Part 36 (2/2)

”You're trying to make this a black-and-white issue. It's not that simple.”

”Not that simple?” said Brone, his voice rising in mock disbelief. He turned to the oddly dressed Texans on his office wal as if expecting them to say a few words of solidarity. ”It wasn't that simple when al this started, Natch. You made it a black-and-white issue by stubbornly refusing to explore the options.

No compromises! That's been your strategy since the very beginning. Wel , now it's paid off, hasn't it? Here you are at last, no friends left, no al ies, nowhere to turn! Tel me this much. You never had any intention of staying here and joining my Revolution of Selfishness, did you? You would have bolted the instant we finished tuning that black code. Or would you have taken advantage of our programming skil s first, waited until Possibilities 2.0 was done, and then run away?” Brone leaned back in his chair, angrily opening and closing the middle desk drawer for no apparent reason. ”Loget said this would happen. He told me you'd never cooperate with us, no matter how much was at stake. But I was too trusting.”

”Too trusting?” said Natch with a guffaw. ”Too trusting? Talk about false pretenses-you never intended to fix that black code. You planned on leaving me like this al along, didn't you?” He held up his right arm, now twitching as frequently and painful y as the left.

”No,” insisted Brone, placing his good hand over his heart in a show of sincerity. ”I'm being on the level with you. I swear, Pierre has been trying to figure out what's wrong.”

Natch felt a sudden rush of nausea, though whether it was precipitated by the black code or Brone's lies he didn't know. ”You haven't been on the level since the beginning,” he sneered. ”If you wanted to work with me, then why didn't you just approach me upfront? Why the deceit? Why the-”

”Oh, please!” The bodhisattva waved away Natch's objections with a swipe of his prosthetic hand. ”I did approach you. Have you forgotten that I gave you money? It was only after you turned up your nose at me-only after you made it clear you were planning to walk straight into Len Borda's clutches with MultiReal in hand-only then that I took the recourse of black code. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, Natch! And did you deserve it? You're the man who lied and cheated his way up the Primo's charts, after al . The man without moral scruples, the man known for his inability to work with anyone. And you say I should have just taken your word? You think I should have just come to you without taking any precautions?”

Natch didn't know why he was stil standing in his old hivemate's office taking such abuse. Better to leave now, better to run out that door into the Chicago winter while his anger was fresh. What could Brone do besides heap scorn upon him as he walked away? Yet Natch's feet felt rooted to the spot; he could not leave, not quite yet. ”If you had so little faith in me,” he said, ”then why did you bother? I wasn't the only one who had core access to MultiReal.

You could have gone to-” Natch stopped short as he felt a horrible truth stab him in the gut. His legs gave way, and he col apsed into a chair near the door.

”For process' preservation,” he said under his breath. ”You-you murdered Margaret.”

The room grew deathly quiet. Brone stood up from his chair and turned his back on Natch. Then he walked slowly to the window and folded his arms across his chest. Outside, a flotil a of dark clouds was threatening to blanket the city with more snow. A few of the devotees ambled by, muttering angry and unintel igible words at one another.

”I admit I wanted to murder her,” said Brone after a long and tense silence. ”I even admit that I threatened her. But it's not so easy to kil someone in cold blood, Natch. You should try it sometime. Would I have gone through with it? I honestly don't know.”

”What do you mean? If you didn't kil her, then who did?”

”n.o.body,” replied the bodhisattva, his voice ashen. ”Margaret Surina committed suicide.”

Something vile wriggled its way inside Natch's bel y. He remembered his last conversation with Margaret atop the Revelation Spire. She'd been in the last stages of paranoia, clutching a dartgun, barely able to recognize Natch. Barely able to recognize Quel . ”You expect me to believe that?” said Natch in a hol ow croak. ”After al the lies you've told?”

Brone shrugged, conceding the point. ”I'm sorry you don't believe me. But the truth is, your business partner kil ed herself. I watched her do it. I sat in that wretched Spire of hers and laid out my vision for Possibilities 2.0, one bodhisattva to another. I told her of my plans for the Revolution of Selfishness, just like I told you.” The bodhisattva slumped forward with his palms on the windowsil .

”I don't know if she even understood what I was saying. You saw how she was behaving toward the end. You were in her office right before me. I offered Margaret Surina a chance to join the Revolution, and instead she chose suicide, with her own black code. It was ... horrible. It wasn't a quick death.” He shuddered. ”Undoubtedly Len Borda has already figured this out, and is just trying to decide who to pin the blame on.

”But I already had a backup plan, Natch, and that was you. So I waited. Because I knew it was only a matter of time before you alienated everyone and exhausted every resource. Regardless of what the Prime Committee decided, I knew you'd never hand them MultiReal. I knew that eventual y you would wind up alone with Council dartguns bearing down on you, with nowhere else to turn. So when the infoquake struck at the Tul Jabbor Complex, I was ready. I swooped down, and I saved you.

”Not only did I save you, Natch-I brought you here to Old Chicago, and I gave you everything you'd always wanted. Unlimited resources. A partners.h.i.+p.

