Part 27 (1/2)
She saw no sign of them, although the menacing figures in white robes and yel ow stars were hard to miss.
And then they turned a corner and came face-to-face with the Tul Jabbor Complex, headquarters of the Prime Committee.
The building was gargantuan, dwarfing al other government structures in the city. It seemed to have been constructed for a much larger race of beings altogether. The windows stood impossibly high off the ground, while the doors could have comfortably admitted a tube train. The whole structure was slablike and boxy in shape, with a monolithic dome capping one end. From one of the hoverbirds streaming in and out of the adjacent dockyards, Jara supposed the building would look like a giant armless statue.
Horvil tapped her on the shoulder. ”That's where we're going,” he explained, pointing at the dome. ”That's where-”
”Where the Prime Committee meets, yes, I know.” The a.n.a.lyst smiled and tapped the side of her head. ”I can access the Data Sea too, Horv.” The engineer blushed.
The inside of the Tul Jabbor Complex was no less intimidating than the exterior. One broad corridor made a winding path through the center of the Complex like intestines. The sides of the corridor were six levels high and lined with an endless grid of office cubicles behind smoky gla.s.s. The corridor itself had no roof. Everywhere they could see public servants striding purposeful y back and forth, sporting a hundred different uniforms.
Midway through the complex in a circular clearing stood an enormous hologram of High Executive Tul Jabbor, fifteen meters tal . The stern, Ja.n.u.s-like faces of the Defense and Wel ness Council's first commander tracked the fiefcorpers mercilessly both as they approached and as they walked past. Jara shuddered and quickened her step until the curving corridor put Jabbor out of sight.
At long last, they reached the dome.
The a.n.a.lyst was suffering from sensory overload as she walked into the auditorium.
Twenty-nine chairs of miserable black iron ringed a floor measuring some thirty-five meters in diameter. Behind and above this row of twenty-nine chairs sat another dozen concentric rings of normal, cus.h.i.+oned seats for the plebes. Each ring rested at an impossibly steep angle above the one in front of it, as if the rings were built for the hologram of Tul Jabbor to climb.
The a.n.a.lyst looked down at the floor and felt her heart curdle in fear. It was the most intimidating setting she could possibly imagine. Facing the entire Committee at once was impossible, and there were no chairs to sit on. From the floor, Jara supposed that the audience members must look like they were stacked on top of one another. Even an extraordinarily tal person would have to crane his neck at an uncomfortable angle to see them. There would be no multi tricks here, no abandoning of Cartesian s.p.a.ce in the audience; whether out of security concerns or out of tradition, no multi projections were al owed in the Tul Jabbor Complex auditorium.
”What a nightmare!” said Ben-and then instantly clamped his hand to his mouth. The place was an acoustic disaster. Ben's exclamation bounced around the wal s and quickly devolved into complete dissonance. Raising your voice only seemed to amplify the problem. Jara suddenly noticed that the place was rustling with the ghostly sound of a thousand whispers, which only added to the creepiness factor.
The fiefcorpers gave one another PokerFace glances and started down the narrow stairway. They headed for the pet.i.tioners' ring-the ring immediately above the Prime Committee, and the fiefcorp's new home until the MultiReal issue was resolved, one way or another.
Ten minutes later, Natch and Serr Vigal arrived. Jara stifled a gasp, then quickly looked around to make sure there were no drudges nearby.
Natch had not shown his face in public for nearly five days, but he might have aged fifteen years in that time. He seemed haggard and noticeably underfed. His left hand was thrust deep into his suit coat pocket as if weighted there by some dense object. Vigal, on the other hand, was so inwardly focused that he completely failed to notice the intimidating stage below. Jara wondered how the neural programmer had managed to reach Natch and whether the entrepreneur had helped Vigal prepare his speech. By the diffident way Natch was treating his old guardian, she suspected that he was hardly aware of Vigal's presence at al . The entrepreneur seemed momentarily confused as they reached the pet.i.tioners' ring, until Vigal's hand clutched his elbow and steered him toward a chair a quarter of the way around the ring from the fiefcorp.
”Something's wrong with Natch,” said Merri.
”What do you mean, something's 'wrong' with him?” asked Horvil. ”There's always been something wrong with him.”
”Yes, but ... his eyes.”
Jara noticed it too, even from this distance. The flesh around Natch's eye sockets looked as if it had been rouged with something dark and sinister.
Any half-decent OCHRE system should take care of that, thought the a.n.a.lyst. Natch, what's happening to you?
A vein in her temple began to throb. She watched the neural programmer nod and mumble to himself like a student prepping for exams, while Natch simply stared straight ahead. Jara waited for him to glance around at the audience; he wouldn't have to tilt his head that far to the left to see the fiefcorp.
