Infoquake (50 page)

"Horvil," she said gently, bundling her hands inside the warm
nest of the engineer's palms. "I hope you can understand this. But I
have to make that presentation. I just have to. This isn't about the fief corp or Natch, or-or product release schedules. It's about me. It's
about ... not backing down. Not failing."

The engineer considered this for a moment. Jara couldn't imagine
what thoughts were running through his head. Could a rich boy from
the other side of London who had never had a moment of financial
instability in his entire life still understand a crisis of conscience? "You
have to promise me you'll be all right," he said.

Jara smiled sadly. "I'm afraid that's not up to me."

There was no burst of comprehension, no sudden epiphany behind
Horvil's eyes. But finally he nodded and clenched the analyst's hands
tightly. "Okay," he said. "So how can I help?"

"You can help me navigate. Do you know if there's a back entrance
to the arena?" She gestured through the window at the now-familiar
sight of Council officers roaming freely around the Surina courtyard.
Their ranks ringed the Revelation Spire like a white crown, and lined
the boulevard to the arena's front doors as well. The Surina security
guards were nowhere to be found. "Obviously, we can't go that way."

Horvil jutted his chin out with determination, and the two of
them rose to their feet. "As a matter of fact," he said, "there's a side
entrance, through the museum here. Quell took me past it yesterday."

Jara brushed off her trousers and gave the Surina statue a respectful
nod. "Let's go then."

The fiefcorp apprentices zipped past the statue of Tobi Jae Witt
and down the hall. They dodged their way through a warren of curio
tables and around a variety of large metal contraptions that had once
housed Witt's experiments in artificial intelligence. The halls were
now mostly empty of people. The few stragglers they did see were
either terrified tourists looking for an escape route or Surina security
forces hustling back towards the square.

Something about the conversation in the atrium had completely
changed Horvil's demeanor. Minutes ago, he had been fearful for Jara's
safety. But now he was taking the lead, lumbering into corridor inter sections as if preparing to use his belly to shield her from a barrage of
darts. Jara looked at the engineer with a broad smile on her face. She
wondered whether Horvil planned on taking the stage with her, and
whether she would try to stop him if he did.

Horvil and Jara crossed over a walkway that bridged the Center for
Historic Appreciation with the auditorium. They tried to keep low to
avoid attention, but most of the soldiers below were fixated on the
Revelation Spire anyway. Hundreds of dart-rifle barrels poked from the
notches in the Spire walls, daring the Council troops to come any
closer.

"The arena's just past that door," said Horvil. "The stage entrance
is down the stairs."

Jara opened the door to the arena and found herself confronted
with a sea of white robes.

The gathering crowd still stood at half a billion strong, but their
ranks now included a large number of Defense and Wellness Council
troops. The officers surrounded the stage and lined every aisle in the
place. Just like last time, they silently shouldered their dartguns, their
faces sculpted of stone.

Horvil gulped. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

They galloped down the stairs, opting now for speed rather than
stealth. The two reached the bottom and rounded the last corner. Sure
enough, the corridor angled upwards and ended in a single metal door
that would lead them directly onto the arena stage. Jara had not
expected this last approach to the stage to be unguarded. But when she
saw the three people standing in front of the door, she gasped and
snapped on a PokerFace 83.4b.

Serr Vigal, the preeminent neural programmer.

Len Borda, High Executive of the Defense and Wellness Council.

And Natch, master of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp.

Jara took an awkward step backwards, tripped, and fell neatly into
Horvil's arms.

She didn't realize that Len Borda was so tall. He towered over the
rest of them like a thin rock pillar, his bald head its capstone. Anywhere in the world, she would have recognized his dour face instantly,
whether or not he wore the Council's white robe and yellow star.

Jara tried but could not shake her head clear of historical vertigo.
Standing before her was the High Executive of the Defense and Wellness Council himself. The man who had led the world's most feared
military and intelligence organization for fifty-seven years and
counting. The man who had personally sparred with giants like Lucco
Primo, Kordez Thassel and Marcus Surina. The man who had singlehandedly defeated the Economic Slump of the 310s. The man who had
mastered the intricacies of his post long before Jara was born.

She thought of all the wild and unverifiable rumors she had heard
about Len Borda over the years. The secret interrogations ... the
hidden fortresses ... the pitiless military strikes ... the all-pervasive
network of spies and snooping programs. And now that face was
directly in front of her. Were the firm grooves on the man's brow a
manifestation of evil intent, as the libertarian drudges contended, or
merely the chiseled remnants of nature's implacable forces?

The High Executive barely noticed her presence. "I will speak to
the crowd," he said to Natch in a gravelly basso profundo. "You have
ten minutes."

Jara glanced at the fiefcorp master. At first glimpse, Natch
appeared calm and collected, dressed in a sharp navy-blue pinstripe
suit. Only someone who had studied his every pore and wrinkle ten
thousand times could tell he was tottering on the brink of collapse. She detected traces of the stimulant program QuickPrep 49q on his face.
"I need twenty," Natch said firmly.

"Twenty then." Borda's tone of voice left the impression that
twenty minutes was what he had been after all along. He waved a
hand, and the door to the arena stage slid open, bathing him in the
spotlight.

