Flash.

Flash.

Choice cycle stacks on top of choice cycle, a colossus of possibility. Petrucio is using MultiReal too.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

For a brief, infinite instant, Natch and Petrucio Patel stand alone, facing off on the battlefield of the mind. A thousand darts bite into Natch; Natch swats them away. Mental processes whirl and spin; the colossus branches out into new and unexpected dimensions. And stil the darts keep coming as Patel expends his own choice cycles to navigate to new realities.

Natch should be col apsing by now-he should be prostrate on the floor in pain and weakness-but he stubbornly refuses to submit. He wil not submit.

Hit, miss, hit, miss, hit, miss, and thenMultiReal stops.

Natch feels a pinp.r.i.c.k in the back of his thigh as the dart pierces his flesh. Loget grabs his arm just as he jumps onto the hoverbird. A few black-robed figures leap on after him, and the door shuts.

35.

The crowd surged forward once the shooting began. Horvil disappeared almost immediately. Merri and Benyamin found themselves swept up the stairs and out the exit. Robby Robby managed to shelter Jara in the lee of his immense hairdo for a moment before he also stuck a limb out too far and was overwhelmed.

Jara was now alone in a furious crush of strangers. A Defense and Wel ness Council officer yanked on her shoulder and herded her out the door, sending her careening into someone else's elbow. She tried to yel a question to the man in the white robe and yel ow star, but he had already vanished in the stampede.

Another aftershock of the infoquake made Jara's knees buckle. She slipped and felt a moment of hysteria. I'm going to get trampled to death out here, she thought. Despite her little sermon about conserving computing resources five minutes earlier, she prepared to activate MultiReal. What do I have to lose?

And then a chunky arm emerged out of nowhere and locked itself tight around her waist.

"Hold on," said Horvil, his brow furrowed with determination.

"I'm getting us the f.u.c.k out of here." Jara merely stared at him.

With that, Horvil dove into the tornado.

Where had al these people come from? Even an auditorium fil ed to capacity shouldn't have generated this much foot traffic through the corridors.

Jara looked up at the six levels of offices behind smoked gla.s.s on either side of the corridor and discovered they were emptying rapidly. She gazed myopical y at the crowd and was astounded to realize that a number of the fleeing citizens were, in fact, government officials. The black ring of the Prime Committee was hanging from more than one neck, as were the insignias of the Congress of L-PRACGs, the Vault, Dr. Plugenpatch, and any number of private security organizations. Jara saw unsheathed dartguns and disruptors aplenty, but as far as she could tel , n.o.body outside of the auditorium had actual y fired one.

Horvil bul dozed his way through the panicked pedestrians like an industrial combine.

n.o.body wanted to mess with a man of his girth. Jara noticed that the engineer had actual y acquired a trail of hapless civil servants hoping to fol ow him to safety. They fel behind when he turned the next corner and quickly dispersed.

Within minutes, Horvil had elbowed his way to the central atrium of the Complex, where people were alternately gravitating toward the giant holograph of Tul Jabbor and speeding away from it. Jara supposed that an Autonomous Mind could have factored through al the trajectories of fleeing souls and plotted a safe course through the melee, but it was beyond mere human means. She was glad she had resisted the temptation to activate MultiReal. What if the exhaustion had overtaken her in the middle of al these people? No, her best strategy was to latch on to the biggest, st.u.r.diest person she could find and hold tight.

That person was Horvil. For a moment, he looked like he might plop down right there and begin sketching mathematical models. Instead he scooted over to the wal with Jara close behind and began probing every office door they pa.s.sed in hopes of finding one that would yield.

Final y one did-but only because its occupant chose that precise moment to run screaming into the corridor. The pasty-faced woman didn't even glance in Horvil's direction as she scurried by. Horvil didn't hesitate. He tightened his grip around Jara's waist and leapt into the office just as the door closed behind them.

Minutes pa.s.sed. Their heartbeats slowed.

