Multireal (66 page)

Geronimo spent the remaining eighteen minutes of their reservation buzzing along to some hideous cacophony on the Jamm. The
drudges called it mocha grind, but to Jara it just sounded like clinking
beads and falsetto yelps. Geronimo left with a clumsy squeeze of her
ass as farewell.

Jara proceeded to wipe her profile and cancel her subscription to
the Doppelganger channel. Well, that's done, she thought, and good riddance. The Sigh immediately sliced a fat wedge out of her Vault
account for early termination.

The Prime Committee finally called on Jara to testify the next
morning.

As soon as she stepped into the auditorium, she could tell that any
extenuating evidence she had to offer would fall on deaf ears. The
lowest ring in the auditorium was packed with the twenty-nine Committee members, some fifty staffers, and at least twenty private security teams. No drudges, no spectators, no Defense and Wellness
Council guards, no libertarians to be found.

The members of the Prime Committee were furious. Their stares
fixed on Jara like searchlights, and their questions stabbed at her like
bayonets. She was asked at least a dozen times if she knew what had
happened to Natch, who the people in black robes were, and why the
infoquake struck when it did. All Jara could do was politely disclaim
all knowledge. Even the libertarian members who had reacted enthusiastically to Serr Vigal's speech had little to say; their sights were on history now as they struggled to find pretty, perfumed words of
demurral for the official record. Two hours after Jara walked into the
auditorium, the Prime Committee dismissed her without allowing her
to speak a single word of substance. She promptly returned to the
Creed Elan hostel, turned off her alcohol-metabolizing OCHREs, and
drank herself into a stupor.

Benyamin approached her in the common room early the next day.
He had spent most of the time since the Tul Jabbor Complex fortified
in the hostel, along with Vigal, Merri, and Horvil. Jara didn't bother
to find out where Robby Robby had gotten off to.

"I know it's not my decision," said the young apprentice, "but I
think we should go home."

Jara took a swallow of nitro and tilted her head in thought. He was
acting unusually deferential. "Why?"

Ben shrugged. "It could take days for the Prime Committee to
make up their mind. Weeks even. You've already testified, and they
probably won't call on any of the rest of us. With these infoquakes happening left and right ... well, I'd rather be at home when they come."

The analyst nodded. She had already reached the same conclusion
last night after her third vodka banzai, but she wasn't about to pass up
the opportunity to improve her rapport with Benyamin. "Good idea,
Ben," she said. "I think you're right. Tell the others to go home and
get some rest. We'll all touch base in a day or two."

Jara packed up the few toiletries she had brought and was on her
way to the tube station in twenty minutes, pausing only to pay her
respects to the Elan facility administrators. She didn't even try to coordinate the ride home with any of the other fiefcorpers.

Seascapes. A light storm off Cape Town. The whisper of the tube
engines. Home.

Jara spent the next twenty-four hours lying on the floor of her stillundecorated apartment, trading reminiscences with her sister. The
aftershocks from the last infoquake were sending cyclones of chaos around the globe and out to the orbital colonies. Such was the mood of
panic that Jara and her sister actually resorted to text messaging in
order to save bandwidth. They talked about their father, who had joined
the Prepared fifteen years ago, and their mother, who was long overdue
to join him. They talked about the ramshackle apartment in Sao Paulo
where they had lived during the Economic Plunge. They reenacted
some of their old whimsical bedtime stories, all about puckish elves and
hidden cauldrons of gold and ordinary princesses propelled into adventure by simply keeping an eye open for the possibilities.

Jara moped for another eighteen hours, staring at the virginal
plaster of her blank walls. What to do now? Where to turn? What if
Natch really was gone for good this time? Was that simply ... it for
the fiefcorp?

Strange territory, this blank existence. It occurred to Jara that this
was the first real idle time she had had since joining up with Natch's
fiefcorp three and a half years ago. There had always been some project
that needed attention, some cracked scheme Natch wanted her to map
out. She couldn't remember when-or if-she had taken a single day
off in all that time. And now? Now she felt like all of the obsessions
that had been crammed inside her skull had been simultaneously
erased-Natch, MultiReal, the fiefcorp, Geronimo. What remained?

Horvil answered her Confidential Whisper mere nanoseconds after she
sent the request. "Process' preservation, woman," he said, exasperated,
"I've been trying to reach you for, like, a day and a half now."

"I know," said Jara. "I'm sorry."

