Multireal (36 page)

"So the question now is, who can destroy the fiefcorp faster-me
or Natch?"

24

Natch's left hand was twitching.

He tried to convince himself that the spasms were just a paranoid
delusion, the product of an overactive imagination. And for the past
few days, that strategy had worked. The very act of asserting his will
against the jittering allowed Natch to take control of it, and he began
to wonder what other problems he might conquer with this method.

His victory was brief. By Friday, the twitches had returned with
reinforcements. Now his hand fluttered even when he walked or carried something heavy like a satchel of bio/logic programming bars, and
no act of will could stop it.

Black code, thought Natch miserably.

There was no other feasible explanation. The hammer and anvil of
Dr. Plugenpatch and the OCHRE system had stamped out all but the
most obscure neurological dysfunctions over the past hundred yearsand those few that still resisted the powers of science were at least diagnosable. No, only human programming code could wreak such havoc.

Natch stayed indoors on Friday and watched the day waft by in
slow motion. He spent hours in front of the mirror trying to figure out
a way to hide his clenched fist behind his lapels, Napoleon-style. It
wouldn't fool anybody in the long term, but it might be sufficient for
short bursts of public exposure.

He received several messages from Serr Vigal and spent long minutes debating whether he should answer or even open them. Jara's
betrayal he could deal with, but the prospect of Vigal's disapproval
flared in his mind like a salted wound. It felt like the culmination of a
long dialogue of failure and disappointment they had been conducting
for the past twenty-five years. In the end, Natch filed Vigal's messages
away unopened.

Numb to the world and unable to concentrate, he tuned in to Jara's
press conference. He started flashing back to the confrontation in
Berilla's office the other day. The huge mistake he had made giving
Jara core access to MultiReal, thinking that would mollify her. A
horror show of images echoed through his skull without context or
explanation; not even the reappearance of Captain Bolbund on the
viewscreen could rouse him from his stupor. He snapped back to sentience some hours later in a darkened apartment, wondering what he
had missed.

Natch looked in the mirror at the quivering mess he had become.
What would Brone say if he saw you like this? he thought.

Khann Frejohr wanted to hold the meeting at the Congress of LPRACGs, but Natch wouldn't budge. "I'm not going to Melbourne,"
he told Frejohr's executive assistant over ConfidentialWhisper. "No
way. The speaker will just have to come to Shenandoah."

"Perhaps you don't understand the protocol," said the assistant.
"You don't just petition the speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs for
an audience and then insist that he come to you...."

"Then tell him to find an office that's not right down the street
from the Defense and Wellness Council."

The assistant emitted a strangled noise of exasperation. "If it's
safety you're worried about ... don't you think you'd be better off at a
heavily guarded compound in Melbourne than at some apartment
building in Shenandoah?"

"No," grunted Natch. "I know how to defend myself here."

There was an annoyed silence from the flunky's end of the connection as he went to consult a higher echelon of public servant. Natch
realized he was being unreasonable; he also knew that he could ill
afford the Congress's wrath on top of the Council's. But these were not times for mindlessly hewing to social niceties. With the shadow of the
infoquake hanging over them all-five thousand people had died in
the wake of the last one-Natch felt there was no paranoia too great.

Besides which, Frejohr needed him. The libertarian caucus had
fallen into a peculiar schizophrenia after Margaret's death, veering
between unfocused indignation at Len Borda one moment and
mawkish nostalgia for the Surinas the next. Meanwhile, the markets
were engaged in a mad dance of their own as second-tier fiefcorps
began sabotaging each other left and right. The drudges were in a
frenzy. And the number of Creed Libertas devotees had literally doubled again in the past forty-eight hours. Frejohr needed to take a
strong stand in the MultiReal crisis, and he knew it. Natch might not
have legal claim to the program at the moment, but he was still its
public face.

The flunky returned to declare that the speaker would come to
Shenandoah after all. In multi. Ordinarily, conducting an important
meeting in multi would be considered an insult, but Natch knew there
was no point harping about it now. These days he took his triumphs
where he could.

Frejohr's security detail arrived late Saturday and spent an hour
combing through the apartment with bulky metal instruments that
looked like panpipes. They posted sentries in the hallway and on several neighboring balconies. One of the guards cast a suspicious look at
Natch's clenched hand, and the entrepreneur was forced to hold the
shaking lump of flesh out to prove he had nothing to hide.

