Multireal (69 page)

"Don't try to pretend you give a shit," said Jara, shaking her head.
"You don't care about us, or about Natch. I saw what happened at the
Tul Jabbor Complex. You want MultiReal so you can unseat Len Borda
as high executive. You want to use it to take over the Defense and
Wellness Council."

Magan Kai Lee let out a sigh, and for only the second time in their
brief acquaintance Jara saw the cracks in his poise and equanimity. "I
don't want anyone in the Council to use MultiReal," he said. "I want
the program in private hands. But not under Natch's control. I want
MultiReal under your control, Jara."

"But ... why?"

"Because you're the only one I trust with it."

Jara reacted as if the lieutenant executive had slapped her. Magan
Kai Lee trusted her? All along, she had assumed Magan wanted MultiReal in her hands because she was the weak one, the easily manipulable
one. But what if the exact opposite were true? Was it possible that the
lieutenant executive had worked to get Natch suspended from the fiefcorp because she was the strong one? Because she was the one most
capable of standing up to both Natch and Len Borda?

She surveyed the faces of her fellow fiefcorpers. Merri seemed crestfallen and distraught. Benyamin's upper lip was visibly quivering with
anger. Serr Vigal looked like he was on the verge of retreating back to
Omaha and never returning. Horvil's attention had floated off into the
distance, and Jara knew he was probably thinking about the job offer
he had received through his Aunt Berilla.

But then they turned as a group to look at Jara, and she saw something she did not expect. For the first time since the Council turned their company upside-down, the fiefcorp had confidence in her. They
trusted in her leadership.

Jara pushed her chair back, stood up from the table, and marched
slowly toward the Council lieutenant. Papizon's left hand flexed
instinctively on the pommel of his dartgun, but he quickly restrained
the impulse. Jara stopped when she was toe to toe with Magan Kai Lee
and looked him straight in the eye.

"Maybe you trust me," seethed the analyst through clenched teeth,
"but do you think I trust you? You tried to break up this company
through lies and mistrust. By dragging their professional careers
through the mud and leaving mine intact." She extended a finger back
toward the apprentices and Vigal. "You did everything you could to
convince them I sold out to the Council, when you knew perfectly well
that I refused to make a deal with you."

The lieutenant executive's split-second downward glance was as
good as an admission of guilt, as far as Jara was concerned.

"But you know what, Magan? You've failed. Utterly failed.

"Ever since this whole thing started, you've been trying to tear this
fiefcorp apart. You dredged up dirt on us, you raided our homes, you disrupted our operations, you sullied our reputations. You dragged our chief
engineer off to prison on bogus charges. And what do you have to show
for it? Nothing. This company has clawed its way back from the edge,
millimeter by millimeter. We're well on our way to resolving our cases
with the Meme Cooperative, and soon we'll be back where we started.

"You don't have Natch. You don't even have MultiReal.

"And the beautiful thing? The program's totally gone. We have no
way of getting in touch with Natch. None of us have any idea where
he is. You should have known from the very beginning that Natch
would be a step ahead of you-he always is. He's probably halfway to
Mars or Furtoid by now, and you'll never find him. Do you hear me?
You will never find Natch. And if nobody can find Natch, nobody can get
their hands on MultiReal, can they?

"So take your fucking flunkies and never interrupt one of our meetings again. You've done your worst, and we're still here. Whatever
you're planning, we don't want any part of it.

"The answer is no."

A wrinkle appeared in the space between Lee's eyebrows as he took
stock of the situation. Papizon's face contorted into some bizarre emotion resembling panic. Finally Magan gave the slightest of nods,
turned, and walked out the door, followed closely by Papizon.

Rey Gonerev stayed behind for a few seconds. She threw Jara a
smile-unvarnished and unironic, possibly even with a morsel of
respect thrown in-and then she too was gone.

45

Magan Kai Lee sat in the back of a Defense and Wellness Council hoverbird practicing his meditation. He straddled the threshold of nonself, peering into the anterooms of Enlightened Harmony with the
Universe, his consciousness a fleeting thing, a wriggling thread-

And then Rey Gonerev spoke, causing consciousness to come
roaring back like a vengeful beast.

"If you want me to stay with you," said the Blade, "I'm going to
need more information." She sounded weary, skeptical. Perhaps a little
afraid. Her fingers were busy unbraiding and then rebraiding dark
locks of hair over and over again.

Magan took a glance out the window to get his bearings. The
Earth was far below them and almost completely carpeted with cloud.
He could see three of their fighter escorts out the starboard window,
and had no doubt he would find the other three if he looked to port.
"What information?" he said.

"You can start by telling me where we're going."

"The orbital colony of Allowell," said Magan. "There to rearm and
regroup."

Pause. "And then?"

"We find Natch."

