Infoquake (29 page)

"Towards Perfection, Natch," she said softly.

"Perfection," replied Natch. "Ready?"

"Yes, but ..." Merri flinched, as if raising an objection were the
most difficult task in the world. "I was hoping you could shed some
light on the role you want me to play today."

Natch checked the Shenandoah central time service. They had
almost twenty minutes before the potential investors arrived at the
Surina Enterprise Facility. He walked past the channel manager and
into her living room, cursing the multi network's insistence on reproducing the wobbly effects of imperfect gravity control. "People don't
trust me," Natch said bitterly, taking a seat on a round ottoman covered with a delicate floral pattern. "I've hit number one on Primo's, I've
proven myself time and time again, but still nobody worth talking to
will do business with me. I need your credibility, Merri."

Merri absorbed all this with an air of mystification. "My credibility?"

"When people look at me, they still see the Shortest Initiation.
They look at Horvil and see ... well, we've been working together so
long, they see me. And Jara made some powerful enemies when she was
on her own. We're all tainted goods, Merri. But you ... Nobody has
said a bad word about you on the Data Sea since you graduated from
the hive. You've got an honest reputation."

The blonde woman shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the
other. "So you're saying you want me there because of this." She nodded
at the swirled black-and-white pin displayed prominently on her
jacket breast pocket.

"Well, of course it helps that you're an Objectivv," said Natch.
"Come on, Merri, you can put two and two together. We're going to a
fundraising pitch. You've taken a pledge not to lie."

Merri wrinkled her nose in disappointment. "It's not quite that
simple."

Natch shrugged. He had always disdained the creeds and their
arbitrary ethical systems-the Surinas with their slavish devotion to
science, the Elanners with their hypocritical advocacy for the poor, the Thasselians with their shallow and pointless worship of business. But
he reserved a special irritation for the Objectivvs. Natch could not
fathom why the public tolerated, even revered, the creed's disciples.
The way they babbled about "the search for objective truth" and dissected every utterance of that cryptic old hermit known as The Bodhisattva made Natch cringe.

"We can discuss philosophy some other time," said the fiefcorp
master, rising from the ottoman and nodding pointedly at the red
square tile in the hallway. "Right now we've got work to do. Get ready
to follow my beacon."

"So," stammered Merri, "what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know," said Natch indifferently. "Keep quiet. Act ethical."

He didn't wait for Merri's next disapproving grimace. Instead,
Natch closed his eyes, focused on the beaker of concentrated entropy
that was Andra Pradesh, and let the cold frisson of multivoid envelop
him. Seconds later, he stood at the gates of the Surina compound,
staring up at the Revelation Spire. Natch stretched his mind out to the
multi network and activated a beacon to tag his spatial coordinates for
Merri to follow.

She needn't have worried about getting separated from her master.
The blue-and-green-clad security officers kept the two visitors waiting
at the compound gates for ten minutes. The Surina guards were busy
eyeing a group of white-robed Defense and Wellness Council officers
across the way who seemed to have nothing better to do than pace at
the bottom of the mountain and polish the barrels of their dartguns.
Merri shuddered with relief when she and Natch were finally escorted
into the safety of the Surina compound.

The Enterprise Facility was an impressive location for a
fundraising pitch: twelve stories of blue stretched stone cantilevered
off the side of a mountain in defiance of the natural laws of gravity.
Merri followed him silently through the throngs of suits up to a room
on the ninth floor. A room blissfully free of irritating SeeNaRee. They entered to find eight capitalmen already seated at the semi-circular
conference table. Natch consulted the time and noted with satisfaction
that he was exactly twelve minutes late, which was three minutes earlier than he had planned.

"Towards Perfection," he said brightly, moving to the focal point
of the table. The five men and three women returned his greeting with
varying degrees of politeness and curiosity. Merri stood respectfully to
one side with her hands clasped behind her back, her Creed Objectivv
emblem on prominent display, waiting for some signal from her fiefcorp master.

"Let's not waste any time," announced the fiefcorp master, gesturing to the white open space on the wall behind him. An itemized
list of business expenses appeared in blocky fixed-width characters.
Natch paused to let the capitalmen absorb his list. As expected, their
eyes uniformly zeroed in on the big ticket items at the bottom: ten
additional bio/logic programmers and engineers, fifteen channelers,
office and meeting space, bio/logic programming equipment, marketing expenses. The total figure spelled out in the bottom right
corner was an eyebrow-raising sum. "This is what I need by the end of
the week," he declared. "Are there any questions?"

Eight pairs of eyes-nine, counting Merri's-gaped dumbly at the
entrepreneur, waiting for some elaboration. But Natch simply stood
there and gazed around the room with a smoldering stare. He looked
as if he were preparing to either cut his multi connection or march
around the table slicing off heads.

Finally, one of the capitalmen raised her hand timidly. Merri sent
an inquiry to the public directory and discovered she was the investment manager for a libertarian L-PRACG and no stranger to
fundraising pitches. "Exactly what is all this for?" she said with an air
of bemusement.

Natch fixed her with an unblinking stare. "For development of
Margaret Surina's Phoenix Project, which I am licensing."

The investors gawked at the entrepreneur as if he had just offered
to sell them a set of dragon's teeth. The mythical Phoenix Project, the
boondoggle to end all boondoggles. Margaret's Folly. Natch could
practically hear his audience's frantic ConfidentialWhisper conversations, their frenzied queries to the Data Sea.

"The Phoenix Project?" continued the capitalman in disbelief.
"Are you serious?"

"Dead serious," replied Natch.

"What is it?"

