Multireal (47 page)

Natch had not shown his face in public for nearly five days, but he
might have aged fifteen years in that time. He seemed haggard and
noticeably underfed. His left hand was thrust deep into his suit coat
pocket as if weighted there by some dense object. Vigal, on the other
hand, was so inwardly focused that he completely failed to notice the
intimidating stage below. Jara wondered how the neural programmer
had managed to reach Natch and whether the entrepreneur had helped
Vigal prepare his speech. By the diffident way Natch was treating his old
guardian, she suspected that he was hardly aware of Vigal's presence at
all. The entrepreneur seemed momentarily confused as they reached the
petitioners' ring, until Vigal's hand clutched his elbow and steered him
toward a chair a quarter of the way around the ring from the fiefcorp.

"Something's wrong with Natch," said Merri.

"What do you mean, something's `wrong' with him?" asked
Horvil. "There's always been something wrong with him."

"Yes, but ... his eyes."

Jara noticed it too, even from this distance. The flesh around
Natch's eye sockets looked as if it had been rouged with something
dark and sinister. Any half-decent OCHRE system should take care of that,
thought the analyst. Natch, what's happening to you?

A vein in her temple began to throb. She watched the neural programmer nod and mumble to himself like a student prepping for exams, while Natch simply stared straight ahead. Jara waited for him
to glance around at the audience; he wouldn't have to tilt his head that
far to the left to see the fiefcorp. But the entrepreneur did not avert his
eyes from a spot of void hovering about three meters before his face.
Jara slumped down in her seat. With Vigal delivering the libertarians'
opening statement and Khann Frejohr lying low, she had pinned her
hopes for this hearing on Natch. But Natch was obviously in no shape
to persuade the Prime Committee of anything.

"How long do you have to go without sleep to get bloodshot eyes
in this day and age?" mused Ben, half to himself.

Jara darted a glance at Robby Robby, but the channeler was either
completely oblivious to their conversation or faking it well. She wondered if he was off shopping for hairdos on the Data Sea or holding a
pep rally with his sales force.

Moments later, the delegation from the Congress of L-PRACGs
arrived. It was the first time Jara had ever seen the legendary Speaker
Khann Frejohr in person. He appeared calm and at ease in his bronze
robe, looking every bit the wily and experienced politician. Frejohr and
his accompanying band of libertarian activists found seats in the petitioners' ring toward Natch's side of the floor. Yet Jara couldn't help but
notice that the speaker refused to look in the entrepreneur's direction,
and he made no move to take the vacant chair on Natch's right.

Horvil shot her a ConfidentialWhisper. "He really pissed Frejohr
off, didn't he?" Jara didn't answer.

And then the doors opened for the Defense and Wellness Council.

Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee stood in the nucleus of a
small pack of lawyers, administrators, and high-ranking Council officers. He looked almost Lilliputian in such an immense space. Jara recognized a few of the other lieutenant executives from drudge reports;
she recognized Magan's flunky Papizon from personal experience. Jara
felt a slight twitch of terror in her gut, remembering that Magan had
unfinished business with her. She sneered it down.

"Don't tell me that Lieutenant Executive Lee is going to be delivering their opening statement?" said Benyamin.

Merri craned her neck forward. "Does anybody see any sign of-"

The doors slammed open once more, and Jara felt her heart sink.
The Blade.

Rey Gonerev, the chief solicitor of the Defense and Wellness
Council, strode through the doors with the confidence of a panther.
Her long braids framed a face which mirrored that confidence. The
Blade walked past the libertarian delegation, barely acknowledged
Khann Frejohr's respectful nod, and headed for the governmentalist
contingent on the opposite site of the auditorium. She was in her element here.

And yet, for all Gonerev's bluster and bravado, where was the
Council's legal army? What had happened to the hundreds of lawyers,
functionaries, and advisors who had marched confidently through the
streets of Melbourne yesterday? Evidently that display had just been a
show for public consumption, because few of them were present today.

Jara studied the twenty-nine empty chairs in the ring above hersseats for the Prime Committee, the ultimate government authority, the
people whose word superseded that of the L-PRACGs. Even the armed
officers of the Defense and Wellness Council spread around the auditorium took their orders from the Committee, at least in theory. If
anyone could give Natch a fair hearing, it was the people who would
shortly be filling those chairs. But would they listen with open ears?

The analyst had a distressing thought. Did she want the government to give Natch a fair hearing? The Prime Committee had the
power to overturn everything Magan Kai Lee had done and restore
Natch to the head of his fiefcorp, to bring back the status quo and put
MultiReal in his hands once more. Would that be a good thing?

At that moment, a more exclusive set of doors opened, and the
Prime Committee entered.

31

The members of the Prime Committee might have been any random
selection of pedestrians off the street. Their composition was about as
polychromatic as any group of twenty-nine could be. There was a
slight preponderance of females and people of Indian descent-what
the sociologists glibly called "the Surina effect"-but nothing that
could produce an obvious prejudice toward any one demographic. All
were dressed in matching robes of dark blue, filigreed with elaborate
gold tracing. The iron symbol of the black ring hung from their necks.

