Multireal (20 page)

She opened her eyes and absorbed the mundanity of her East
London flat once more. Open surfaces, bare countertops, white walls.
The first faint sketches of her future were drawn there, but the lines
were still too indistinct for her to make out.

14

There were no redwoods on the long tube route that snaked halfway
around the globe to Andra Pradesh. For most of the journey, there was
nothing for Natch to look at but sea and sky-and the Council officers
who had been tailing him since Shenandoah.

Watching Quell work the viewscreens on the window proved an
interesting diversion. Natch didn't know if the Islander possessed the
neural equipment necessary to give a window direct commands; his
understanding was that the Islanders had most standard OCHRE
machines implanted at birth but simply kept them turned off. How
else could Quell run a program as complex as MultiReal? Whatever
the reason, he was navigating the Data Sea with his fingertips via an
onscreen maze of buttons. Natch fell into a light sleep wondering how
many other systems had hidden unconnectible interfaces built into
them.

"They're comparing you to Marcus Surina," said Quell a few hours
later.

The QuasiSuspension program had Natch awake and alert before
the Islander even finished the first syllable. He glanced out the window
just in time to see the shores of Sicily hurtling past. "Who is?" said the
fiefcorp master.

"The drudges at the MultiReal lottery." Quell gestured at the
window, which was showing an opinion piece by some obscure pundit
named Vermillion. "This guy says that if Marcus couldn't put together
a feasible plan for teleportation, you won't do any better with MultiReal. He thinks Marcus turned out to be mostly hype, and you're
headed the same way."

Natch shrugged. "Doesn't matter. The drudges don't know anything. They're just blowing smoke." He scanned the first few para graphs of the story, picking out the standard descriptors: reckless, neurotic, maniacal. Natch supposed he should give the article a closer look,
make sure the lottery went off without any major gaffes. But right now
the only things he could focus on were black code and MultiReal.

The entrepreneur settled back into his seat. "They could've chosen
someone worse. Marcus Surina was the richest man in the world in his
day."

Quell frowned. "Yeah, but he came to a bad end."

"Most good things do," said Natch as he drifted back into QuasiSuspension.

From the moment the tube train pulled into Andra Pradesh, they
could see that the Surina compound was in disarray-guards rushing
everywhere, trash piling up, a little boy lost screaming for his mother
and nobody giving him a second glance. The man checking identities
at the bottom of the hill gave Natch and Quell no more than a cursory
scan before admitting them through the gates.

Things did not improve when they climbed the hill and found their
way to the compound's central courtyard. Figures in blue-and-green
livery scurried around the square with little semblance of order, as if
struggling to obey confusing or even contradictory orders. The entrances
to the Center for Historic Appreciation and the Enterprise Facility were
sparsely guarded, and a small platoon of Council officers could easily
have snuck into the absurd castle that contained the Surina family residences. The security force was concentrated around the half-kilometerhigh thorn known as the Revelation Spire. Margaret had exiled herself
to the tip of that spire several weeks ago, when the Defense and Wellness Council marched in before Natch's last demo. And now, it seemed,
she had decided to make it a permanent arrangement.

Quell pointed disdainfully at a pair of guards who were attempting to haul a disruptor cannon across the courtyard by the barrel. "I knew
things were bad," growled the Islander, "but I didn't know they were
this bad."

Natch shuddered. He had seen how effortlessly Len Borda's troops
took control of the compound last month, when Surina security was still
in relatively good shape. If Magan Kai Lee sent a few legions of his officers here today, what kind of resistance could the Surinas possibly offer?

The Islander snatched the arm of a passing officer. The woman
yelped and reached for the dartgun in her holster. Then she saw who
had seized her and let the free arm drop to her side. Apparently Quell's
reputation still carried a lot of weight in this place. "You," he barked.
"What's going on? Where's the security chief?"

"He-he left," stuttered the officer.

Quell yanked the woman's arm almost hard enough to dislocate
her shoulder. "What do you mean, he left?"

"Suheil dismissed him," whimpered the guard. "Sent him home.
The bodhisattva just ... let it happen."

"So who's in charge here?"

The woman gave him such a pitiful look in response that Quell let
her go. She tore across the travertine and disappeared into the Surina
Enterprise Facility without a backward glance.

"Suheil," muttered the Islander, half to himself.

"Isn't that Margaret's cousin?" said Natch.

"Second cousin. Or third, I can never remember which. I should've
known.... Suheil and Jayze probably started taking advantage of her
the instant I left."

