"I don't understand why the Council hasn't said anything about Margaret's murder," said Horvil. "I thought they were doing an investigation. They must have figured out something by now."

Jara frowned and bit her bottom lip, hard. She was ashamed to admit it, but she had barely thought about Margaret Surina's mysterious death during the tumult of the past two weeks.

"Doesn't surprise me they're not saying anything," Benyamin remarked. "With al this going on"-he twirled his index finger in the air-"Len Borda would have to be pretty stupid to bring it up now."

"What about Quel ?" asked Horvil. "The Council can't just hold him indefinitely, can they? They must have figured out by now that he didn't kil her. Isn't there something we can do to help him?"

"I already tried," said Merri. Four surprised heads swiveled in her direction. "I convinced Khann Frejohr's people to make some inquiries. But the Council's keeping mum. They've got him in an orbital prison somewhere. That's al I can find out."

"Do you know which one?" asked Serr Vigal. "I toured a few of them back in '35 or '36.

The good ones aren't so bad. But the bad ones ..." The neural programmer waved his arms helplessly for a moment, but no words arrived to bail him out.

Ben tapped his fingers on the table, impatient. "We can't be the only ones looking for him, can we? Doesn't Quel have a family at home? Close friends? The Islanders don't take these kinds of things lightly. There's got to be some committee pet.i.tioning the Council for his release."

"Wel , that's the interesting part," replied Merri. "There is a group of Islanders working with the libertarians to try to secure Quel 's release. They're making al kinds of threats. And one of them is Quel 's son."

Horvil's jaw flipped open as if on springs. "Quel has a kid?"

"Apparently he does."

"I wonder if that's why he's staying in prison," said Jara, contemplative. Everyone gave her blank stares. "Wel , why doesn't he use MultiReal to overpower the guards and escape?"

"They regulate al transmissions in and out of those prisons," offered Ben. "He wouldn't be able to access MultiReal in there."

"Fine-but why did Quel let them take him to prison in the first place?"

No one knew.

The conversation seemed to lose its legs at that point. The fiefcorpers looked around at one another, each expecting somebody else to prolong the conversation. Three minutes pa.s.sed. The SeeNaRee generated some background hal way noise to fil the silence.

"Okay," said Jara final y. "We can't just avoid the obvious question al morning, can we?

We need to figure out what happens to the fiefcorp. We need to figure out what to do, now that we've got no product."

Benyamin frowned. "What do you mean, no product?"

"Ben," said Merri gently, "you know that the Prime Committee is likely to-"

"Yes, yes, of course," snapped Ben, cutting her off. "They'l probably vote to take control of MultiReal and hand it over to the Council. But does that mean we're just going to ... give up? I don't care what the Committee decides. We could always appeal the ruling, right? We could talk to Khann Frejohr, get him to stir up public sentiment again. Or-or, we could try to work out another deal with Len Borda. A real deal this time."

Jara shook her head. "It's a moot point, Ben. Even if we could persuade the centralized government to change their minds ... we don't have MultiReal anymore. Natch moved the databases. He used that ... back door in his head, or whatever it is to lock up al the code and squirrel it away somewhere on the Data Sea where no one can find it."

"You mean-"

"Yes. It doesn't matter what the Prime Committee decides, because MultiReal's gone."

Serr Vigal stroked his goatee, pensive. "What about the Patel Brothers? If Natch took the MultiReal code with him, do they stil have access to it?"

Jara shrugged. "I'm not sure. I a.s.sume that if we don't know how to find it, they don't know either." And once the Patels figure out I don't have MultiReal, she thought sourly, that probably spel s the end of the deal I arranged with them to get the fiefcorp's business licenses back.

"But it's not like MultiReal's permanently gone," said Benyamin, unwil ing to let go.

"Natch stil has access to it. And he's going to come back eventual y.

He hasn't just disappeared for good ... has he?"

Silence. Jara expected an objection from Serr Vigal, but the neural programmer remained disturbingly quiet. Horvil merely sat and nibbled on his cuticles, while Merri fidgeted uncomfortably.

