41.

I can't let you leave, Natch. Certainly you must realize that.

Faces stare from the windows of Old Chicago as Natch runs pel mel through the streets.

Past the four-wheeled fossils that were stripped to the bone hundreds of years ago. Past the untidy rubble of a tower that might have dwarfed even the Revelation Spire before it was struck down by the Autonomous Minds. To the very banks of the Great Diss Lake itself, stil silted with the metal droppings of ancient warplanes.

He has been running for at least an hour when he notices that the diss have come out of their ruined towers to look for him. It's not quite dawn. Electric lights strung along the debris are stil il uminating the streets. Yet there's a palpable presence, a stirring through the city as the echoes of shuffling feet fly through the al eyways. Whispered voices. He can't see anybody, not yet, but every few blocks he turns a corner and sees fresh footprints in the snow.

Somehow Brone has already discovered that he's left the old hotel. He's put the word out among the diss that Natch is a wanted man. Natch remembers Brone's overblown gesture of throwing his synthetic arm on the table in that underground cafe, and now he realizes that that was more than just a gesture. It was a signal. Natch has been marked.

Brone chose wel when he picked Old Chicago as the launchpad for his Revolution of Selfishness. The diss are good trackers: too fiercely independent to band together for an organized pursuit, and therefore almost impossible to predict. This is the city of barter, and with Brone the diss have struck the mother lode of bargains. Keep the Tha.s.selians safe; keep them hidden and protected; do the occasional odd job. And in return, Brone wil deliver them their Shangri-la. The ability to eliminate al social boundaries, the ability to bring themselves up to the connectibles' level-or bring the connectibles down to theirs.

I didn't want it to come to this. But you've forced my hand. I can't risk Borda finding you and taking MultiReal away.

The words float through his consciousness like a memory of something he once said, yet Natch is fairly certain that he never said them. Yet it's his own voice he's hearing, his own interior monologue. What's going on?

He makes a quick left at the next intersection and goes looking for cover, only to find himself at a dead end. An impa.s.sable cul-de-sac of rusted metal and petrified wood that might once have served as a barricade during the Autonomous Revolt. He scrambles into the corner, thinking he sees a way through the mora.s.s, but it turns out to be only a deceit of the night. Natch knows that he can't continue running like this with no direction, but he's stil too addled by rage and black code and exhaustion to keep track of where he's going.

Sprinting through the city at top speed temporarily distracted him from the pain and the quivering, but now both are returning with a vengeance. And the cold ... It's frigid as death out here. Even the winter of initiation wasn't this bad, and he didn't have the artificial insulation of bio/logics back then either.

Natch backtracks, finds a deserted storefront, and stops to catch his breath. He huddles inside the empty store next to rusted metal racks that might once have contained household products. He needs to figure out some strategy for how to proceed. Where is he going? Where can he go? Connectible territory is off-limits with the Defense and Wel ness Council on the hunt for him; and now unconnectible territory is as wel . What does that leave?

He summons a map of the city from the Data Sea and tries to get his bearings. But apparently no one has made a systematic effort to scope out Old Chicago in decades. The schematics he finds hail from a more idyl ic time when the streets weren't as cluttered with detritus and more of the old landmarks were stil standing. He looks at the most recent map and tries to figure out which building his mother lived in. Vigal once told him that Lora lived on the thirty-fourth story of a rotting skysc.r.a.per, and even an hour ago Natch had been naive enough to think he might locate the building on that description alone. But there are a dozen such structures within walking distance, and more dot the horizon to the south and east.

A pair of young men come jogging by, leading a vicious-looking mongrel on a chain.

They're peering into the shadows. Any second now they'l notice his footprints in the snow, which he's stupidly forgotten to cover up. Natch flips on MultiReal, wondering if he can use Horvil's mind control trick to divert their attention without alerting them to his presence. Thankful y, he doesn't have to worry about it, because at that moment something metal crashes to the ground a few blocks away, and the diss trackers go tearing off to investigate.

MultiReal isn't going to do you any good. You might as wel save yourself the effort.

