Part 30 (2/2)

Close to twenty Council officers were firing at Natch now, though as a moving target he was much harder to hit. Three times that number were futilely clinging to the idea of crowd control. Maybe a dozen figures in black robes remained.

Natch was getting close to the doorway.

Magan Kai Lee skidded to a halt in front of Petrucio Patel, who watched his approach with almost maniacal calm. ”MultiReal,” barked the Council lieutenant.

”Use it!”

The businessman regarded the Council lieutenant with a bemused stare. ”Use it how?” he said.

”On Natch! Hurry, before it's too late.” Magan tossed his dartgun into Petrucio's lap.

”We're only going to get one shot at this.”

Petrucio arose and brushed off his b.l.o.o.d.y lapels, letting the gun clatter to the ground. The nosebleed was ancient history by now, but it had done significant damage to what Magan suspected was a very expensive suit. At the moment, the suit appeared to be the fiefcorper's primary concern. ”Why me? You do it.”

”Don't you understand? Natch is using MultiReal. You've got MultiReal. You're the only one here who has any chance of hitting him.”

Patel considered this for an agonizing moment, a moment that saw Natch stumble ever closer to the door. ”I don't know if I real y have a chance or not,”

he said final y. ”I don't know if Jara's made the switch yet.”

”Listen,” hissed Magan. ”Once Natch gets out of this building, we're never going to find him again. Do you want that man on the loose out there? Do you think he's going to let Jara make that switch after he's gone?” Magan had no idea what he was tel ing Petrucio, didn't know what kind of switch lay in the balance here, but figured he had nothing to lose by bluffing. ”You've got those MultiReal-D programs. Don't play dumb, Petrucio, I know you have themyou were supposed to demo them to the Prime Committee today. Now load them up and use them.”

Whatever he had threatened seemed to have worked. Petrucio nodded. He picked Magan's gun up off the ground. ”Should I hit him here?”

Magan looked around at the Council officers, the fleeing spectators, the observing drudges. Then he was struck by a sudden bolt of inspiration. ”No.

Wait ... These people in black robes. How did they get in? And how do they intend to get out?”

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He can see it, pantomimed a thousand times on the private stage of his mind, acted with an eerie verisimilitude. A Defense and Wel ness Council officer takes aim and pul s the trigger on his rifle. A sliver of OCHRE-laden doom careens toward the floor of the auditorium, pierces clothing, bites flesh.

He stiffens and the Nul Current pul s him into its icy depths.

Natch sees himself die. Hundreds of times. It's a vast panorama of his mortality, visions of his death stretched out on an infinite grid.

Flash.

Flash.

Flash.

He observes each scenario, interprets it, rejects it. The choice cycle is discarded; he moves on to new possibilities; the memory fades. He dies and dies again. And each rejection costs him an infinitesimal act of wil power; each a.s.sertion of his raw desire to live must be explicitly stated in the language of the neuron, synapse, axon, and dendrite. Each time, there wil come the eventual reprieve like the answer to a prayer. A missed shot. A hesitation. A finger twitched too soon or too late.

And so Natch claws his way, alive, through another fraction of a second. Every time it feels like luck. He watches his mental Data Sea video feeds and sees the tiny figure that is him inching closer to the door, a lowly p.a.w.n on a vast chessboard loaded with enemy knights.

Flash.

The figures in black robes aren't firing at Natch, and for some reason that makes total sense. He has spent much of the past month dreading these black figures and speculating on their ident.i.ties. But their presence doesn't feel quite so alarming as it did in that Shenandoah al eyway. So much has happened since that attack. Death, suspension, protests, riots. Natch knows that death is his eventual destination now, the last stop on the track. But he'l make it there on his own timetable. He wil not be hurried.

It feels like months have pa.s.sed when Natch final y makes it to the door and the pa.s.sageway beneath the Committee members' ring. He opens his eyes, busts through the door, and leaps up the stairs to the auditorium exit.

The exhaustion begins to choke him. He wants to col apse. He needs to col apse. He pushes on.

There are stil Council officers in the hal ways, of course, and Council officers close on his heels. But now he's only one man in a throng of people clamoring for the exits. The officials out here are more concerned with shepherding the sheep to safety than with plugging Natch with black code. Some of the figures in white robes and yel ow stars are actual y firing at each other, an oddity Natch does not have the energy to ponder right now.

He runs as fast as his feet can carry him. He doesn't particularly care where he's headed.

Occasional y he cuts his way through the crowd with the scythe of MultiReal, but it's mostly unnecessary here. Fleeing, infoquake-panicked pedestrians make for better camouflage.

The central atrium. The imposing holograph of Tul Jabbor, his mien a dour judgment against al manner of chaos and disorder.

Standing in Jabbor's shadow are three figures in black robes, beckoning Natch toward a side hal way that he wouldn't have otherwise noticed. A service exit of sorts. Dartguns are in their hands, but n.o.body is threatening Natch. One of them has actual y pul ed his hood back, but it's n.o.body the entrepreneur recognizes: some random Caucasian male, heavily muscled, perhaps in his midthirties. ”This way, Natch!” he beckons. ”Hurry!”

Natch pauses. Go with them? Exactly how stupid do they think I am?

And then he catches a glint of something from the corner of his eye. Natch peers around Tul Jabbor and sees a veritable battalion of white robes and yel ow stars headed this way. Scores of Defense and Wel ness Council officers with dart-rifles drawn, reinforcements rus.h.i.+ng from the building's front doors. They don't see Natch or his would-be benefactors yet, but they wil . Soon. The men in black robes beckon him again.

Natch whips around and heads in their direction.

The men in black robes form a tight phalanx around him and haul a.s.s down the narrow hal way. There's a metal door ajar there, and a hoverbird parked just outside with its boarding ramp extended. The vehicle is painted white with the yel ow star on its side. The sub terfuge is convincing from a distance, but as he draws closer Natch sees that it's a counterfeit.

A familiar voice. ”Natch!”

He turns around. Sees, at the far end of the corridor, Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee and Petrucio Patel. There are two or three Council officers with them, but it appears that the ma.s.s of troops Natch saw a minute ago have been given the slip. Magan is making no move to summon them this way.

In fact, he looks just as anxious to avoid attention.

”Come with us,” says Magan, palms upturned and extended. ”We can make a deal. We can keep you safe from Len Borda.”

Petrucio's look flings vitriol. There's dried blood on his suit. His finger caresses the trigger of his dartgun.

Natch turns around again and looks at the waiting hoverbird. The figures who escorted him down the hal way are leaping aboard, firing a few wild shots back down the hal that don't hit anything but stone. A lone figure leans out and stretches a hand toward him. Its skin is the color of mahogany. ”Hurry up, Natch!” cries the voice. ”Don't trust him!” Natch looks up, sees the man pul back the cowl of his robe, and gapes in astonishment.

Pierre Loget?

Natch is now submerged far below the realm of conscious decision or human emotion. Al he can see is the murderous look in Petrucio Patel's eye, the thousands of deaths the Council has inflicted on him this afternoon. The weariness that's dragging at his heels, the man who invaded his home and cal ed him irrelevant. He vaults for the hoverbird.

Petrucio raises the gun in both hands and fires.

Flash.

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