gazed straight ahead and expired wordlessly.

How did it come to this? thought the lieutenant as he ducked into the pa.s.sage below the Committee members' ring, making for the floor and Rey Gonerev.

"Al right," urged Jara. "Let's go. This way."

The fiefcorpers had made no real progress in escaping the pet.i.tioners' ring, but at least they had al managed to achieve verticality. Robby Robby and Ben were leaning on one another like wounded soldiers, while Merri was crying and Horvil simply stared bewilderedly into s.p.a.ce. Across the ring, Vigal was sitting upright and studying his exit strategies like a seasoned backgammon player.

Jara seemed to be the only one who noticed they were not real y in any danger. The Council soldiers were busy firing darts at Natch, and while the fiefcorpers' mental foundations might have been shaken by the infoquake, the foundations of the Tul Jabbor Complex remained solid. Jara's job at this point was simple: keep everyone calm, prevent them from doing something stupid, and get them the f.u.c.k out of there.

"Shut down as many programs as you can," she announced to the others. "It helps with the vertigo."

"What about MultiReal?" said Ben.

"Especial y MultiReal."

They had made half of the Sisyphean trudge back up the stairs when the first man in black robes slipped into the auditorium. Others soon fol owed.

They looked exactly as Natch and Benyamin had described: cloaked head to toe in robes of midnight, laced with crimson Oriental lettering. Upon later reflection, Jara would realize they had arrived too soon after the beginning of the infoquake to have run al the way from the building's street entrance.

The figures in black drew dartguns and began firing.

Not at Natch. At the officers of the Council.

Magan could tel that the a.s.sailants in black robes were not battlehardened. Although they were decent marksmen, their playbook was limited; they seemed to be executing the same maneuver over and over again. Aim, shoot, drop, crawl.

Aim, shoot, drop, crawl. As a longhaul strategy the maneuver was seriously deficient, but in the middle of al this chaos, it just might distract Borda's troops long enough for them to accomplish their objective.

Which was ... what? To a.s.sa.s.sinate members of the Prime Committee? To kil or incapacitate Natch? To make a political statement that would hit tonight's drudge reports with a bone-crunching impact?

Borda's officers, caught off guard, began to go down.

This is insane, thought Magan. Defense and Wel ness Council officers were firing black code darts wildly at Natch; anonymous lunatics in black robes were picking off Council officers; and Magan's group hunkered down in the middle, targeting both the mysterious wouldbe a.s.sa.s.sins and the occasional Council officer who swung a gun in their direction. Audience members were fleeing in every direction and occasional y getting caught in the crossfire.

Bodies from al sides lay twitching around the auditorium. And the accursed fiefcorper now stood in the middle of the tumult, untouched.

Obviously this impa.s.se would be short-lived. The black-robed a.s.sailants had apparently deployed their ful strength, which numbered about twenty; meanwhile, Council reinforcements would be washing in by the hundreds any minute now. MultiReal or no MultiReal, the fools in black would soon be eradicated, and Natch would find himself either dead or the permanent resident of an orbital prison cel .

Magan watched the former fiefcorp master careful y for some hint to his intentions, but his face was impossible to read. Natch might have been some alien species'

fledgling effort to piece together a human being with a random a.s.sortment of mental states. Anger, determination, triumph, melancholy, resolve-al seemed to rol across the entrepreneur's face at once. Darts were clattering against stone al around him. Through it al , Natch's eyes remained steadfastly closed.

And then, with no warning, he began stumbling for the exit.

It was the reeling gait of a drunkard. First a step this way, then a step that way, fol owed by two hops in a third direction altogether. But this walk was anything but aimless, Magan realized; it was a careful y calculated path that kept him free of black code darts.

"He's running away!" cried Rey Gonerev, tugging at Magan's elbow. "What the f.u.c.k do we do now?" Her voice was tinged with anger and not a little fear. Magan realized that few lawyers ever found themselves on real, live battlefields.