Natch leaps out from his hiding place, taking care to step in the footprints of his pursuers as much as possible. He can't last much longer out here.

He's worn out, not just from the cold, not just from the incident at the Tul Jabbor Complex, but from weeks of ceaseless wandering, from years of pressing on through the maze of fiefcorpery.

He finds himself in an empty intersection and surveys the crossroads before him. North, south, east, west-which way should he turn?

But his feet wil not obey him. The prospect of taking a step in any direction seems like the most difficult thing in the world. He tries to peer into the future, but he can't see beyond the next five minutes. Running, and then running, and thenI'm sorry, Natch.

The sun final y climbs over the horizon and showers Natch with its cold light. Before he can react, the blackness is upon him.

Unmoving, unspeaking.

It is a completely desolate and dimensionless universe, a blackness without blackness.

There is no more Old Chicago, no more snow, and no more diss. The very Earth and sky have dissipated away. Corporeality of any kind is nothing but an abstraction, and the constant chatter of the five senses is nothing but a memory.

And yet Natch is here.

He feels that he is present, even if there's nothing to be present in. But the central core of his being, the ident.i.ty, the I that fil s the p.r.o.noun, is there.

Natch. His existence may actual y be the only thing possible in this place.

He stretches his nonexistent arms and tries to reach for somethingbut there is only Nothing within reach. His legs: he kicks out with them too, expecting to find ground, or a bed, or at the very least air. But those things, too, are gone.

In fact, he can only take it as an article of faith that he himself is stil here, since he can't see anything. Natch pats where his torso should be: nothing.

MultiReal. Even in this place, so far removed from everything, he is aware that the program is out there somewhere. He remembers the sense of limitless potential, the flush of power. But as he stretches his mind out like he has done a mil ion times since he was a child in the hive, he knows it's useless; the Data Sea, Minds.p.a.ce, even his own OCHRE systems lie in a different continuum altogether. And even if he could somehow reach and activate MultiReal, were there any possibilities for him to choose from in this nons.p.a.ce?

A voice speaks. This isn't how I wanted things to end.

The entrepreneur spins around, or at least tries to, which is impossible in a world without exterior referents. No actual sound has pierced the veil of this ultracompacted universe, but it seems like a sound. It seems like a voice. It is, in fact, the only voice that is conceivable here.

His own.

Natch has spoken those words, and yet he has not. He remembers making the vocalizations that echo in his mind; he remembers saying those things, as much as the concept makes sense. But the ideas came from elsewhere. Outside.

He can feel more words forming at his nonexistent lips, and he cannot stop them. It took me years to perfect this little piece of black code, Natch. You would be quite impressed if you had more time to explore it. The ultimate loopback!

Much more interesting than some sil y cloaking program. Al sensory input rerouted, al sensory commands blocked off. Think of it as a dam of sorts, planted in the brain stem. Except I have the ability to open and close channels at wil . Witness....

An instantaneous sword thrust of pure, unal oyed agony. The Urpain, the primordial concept itself.

Gone.

A sudden reemergence of sound. Low voices muttering, the distant bark of the mongrel.

Staccato sc.r.a.pes that might come from the confluence of boots and rubble.

Nothing.

Don't try to blame me for this state of affairs, says the voice. If you want to blame someone, you can blame yourself. You've done a much better job isolating yourself than I could have ever done. Al I've done is take advantage of it.

Yes, thanks to you, Natch, your disappearance wil arouse little suspicion. I'm sure the drudges wil speculate about you for a while. Some wil suspect foul play; some wil suspect that the Council has done away with you. But most people?

Most people wil a.s.sume you've fal en prey to your own paranoia, gotten sucked into your own self-delusions. Like Henry Osterman and Sheldon Surina.

Like Marcus Surina at the end. They'l think that one of your uncountable enemies final y caught up to you on a dark road somewhere.

I daresay even those few you label your friends wil give up on you soon enough.

People wil wonder what happened to MultiReal. The drudges wil have heated debates about it, and some of the bigger fie/corps wil attempt to dupli cate it-unsuccessful y, of course. Some wil conclude that the whole thing was a hoax to begin with.

