Part 12 (1/2)
”It's political,” replied the engineer. He seemed remarkably non chalant, almost jocular, for someone whose career was under siege. ”Lots of bad blood between the Guild and the Cooperative. Goes back twenty years. The Guild's been accusing the Co-op of coddling the business interests. So the Co-op keeps one-upping them lately, pus.h.i.+ng the envelope. If the Guild takes away your card, then you can bet the Co-op's going to take away your license-”
Natch switched focus back to the channel manager. Labor politics always made him irritable, and al he real y needed to know was that the Council was taking aim at Horvil's license to do business. He scrol ed feverishly up and down the Creed Objectivv letter that Merri had received. There was only the typical bureaucratic obfuscation: al flourish and no content. ”So what's going on, Merri?” he said. ”Why did they suspend you?”
”My chapter manager says it's about ... 'pledging under false pretenses.
The entrepreneur writhed under the neural miasma, wis.h.i.+ng for the luxury of a molded tube seat instead of the Spartan practicality of this hoverbird chair. ”Listen, I'm sorry to hear about this, but-”
”But what does it matter to the fiefcorp?” Merri sighed. ”Wel , the Objectivv truth-tel ing oath is a potent tool, Natch. Channelers who've pledged not to lie have a big advantage. So if the Meme Cooperative thinks we're gaming the system ...
If they think I joined the creed specifical y so the fiefcorp could take advantage of the oath ...”
”Al right, I get it. Unfair compet.i.tion. Customers filing lawsuits left and right: I only bought their program because of the oath, and the oath is a sham.”
Perhaps not enough for any kind of conviction, but enough to get an investigation under way. Enough, maybe, to get Merri's license from the Meme Cooperative suspended.
Natch's heart raced. The contours of Magan Kai Lee's scheme were beginning to take shape. Not a military onslaught but a bureaucratic one, with the Cooperative as rifle and business licenses as ammunition. But why? What did Magan get out of suspended licenses?
Two more high-priority pings, almost simultaneous. Benyamin and Serr Vigal. Whatever else the Council was capable of, they had certainly mastered timing and coordination.
”It appears that the Vault has put me under investigation,” muttered Vigal without preamble.
”My mother, Natch,” said Benyamin, one beat away from abject terror. ”She shut down the a.s.sembly-line floor.”
”She what?”
”It was that programming floor manager, Greth Tar Griveth. She must have blabbed something to my mother-that's the only thing I can think of. The Council swooped in and opened an investigation. But that's not the worst part, Natch. My mother, she went into a rage when she found out. She actual y ordered the floor to rol back the changes to MultiReal they made last month.”
The hoverbird made a sudden s.h.i.+mmy from the turbulence. Natch's stomach lurched.
”They're rol ing back-?”
-and even Primo's uses the Engineering Guild's routines to determine their rankings,”
continued Horvil, stil operating under the a.s.sumption that he had the fiefcorp master's ful attention. ”That's what the rumor is anyway Vigal: ”I don't understand it, Natch. Some fool at the Vault has decided that I'm funneling money from my memecorp fund-raising into the fiefcorp. He says the receipts don't add up. The lawyer I talked to even accused me of slipping money to the Surinas, of al people ...”
”I know what you're thinking, Natch.” Merri. ”You thought I took the Objectivv truth-tel ing oath years ago. But no, I only took the oath about nine months before I signed on with you. About the same time you started courting me for the job ...”
Natch tried to pa.r.s.e through the confused babble streaming through his head, the overlapping ConfidentialWhispers, the worried moans. He tugged at the hoverbird harness as if preparing to stand up and pace off the built-up frustration. But there was no room to pace in this cramped vehicle. So instead he sat in his seat, paralyzed, as the avalanche of bad news came cras.h.i.+ng down.
”We've got to do something, Natch. If we don't get to that factory floor quick, they could real y mess things up. It might take us weeks to sort through it-”
”The Vault's put a hold on al my memecorp accounts. I tried to get on a shuttle to the cognitive processes conference this morning, and they wouldn't even let me board....”
