Part 29 (2/2)

As Petrucio Patel emerged from a door on the governmentalist side of the auditorium, Jara had to admit that the fiefcorp master looked al too prepared for this summons. The shoulder pads of his robe fil ed out his otherwise lanky frame, transforming him from a lean al ey cat into a sultry, confident panther. Petrucio smiled, nodded briefly at the audience, and gave his mustache a final grooming stroke as he reached Rey Gonerev's side. In his right hand, he held a basebal bat. Under his left arm, a box.

The Blade whispered something inaudible to Petrucio, and by the way his shoulders tensed Jara could tel he wasn't pleased. Seconds later, he removed his scarf to reveal a prominent pin featuring the black-and-white swirled logo of Creed Objectivv. So the Council stil has its daggers in the Patel Brothers, Jara thought.

The muttering among the libertarian sympathizers in the audience rose several decibels, and Jara could see one of the Council guards nearby tense up. Khann Frejohr and his libertarian al ies looked perturbed. Natch did not seem to care one way or the other.

Horvil and Benyamin, meanwhile, were having an intense back-and forth about parliamentary rules of order. ”Can Gonerev even do that?” said Ben in a heated whisper. ”Can she just cal forward her own witness?”

”It's a hearing, not a trial,” replied Horvil, gesturing at the Vault representative in the row directly below them. ”And it doesn't look like any of the Committee members are about to object.” In fact, some of them were craning forward in their wrought-iron chairs to get a better look.

The a.n.a.lyst thought back to her meeting with the Patel Brothers and desperately tried to remember the exact wording of their discussion. Had Petrucio said anything about helping or hindering the company's pursuit of MultiReal?

Jara had purposeful y kept the wording of their brief agreement vague. Would a demonstration of MultiReal before the Prime Committee violate that agreement in any way? What if Petrucio had already made a conflicting agreement with the Council several months earlier? The a.n.a.lyst took a sidelong glance at Merri, feeling a new appreciation for the difficulties of the Objectivv truth-tel ing oath.

”Towards Perfection,” said Petrucio to the Prime Committee, his poise recovered. He set the box down on the floor and made a sweeping bow that encompa.s.sed al 360 degrees of the circle. ”It's an honor to be cal ed before the Committee.”

Rey Gonerev reached down into the box and pul ed out a cla.s.sic league basebal . ”Before we get into more extensive demonstrations, I'd like to start by reenacting Natch's performance at Andra Pradesh last month,” she said. ”Petrucio, why don't you tel us what you're doing.”

Patel nodded and moved into a batter's crouch, which looked quite absurd in such a loosely tailored robe. ”I'm going to hit the bal into the fourth ring of the auditorium, three rows above the gentleman from the orbital colonies,” he said, arching his chin in that direction. ”I'm now reaching out to the MultiReal interface and preparing to activate it.”

A.

rumble.

The Blade stepped back several paces and made an underhanded pitch to the bio/logic programmer.

Petrucio got ready to swing. ”Activating-”

And then Natch was out of his seat, hurtling through the smal pa.s.sage under the Committee members' ring onto the floor of the auditorium. His eyes screamed insanity; his arms signaled panic.

The bal connected with Petrucio's bat, and the infoquake was upon them.

34.

The basebal arced into the audience somewhere above Jara's head. She never thought about it again.

Such was the force of the infoquake that even the fleet-footed Magan Kai Lee was tossed hither and thither like a pinbal . Jara gaped in disbelief at the purple bruise mushrooming on the Council lieutenant's forehead, then found herself sucked down into Benyamin's lap. She hadn't even realized she had stood up in the first place. Within seconds, the entire fiefcorp was tangled in a confused pile, and Robby Robby's bony a.s.s might have been the only thing that kept a fal ing spectator from snapping Jara's neck in two.

Voices in her head. Deep gouges in her mental databases. OCHREs furiously pinging Dr.

Plugenpatch. Notices warnings screams ConfidentialWhispersJara clambered to her feet and managed to bring her internal systems to something a few rungs down from normalcy. The trick was to avoid the reflex to fire up bio/logic relief and to shut down as many programs as possible instead. She clutched the railing and looked around the auditorium.