Lieutenant Lee watched the entrepreneur's progress across the floor, helpless. n.o.body but Natch could survive that hailstorm of darts whizzing in every direction. For a moment, he was prepared to just let the man go. After al , what did Natch stil possess that Jara didn't? Then he remembered that meeting at the Tul Jabbor Complex. The way this man had turned the tables on Magan, the pure ferociousness of him.

And then he knew what to do.

"Petrucio!" he shouted. "Where's Petrucio?"

The Blade was having trouble hearing, or concentrating, or both. "What?" she said, confused. Papizon, meanwhile, yanked the lieutenant's sleeve and pointed him across the auditorium. Petrucio Patel was sitting on the floor there with his back to the lowest stair, looking somewhat dazed but very much alive.

Without a word, Magan sprang out from the protective curtain of loyal Council officers, narrowly missing both a cowering bureaucrat and one of the black-robed a.s.sailants' darts. He fired up a cla.s.sified bio/logic adrenaline boost program cal ed 2539i. Then he was sprinting as fast as his feet could carry him around the perimeter of the floor, trying not to hug the wal to avoid giving his enemies an easy reference point. In some distant antechamber of consciousness, he could hear darts striking the stone around him.

Close to twenty Council officers were firing at Natch now, though as a moving target he was much harder to hit. Three times that number were futilely clinging to the idea of crowd control. Maybe a dozen figures in black robes remained.

Natch was getting close to the doorway.

Magan Kai Lee skidded to a halt in front of Petrucio Patel, who watched his approach with almost maniacal calm. "MultiReal," barked the Council lieutenant.

"Use it!"

The businessman regarded the Council lieutenant with a bemused stare. "Use it how?" he said.

"On Natch! Hurry, before it's too late." Magan tossed his dartgun into Petrucio's lap.

"We're only going to get one shot at this."

Petrucio arose and brushed off his b.l.o.o.d.y lapels, letting the gun clatter to the ground. The nosebleed was ancient history by now, but it had done significant damage to what Magan suspected was a very expensive suit. At the moment, the suit appeared to be the fiefcorper's primary concern. "Why me? You do it."

"Don't you understand? Natch is using MultiReal. You've got MultiReal. You're the only one here who has any chance of hitting him."

Patel considered this for an agonizing moment, a moment that saw Natch stumble ever closer to the door. "I don't know if I real y have a chance or not,"

he said final y. "I don't know if Jara's made the switch yet."

"Listen," hissed Magan. "Once Natch gets out of this building, we're never going to find him again. Do you want that man on the loose out there? Do you think he's going to let Jara make that switch after he's gone?" Magan had no idea what he was tel ing Petrucio, didn't know what kind of switch lay in the balance here, but figured he had nothing to lose by bluffing. "You've got those MultiReal-D programs. Don't play dumb, Petrucio, I know you have themyou were supposed to demo them to the Prime Committee today. Now load them up and use them."

Whatever he had threatened seemed to have worked. Petrucio nodded. He picked Magan's gun up off the ground. "Should I hit him here?"

Magan looked around at the Council officers, the fleeing spectators, the observing drudges. Then he was struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. "No.

Wait ... These people in black robes. How did they get in? And how do they intend to get out?"

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He can see it, pantomimed a thousand times on the private stage of his mind, acted with an eerie verisimilitude. A Defense and Wel ness Council officer takes aim and pul s the trigger on his rifle. A sliver of OCHRE-laden doom careens toward the floor of the auditorium, pierces clothing, bites flesh.

He stiffens and the Nul Current pul s him into its icy depths.

Natch sees himself die. Hundreds of times. It's a vast panorama of his mortality, visions of his death stretched out on an infinite grid.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He observes each scenario, interprets it, rejects it. The choice cycle is discarded; he moves on to new possibilities; the memory fades. He dies and dies again. And each rejection costs him an infinitesimal act of wil power; each a.s.sertion of his raw desire to live must be explicitly stated in the language of the neuron, synapse, axon, and dendrite. Each time, there wil come the eventual reprieve like the answer to a prayer. A missed shot. A hesitation. A finger twitched too soon or too late.

