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Infoquake

Page 20

by David Louis Edelman


  "I came to discuss-"

  "Figaro Fi," said Brone in a commanding voice, cutting Natch off in mid-sentence. "You remember the fat little capitalman Figaro Fi? This whole cripple routine was Figaro's idea. Show off your scars, my boy, he said. Play up your handicaps. Hold out your stump to gain their sympathy, then hold out your good hand to take their money." As he spoke, Brone hunched over in a cruelly effective parody of the little man. Longrepressed memories of the night before initiation came flooding back to Natch, and he nearly retched in disgust.

  "Perhaps it was a despicable thing to do," continued Brone, "but it worked! Figaro brought me everywhere in those miserable years after the initiation. He would stand me up in these little auditoriums with a group of capitalmen, put a bio/logic programming bar in my hand, and cheer me on like a monkey while I performed tricks in MindSpace. Figaro's programming cripple, victim of the Shortest Initiation! Who could withhold money from such a sad and noble soul?

  "And Figaro was right! How amazingly simple it is-all you have to do is admit that the world has defeated you, and the money will come pouring in. It's an intoxicating feeling. And if you make the right connections, if you stroke enough egos, if you convince enough of those shallow, soulless capitalmen that their gifts have soothed your pain-why, you win the game. The capitalmen begin throwing you private contracts. You can work outside the auspices of the Meme Cooperative, where you don't have to worry about the constraints of Dr. Plugenpatch. You can toss that Primo's bio/logic investment guide in the dungheap where it belongs!"

  Brone began rubbing his chin in far-away contemplation, and Natch had to use every ounce of his willpower not to wrap his hands around his throat and begin squeezing as hard as he could. He looked around for something to sit on, and found nothing but diamond outcroppings that were almost certainly illusions.

  "I can see you're restless," said Brone, turning to Natch as if noticing him for the first time. He leaned back in the gargantuan chair and laid his arms on the throne, like a withered and haunted king. "You want to sit, you want to stand, you want to move, you want to stay still-it's been like this your whole life, hasn't it?

  "Well, let me tell you, Natch, I know where you're heading, and I've been there. There's a whole economy up in that rarefied air that the drudges know nothing about. And I made riches up there. Riches! You fantasize about living in a lunar estate some day? I own one, Natch, and it's worth every bloody credit. Sunrises over the lip of Tycho while you watch and sip chaff in a gravity-controlled dome ... servants at your beck and call ... pretty young gardeners pruning all those twisted moon plants. There's nothing like it.

  "But the lunar estate grows tiresome after a while. So do the sycophants and the bootlickers. It sounds like a cliche, but it's true. I bought myself the gaudiest estate I could, and the private hoverbird service, and the baubles and jewels and gadgets. And then I asked myself: Now what?

  "So I went searching again.

  "First, I went to the medical specialists. Hack the body, and the mind will follow-isn't that what Sheldon Surina said? But can you believe what a superstitious world we live in, Natch? The Autonomous Revolt was hundreds of years ago-and yet the Prime Committee still won't allow a simple tank-grown limb! The only place for human flesh is on the human body, they say." His voice rumbled up to a dangerous level, as if he were playing to the rafters in some imaginary amphitheater.

  "So they gave me the next best thing." And then, as Natch looked on in horror, Brone unsnapped his fake arm and thrust it onto the table, where it landed on the bleu cheese with a sickening thwup. A circle of plastic prongs shone wetly on the end of Brone's stump, like octopus teeth. "Completely self-contained, no nerves or blood required: a miracle of engineering. You would be surprised to know how quickly one can tweak it to work in MindSpace like a bio/logic programming bar. And, of course, having an artificial limb gives one certain ... advantages." When the fingers of the disembodied hand began twitching of their own accord, Natch leapt back and nearly sprawled on his face again. The fingers tore through the rind of the cheese and performed a gooey dance, spackling the floor with bits of white.