In the few minutes since the infoquake began, the Tul Jabbor Complex had descended into pandemonium. Prime Committee members and their retinues were ducking, cowering, fleeing through side exits. Jara recognized the staid Plugenpatch representative standing on his chair, yel ing an indecipherable plea for calm. Down on the auditorium floor, the Blade had found her way to the wal and was wobbling against it on unsteady feet.

Meanwhile, a confused Petrucio Patel was staring at the basebal bat in his hands in shock.

The end of it was stained red from his own b.l.o.o.d.y nose, though how he had acquired that was unclear.

Petrucio had nothing to do with this, Jara thought. He's just as surprised as anyone. But if Petrucio Patel didn't launch this attack-then who did?

She surveyed the remaining members of the Prime Committee, quailing under their wrought-iron chairs, and had another insight: the libertarians had just lost their case. Moments ago, the Committee had been the very model of probity and open-mindedness; now they were surrendering to dumb animal panic. Animals banded together when threatened and sought to protect themselves at al costs. No, despite Vigal's lofty rhetoric and common sense, Jara could see that nothing would persuade the Prime Committee to overrule Len Borda now.

So the infoquake was a tool of Len Borda's then? A desperate attempt to thumb down the scales of justice? Natch had expressed that opinion several times, and Jara had been inclined to agree with him.

But something didn't quite add up. If the high executive was going to execute such an attack, wouldn't he have prepared the guards of the Defense and Wel ness Council first? The officers in white robes and yel ow stars were mil ing around the auditorium in confusion like everyone else, cut off from their chain of command and unsure what to do. Some were attempting to herd audience members out the doors peaceably, while others were trying to block the doors and keep everyone inside.

If the infoquake is a governmentalist plot, thought the a.n.a.lyst, then why isn't the government ready for it?

”What's going on?” mumbled a voice. Merri, struggling to find her feet in a quite literal sense, as they were buried under Horvil and Robby.

”We need to get out of here,” said Jara. ”Now, before the crowd-”

She stopped short as some word of authority final y penetrated the data vomit and took hold of the Council officers one by one. Within seconds, a handful of Len Borda's lackeys around the auditorium had drawn their dartguns and moved to the railings. They took careful aim and centered on a single target.

Natch.

He had heard the rumbling. He had felt the tremors. He had sensed the computational maelstrom raging from afar.

He had tried to run.

Now he kneels on the cold floor of the Tul Jabbor Complex, writhing in the acid bath of the infoquake. Data piercing his mental defenses like shrapnel, OCHREs thrumming crazily and heating up nearly to the melting point. He sees patterns within patterns, things not visible in any spectrum. Somewhere in his peripheral vision he sees Serr Vigal, pa.s.sed out on the stone but stil breathing.

Elsewhere he catches a glimpse of a figure in a white robe shouldering his dart-rifle.

The nothingness at the center of the universe.

The guardian and the keeper.

You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices.

I can handle everything the world throws at me. Just watch.

Natch closes his eyes. It's hard enough to concentrate through al the noise; the infoquake just makes things worse. But he has to concentrate; he has to. He flings his mind onto the Data Sea and finds live video feeds from every conceivable angle, the perspectives of scared drudges watching the scene unfold from the audience. With his own eyes, Natch can only see and react to what's in front of his face. Here in the infinite ocean of information, he can see al .

Natch gathers his courage and activates MultiReal.

Magan came to and reached reflexively for the dartgun at his side. The corrugated surface of the grip felt like safety. With the other hand he probed his forehead for the bruise he had received striking his head against the railing. Stil sore, but healing quickly through the miracle of OCHRE technology.

He pried open his eyelids, scrambled shakily to his feet, and tried to take inventory of the situation. Infoquake ebbing and flowing. Audience members fleeing. Petrucio Patel crawling slowly toward the stairway. Prime Committee members safe. Officers of the Defense and Wel ness Council gathering at the railings, shoving spectators aside, aiming their dartguns at Natch.

And firing.

Magan gaped dumbly as eight or nine darts whizzed through the air toward the center of the auditorium. The Council lieutenant rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was experiencing some kind of residual hal ucination from the infoquake. Every single officer missed the target.

There was another vol ey, then another. Natch remained kneeling on the floor, coc.o.o.ned in his own internal awareness. The needles tinked harmlessly onto the stone around him.

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