How convenient, thought Jara, stubbornly clinging to her midnight malaise. We issue a press release, and al the drudges who hate Natch suddenly get amnesia. She continued reading: After Len Borda's aggressive posturing of late, the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp's announcement of a MultiReal exposition is not only bril iant, it's courageous. It puts Natch and his apprentices out in the open when a lesser man would seek the shadows. It's a bold and clear statement to the Defense and Wel ness Council: we are not afraid of you.

And the symbolism of twenty-three lucky lottery winners playing MultiReal soccer shouldn't be lost on anyone either. Let's hope the twentythree members of the Prime Committee are watching these soccer players careful y.

Sen Sivv Sor, meanwhile, was covering another promising development: the burgeoning membership of a creed cal ed Libertas. The organization had been skulking around the periphery of the libertarian movement for years. But suddenly, with the election of Khann Frejohr as speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs, the membership ranks of Creed Libertas were exploding. And the match that had set off the powder keg was nothing less than Magan Kai Lee's raid on Natch's apartment. In the past few days alone, the creed had pledged another fifteen to twenty mil ion devotees.

There was plenty more, but Jara was suddenly interrupted by a multi request. Horvil.

She leapt out of bed, darted into the breakfast nook with the speed of a panther, and began a frenzied effort to straighten the countertop. What are you doing? the a.n.a.lyst scolded herself. It's Just Horvil. She abandoned the breakfast nook to its sloppery ten seconds later and accepted Horvil's multi request. It had to be pretty important for the engineer to be up this early in the morning.

Horvil sidled in from the foyer, managing to look both furtive and transparent at the same time. His left hand was clenched tightly in his vest pocket, while his right nervously raked through rows of black hair. "I need to talk to you about something," he said.

Oh no, thought Jara, suddenly realizing why she had reacted the way she did. This was the first time the two of them had been alone since that awkward scene in the Center for Historic Appreciation. Al I care about is not losing you, Horvil had told her as they crouched between the toes of the Sheldon Surina statue, waiting for their doom at the hands of the Defense and Wel ness Council.

Jara looked in that chubby face now and auditioned a series of emotions-embarra.s.sment, unease, gratification, reticence-but none of them seemed to fit the part. Final y she sat down in an easy chair and braced herself for whatever Horvil might have to say. "What is it?" she managed final y.

Horvil threw himself down on the couch opposite her and exhaled loudly from one side of his mouth. "It's-it's about Benyamin."

The a.n.a.lyst blinked rapidly in surprise. "Benyamin?"

"He's being blackmailed."

It took Jara a few seconds to refocus her mental lenses. Who could possibly be blackmailing Ben? The answer leapt into her mind after a moment's study. "That woman at Beril a's a.s.sembly-line shop. The one who manages the programming floor."

Horvil nodded rueful y. "Greth Tar Griveth," he said. "She's asking for credits. Lots of credits."

"Just to keep things quiet from your Aunt Beril a? This is ridicu lous, Horv. After al that's happened in the past month, can't Ben just tel his mother he's hired her shop to do the a.s.sembly-line work on MultiReal? It's not like we won't pay her.

Would she real y shut down the programming floor?"

"You don't know her," replied the engineer with a sad shake of the head. "Beril a hates Natch. She's trying to mobilize that whole creed of hers to pa.s.s these official statements condemning him. If she finds out one of her shops is doing barwork for our fiefcorp-f.u.c.k yeah, she'l shut down the programming floor. In a heartbeat."

Jara made a dismissive gesture with the flick of a wrist. "Why are you even bothering me with this?" she said. "There's a thousand good a.s.sembly-line shops out there. Ben real y shouldn't be contracting his mother's company anyway. Tel Ben to go solicit some compet.i.tive bids. He's stil got a few days before we need to pa.s.s off the final templates. They're just doing low-level work right now. That should be plenty of time."

"He's tried. He put together three new deals, but they al fel through."

"Why?"

"n.o.body's saying." Horvil's face devolved from melancholy to ful fledged misery. "The a.s.sembly-line managers just tel him that they're already running at capacity. But I think they're scared. Every time Ben shows up somewhere to talk business, a squad of Meme Cooperative officials shows up the next day and starts checking tax records. The word's gotten out."

Jara groaned. "Magan Kai Lee." She felt nervous even saying the lieutenant executive's name out loud, as if those words were a talisman to release some infernal warrior from imprisonment. Magan had so many arcane weapons at his disposal-taxes, regulations, laws, policies-and Natch had so many weaknesses. It just didn't seem fair. "So what's Greth asking for that's so ridiculous?" said Jara.