  Natch felt sick. He recognized his own ruthless utilitarian tactics at work. What was it that old Kordez Thassel had said? Do not let taboos and social restrictions stop you from gaining advantage over your enemy. OCHREs rushed to defuse the acid in his stomach, and Natch would have supplemented their soothing effects with a bio/logic program if he thought it would help. "I-I came here today," he stuttered, "to-"

  Brone completely ignored him. "So the replacement arm and the replacement eye were dead ends," he said with a shrug. "I knew as soon as they were installed that I had been using my handicap as an escape. It was an easy way to distract me from what I really wanted to do, from the one thing that would make me happy.

  "And that was killing you."

  Natch edged back, flailing his arm behind him in search of the door. He realized with dismay that it had vanished. He didn't want to know anymore why Brone had invited him here this morning, or what his interest in the Phoenix Project was; Natch just wanted out. But the diamond walls completely surrounded him now. He was trapped.

  Brone leaned back in his throne and regarded Natch with sepulchral eyes, like someone watching from a separate plane of existence. The disembodied forearm began tapping out a mad rhythm on the cheese plate. "I spent months planning the whole scenario. I followed you around, Natch, did you know that? I scouted out a thousand locations for the perfect ambush. Should I follow you to Cisco and shoot you down in the forest? Or plug you full of black code on a sidestreet in London? Or just push you off your own balcony in Shenandoah and be done with it?"

  Natch rubbed his back against the diamond wall and did not breathe. The door had to be there somewhere ... if he could just pierce the veil of this confounded SeeNaRee....

  "But don't worry, Natch," said Brone, his voice one big sneer. "You're not in any danger here today." He spread his hand and stump wide in a conciliatory gesture. His smile was the smile of a ghoul. "You see, I have found religion."

  The fiefcorp master stared at his old enemy, not comprehending. "The Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," Natch croaked under his breath. "Where is he?"

  Brone gave a long and uncomfortable pause, like a robot in suspended animation. "I am the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," he said at last.

  It took a minute for the words to penetrate Natch's defenses. He turned them around in his head, breaking them down into small digestible pieces to try and make sense of them. Brone the head of the Thasselians?

  Before he could get a grip on the situation, the SeeNaRee changed.

  Suddenly, they were hurtling through black space in a small starcraft not much bigger than the Falcon that transported them home from initiation all those years ago. Rocks and chunks of ice whizzed by at breakneck speed. Natch looked out the starboard window just in time to see an asteroid the size of a tube train hurtle past them, missing the ship by half a meter.

  "I could turn you in to the Prime Committee," Natch gasped. "You can't hide exits like that. It's against the law. And you can't just switch environments on the fly without giving me fair warning."

  Brone sat back in his padded captain's chair, toying idly with the steering panel that rose before him from the floor like a metallic mushroom. He did not react at all to the first asteroid collision, which made the rickety craft shudder as if it were a few bolts away from completely collapsing. "How ironic," Brone croaked. "Natch threatening to turn me over to the law? Here at Creed Thassel, we take a more laissez-faire approach to laws. As old Kordez used to say, Rules are for those who follow rules. "

  "But-" The rusted hull of a dead spaceship slammed into the side of their craft, sending Natch sprawling onto the floor once again with his teeth chattering. He bit the inside of his cheek with an audible chomp. Brone remained comfortably seated, and Natch noted that the disembodied arm sat motionless on the table. Yet another infraction, thought the fiefcorp master bitterly.
Inconsistent laws of physics.

  "Creed Thassel was really in abysmal shape when I found it," continued Brone, studying the fingernails of his good hand intently. "You'd be surprised how many people think Creed Thassel ceased to exist twenty years ago. There was that expose by Sen Sivv Sor. Financial scandals. A real paucity of leadership. The imbeciles running the organization were even on the brink of losing control of the Kordez Thassel Complex. So when I got religion, Natch, I got it for a real bargain-basement price. They needed my money. They needed my vision and my initiative."

  Cosmic debris continued to slam into the ship, leaving Natch huddled on the floor with his hands over his head. OCHREs had already staunched the bleeding in his mouth, but he couldn't help probing the scar with his tongue. He knew he cut quite a ridiculous figure to his old rival, but survival was all he cared about at this point.

