Part 8 (1/2)

”Maybe you're just not used to looking at the mind of a genius.”

”Quiet, Horvil.”

Gradual y Natch's senses rea.s.serted themselves, and he began to comprehend his surroundings once more. This is my apartment. That's my ceiling.

The cus.h.i.+on underneath me is my couch. And the thing in my hand is-is-Natch looked sideways to find an unfamiliar object creeping through the fingers of his clenched fist. It was something soft, something paper-thin and feather-light. He could feel his mind's engine turning over but not catching.

A hand gently pressed his head back onto the couch. ”You need to relax,” said a voice he recognized as Serr Vigal's. ”We're going to readjust the OCHRE probe and pul back the focus. Are you sure you don't want to be sedated for this?”

”No,” said the entrepreneur at once. ”Absolutely not.”

”It's gonna feel weirrrrd,” warned the engineer in a child's singsong voice.

”Try living with black code in your veins for a month,” growled Natch. The ident.i.ty of the thing in his hand was dancing just beyond the tip of his tongue....

Vigal emitted an exasperated sigh. ”Please, Horvil, can we put the sarcastic remarks on hiatus for a few minutes? Quel 's in enough of a hurry as it is.”

The Islander made some kind of phlegmy noise that might have been either an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt or one of dismissal. ”Andra Pradesh'l stil be standing in another few hours,” he said. His face and bleached ponytail came into view directly over the fiefcorp master's head. He made some signal in the direction of the office. ”Okay, Natch, hold on, you're about to feel a-”

Natch final y realized that the thing dribbling through his fingers was a crushed daisy from the garden. Then everything blanked out.

Time ceased to exist.

The feeling wasn't much different from the mental caesura of multivoid. Natch's senses had not diminished, but he could find no order in them. A flurry of lights, a jumble of glottal sounds, a softness pressing against his back-but what did it al mean? Patterned noise. Raw electrical activity without context.

Natch could not tel if he had lain there for two minutes or two years when ful consciousness snapped back with the suddenness of a cartridge being loaded into a gun.

He sat up and took a swig from the water bottle on the table. Natch could feel a little bit of normalcy returning with every drop. He summoned a mental calendar and verified that he had indeed slid back into the normal groove of elapsing time. It was January 1, New Year's Day, and in forty-eight hours the fiefcorp would be announcing the winners of the MultiReal lottery. Five days after that was the exposition itself. He glanced at the ceiling, at the holographic fractal patterns that had been tormenting him, and realized he was looking at the standard OCHRE schematic of the human brain.

Vigal, Horvil, and Quel occupied three corners of the room, looking solemn and exhausted. It didn't escape Natch's attention that the Shenandoah sun was at a much different place in the sky than it had been before the probe began.

”Wel ?” asked Natch, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with impatience.

”We didn't find your black code,” said Horvil hesitantly. Al traces of the engineer's levity had slipped away while Natch was off in the netherworld of the OCHRE probe. ”But-”

”But what?”

Horvil and Vigal's eyes swung instantly toward each other as if attracted by magnetic force. Quel folded his arms across his chest in consternation and turned to face the wal . ”We found MultiReal,” said Vigal under his breath.

”MultiReal? In my head?”

”Yes. It was ... everywhere. Al over your neural system.”

”Not the whole program,” said Horvil quickly. ”Just bits and pieces. But they're definitely bits and pieces of MultiReal. I think I saw one of those structures in Possibilities just the other day.”

”How do you know it's the same thing?” said Natch, delicately probing his skul with both hands as if it were a precious vase he might crack.

”We took a few samples from your head and plunked 'em into Minds.p.a.ce. Then we did a side-by-side comparison with some of the structures from Possibilities. An exact match.”

Natch could feel his hands trembling. ”Show me.”

They al walked into Natch's office and stood next to the workbench, over which Possibilities floated in a translucent bubble. The program looked ridiculous crammed in such a smal s.p.a.ce. ”There,” said his old hivemate. ”Look at that right there.” He dipped the end of a bio/logic programming bar into Minds.p.a.ce, causing a beam of light to sweep across the bubble. Ma.s.ses of MultiReal code turned transparent as the beam hit them. The light stopped on a yel ow-and-blackstriped module that looked like a mutant insect of some kind. A yel ow jacket, maybe. ”Now here's a copy of the same thing in your neural system....” With a flick of the wrist, Horvil switched the display to a smal chunk of Natch's OCHRE schematic. The resemblance was unmistakable.