Jara mustered all of her courage and spoke to the retreating high
executive. "What about all those troops out there?" she cried.

Borda paused and gave her an unyielding look. The look of a man
who could pinpoint her precise location, down to the minutest degree,
in the orgchart of the universe.

The analyst felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned to find Serr
Vigal. "Jara, the Council is here for our protection," he said gently. "It
was Natch's idea."

She gaped at the neural programmer, uncomprehending. "And ...
Margaret?"

"She'll be fine," replied Borda. "Unfortunately." The high executive continued through the doorway and disappeared onto the stage.
The door closed behind him.

Natch was already huddled with Horvil, listening intently to the
engineer's instructions on how to operate the MultiReal program.
There was no time to break down all that complexity into bite-sized
pieces; Horvil was speaking pure calculus at this point. Natch gave no
sign he understood the formulas his old friend was reeling off.

Jara turned to Serr Vigal. The neural programmer looked
exhausted, and his eyes were full to the brim with concern for his protege.

"Natch was hit with black code," said the neural programmer in
response to her unspoken question. "He just woke up a few hours ago."

"The Patels?"

"Maybe, maybe not. He doesn't remember very much."

The fiefcorp master and the engineer were now dashing around trying to find a conference room with SeeNaRee capabilities. Quell
happened to show up at that precise moment, and he quickly led them
to an out-of-the-way door under the stage. Natch, Horvil, Jara, Quell
and Serr Vigal rushed in and found themselves standing at home plate
on the baseball diamond again. Horvil conjured up a ball and a
Kyushu clubfoot, then tossed them to the fiefcorp master. Natch took
a deep breath, threw the ball skywards, and swung.

He missed.

He picked up the ball, chucked it in the air, and missed again.

On the fifth attempt, Natch finally connected. But the bottom
edge of the bat barely nicked the ball, causing it to limp towards first
base and roll to a stop in the infield.

"I can't get this fucking thing to work, Horvil!" cried Natch, flush
with rage. "Didn't Ben's people hook those programs together? What
the fuck have you all been doing these past few days?"

"Benyamin's team got the job done," said Quell, doing his best to
ignore the fiefcorp master's slight. "I tested the program myself."

The engineer patted his boss's virtual shoulder. "Just as you begin
the swing, you've got to reach out with your mind towards the Possibilities interface and make sure you don't-"

"Never mind," Natch said gruffly. "There's no time. I'll figure it
out. Jara, show me the script."

She did. Let me do the presentation instead, she almost said. I'm ready,
I've had a chance to experiment with Possibilities 1.0 in the past few days. But
Jara could see the iron resolve in Natch's eyes, the single-minded
insanity that kicked in whenever he was backed into a corner. Her
little catharsis at the museum withered, wormlike, into the dust. It
was inevitable. Natch would never turn down a chance to perform in
front of an audience of this size. As she had predicted, he would either
deliver a perfect presentation, or die trying. Jara wondered fleetingly
how the living, breathing audience upstairs compared to the invisible
audience Natch had been playing to in his head all those years.

"Jara, tell me whether the auditorium can handle all these calculations," said Natch suddenly. His eyes were yellow and coyote hungry.
"Tell me we're not going to cause a hundred more of those infoquakes."

"Well, the Surina people think that-"

"I don't want to hear it! Tell me yes or no."

The bio/logic analyst pursed her lips for a full three seconds in
thought. She had never hated Natch more. She had never found him so
irresistibly sexy. "Yes."

"Good! Now go find Ben and Merri. The three of you comb the
crowd and find the most sickeningly sweet little girl on the face of the
earth. I'm talking five years old, pigtails, the whole thing."

"They don't allow anyone younger than eight on the multi network, remember?"

"Fine, eight years old then. But not a day over eight. Tag her spatial coordinates with a beacon so I can find her. Horvil!" The engineer
saluted briskly, looking as if he were ready to give his life for the cause.
"Go find a workbench. I need you to do the quickest programming job
you've ever done in your life. We've got a couple of alterations to
make."

"What did you have in mind?"

Natch spouted off a few polynomials. Horvil turned to the
Islander, who nodded. "It can be done," muttered Quell. "Maybe." Seconds later, the three of them bolted out the door and down another
hallway.

"I've never seen him so frightened, Jara," said Serr Vigal, as the two
of them walked back towards the stairs and a door that would take
them into the audience. "I don't think I've ever been so frightened for
him either."

Jara wrapped a comradely arm around the neural programmer's
waist. Nobody would have mistaken Vigal for a young man, but he
seemed to have aged twenty years in the past few weeks. "I'd be frightened too if I got shot full of black code," said Jara. "But don't worry, Vigal. He's already survived one attack, and with all those Council officers swarming through the arena, I doubt anyone would be stupid
enough to try another."

Vigal gave her a curious look. "I don't think you understand.
Natch isn't afraid of another black code attack. He's still worried about
the first one."

"You mean ... ?"

"Natch is still infected. The program didn't self-destruct after it
knocked him unconscious. In fact, we think it was the code that woke
him up."

"Well, what does the code do? What's it waiting for?"

"We don't know. That's what we're afraid of."