Infoquake (31 page)

"And that was killing you."

Natch edged back, flailing his arm behind him in search of the
door. He realized with dismay that it had vanished. He didn't want to
know anymore why Brone had invited him here this morning, or what
his interest in the Phoenix Project was; Natch just wanted out. But the
diamond walls completely surrounded him now. He was trapped.

Brone leaned back in his throne and regarded Natch with sepulchral eyes, like someone watching from a separate plane of existence.
The disembodied forearm began tapping out a mad rhythm on the
cheese plate. "I spent months planning the whole scenario. I followed
you around, Natch, did you know that? I scouted out a thousand locations for the perfect ambush. Should I follow you to Cisco and shoot
you down in the forest? Or plug you full of black code on a sidestreet
in London? Or just push you off your own balcony in Shenandoah and
be done with it?"

Natch rubbed his back against the diamond wall and did not
breathe. The door had to be there somewhere ... if he could just pierce
the veil of this confounded SeeNaRee....

"But don't worry, Natch," said Brone, his voice one big sneer.
"You're not in any danger here today." He spread his hand and stump
wide in a conciliatory gesture. His smile was the smile of a ghoul. "You
see, I have found religion."

The fiefcorp master stared at his old enemy, not comprehending.
"The Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," Natch croaked under his breath.
"Where is he?"

Brone gave a long and uncomfortable pause, like a robot in suspended animation. "I am the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," he said at
last.

It took a minute for the words to penetrate Natch's defenses. He turned them around in his head, breaking them down into small
digestible pieces to try and make sense of them. Brone the head of the
Thasselians?

Before he could get a grip on the situation, the SeeNaRee changed.

Suddenly, they were hurtling through black space in a small starcraft not much bigger than the Falcon that transported them home
from initiation all those years ago. Rocks and chunks of ice whizzed by
at breakneck speed. Natch looked out the starboard window just in
time to see an asteroid the size of a tube train hurtle past them,
missing the ship by half a meter.

"I could turn you in to the Prime Committee," Natch gasped.
"You can't hide exits like that. It's against the law. And you can't just
switch environments on the fly without giving me fair warning."

Brone sat back in his padded captain's chair, toying idly with the
steering panel that rose before him from the floor like a metallic mushroom. He did not react at all to the first asteroid collision, which made
the rickety craft shudder as if it were a few bolts away from completely
collapsing. "How ironic," Brone croaked. "Natch threatening to turn
me over to the law? Here at Creed Thassel, we take a more laissez-faire
approach to laws. As old Kordez used to say, Rules are for those who follow
rules. "

"But-" The rusted hull of a dead spaceship slammed into the side
of their craft, sending Natch sprawling onto the floor once again with
his teeth chattering. He bit the inside of his cheek with an audible
chomp. Brone remained comfortably seated, and Natch noted that the
disembodied arm sat motionless on the table. Yet another infraction,
thought the fiefcorp master bitterly. Inconsistent laws of physics.

"Creed Thassel was really in abysmal shape when I found it," continued Brone, studying the fingernails of his good hand intently.
"You'd be surprised how many people think Creed Thassel ceased to
exist twenty years ago. There was that expose by Sen Sivv Sor. Financial scandals. A real paucity of leadership. The imbeciles running the organization were even on the brink of losing control of the Kordez
Thassel Complex. So when I got religion, Natch, I got it for a real bargain-basement price. They needed my money. They needed my vision
and my initiative."

Cosmic debris continued to slam into the ship, leaving Natch huddled on the floor with his hands over his head. OCHREs had already
staunched the bleeding in his mouth, but he couldn't help probing the
scar with his tongue. He knew he cut quite a ridiculous figure to his
old rival, but survival was all he cared about at this point.

"Forgive me," sighed the bodhisattva, his voice devoid of supplication. "I suppose I've gotten carried away." He waved his hand in the
air-the hand of flesh and bone-and the cluttered field of debris outside the ship vanished. The virtual gravity stabilized. "So let us discuss
business, you and I."

Natch warily got to his feet and brushed himself off. It seemed
strange that an hour ago, the only thing occupying his mind was his
dire need for capital. Now suddenly, he was treading water in a sea of
old landmines. "Do I have any choice?" he muttered.

"Game playing!" shouted Brone abruptly, his eyes ablaze. He arose
from the chair and stood at the port window, his stump resting wearily
against the glass. "All these games we've played throughout the years,
you and I. And this whole setup-the invitation, the SeeNaRee,
throwing the arm on the table-just another move in the game. A way
to put you off guard. But believe it or not, after all the hurt and pain
and suffering you have caused me, Natch, I am capable of forgiving
you."

Natch gritted his teeth. Forgiving me for what? he thought.

"Soon, we will all be moving beyond games," continued Brone.
"All of us ... you, me, the drudges, Horvil, the idiots at the Defense
and Wellness Council, all those narrow-minded bean counters at
Primo's. Soon, it will make no difference who the winners and losers
are."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about Margaret Surina, of course. I'm talking about
the Phoenix Project'." Natch could practically hear the belittling quotation marks.