Horvil listed a number that ventured past the ludicrous into the realm of the obscene. The a.n.a.lyst whistled. "I don't know if Natch would fork over that many credits," said the engineer. "That's way too much. Besides, it's too big of a number for Ben to transfer without Aunt Beril a getting wind of it.

Someone's bound to notice. Especial y with the Council and the drudges hanging over everyone's shoulders."

Jara rapped her knuckles hard against the chair's nailhead trim. "Come on, Horvil, this Greth woman can't be that unreasonable. She's got to see that if she keeps behaving like this, she'l kil the goose that lays the golden eggs."

"That's the whole thing," said Horvil, slumping to a spinecracking position in the couch.

"Greth's not being reasonable. Either she's a loose cannon or she's just not very bright. She doesn't care about kil ing the goose that lays the golden eggs-she wants one big egg instead."

Jara sighed. She hated to admit it, but paying up was the only solution that made sense.

Natch would authorize the bribe without thinking twice and find a way to carve it out of the woman's flesh later. That was simply his way of doing things.

The a.n.a.lyst was feeling the preliminary sorties of a ma.s.sive headache and fired up Deuteron's Anodyne 88. "So what does Natch have to say about al this?"

Horvil flapped his lips in irritation. "Benyamin's afraid to tel him," he said, letting his head slump onto the back of the couch. "I kind of agree. Relying on that woman in the first place was a major f.u.c.k-up, and Ben knows it. He's convinced that Natch wil kick him out of the fiefcorp for this. So I ... I told him"

"You told him you'd talk to me."

The engineer made a peculiar half-nod without actual y taking his neck off the back of the couch. "You're the-the most level-headed one in the fiefcorp.

You always keep your wits in these situations. I told Ben you'd know what to do."

Jara folded her arms over her chest and frowned. "If I'm the level headed one," she grumbled, "then this fiefcorp is in bigger trouble than I thought."

Does Horvil have any idea how much time I've spent on the Sigh with that idiot Geronimo? Does he have any idea that Magan Kai Lee is recruiting me to betray Natch, and I haven't said no yet?

"Listen, Jara," continued Horvil, "Ben trusts you. We al trust you. I mean, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be able to-"

Jara could sense a clumsy segue in the making, and she made a slicing gesture to cut him off. "Okay, fine," she sighed. "It's probably better not to pester Natch with this c.r.a.p anyway. Here's what you tel Ben. Have him transfer a piece of the money from our accounts, the fiefcorp accounts. We've got it right now, and if we use the company money it won't get on your aunt's radar. Have him tel Greth Tar Griveth that this is al he could get on such short notice-but if she'l wait until after the exposition, he'l give her the rest plus an additional twenty percent."

Horvil gasped. "Twenty percent? I could buy a hoverbird with that additional twenty percent."

"It doesn't matter. She won't get it. Greth's leverage evaporates after the MultiReal exposition."

The engineer gave a judicious nod and rubbed his nose. "It sounds reasonable coming from you," he said, "but what if Greth doesn't buy it? She's going to suspect that Ben won't fol ow through."

"Not if she thinks this is al coming from Benyamin's head," replied the a.n.a.lyst. "No offense, Horv, but your cousin is kind of naive. Ben can sel it to Greth if he real y thinks we're going to pay her after the exposition. Just tel him we don't have al that cash at the moment, and it's going to take a while to get it."

Horvil stood up from the chair, looking relieved and not a little sheepish. "Thanks, Jara,"

he said. "I think you might have saved Ben's job."

Jara smiled wanly and waved a farewel at Horvil before he disappeared. She felt that nothing short of an industrial decontamination chamber could wash away the stench of corruption oozing from her pores. She remembered Natch's words to her just last month. Everyone who invests in biol ogics knows what's going on. Things like this happen al the time. Do you think the Patel Brothers got to the top without getting their hands dirty? Or Len Borda?

Shaking her head, Jara arose and turned to take refuge in the bedroom. Suddenly she realized the window behind her was stil tuned to a drudge clipping she had read the other day. It was a piece by one of the gossip drudges who made even Kristel a Krodor seem like a paragon of substance. Jara looked at the headline and blushed furiously, realizing that Horvil must have seen it the whole time. If this ever got back to Natch, she didn't know how she could live with herself.

IS IT LOVE OR INFATUATION?.

