Part 7 (1/2)
How convenient, thought Jara, stubbornly clinging to her midnight malaise. We issue a press release, and al the drudges who hate Natch suddenly get amnesia. She continued reading: After Len Borda's aggressive posturing of late, the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp's announcement of a MultiReal exposition is not only bril iant, it's courageous. It puts Natch and his apprentices out in the open when a lesser man would seek the shadows. It's a bold and clear statement to the Defense and Wel ness Council: we are not afraid of you.
And the symbolism of twenty-three lucky lottery winners playing MultiReal soccer shouldn't be lost on anyone either. Let's hope the twentythree members of the Prime Committee are watching these soccer players careful y.
Sen Sivv Sor, meanwhile, was covering another promising development: the burgeoning members.h.i.+p of a creed cal ed Libertas. The organization had been skulking around the periphery of the libertarian movement for years. But suddenly, with the election of Khann Frejohr as speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs, the members.h.i.+p ranks of Creed Libertas were exploding. And the match that had set off the powder keg was nothing less than Magan Kai Lee's raid on Natch's apartment. In the past few days alone, the creed had pledged another fifteen to twenty mil ion devotees.
There was plenty more, but Jara was suddenly interrupted by a multi request. Horvil.
She leapt out of bed, darted into the breakfast nook with the speed of a panther, and began a frenzied effort to straighten the countertop. What are you doing? the a.n.a.lyst scolded herself. It's Just Horvil. She abandoned the breakfast nook to its sloppery ten seconds later and accepted Horvil's multi request. It had to be pretty important for the engineer to be up this early in the morning.
Horvil sidled in from the foyer, managing to look both furtive and transparent at the same time. His left hand was clenched tightly in his vest pocket, while his right nervously raked through rows of black hair. ”I need to talk to you about something,” he said.
Oh no, thought Jara, suddenly realizing why she had reacted the way she did. This was the first time the two of them had been alone since that awkward scene in the Center for Historic Appreciation. Al I care about is not losing you, Horvil had told her as they crouched between the toes of the Sheldon Surina statue, waiting for their doom at the hands of the Defense and Wel ness Council.
Jara looked in that chubby face now and auditioned a series of emotions-embarra.s.sment, unease, gratification, reticence-but none of them seemed to fit the part. Final y she sat down in an easy chair and braced herself for whatever Horvil might have to say. ”What is it?” she managed final y.
Horvil threw himself down on the couch opposite her and exhaled loudly from one side of his mouth. ”It's-it's about Benyamin.”
The a.n.a.lyst blinked rapidly in surprise. ”Benyamin?”
”He's being blackmailed.”
It took Jara a few seconds to refocus her mental lenses. Who could possibly be blackmailing Ben? The answer leapt into her mind after a moment's study. ”That woman at Beril a's a.s.sembly-line shop. The one who manages the programming floor.”
Horvil nodded rueful y. ”Greth Tar Griveth,” he said. ”She's asking for credits. Lots of credits.”
”Just to keep things quiet from your Aunt Beril a? This is ridicu lous, Horv. After al that's happened in the past month, can't Ben just tel his mother he's hired her shop to do the a.s.sembly-line work on MultiReal? It's not like we won't pay her.
Would she real y shut down the programming floor?”
”You don't know her,” replied the engineer with a sad shake of the head. ”Beril a hates Natch. She's trying to mobilize that whole creed of hers to pa.s.s these official statements condemning him. If she finds out one of her shops is doing barwork for our fiefcorp-f.u.c.k yeah, she'l shut down the programming floor. In a heartbeat.”
Jara made a dismissive gesture with the flick of a wrist. ”Why are you even bothering me with this?” she said. ”There's a thousand good a.s.sembly-line shops out there. Ben real y shouldn't be contracting his mother's company anyway. Tel Ben to go solicit some compet.i.tive bids. He's stil got a few days before we need to pa.s.s off the final templates. They're just doing low-level work right now. That should be plenty of time.”
”He's tried. He put together three new deals, but they al fel through.”
”Why?”
”n.o.body's saying.” Horvil's face devolved from melancholy to ful fledged misery. ”The a.s.sembly-line managers just tel him that they're already running at capacity. But I think they're scared. Every time Ben shows up somewhere to talk business, a squad of Meme Cooperative officials shows up the next day and starts checking tax records. The word's gotten out.”
Jara groaned. ”Magan Kai Lee.” She felt nervous even saying the lieutenant executive's name out loud, as if those words were a talisman to release some infernal warrior from imprisonment. Magan had so many arcane weapons at his disposal-taxes, regulations, laws, policies-and Natch had so many weaknesses. It just didn't seem fair. ”So what's Greth asking for that's so ridiculous?” said Jara.
Horvil listed a number that ventured past the ludicrous into the realm of the obscene. The a.n.a.lyst whistled. ”I don't know if Natch would fork over that many credits,” said the engineer. ”That's way too much. Besides, it's too big of a number for Ben to transfer without Aunt Beril a getting wind of it.
