Part 14 (2/2)

”Worth it to me,” roared Quel . And then he was in motion once again.

Darts streaked across the room from the Council officers' gun barrels, heading straight for the Islander's chest. Natch gaped in astonishment as Quel made an elegant pirouette and swatted the darts aside with two rapid swings of his truncheon. It looked as slick and effortless as a ch.o.r.eographed dance maneuver.

MultiReal.

For the second time in their brief acquaintance, Natch saw some distant relative of fear and uncertainty behind the Council executive's eyes. Magan scurried backward as fast as he could, tearing down pottery and knocking over chairs in an attempt to flee. Surina guards, meanwhile, started methodical y taking out the Council troops, who were wasting their ammunition on the Islander. Poison needles littered the floor. One ricocheted off the Islander's club and pa.s.sed straight through Natch's insubstantial forehead.

”Quel !” cried Natch, not sure if he was trying to encourage the big man or dissuade him.

The Islander pounced with a yel and struck Magan ful in the chest with the baton. Sparks sparked through the air. The lieutenant went flying back against the window, where his head thumped against the gla.s.s. But Natch's cry must have penetrated the Islander's cloak of rage, because he had pul ed the blow at the last possible instant.

In spite of the blood trickling from his nose and the visible indenture in his chest, Magan Kai Lee clearly realized he should be dead right now. ”Fool,”

he croaked between ragged breaths, ”don't you realize I'm the only one standing between you and Borda?”

The Islander hesitated. His eyes swiveled back and forth from Magan to the corpse of Margaret Surina, stil lying on the desk where he had left it. He seemed to reach some decision. His shoulders quivered, then slackened. The shock baton slid from his fingers and hit the carpet.

And just at that moment, the elevator doors opened and two dozen officers in white robes and yel ow stars swept into the room. They quickly formed a perimeter and relieved the remaining Surina officers of their weapons. Natch caught a movement from the corner of his eye, and whipped his head around to see a pair of military hoverbirds levitating right outside the window. He could only guess what their cannons were loaded with, but they were aimed right at him.

Magan Kai Lee slumped to the floor. He coughed, then spat blood. ”Invest your forces in ultimate sacrifice,” he said in the timbre of command, motioning toward Quel . ”Make sure you've covered al reasonable supply requisitions.”

The lieutenant executive was obviously speaking in some kind of Defense and Wel ness Council code, and he didn't appear to be in any mood for translations.

Natch climbed shakily to his feet, trying his best to ignore al the concentrated pandemonium in the room. The remaining Surina guards were dragging their limp comrades one by one to the elevator under the Council's watchful eyes. The officer named Papizon, meanwhile, was staring at the remnants of the battle with horror. Natch supposed that the destruction of priceless art meant less to him than the despoiling of precious evidence. Not even high-tech polymers could insulate from this kind of havoc.

Half a dozen Council officers wrestled the Islander to his knees, even though he was only offering token resistance. The MultiReal program had obviously sapped his strength to some degree, but more than that, he seemed to have lost the wil to resist. One of the officers brutal y wrenched the Islander's thin metal col ar off his neck, leaving a shal ow tributary of blood.

”I don't care,” shouted Quel . ”I'm never wearing one of those f.u.c.king things again. Do you hear me? Do you hear me?”

Magan Kai Lee simply shook his head. His breathing had already resumed something close to its normal rhythm, and the patch of blood on his chest was beginning to evanesce into the air. But this was one injury that would need more than OCHREs to heal. Magan gave Quel one last angry look and swiped an arm wildly toward the elevators. The Council officers dragged him away.

Natch stood as straight as his trembling knees al owed. He looked around and realized that al of the friendly forces were now gone. ”So what are you going to do with me?” he said.

”You?” The question only seemed to irritate the lieutenant executive. ”You are irrelevant.

Go home.”

And then Natch consulted the messages that had been piling up in his mental inbox. The citation from the Meme Cooperative suspending his business license was there, and it had taken effect a scant four minutes ago. Also present was the court order demanding that Natch transfer MultiReal core access to Jara.

Magan Kai Lee had delivered on his promises. The Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was no longer under Natch's control.

3.

VARIABLES I N FLUX.

18.

The World Economic Oversight Board sensed a disturbance in the marketplace.