And so Natch claws his way, alive, through another fraction of a second. Every time it feels like luck. He watches his mental Data Sea video feeds and sees the tiny figure that is him inching closer to the door, a lowly p.a.w.n on a vast chessboard loaded with enemy knights.

Flash.

The figures in black robes aren't firing at Natch, and for some reason that makes total sense. He has spent much of the past month dreading these black figures and speculating on their ident.i.ties. But their presence doesn't feel quite so alarming as it did in that Shenandoah al eyway. So much has happened since that attack. Death, suspension, protests, riots. Natch knows that death is his eventual destination now, the last stop on the track. But he'l make it there on his own timetable. He wil not be hurried.

It feels like months have pa.s.sed when Natch final y makes it to the door and the pa.s.sageway beneath the Committee members' ring. He opens his eyes, busts through the door, and leaps up the stairs to the auditorium exit.

The exhaustion begins to choke him. He wants to col apse. He needs to col apse. He pushes on.

There are stil Council officers in the hal ways, of course, and Council officers close on his heels. But now he's only one man in a throng of people clamoring for the exits. The officials out here are more concerned with shepherding the sheep to safety than with plugging Natch with black code. Some of the figures in white robes and yel ow stars are actual y firing at each other, an oddity Natch does not have the energy to ponder right now.

He runs as fast as his feet can carry him. He doesn't particularly care where he's headed.

Occasional y he cuts his way through the crowd with the scythe of MultiReal, but it's mostly unnecessary here. Fleeing, infoquake-panicked pedestrians make for better camouflage.

The central atrium. The imposing holograph of Tul Jabbor, his mien a dour judgment against al manner of chaos and disorder.

Standing in Jabbor's shadow are three figures in black robes, beckoning Natch toward a side hal way that he wouldn't have otherwise noticed. A service exit of sorts. Dartguns are in their hands, but n.o.body is threatening Natch. One of them has actual y pul ed his hood back, but it's n.o.body the entrepreneur recognizes: some random Caucasian male, heavily muscled, perhaps in his midthirties. "This way, Natch!" he beckons. "Hurry!"

Natch pauses. Go with them? Exactly how stupid do they think I am?

And then he catches a glint of something from the corner of his eye. Natch peers around Tul Jabbor and sees a veritable battalion of white robes and yel ow stars headed this way. Scores of Defense and Wel ness Council officers with dart-rifles drawn, reinforcements rushing from the building's front doors. They don't see Natch or his would-be benefactors yet, but they wil . Soon. The men in black robes beckon him again.

Natch whips around and heads in their direction.

The men in black robes form a tight phalanx around him and haul a.s.s down the narrow hal way. There's a metal door ajar there, and a hoverbird parked just outside with its boarding ramp extended. The vehicle is painted white with the yel ow star on its side. The sub terfuge is convincing from a distance, but as he draws closer Natch sees that it's a counterfeit.

A familiar voice. "Natch!"

He turns around. Sees, at the far end of the corridor, Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee and Petrucio Patel. There are two or three Council officers with them, but it appears that the ma.s.s of troops Natch saw a minute ago have been given the slip. Magan is making no move to summon them this way.

In fact, he looks just as anxious to avoid attention.

"Come with us," says Magan, palms upturned and extended. "We can make a deal. We can keep you safe from Len Borda."

Petrucio's look flings vitriol. There's dried blood on his suit. His finger caresses the trigger of his dartgun.

Natch turns around again and looks at the waiting hoverbird. The figures who escorted him down the hal way are leaping aboard, firing a few wild shots back down the hal that don't hit anything but stone. A lone figure leans out and stretches a hand toward him. Its skin is the color of mahogany. "Hurry up, Natch!" cries the voice. "Don't trust him!" Natch looks up, sees the man pul back the cowl of his robe, and gapes in astonishment.

Pierre Loget?

Natch is now submerged far below the realm of conscious decision or human emotion. Al he can see is the murderous look in Petrucio Patel's eye, the thousands of deaths the Council has inflicted on him this afternoon. The weariness that's dragging at his heels, the man who invaded his home and cal ed him irrelevant. He vaults for the hoverbird.

Petrucio raises the gun in both hands and fires.

Flash.