Part 32 (1/2)

Brone approached, shadowed by three figures wearing identical black robes to Loget's.

His skin was grub pale, as if he had not seen the sun since his last appearance at Natch's apartment and could not be bothered with bio/logic pigmentation. The entrepreneur watched how Pierre Loget bowed low to the bodhisattva, and the way his three black-robed lackeys did the same. Brone seemed at ease here, in command. Natch had never seen him so comfortable with his prosthetic arm and emerald eye, and the beige suit he wore brought a kind of dignity to his stoutness.

”So where's your spooky costume?” said Natch with a snort of false bravado.

Brone did not appear to have heard him. ”How many did we lose down there?” he asked Loget.

”Eleven or twelve, I think.”

The bodhisattva nodded, melancholy. ”Now what did Petrucio have loaded in that dartgun, do you think?” He and Loget shared a look that was merely the tip of a Confidential Whisper iceberg.

Seconds later, Loget knelt behind Natch and plucked something from the back of his thigh. A tiny silver needle whose bite hardly broke the threshold of perception. Natch could feel his blood pressure rise as he remembered the confrontation in the Tul Jabbor Complex, the MultiReal duel, the endless panorama of choice cycles. Petrucio's dart had hit him, al right-but had it even penetrated the skin far enough to discharge its armada of tainted OCHREs? Shouldn't Natch feel ... something?

Brone took the sliver. He held it up to the light, dutiful y scanning its surface as he twirled it around slowly like a baton. Then, without warning, he plunged the tip of the dart straight into the palm of his artificial hand. Natch gasped, wondering what this theatrical gesture was supposed to prove, until he saw the intent look on Brone's face and concluded that the prosthesis must be performing some kind of chemical a.n.a.lysis.

”If there was any code embedded on the tip of those OCHREs, it's gone now,” announced the bodhisattva after a minute.

”What's going on?” snapped Natch, impatient. ”Where are you taking me? Why did you hit me with black code last month?”

Brone turned to one of his subordinates. ”Go ahead and get a-”

Natch had had enough. His muscles were screaming with exhaustion, but he managed to grab Brone by the lapels and half walk, half shove him against the side of the virtual hive building. The bodhisattva's head hit the stucco with a thump, indicating the presence of a real wal there. ”Answer me!”

Natch yel ed. ”What the f.u.c.k did you do to me?”

Loget stepped aside in preparation for something messy. Brone, however, wasn't fazed.

He gave the entrepreneur an opaque look that said he would not be pushed into revealing his hand so easily.

And here sits Brone, the man whom you wronged al those years ago, he had told Natch in those frantic days before the demonstration at Andra Pradesh. He is angry. Yes. He hates you and would love to see you dead. Yes.

Indisputable facts.

”Take a look behind you, Natch,” said Brone in a ragged whisper. ”Tel me what you see.”

The entrepreneur turned his head and saw that the SeeNaRee had evaporated, leaving only the dul plastics of a luxury hoverbird interior. They were standing in a rear compartment, about two meters away from the door Natch had leapt through to escape Magan Kai Lee and Petrucio Patel.

Immediately behind them was a large rear window, showing rapidly retreating clouds.

”We're in the air,” said Natch stupidly. ”We're over the ocean.”

”And who is pursuing us?”

Natch gazed al around. Theirs was not the only vehicle in the sky, but al of the distant craft appeared to be minding their own business. ”n.o.body,” he said.

”Yes,” replied the bodhisattva in that maddeningly supercilious tone of his. ”And do you know why n.o.body is pursuing us, Natch? Do you know why we're not dodging Council missiles right now?”

Natch shook his head.

”Because that black code floating in your bloodstream renders you invisible to Len Borda's tracking mechanisms. Do you understand me? The Council has no way to find you. ”

The entrepreneur stepped back, his tongue flopping uselessly in his mouth. Al this time, the black code-a cloaking tool?

Brone removed Natch's hands from his suit jacket and firmly walked the entrepreneur back two paces. His touch was glacier cold. Then he gave Natch a light push in the chest, knocking him back onto a stone planter. The hoverbird interior was blanketed by Proud Eagle SeeNaRee once more.

”You can thank me later,” said Brone, his voice registering something mealy that might be cal ed amus.e.m.e.nt. ”We'l be there in a few hours.”

”Where?” cried Natch.

No one answered. Brone, Loget, and the other black-robed figures disappeared into the virtual building, leaving Natch locked in the rear compartment, alone.