  "Forgive me," sighed the bodhisattva, his voice devoid of supplication. "I suppose I've gotten carried away." He waved his hand in the air-the hand of flesh and bone-and the cluttered field of debris outside the ship vanished. The virtual gravity stabilized. "So let us discuss business, you and I."

  Natch warily got to his feet and brushed himself off. It seemed strange that an hour ago, the only thing occupying his mind was his dire need for capital. Now suddenly, he was treading water in a sea of old landmines. "Do I have any choice?" he muttered.

  "Game playing!" shouted Brone abruptly, his eyes ablaze. He arose from the chair and stood at the port window, his stump resting wearily against the glass. "All these games we've played throughout the years, you and I. And this whole setup-the invitation, the SeeNaRee, throwing the arm on the table-just another move in the game. A way to put you off guard. But believe it or not, after all the hurt and pain and suffering you have caused me, Natch, I am capable of forgiving you."

  Natch gritted his teeth. Forgiving me for what? he thought.

  "Soon, we will all be moving beyond games," continued Brone. "All of us ... you, me, the drudges, Horvil, the idiots at the Defense and Wellness Council, all those narrow-minded bean counters at Primo's. Soon, it will make no difference who the winners and losers are."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "I'm talking about Margaret Surina, of course. I'm talking about the Phoenix Project'." Natch could practically hear the belittling quotation marks.

  "I don't know-"

  "Oh, please!" snapped the bodhisattva in a sudden fit of pique. "Don't waste your breath. The Phoenix Project is the whole reason you held those little fundraising charades of yours, isn't it? It's the whole reason you're here. But even if you hadn't held those meetings, Natch, I would have come looking for you. I know all about your visit to Andra Pradesh. Thasselian agents were watching when you walked in and out of those gates at the Surina compound, and they attended your little performances yesterday too. That's the advantage of having an organization with a secret membership.

  "Let me be forthcoming. You're a step behind in this game, Natch, just as you've always been a step behind me in everything else. The struggle for the Phoenix Project was well underway before you butted your nose into it. I have no problem with your pathetic attempts to grab a little portion of the pot, but don't think you can walk away with the whole thing. There are too many people who know too much."

  Natch gave a haughty sniff in Brone's direction. "And what do you know that I don't?"

  "I know what you have been trying to find out-I know what this technology of Margaret's is." Natch could practically feel Brone's grim smile, even though he was facing the other direction. "Let me tell you, it is everything you suspect it is, and more. Perhaps even more than Margaret imagines."

  The fiefcorp master hesitated and felt Serr Vigal's suspicions rushing in to fill the hole in the pit of his stomach. Could Brone be telling the truth? The Thasselians continued to pledge their devotees in secret, after all, and there were no Creeds Coalition bylaws preventing people from pledging to more than one creed. "So what are you wasting time with me for?" said Natch with affected nonchalance. "If you're so far ahead of me, go talk to Margaret yourself."

  "I have tried, many times. The Surina woman does not listen."

  "Perhaps she's put off by your winning way with people."

  Natch's wisecrack did not succeed in penetrating Brone, now standing at the window rubbing his chin with his handless stump. Natch couldn't help but shiver. "Obviously, you cannot see the forest for the trees, Natch. I wish I could say this surprises me, but it does not. So let me tell you the truth of the situation that has so far eluded you." Brone spread the fingers of his good hand out against the window, as if straining to reach something beyond the black void. "I have seen the future, Natch. And the future is you and I, in business together, selling the Phoenix Project."

  The thought made Natch nauseous. "Bullshit."

  "I understand your dilemma, Natch," said Brone, his voice barely a whisper now. "You want to walk out the door right now and never see me again." He nodded towards the rear of the spacecraft, where a plain metal door suddenly materialized out of nowhere. "But Margaret Surina has dangled the carrot just beyond your reach, like everything has always been just beyond your reach. You need my help. Nobody is buying your fundraising pitch, and you're running out of time. You need the money that I can provide-money that's just sitting in the coffers of Creed Thassel waiting for a worthwhile investment. I can transfer the credits to your Vault account before the hour is up."