And so the powers that moved the financial levers of the world sent their agents to a secure location to make some decisions. Everyone with a stake in the process was represented: the Congress of L-PRACGs, the big businesses, the Defense and Wel ness Council, the labor organizations, the Meme Cooperative, the administrators of the Data Sea, the Prime Committee, al the thousands of inst.i.tutions running Vault protocols.

It might have made for a cramped meeting had its partic.i.p.ants been made of flesh and blood. But these were virtual ent.i.ties, data agents stored as quark color changes on the Data Sea. One could find no purer representatives of organizational wil , for strictly speaking these were not representatives at al but the things themselves, the essence as expressed in formulas and business logic.

The administrator of the World Economic Oversight Board gaveled the meeting to order, after a fas.h.i.+on. Rol was taken. Preliminary exchanges of information were made, micro-negotiations to determine place and order.

And then the administrator laid out the situation. A handful of unorthodox transactions had spiked the stock exchanges, causing ripples to flow far and wide across the economic spectrum, amplified in no smal measure by sudden troop movements from the Islanders and the Defense and Wel ness Council. VIP travel itineraries were fluctuating by the second. Information requests across the Data Sea were multiplying exponential y. Strange patterns abounded.

There was a flurry of conversation from the a.s.sembled crowd. Newly sp.a.w.ned data agents dashed across the Sea to fetch fol ow-up information and make detailed queries against private data stores. More micro-negotiations.

The administrator cal ed for a status report. Like ants piling grain before their queen, agents of the world's financial inst.i.tutions began depositing data points before the Oversight Board. Balance vacil ations in key Vault accounts. Interest rates being charged by various lending inst.i.tutions. The values of certain commodities in the global marketplace. Primo's ratings for a representative sample of bio/logic fiefcorps. The status of bel wether legislation wending through the various L-PRACGs. Each datum gave form and shape to the pile-a form that stretched through dimensions invisible to the human eye. Derivatives of derivatives of derivatives, probabilities and possibilities, vectors of a.n.a.lysis that stretched from the universe's putative beginning to its predicted end.

The administrator contemplated the shape arrayed before the a.s.sembly. The number of patterns stored in the Oversight Board's catalog was in the tril ions of tril ions, but this particular pattern fel into the spa.r.s.e category of unknowns.

More information, commanded the administrator.

A second wave of data began acc.u.mulating on the pile, refining its shape. The presence of certain buzzwords and warning signs on public financial boards. The heart rates and blood pressures of the Prime Committee's voting members.

Rainfal reports from the Environmental Control Board. OrbiCo s.h.i.+pping schedules, hoverbird flight patterns, TubeCo riders.h.i.+p figures. Members.h.i.+p and cancel ation numbers from the Jamm and the Sigh. The throughput of quantum channels between the orbital colonies. Len Borda's cholesterol level and platelet count. The reported whereabouts of the bodhisattvas of the major creeds.

If the administrator knew anything about Margaret Surina, it knew her as a convergence point of data on the eternal sea of information. A confluence of trends both macro-and microeconomic.

If the administrator knew anything about death, it knew that death was a transformation, a final resolution of variables that had heretofore been in flux.

The general economic pattern might not have been comprehensible to the administrator, but certainly there were scattered fragments it could grasp.

The sudden and unexpected death of a highly influential figure. Anger and distrust at governmental authority. Fear, agitation, change. The administrator took these fragments as it had been designed to do, a.n.a.lyzed them, cobbled them together like some mad virtual Frankenstein.

And now, what to do about it?

The administrator checked its core tables, the baseline values engraved in its memory by the Makers themselves. The goals were clear and succinct: preserve existing a.s.sets; encourage stasis; smooth the jagged edges of human activity into manageable probability curves.

The administrator began to put together a plan. Hurricanes could be ameliorated and tides could be manipulated. But so could human behavior, given enough time and sufficient data points.

Decision after decision flowed from the administrator to the ful body of the Oversight Board, and each decision required the okay of the ful board.

Haggling erupted among the a.s.sembly as data agents darted from member to member, carrying proposals and counterproposals, modifications and amendments and official objections. Conflicting agendas laid themselves out like stones on a Go board, with the administrator holding the final token.

A few bil ionths of a second later, the plan was ratified.

Make it so, the administrator commanded.

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