"So ... what's next?"

"You mean, what's next for the company? Or what's next for you
and me?"

The engineer let out a ruminating hum. "Both, I guess."

"We're going to have a fiefcorp meeting tomorrow. Ten o'clock
sharp London time, at the Surina Enterprise Facility."

"And ... ?"

"You and me? Well ... can you be here in twenty minutes?"

"I can be there in fifteen."

43

Len Borda stood at the porthole of his ship and surveyed the choppy
seas. Waves leapt up some fifteen meters high, tossing algorithmically
generated sailors around with kraken glee and threatening to drag the
fragile ship down to a watery doom. He had lost two of the best in the
armada, and the remaining two were only being held together by rope
and pitch. But the six French juggernauts that had been cutting off his
supply lines were now nothing but driftwood.

The high executive sent lifeboats out to pick up the wounded and
the dying. The death of a virtual sailor was nothing to mourn, of
course. But Borda had learned years ago that prisoners made good bargaining tools, and they could be chained to the oars in a pinch.

"Well played," said Magan Kai Lee.

Borda knew better than to betray his surprise at the sudden voice
behind him. He had predicted that the lieutenant executive would try
to make contact today, even if he couldn't pinpoint the exact time or
the method Magan would use. The fact that the lieutenant was forbidden from walking DWCR's corridors-under penalty of deathwouldn't deter him.

"I could have your multi transmission traced," said Borda, without
averting his gaze from the porthole.

"You know as well as I do how unreliable that technology is,"
replied Magan, unperturbed. "And even if you could trace the transmission, you'd need a hundred thousand officers to get to me here."

"I have a hundred thousand officers, many times over."

Pause. "Are you sure?"

The high executive sighed. He didn't doubt that he still commanded enough troops to pry Magan's stray contingents out of whatever hole they were skulking in. But the point was well taken. An era of steady loyalties had come to a messy demise in the Tul Jabbor Complex last week. Now nobody wearing the white robe and the yellow
star could look at his fellow officers without second-guessing. These
days, justice had many masks. It was remarkable that none of the
drudges had picked up on the schism between Magan and Borda yet,
but that could only last for so long. Once the story broke-well, things
would only get murkier.

Borda turned around to face Magan Kai Lee. His subordinate
looked well rested and comfortable, hardly like a man on the run from
the most powerful military force in the history of the world. He had
kept the white robe but abandoned the gray smock of his position.

"So tell me, Magan," said the high executive, voice devolving into
a sneer. "You're the one with all the elaborate plans. Short-term plans,
long-term problems, isn't that right? Well, you've led us to this state of
affairs. Use your wisdom and tell me what you have in store for the
Council now."

Magan pulled out a chair at Borda's ornately carved planning table,
setting aside yellowed maps and letters of marque before taking a seat.
"I'm not the man who ordered two assassinations on the floor of the Tul
Jabbor Complex. My plans will depend on his."

"Spare me your soliloquies," muttered Borda. "I gave you a chance
to prove yourself. You failed. You brought riots and chaos. You
reminded the world that the Defense and Wellness Council is subject
to the whims of the Prime Committee." Borda looked down and
noticed that he was repeatedly thumping one bony fist against the
cabin wall. He stopped, perhaps a second too soon to persuade Magan
it had been intentional. "We should have brought Natch to the bargaining table, by force. That would have ended it."

The lieutenant executive's face was impassive. "You would have
coerced him into handing over MultiReal. You would have tortured him."

"It wouldn't have come to that. The fiefcorp master's not stupidhe would have made a deal."

"And if he hadn't ..." Magan sliced his hand through the air with
an almost irreverent manner. "You would have done to him what you
did to Marcus Surina."

"I told you, it wouldn't have come to that!" thundered Borda. Outside, the winds surged to hurricane strength. From the corner of his
eye, the high executive could see the ship's boatswain dangling over
the railing by a frayed rope. None of the other virtual sailors were
rushing to his aid.

But Magan Kai Lee was not intimidated by his master's wrath. He
sat and watched the high executive with that same inscrutable look on
his face. If controlling one's emotions were the only skill necessary to
lead the world's security and military forces, then Magan would make
a fine high executive indeed. But that's not all it takes, thought Borda.
You need to be able to think on your feet. You need to be able to win votes on the
Prime Committee, and sometimes to manipulate them. You need to be able to
sign the order to terminate a life-even if that life is a Surina's.