Multireal (33 page)

Whether anything on this list was actually enough to convict
Horvil and Ben of a crime was uncertain. But it didn't really matter. If
this memo found its way into a drudge's hands, it would have a much greater effect on Horvil's and Ben's careers than any Meme Cooperative
hand slapping.

Berilla read through the memo with mounting agitation and not a
little sadness. A trickle of sweat worked its way down her neck.
"Horvil's stood by you since you were a little boy," she protested. "He
follows you around like a puppy, Natch. He lends you money. Have
you really sunk that low?"

"Only the one prepared to sacrifice anything can achieve everything," said
Natch, quoting Kordez Thassel. "You said it yourself-I really have
nothing to lose, do I? I might already be heading for a Council prison."

"But-but-"

"What can you do to stop me from sending out this memo? I'll tell
you what you're going to do." The entrepreneur found his way back to
the straight-backed chair and sat on it like a king taking his throne.
"You're going to start production on that assembly-line floor again.
You're going to undo every fucking change your team made to the MultiReal code. And then you're going to finish the job you started. In fact,
you're going to put the entire floor on the project so they finish faster.
And if I see the slightest bit of evidence you're holding out on me, Sen
Sivv Sor and John Ridglee are going to see this memo within the hour.
Do you understand me now?"

Time shuddered to a halt. For a moment, Jara found herself
admiring the deviousness, the sheer audacity, of Natch's plan. It was
the ultimate bluff: mutually assured career destruction. If Natch went
down in ignominy, then his apprentices would go down with him. Or
at least so Berilla was supposed to believe. He wouldn't actually do
something so Machiavellian, would he?

Then Jara caught a glimpse of Natch's face, and she realized that
he was utterly serious. He would sacrifice Horvil and Benyamin's
careers-and quite possibly their liberty-to get what he wanted. And
the prize if he succeeded: a top-notch assembly-line shop at his command, ready to finally complete the MultiReal coding. No small thing, considering that there was no other shop that would defy the Council's
blacklist. If Berilla put the entire floor on the job, they might even get
the job done in time for the MultiReal exposition.

So Natch was now using blatant threats to get his way. But why
allow Jara to hear them, unless he was implicitly threatening her career
too?

She could see the scene unfolding in her mind. Jara would sit quietly through the rest of the meeting and confront him later in private.
Natch would blow her off at first, then finally capitulate. Of course I
wouldn't have really sent out that memo, he would say, touching her
shoulder to short-circuit her logical processes. Of course I was bluffing.
But it was a bluff you needed to see. I needed to gauge your determination to
deal with the hard realities of running a fie/corp. You have to be prepared to do
these kinds of things, Jara-and I don't think you are.

But the worst part was not Natch's callousness or his scheming
nature; it was not the fact that he was manipulating her. Those things
were givens. The worst part was that Natch already knew she would
capitulate. She would fret and she would yell, but in the end she would
accept his explanations and do nothing to intervene. Not only that,
but she would actually assist him in perpetrating his plots, and she
would make excuses for him to Horvil and Ben. Wasn't that what she
always did? Jara had unwittingly acted out that scene too many times
to count.

Natch had reduced Jara to her essence, and that essence was
cowardice.

As she sat there in Berilla's office, half a decade of seductive touches
and gruff admonitions abruptly came together to form a sinister picture in her mind. How could she have believed that Natch was starting
to respect her? On the contrary, Jara had become nothing more than a
crass calculation to him. So confident was Natch of his dominance that
he could rely on her to ignore his threats to Horvil and Ben. He could
hand over core access to MultiReal without worrying that she would betray him. He could depend on her to simply submit to his whimseven when Jara would suffer for them.

Jara rose from her seat, veins throbbing with fury at Natch, at
herself.

"I've had enough of this," said the analyst. She waved her hand at
the window and banished the display into digital limbo. "You're not
going to send that memo anywhere."

Berilla snapped her head around as if noticing Jara's presence for
the first time. Natch plastered a creepy grin on his face, but it had the
look of an artificial emotion constructed with bio/logic programming.
He fired a ConfidentialWhisper in her direction; now it was her turn
to ignore his requests.

"Jara," said the entrepreneur, standing up straight and slipping
into salesman mode. "Why don't-"

"No," she interrupted. "Don't start. You really think I'm going to
sit here and listen to you make threats against your own apprentices?
Against Horvil, after all he's done for you?"

"Why don't we talk about this back in-"

"No, we'll talk about it now. You want threats? I'll give you
threats. You don't have anything on us that we don't have on you. Erase
that memo, or I give the drudges a full report of all your dirty tricks."

The entrepreneur smirked. "Didn't the Blade already do that?"
More Confidential Whisper requests, more denials.

Jara knew her bravado would not last long. Already she could see
Natch reconfiguring his strategy, adjusting to circumstances. She
needed to end this quickly and decisively. Jara felt a bluff of her own
come bubbling to the front of her consciousness. "Erase that memo, or
I'll end this whole thing right here and now. You know I'm sick of this
whole business. I'll give Magan Kai Lee what he wants. I'll give him
core access to MultiReal. I'm sure he'll pay handsomely for it."