"You'll have to wait and see."

A sense of shock crusted over their fury at being lured out to India
for such a ludicrous presentation. Merri was surprised to see that Natch
had been correct about her ties to Creed Objectivv; the pin on her
breast pocket might have been the only thing preventing the capitalmen from vanishing in disgust. But even that would only keep the
outrage from boiling over for so long. The capitalmen began hurling
questions at him in rapid-fire succession, which Natch answered
brusquely and without hesitation.

"What can you tell us?"

"I can tell you that if you invest in me, you'll make more money
than you've ever dreamed of."

"How much?"

"The sky's the limit."

"What is this Phoenix Project anyway? Is it a bio/logic program?
Something you're going to launch on the Data Sea next week?"

"The Phoenix Project is a bio/logic program, but it's much more
than just a bio/logic program. No launch schedules have been decided
on yet."

"Don't you have any specs you can show us? Technical diagrams?
Projections? Anything?"

"No."

"How do we know we can trust you? How do we know you're not just making this all up?"

"If you don't trust me, don't invest."

By the time Natch wrapped up the discussion a scant fifteen minutes after it had begun, Merri's face had turned to stone. She asked no
questions and did not react at all when her master said his goodbyes
and cut his multi connection. Merri cut her own connection and
walked out to the foyer of her apartment, expecting Natch to await her
arrival there. But the apartment was empty.

She found him in his own flat in Shenandoah. Natch was already at
the window fiddling with a series of bio/logic price graphs as if
nothing had happened. He seemed unaware of Merri's presence until
she cleared her throat two minutes later. "You should catch up on your
work while you can," he said gruffly. "We've got another one of these
in an hour and a half, and then a third one late tonight."

The channel manager nervously ran her fingers through her milky
hair. "Are you really planning to license a bio/logic program from Margaret Surina?"

"I'm definitely planning to," replied Natch. "I'd give 60-40 odds
right now that it'll actually happen."

"And do-do you really think any of those capitalmen are going to
invest in you?"

"No."

Merri blanched. "No?"

The fiefcorp master turned to his apprentice with an impatient
mien, like a hoverbird engineer trying to teach a child how to construct a paper airplane. "Listen, Merri-I don't expect any of those
people to put up a single credit. I'm not going to get any money out
of the people we talk to tonight either. That's not what we're doing."

"So. . ."

"So what are we doing? We're stirring the pot. We're creating
noise. The people I invited to these fundraising meetings aren't the
high rollers; they're the ones who like to gossip. By the end of the day, I guarantee you the people I really want to hear from will have heard
the words Natch, Margaret Surina, and Phoenix Project in the same sentence. Listen, you can't just approach investors and ask them to put up
money for this sort of thing. Anyone who's willing to take a risk like
this is going to contact me privately and insist on complete secrecy.
Not only that, but they have to be convinced that investing in the
Phoenix Project is their idea."

Merri nodded politely though she understood nothing, and left
Natch to his bio/logic price graphs.

Rumors about Natch's investor meeting quickly percolated through
the Data Sea. Most of the comments he read were laced with the standard pejoratives Natch had seen attached to his name since childhood:
cocky, arrogant, insane. He didn't mind. People could insult him to their
hearts' content, but now that he had the Primo's title under his belt,
they could no longer dismiss him so easily.

The second and third investor groups were better prepared and had
more penetrating questions, but Natch would not crack. He kept a
cloud of mystery over the entire project; if anything, he became even
vaguer with his answers. What could I possibly reveal to these people
anyway? he thought. I don't know much more than they do. As for Merri,
she seemed to grow more comfortable with her silent performance the
longer the night wore on, now that she had convinced herself that
Natch was not actively deceiving anyone.

At seven o'clock that evening, word leaked on the Data Sea that
Natch was scoping out investors for a new Surina technology that just
might be the legendary Phoenix Project. Twenty minutes later, John
Ridglee wrangled a terse no comment out of the Creed Surina
spokesperson.

An admission or a denial from the Surinas would have been news. Refusal to comment was big news.

By ten o'clock Shenandoah time, the avalanche of messages had
begun. It was mostly the same drivel that had tumbled Natch's way
after hitting number one on Primo's a few weeks ago. L-PRACG-sanctioned advertisements for financial software. Pleadings for donations to
this or that cause. Servile requests from old business associates who
once griped about how Natch had ruined them. Greetings from longlost hivemates whose names he had never cared to learn in the first
place. Buried in the rubbish were a few legitimate queries from anonymous capitalmen, none of which led anywhere.

Horvil and Jara began shotgunning messages, ConfidentialWhis-
pers, and multi requests to Natch by the dozens trying to figure out
what was going on. Natch replied calmly that he would explain everything tomorrow night. Then he prived himself to all of their incoming
communications and waited.

The Patel Brothers launched a handful of product upgrades just
before midnight, further solidifying their number one position on
Primo's. Pierre Loget's PulCorp made a surprising leap to second place,
bumping Natch down to number three and Sentinel to number four.

And then, at three-thirty in the morning, as Natch was making yet
another circuit around the balcony and glaring at the music that
wafted up faintly from Shenandoah's entertainment quarters, the message he had been waiting for arrived. Natch did not know what shape
or form it would take, but he knew the instant he opened the message
that he had found his investor.

Time is luxury. Action is currency.

-Kordez Thassel

You are cordially invited to breakfast with the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel
today, the 25th of November, at 7:45 a.m. Omaha time, in the resplendent
Kordez Thassel Complex in the northern reaches of the Twin Cities Megalopolis to discuss mutually beneficial business opportunities.