Part 17 (1/2)

A rote conversation ensued. Was BizWorks 139.5f listed as an acceptable expense in the Natch Fiefcorp data stores? Yes, it was. Did the unique identifying code stored in the newt's memory correspond to the one expected by the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp? Yes, it did. Was the price quoted by PulCorp agreeable to its customer? Yes, it was.

The answer triggered an innate response in the data newt. The newt replicated itself, stamped its clone with a subset of the required tools, and waited patiently as the newcomer sped off to the Vault. Billions of newts had already queued up at the nearby Vault processing center to retrieve and deposit payments large and small, but there was no disagreement or jockeying for position in a world of indelible, unalterable rules. The data representative of the Pierre Loget Fiefcorp slid into line in its prescribed position. After a few nanoseconds, the newt reached the front of the queue and presented the Vault agent with its transaction: Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp, Pierre Ulyanich Loget Fiefcorp, 0.03 credits. The Vault agent made all the appropriate inquiries and finally responded with a credit authorization. What happened to the credit authorization after that was of no concern to the cloned newt; it reported a transaction summary back to its master and returned to the mother station.

With a credit authorization in its databanks, the data newt at the Natch Fiefcorp data stores determined it was ready to proceed. It consulted the fore table to look for its Defense and Wellness Council-sanctioned processing precedence, and lined up behind OCHRE transmissions, geosynchrons, Prime Committee statistical algorithms, and agents of L-PRACG taxation. Finally, the newt arrived at the front of the line and completed the task for which it had been born: the recording of an order by the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp for a replacement part on one of Horvil's bio/logic programming bars.

All that remained was housecleaning. The newt sp.a.w.ned another clone to relay the order back to the mother station. Meanwhile, the newt consulted its own aft table for special instructions on completing a business transaction. The L-PRACG with jurisdiction over the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp dictated that all programs must log a record of their activities in the fiefcorp's data stores. This task done, the newt performed a quick self-examination to see if it had lost data integrity or left any stray bits of information in the fiefcorp's holdings or needed to do any unusual acts of maintenance. All indications were that the newt had conducted a clean transaction.

And so the data structure left the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp holdings to perform a sweep of the remaining 4,293 fiefcorps on Pierre Loget's subscription list.

Several thousand nanoseconds later, the newt returned to the mother processing station-the prodigal son back home at last. The data structure reported a summary of its activities for the statistical programs to compile and then reported back to the Meme Cooperative energy stores. There the newt uncomplainingly self-destructed, having successfully fulfilled its mission of existence.

A few billion oscillations of hydrogen later, another second pa.s.sed.

More than twenty-four hours had gone by since Margaret's speech, and Jara had slept for none of them. Had she not been propping herself awake with Doze-B-Gone 91 and AntiSleepStim 124.7 and two cups of nitro, the a.n.a.lyst might have taken more notice of her surroundings. Instead, Jara sleepwalked past the guards at Andra Pradesh and up three stories of the blue Surina Enterprise Facility with hardly a glance in any direction.

She opened the conference room door and found herself standing in a corporate boardroom from antiquity.

Jara blinked hard, twice, wondering if the opulent surroundings were the hallucinations of a sleep-deprived mind. The oval-shaped room sported a faux mahogany table that could have seated twenty, gla.s.s windows that overlooked a panoply of phallic skysc.r.a.pers, and a wet bar complete with Waterford crystal and Kentucky bourbon. But Jara was in no mood to start tapping things to figure out whether they were real or SeeNaRee. She approached the table and slumped onto a chair, which automatically scooted in and adjusted to the contours of her body. This one, at least, was virtual.

The a.n.a.lyst, consulting the time, realized she had arrived fifteen minutes early for their fiefcorp meeting. Jara scowled an order to the building for another cup of nitro, and then called up the morning drudge reports on a nearby window.

n.o.body could quite recall who had coined the term infoquake, but within hours it had become common currency throughout the civilized world. Infoquake: a mysterious computational disturbance of unknown origin and awesome destructive power. Even the handful of residents living at remote experimental colonies beyond Jupiter were now bandying the word around like they had been speaking it for years.

