Multireal (57 page)

Natch shifted into high alert and began casting python-quick
glances over his shoulder to make sure he still had a clear retreat. Pierre
Loget was standing near the front door to the place, but he wasn't
speaking the body language of conflict, and he appeared to be unarmed.

Suddenly the metal stalks were lowering to the ground and shedding programmers. People began walking up to Natch and jubilantly
clapping him on the back. There were catcalls of encouragement,
words of congratulations. It was all a little too overwhelming for the
entrepreneur's frayed nerves. Only a few hours ago, he had been racing
through the Tul Jabbor Complex dodging black code darts; now he
was being feted like a gladiator. And the people cheering him-he had
humiliated some of these people over the years, ruined them. Why
shower such praise on him now? Incomprehensible.

At some point, wine began to flow around the room, and Natch
found a full glass being pressed into his hand. He watched for some
furtive sign of poison. But the revelers were all imbibing sloppily from
the same bottle, passing glasses haphazardly around with no semblance
of order. Still, Natch drank nothing.

The ancient hotel lobby quickly became the site of the strangest
party Natch had ever witnessed. In one corner, Billy Sterno was presiding over a cart of steaming finger foods that someone had rolled in
from a back room. In another corner, one of the more promising young programmers in muscle tissue and cartilage was dancing tipsily atop a
crescent platform while a handful of engineers egged him on. Several
of the figures in black robes had gathered in a solemn semicircle to
mourn the ones who had not made it out of the Tul Jabbor Complex
alive. And serving as ringmaster for the whole circus was Brone,
smiling wider than Natch had seen him smile since initiation.

Finally, after an hour of this surrealism, Natch felt a set of fingers
brushing his arm. Pierre Loget. "You're tired," said Loget. "Go ahead,
we've got quarters for you. Upstairs, room two-twelve. You can take
either staircase."

Natch couldn't think of an appropriate reaction, so he made none.
He started up the right-hand staircase and found his way down the
dim corridor to a room with the number 212 freshly painted on its surface. The door swung open as he approached.

Run, he could hear an inner voice urging. Run while you still can. But
Natch didn't have the strength. He gave the room a quick once-over,
then barricaded the door behind him. There seemed to be nothing sinister about the furnishings arrayed around the room, and the bed he collapsed in appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary bed.

37

Natch couldn't recall the last time he had had a full night's sleep.
Sometime in October, he imagined, before he hit number one on
Primo's. Before Margaret and MultiReal. He was not naive enough to
think twelve hours of slumber would solve all his problems-but certainly, he thought, I expected more than this. Natch awoke feeling like
nothing had changed, like he had merely transported his weariness
intact half a day into the future.

He was lying on a decadently large bed, submerged in pillows that
appeared to be stuffed with real feathers. Portraits hanging on the wall
against a background of royal blue chevrons spoke of a past where mustached men frolicked on horseback in fields of Kentucky bluegrass.
Natch stumbled over to the shower. On the way, he caught a glimpse
through the window of a wide boulevard that might have been the
apex of high society before the Autonomous Revolt. Now it wallowed
in smashed concrete and twisted metal.

The water was clean and fresh. Once showered, Natch couldn't
think of anything else to do but join the Thasselians downstairs.

Brone and his devotees were waiting in the atrium. Natch was surprised to see all of the metal stalks lowered nearly to the ground, with
the crescent-shaped platforms intermeshed seamlessly to form one
enormous oval conference table. Where the workbenches had gotten
off to, Natch wasn't sure.

"Come come come!" beckoned Brone from a chair on the far side
of the room. "You almost missed breakfast." The bodhisattva's demeanor remained relentlessly upbeat, which was enough to make
Natch nervous.

Natch tiptoed carefully down the stairway, expecting some kind
of booby trap or trick step all the way. He found one of a dozen empty chairs on the opposite end of the table from Brone, and
slumped into it.

The bodhisattva pointed at a pretzel-shaped pastry on his plate
oozing with red jam. "These are exquisite," he offered. "Try one."
Something about the room's acoustics allowed him to speak in a conversational tone and still be heard across the table.

Natch eyed the collection of pastries on the plate in front of him
suspiciously and prodded the red one with a fork. Finally, ravenous, he
pushed himself away from the table, walked a dozen paces counterclockwise, and grabbed someone else's largely untouched plate. Then
he proceeded back to his seat and wolfed the pastries down one by one.
The strawberry pastry was, indeed, delicious.

Brone slapped the table in mock indignation. "For process' preservation, Natch! Those poisoned pastries took me hours to prepare. I told
you he was too smart to fall for this, Loget."

A few seats down, Pierre Loget tittered.

The setting was almost aggressively mundane. Ordinary people
chowing down on ordinary breakfasts, holding ordinary whispered
conversations about soccer, fashion, and politics. Natch hadn't realized
Brone was even capable of such tidy domesticity.

"So I assume the room was comfortable," continued the bodhisattva,
his lips hinting at a smile. Natch didn't answer. "If not, there are plenty
of other vacant ones to choose from. Obviously we're missing a few
amenities out here. No underground transfer system for us, I'm afraid!
But we've had plenty of time to stock up on the basics. The larder's quite
full, and we've installed automated laundry facilities. Billy's even outfitted the ballroom with some good selections of SeeNaRee."