The blonde channel manager folded her hands on the table and screwed up her face like a woman trying to calculate logarithms in her head. "So if we a.s.sume that Natch is gone ... and MultiReal is gone ... what do we have left?"

"Nothing and nothing," said Horvil dejectedly. "After the demo at Andra Pradesh, Natch sold off every last b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.p of code we had. Even the RODs. The fiefcorp dock is just ... completely empty."

"Bril iant," grumbled Ben. "f.u.c.king bril iant."

"So then should we ... dissolve the company?" asked Merri.

A hush fel upon the already quiet fiefcorpers. Everyone had heard the stories about apprentices. .h.i.tched to dead fiefcorps by dint of circ.u.mstance.

One of Jara's old hivemates had spent three years working for a bio/logic programmer who pa.s.sed away unexpectedly nine years after founding her company. Fiefcorp tax breaks dried up after a decade; no capitalman would invest in a company so close to its cutoff. Suddenly Jara's friend had found himself with nothing but a portfolio of worthless shares to his name.

But for the employees of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp, dissolving the company meant much more than just loss of profit. They would probably have to forgo their bio/logic programming equipment and most of their professional relationships. Jara and Merri might have to give up their apartments.

In other words, they would al have to start over as if the last three and a half years had never happened.

"I'm not sure we could legal y dissolve the fiefcorp," mused Vigal. "With most of us stil suspended by the Meme Cooperative and the masters of the company completely absent ... I think we'd have a difficult time in the courts. The fiefcorp's a.s.sets would probably just go into receivership. It might take years for the courts to final y accept that Natch is ... Natch is ..." He couldn't finish the sentence. Gone.

Horvil slapped the table. "I could buy the company," he blurted out.

A spark glinted in Merri's eye, but Ben sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. A purchase that big-you couldn't manage that without clearance from my mother, and you know she'd never approve. No, don't start, Horvil. We couldn't afford it alone. Even if we both pooled al our liquid a.s.sets, I don't think we have the money."

"Some of Khann Frejohr's al ies have been pushing for reparations," said Merri. "They're demanding that we get compensation if the Prime Committee tries to compel us to turn over MultiReal."

"And what chance do you think that has of working?" asked Horvil, chin planted in hand.

"One in a mil ion?"

"Listen, money isn't the problem," said Jara. "We've got plenty of credits sitting in the company coffers. Margaret Surina's money."

"You mean, Jayze and Suheil Surina's money," Ben retorted. "You know that those sleazebal s are going to come after it. They already laid the groundwork by having her declared mental y incompetent before she died. The next thing they do is say that Margaret was unstable when she entered into her partnership with Natch. Don't tel me that's going to be too hard to prove."

Jara shook her head. "I'm not worried about Jayze and Suheil getting hold of the fiefcorp's money. The problem is that we can't get ahold of it. Not as individuals. What I'm saying is that even if we could dissolve the company, we can't just split up the Vault account five ways. What we can do is spend it-as a fiefcorp." She stood up from her chair, leaned over, and pressed her clenched fists onto the tabletop. "Listen, we don't have enough bio/logic code left in our dock to build a product base on. And starting over from scratch isn't real y feasible, right? So let's use that money. Let's approach some of the bigwigs on Primo's and offer to buy a portfolio of their programs."

There was a moment of quiet contemplation. Given the idiosyncratic nature of bio/logic programming, it usual y wasn't worth the effort to cobble together a product line from the remnants of someone else's code. It wasn't unusual for a fiefcorp to purchase one or two pro grams to round out their own offerings, but to build a company from the ground up this way was a risky move at best.

"Which bigwigs did you want to approach?" said Merri.

"Lucas Sentinel," replied Jara. "Bol iwar Tuban. Pierre Loget and Bil y Sterno, if they ever show up again."

Ben spoke up. "I thought you and Sentinel didn't get along. Do you think he'd sel us anything but the dregs?"