Horvil's luck was incalculable. He had stumbled into some middle manager's office, complete with standard Prime Committee-issue desk, wal of viewscreens, and hanging ficus plant. It was little more than a cubicle, and the only chair in sight looked frightful y uncomfortable. So the two fiefcorpers slumped to the floor with backs to the desk and caught their breath. A sign on the wal next to the door told them to PROMOTE L-PRACG COOPERATION AT ALL COSTS in sanctimonious smal caps.

"You're responsible for al this, aren't you?" said Jara, leaning against the engineer's shoulder.

Horvil tipped an imaginary hat. "Of course."

"A little over the top, wasn't it? I mean, did you have to spark worldwide pandemonium just to get out of your fiefcorp contract?"

"I dunno, sometimes I think you just have to take the big chances. Like the great Lucco Primo once said, Global catastrophe causes fertilization and, um, crystal ization of purpose in-in fiefcorp negotiations. Or something like that."

The joke wheezed to a halt, leaving the two alone with their thoughts.

Jara realized that Horvil had never actual y taken his arm from around her waist, but she was in no mind to remove it. After al , now that she had core access to MultiReal, she was just as much of a target as Natch, wasn't she? Through the translucent gla.s.s of the door, she could see the bedlam of Prime Committee bureaucrats and hear the tramp of confused Defense and Wel ness Council officers. One of those officers could hit the door with a priority override and zap them ful of black code at any time. The menacing figures in black robes could track them down. Drudges might be waiting to pounce right in the hal . Was there any safer place to be than nestled in the plush cushion of Horvil's bel y? Jara tilted her head back slightly into Horvil's chest and listened to the rhythmic chugging of his heart, as steady an engine as could be found in this wretched place.

"What are you thinking?" she asked softly.

"Oh, I'm thinking about the Spiral Theory of History," replied Horvil.

Jara smirked. "You'l have to explain that one. I was never very good at history."

"It's one of the tenets of Creed Dao, I think. Something about the looping patterns of history. Events recur, but it's not just a circle, it's more like a spring or a coil. So we're not just going round and round the same groove-we're progressing somewhere. Moving up or down on a spiral track." The engineer twirled the index finger of his left hand, drawing an invisible cone that would come to a point at some hypothetical place in the aether.

"Horvil, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Come on. Marcus Surina introduces this revolutionary new technology, teleportation.

Everybody goes wild over it, there's al this hul abaloo, and then he dies suddenly in a hoverbird explosion. The whole economy tanks. Now here we are, a generation later. Margaret Surina introduces another revolutionary new technology, there's al this hul abaloo, and then she dies suddenly.

Murdered, maybe. A spiral."

The a.n.a.lyst gave him a playful poke in the side. "You're just now figuring this out? The drudges have been pushing that story for weeks. Just like her father, history repeats itself-"

"No no no, you're missing the whole point, Jara. It's not just history repeating itself.

There are a lot of recurring patterns, sure, but it can't be the same, because everything we do is informed by what happened in the past. We're going somewhere. It's either spiraling up, or it's spiraling down. And the Daoists, they believe that you can track that change, that you can figure out the laws of the universe if you can figure out the coefficient of change between historical cycles."

Jara laughed quietly in the crook of Horvil's arm. It was just like him to float off into abstraction like an untethered bal oon amidst such turmoil. "Wel , which way are we going? Up or down?"

Horvil made a jovial face as his mind came crashing back to the present. "I dunno. That's the big question, I guess."

"Okay, while you're at it, here's another big question," said the a.n.a.lyst. "A month ago, you and I were sitting in the Center for Historic Appreciation at Andra Pradesh. On the floor, with your arm around me. Panicked people running al over the place, Council offi cers everywhere." She nodded her head toward the door, which shuddered momentarily as some shadowy figure slammed against it, then disappeared. "Now here we are again. A recurring pattern. So which direction are we spiraling in, up or down?"