Unfortunately, the terminology was just about the only thing the pundits could agree upon.

”Once again, the Data Sea has exhibited its juvenile tendency to turn everything into a conspiracy,” wrote the drudge Mah Lo Vertiginous.

According to the preliminary a.n.a.lysis from Creed Conscientious, the infoquake was a simple bottleneck of information; nothing more, nothing less. An unheard-of concentration of multi projections in a single s.p.a.ce, vying for access to the same facts and figures on the Data Sea. Is it so hard to imagine that a series of overloaded data agents could cause OCHREs to fail?

But Vertiginous' opinion was by no means the majority along the drudge circuit. Sen Sivv Sor had a considerably darker view of the previous night's events: Some governmentalist cretins would have you believe we suffered from a simple bottleneck of information last night. Unfortunately, dear readers, nothing could be further from the truth.

Since when does a simple bottleneck of information stop several hundred weak hearts from beating? Since when does a simple bottleneck of information cause a generator malfunction on Furtoid and send two hundred people to an icy death? Since when does a simple bottleneck of information wreak havoc with the gravity control on 49th Heaven and fling three dozen people into freefall?

Mark my words: Disasters like the infoquake are not natural occurrences. Wherever you find such poisonous medicine, there's a human hand nearby administering the dose.

”Let me guess,” said a voice. ”Tokyo circa the Second American Revolution.”

Jara whipped her head around to find Horvil surveying the room. The elaborate SeeNaRee only seemed to heighten the engineer's already high spirits. As soon as he spotted the wet bar, Horvil bounded across the room on some undefined errand of mischief. His movement revealed a nervous-looking youth who had been standing in the engineer's shadow.

”It's not Tokyo,” said Jara. ”It's New York City, before the orbital colony hit. See, that's the Hudson River over there.” She regarded the young man with a cynical eye, noticed his inky black hair and five o'clock shadow, and decided he must be a relative of Horvil. His face had the same air of bonhomie, but Jara could also see an undercurrent of piety that could only have been a genetic gift from the infamous Aunt Berilla. ”You must be Benyamin.”

The youth nodded and gave a polite bow in Jara's direction. ”Towards Perfection,” he said. ”I guess you're Jara. Horvil's told me a lot about you.”

Jara shot a suspicious glance at the engineer, who had begun to juggle the Waterford crystal. Over his head, patterns of reflected sunlight danced crazily on the ceiling. ”Oh, has he?”

”Don't worry,” said Horvil. ”I really only told him a tiny bit. Just the good things.”

Benyamin sensed the tension and immediately a.s.sumed the role of diplomat. ”Ah, the drudges,” he said, nodding at the chaotic display of fully justified type on the window. ”You know, Khann Frejohr thinks High Executive Borda caused it.”

”Caused what?”

”Well, the infoquake.”

Horvil had moved from three pieces of stemware to four, and their arcs of flight were growing longer by the second. ”Yeah, I saw that speech he gave last night,” he said. ”The evil work of the Defense and Wellness Council. Len Borda's last-ditch effort to muzzle the Sarinas once and for all. You gotta love that Khann Frejohr.”

”What a load of s.h.i.+t,” said Jara with a grimace. ”Come on, Horvil. Borda pulled his troops out of Andra Pradesh almost as soon as the infoquake was over. If he wanted Margaret dead, she'd be dead by now.” She waved her hand, banis.h.i.+ng the news coverage from the window screen. ”So how did Borda react to Khann's speech? He must have gone completely offline.”

Benyamin nodded. ”That's putting it mildly. He shut down the Sigh and the Jamm and all other 'resource-intensive pleasure networks' until further notice.”

”He shut down-?”

”Len Borda isn't our problem right now.” The three fiefcorp apprentices swiveled around to find Natch standing in the doorway. Jara saw that he had come with wolf's grin and invisible audience in tow, not to mention an impeccable pin-striped suit that would have been at home in ancient New York. ”So let's get down to business already.”

