Part 39 (1/2)

”I don't understand why the Council hasn't said anything about Margaret's murder,” said Horvil. ”I thought they were doing an investigation. They must have figured out something by now.”

Jara frowned and bit her bottom lip, hard. She was ashamed to admit it, but she had barely thought about Margaret Surina's mysterious death during the tumult of the past two weeks.

”Doesn't surprise me they're not saying anything,” Benyamin remarked. ”With al this going on”-he twirled his index finger in the air-”Len Borda would have to be pretty stupid to bring it up now.”

”What about Quel ?” asked Horvil. ”The Council can't just hold him indefinitely, can they? They must have figured out by now that he didn't kil her. Isn't there something we can do to help him?”

”I already tried,” said Merri. Four surprised heads swiveled in her direction. ”I convinced Khann Frejohr's people to make some inquiries. But the Council's keeping mum. They've got him in an orbital prison somewhere. That's al I can find out.”

”Do you know which one?” asked Serr Vigal. ”I toured a few of them back in '35 or '36.

The good ones aren't so bad. But the bad ones ...” The neural programmer waved his arms helplessly for a moment, but no words arrived to bail him out.

Ben tapped his fingers on the table, impatient. ”We can't be the only ones looking for him, can we? Doesn't Quel have a family at home? Close friends? The Islanders don't take these kinds of things lightly. There's got to be some committee pet.i.tioning the Council for his release.”

”Wel , that's the interesting part,” replied Merri. ”There is a group of Islanders working with the libertarians to try to secure Quel 's release. They're making al kinds of threats. And one of them is Quel 's son.”

Horvil's jaw flipped open as if on springs. ”Quel has a kid?”

”Apparently he does.”

”I wonder if that's why he's staying in prison,” said Jara, contemplative. Everyone gave her blank stares. ”Wel , why doesn't he use MultiReal to overpower the guards and escape?”

”They regulate al transmissions in and out of those prisons,” offered Ben. ”He wouldn't be able to access MultiReal in there.”

”Fine-but why did Quel let them take him to prison in the first place?”

No one knew.

The conversation seemed to lose its legs at that point. The fiefcorpers looked around at one another, each expecting somebody else to prolong the conversation. Three minutes pa.s.sed. The SeeNaRee generated some background hal way noise to fil the silence.

”Okay,” said Jara final y. ”We can't just avoid the obvious question al morning, can we?

We need to figure out what happens to the fiefcorp. We need to figure out what to do, now that we've got no product.”

Benyamin frowned. ”What do you mean, no product?”

”Ben,” said Merri gently, ”you know that the Prime Committee is likely to-”

”Yes, yes, of course,” snapped Ben, cutting her off. ”They'l probably vote to take control of MultiReal and hand it over to the Council. But does that mean we're just going to ... give up? I don't care what the Committee decides. We could always appeal the ruling, right? We could talk to Khann Frejohr, get him to stir up public sentiment again. Or-or, we could try to work out another deal with Len Borda. A real deal this time.”

Jara shook her head. ”It's a moot point, Ben. Even if we could persuade the centralized government to change their minds ... we don't have MultiReal anymore. Natch moved the databases. He used that ... back door in his head, or whatever it is to lock up al the code and squirrel it away somewhere on the Data Sea where no one can find it.”

”You mean-”

”Yes. It doesn't matter what the Prime Committee decides, because MultiReal's gone.”

Serr Vigal stroked his goatee, pensive. ”What about the Patel Brothers? If Natch took the MultiReal code with him, do they stil have access to it?”

Jara shrugged. ”I'm not sure. I a.s.sume that if we don't know how to find it, they don't know either.” And once the Patels figure out I don't have MultiReal, she thought sourly, that probably spel s the end of the deal I arranged with them to get the fiefcorp's business licenses back.

”But it's not like MultiReal's permanently gone,” said Benyamin, unwil ing to let go.

”Natch stil has access to it. And he's going to come back eventual y.

He hasn't just disappeared for good ... has he?”