”The silver lining here is that the Guild doesn't have any power to block access to the MultiReal code. Cooperative doesn't either, real y. So I can stil get the program ready for the exposition, you just can't pay me for it....”
”What should I do, Natch? The creed must be so disappointed in me.... I don't even know where to start....”
”You know I've always been lazy about balancing the books, Natch, and it's just so complicated with money going in and out al over the place. You don't suppose that somewhere in the past few years I might have misplaced a few-”
”Horvil's going to hate me....”
Natch turned to the window for a calming vision of the sea and saw only the il icit chunk of MultiReal code they had found in his head.
A ping. A text message, from Quel .
Be on your guard. We spotted a whole cl.u.s.ter of Council hoverbirds on the outskirts of Andra Pradesh a few hours ago, headed your way.
Looks like they might be fol owing you.
Natch sat back, activated a bio/logic routine to stanch the flow of sweat from his brow, and dialed the Confidential Whisper discussions down to a murmur. Stop, he told himself. Calm down.
He inhaled deeply and let the rarefied hoverbird oxygen rush into his lungs. The Council wants you in a panic, he thought. They want you confused.
They want you to make mistakes. He found a snapshot of memory and held it up: a young boy, sul en and wild-eyed, threatening to report the capitalman Figaro Fi to the authorities. He had blown his chance at getting seed money for a fiefcorp and wasted several years of his life as a consequence. And why? Because he had been flummoxed by Brone.
But that's not going to happen again.
You can beat them.
Natch uncurled his fingers from their death grip on the armrest and slid into a straight and narrow mental groove. He watched himself cool y line up the fiefcorpers' woes as if in spreadsheet columns. Horvil's termination from the Bio/Logic Engineering Guild. Merri's suspension from Creed Objectivv.
Vigal's supposed financial improprieties. Ben's mother's attempt to rol back their MultiReal code. Quel 's security issues at the Surina compound.
Margaret's stupor. Jara'sThe panic lapped briefly over his mental seawal s, bolstered by exhaustion and doubt and black code. Why hadn't he received any word from Jara?
He tried pinging her. No response. Again, and again. Stil nothing.
Stay focused, Natch admonished himself. Think. What's the Council trying to do? Magan Kai Lee had unleashed a torrent of suspensions, improprieties, and investigations on him, al scrupulously planned and nearly impossible to trace back to the Council. But what did it real y add up to in the end? Clearly he was missing something. Where did he factor in? What catastrophe did Magan have waiting for him?
The last ConfidentialWhisper arrived from Robby Robby. ”Bad news for ya, Natchster,”
said the channeler. He paused, waiting for some interjection from Natch that did not come. ”Just tried to bring my team out to Sao Paulo for a look around the soccer stadium, and they wouldn't let us in. Told me the exposition's been canceled. Can you beat that? Jara's orders, they said. I tried to set them straight, but they-”
Robby's sentence was sliced off abruptly in midsyl able. But it wasn't just Robby-al of Natch's ConfidentialWhisper threads with his employees had been cut. He turned to the window, wondering if there was some kind of malfunction with the hoverbird, and discovered his connection to the Minds.p.a.ce workbench in Shenandoah was gone too. In place of the yel ow jacket was a Defense and Wel ness Council hoverbird matching their course. Natch looked out the other window to find a second vehicle bracketing him in.
Raw and b.l.o.o.d.y anger. ”What the f.u.c.k is going on?” he barked at the pilot.
The woman seemed unconcerned. She rapped her knuckles against the side of the hoverbird. ”Don't bother trying to access the Data Sea,” she said.
”Nothing's getting through this hul unless we want it to get through.”
”Where are you taking me?”
”The Twin Cities,” she said, turning back to the weather reports and traffic chatter on the window. ”Might as wel get some sleep while you can. You're not going anywhere.”
16.