"Probably not," Jara admitted. "Given al the animosity Natch has built up in this industry over the years, I'm sure a lot of people are just waiting to take their revenge too. Even if Natch isn't around to see it. But it seems to me that this is our best option-unless the Prime Committee votes in our favor."

"It's too late for that," said a voice.

The SeeNaRee instantly evaporated into nothingness, leaving the fiefcorp sitting in a conference room that was even dul er and more antiseptic than the virtual one Jara's mood had conjured up. Standing by the door was Magan Kai Lee, flanked by his proteges Papizon and Rey Gonerev.

"The Prime Committee just voted an hour ago to seize MultiReal and hand it over to the Defense and Wel ness Council," said Magan. "Eighteen to five."

Jara was sick of Defense and Wel ness Council agents popping up everywhere she went.

She was tired of opening doors and rounding corners to find the placid, emotionless face of the lieutenant executive. How had he managed to get into this room without Jara's authorization? How had he managed to get into this building, for that matter? The a.n.a.lyst thought it was probably better not to know.

Jara took a few steps closer to the Council officers and extended her finger into prime wagging position. "Listen, Lieutenant Executive," she spat, "I don't know what kind of s.h.i.t Len Borda's trying to pul here-"

"We're trying," said the Blade, "to protect you from Len Borda."

The a.n.a.lyst closed her mouth and plopped back down in her seat.

"The world is on the brink of crisis," continued Magan. "What happened at the Tul Jabbor Complex is only the beginning. The Data Sea's buckling under the strain of these infoquakes. Computational resources are disappearing; people are dying. The Islanders and the Pharisees are marshaling their forces for war." He recited these calamities with the detachment of a man reading from a speech handed to him by a subordinate moments ago. "The Council has more pressing things to deal with than pursuing a vendetta against your fiefcorp. So we're prepared to offer you one last deal."

Jara let out a scornful laugh that took everyone in the room by surprise. Papizon visibly flinched. "A deal?" cried Jara. "What kind of deal could you possibly offer us? We don't have anything you want, and we wouldn't take anything you offered."

"Don't play ignorant with us," said Rey Gonerev, stepping forward with the triumphant look of a card player unveiling a winning hand. "We're perfectly aware that Natch gave you core access to the MultiReal databases. But Borda doesn't know that, which is the only reason you're stil alive."

Jara snorted. "So? That core access is useless. Natch moved the f.u.c.king databases. We have no idea where they are."

The Blade stopped short and blinked hard in shock. For once she seemed at a loss for words.

Magan, however, did not appear to be surprised by this sudden turn of events. "Al we're asking is that you help us track Natch down. In return, we'l persuade the Meme Cooperative to drop al its charges against you. You'l be given clean slates in the bio/logic sector and the freedom to find new apprenticeships if you wish. We'l compensate you for any losses you've incurred." He turned to gaze at each of the fiefcorpers in turn, final y stopping to bestow an especial y vivid look in Jara's direction. "Refuse to help us, and I can't predict what Len Borda wil do. He's capricious enough to drag everyone off to join the Islander in prison, or just do away with the lot of you. With the infoquakes stil in ful swing, n.o.body's going to stop him. I doubt hiding at a fancy estate with a pack of drudges on the doorstep wil hinder him this time."

"Don't try to pretend you give a s.h.i.t," said Jara, shaking her head. "You don't care about us, or about Natch. I saw what happened at the Tul Jabbor Complex. You want MultiReal so you can unseat Len Borda as high executive. You want to use it to take over the Defense and Wel ness Council."

Magan Kai Lee let out a sigh, and for only the second time in their brief acquaintance Jara saw the cracks in his poise and equanimity. "I don't want anyone in the Council to use MultiReal," he said. "I want the program in private hands.

But not under Natch's control. I want MultiReal under your control, Jara."

"But ... why?"

"Because you're the only one I trust with it."