Silence. Jara expected an objection from Serr Vigal, but the neural programmer remained disturbingly quiet. Horvil merely sat and nibbled on his cuticles, while Merri fidgeted uncomfortably.

The blonde channel manager folded her hands on the table and screwed up her face like a woman trying to calculate logarithms in her head. ”So if we a.s.sume that Natch is gone ... and MultiReal is gone ... what do we have left?”

”Nothing and nothing,” said Horvil dejectedly. ”After the demo at Andra Pradesh, Natch sold off every last b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.p of code we had. Even the RODs. The fiefcorp dock is just ... completely empty.”

”Bril iant,” grumbled Ben. ”f.u.c.king bril iant.”

”So then should we ... dissolve the company?” asked Merri.

A hush fel upon the already quiet fiefcorpers. Everyone had heard the stories about apprentices. .h.i.tched to dead fiefcorps by dint of circ.u.mstance.

One of Jara's old hivemates had spent three years working for a bio/logic programmer who pa.s.sed away unexpectedly nine years after founding her company. Fiefcorp tax breaks dried up after a decade; no capitalman would invest in a company so close to its cutoff. Suddenly Jara's friend had found himself with nothing but a portfolio of worthless shares to his name.

But for the employees of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp, dissolving the company meant much more than just loss of profit. They would probably have to forgo their bio/logic programming equipment and most of their professional relations.h.i.+ps. Jara and Merri might have to give up their apartments.

In other words, they would al have to start over as if the last three and a half years had never happened.

”I'm not sure we could legal y dissolve the fiefcorp,” mused Vigal. ”With most of us stil suspended by the Meme Cooperative and the masters of the company completely absent ... I think we'd have a difficult time in the courts. The fiefcorp's a.s.sets would probably just go into receivers.h.i.+p. It might take years for the courts to final y accept that Natch is ... Natch is ...” He couldn't finish the sentence. Gone.

Horvil slapped the table. ”I could buy the company,” he blurted out.

A spark glinted in Merri's eye, but Ben sighed and shook his head. ”I don't know. A purchase that big-you couldn't manage that without clearance from my mother, and you know she'd never approve. No, don't start, Horvil. We couldn't afford it alone. Even if we both pooled al our liquid a.s.sets, I don't think we have the money.”

”Some of Khann Frejohr's al ies have been pus.h.i.+ng for reparations,” said Merri. ”They're demanding that we get compensation if the Prime Committee tries to compel us to turn over MultiReal.”

”And what chance do you think that has of working?” asked Horvil, chin planted in hand.

”One in a mil ion?”

”Listen, money isn't the problem,” said Jara. ”We've got plenty of credits sitting in the company coffers. Margaret Surina's money.”

”You mean, Jayze and Suheil Surina's money,” Ben retorted. ”You know that those sleazebal s are going to come after it. They already laid the groundwork by having her declared mental y incompetent before she died. The next thing they do is say that Margaret was unstable when she entered into her partners.h.i.+p with Natch. Don't tel me that's going to be too hard to prove.”

Jara shook her head. ”I'm not worried about Jayze and Suheil getting hold of the fiefcorp's money. The problem is that we can't get ahold of it. Not as individuals. What I'm saying is that even if we could dissolve the company, we can't just split up the Vault account five ways. What we can do is spend it-as a fiefcorp.” She stood up from her chair, leaned over, and pressed her clenched fists onto the tabletop. ”Listen, we don't have enough bio/logic code left in our dock to build a product base on. And starting over from scratch isn't real y feasible, right? So let's use that money. Let's approach some of the bigwigs on Primo's and offer to buy a portfolio of their programs.”

There was a moment of quiet contemplation. Given the idiosyncratic nature of bio/logic programming, it usual y wasn't worth the effort to cobble together a product line from the remnants of someone else's code. It wasn't unusual for a fiefcorp to purchase one or two pro grams to round out their own offerings, but to build a company from the ground up this way was a risky move at best.

”Which bigwigs did you want to approach?” said Merri.