Part 20 (1/2)

”There's one more topic we need to cover,” Natch said with an abrupt change of tone. Either he was suddenly being sincere, or he had made new strides in his mask of personableness. ”The Defense and Wellness Council is out there, and they don't want this demonstration to go forward. You all saw what happened at Margaret Surina's speech. When this meeting is over and I send out the announcement of our demo, we've got seventy-two hours til showtime-and once Len Borda knows that, he might resort to something desperate.”

”What about the Patels?” said Jara. ”Are they going to come after us too?”

Natch scratched his elbow thoughtfully. ”I don't know. I can't see the angle in them resorting to violence. And Frederic and Petrucio never do anything without an angle.”

Horvil eyed a pack of hyenas in the distance as if they might be Council informants. ”So what do you want us to do? Lock our doors? Hire bodyguards?”

”Maybe we should just lie low until Tuesday,” suggested Ben. ”Find somewhere the Council can't get to us.”

Merri gave the young apprentice a dark look. ”Like where?”

There was a long pause. Somewhere in the distance, a cl.u.s.ter of African bats shrieked. The Defense and Wellness Council had a presence in every city on the globe, every chartered settlement on Luna and Mars, every jerrybuilt outpost orbiting the sun from Earth to the asteroid belt. Was there anyplace in the whole of human civilization where Borda couldn't find them?

Natch leaned forward, balancing his chin on the tips of his two index fingers. ”All right, then,” he said. ”Everyone's going to come out here to Andra Pradesh. The Surina compound's got plenty of accommodations and the best programming facilities in the world-not to mention armed security.”

”What good is that going to do us?” said Jara with a grimace. ”The Council marched right inside the gates the other day while Surina security just sat there and watched. What makes you think they'll stop Borda this time?”

The entrepreneur closed his eyes once more, and Jara realized he had explored this situation a thousand times already in his head. ”Where else can we go? Any place that's primitive enough to escape the Council's notice is too backwards for us to put together a demo in. And I've looked everywhere ... the Islands, the Pharisee Territories, OrbiCo s.p.a.ce freighters. It's the same wherever you look. At least in Andra Pradesh we'll see them coming.”

”What-what about Serr Vigal?” stuttered Horvil.

”Vigal will be all right. He's got his own private security team at the conference, and everyone knows he doesn't have much to do with our day-to-day operations. He promised he'd show up for the demo.”

”Natch, what about me?” Merri's tone of voice was distraught, almost tearful. ”I don't think there's any shuttle that can get from Luna to Terra that fast. The presentation will be over while I'm still in transit.”

”I haven't forgotten about you. I've made you a reservation at TeleCo later this afternoon.”

Jara's eyes went wide with disbelief. ”Teleport-from the moon? Are you kidding? Do you know how expensive that is? That's like our entire third quarter budget right there.”

”Not as expensive as replacing a dead channel manager at the last minute,” said Natch.

n.o.body could argue with that.

Ten minutes later, Natch cut his multi connection. He stood on the red square tile in his hallway and took stock of preparations for Tuesday's performance. All the pieces were set on the board: the auditorium s.p.a.ce had been reserved, the proper doc.u.mentation had been filed with the Meme Cooperative, the press release had been blasted to every corner of the Data Sea. He gave the drudges another fifteen minutes before they started a blitzkrieg of their own.

He consulted the time and shook his head. Precious seconds were ticking away, time disappearing forever into the void. He would need to drive his staff hard in order to complete this ma.s.sive undertaking. He would need to thrash a little sloppiness out of Horvil; to wink and cajole a little extra effort out of Jara; to give Merri that zone of comfort that allowed her to produce consistently excellent work. Benyamin's motivations were still a mystery to him, as were those of the Islander Quell. But Natch felt confident he would find their hooks before this crunch was through.

The fiefcorp master made a quick list of things he would need at the Surina complex. His satchel of bio/logic programming bars. A few s.h.i.+rts. An extra pair of pants. The gabardine suit he had purchased for important events. Natch tucked the hermetically sealed packets of clothing into his satchel, wolfed down a sandwich, and was on his way. As he left the building, he imagined he could hear his apartment breaking down and compressing into its component pieces.

November afternoons in Shenandoah were dreary affairs. It would not be unusual to expect a dusting of early snow, but Natch's LPRACG weather service was predicting rain. Indeed, a group of ominous dark clouds had a.s.sembled on the city's western edge, trying to decide whether to advance downtown or move on to riper targets. The threat of rain was enough to empty the streets. Why slog through the rain when you could multi to some sunny locale halfway around the globe?

The large viewscreen down the road from Natch's building had long since moved on from its ChaiQuoke advertis.e.m.e.nt. Now it showcased a bosomy woman with a l.u.s.tful gaze that followed everyone who pa.s.sed by. Above her shoulder were the words: I'LL BE WAITING FOR YOU IN 49TH HEAVEN.

Vacation packages for all ages and income brackets.

But Natch paid as little heed to the sign as he did to the mounting rain. His head was already inside Minds.p.a.ce at the Surina Enterprise Facility, toying with the intricate code stored in the MultiReal databases. By the time he made it halfway to the TubeCo station, his hair had drooped mopstyle onto his forehead, bogged down by the afternoon drizzle.

He leaned forward to shake off the watery acc.u.mulation, causing the first dart to whizz past his right ear.

Natch snapped his head up and saw a small needle embedded in the side of the building he had been walking past. Undoubtedly, the dart's payload of OCHREs was discharging harmlessly into the concrete.