The engineer rubbed his chin and peered into the distance with his newfound Horvilish calm. "That's a very interesting question. Let me dig out my slide rule."

Jara burst into laughter. It was probably the only laugh to be heard for a kilometer or more.

And then they were kissing. She couldn't quite say who leaned in first, or whether they had both done so simultaneously. It wasn't the explosive outburst of pa.s.sion that Jara had been hoping for from Natch these past few years; it was congenial, friendly, familiar.

Jara opened her eyes. Nothing had real y changed. She didn't real y even think she loved this man sitting next to her. But she liked him and respected him and trusted him. For now, wasn't that enough?

Horvil sat back with a sunny grin that belied everything they had experienced since this entire MultiReal crisis had begun. "Al right, now that that's over with," he said, "what say we get out of here?"

Jara looked at his pudgy, uncomplicated face, drank in his expression of calm cert.i.tude, and then nodded. "Okay, where to?"

"Fol ow me. We're catching a ride."

The door slid open on command, revealing a scene of utter disarray. The crowds clogging the hal ways of the Tul Jabbor Complex had thinned slightly, but those who remained were more strident and unnerved. If Horvil's Daoist theory was right, the crucial difference between this scene and the one at Andra Pradesh was that n.o.body was in charge here. A large contingent of Defense and Wel ness Council officers flew past them looking just as muddled and confused as any of the hundred private L-PRACG security forces. A few bodies were scattered on the ground, though whether they were dead or merely temporarily stunned from the infoquake, Jara could not tel .

Horvil screwed up his face, clutched Jara tightly in his arm, and let out a completely gratuitous war cry. Then he went careening into the crowd with the a.n.a.lyst hugging his every step.

There was some shoving, but most people knew better than to get in the way of a bel owing mammoth like Horvil. Jara col ided with a young Islander running in the opposite direction, leading the a.n.a.lyst to wonder if those connectible col ars were even working in the middle of al this. Was the infoquake affecting the Islanders too? The engineer yanked the young man to his feet and gently thrust him aside. We're going to get through this, thought Jara. And without MultiReal.

The curving hal ways of the Tul Jabbor Complex were interminable, but Horvil wasn't heading to the front entrance. After a few more minutes in the fray, he led them to a smal meeting room in a relatively deserted alcove. Five burly men in purple robes awaited them there. They were armed to the teeth and festooned with the Creed Elan regalia.

"Come on!" bel owed the man in the lead. "Let's go!"

There was no time to think. A door at the far end of the room swung open, and the two fiefcorpers fol owed the guards into a courtyard where a red Vulture hoverbird idled half a meter off the ground. Within seconds the guards had half a.s.sisted, half tossed them through the hoverbird doors, and the Vulture was making a steep arc up into the blue.

Jara flopped to the floor and would have slid al the way down the center aisle but for a hand that lashed out and gripped her ankle. "Gotcha, Queen Jara," said Robby Robby, beaming like an idiot.

Seconds later, she and Horvil had managed to crawl to the hoverbird's upholstered pa.s.senger seats and strap themselves in. A quick glance around the cabin revealed the bird's other occupants: Serr Vigal, Benyamin, Merri, and Robby Robby, along with a pilot and the guards who had ushered them in here.

"I don't suppose," sighed Jara heavily, "that anybody's seen Natch."

Blank stares echoed from the rest of the hoverbird's occupants, and Jara knew then that n.o.body else had even thought to look.

The a.n.a.lyst smiled wanly and shrugged her shoulders. Horvil gave her a wink from his seat across the aisle. Jara turned to one of the gruff Elanners and stuttered out a tired "thank you."

"Don't thank me," muttered the guard, wiping the barrel of his handheld disruptor before sheathing it. "I'm just doing my job. Thank her."

Jara fol owed the man's. .h.i.tched thumb over his shoulder and was shocked to see a familiar figure who had been hidden from view in the seat next to the pilot. "Beril a?"

