Infoquake (48 page)

"I think we need to try contacting Serr Vigal again," said Quell.

Jara shook her head. "What's the matter with you people? We've
been through this, Quell. We keep going round in circles, the same arguments over and over again for hours." The analyst scoped out the
conference table for a suitable object to use as a projectile, found none,
and pressed her fingertips to the mahogany all the harder. "Even if
Vigal was returning my messages, we can't have him deliver the speech.
He's just not a good enough huckster. Have you ever sat through one
of his neural programming speeches? They're excruciatingly boring."

"I'm afraid to say it, but I agree with Jara," offered Merri.

"But Vigal's got a reputation in the programming community,"
said Quell. "He's got a following. He knows what he's talking about."

"And after the tenth time he stops mid-sentence to scratch his bald
head, people are going to wonder where Natch is. They're going to
think something has gone terribly wrong in the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp, and consumer confidence in us is going to plummet
before we can even get a product to market. Blowing your first major
company presentation is worse than not doing one at all."

"So why don't we cancel already?" mumbled Horvil, his head
bowed to the table under the confining archway of his clasped hands,
as if waiting for a guillotine to drop.

"Because we have an alternative," said Jara.

The Islander let out a brutish noise halfway between a grunt and a
laugh. "Now you're the one who's going around in circles. How many
times do I have to say this? Margaret won't do it. She's handed the
project off to Natch-she's not going to jump back into this whole
business again."

Jara frowned, brushing one finger slowly over her bottom lip. "I
realize you've known Margaret longer than any of us-for process'
preservation, I've never even met her except for that two-minute
appearance she put in at the fiefcorp meeting the other day. But I'm
just not convinced. We've got a first-rate demonstration. Merri's been
working with Robby Robby to get the crowd fired up. The entire
thing is laid out. All Margaret has to do is stand up and deliver it.
How can she refuse?"

"The infoquake," said Quell. "She keeps saying the whole thing
was her fault. She thinks those people died because of hear"

"Delusions of grandeur," muttered Ben.

Quell glared sharp slashing daggers at the young apprentice.
"When you're the daughter of the Surinas," he snarled, "there's no such
thing as a delusion of grandeur."

"That notwithstanding," said Jara, "I have to try to convince her.
For process' preservation, Quell-this woman is a scientist. She'll
listen to reason, won't she?"

Jara marched through the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation
with her miniature fists clenched. Security guards haloed her like massive blue-green planets orbiting a small but furious star. She
approached the atrium through an archway labeled Subaether Court. A
score of disgruntled visitors glared at Jara when she passed, as if she
were responsible for their being muscled out of the atrium.

But the fault lay with the nondescript woman in the center of the
domed room gazing up at the statue of a skinny man with a large nose.
He was not the largest of the scientific titans adorning the dome, but
his stone effigy had an almost mythical presence. The man stood
calmly with one hand extended, not offering a welcoming gesture so
much as making a commanding sweep. At his feet were carved the
words:

ANYTHING WORTH DOING IS WORTH PERFECTING

-Sheldon Surina

Next to the Father of Bio/Logics, Margaret Surina was a half-presence at best. She looked like she might disintegrate inside her bodhisattva's robes at any moment. Her face was solemn, even apologetic.
An internal monologue flashed behind her eyes like distant lightning.

Jara could spare no time for pity. She shook herself loose from the
Surina guards and stalked to the bodhisattva's side. The guards established a perimeter around the room and kept their distance. "I've been
trying to find you for almost two hours," said Jara.

Margaret did not even acknowledge Jara's presence. "The Texan
governments tried to assassinate him," said the bodhisattva, her gaze
never leaving that of her ancestor. Even carved in stone, Sheldon Surina bore a look of self-importance. "The public hated him for a long time
too. People always forget about that. The Three Jesuses called him a
devil, and the Pharisees slaughtered thousands of his supporters for
sport. He came up with the idea for MindSpace sitting in a cave in the
Himalayas."

"Natch has disappeared," said Jara.

"I know."

The bio/logic analyst took a step back in surprise. Margaret knew?
Then why hadn't she answered all the messages and Confidential Whispers Jara had been flinging her way? As one of the firm's senior partners, why hadn't she immediately called a meeting to discuss alternative plans for the presentation? Jara felt like crying at the unfairness of
it all. Why does it feel like I'm the only one willing to fight for this fiefcorp?
Why is it that when push comes to shove, Natch disappears, Serr Vigal prives
himself to all communication, and Horvil just falls apart? And yet I'm the
one who's trying to get out of this whole nightmare. I'm the one who wants to
put this MultiReal shit behind me and get on with my life.

"If you want to honor Sheldon Surina's memory," Jara said in a slow
and deliberate tone of voice, "then you'll stop feeling sorry for yourself
and help us figure out an alternate course of action."

Margaret recoiled as if she had just been slapped. "I have no idea
where Natch is. I didn't do anything to him."

"I'm not suggesting you did. But you're the one who set this whole
thing in motion."

"Indeed?"

"Come on, Margaret! You created this fucking program, you
dragged Natch and the rest of us into this business. You stood up there
in front of billions of people and announced a bold new era of multiple
realities. It's too late to back out now. You have a responsibility-no,
an obligation-to see it through."

