Part 8 (2/2)
”I've tried,” moaned Horvil. ”Believe me.”
”Yeah, but did he try it?” Natch reached out, grabbed the Islander's wrist, and held his hand up in the air. The programming rings twinkled. ”With these?
Horvil merely shrugged. He extended his open palm toward the workbench as if to say, Be my guest.
The Islander eyed the bubble warily and removed himself from Natch's grasp. Then he plunged his hands into the bubble and began weaving a peculiar cat's cradle with the diffuse strands of data. His face flushed with concentration.
Natch gritted his teeth and clutched the windowsil , expecting another blackout at any moment. He felt a hand on his shoulder. ”Maybe you should ... sit down?” said Serr Vigal. Natch shook his head.
He watched Quel 's fingers with a vulture eye, trying to translate the Islander's finger phrases into the programming bar idioms he knew so intimately.
Some of the moves looked familiar, but others were completely alien. Natch reminded himself that Sheldon Surina and the original bio/logic programmers had coded this way-though they had used a much smal er set of rings and a rudimentary form of Minds.p.a.ce that hardly deserved the name. Surina had built the foundations of bio/logics using such primitive tools. Certainly, it seemed to Natch, the best way to break into code locked by the Surinas was to use the same methods they had used to seal it.
The diagram panned out, swiveled, and changed colors many times. Yet despite Quel 's best efforts, the mutant yel ow jacket remained sealed.
”Maybe we should try to find a different subroutine from MultiReal to crack into,”
offered Horvil, who had crept closer to the workbench to watch Quel 's performance. ”We might have better luck.” No one answered.
Natch could feel his mind revving up, blasting pistons at a phenomenal rate. Something was hovering just beyond his perception. An arcane destination, off the main road-something peculiar”Quel ,” he snapped. ”Give me those rings.”
The Islander stepped back. ”My rings? What-”
”Just do it.”
Quel looked to his fel ow engineer, dumbfounded, but Horvil didn't have any better idea what Natch was up to. Final y Quel shrugged, slid the gold bands off one by one, and handed them to the fiefcorp master.
Natch slipped the stil -warm rings onto his fingers. He hadn't realized quite how large Quel 's hands were. When he finished donning the programming rings, he felt like a child playing dress-up with his mother's jewelry. Even the notoriously thickset Islanders couldn't have standard ring sizes this big.
Natch stepped up to the workbench and raised his hands. The code floating in Minds.p.a.ce seemed to exert a slight magnetic pul on his fingers, much as it did on a set of programming bars.
As Quel , Horvil, and Vigal looked on, Natch began conducting a data symphony with his digits. It started as a delicate tune that hovered in the middle registers. But as the fiefcorp master gradual y gained confidence in his technique, he began to make more daring moves. Sudden staccato bursts al over the imaginary orchestra, glissando stretches from one end of the scale to the other.
After fifteen minutes, Horvil began to grow restless. ”If you don't need me,” he said, ”I think I'l get back to work....”
”Not yet,” barked Natch. The engineer stayed put. Serr Vigal retreated to the chair in the corner and parked himself anxiously upon it.
Natch zoomed in on the peculiar bee-shaped structure and began twisting at it with his fingers, over and over again. The coil spun around like a lump of clay under the hands of a skil ed potter. Every few spins, Natch would stab at the coil with his fourth finger.
”What's he doing?” mumbled Horvil, leaning in until his face was neatly bisected by the edge of Minds.p.a.ce and took on a pinkish glow.
Quel squinted at the bubble dubiously. ”Are you sure you know what you're doing?” he said. ”If you keep doing that, you might-”
”Break it?” Natch grinned like a demon and made one final stab with four fingers at once.
And then the darkness spil ed out.
Natch didn't know how long he lay there before the refres.h.i.+ngly prosaic voice of Horvil came meandering out of the blackness. ”I can look after him for a bit, Vigal. You real y need to get some sleep.”
He tried to sit up, to respond, but his eyelids felt tied down and he could not open them.
His body simply would not respond to his commands.
”I'm not leaving until I know he's okay,” said Vigal. The neural programmer was almost within arm's reach. ”When is Quel leaving?”
”Dunno. I keep tel ing him he should go to Andra Pradesh already if he's going to go, but you know how stubborn he is. I think he's trying to put it off.”
Horvil emitted a long, rattling noise of impatience through his sinuses.
Natch attacked the th.o.r.n.y thicket around his eyelids with every gram of strength he had.
Pain flooded down his spinal cord and then abruptly subsided.
He bolted upright to find the concerned faces of Horvil and Serr Vigal staring down at him on the living room sofa. Vigal's expression was clouded with gloom, while Horvil looked like he had aged a year. Natch noticed that the sun had almost disappeared behind the jagged Shenandoah skyline. How long had he been under?
”You okay?” said Vigal gently.
The fiefcorp master struggled with the snares around his tongue. After a few minutes, he managed to croak out a reply. ”I don't think I'l be doing that again for a while.”
Horvil plopped down on the chair-and-a-half. ”I'm sorry, Natch,” he muttered. ”We were hoping to find some answers about the black code. But looks like we just made things more complicated.”
”Complicated doesn't bother me,” said Natch, stretching his neck muscles in an effort to unstiffen them. ”I don't mind a complicated answer, as long as I have the answer. Is MultiReal the black code? Or are they separate programs?”
Horvil shook his head despondently and said nothing.
”Come on, Horv!” yel ed Natch. ”No clues? Nothing at al ? Vigal, you know neural programming. You have to have some idea.”
His old mentor frowned from the kitchen, where he was running his finger aimlessly across the countertop. Natch noticed the remains of a dinner that the three of them must have eaten while he was unconscious. ”I don't think they're the same thing. I think there's another il icit program hidden in your OCHRE system. But that's just an opinion.”
Natch, petulant: ”So how did the MultiReal code get there?”
”I don't know,” replied Vigal.
”Then what's it doing?”
Vigal rubbed his chin and stared at the wal , pensive. ”Wel , we know that it can put you to sleep for several days....”
”There's got to be more than that!” shouted Natch, pounding his fist on one of the couch's throw pil ows. ”Why would someone put together a strike team just to slip me a sleeping pil ? If al they wanted to do was prevent me from delivering that demo at Andra Pradesh, the f.u.c.king code would have selfdestructed by now.”
Serr Vigal slid into a weary silence.
Natch lurched to his feet, balancing himself against the edge of the sofa until he was confident he would not fal down. Vigal and Horvil both offered him a helping hand, but the fiefcorp master waved them away. ”Where's Quel ?” he grunted.
Horvil pointed wordlessly toward the balcony door. Natch clasped his hands behind his back and strode in that direction. The balcony door swished open as he approached.
Quel the Islander stood outside with his hands firmly clenching the railing, as if he were about to rip it loose and hurl it into s.p.a.ce. His gaze was fixed on a smal group of Council officers standing across the road, exchanging hand signals with other teams in the vicinity. They were clearly watching Natch's apartment, or at least pretending to. One of the officers went so far as to brandish a dart-rifle ostentatiously in Quel 's direction, as if he might fire it at any moment. His fel ows laughed.
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