Horvil caught three pieces of stemware but accidentally let the fourth slip through his fingers. The virtual Waterford landed on the marble floor with a clang but did not break. ”What about Vigal? And Merri?” asked Horvil.

”Vigal's off to another one of his seminars in Beijing,” said Natch. ”Effects of Orbital Colony Gravitational Fields on Neural Pathways, or something like that.”

”Nothing stops a scientific conference,” muttered Jara.

”And I'm right here,” said Merri. The blonde channel manager had apparently snuck in while n.o.body was paying attention. Merri had taken a seat near Natch's side of the table and projected a set of notes visible on the dark wood in front of her. Her penmans.h.i.+p was crisp and perfect, something that gave Jara an inexplicable pang of jealousy.

”So what's everyone waiting for?” cried Natch in a sudden fit of pique. ”Sit the f.u.c.k down.”

Natch planted himself in the cus.h.i.+oned leather chair at the head of the table and surveyed his four apprentices with a barely suppressed smirk. A snapshot of the Council troops tromping through the Surina courtyard loomed large on the window behind him; Jara realized she must have accidentally left open one of her morning news stories. The four apprentices gazed expectantly back and forth between the photo and their fiefcorp master. Margaret Surina, the Defense and Wellness Council, investor meetings, infoquakes, MultiReal-hadn't the time finally come for Natch to let them know what was going on?

The entrepreneur turned to Jara with p.r.o.nounced matter-of-factness, his face a riddle. ”Why don't you start us off with an a.n.a.lysis of the latest sales figures,” he said.

Jara shrugged. Sales figures? Who can think of sales at a time like this? But she knew Natch, and had prepared a brief a.n.a.lysis this morning anyway. She snapped her fingers briskly, causing a three-dimensional chart to hover over the surface of the conference table. Lines in primary colors raced one another to see which could climb to the top right corner the quickest.

The a.n.a.lyst indicated an uncharacteristic dip at the end of a green line labeled MENTAL INDEXX 39. ”Looks like one of our programs took a hit yesterday,” she said. ”An 18 percent drop in the last twentyfour hours. It must have suffered a few glitches during the infoquake.” She gave Horvil the evil eye. ”Billy Sterno's DataReorg 55c had a 43 percent jump in sales during the same period.”

Horvil sat back confidently, measuring the table as a possible resting spot for his feet. ”Glitches happen. Mental Indexx 40'11 bring 'em back into the fold.”

As she crunched the numbers, Merri plucked at the chart lines like guitar strings. ”I see there's a silver lining here as well.”

Jara smiled. ”Yeah, I see it too.... It looks like the Patel Brothers had a few glitches of their own, and Primo's took note.” The chart s.h.i.+fted from sales figures to Primo's scores. If anything, the incline of the race became even steeper. ”So even though we lost market share to Billy Sterno, we gained ground against the Patels on Primo's. Looks like we're back up to number three!”

Horvil broke out in a spirited cheer, which Merri and Benyamin echoed with a pair of quiet grins. Natch seemed oddly oblivious, a mystery that Jara did not feel like pursuing. Maybe this info quake was the end of the whole thing, she thought. Maybe all this ha.s.sle will just go away, and my last ten months will be business as usual.

”Okay, so if we look at the big picture, what've we got?” said Horvil.

”82.4 percent gross increase in revenues so far this year,” stated Jara, ”most of that after we hit number one on Primo's. And only a 17 percent increase in expenditures.” She banished the bar chart to datalimbo with a wave of her hand. ”I'd say we're doing pretty well.”

A look of concern slowly rippled across Merri's face. ”Only a 17 percent increase in spending-how is that possible?” The soft-spoken channel manager began counting on her fingers. ”In the last week alone, we've bought new bio/logic programming bars ... a.n.a.lysis algorithms ... these conference rooms ... not to mention hiring a new apprentice ...” She nodded her head towards Benyamin, who merely sat with a bland smile on his face. Merri took a deep breath. ”I was hoping, Natch, that you might be able to explain some of this.”

Natch raised one eyebrow. A private in-joke with his invisible audience. ”What do you want me to explain?”