Someone's bound to notice. Especial y with the Council and the drudges hanging over everyone's shoulders.”
Jara rapped her knuckles hard against the chair's nailhead trim. ”Come on, Horvil, this Greth woman can't be that unreasonable. She's got to see that if she keeps behaving like this, she'l kil the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
”That's the whole thing,” said Horvil, slumping to a spinecracking position in the couch.
”Greth's not being reasonable. Either she's a loose cannon or she's just not very bright. She doesn't care about kil ing the goose that lays the golden eggs-she wants one big egg instead.”
Jara sighed. She hated to admit it, but paying up was the only solution that made sense.
Natch would authorize the bribe without thinking twice and find a way to carve it out of the woman's flesh later. That was simply his way of doing things.
The a.n.a.lyst was feeling the preliminary sorties of a ma.s.sive headache and fired up Deuteron's Anodyne 88. ”So what does Natch have to say about al this?”
Horvil flapped his lips in irritation. ”Benyamin's afraid to tel him,” he said, letting his head slump onto the back of the couch. ”I kind of agree. Relying on that woman in the first place was a major f.u.c.k-up, and Ben knows it. He's convinced that Natch wil kick him out of the fiefcorp for this. So I ... I told him”
”You told him you'd talk to me.”
The engineer made a peculiar half-nod without actual y taking his neck off the back of the couch. ”You're the-the most level-headed one in the fiefcorp.
You always keep your wits in these situations. I told Ben you'd know what to do.”
Jara folded her arms over her chest and frowned. ”If I'm the level headed one,” she grumbled, ”then this fiefcorp is in bigger trouble than I thought.”
Does Horvil have any idea how much time I've spent on the Sigh with that idiot Geronimo? Does he have any idea that Magan Kai Lee is recruiting me to betray Natch, and I haven't said no yet?
”Listen, Jara,” continued Horvil, ”Ben trusts you. We al trust you. I mean, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be able to-”
Jara could sense a clumsy segue in the making, and she made a slicing gesture to cut him off. ”Okay, fine,” she sighed. ”It's probably better not to pester Natch with this c.r.a.p anyway. Here's what you tel Ben. Have him transfer a piece of the money from our accounts, the fiefcorp accounts. We've got it right now, and if we use the company money it won't get on your aunt's radar. Have him tel Greth Tar Griveth that this is al he could get on such short notice-but if she'l wait until after the exposition, he'l give her the rest plus an additional twenty percent.”
Horvil gasped. ”Twenty percent? I could buy a hoverbird with that additional twenty percent.”
”It doesn't matter. She won't get it. Greth's leverage evaporates after the MultiReal exposition.”
The engineer gave a judicious nod and rubbed his nose. ”It sounds reasonable coming from you,” he said, ”but what if Greth doesn't buy it? She's going to suspect that Ben won't fol ow through.”
”Not if she thinks this is al coming from Benyamin's head,” replied the a.n.a.lyst. ”No offense, Horv, but your cousin is kind of naive. Ben can sel it to Greth if he real y thinks we're going to pay her after the exposition. Just tel him we don't have al that cash at the moment, and it's going to take a while to get it.”
Horvil stood up from the chair, looking relieved and not a little sheepish. ”Thanks, Jara,”
he said. ”I think you might have saved Ben's job.”
Jara smiled wanly and waved a farewel at Horvil before he disappeared. She felt that nothing short of an industrial decontamination chamber could wash away the stench of corruption oozing from her pores. She remembered Natch's words to her just last month. Everyone who invests in biol ogics knows what's going on. Things like this happen al the time. Do you think the Patel Brothers got to the top without getting their hands dirty? Or Len Borda?
Shaking her head, Jara arose and turned to take refuge in the bedroom. Suddenly she realized the window behind her was stil tuned to a drudge clipping she had read the other day. It was a piece by one of the gossip drudges who made even Kristel a Krodor seem like a paragon of substance. Jara looked at the headline and blushed furiously, realizing that Horvil must have seen it the whole time. If this ever got back to Natch, she didn't know how she could live with herself.
IS IT LOVE OR INFATUATION?.
Our Foolproof Guide to Figuring Out How He Feels After stepping off the multi tile, Horvil tried to bury his warped emotions in Minds.p.a.ce, using his bio/logic programming bars as shovel.
His arms whirled in Minds.p.a.ce, making and breaking data connections at blinding speed.
Every few seconds, he would slip a bio/logic programming bar back into his satchel and slide another out to replace it with a single uninterrupted motion. Final y he chugged to a halt.
The engineer hitched back his thumb to survey the ma.s.sive MultiReal castle before him.
Horvil nodded and incremented the version number a fraction of a point. It's ready, he told himself. But are you sure you want to do this? He had been waiting for days to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches on the latest iteration of Possibilities so he could conduct this experiment, but now he didn't feel so confident.