The greatest technological chal enge in the history of programming, and al the time in the world to master it.” Brone took a deep breath, looking miserable and defeated. ”I'm not sure what else you expect me to do.”

”I already told you,” said Natch. ”Fix that black code. Fix it, or get rid of it.”

There was no noise but the creaking of the old hotel for several minutes. Natch could see Brone's reflection in the window. The bodhisattva's eyes were dead, hol ow, unmanned.

Final y, Brone spoke. ”My black code isn't causing those tremors and blackouts, Natch,”

he said. ”I don't know what is. And that's the truth.”

Natch snorted. ”I don't believe you.”

Another pause. The storm clouds that had been threatening snow began to deliver on their promise.

”Why should I help you, Natch?” said Brone, tired. ”You're already planning to leave.

This is Chicago, the city of barter. And yet you offer me nothing in exchange.”

Natch picked himself up from the chair and thrust his hands in his pockets. ”Why should I barter?” he said. ”I've got core access to MultiReal. I don't have to offer anything in return. You've got one more day. Fix the black code, or get rid of it-and then I'l decide if I'm going to stay. It's the only chance you've got.”

Brone did not turn around. ”So be it,” he said.

The graveyard of midnight. Complete silence throughout the hotel.

Natch bolted out of bed and threw on his clothes. He dashed through the hal way and down the stairs. There were no revelers in the atrium tonight, no wandering insomniacs, n.o.body picking over leftovers from the kitchen. Through the windows, Old Chicago had nothing to offer but the wind and the sepulchral snow. Natch picked a devotee's platform at random, lowered it, and hopped on.

He knew what he had to do.

Natch stood at the workbench and waved his left hand. A s.h.i.+mmering bubble the size of a coin appeared in the air before him. The bubble quickly expanded until it encompa.s.sed most of the workbench, until it enveloped him entirely and blanketed the rest of the world in a translucent film.

Minds.p.a.ce. An empty canvas, a barren universe. Anything was possible here.

With his right hand, Natch reached into his pocket and pul ed out the black felt bag he had been carting with him for weeks now. He yanked open the drawstring and shook out the bag's hidden treasure on the workbench: ten glimmering circlets of gold, the bio/logic programming rings Quel had lent him.

Natch slid them whisper-quiet onto his fingers. As soon as the rings pa.s.sed the borders of Minds.p.a.ce, strings of programming code leapt to his fingertips and formed an intricate pattern in the air.

The entrepreneur raised his left hand again and spread his fingers wide. The Minds.p.a.ce bubble quickly fil ed with the swol en treble clef, the black code that had been afflicting him since that fateful night on the streets of Shenandoah.

Natch attacked.

The treble clef buzzed and whirred while the minutes pa.s.sed. Mindful of what had happened the last time he tried to bombard a subroutine too quickly, Natch took absolute care with Brone's black code, only making tentative sorties at first to test the program's defenses. The rings felt more comfortable now than when he had tried them in Shenandoah. They had adapted to his movements, his pace, his style. He could have sworn they had even shrunk a size or two. Gradual y, minute by minute, he began to make more complex maneuvers.

Final y, one of his attacks penetrated the program's surface, and the treble clef exploded into a thousand pieces with a deafening crash. Natch stepped back, surveyed the jagged guts of the black code.

And realized that this was definitely not a cloaking program.

Natch had never actual y built a cloaking routine before, but he had spent long hours studying their ilk in dark corners of the Data Sea. He knew the shapes and contours to expect, and he had an idea of where the hooks should be. But this program, this black code, didn't match the profile. Links in the treble clef pointed to obscure OCHRE subsystems that would be of little use if the program did what Brone claimed. Natch wished he had paid more attention to Serr Vigal's neural programming lectures al those years ago, because most of the treble clef's nodes appeared to be tied to machines along the brain stem.

Natch stood on the lowest platform of the atrium, gazing at the stalks that jutted into the air around him like stalagmites. He felt the internal fury boil over. His suspicions had been justified; Brone had lied to him, and now he had proof.

Do you know why we're not dodging Council missiles right now? the bodhisattva had said. Because that black code floating in your bloodstream renders you invisible to Len Border's tracking mechanisms. Do you understand me? The Council has no way to find you.

If the black code was not a cloaking mechanism to keep him hidden from the Defense and Wel ness Council, then what was it? Why was Brone so adamant about refusing to disable it? Had Pierre Loget been faking al his efforts to tune out the code's insidious side effects? And if Brone was lying to him about the black code software, what else was he lying about?

Natch combed frantical y through the Minds.p.a.ce schematic looking for a way to disable the software, but it was too wel crafted for the simplistic tricks that would cripple most works of black code. He remembered how skil ful a programmer Brone had been even years ago at the Proud Eagle; now he was witnessing the end product of that ruthless and cunning intel ect. No, even with the program's innards splayed open in Minds.p.a.ce, it would take Natch hours, possibly days, to dislodge it from his skul . Could he afford to cal Brone's bluff?

Could he even afford to wait for Brone to discover that he had found a way inside?

Natch shut off the workbench, pocketed the felt bag with the programming rings, and ran out the front door without a backward glance.

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