Multireal (52 page)

Petrucio had nothing to do with this, Jara thought. He's just as surprised
as anyone. But if Petrucio Patel didn't launch this attack-then who did?

She surveyed the remaining members of the Prime Committee,
quailing under their wrought-iron chairs, and had another insight: the
libertarians had just lost their case. Moments ago, the Committee had
been the very model of probity and open-mindedness; now they were
surrendering to dumb animal panic. Animals banded together when
threatened and sought to protect themselves at all costs. No, despite
Vigal's lofty rhetoric and common sense, Jara could see that nothing
would persuade the Prime Committee to overrule Len Borda now.

So the infoquake was a tool of Len Borda's then? A desperate
attempt to thumb down the scales of justice? Natch had expressed that
opinion several times, and Jara had been inclined to agree with him.

But something didn't quite add up. If the high executive was going to
execute such an attack, wouldn't he have prepared the guards of the
Defense and Wellness Council first? The officers in white robes and yellow
stars were milling around the auditorium in confusion like everyone else,
cut off from their chain of command and unsure what to do. Some were
attempting to herd audience members out the doors peaceably, while
others were trying to block the doors and keep everyone inside.

If the infoquake is a governmentalist plot, thought the analyst, then why
isn't the government ready for it?

"What's going on?" mumbled a voice. Merri, struggling to find her
feet in a quite literal sense, as they were buried under Horvil and Robby.

"We need to get out of here," said Jara. "Now, before the crowd-"

She stopped short as some word of authority finally penetrated the
data vomit and took hold of the Council officers one by one. Within
seconds, a handful of Len Borda's lackeys around the auditorium had
drawn their dartguns and moved to the railings. They took careful aim
and centered on a single target.

Natch.

He had heard the rumbling. He had felt the tremors. He had sensed
the computational maelstrom raging from afar.

He had tried to run.

Now he kneels on the cold floor of the Tul Jabbor Complex,
writhing in the acid bath of the infoquake. Data piercing his mental
defenses like shrapnel, OCHREs thrumming crazily and heating up
nearly to the melting point. He sees patterns within patterns, things
not visible in any spectrum. Somewhere in his peripheral vision he sees
Serr Vigal, passed out on the stone but still breathing. Elsewhere he
catches a glimpse of a figure in a white robe shouldering his dart-rifle.

The nothingness at the center of the universe.

The guardian and the keeper.

You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices.

I can handle everything the world throws at me. Just watch.

Natch closes his eyes. It's hard enough to concentrate through all
the noise; the infoquake just makes things worse. But he has to concentrate; he has to. He flings his mind onto the Data Sea and finds live
video feeds from every conceivable angle, the perspectives of scared
drudges watching the scene unfold from the audience. With his own
eyes, Natch can only see and react to what's in front of his face. Here
in the infinite ocean of information, he can see all.

Natch gathers his courage and activates MultiReal.

Magan came to and reached reflexively for the dartgun at his side. The
corrugated surface of the grip felt like safety. With the other hand he
probed his forehead for the bruise he had received striking his head
against the railing. Still sore, but healing quickly through the miracle
of OCHRE technology.

He pried open his eyelids, scrambled shakily to his feet, and tried
to take inventory of the situation. Infoquake ebbing and flowing. Audience members fleeing. Petrucio Patel crawling slowly toward the
stairway. Prime Committee members safe. Officers of the Defense and
Wellness Council gathering at the railings, shoving spectators aside,
aiming their dartguns at Natch.

And firing.

Magan gaped dumbly as eight or nine darts whizzed through the
air toward the center of the auditorium. The Council lieutenant
rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was experiencing some kind of
residual hallucination from the infoquake. Every single officer missed
the target.

There was another volley, then another. Natch remained kneeling
on the floor, cocooned in his own internal awareness. The needles
tinked harmlessly onto the stone around him.

Magan had commanded more missions than he could count. He
had seen Council troops on good days and bad; he had seen horribly
botched raids, officers in white robes twitching in their death throes
with heads staved in by Islander shock batons. For half a dozen officers
to fire on a stationary target less than thirty meters away and all miss
... it defied the laws of probability. Even factoring in the occasional
jostled elbow, the steep angle, and the intermittent aftershocks of the
infoquake, Magan had never seen a team of uniformed officers perform
so poorly. MultiReal, he thought. Natch must be using MultiReal.

Lieutenant Executive Lee snapped into combat mode between one
instant and the next. He made sure the dartgun in his hand was cocked
and loaded with a variety of black code routines and felt the battle language algorithms slide over his mind like a glove. "Instant broker!
Parallel!" he barked at the soldiers, waving his arms in the air. Stop!
Stop, you fools!

But the rain of darts continued unabated. Eight officers, now ten,
all firing, all missing.

