Geosynchron (38 page)

Horvil could calculate the trajectory of a feather on the wind with devastating accuracy, just by eyeballing it. He could factor large polynomials without resorting to computational assistance. But he couldn't
begin to deduce how they were going to locate Natch in the middle of
the floating pandemonium that was 49th Heaven.

The engineer found himself in the unique position of being the
most organized and responsible member of the party. Left to their own
devices, Serr Vigal and Richard Taylor would flounder around the
colony for days on end, getting hooked by distraction after distraction-of which 49th Heaven had an endless supply. There were
dancing girls performing salacious routines that would get them
banned by most Terran L-PRACGs. There were dancing boys whose
routines made the girls' look positively saintly. There were black code
programs of every variety being passed around in little silver canisters.
There were exclusive dramas and exotic sporting events and esoteric
cuisines and exquisite works of art....

After three days in which absolutely nothing productive was
accomplished, Horvil called a meeting in their hotel. It was the least
gaudy establishment the engineer could find that still bore an appearance of cleanliness and still accepted full payment in Vault credits.
Even in the least gaudy hotel on 49th Heaven, the small circular conference table in their suite was colored neon pink.

"Okay, first things first," said Horvil. "Richard, any sign of your
fellows in the ... Order of the, um, the Unchained-"

"The Faithful Order of the Children Unshackled," replied Taylor
cheerfully, unperturbed at Horvil's complete inability to remember the
name of his organization. "And to directly answer your question,
Horvil-no, I've been unable to locate any of my fellow devotees. They appear to have packed up and left town, if I'm using your idiom
correctly."

"Can't you message them or something?"

"You forget, my friend, that most of us in the so-called Pharisee
Territories don't even have your OCHRE machines installed, much less
turned on to receive messages. I suppose it would be possible to use the
unconnectible interface on a window terminal and send a text message
care of the Order. But I suspect that if the delegation here has left 49th
Heaven, they're probably headed back down to Earth to New
Jerusalem, and aren't likely to be checking their mail. Now, I could
also consider-"

Horvil let the Pharisee prattle on for a minute and indulge in his
characteristic habit of using ten words where three would do. The
engineer closed his tired eyes and tried to imagine living in the Pharisees' world, where instantaneous communication was unknown. You
could be standing in the next room from someone, each trying to get in
contact with the other, and fail because of incompatible protocols or
because someone didn't think to check for messages. Not so different
from what's happening right now, thought Horvil. Who's to say that Natch
hasn't booked the room next door?

Finally, he cut Taylor off with a gentle pat on the arm. "All right,
thanks, Richard. The point is, we're not getting anywhere just wandering around the colony. We haven't come up with any real leads yet.
So we need to come up with a strategy. We need to start from square
one."

"Not precisely from the first square," objected Taylor. "At least we
know that Natch has been here and negotiated with mobsters on
behalf of my order."

Serr Vigal interposed with a hand on the Pharisee's other arm. "You
know that. Horvil and I are still not entirely convinced. You must
admit that you haven't exactly proven your case. We haven't seen any
evidence."

Taylor thoughtfully ruffled the beaded strands of beard dangling
from his chin. "I have a token I was told to give to Natch. They said
he would recognize it."

This was news to Horvil. "What token?"

Richard Taylor smiled and rummaged around with one hand in the
knapsack slung over the back of his chair. The bag emitted a series of
jingling and clanking noises as an assortment of objects banged
together from his rough handling. After a few seconds, the Pharisee's
hand emerged with a small, flat block of wood that looked like it had
been shorn from a piece of antique furniture.

Horvil and Vigal studied the block of wood curiously as Taylor
rotated it around in his palm. The look on the neural programmer's
face indicated that he had no more idea what this thing was supposed
to be than Horvil. More than that, he seemed to be doubting once
more the wisdom of keeping the Pharisee involved in their quest.
"What is it?" asked the engineer.

Taylor shrugged and shook his head. "I must admit that I don't
know. It seems a rather odd token to me. But I was told that Natch
would know what it is."

Horvil pinged his Vault account on instinct and then doublechecked the nightly fee for the hotel room. A few more weeks of this nonsense, and it's going to put a dent in the account that I'm going to have to
explain to Aunt Berilla. Vigal, for his part, lifted his china cup of tea to
camouflage a dubious frown.

"Be that as it may ..." said Horvil, gesturing for Taylor to put the
chunk of wood back in the bag. He did. "Whether Natch recognizes
that block of wood or not, first we have to figure out where he is. And
that means trying to think like him."

Vigal sipped delicately from his cup of tea and gave a wistful look
at the table, as if mentally sampling the long list of Natch's quirks and
peculiarities of thought. "If anyone's qualified to do that," he said to
Horvil, smiling, "it's you and me."

"Right. We've already decided to give Richard here the benefit of
the doubt and assume that Natch traveled to 49th Heaven. Seems to me
our next logical step is to figure out which ring he'd be in. We've got
seven to choose from. Which would he pick?" The engineer waved his
hand and summoned a virtual diagram of the orbital colony over the
center of the table. Seven concentric circles with a single connecting corridor. "We're back to the same dilemma we had before. You'd think
Natch would head straight for the most decadent spot in the colony,
because that's the last place anyone would expect to find him." Horvil
tapped the innermost ring with his right index finger, causing that circle
of the diagram to emit a purplish glow. "But remember that Natch
would expect people to look for him in unexpected places. So he might be
staying in the outermost ring because it's the place he'd be most comfortable. And who would expect Natch to be in the first place you
looked?" He fingered Seventh Ring and set it aglow in red.