All at once, Natch's carefully polished veneer shattered. He stormed
to the far side of the room, his face caught up in a snarl. "You think you know how to run a business, Jara? You think you can stand up to the
Council? Open your eyes!" He flailed his hands around in the air as if he
might smash one of Berilla's precious artifacts at any moment. "You're
going to give them core access to MultiReal? That's exactly what Magan
Kai Lee wants! That's exactly why he put you in this position-so the
Defense and Wellness Council can plow right through you and take
MultiReal away. Can't you see anything? Are you fucking blind?"

Jara did not flinch. "You're not running this fiefcorp any longer,"
she said, carefully enunciating each syllable. "I am. And I'm not going
to let you drive it into the ground. I'm not going to let you trash five
years of my life on some meaningless crusade." She took a deep breath.
"The arrangement is off. Get the fuck out of here. We don't want you
here anymore."

Berilla's jaw gaped open as she recoiled in her seat. Her hand grasped
the ink pen as if its quill were a magical talisman of protection.

Natch paced frenetically around the room in an ever-tightening
spiral. "Useless!" he cried out of nowhere. He turned and jabbed a
finger at the doorway and the fiefcorpers somewhere down the hall.
"You're useless. You're all useless. I knew I shouldn't have bothered to
come here. I won't let you hand my business over to the Council. They
won't take MultiReal away from me. Margaret chose me. Me. She said
I'm the guardian and the keeper. So do whatever you want. I don't care.
From now on, I'm doing what I have to do, and I'm doing it alone."

Then Natch whirled on his heels and strode back out the double
doors. The sound of some fragile knickknack shattering echoed
through the west wing of the house, and then he was gone.

Vigal, Merri, and Benyamin were already seated at the provisional conference table in the parlor when Horvil arrived. Their faces were frozen
in various stages of distraction and worry.

And who could blame them? They were holed up in a London estate,
while outside infoquakes raged and the public angrily clamored to know
who had killed Margaret Surina. There were articles from know-nothing
pundits all over the Data Sea fulminating about Natch's culpability, his
lack of ethics, his inherent sliminess. Nobody had anything to offer except
vague conjecture, yet they all seemed quite certain of their opinions.

The drudges had even come up with something of a communal
narrative to explain the circumstances behind the murder. According
to this narrative, Quell had gotten in a big argument with Margaretabout what, nobody could say. This argument had left him vulnerable
to Natch's job solicitations and offers for revenge. Natch had hired
Quell away for his insider knowledge of the Surina operation, arranged
a hostile takeover, and then brainwashed the Islander into murdering
Margaret when the deal went sour.

Horvil wondered when the drudges would figure out that Natch
was responsible for the Autonomous Revolt and the death of Henry
Osterman too.

Unfortunately, the Data Sea was full of persuasive, if anecdotal,
evidence. There was a video that showed Quell being dragged away by
Council officers. There was the complaint by the Meme Cooperative.
Jayze Surina had leaked the fact that Natch might have been the last
person to see Margaret alive. On top of all this, Creed Surina had
announced a big public funeral for Margaret next week at Andra
Pradesh. Whether such a spectacle would tamp down the flames of
innuendo or fan them to new heights was anyone's guess.

Jara arrived at that moment, looking pale and angry. Her fists were
clenched. Horvil, Merri, Vigal, and Benyamin stared at her without
saying a thing.

"We've got to move in a new direction," announced the analyst.
"Natch has been trying the same thing in this fiefcorp for-what?
Four, five years now. Stirring up chaos. Pushing toward something
that's always right over the next hill. Well, I'm sick of it."

Only Benyamin had the gumption to ask the obvious question. "So
what does Natch think?"

Jara gathered up her courage and then looked the apprentice
squarely in the eye. "Natch is gone. For good. I kicked him out."

Serr Vigal nearly fell off his chair in shock. Horvil tried to hold
back his gaping stare, but failed miserably. In his peripheral vision, he
could see Ben and Merri grip the table as if waiting for a hurricane to
pass through.

"What happened?" said Merri in a timorous voice.

Jara pointedly ignored the question. "Listen, the Council's in disarray right now, with Margaret's death and the infoquakes and the
public uproar. Those drudges will stay out there for a while in hopes
of catching a glimpse of Natch. In the meantime, we'll have a few days
to gather our wits. The Surinas are holding a funeral for Margaret next
week. We'll have at least until then, maybe even a few days after that.

"So here's what we need to do.

"We need to spend that time repairing the company's image. The
Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp has a huge image problem, and it
won't just go away. We can't just sweep it under the rug. We keep
fighting this same battle for dignity over and over again, day after day,
and it's got to stop. The strongest hand we have to play now is public
trust-and we don't have any.

"So how do we repair our image? We hold a press conference as
soon as possible like any normal, ethical company would. Tell the
world we have nothing to hide. Once that's done, we get to work
clearing up these charges from the Meme Cooperative. Settle them,
plead guilty to a few if we have to, it doesn't matter-just get everything resolved as quickly as possible so we can move on.

"The most important thing is to postpone this MultiReal exposition indefinitely. We can say we're doing it out of respect for Margaret
Surina so we don't completely lose face. We just need to back off and
let things simmer down. Then, in a few weeks-when we have a better hand-we sit down with Magan Kai Lee again and start the dialogue
in earnest.

"So who's with me?"

Nobody answered. A confused silence hung over the parlor like
smoke for several minutes. Finally Jara pursed her lips, walked back
down the hall to the room she had appropriated as an office, and shut
the door behind her.

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