Magan couldn't begin to guess how long Natch's MultiReal tricks
would enable him to keep dodging projectiles. There were hundreds of officers within the building, and untold thousands more on the streets
of Melbourne. Could MultiReal hold off a hundred dartguns? How
about two hundred? How about ten thousand? What would happen
when Len Borda decided to lob a missile on the whole complex?

Magan ran up the stairs and bolted toward the first Council officer
he could find, a strapping African with a dart-rifle mounted against his
shoulder and his eye squinting at the scope. "Mission detail! See to the
transom!" yelled Magan. Stop firing-that's an order!

The officer gave Lee a peculiar sidelong glance but did not take his
finger off the trigger. "Forward motion in an obscure trajectory," he
muttered, then fired off another dart.

The lieutenant blinked at the man for a moment, adrift, waiting
for the burst of decryption that never arrived. Could the battle language decryptors have somehow gotten scrambled by the infoquake?
Had this computational chaos left the Defense and Wellness Council
unable to communicate on the ground-and if so, why hadn't anyone
followed standard procedure and tried another protocol?

And then comprehension stabbed him in the gut. Someone had
reseeded the algorithms. The officers were communicating just fine; it
was only Magan who had been cut off.

I give you until the fifteenth of January to take possession of MultiReal. If
you do, we have an agreement. If you don't ...

Lieutenant Executive Lee's mind whirled, spun, gyrated. What
could the old man possibly be thinking? People were dying from
OCHRE failures right now all around the world. There were a handful
of bodies right here in the auditorium, whether trampled or shot or
simply fainted Magan couldn't tell. Why couldn't Borda see that
ordering Defense and Wellness Council officers to shoot black code
darts into a crowd-in full view of the drudges, no less-was nothing
short of madness?

Before the lieutenant could decide on a proper course of action, he
felt a hand grab his shoulder and spin him around.

Three guards in the white robe and yellow star. The hulking man
in the center of the pack was none other than Ridgello. His dartgun
was unholstered and its barrel aimed squarely at Magan's heart. "I'm
sorry, Lieutenant," he said. Ridgello's emotions had always been difficult to read, but behind his mask of duty, the soldier appeared to be
genuinely apologetic.

The lieutenant executive felt his heart sink. Not now. Not Ridgello.

Magan took a quick glance around the auditorium at the rapidly
emptying seats, at the firing Council officers, at the Plugenpatch representative who had gathered a few wide-eyed drudges together for an
impromptu statement of some kind. There were plenty of other
drudges taking cover behind their seats to record the scene, but their
attention was focused squarely on Natch. No one would notice or question an accidental death by friendly fire.

How long had Len Borda been playing him? How deep did his
comprehension of Magan's plots go? He remembered the ruse he had
pulled on the high executive weeks ago when Ridgello had held a
dartgun to the back of his head. Had Ridgello been in Borda's pocket
even then? For a moment, Magan toyed with the idea that the infoquake itself was nothing but a premeditated device for decapitating a
brewing rebellion, a way to tidy some loose ends. But no, such a plan
was too messy even for someone as choleric as Len Borda. Too full of
unknown variables.

Besides which, if Borda had given this operation careful thought,
he would have instructed Ridgello to shoot Magan in the back.

Short-term plans, long-term problems, thought the lieutenant. Your
recklessness fails you once more, Borda.

Acting on instinct, Magan Kai Lee ducked and delivered a swift
kick to Ridgello's knee. He could hear the tiny ving of a dart missing
his right ear by centimeters. In one smooth motion, the lieutenant
thumbed the selector on his gun, loading a more lethal variety of black
code dart, then fired point-blank into the soldier's belly. Ridgello's eyes didn't even have time to widen before the Null Current claimed him.
Magan shoved the rapidly stiffening corpse at the officer on the left,
causing him to stumble and shoot wide. But the third officer-

The third officer collapsed with three black code darts sticking out
of his torso. Magan snapped his neck around, following the angle of
impact back to its source, and saw a small huddle of Council officers
on the floor led by a taciturn Rey Gonerev. Papizon was there too. At
least Borda hadn't gotten to everyone. There were still some officers in
the Tul Jabbor Complex who remained loyal to Magan.

The Blade gave him a stiff nod. Magan returned it, then swiveled
around to plug Ridgello's remaining compatriot with three darts of his
own. The man gazed straight ahead and expired wordlessly.

How did it come to this? thought the lieutenant as he ducked into
the passage below the Committee members' ring, making for the floor
and Rey Gonerev.

"All right," urged Jara. "Let's go. This way."

The fiefcorpers had made no real progress in escaping the petitioners' ring, but at least they had all managed to achieve verticality.
Robby Robby and Ben were leaning on one another like wounded soldiers, while Merri was crying and Horvil simply stared bewilderedly
into space. Across the ring, Vigal was sitting upright and studying his
exit strategies like a seasoned backgammon player.