The members filed around the auditorium to find their seats. Jara
noticed that the Committee members' row did not intersect with any
of the main auditorium stairways. In fact, the steps from the petitioners' row to the floor actually ducked under the Committee members'
seats with a flourish of architectural bravado.

As the men and women sat on the uncomfortable-looking black
chairs, each person's representative organization flashed in hologram
before them: The Vault. The Creeds Coalition. Dr. Plugenpatch. The
Meme Cooperative. TeleCo. GravCo. Orbital Colonies. The Congress
of L-PRACGS. True to their governing philosophy, none of the members' names were anywhere to be found.

"What do the italics mean?" said Horvil to nobody in particular.
Jara took a closer look, and sure enough, some of the affiliations were
displayed in a slightly smaller, italicized font: Islanders. Data Sea Network
Administrators. Pharisees. The Prepared. TubeCo.

"Nonvoting member," replied Ben, pleased to be the resident
expert on something. "Twenty-nine reps total, but only twenty-three
get a vote."

"I thought TubeCo was a voting member," said Merri, scratching
her head.

"They were. Got booted off last year, remember? It was-"

Jara waved them all to silence. "They're about to start."

Everyone in the Committee members' ring rose dutifully and
bowed in unison. It was a stirring sight, something Jara had seen often
in Data Sea videos but never in person. For a moment, she felt like she
was suspended above Melbourne in the tube car again, watching the
reasoned and orderly process of government at work.

The members of the Prime Committee remained standing as a blue
light swept around the ring three times like a roulette wheel and
finally stopped in front of a nondescript woman from the Meme Cooperative. Apparently this meant she would be the randomly selected
moderator for the proceedings. All the other representatives took their
seats again.

The woman spoke. Some feat of aural wizardry allowed her voice
to boom across the dome without distortion or reverberation. "This
special session of the Prime Committee, held here on the fourteenth of
January in the three hundred and sixtieth year of the Reawakening,
will now come to order."

There was a brief pause as the Committee members' assistants
shuffled into place beside the representatives and held quick, whispered conversations. Spectators around the auditorium gradually took
their seats, and Council officers took up their posts, though they
seemed in little hurry to do so. Jara took a glance at Natch. The entrepreneur simply looked dazed, like a tottering tree that might crash to
the floor at any moment.

The Committee moderator continued. Jara got the impression that
her words had been prepared ahead of time, that they were only coming
from her mouth instead of someone else's out of sheer happenstance.

"We are at an important crossroads in history," said the woman.
"For the past two hundred years, libertarians and governmentalists
have been debating what the proper role of government should be.
What powers should reside with the citizenry and what powers should reside with their governments? Should these governments be centralized or decentralized? Elected or appointed? Where does personal liberty end and public welfare begin?

"The Prime Committee cannot pretend to be the final arbiter of
these questions.

"Nor is that our job. Though we may be governmentalists or libertarians in our personal philosophies, here we are all simply members of
the Prime Committee. We speak with one voice, and we represent every
citizen of the Reawakening. We provide oversight; we provide law and
structure; and in times of crisis, we provide stability and judgment.

"It is in that last capacity that we sit before you today. The world
is in a crisis. Vortexes of information are causing death and destruction
from Earth to Furtoid. One of the beloved icons of the Reawakening
has died under mysterious circumstances. Activists have taken to the
streets and jammed the gears of commerce. And at the center of everything lies a powerful new technology the likes of which the world has
never seen.

"Government cannot simply stand by and watch matters unfold.
For better or worse, government must take action.

"Let it not be said afterward that the Prime Committee had already
made up its mind before these sessions had begun. Truth walks through
open doors, the Bodhisattva once said. We come to this hearing as representatives of the public welfare with no preconceived agenda, and we
ask the observers of this hearing to do the same.

"The Committee wishes to emphasize that this is not a trial. As
such, we will follow no formal procedures other than simple parliamentary rules of order. The Committee will call witnesses as it sees fit,
in the order it sees fit, for as long as it takes to satisfy the questions at
hand. We hereby command these witnesses to speak truthfully, honestly, and without reservation.

"Such is the agenda of the Prime Committee. Let any objections be
entered into the record now."

Jara peered around the audience, wondering who would have the
temerity to speak out against such a high-minded opening. But, of
course, objections there were-a representative of the diss, demanding
a voice in the proceedings and a seat on the Committee; a robed and
bejeweled member of the Pharisee tribes, questioning the legitimacy
of the entire centralized government; the outlandishly dressed bodhisattva of Creed Null, proclaiming imminent doom for all and
sundry. The woman assigned to be the Prime Committee administrator nodded without comment as each exception was entered into the
record. Obviously they had all performed these steps in the dance
many times before. The dissenters even had a small reserved section to
themselves right behind the petitioners' ring.

When the formal objections were complete, the woman took her
seat once again. "The Prime Committee hereby calls upon Serr Vigal
of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp to make a statement on behalf
of the Congress of L-PRACGs," she said.