Natch studied his surroundings. It was an uncanny simulation, accurate down to the loose flagstone on the patio that Natch remembered digging at with his foot many a lazy summer afternoon. The palm fronds felt as rubbery as real palm fronds, and the rich olfactory melange from the garden was a scent firmly entrenched in his memory.

But this was no pedestrian work of SeeNaRee. Natch strol ed around the entire garden, then circ.u.mnavigated the hive building a few timesimpossible under standard rules of SeeNaRee. He remembered the giant hol owed-out diamond with the hidden exits from his last encounter with Brone. Clearly his old hivemate had only disdain for such rules.

Natch sat on the edge of the planter and tried to absorb the idyl ic calm of the garden. He could barely move, but he needed to marshal his strength for whatever Brone had planned. He needed to be ready.

But ready for what?

Obviously he couldn't declare victory over the Defense and Wel ness Council just because he had narrowly escaped their clutches this time. Officers had actual y fired on him in plain view of the public, in a sacred hal of government, no less. Natch couldn't be sure the code in their dartguns was of the lethal variety. But based on the agonized twitching of the bodies caught in the crossfire, Len Borda had moved beyond mere light-paralysis routines. No, if he couldn't wrest control of MultiReal from Natch's hands, then the high executive was prepared to a.s.sa.s.sinate him in cold blood and deal with the consequences later.

Natch s.h.i.+vered. Could he ever be safe from the Council again? Even a black code cloaking mechanism couldn't protect his Vault account from being seized by the government. They couldn't prevent people from recognizing his face or his voice or his mannerisms. Magan Kai Lee had claimed he could keep Natch out of Borda's reach-but even if Natch could trust him, the claim seemed unlikely.

He looked at his hands, now shaking uncontrol ably. A sudden pain lanced through his head, as it had been doing every hour with fascistic regularity for days. How could he know for sure the black code was a device for cloaking his bio/logic signatures, as Brone said? Certainly the lack of pursuit was a strong piece of circ.u.mstantial evidence, but not conclusive by any means. The chaos from the infoquake and the disguised hoverbird alone could have thrown the Council off his scent.

And what about the two other pieces of foreign code wending their way through Natch's bio/logic systems? There was stil the matter of the MultiReal yel ow jacket, not to mention whatever program Petrucio Patel had infected him with.

How had Petrucio managed to hit him? Why had MultiReal just stopped like that?

Natch buried his face in his hands. He felt leprous, unclean. Could he even trust his own thoughts with those insidious OCHREs in his neural system?

One black code program was bad enough; now he had three. Three times the black code, a thousand times the potential malevolence.

So many questions and so few answers. Natch felt a moment of extreme claustrophobia and panic. Run away! he told himself. Get as far away from here as you can!

He looked for some sign of the hoverbird hatch he had leapt through a scant half an hour before. Unsurprisingly, he found only the virtual hive building and the imposing wal s that surrounded the garden. But what good would an emergency hatch do anyway, kilometers up in the sky? Natch had no parachute, no oxygen supply, and no experience using either of those things anyway.

And even supposing he could fas.h.i.+on some miraculous escape and safe landing ... what then? Could any of the fiefcorpers shelter him? The Council would probably have them al under the strictest surveil ance now-besides which, they might not want to help him. Natch had threatened to trash Horvil's and Ben's careers. He had not raised a finger to help Merri fight the bogus charges that had gotten her suspended from Creed Objectivv. He had left Serr Vigal lying unconscious on the floor of the Tul Jabbor Complex. Quel had vanished. He had stretched the control ing clamps on Jara to the snapping point.

Natch was struck with a sudden inspiration. He knew what had happened at the Tul Jabbor Complex. He knew how Petrucio Patel had been able to shoot him with the dartgun.

Snippets from the soccer demonstration in Harper echoed through Natch's head. Ben kicking the bal , Quel blocking every kick. Something's ...

strange, Benyamin had said. I'm using MultiReal, just like before-but it just stops at some point. It leaves me hanging there in midloop.

Limited choice cycles! Horvil had shouted. I think I get this now. We put a limit on the number of reality loops Ben can do at one time-but your version of MultiReal stil has no limits.

Someone must have modified the MultiReal program while Natch wasn't looking. Set a limit on the number of daily choice cycles and brought the program down to the level of the Patel Brothers' licensed version. Natch had drained his reservoir of daily choice cycles with al of those acrobatics in the auditorium of the Tul Jabbor Complex. Petrucio had not.