Part 20 (1/2)
”What's going to happen to MultiReal? Did you sel it to the Council?”
”If you don't have anything to hide, why are you taking money under the table from Creed Tha.s.sel?”
Jara gaped at the last question. The Tha.s.selians? How had they gotten involved in al this?
She thought back to the bizarre fundraising pitches Natch had undertaken last month when the fiefcorp was frantical y trying to prepare for the unveiling of Margaret's thenmysterious Phoenix Project. Natch had made some elusive comments about borrowing money from an unnamed ”third party,”
and Horvil later hinted that an old acquaintance from the hive had stepped forward with the cash. Jara had shrugged it off. Was Natch so desperate he would take funding from a discredited creed? And not just any creed, but a notoriously shady one with a secret members.h.i.+p roster?
The a.n.a.lyst flailed around in vain for an answer. She gave the subtlest of glances in Merri's direction, but the channel manager's mien was impenetrable. ”I'm real y not at liberty to discuss the company's finances right now,” Jara replied lamely.
With a notoriously unethical creed as grease, the press conference began to slide down a dangerous slope toward the paranoid. The drudges began launching personal attacks on Natch's character, or personal attacks on Jara's character, or far-flung theories about MultiReal that bordered on the insane.
It was al Jara could do to simply keep up with her canned responses. Someone even tried to pin the disappearances of Pierre Loget and Bil y Sterno on Natch, to which Jara could only shake her head.
Just when it seemed like things couldn't get any worse and even Robby Robby was showing traces of unease, a misshapen lump of a man stepped to the front of the line. He had s.h.i.+fty eyes and an oily dab of mustache.
”A hundred and twenty violations of the Meme Cooperative bylaws!” squawked the man.
”Isn't it convenient that in al the hul abaloo surrounding Margaret's death, everyone's forgotten about that?”
Jara stared at the drudge, certain she had seen him before. She lobbed his picture at the public directory, but his profile had been careful y scrubbed clean. Jara searched her memory and came up blank there too. ”The Meme Cooperative gives out twenty thousand citations every year,” she said. ”If you read through the list, you'l see that ninety-five percent of them are political y motivated.
Once Natch gets his day in front of the arbitration board, I'm sure he'l be vindicated for most of them.”
”Most of them? Most of them?” The man emitted a squeal that might have pa.s.sed for amus.e.m.e.nt and gave the woman behind him a conspiratorial elbow in the gut. Jara hoped the other drudges would hustle this odd person out of the queue so she could draw the conference to a close, but instead they were clearing a s.p.a.ce for the man's grandstanding. ”So what would you say if I told you I'm filing a whole new set of charges against the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp for breach of contract?”
Jara was starting to get a major headache. ”Breach of whose contract?”
”I'm glad you asked,” said the man with a queer smile. Then he turned his back to the stage and lifted his hands with a flourish, like a prophet signaling to his people that they had arrived at the Promised Land.
A smal band began to march through the crowd from the back of the auditorium. Amused smiles percolated across the faces of the drudges. Jara counted eighteen people in the group that came to a halt behind the grandstander. It was as random a group as one could possibly a.s.semble, and Jara didn't recognize any of them.
”What are you doing up there?” came a frantic ConfidentialWhisper from Benyamin.
”Cal security before this guy hijacks the whole press conference!”
Jara fidgeted and turned to look at an equal y perplexed Robby Robby. What could she do?
”I give you Natch's latest victims!” brayed the lumpy man. ”I give you the victims of the cra.s.s pyramid scheme cal ed the MultiReal exposition lottery!
Eighteen suffering souls who entered into a Faustian bargain with your boss Natch!
Eighteen souls promised a chance at fame and fortune, under legal contract, mind you. A legal contract that was broken without a second glance by your scheming, manipulative fiefcorp master!”
That was when Jara final y placed him.
Captain Bolbund.
Something rancid and congealed in Jara's gut made an effort to creep back into her throat.