Jara reacted as if the lieutenant executive had slapped her. Magan Kai Lee trusted her? Al along, she had a.s.sumed Magan wanted MultiReal in her hands because she was the weak one, the easily manipulable one. But what if the exact opposite were true? Was it possible that the lieutenant executive had worked to get Natch suspended from the fiefcorp because she was the strong one?

Because she was the one most capable of standing up to both Natch and Len Borda?

She surveyed the faces of her fel ow fiefcorpers. Merri seemed crestfal en and distraught.

Benyamin's upper lip was visibly quivering with anger. Serr Vigal looked like he was on the verge of retreating back to Omaha and never returning.

Horvil's attention had floated off into the distance, and Jara knew he was probably thinking about the job offer he had received through his Aunt Beril a.

But then they turned as a group to look at Jara, and she saw something she did not expect.

For the first time since the Council turned their company upside-down, the fiefcorp had confidence in her. They trusted in her leadership.

Jara pushed her chair back, stood up from the table, and marched slowly toward the Council lieutenant. Papizon's left hand flexed instinctively on the pommel of his dartgun, but he quickly restrained the impulse. Jara stopped when she was toe to toe with Magan Kai Lee and looked him straight in the eye.

"Maybe you trust me," seethed the a.n.a.lyst through clenched teeth, "but do you think I trust you? You tried to break up this company through lies and mistrust. By dragging their professional careers through the mud and leaving mine intact." She extended a finger back toward the apprentices and Vigal.

"You did everything you could to convince them I sold out to the Council, when you knew perfectly wel that I refused to make a deal with you."

The lieutenant executive's split-second downward glance was as good as an admission of guilt, as far as Jara was concerned.

"But you know what, Magan? You've failed. Utterly failed.

"Ever since this whole thing started, you've been trying to tear this fiefcorp apart. You dredged up dirt on us, you raided our homes, you disrupted our operations, you sul ied our reputations. You dragged our chief engineer off to prison on bogus charges. And what do you have to show for it? Nothing. This company has clawed its way back from the edge, mil imeter by mil imeter. We're wel on our way to resolving our cases with the Meme Cooperative, and soon we'l be back where we started.

"You don't have Natch. You don't even have MultiReal.

"And the beautiful thing? The program's total y gone. We have no way of getting in touch with Natch. None of us have any idea where he is. You should have known from the very beginning that Natch would be a step ahead of you-he always is. He's probably halfway to Mars or Furtoid by now, and you'l never find him. Do you hear me? You wil never find Natch. And if n.o.body can find Natch, n.o.body can get their hands on MultiReal, can they?

"So take your f.u.c.king flunkies and never interrupt one of our meetings again. You've done your worst, and we're stil here. Whatever you're planning, we don't want any part of it.

"The answer is no."

A wrinkle appeared in the s.p.a.ce between Lee's eyebrows as he took stock of the situation. Papizon's face contorted into some bizarre emotion resembling panic. Final y Magan gave the slightest of nods, turned, and walked out the door, fol owed closely by Papizon.

Rey Gonerev stayed behind for a few seconds. She threw Jara a smile-unvarnished and unironic, possibly even with a morsel of respect thrown in-and then she too was gone.

45.

Magan Kai Lee sat in the back of a Defense and Wel ness Council hoverbird practicing his meditation. He straddled the threshold of nonself, peering into the anterooms of Enlightened Harmony with the Universe, his consciousness a fleeting thing, a wriggling threadAnd then Rey Gonerev spoke, causing consciousness to come roaring back like a vengeful beast.

"If you want me to stay with you," said the Blade, "I'm going to need more information."

She sounded weary, skeptical. Perhaps a little afraid. Her fingers were busy unbraiding and then rebraiding dark locks of hair over and over again.

Magan took a glance out the window to get his bearings. The Earth was far below them and almost completely carpeted with cloud. He could see three of their fighter escorts out the starboard window, and had no doubt he would find the other three if he looked to port. "What information?" he said.

"You can start by tel ing me where we're going."

"The orbital colony of Al owel ," said Magan. "There to rearm and regroup."