Ten minutes later, Speaker Khann Frejohr materialized in Natch's
foyer. The two exchanged polite bows.

"Let's just skip the Perfections," said the Congressional leader in a
voice both gravelly and hypnotic. "I congratulate you on getting to
number one on Primo's. You congratulate me on getting elected to the
speaker's chair. Okay? Done."

"Fine with me," Natch shrugged. A promising start.

He sized up Len Borda's nemesis as they headed for opposite
couches in the living room. Frejohr was older and shorter than the
images on the Data Sea suggested, but he had a rough-edged charisma
that contrasted well with Borda's stony diffidence. A man of the
people, a leader even ... but a violent revolutionary? It hardly seemed
possible. Natch wondered what kind of displacements had occurred in
Frejohr's mind since the Melbourne riots forty years ago. Was he still
as hot-tempered and uncompromising as he had once been? Or had
decades of government service mellowed him?

"The Council took my business away," Natch began, sitting on the
edge of the sofa. "They threw a bunch of trumped-up charges at the
Meme Cooperative and convinced them to suspend my license. And
now MultiReal's in the hands of my-"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Frejohr with a wave of his hand. Although
he had only just sat down on Natch's sofa, he already looked like he
owned it. "I follow the news, believe it or not, so I'm fully aware of
what's going on. And?"

"And?"

"Look, Natch," said the speaker with an air of impatience. "You
know I've got no love for the Defense and Wellness Council. I'm sympathetic to what you're going through, believe me. But I'm not sure
the Congress has any business getting involved. It's a big world, and
the high executive has a million tentacles." He raised his bushy unified
eyebrow in the direction of the window, indicating either the Council
officers on the street or the Council hoverbirds in the sky or perhaps
the totality of human space from here to Furtoid. "You can't just
expect the Congress to intervene every time Len Borda forces
someone's company out of business," continued the speaker. "We'd
never get anything done. We have to pick our battles carefully."

The entrepreneur scowled. "So why did you agree to talk to me
then?"

"I said I'm not sure if we should get involved," replied Frejohr, tired. "Which means, I'm not sure." Natch could sense calendar
appointments and to-do items flitting behind the speaker's eyelids. He
wouldn't be surprised if Frejohr was mentally dictating correspondence
as they spoke.

Natch arose from the sofa and stalked over to the window,
clutching his fist so it was invisible from the speaker's perspective. Jara
had warned him he wasn't ready for the political spectrum, and he had
ignored her. He could hear the accusatory barbs from an entirely different conversation on some subvocal register, a conversation not with
Jara or Khann Frejohr, but with the universe itself. Arriviste. Upstart.
Nobody. Pretender ... How long would it be until someone took him
seriously? Would he have to wait until the shadows of Borda's hoverbirds were darkening every doorstep, when it was too late to do anything about it ... ?

Then he felt the speaker's hand on his shoulder. It was a firm yet
avuncular grasp, the kind Serr Vigal gave when the mood struck him.
Natch realized with a start that Frejohr hadn't used some stealth
program to sneak up on him; it was he who had blanked out for an
indeterminate length of time. He hoped it had only been a matter of
seconds and not minutes.

"Come on," said the speaker, inclining his head toward the balcony
door. "A little moonlight will do us both good."

The balcony whipped out from the side of the building in a heartbeat,
yet Natch was hesitant to step onto it. Magan Kai Lee might have
declared him "irrelevant," but he had made no move to recall the
Defense and Wellness Council tails on the street. They didn't even
bother to wear disguises anymore; they simply lingered in formation
with fingers never more than a hair's breadth away from a dartgun or
disruptor trigger. Khann Frejohr, however, seemed to have complete confidence in the bronze-robed men and women keeping watch from
the neighboring balconies. So Natch muzzled his trepidation and followed the speaker outside.

The two stood at the railing for several moments and watched the
city. Shenandoah was an important metropolis, but it was relatively
small in size. Thus one could easily catch the mood of the entire metro
area from the top of a building like Natch's. Right now the epicenter
of pedestrian traffic was clearly downtown, where the Winter Baseball
League was holding a three-game extravaganza. Natch and Frejohr
silently watched the stadium gobble up space from neighboring office
buildings that were compressing for the night.

"Len Borda killed Margaret, didn't he?" said Natch abruptly.

Frejohr pursed his lips, expressing some emotion that Natch didn't
recognize. Reticence? "You're just guessing," said the speaker. "Unless
you know something I don't."