Darts ... OCHREs laden with ... black code!

Natch's animal instincts took over as he sprinted for cover. He caught a glimpse of a figure in a black robe flecked with crimson, shouldering a dart-rifle. Firing.

Thwip! Thwip! Two more projectiles slammed into the wall mere centimeters away, sending miniature starbursts of rainwater into the air.

Natch dove around the corner into an alleyway of sorts, a temporary opening between buildings that did not need the s.p.a.ce. An avenue of shadows that would be gone long before anyone got around to naming it. Natch dimly realized that ending up here was no accident; this a.s.sault had been well planned.

He risked a glance back across the street, where he had seen the figure in the black robe. If the man was a Council officer, he was not wearing any of the standard issue uniforms. The robe draped him from head to toe, and the red formed some kind of pattern-Chinese characters, perhaps. Illegible at this distance, in any event.

The man was making brusque hand signals in several directions. He was not alone.

Two figures went tearing past the alleyway in an attempt to establish a flanking position on the other side. In one fluid motion, Natch drew a bio/logic programming bar from his satchel and hurled it like a discus.

The bar hit home, and one of the black-robed figures went down with a grunt. Definitely human, definitely male, and definitely not a multi projection. He doubted he had used enough force to cause major damage, but a solid metal bar in the gut was enough to bring anyone to the floor for at least a few minutes.

Natch could see more scrambling motions in the shadows, and more figures in identical black robes. He swung his head around wildly, looking for someone on the street to yell to, some method of escape. But the street was empty and the only way out of the alley lay some fifty meters ahead of him. Natch bolted down the corridor, frantically trying to think of a bio/logic program he could use for selfdefense. Forty meters to the end of the alley ... thirty meters ... almost halfway there ...

And then Natch felt the pinp.r.i.c.k of a needle in his back, near the base of his spine, and the black code slammed into him.

He flopped around and saw one of his mysterious pursuers standing at the end of the alleyway, dartgun mounted on his shoulder. Before Natch could react, he was. .h.i.t twice more in the side and the right forearm.

As the malevolent dart tip OCHREs flowed into his bloodstream, he felt surprisingly little pain. All the same, he knew it wouldn't be long before the insidious machines had nullified his defenses and reprogrammed his internal systems. The rules of the Meme Cooperative, the strictures of Dr. Plugenpatch, the protective matrix of OCHREs, and the red blood cells in his body-all could be circ.u.mvented, given time and expertise and direct access to the major arteries carrying cellular traffic.

Natch tried one last desperate ConfidentialWhisper request to Horvil, but it was too late. He collapsed face first into a puddle of rainwater and continued down below street level into darkness.

The apprentices, conscious of the press of time, cut their multi connections and made arrangements to cart their bodies to Andra Pradesh. Only Jara stayed behind at the Enterprise Facility to await Quell's arrival.

Horvil's tube ride to Andra Pradesh was uneventful. No Council officers in white robes lurking around, no strange looks from fellow tube pa.s.sengers other than the ones Horvil was used to getting. The engineer had ascended halfway up the steep hill inside the Surina compound gates before it occurred to him that a three-day stay at Andra Pradesh might require more than his bio/logic programming bars and a thermos of nitro.

He was the first one back at the safari SeeNaRee. Quell had still not arrived. While Jara tried to wrap up the first draft of a speech outline before she fetched her body from London, Horvil made camp at the antiseptic conference table. He conjured up a diagram of Probabilities 4.9 and began poring over the details, trying to familiarize himself with a program he had unceremoniously discarded five years ago. It was like reading old hive poetry; the coding was sloppy, the connections strained and amateurish. Probabilities 4.9 would not even have pa.s.sed muster at Dr. Plugenpatch five years ago, and the bio/logic standards had evolved so much since then. He couldn't wait to find a workbench and tear into this program in Minds.p.a.ce.

Suddenly, a shadow fell across the table, obscuring the holograph. Horvil looked up in irritation. Not another one of those SeeNaRee elephants It was no elephant. An immense man stood before him, possibly fifty years old but with the physique of someone half that age. A pale blonde ponytail slunk down one shoulder and splayed out over his great barrel chest. The man could have cracked Horvil's head like a walnut between his biceps and forearm, but his demeanor was calm, almost sardonic. ”I presume you're Horvil,” he said.

Horvil balked, his mind a blank. ”And you are?”

”I'm your new apprentice,” replied the man. ”Quell.” He extended a hand in Horvil's direction at precisely the same time Horvil arose and started to bow. The plump engineer stared at the calloused and manyringed hand in confusion.

”You're supposed to shake it, you idiot.” Jara walked up and placed her tiny palm in Quell's. To do so, she nearly had to get up on her tiptoes. ”Towards Perfection. I'm Jara, Natch's bio/logic a.n.a.lyst. Don't mind Horvil-not everybody here is that clueless about your customs.” The big man enclosed her virtual hand in his flesh fist, and they went through the awkward mechanics of a handshake. Finally, she pulled her hand away in frustration. ”Maybe you can see why we bow instead.”

Quell did not miss a beat. ”And maybe you can see why I insist on shaking anyway.”

All at once, comprehension came flooding into Horvil's head. He caught sight of the plain tan breeches and the thin copper collar suspended from the man's neck. The breeches were cinched tightly around his waist with a snakeskin belt that looked like it was actually made out of snakeskin. ”Y-you're an unconnectible!” the engineer exclaimed in surprise.

”Yeah,” replied Quell, ”although I think the term you're looking for is Islander.”