Our Foolproof Guide to Figuring Out How He Feels After stepping off the multi tile, Horvil tried to bury his warped emotions in Minds.p.a.ce, using his bio/logic programming bars as shovel.

His arms whirled in Minds.p.a.ce, making and breaking data connections at blinding speed.

Every few seconds, he would slip a bio/logic programming bar back into his satchel and slide another out to replace it with a single uninterrupted motion. Final y he chugged to a halt.

The engineer hitched back his thumb to survey the ma.s.sive MultiReal castle before him.

Horvil nodded and incremented the version number a fraction of a point. It's ready, he told himself. But are you sure you want to do this? He had been waiting for days to put the finishing touches on the latest iteration of Possibilities so he could conduct this experiment, but now he didn't feel so confident.

Had anyone ever tried to run MultiReal nonstop to see what would happen? What if he got caught in some kind of unending choice cycle? Possibilities wasn't a typical bio/logic program that you could run through Dr.

Plugenpatch to weed out the fatal errors.

Admit it, Horv. This s.h.i.t is dangerous.

Then Jara's words came floating to the top of his consciousness. If I'm the level-headed one, then this fiefcorp is in bigger trouble than I thought. He couldn't keep going to Jara every time he faced a tough decision; he'd never get everything done in time for the exposition. Horvil flipped off Minds.p.a.ce, activated Possibilities 0.812, and hustled out of the apartment before he could change his mind.

The first decision point came on the building's front steps. A large puddle of rainwater sat right at the intersection of stair and street; Horvil had been sloshing through it for days. But he could avoid soaking his shoes altogether if he could only vault over the side railing and land on that dry patch about a meter awayFlash.

Horvil's consciousness slipped into a state of suspended animation as soon as he activated Possibilities. And then there was an indescribable flash, a mental widening of view. The image of himself hurdling onto the dry spot of concrete hung in his mind like a bead on a string, in limbo. Some hidden inner sense showed him a line of alternate realities that stretched out to eternity in each direction, Horvils leaping and bounding at every conceivable angle. He felt himself scrol ing among them, looking for a better possibility, a future in whichFlash.

-Horvil sprang over the railing and made an acrobatic landing just beyond the puddle of rainwater.

The fiefcorp engineer paused and ran an arm across his sweating forehead. He had barely made it out of the building, and already he felt giddy. Not too late to turn back, Horvil told himself.

He stood and thought for a moment. f.u.c.k that. Then the engineer hooked a right and headed toward Centurion Market Square, a place that promised any number of interesting experiments.

Turned out the feeling was intoxicating, a high unlike any he had ever felt. Horvil spent two hours in the West London tube station alone, hopping on and off the trains. He made graceful sashays to avoid jostling into pa.s.sersby. He made improbable darts and zips to catch the last free seat on the train.

And in one ridiculous act of chutzpah, Horvil even made a flying leap across the tracks right in front of a speeding tube train. Possibilities made it al seem so easy.

But such appearances could be deceptive. Each contingency the program laid out was the product of Horvil's own probability engine, the old ROD they had hastily tacked on to the program like a postscript. And Horvil found out the hard way that his probability engine was not omniscient. He was making another preposterous leap over a metal railing when his hand lost its grip and he found himself tumbling head-first down a flight of stairs. Luckily the engineer was able to activate MultiReal again several times on the way down, and he came out of the tumble unbruised. When he climbed back up the stairs to investigate, Horvil noticed that the railing was slick with rainwater and almost completely covered in shadow. Of course, he thought. MultiReal can only make calculations using the factors you give it. If you can't see that the railing's wet, MultiReal won't factor it in. He thought back to his crazy leap across the tube tracks a few minutes ago. What if the train had suddenly picked up speed after he jumped? What if there had been a wire running across the gap that he hadn't been able to see? He shuddered.

And then dashed back down the stairs in search of more adventure.

Horvil had never had the time to just mess around with multiple realities before. When he was on deadline, every activation had a narrow and targeted purpose, to test this or that modification. Even when he wasn't on deadline, every activation was a calculated move to understand the product better.

There was never any opportunity to gleeful y splash in the program like a child in a wading pool. Has it real y only been a month since I first laid eyes on this thing? he thought.

After a few hours, Horvil began to feel pangs of hunger, which were never that far away to begin with. He was rounding Centurion Market Square when he spotted a row of street vendors sel ing exotic foods. Horvil walked up to one at random and found an appetizing enough plate of rice and lentils. The proprietress, a girl scarcely old enough to qualify for an L-PRACG vending license, scanned the engineer up and down with the eye of a trained haggler.