"I don't know-"

"Oh, please!" snapped the bodhisattva in a sudden fit of pique.
"Don't waste your breath. The Phoenix Project is the whole reason you
held those little fundraising charades of yours, isn't it? It's the whole
reason you're here. But even if you hadn't held those meetings, Natch,
I would have come looking for you. I know all about your visit to
Andra Pradesh. Thasselian agents were watching when you walked in
and out of those gates at the Surina compound, and they attended your
little performances yesterday too. That's the advantage of having an
organization with a secret membership.

"Let me be forthcoming. You're a step behind in this game, Natch,
just as you've always been a step behind me in everything else. The
struggle for the Phoenix Project was well underway before you butted
your nose into it. I have no problem with your pathetic attempts to
grab a little portion of the pot, but don't think you can walk away with
the whole thing. There are too many people who know too much."

Natch gave a haughty sniff in Brone's direction. "And what do you
know that I don't?"

"I know what you have been trying to find out-I know what this
technology of Margaret's is." Natch could practically feel Brone's grim
smile, even though he was facing the other direction. "Let me tell you,
it is everything you suspect it is, and more. Perhaps even more than
Margaret imagines."

The fiefcorp master hesitated and felt Serr Vigal's suspicions
rushing in to fill the hole in the pit of his stomach. Could Brone be
telling the truth? The Thasselians continued to pledge their devotees
in secret, after all, and there were no Creeds Coalition bylaws preventing people from pledging to more than one creed. "So what are you wasting time with me for?" said Natch with affected nonchalance.
"If you're so far ahead of me, go talk to Margaret yourself."

"I have tried, many times. The Surina woman does not listen."

"Perhaps she's put off by your winning way with people."

Natch's wisecrack did not succeed in penetrating Brone, now
standing at the window rubbing his chin with his handless stump.
Natch couldn't help but shiver. "Obviously, you cannot see the forest
for the trees, Natch. I wish I could say this surprises me, but it does
not. So let me tell you the truth of the situation that has so far eluded
you." Brone spread the fingers of his good hand out against the
window, as if straining to reach something beyond the black void. "I
have seen the future, Natch. And the future is you and I, in business
together, selling the Phoenix Project."

The thought made Natch nauseous. "Bullshit."

"I understand your dilemma, Natch," said Brone, his voice barely
a whisper now. "You want to walk out the door right now and never
see me again." He nodded towards the rear of the spacecraft, where a
plain metal door suddenly materialized out of nowhere. "But Margaret
Surina has dangled the carrot just beyond your reach, like everything
has always been just beyond your reach. You need my help. Nobody is
buying your fundraising pitch, and you're running out of time. You
need the money that I can provide-money that's just sitting in the
coffers of Creed Thassel waiting for a worthwhile investment. I can
transfer the credits to your Vault account before the hour is up."

The entrepreneur snorted. "And what do you get in return?"

"Nothing at all. This is simply a cash loan. Repayment over five
years with Vault standard interest rates."

Natch stared uncomfortably at the plastic teeth of Brone's stump.
He could feel the wheels of his mind spinning and spinning but
gaining no traction. "Why would you do that?"

"Because," replied Brone with maddening calm, "you need money
and I need a foot in the door. If I attached strings to the offer, you wouldn't take it."

"Let me see the contract," Natch grunted.

Brone stepped away from the fiefcorp master's side, and gave a
sweeping bow towards the window. The twinkling stars of space were
replaced with the dull black-and-white text of a legal document.
Natch scanned the length of the contract in less than a minute, then
read it over twice more to make sure he wasn't missing anything. The
contract was conspicuously short and completely free of legal doubletalk or hidden provisos.

"I don't get it," Natch rasped.

"That is because you have a limited intellect," said Brone. "This is
an act of trust, Natch. It is a concept beyond your understanding."

The fiefcorp master looked back and forth between his wraithlike
nemesis, the grubby hand on the table, and the blocky letters on the
viewscreen. If I had the slightest doubt you could find the money to do this,
Margaret had said, you wouldn't be here. He checked his internal calendar
and looked once more at the menacingly small block of days remaining
until Margaret's planned unveiling of the Phoenix Project.

Suddenly, with his mind's eye, he saw a raging bear in the wilderness. A battered and bleeding boy lying in the back seat of a Falcon
hoverbird. An act of trust?

Natch quelled the inner voice screaming dire words of doom. He
blocked out the chortling of Figaro Fi and Captain Bolbund and the
Patel Brothers that echoed through his head. Then he reached out with
his mind and affirmed the contract.

Brone smiled. His detached hand dragged itself painstakingly to
the edge of the table and then threw itself to the ground, where it
wriggled like a fish out of water.

Horvil studied the viewscreen with as much concentration as he gave
his bio/logic programs. "If you ask me-"

"Which I'm not," muttered Jara.

"If you ask me, daisies would work much better in here than violets." The engineer put his nose up to the viewscreen as if trying to
give individual attention to every pixel. Then, in feng shui mode, he
glanced around Jara's apartment with eyes narrowed. "A garden of violets is going to stick out in here like a sore thumb," said Horvil. "But
daisies, they're so ... light and ... airy. They'd look terrific with this
blank wall effect you have going on here." He made an expansive gesture at the unadorned white plaster running the length and breadth of
the room.