A few seats over from Natch, Billy Sterno nodded, his goatee
greasy with undercooked egg.

Natch brushed the crumbs off his own face and sat back. "What
makes you think I'm planning on staying here?" he growled.

The bodhisattva of Creed Thassel shrugged. "You wish to leave?" he said. "No one's stopping you." He extended his synthetic hand
toward the front door, which hung open a few tantalizing centimeters.
"But since I did provide you with this sumptuous breakfast, perhaps
you could do me the courtesy of-"

"Of listening to your little business proposal," interrupted the
entrepreneur, folding his arms in front of his chest. "Fine, I get it. But
you might as well save your breath. You know I can't trust you. Not
after-not after what happened in Shenandoah."

"The black code again," replied Brone with a shake of his head,
ever the captious professor. "Let me explain something to you, Natch.
That black code is the only thing that's kept you alive this long. You
think it was your cunning and ingenuity that kept the Council from
finding you time and again? No, it was my code, masking and
encrypting your bio/logic signatures. Erasing the breadcrumbs you
leave behind on the Data Sea. It's only because of my foresight that you
got out of the Tul Jabbor Complex in one piece."

The entrepreneur blanched. "You caused the infoquake?"

Brone shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I had nothing to do with
that. But I figured the Council would try to take you into custody if
the hearing started going the libertarians' way. So when the infoquake
hit, my team was already in place, ready to get you out of there. I saved
your life, Natch."

"And last month when you ambushed me in the alleyway? I suppose you think you were saving my life then too?"

"Yes," replied the bodhisattva, not missing a beat. "Don't forgetCreed Thassel has eyes and ears everywhere, including the Defense and
Wellness Council. We see what the rest of the world refuses to see." He
tapped his cheekbone twice, right under the artificial eye. "Len Borda
was drawing up plans to march on Andra Pradesh again, Natch. He
was planning to seize MultiReal at your little demo. Fortunately for
you, I came up with the idea of hiding you from the Council's prying
eyes. Convincing Borda that you had disappeared and weren't going to show up to Andra Pradesh anyway. And it worked! With your apprentices running around all over the globe trying to find you, the Council
had no choice but to call the operation off.

"So we woke you up a few hours early, assuming you'd immediately
scurry over to the Surina compound and prepare for your demo. A
demo you could now safely deliver without government interference.
But what did you do instead?" He laughed mirthlessly. "You ran off to
Len Borda and offered him MultiReal yourself-so Borda could protect you from me!"

Natch folded his arms and clutched his chest in a vain effort to stop
the trembling. He took a quick glimpse at the solemn faces around the
table and saw that their argument had sapped all traces of levity from
the room. "So why dress up in black robes and ambush me like that?
What was that all about?"

Loget cackled. "The black robes were camouflage," he said. "You
weren't supposed to see us. Sterno here blew that strategy by firing the
first shots too early."

"Told you we should have hired professionals," Billy Sterno sulked
under his breath, then stuffed his face with more egg.

"The robes were camouflage," said Brone, "but they were also a bit
of necessary theatrics. You weren't supposed to see us, but the Council
was. We needed to convince Borda that you'd really been abducted."

The entrepreneur stood slowly and planted his clenched fists on the
table. "You think I'm stupid enough to believe this story?" he said.
"You really think I can trust you?"

Around the table, the Thasselians were throwing each other worried looks. Brone leaned forward, folding his real and faux fingertips
together on the table. Suddenly Natch could see the ceaseless hatred
that had been burning in his eyes since the Shortest Initiation.
Nothing had changed in the past month. Indeed, nothing had changed
since that day a dozen years ago when Natch had watched him
writhing and bloody in the backseat of a Council hoverbird.

"You want to know how you can trust me?" said the bodhisattva in
a voice kicking with strangled fury. "You can trust me because I kept
you alive, Natch. Because I arranged to pull you out of that mess at the
Tul Jabbor Complex instead of leaving you to the mercy of Len Borda's
truth extractors. Don't you think I want revenge? I've had opportunities. Multiple opportunities. And each time I've held back. Why?
Because I need you here.

"Why plug you with black code under the cover of night? I told
you, Natch. You were about to hand MultiReal over to the Council on
a jeweled platter. You had just terminated our loan agreement and
indicated that you had no intention of listening to reason. Someone
needed to save you from yourself. I did."

Natch straightened up and prepared to walk out the door. Surely
there was no clearer definition of insanity than staying here in the den
of his oldest and gravest enemy. The idle chatter around the table completely ceased. Several dozen pairs of eyes watched silently, but nobody
made any move to restrain him.

"I repeat, Natch: if you decide to leave, I won't stop you," said
Brone. He extended one hand toward the exit. "But tell me this.
Where will you go?"

Natch stopped short. He sat down.

Brone nodded, all levity bled from his demeanor. It was almost a
comfort seeing him like this: brooding, unforgiving, self-absorbed to
the extreme. "Good," he said. "Now you know how I arranged to bring
you here. Would you like to know why?"