The entrepreneur studied the two blocks of programming logic careful y. He switched back and forth several times. Horvil and Vigal had been correct; the chances of such a structure appearing in two disparate programs by accident were dangerously close to nil.

”So what is it?” asked Natch.

Vigal shrugged. ”We're not entirely sure,” he said. ”It's a pretty obscure subroutine, buried quite a ways beneath the surface of the program. We can't seem to get inside. It's locked up somehow. I'm guessing this is just a library of logarithmic functions. I don't think it does anything important-Horvil just happened to recognize it, that's al .”

”But if Horvil recognized this subroutine, there might be hundreds more in there that he didn't.”

”I think the question we need to ask is how long that yel ow jacket's been in your head,”

said a frustrated Horvil. ”Was it there before those goons. .h.i.t you with black code? Did it come from the black code darts? Or did it show up later?”

Natch noticed that he hadn't heard a peep from the Islander since he had woken up. He turned his focus on Quel , wis.h.i.+ng he had a function that could see through people as easily as code. The Islander had removed himself to the doorway, where he was staring at the yel ow jacket with arms folded and eyebrows furrowed.

Natch eyed him with sudden suspicion. ”Is there anything you want to tel me?” he snarled.

Quel emitted a gruff tssk and shook his head. ”Like what?”

”Were you behind that group in the black robes? Did you attack me in that al eyway and put MultiReal in my system?”

The Islander burst into laughter. ”Don't be ridiculous! Why would I go to al that trouble when I could plug you right here in your apartment? And why would I do something like that in the first place?”

The fiefcorp master did not back down. ”Margaret said the Patels sold out to the Defense and Wel ness Council.” He aimed one accusatory finger at the Islander. ”Maybe you did too.”

Quel clenched his fists and lowered them to his sides. Al traces of humor were swept aside by a red rage swirling in his eyes. ”You think I'm working for Len Borda?” he growled. ”Me working for Len Borda.” The Islander flexed his biceps again and studied Natch as if trying to determine the best way to eviscerate him. Horvil and Vigal backed slowly to opposite sides of the room, nervous, unsure what to do.

But the moment was brief. Quel soon bottled up his fury and stuck his hands in his pockets. ”Do you want to know how my father died, Natch?” he said, his voice simmering down to a mumble. ”The Council shot him. Len Borda's people shot him. The war of '34, skirmishes near Manila. I watched my father fal facedown in the sand with a pair of black code darts poking through his eyebal .

Couldn't even-couldn't even get his connectible col ar off before the Nul Current took him.” Quel let loose a few snorts, his thoughts directed inward. ”I know you're under a lot of stress right now, Natch. But if you ever suggest I'm on the Council's payrol again, I'l crush your f.u.c.king windpipe.”

Natch lowered his chin to his chest, conceding the argument. He stil knew much too little about the Islander for his comfort, but he felt confident now that Quel was not working for Borda. Besides, the Islander had had ample opportunity to plant Natch with black code, or even slit his throat.

But if Quel hadn't put that yel ow jacket inside him, then who had? Outside of the fiefcorp, the only ones who had access to MultiReal were Quel , Margaret Surina, and the Patels. Pierre Loget had briefly been involved with the project before Frederic and Petrucio, but Margaret hadn't made it clear whether he had even actual y seen the code. Stil , why would Loget ambush him in the street like that? Or Margaret, for that matter? The Patels had plenty of motive, but Petrucio had disclaimed any knowledge of a black code attack while under the Objectivv truth-tel ing oath. That left Frederic Patelthough Natch's gut told him that an ambush wasn't quite Frederic's style.

”So what the f.u.c.k is going on?” said Natch, throwing his hands up at the ceiling.

More uneasy silence.

”Al right,” grunted the fiefcorp master after a few moments. ”I'm not going to just sit here and let this MultiReal code run rampant. Start that OCHRE probe again. Get that f.u.c.king thing out of there.”

Quel shook his head. ”Natch, that yel ow jacket is everywhere. See?” He walked over to the workbench and stuck his hand in the Minds.p.a.ce bubble.

Natch noticed for the first time that Quel 's fingers were adorned with his Islander programming rings, al owing him to manipulate the virtual blueprint without metal bars. He panned the schematic to a few key intersections where globules of code hung un.o.btrusively like parasites. ”We could spend a year hunting those snippets down and stil not find them al ,” said Quel . ”And if we try to just yank everything out without taking precautions-serious precautionsit could be catastrophic.”

”Maybe and maybe not,” said Natch, eyeing the black-and-yel ow blob. ”We need to crack that son of a b.i.t.c.h open.”