  The entrepreneur snorted. "And what do you get in return?"

  "Nothing at all. This is simply a cash loan. Repayment over five years with Vault standard interest rates."

  Natch stared uncomfortably at the plastic teeth of Brone's stump. He could feel the wheels of his mind spinning and spinning but gaining no traction. "Why would you do that?"

  "Because," replied Brone with maddening calm, "you need money and I need a foot in the door. If I attached strings to the offer, you wouldn't take it."

  "Let me see the contract," Natch grunted.

  Brone stepped away from the fiefcorp master's side, and gave a sweeping bow towards the window. The twinkling stars of space were replaced with the dull black-and-white text of a legal document. Natch scanned the length of the contract in less than a minute, then read it over twice more to make sure he wasn't missing anything. The contract was conspicuously short and completely free of legal doubletalk or hidden provisos.

  "I don't get it," Natch rasped.

  "That is because you have a limited intellect," said Brone. "This is an act of trust, Natch. It is a concept beyond your understanding."

  The fiefcorp master looked back and forth between his wraithlike nemesis, the grubby hand on the table, and the blocky letters on the viewscreen. If I had the slightest doubt you could find the money to do this, Margaret had said, you wouldn't be here. He checked his internal calendar and looked once more at the menacingly small block of days remaining until Margaret's planned unveiling of the Phoenix Project.

  Suddenly, with his mind's eye, he saw a raging bear in the wilderness. A battered and bleeding boy lying in the back seat of a Falcon hoverbird. An act of trust?

  Natch quelled the inner voice screaming dire words of doom. He blocked out the chortling of Figaro Fi and Captain Bolbund and the Patel Brothers that echoed through his head. Then he reached out with his mind and affirmed the contract.

  Brone smiled. His detached hand dragged itself painstakingly to the edge of the table and then threw itself to the ground, where it wriggled like a fish out of water.

  Horvil studied the viewscreen with as much concentration as he gave his bio/logic programs. "If you ask me-"

  "Which I'm not," muttered Jara.

  "If you ask me, daisies would work much better in here than violets." The engineer put his nose up to the viewscreen as if trying to give individual attention to every pixel. Then, in feng shui mode, he glanced around Jara's apartment with eyes narrowed. "A garden of violets is going to stick out in here like a sor
e thumb," said Horvil. "But daisies, they're so ... light and ... airy. They'd look terrific with this blank wall effect you have going on here." He made an expansive gesture at the unadorned white plaster running the length and breadth of the room.

  Jara snorted loudly. Was this clod actually serious for once, or was he just being sarcastic? She couldn't tell which option was worse. The fact that Horvil had absolutely no taste or personal style whatsoever only compounded the problem. Then again, Jara thought bitterly, why would you need to have fashion sense if you've got enough money to buy it instead? She remembered the rare ceramic sculpture Horvil had hanging on his wall with a stray glob of peanut butter encrusted on its bottom edge, and she cringed.

  The analyst forced herself to stop this dreadful internal monologue. She couldn't blame Horvil for her failure to carve a home out of this tiny apartment. She could only blame herself. And that was why Jara had decided she was going to order a new garden and wall hangings today. Who cared if she could ill afford them on her apprentice's salary. She had to draw the line somewhere. "I'm going with violets," she said between tense grinding teeth, and gave the viewscreen a silent command.

  In the blink of an eye, the living room wall shifted back a meter to make room for a row of holographic violets that slid up from the floor. Horvil yelped and quickly scooted out of the way. As Jara searched for a suitable layout, he took a seat at the kitchen table and watched the shifting kaleidoscopic patterns on the floor. "Maybe you could try layout 57, with a few daisies sprinkled in to match th-"

  "Horvil, please."

  He shut up. Jara settled on a slight arc that spanned the length of the room, and confirmed the order. Delivery tomorrow at 3:25 pm, the system told her. Somewhere on the Data Sea, computational agents for the tenement building cut a thick slice out of Jara's Vault account.

 

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