Part 35 (2/2)
Natch stopped short. He had no idea. The answer touched on advanced Prengalian physics and involved questions that even the world's greatest minds could not answer.
The bodhisattva touched his fingertips together under his chin. ”Natch, you know the software better than any of us,” he said. ”Margaret had sixteen years to work these problems out. What did she conclude?”
”I don't know,” said Natch. ”She's dead, and I never got the opportunity to ask her. The only other person who might know is sitting in a Defense and Wel ness Council prison somewhere.”
The meeting ended shortly thereafter on a note of grim silence. Does MultiReal have any limits? the entrepreneur found himself wondering.
Even if they managed to work through the list of technical problems, a whole other set of legal and ethical questions awaited them. Natch was hesitant to even raise the subject. The fact of the matter was, catching another person in a col aborative MultiReal process was moral y shady. It meant forcing someone to partic.i.p.ate in a software interaction without his consent-or even his knowledge, since MultiReal erased putative memories as a matter of course. How long would the L-PRACGs stand for that?
Most troublesome of al was Natch's suspicion that there was nothing the law could do to stop it. Some of the programming hooks MultiReal used were buried so deep in the framework that changing them would upend fifty years of bio/logic progress. Natch had not even been aware that these hooks existed. They must have lain hidden in the standard OCHRE system for generations. How had Margaret known where to find them? Had Marcus Surina put them there? Or maybe even Prengal?
Natch kept the door to his room locked and barricaded at night. He made sure that MultiReal remained ful y functional despite al their manipulations, and kept it at the ready. Just in case. Just in case.
In the end, it was the black code that caused Natch to renegotiate the terms of the agreement with his old hivemate.
The trembling that had been pil aging the nerves of his left arm began to make exploratory raids throughout his body. He would find his neck muscles twitching uncontrol ably at certain times of the day. More than once, Natch opened his eyes only to realize that he had blacked out some indeterminate time before. He would immediately switch into paranoid mode, shut down the Minds.p.a.ce bubble, and do a thorough review of every data strand the Tha.s.selians had touched in the past hour. But as far as Natch could tel , Brone's devotees remained on the level.
He approached Brone in his backroom office.
”This black code cloaking program,” said Natch, too exhausted to make any attempts at subtlety. ”Does it have any side effects?”
The bodhisattva smiled. The prospect of seeing his enemy suffering physical y seemed to give him cheer. ”I was wondering when you were going to ask about that,” he replied. ”The shaking and the blackouts-don't think I haven't noticed.”
”So it's your code that's causing them?”
”Maybe,” said Brone, his smile curling into a smirk.
”Wel , you need to do something about it,” snapped Natch. ”I can't work like this.”
Natch folded his arms in an attempt to keep steady and eyed the room Brone had claimed as his personal headquarters. He didn't know how long Creed Tha.s.sel had been making modifications to this old hotel, but Brone seemed to have left the room exactly as he had found it. Yel owed photos of some long-forgotten Texan dynasty on the wal s, a dilapidated metal desk, cracked brick on the floor, a prodigious leather sofa on which he was now reclining. A real window, with actual gla.s.s, though how it had survived the centuries since the Autonomous Revolt intact Natch couldn't guess.
The bodhisattva put his feet up on the splintered oak table in front of him and clasped his hands behind his head. ”I could make some modifications,”
he said, affecting nonchalance. ”We've been able to tweak that cloaking program for the rest of the crew. Bil y has the occasional flutter, but everyone else is coping with the black code just fine.”
”So then tweak it.”
Brone sniffed. ”And why should I?”
The two enemies stared each other down, Natch fil ing up with increasing rage and Brone sliding deeper into insouciance with every pa.s.sing second.
It was a peculiar game of bluffs. Natch knew that Horvil's so-cal ed mind control trick wouldn't work here. Even if Natch could use MultiReal to find that one possibility in a thousand where Brone decided to do his bidding, he would need to repeat the same trick over and over again possibly for hours. As he had discovered with Khann Frejohr on his balcony, that was excruciatingly hard work.
Natch simply didn't have the strength for it. But he couldn't admit that to Brone, could he?
”Fix it,” said Natch between clenched teeth, ”or I'l leave. Right now. I'l leave and take MultiReal with me, and your 'Revolution of Selfishness' wil be over before it even gets off the ground.”
Brone shrugged. ”Ah, but if you leave, that jittering is only going to get worse. Much worse. I've seen what that black code can do. The first volunteer ended up with the Prepared. I'd absolutely hate to see that happen to you.”
”I'l take my chances. I can fix it myself.”
”Real y? Then why haven't you?”
Silence. The sounds of clanking silverware from the devotees' dinner came wafting down the hal way.
Brone's face softened into something resembling capitulation. ”Understand my position, Natch. I need you here. You and I are the only ones who are real y capable of finis.h.i.+ng the MultiReal project. Pierre and Bil y are talented programmers, I grant you that-but they're two-dimensional thinkers, or Margaret Surina would have licensed the program to them in the first place. But admit it, you need me too. You can't make al those thousands of bio/logic connections by yourself, and in case you hadn't noticed, Old Chicago's not exactly teeming with a.s.sembly-line programming shops.
”So I'm in a bind, Natch. You can use MultiReal at any point to run out of here, and we can't stop you. This black code is the only bargaining chip I have.
So let's be reasonable businesspeople. Let's fol ow the example of the diss, and let's barter. You give me something I want; I'l give you something you want.”
Natch, muttering under his breath: ”So what do you want?”
”Only what's fair,” replied Brone, opening his arms with a gesture of welcome that had more than a hint of saccharine. ”Give me access to MultiReal like you've given the rest of the devotees. I'm not asking for core access. I'l stick with the same subset of programming tools, I'l abide by the rest of your rules. Just let me do something instead of sitting back here kil ing time.”
”That's al ?”.
”That's al .”
The entrepreneur pursed his lips. He could feel the slightest decline of the road ahead into a long and slippery slope. Brone finding tool after tool to barter with. Natch granting more and more concessions.
But he held the final trump card, didn't he? Core access to MultiReal. That was al that mattered in the end. MultiReal couldn't give Natch the power to control someone else's life; but it could give him the ultimate power to control his own.
Give Brone what he wants this time, Natch told himself. You're much too powerful for him to take MultiReal away, and he knows that.
”Fine,” he said. ”But I want Loget to tweak the black code. Not you. We might be working side by side here, but I stil don't trust you.”
The bodhisattva rose and gave an ingratiating bow. His prosthetic eye caught the light and twinkled. ”I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Natch,”
he said. ”I'l make sure Loget is on the case first thing tomorrow morning.”
40.
Natch was starting to remember why he had never sought out Pierre Loget's company.
The man's brain ran on dandelion logic, scattering to the four corners of the Earth in the slightest breeze. Loget began the morning chattering about Hegelian dialectics, then flitted on to modern Patronel ian dance and the thermodynamics of hoverbird flight without any discernible segue.
”The black code,” insisted Natch after ninety minutes of this. ”Have you finished tuning that f.u.c.king black code?” He was lying faceup on one of the icy crescent platforms, arms tied lightly at his sides so the shaking wouldn't knock him over the edge. Loget, meanwhile, was hauling chunk after chunk of Natch's OCHRE code into Minds.p.a.ce while he babbled about nothing.
”Just be patient,” replied Loget. ”This takes time.”
”How much time?”
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