"An obligation to whom? To you?" The descendent of Sheldon
Surina snorted haughtily. "I don't know you."

"You know Natch," said Jara. "You know Quell."

Margaret firmed up her jaw, looking again at the cool stone representation of her ancestor. Natch's name had produced barely a ripple
on the bodhisattva's face, but mention of the Islander had obviously
shaken her. "My obligation," she replied, "is to him." By him, clearly,
Margaret meant the big-nosed stone statue and not anyone this side of
the grave.

Jara stomped her foot and, only by sheer force of will, restrained
herself from yelling at the venerable bodhisattva. Hadn't she been
through this same scenario with Natch just a few weeks ago, when he
all but announced his intention to frame his apprentices for that little
black code scheme? Was there something inherent in the bio/logics
trade that caused fiefcorp masters to lose their moral bearings? "So
after sixteen years of working on this thing, you're just going to give
up ,,

"Now who's playing the victim? You're not an invalid, Jara." Until
that moment, Jara had not quite been sure the bodhisattva even knew
her name. "I'm quite certain Natch didn't hold a dartgun to your chest
and force you to sign an apprenticeship contract. When you start a new
business, there always are risks. You didn't think Natch and I were
going to take all those risks while you sat back and watched millions
of credits pour into your Vault account, did you?"

Blistering words clawed at Jara's windpipe, struggling for release.
But at that moment, a Surina security guard trotted up to Margaret
with a fist raised chin-level in salute. The bodhisattva gave the man a
sidelong glance. Then the color drained from her face in response to
some word she heard over Confidential Whisper.

"Go ahead," rasped Margaret, stumbling towards the window with
a hand clutching her stomach. "You might as well tell her."

The officer turned to Jara and saluted smartly. "The Defense and
Wellness Council is coming."

"What?"

"Several hundred hoverbirds have been spotted on the outskirts of
Andra Pradesh. Three or four legions of Council officers are heading
this way."

Jara felt her knees buckle, and before she knew it, she was sitting
on the ground, woozy, her back leaning against Sheldon Surina's toes.
Was it going to happen this easily? Just like Margaret's speech last
week, Len Borda's troops were going to surge into the Surina compound and disrupt the proceedings-maybe even seize MultiReal by
force-in front of the entire world.

Margaret pressed her forehead against the glass. A look of doom
washed over her face. "You see?" she cried. "He's never going to stop,
not until I'm dead and MultiReal is under his control. And what can
anybody do about it? What can anybody do about it?"

Jara said nothing. Words seemed quite beside the point.

"Nothing to say? I thought so." The bodhisattva cast a hateful
glance back at Jara, reached into a gap in her robes, and drew a sleek
silver dart pistol. "Well, don't worry. The high executive is about to
find out that confiscating MultiReal won't be as easy as it looks.

"The Spire!" she roared to her security detail, then stormed out the
front door into the courtyard. Her cordon of guards followed close
behind.

Millions of spectators had already poured into the Surina auditorium
to await the first public demonstration of MultiReal. Despite Creed
Conscientious' pleas, nobody seemed deterred by the prospect of
another infoquake. They wanted to catch a glimpse of the infamous
Natch, to see if he really deserved his reputation among the drudges.
They wanted to measure Margaret Surina's accomplishments against
those of her ancestors. More than anything, they just wanted to bask
in the glow of history.

A carnival atmosphere swirled through the arena. Drudges and
politicians of every ideological stripe wandered around broadcasting
their analysis of the spectacle to their constituencies. Fiefcorp apprentices flaunted product slogans on their shirts and foreheads in vivid
glow-in-the-dark colors. Creed devotees multied into the arena dressed
in full creed regalia, while bodhisattvas from fringe groups stood on
chairs and preached to anyone who would listen. Groups of children
clustered together under the aegis of their hives, accompanied by
stern-faced proctors of business, programming, politics and ethics. A
few dozen L-PRACG activists multied into the auditorium stark
naked and began chanting a tepid protest of Vault lending practices.
One by one, they were caught in the beam of the Surina security disruptors and their multi connections cut. Council officers were nowhere
to be seen.

Merri had been standing at the foot of the stage since the first
thirty-five thousand spectators arrived and the auditorium began overlapping multi projections. She felt a strange sense of privilege to be
here as a real body; it was quite literally a one-in-a-million opportunity. Fiefcorp apprentices living on the moon usually did not receive
this kind of privilege.

Her reverie was interrupted by a reedy voice Merri had heard all
too often over the past few days. "Say you run an assembly-line programming floor, and you're on a tight deadline. You don't have time
to make mistakes." Merri zeroed in on the source of the voice, and saw
Frizitz Quo not three meters away, holding court before an audience of
Meme Cooperative officials. "Every time one of your workers fumbles
a connection, that's a few precious minutes you've wasted. A few
credits MultiReal could have saved you. Now multiply that by a few
hundred workers, and that's real money...."

Merri tuned out the sprightly Asian and called up the grid that
would show her the location of Robby Robby's entire team of cubeheaded channelers. A diagram of the arena appeared in the air before her, speckled with purple dots to indicate the coordinates of each team
member. A legend in the corner of the diagram silently tallied up audience demographics.