And then-once the rumors have died down, once the subject has become nothing more than a myth, once even the Defense and Wel ness Council has concluded that MultiReal is lost in the deep eddies of the Data Sea-Creed Tha.s.sel wil emerge. We'l launch Possibilities 2.0 and proclaim an end to the tyranny of cause and effect, forever.

An end to the Council. An end to centralized authority. A new beginning.

It is a strange thing, speaking the words of another. Natch feels the vibrations of his vocal cords, the swaying of his tongue-the idea of his vocal cords, the idea of his tongue-but he knows indisputably that the sentiments behind the words belong to someone else. And yet, the mere act of stringing together such words in his memory is causing him to reverse engineer the sounds back into their component thoughts.

The voice continues.

I hoped that we could work together, Natch. I real y hoped that we might put aside our differences and launch Possibilities 2.0 as a team. I wasn't lying about that. It would have made for great symbolism-two enemies joining forces to announce the end of the zero-sum game! And it wil take much longer to finish the programming without you. Maybe years longer.

But I see now that it's not fated to be. I was right to send that strike team after you. I was right to take out this little piece of insurance. You'l never wil ingly join my Revolution of Selfishness; as long as you live, you'l be a hindrance. I would simply keep you cooped up in this prison of mine until the launch of Possibilities, but I'm not that foolish. You would figure a way out of here eventual y.

And so we come now to the final choice. Your last choice.

Don't think I take any pleasure in this, Natch. No sane human being enjoys taking the life of another But you must agree that sometimes it's necessary.

Sometimes we must sacrifice our own lives in order that others may be free. And that's what you'l do. Your gift of MultiReal to the world wil engender a future of boundless freedom for al . You can take some consolation in the fact that you'l be a hero, a martyr for humankind.

Natch feels the raw fury inside him. It's threaded through every cel in his body, and now he summons it al . Anger. The righteous, white-blazed inferno of need and struggle and drive, shaped into a dagger of wil power. The terrible madness of the Shortest Initiation. The humiliation of Captain Bolbund's poetry. The sting of being outmaneuvered by Magan Kai Lee. The howl of frustration he feels at locking horns with Jara. Al concentrated and compounded to the utmost degree.

Natch reaches out and wrenches control of the voice. What's kil ing me going to accomplish? he says. You can't be that stupid. Without me, MultiReal is gone forever. It'l float out there on the Data Sea for al eternity-and even when you find it, your little piece of black code won't give you core access.

What happens to your f.u.c.king Revolution of Selfishness then?

There is a moment of considered silence. He can almost feel the pitying smile on Brone's face, the wretched shake of the head.

I don't think you quite understand, says the voice. You're lying completely defenseless on a street in Old Chicago. There's no one out here but the disc for kilometers. And I have here the gateway to pain beyond your imagining.

Unadulterated pain that's al the more potent because it doesn't go through the intermediary step of the nervous system.

You have one last choice left to make, Natch. And I already know what your decision is going to be. When you're racked with anguish beyond anguish and you're given the opportunity to end that suffering-of signing over core access to MultiReal to me and earning a swift death you'l make the only logical choice. I know you wil .

Natch tries to reach out and steady himself against something, but there is nothing to steady himself against. He feels the primal fear wash over him, the fear of emptiness, of loneliness, of pain. He yanks away control of his voice one last time. You have no f.u.c.king idea what I'l do, he says. Torture me for a thousand years. I'm stronger than you. I'm the most stubborn son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h who ever lived. I'l never hand over MultiReal. Are you listening? Do you hear me? Never. I'l never do it. Never.

He waits for the inevitable retort, for Brone's perfidious last word, but it never comes.

Brone is correct. It is pain beyond imagination, pain reduced to its purest essence and served raw. The snapping of bones in their sockets, the laceration of flesh, the jab of a mil ion simultaneous stabbings, weeks of thirst and starvation, al concatenated into one infinite instant-and Natch can feel it bearing down on him like a tsunami.

And then the nothingness at the center of the universe clasps hold of him, and Natch knows no more.