It had been years since Natch's little altercation with Captain Bolbund in the ROD coding business, years since she had endured his putrid poetry. The last Jara remembered, Bolbund's business license had been suspended for impersonating a Meme Cooperative official. And yet here he stood, flaring his nostrils and stirring mischief. How long had this bottom feeder been festering in his anger, waiting for an opportunity at revenge? Was the list of Natch's enemies truly endless?
”Justice for the MultiReal exposition lottery winners!” thundered Bolbund, swinging his fist back and forth in an attempt to wrench the words into a rhythmic chant. ”Justice for the MultiReal exposition lottery winners! Justice! Justice!”
Vigal openly buried his face in his hands, and Merri looked like she had been turned to stone. Robby and Frizitz were making clipped gestures to the channelers in the crowd, but what kind of message they were trying to send was unclear.
Jara made a few stumbling attempts at imposing order, but the genie would not be forced back into the bottle. Objectivv security officers rushed forward to apprehend the miscreant, but now he was darting through the crowd like a fat gremlin. Laughter spurted out of the drudges at the obscene spectacle. Someone even stuck a foot in front of the Objectivv officers, sending them cras.h.i.+ng to the floor like a row of black-and-white-swirled dominoes.
The a.n.a.lyst rubbed her temples in frustration. A nightmare.
Jara wanted to bury her face in the soft refuge of her mother's bel y. Beril a's couch made a poor subst.i.tute. The microfibers on the pil ows wouldn't even absorb her tears, but left them to dribble down to the crook of the couch instead.
Someone tapped on the door. ”Come in,” said Jara softly.
The door slid open and admitted Horvil. He took in the a.n.a.lyst's misery and parked himself backward on a spindly chair. ”You look upset,” said the engineer, once again demonstrating his penchant for either stating the obvious or blundering right past it.
”I am upset,” replied Jara. ”I can't believe our own contest winners are suing us. On top of everything else going on right now.”
Horvil made a sour face. ”Bolbund,” he said. ”Never thought I'd see that idiot again.
Don't worry about it. The whole exposition is yesterday's news.
Those lottery winners'l just disappear into the woodwork, you'l see. If nothing else, that lawsuit's put more drudges at the front gates. There must be six hundred people out there now.”
Jara craned her neck toward the window, but the couch's armrest blocked her view. ”I should have listened to Ben,” she said after a moment's reflection. ”I shouldn't even have held that f.u.c.king press conference. You don't think I made things worse ... do you?”
”Al I know is that you stood up and did something,” said Horvil. ”Somebody needed to.”
The headache that had begun during the press conference had now captured Jara's frontal lobes. She felt a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic urge to just let it rampage for a while. ”Listen, Horvil, I ... There's something I think you should know.”
Horvil sniffed and shrugged at the same time. ”If you're going to tel me about Natch's little threat to ruin my career, don't bother. Aunt Beril a already told me. It's not real y anything to get upset over. I know he didn't mean it.”
”Didn't mean it?” The pain lanced through the back of Jara's neck as she sat up abruptly.
”How can you say that?”
”Hey, I'm not the one who just stood up and told a mil ion drudges what an ethical businessman Natch is.”
”That's for the good of the company. It's different.”
Horvil nodded and slumped his chin down onto his folded arms. ”Natch is stressed out, Jara. He's losing it. Have you noticed al that twitching, al those strange looks? I've-I've never seen him this bad before. That black code is tearing him up. He's running out of options. He wouldn't have made that threat to Aunt Beril a unless he had no other choice.”
”I can't believe I'm hearing this,” said Jara, aghast. ”You're making excuses for him. Of course he had other choices.”
”Real y?” Horvil asked. ”If someone put a gun to your head and said it's either you or Natch-what would you do?” The engineer rose and walked to the window, where he stood in plump silhouette against the moonlight. Jara could see that the drudges were definitely there, camped right outside the gates.