Then Horvil had a sudden inspiration.

Flash.

"How much?" he asked the girl.

"Thirty-two," she replied.

Flash.

"How much?" said Horvil.

"Thirty-two."

Flash.

"How much?"

"Thirty-two."

The exchange was not a vocal one. Instead it felt like a mighty abacus of alternate realities suspended in time. Horvil's questions, phrased in an infinite number of different inflections and intonations, served as the x-axis; the girl's responses, straight from her own unwitting subconscious, became the y-axis.

Absurd and improbable realities branched off in new directions, realities where Horvil said something else entirely or gave her a rude gesture or flapped his arms like a madman. It was al one vast grid that stretched to eternity in every direction until it encompa.s.sed every action and response possible.

And Horvil was traversing that grid one node at a time, expending a smal amount of wil power with each hop. Even in this state of nul consciousness, the possibilities were sliding by as quickly as cards in a shuffled deck. Horvil could get a taste of each one as he pa.s.sed, as if he were performing the same interaction over and over again; but at the same time, the memory of each alternate reality vanished almost as soon as Horvil pa.s.sed it.

Final y, the engineer found the junction he was looking for.

Flash.

"How much?" said Horvil, back in real time.

"Thirty," replied the girl.

The engineer stuttered something unintel igible, paid the girl an even forty credits, and grabbed the plate she offered him. He felt dizzy. Aside from the slight crease of confusion on her forehead, she seemed completely ignorant of what had just transpired.

A conversation replayed itself in Horvil's head. Quel , standing on home plate of a SeeNaRee basebal diamond, explaining why Benyamin had such a hard time catching his pop flies. For every missed catch, there were dozens of alternate reality scenarios played out inside our minds before they ever actual y "happened." The whole sequence looped over and over again-dozens of my possible swings mapped out against dozens of possible catchesdozens of choice cycles-until I found a result I liked.

Ben, sul en, defiant: But I don't remember any of that happening.

No. You wouldn't. Not without MultiReal.

The girl was now giving Horvil a strange look, and the engineer realized he hadn't moved since their transaction was completed. Horvil made an exaggerated smile, shoveled down a few spoonfuls of the gloppy mixture, and hustled away.

He should have realized this al along. If MultiReal worked on physical interactions-if it could cause an outfielder to live out that improbable reality where he dropped the bal every time-why wouldn't the same thing work on mental interactions? It made perfect sense. MultiReal trapped cognitive processes and applied computing logic to them before the body translated them into concrete action. And what was concrete action if not a cognitive process made flesh? Every word, every emotion, every breath you took was the product of a decision-and decisions could be altered.

Certainly if you try the same transaction a thousand times, thought Horvil, you'l catch a time when the merchant sizes you up a different way and charges a lower price.

He discarded the tepid plate of mush a few blocks away.

Later, Horvil wondered if that was the precise moment when the experience of constant Possibilities turned into a nightmare.

He continued to meander around London for hours, but the high was gone. In its place he felt the gambler's compulsion to ratchet things up further, to extend his lucky streak just One More Time. He found life unspooling behind a constant two-second mental buffer as he a.n.a.lyzed and rea.n.a.lyzed the movements of those around him. It became a craving, a hunger: the desire to avoid stepping on that broken piece of pavement, to dodge insects like bul ets, to find the sweet spot in every crowd where the wind's bite wasn't quite so sharp.

Horvil final y staggered back to his apartment building many hours later and shut off Possibilities. His head felt like a weatherbeaten old shoe, and his muscles felt like they had been stretched on a rack. Zipping through al those choice cycles did indeed take its tol after a while. On the way up, Horvil purposeful y stomped through the rainwater puddle at the bottom of the steps. The moisture seeping through his socks felt good.

He stumbled into his apartment, flopped down onto the bed. He could barely move. Then he waved his hand at the nearest window and summoned the article he had been putting off reading al afternoon.

IS IT LOVE OR INFATUATION?.

Our Foolproof Guide to Figuring Out How He Feels I I.

Fractal patterns pirouetted across the ceiling over Natch with schizophrenic logic, darting this way and then that, expanding and then contracting. The colors spanned the entire rainbow and ventured briefly outside the bounds of the visible spectrum.

"Too deep," said a familiar voice. Quel ? "Can't see a f.u.c.king thing."