The matriarch's gaze was fixed out the opposite window, where the tumult was stil visible but growing more distant with each pa.s.sing second. The confusion of the Tul Jabbor Complex began to seem like a natural occurrence the higher they climbed: warring ant tribes scrambling for turf. Melbourne itself metamorphosed from a place of fiercely clashing agendas to an orderly grid of unmoving buildings.

Beril a pursed her lips as if she had just slurped on a particularly tart lime. "What has that man gotten you al into this time?" she grumbled.

5.

POSSIBILITIES 2.0.

36.

The turbulence of the Tul Jabbor Complex vanished the instant Natch pa.s.sed through the doors of the hoverbird. The Council officers, the whizzing darts, the fleeing bystanders, Petrucio Patel: al gone.

Natch flopped onto a thin carpet of leaves and skidded to a halt against a particularly scabby tree. He could feel the cogs of his mind catch on a smal and intractable stone. This place, this garden with its motley a.s.sortment of plants and trees that could have been carelessly flung from a barrel of random seeds: how did he get here? And where had he seen this place before?

The entrepreneur crawled in the dirt, parted a curtain of grapevine, and saw a patio of hand-crafted stone. A careful y stuccoed building lay two meters ahead, with plenty of benches and brick abutments to sit on. Insects both large and smal danced a tarantel a around the latticework.

A hand reached down and took ahold of Natch's. The skin was deep mahogany, the color of furniture. "You al right, Natch?"

"I'm fine," grunted the entrepreneur. He let the man tug him to his feet, and found himself face-to-face with Pierre Loget.

Loget was sanguine to the point of absurdity. His cowled black robe was definitely the same type Natch had seen that day in the al eyways of Shenandoah. Up close, he discovered that what he had taken for red Chinese lettering was not actual y lettering at al , but a geometric pattern with a vaguely Arabic motif.

And the man himself? Wel , the man was Pierre Loget: effeminate, inward-facing, thoroughly nonthreatening.

It was almost too much to contemplate. Pierre Loget had arranged a strike force to pump him ful of black code? Natch couldn't possibly see how Loget fit into the weave of current events. Yes, they were compet.i.tors on the Primo's rankings, and to compete on Primo's a.s.sumed some amount of rancor by definition. But Loget had always seemed aloof from the fray, a hermetical y sealed individual. Natch had only spoken to the man a few times in his life, and each encounter had blurred into the everyday administrative bustle of fiefcorpdom. A meeting, a seminar, a dinner party Jara had dragged him to once.

Natch wasn't sure if he should feel angry or relieved. "What are you doing here?" he said.

"How did you know where to find me?"

Loget's laughter fluttered through the SeeNaRee, pigeonlike. "With al the publicity surrounding that Prime Committee hearing, I suspect everyone in the solar system knew where to find you."

"And the black code? What the f.u.c.k was that about?"

The programmer put a delicate hand on Natch's shoulder. "You should ask the bodhisattva," he said simply.

"The-what?"

"Natch has been hit," said a voice behind him. "Weren't you paying attention back there, Loget?" Natch could feel a shiver emanate from someplace deep in his gut and quickly work its way to his shoulder blades. He knew that voice almost as wel as he knew his own.

The bodhisattva of Creed Tha.s.sel. Brone.

Suddenly the pebble lodged in Natch's mental gearworks sprang free. Natch was correct; he had been in this place before. It was the garden at the Proud Eagle hive where he and Brone had spent most of their childhood. He had not utterly lost control of his faculties and plunged into madness after al .

He had jumped onto a hoverbird, and that hoverbird had been outfitted with SeeNaRee capabilities.

Natch tried to imagine the exorbitant sum of money it would take to accomplish such a thing. To instal SeeNaRee on a hoverbird? And then to track down video of the Proud Eagle hive and go through the laborious process of SeeNaRizing it? Why?