Rey Gonerev quietly worked on untangling a knot in her hair for
a minute. Magan suspected she was still smarting from the way Natch
had sized her up and shoved her aside at the Kordez Thassel Complex
a few weeks ago. But Magan had made no move to reassure her, either
then or now. She would need to exorcise that demon if she intended to
continue as his right-hand woman when he took the high executive's
seat. "How do you propose we find him?" she said.

"The fiefcorp master is a wanted man, Rey. His Vault account has been locked down. His license with the Meme Cooperative is still suspended. All of his friends and acquaintances are under surveillance.
Every drudge on the Data Sea knows his picture and identifying characteristics. If Natch so much as steps on a public tube train, we'll
know. The challenge isn't finding him. The challenge is finding him
before Len Borda does."

Rey Gonerev frowned. "And what-what if Natch is dead?"

"He's not."

The Blade reached for the side of the hoverbird and steadied herself against it. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

The other fiefcorpers cut their multi connections and went home, but
Jara was not quite ready to face the existential blankness of her empty
walls. Instead she threaded her way through the corridors of the Surina
Enterprise Facility and found the double doors that would lead her out
to the courtyard. Her heart was pounding at a tempo that might have
been appropriate for one of Geronimo's mocha grind songs.

The crowds had returned to the Surina complex, spurred by a temporary lull in the winter weather. A corpulent sun sat in the sky,
announcing that spring was right around the corner. Tourists were
streaming in and out of the Center for Historic Appreciation again, and
Jara saw that the Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton statues had been
shouldered aside to make way for a new monument to Margaret Surina.
Half a dozen couples stood in the center of the courtyard with arms
around one another, some staring up at the Revelation Spire, some
staring down at the engraved plaque marking the bodhisattva's burial
place. "I don't care about the strikes and the infoquakes and the unrest,"
Jara heard someone say. "I'm not going to let that rule my life."

The analyst found her way to the railing, where she could see the city of Andra Pradesh laid out before her feet. She prived herself to all
communication and let her skin absorb the sun's energy.

As soon as Magan Kai Lee had left the meeting, it occurred to Jara
that she had unilaterally rejected his offer without so much as a ConfidentialWhisper to the rest of the fiefcorp. Certainly the obstinate
Benyamin would have backed her up, but Merri? Vigal? Horvil? She
could imagine a hundred reasons why they might have leapt at the
lieutenant executive's offer. A chance to restore their careers and their
business credentials all in one shot. A chance to leap back into the
bio/logics game without penalty, and all they had to do in return was
help track down a man who had scorned and abandoned them anyway.
At the very least, someone might have objected to the way Jara made
such a major choice about their lives and careers without consulting
them. Imperious decision making seemed almost ... Natchlike.

But then Jara realized she was not running a democracy.

She was running a business.

Did she think she could just flee from everything Natch stood for
and still run a successful fiefcorp? Life wasn't cut into such predictable
shapes. For all his failings, Natch had led his company from complete
obscurity to the height of the Primo's bio/logic investment guideand he had done it quicker than anyone else in history. There were
good things to be salvaged from any boss who could do that. Her job
as the new leader of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was to take
the good ideas, to reject the bad ideas, and most importantly, to pound
her fist on a tabletop and make the firm determination which ideas
belonged where. Jara could scarcely believe it, but in the past few
weeks she had discovered that she had this ability.

She thought about the looks the fiefcorpers had given her before
cutting their multi connections. Merri, Horvil, Benyamin, and Serr
Vigal had regarded her not with admiration or awe or thankfulnessbut simply with respect. Jara was their leader now, and they accepted
that.

Jara called up ConfidentialWhisper and fired off a message to the
rest of the team.

"Everyone get some rest today," said the fiefcorp master. "We've
got a lot of work to do to get this company back on track. And we start
first thing tomorrow morning."

Natch is an entrepreneur with a burning ambition. He simply can't
define what it is.

The world he lives in is a ripe place for ambition. Having suffered
a cataclysmic Al revolt hundreds of years ago, the world embraced
Sheldon Surina and his science of bio/logics. Now, 359 years later,
thousands of small software companies-fiefcorps-compete ruthlessly for the right to sell the programs that run the human body.
Order is maintained by a patchwork of subscription-based governments called L-PRACGs. Overseeing these governments is the Prime
Committee, which uses the Defense and Wellness Council as its police
force.

As an orphaned boy in the care of the neural programmer Serr
Vigal, Natch is plagued by strange and hallucinatory visions. He learns
to use his wits to best his childhood enemies and achieve top scores in
his class. His only obstacle is Brone, a boy with an equally cunning
intellect and a more charismatic way with people. But Brone is soon
dispatched during the boys' initiation by a bear attack that is partly
accident, partly fate, and partly Natch's dark vengeance.