But the entrepreneur did not avert his eyes from a spot of void hovering about three meters before his face. Jara slumped down in her seat. With Vigal delivering the libertarians' opening statement and Khann Frejohr lying low, she had pinned her hopes for this hearing on Natch. But Natch was obviously in no shape to persuade the Prime Committee of anything.
”How long do you have to go without sleep to get bloodshot eyes in this day and age?”
mused Ben, half to himself.
Jara darted a glance at Robby Robby, but the channeler was either completely oblivious to their conversation or faking it wel . She wondered if he was off shopping for hairdos on the Data Sea or holding a pep ral y with his sales force.
Moments later, the delegation from the Congress of L-PRACGs arrived. It was the first time Jara had ever seen the legendary Speaker Khann Frejohr in person. He appeared calm and at ease in his bronze robe, looking every bit the wily and experienced politician. Frejohr and his accompanying band of libertarian activists found seats in the pet.i.tioners' ring toward Natch's side of the floor.
Yet Jara couldn't help but notice that the speaker refused to look in the entrepreneur's direction, and he made no move to take the vacant chair on Natch's right.
Horvil shot her a ConfidentialWhisper. ”He real y p.i.s.sed Frejohr off, didn't he?” Jara didn't answer.
And then the doors opened for the Defense and Wel ness Council.
Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee stood in the nucleus of a smal pack of lawyers, administrators, and high-ranking Council officers. He looked almost Lil iputian in such an immense s.p.a.ce. Jara recognized a few of the other lieutenant executives from drudge reports; she recognized Magan's flunky Papizon from personal experience. Jara felt a slight twitch of terror in her gut, remembering that Magan had unfinished business with her. She sneered it down.
”Don't tel me that Lieutenant Executive Lee is going to be delivering their opening statement?” said Benyamin.
Merri craned her neck forward. ”Does anybody see any sign of-”
The doors slammed open once more, and Jara felt her heart sink. The Blade.
Rey Gonerev, the chief solicitor of the Defense and Wel ness Council, strode through the doors with the confidence of a panther. Her long braids framed a face which mirrored that confidence. The Blade walked past the libertarian delegation, barely acknowledged Khann Frejohr's respectful nod, and headed for the governmentalist contingent on the opposite site of the auditorium. She was in her element here.
And yet, for al Gonerev's bl.u.s.ter and bravado, where was the Council's legal army? What had happened to the hundreds of lawyers, functionaries, and advisors who had marched confidently through the streets of Melbourne yesterday?
Evidently that display had just been a show for public consumption, because few of them were present today.
Jara studied the twenty-nine empty chairs in the ring above hersseats for the Prime Committee, the ultimate government authority, the people whose word superseded that of the L-PRACGs. Even the armed officers of the Defense and Wel ness Council spread around the auditorium took their orders from the Committee, at least in theory. If anyone could give Natch a fair hearing, it was the people who would shortly be fil ing those chairs. But would they listen with open ears?
The a.n.a.lyst had a distressing thought. Did she want the government to give Natch a fair hearing? The Prime Committee had the power to overturn everything Magan Kai Lee had done and restore Natch to the head of his fiefcorp, to bring back the status quo and put MultiReal in his hands once more.
Would that be a good thing?
At that moment, a more exclusive set of doors opened, and the Prime Committee entered.
31.
The members of the Prime Committee might have been any random selection of pedestrians off the street. Their composition was about as polychromatic as any group of twenty-nine could be. There was a slight preponderance of females and people of Indian descent-what the sociologists glibly cal ed ”the Surina effect”-but nothing that could produce an obvious prejudice toward any one demographic. Al were dressed in matching robes of dark blue, filigreed with elaborate gold tracing. The iron symbol of the black ring hung from their necks.
The members filed around the auditorium to find their seats. Jara noticed that the Committee members' row did not intersect with any of the main auditorium stairways. In fact, the steps from the pet.i.tioners' row to the floor actual y ducked under the Committee members' seats with a flourish of architectural bravado.
As the men and women sat on the uncomfortable-looking black chairs, each person's representative organization flashed in hologram before them: The Vault. The Creeds Coalition. Dr. Plugenpatch. The Meme Cooperative. TeleCo.
GravCo. Orbital Colonies. The Congress of L-PRACGS. True to their governing philosophy, none of the members' names were anywhere to be found.
”What do the italics mean?” said Horvil to n.o.body in particular. Jara took a closer look, and sure enough, some of the affiliations were displayed in a slightly smal er, italicized font: Islanders. Data Sea Network Administrators. Pharisees.
The Prepared. TubeCo.
”Nonvoting member,” replied Ben, pleased to be the resident expert on something.
”Twenty-nine reps total, but only twenty-three get a vote.”