"Taking advantage? Taking advantage how?"

Quell pursed his lips, and Natch got the impression he had said
more than he intended. "I shouldn't have brought you here. This is
insane. I don't think you're going to get what you came for."

Natch folded his arms across his chest. "I just wasted half a day on
a tube train to get here," he said. "You're not going to scare me away. I came to get some answers from Margaret, and I'm not leaving until
I get them."

The Islander tilted his head back and let his gaze wander up the
slim shaft of the Revelation Spire to the summit, hidden high in the
clouds. "You won't like what you see."

Natch made a noncommittal noise, squared his shoulders, and
headed for the entrance to the Revelation Spire. After a moment, Quell
sighed and followed.

The guards who had barred Natch's entrance to the Spire before
were still in evidence today, but this time they let him pass. Quell's
influence, no doubt. The Islander thrust open the large set of double
doors at the tower's base and strode through them.

The inside of the Revelation Spire did not resemble the picture
that had lodged in Natch's head all these years. He expected to see a
utilitarian space filled with offices and Surina functionaries. Instead he
saw a structure that served no useful purpose at all; an ornamentation,
a gilded trophy.

The world's tallest building was almost completely hollow. A central
column of air extended up through a jungle of structural supports to the
limit of Natch's eyesight. Even using Bolliwar Tuban's Telescopics 89d,
he could see no sign of the top. One long stairway made a dizzying spiral
up the wall, interrupted at periodic intervals by wide platforms cantilevered off the side. Sculptures, statues, and paintings were strewn
about everywhere with some avant-garde principle of decoration that
eluded Natch. In the middle of it all stood a very lifelike marble representation of Marcus Surina, pointing confidently up into the aether.

So it's a museum then, thought Natch. But if it was a museum, why
weren't there any civilians within eyeshot? Why were there only Surina
security guards by the dozen, with dartguns drawn and ready? This
was a different breed of guard altogether than the ones fumbling
around the courtyard; these troops would fire first and ask questions
later, if at all.

Quell had obviously been here a million times before and didn't
give the pomp and pageantry a second glance. Natch followed him to
the foot of the stairway. Half a dozen guards in blue and green blocked
their path, and for a second Natch expected some of those dartguns to
swivel in his direction. But the guards took a single look at the
Islander and dutifully stepped aside. Natch allowed himself a slight
sigh of relief.

Stair after stair disappeared behind them. Banners and ceremonial
plaques and eclectic sculptures marched by. Natch assumed there had
to be an elevator somewhere along the way; not even bio/logically
enhanced legs could be expected to climb half a kilometer of stairs
unaided.

It wasn't aching muscles that caused him to stop for a breather ten
minutes later but the glacial cold permeating the soles of his feet.
Natch supposed he should be grateful that the magic of modern architecture kept the Spire from turning into a giant wind tunnel. He
scowled, not feeling grateful for anything today. "How do you stand
the cold?" Natch complained.

"You get used to it," grunted Quell in response.

The fiefcorp master reached out to the Data Sea and located a program called NumbSoles 85. The program was prefaced with a lengthy
warning about the dangers of nerve-enhancing software, which Natch
ignored. He quickly revved up the bio/logic code until he could sense
his toes again, and the two pressed on.

Finally, some ten stories up, Natch and Quell found themselves
standing in front of a bank of elevators. Translucent shafts extended
from the top of the elevators into the distance like the pipes of some
massive organ. Natch couldn't begin to guess which one led to the
Spire's summit, and the troops stationed nearby weren't volunteering
any information. Quell strutted into the third elevator from the left
without hesitation. Natch followed.

The ride up was a fifteen-minute exercise in tedium. After the first couple dozen floors, the building's architects had abandoned any pretext of utility; the upper levels of the Spire were all but empty, except
for the occasional platform of troops aiming heavy weaponry out the
windows.

Just when the monotony was growing unbearable, a sixth sense
prompted Natch to look up. He saw a large gray mass approaching
through the elevator's glass ceiling, a mass that could only be the underside of the Spire's top floor. Carved on that surface was an enormous basrelief sculpture showing an emaciated figure with impossibly long fingers clawing at the elevator shaft. Natch took in the supercilious stare
and the hawkish nose, and realized that this was Sheldon Surina. THERE
IS NO PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE SOLVED BY SCIENTIFIC INNOVATION, read
the inscription beneath him. Natch shivered as the elevator capsule slid
between the talons of the father of bio/logics and came to a stop.