"Or perhaps he might defy both those assumptions and just choose
a ring in the middle at random," mused Vigal.

Horvil ran the tip of his finger up the colony like a harpist doing
a glissando. The diagram of 49th Heaven was now colored as brightly
as a child's toy.

"For completeness' sake," added Taylor, "I suggest we also consider
the possibility that Natch isn't staying in any one particular place. If
this man is as resourceful as you two have indicated, he could potentially be moving from ring to ring."

The engineer looked at the diagram with a furrowed brow that
grew only more wrinkled the longer he stared. How many people lived
here in 49th Heaven? Twenty thousand? And that was only the figure
from the official census of permanent residents; the colony probably
boasted at least twice that number in tourists, junkies, and fugitives
from the law. Sixty thousand people. Horvil pictured himself wandering the bleachers of a world-class soccer stadium, trying to find a
single body among the bustling, jabbering crowd.

"A complicated man, this Natch," said Richard Taylor under his
breath.

"You have no idea," replied Horvil.

"If we can't zero in on his location, maybe we should try focusing
on his vocation," said Vigal. "Natch would realize that he couldn't live
off his savings forever. Sooner or later, he would need a source of
income."

Taylor nodded. "That makes good sense, Serr Vigal. So where
would Natch be likely to find employment here in 49th Heaven?"

"Listen, we all know that there's really only one kind of business that
Natch is likely to pursue," said Horvil. "And that's a bio/logic fiefcorp."

"It makes sense," Vigal ruminated as he stroked his goatee and
stared absentmindedly again at the electric pink tabletop. "49th
Heaven is one of the most libertarian enclaves from here to Furtoid.
There's almost no government regulation here. I can see Natch thinking that this place might offer him the freedom he lacked on Earth."

"And it's pretty far away from the Council," added Horvil. "Have
you noticed that there are hardly any white-robes up here?"

"So we have decided on a new course of action then?" said Richard
Taylor, almost giddy with the excitement of the chase.

Horvil nodded. "We research fiefcorps."

For the next forty-eight hours, the three of them were consumed with
fiefcorp research.

In any other locale, it would be simple enough to find a listing of
bio/logic fiefcorps and cross-reference job listings over the past few
months. But the programmers who catered to the denizens of 49th
Heaven operated on obscure software exchanges and often went out of
their way to avoid exposure. Few of them even submitted their wares
to the Primo's bio/logic investment guide for ranking. Horvil was appalled to discover that many even skipped Dr. Plugenpatch validation-which might have caused major compatibility issues if there
wasn't a thriving black market here for modified OCHREs. It went
without saying that the local drudges were a rowdy bunch who had a
complicated and not entirely linear relationship with the truth.

Of course, there was no reason Natch couldn't be working for an
ordinary Terran fiefcorp here on 49th Heaven. People commuted to
jobs thousands of kilometers away over the multi network every day.
But they needed to start making assumptions somewhere to narrow
down the scope of their search.

Vigal started to withdraw into a cocoon of despair, but Horvil
quickly put a stop to that. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy,
right?" he said. "Let's at least try throwing out some Infogathers before
we start moping."

The two fiefcorpers spent several hours crafting just the right
parameters for an Infogather while Richard Taylor looked on in rapt
fascination. Horvil and Vigal decided that the key attribute to look for
was a sudden fluctuation in a fiefcorp's circumstances during the past
two months. Natch couldn't help being a change agent no matter
where he went or how he tried to disguise it. Perhaps his presence had
caused a company's share prices to suddenly skyrocket or plummet.
Maybe there had been an abrupt sales jump for a particular product or
unexpected adjustments in a company's board of directors. Crossreference that with known personnel shifts, mentions in the drudge
circuit, and a handful of other more subjective indicators.

After tinkering with the granular details of the Infogather request
for another half an hour, Horvil decided to just set the thing loose on
the Data Sea already. The three of them sat in their suite and eagerly
watched the viewscreen where they had pointed the results.

If anyone expected a handsome, sandy-haired, blue-eyed entrepreneur to pop up instantaneously at the top of the list, he was disappointed. Instead, Infogather returned a large array of names, ranked in descending order from the unlikely matches to the extremely unlikely
matches.

Serr Vigal tried to forestall the gloom by going out and spotchecking the names on the list. Horvil doubted the neural programmer
would find anything illuminating in person that he couldn't pull up
on a holo or a viewscreen, but Vigal was probably just looking for an
excuse to leave the hotel room and get some solitude. Who could
blame him?

"Perhaps we are approaching this from the wrong direction," said
Taylor an hour later. The Pharisee had moved his chair into the corner
and hunched in it facing the wall, a position he denoted as his thinking
stance.

"What would you suggest?" said Horvil distantly, sitting at the
table and stirring a congealed mass of cold ramen noodles with a fork.

"My brother is a hunter. He hunts mostly birds, but I am told he
also occasionally ventures down to Africa to hunt more exotic game.
Elephants, I believe, or at least so he tells me. Malcolm says that one
facet of the art of hunting which men often overlook is that the hunt
is not solely a one-sided affair: hunter chasing quarry. You can only
pursue your quarry so far, Malcolm said to me once. Once you have tracked
the animal to its natural habitat, the animal has you at an advantage. Instead
of pursuing the beast, you must persuade it to come to you. "

Horvil set his fork handle against the edge of the bowl and considered this advice. "Interesting.... What you're saying is, we need to
lay a trap for Natch."

"That is precisely what I am saying."