Part 31 (1/2)
Flash.
Flash.
Choice cycle stacks on top of choice cycle, a colossus of possibility. Petrucio is using MultiReal too.
Flash.
Flash.
Flash.
For a brief, infinite instant, Natch and Petrucio Patel stand alone, facing off on the battlefield of the mind. A thousand darts bite into Natch; Natch swats them away. Mental processes whirl and spin; the colossus branches out into new and unexpected dimensions. And stil the darts keep coming as Patel expends his own choice cycles to navigate to new realities.
Natch should be col apsing by now-he should be prostrate on the floor in pain and weakness-but he stubbornly refuses to submit. He wil not submit.
Hit, miss, hit, miss, hit, miss, and thenMultiReal stops.
Natch feels a pinp.r.i.c.k in the back of his thigh as the dart pierces his flesh. Loget grabs his arm just as he jumps onto the hoverbird. A few black-robed figures leap on after him, and the door shuts.
35.
The crowd surged forward once the shooting began. Horvil disappeared almost immediately. Merri and Benyamin found themselves swept up the stairs and out the exit. Robby Robby managed to shelter Jara in the lee of his immense hairdo for a moment before he also stuck a limb out too far and was overwhelmed.
Jara was now alone in a furious crush of strangers. A Defense and Wel ness Council officer yanked on her shoulder and herded her out the door, sending her careening into someone else's elbow. She tried to yel a question to the man in the white robe and yel ow star, but he had already vanished in the stampede.
Another aftershock of the infoquake made Jara's knees buckle. She slipped and felt a moment of hysteria. I'm going to get trampled to death out here, she thought. Despite her little sermon about conserving computing resources five minutes earlier, she prepared to activate MultiReal. What do I have to lose?
And then a chunky arm emerged out of nowhere and locked itself tight around her waist.
”Hold on,” said Horvil, his brow furrowed with determination.
”I'm getting us the f.u.c.k out of here.” Jara merely stared at him.
With that, Horvil dove into the tornado.
Where had al these people come from? Even an auditorium fil ed to capacity shouldn't have generated this much foot traffic through the corridors.
Jara looked up at the six levels of offices behind smoked gla.s.s on either side of the corridor and discovered they were emptying rapidly. She gazed myopical y at the crowd and was astounded to realize that a number of the fleeing citizens were, in fact, government officials. The black ring of the Prime Committee was hanging from more than one neck, as were the insignias of the Congress of L-PRACGs, the Vault, Dr. Plugenpatch, and any number of private security organizations. Jara saw unsheathed dartguns and disruptors aplenty, but as far as she could tel , n.o.body outside of the auditorium had actual y fired one.
Horvil bul dozed his way through the panicked pedestrians like an industrial combine.
n.o.body wanted to mess with a man of his girth. Jara noticed that the engineer had actual y acquired a trail of hapless civil servants hoping to fol ow him to safety. They fel behind when he turned the next corner and quickly dispersed.
Within minutes, Horvil had elbowed his way to the central atrium of the Complex, where people were alternately gravitating toward the giant holograph of Tul Jabbor and speeding away from it. Jara supposed that an Autonomous Mind could have factored through al the trajectories of fleeing souls and plotted a safe course through the melee, but it was beyond mere human means. She was glad she had resisted the temptation to activate MultiReal. What if the exhaustion had overtaken her in the middle of al these people? No, her best strategy was to latch on to the biggest, st.u.r.diest person she could find and hold tight.
That person was Horvil. For a moment, he looked like he might plop down right there and begin sketching mathematical models. Instead he scooted over to the wal with Jara close behind and began probing every office door they pa.s.sed in hopes of finding one that would yield.
Final y one did-but only because its occupant chose that precise moment to run screaming into the corridor. The pasty-faced woman didn't even glance in Horvil's direction as she scurried by. Horvil didn't hesitate. He tightened his grip around Jara's waist and leapt into the office just as the door closed behind them.
Minutes pa.s.sed. Their heartbeats slowed.
Horvil's luck was incalculable. He had stumbled into some middle manager's office, complete with standard Prime Committee-issue desk, wal of viewscreens, and hanging ficus plant. It was little more than a cubicle, and the only chair in sight looked frightful y uncomfortable. So the two fiefcorpers slumped to the floor with backs to the desk and caught their breath. A sign on the wal next to the door told them to PROMOTE L-PRACG COOPERATION AT ALL COSTS in sanctimonious smal caps.
”You're responsible for al this, aren't you?” said Jara, leaning against the engineer's shoulder.
Horvil tipped an imaginary hat. ”Of course.”
”A little over the top, wasn't it? I mean, did you have to spark worldwide pandemonium just to get out of your fiefcorp contract?”
”I dunno, sometimes I think you just have to take the big chances. Like the great Lucco Primo once said, Global catastrophe causes fertilization and, um, crystal ization of purpose in-in fiefcorp negotiations. Or something like that.”
The joke wheezed to a halt, leaving the two alone with their thoughts.
Jara realized that Horvil had never actual y taken his arm from around her waist, but she was in no mind to remove it. After al , now that she had core access to MultiReal, she was just as much of a target as Natch, wasn't she? Through the translucent gla.s.s of the door, she could see the bedlam of Prime Committee bureaucrats and hear the tramp of confused Defense and Wel ness Council officers. One of those officers could hit the door with a priority override and zap them ful of black code at any time. The menacing figures in black robes could track them down. Drudges might be waiting to pounce right in the hal . Was there any safer place to be than nestled in the plush cus.h.i.+on of Horvil's bel y? Jara tilted her head back slightly into Horvil's chest and listened to the rhythmic chugging of his heart, as steady an engine as could be found in this wretched place.
”What are you thinking?” she asked softly.
”Oh, I'm thinking about the Spiral Theory of History,” replied Horvil.
Jara smirked. ”You'l have to explain that one. I was never very good at history.”
”It's one of the tenets of Creed Dao, I think. Something about the looping patterns of history. Events recur, but it's not just a circle, it's more like a spring or a coil. So we're not just going round and round the same groove-we're progressing somewhere. Moving up or down on a spiral track.” The engineer twirled the index finger of his left hand, drawing an invisible cone that would come to a point at some hypothetical place in the aether.
”Horvil, I have no idea what you're talking about.”
”Come on. Marcus Surina introduces this revolutionary new technology, teleportation.
Everybody goes wild over it, there's al this hul abaloo, and then he dies suddenly in a hoverbird explosion. The whole economy tanks. Now here we are, a generation later. Margaret Surina introduces another revolutionary new technology, there's al this hul abaloo, and then she dies suddenly.
Murdered, maybe. A spiral.”
The a.n.a.lyst gave him a playful poke in the side. ”You're just now figuring this out? The drudges have been pus.h.i.+ng that story for weeks. Just like her father, history repeats itself-”
”No no no, you're missing the whole point, Jara. It's not just history repeating itself.
There are a lot of recurring patterns, sure, but it can't be the same, because everything we do is informed by what happened in the past. We're going somewhere. It's either spiraling up, or it's spiraling down. And the Daoists, they believe that you can track that change, that you can figure out the laws of the universe if you can figure out the coefficient of change between historical cycles.”
Jara laughed quietly in the crook of Horvil's arm. It was just like him to float off into abstraction like an untethered bal oon amidst such turmoil. ”Wel , which way are we going? Up or down?”
Horvil made a jovial face as his mind came cras.h.i.+ng back to the present. ”I dunno. That's the big question, I guess.”