6.

NEW BEGINNINGS.

42.

Jara arranged to meet Geronimo the day after the disaster at the Tul Jabbor Complex.

She nearly canceled. The thought of letting a Natch look-alike inside her emotional barricades made her feel greasy in places where human beings were not meant to feel greasy. But Jara had spent the day fretting in the Creed Elan hostel, waiting for some sc.r.a.p of news about Natch, or barring that, information on what the Prime Committee was up to in their closed-door session. She needed a distraction. And she wasn't quite ready to get intimate with Horvil yet, despite the kiss they had shared in the anonymous bureaucrat's office. An afternoon in bed with Geronimo felt like a monumental y stupid thing to do, but it was a stupid thing she needed to do.

Merri wandered in to the common room at some point, looking tired and drained of energy. "How's Bonneth?" Jara asked her.

"Stable for now," replied Merri, propping a smile onto her face. "Access to Dr.

Plugenpatch has been real y spotty up there for the past twenty-four hours. But she made it to the Objectivv facilities in Einstein. They're looking after her."

Jara felt like the icy hand of death had just gripped her by the throat. She had asked the question as idle chatter; Bonneth's medical chal enges in the face of the infoquakes had completely slipped her mind, again. "Are you-are you going back there?"

The blonde channel manager nodded. "I'm booked on a Lunar shuttle this Sat.u.r.day." She slumped down in the chair, searching for a comfortable position that remained elusive. "Honestly, I don't think I'm ready to go yet."

"But don't you miss her? You've been Earthside for, what, over a month now."

"It's not that difficult, Jara. We have multi. We have messaging. We even have ... wel , we have the Sigh when we need it." A blush tickled Merri's plump cheeks.

Jara thought of her own impending tryst with Geronimo, causing her to fidget in her seat like a teenage girl. Keep it together, she admonished herself.

"But it's not the same," she told Merri. "You can't eat meals together. You can't sleep in the same bed. Doesn't the intimacy get strained after a while?"

Merri closed her eyes for a moment as she considered the question. "Of course things get strained after a while. And of course I miss her. But sometimes-sometimes I need a little break from Bonneth, you know? She understands.

She knows that sometimes I just need to do what I need to do. But when I'm ready, I'l always be back."

The a.n.a.lyst nodded. "Yeah. I know what you mean." She debated asking Merri's advice about whether she should keep the appointment with Geronimo, but decided against it. In a sense, the channel manager had already answered.

So Jara retreated to her room at the hostel. She closed the door, scuttled into bed, and activated her connection to the Sigh. Within seconds, the real world melted away, and Jara was standing on a glittering patio of solid turquoise. The attendant who greeted her had a wolf's pelt and four tongues.

"What's up, baby?" came a voice. A hand touched her shoulder. Geronimo.

It was the first day that Len Borda had al owed public access to the Sigh since shortly after Margaret's funeral. Consequently lines were long and tempers were frayed. Jara listened to Geronimo describe Jeannie Q. Christina's latest celebrity gabfest in agonizing detail for fifteen minutes while they waited. He seemed completely unaware of the turmoil that had engulfed the world in recent days.

Things didn't get any better when they final y made it to their room. (Black leather, again.) Geronimo put on the sul en pout that had almost become a third partner in their s.e.x life and paid Jara little attention during the act some cal ed lovemaking. Jara stared at the ceiling, wondering if she was being watched by one of Rey Gonerev's flunkies. I don't care, she thought, hoping the defiance was visible on her face. I'm not afraid of her anymore.

Geronimo spent the remaining eighteen minutes of their reservation buzzing along to some hideous cacophony on the Jamm. The drudges cal ed it mocha grind, but to Jara it just sounded like clinking beads and falsetto yelps. Geronimo left with a clumsy squeeze of her a.s.s as farewel .

Jara proceeded to wipe her profile and cancel her subscription to the Doppelganger channel. Wel , that's done, she thought, and good riddance. The Sigh immediately sliced a fat wedge out of her Vault account for early termination.

The Prime Committee final y cal ed on Jara to testify the next morning.