Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  "Looks like you're packed for quite a journey," said Horvil, eyeing the faux-leather suitcase Vigal had deposited in the vestibule. "Are you sure we even need to go anywhere? Seems to me we have just as strong a chance of finding him in multi."

  The neural programmer shook his head. "I'm afraid this is going to require some detective work, Horvil. We need to be prepared to go wherever the trail leads us."

  "Detective work, huh?" Horvil waved Vigal to the kitchenette in hopes that tea and a clean cup might be unearthed somewhere amid the clutter. "We'll be just like Holmes and Watson! Or Rajiv and Castrano!"

  "`The universe is our puzzle box, Castrano!"' said Vigal with a chuckle, repeating the catchphrase from the ever-popular fifty-year-old dramas.

  After Horvil had found his way into proper daytime clothing, and after Vigal had determined that there was nothing even vaguely tea-ish in the kitchenette, the two decided to decamp to a local chaff bar for breakfast and strategic planning. Horvil vetoed Vigal's suggestion of the Ostrich Egg and chose another venue a few blocks down. The engineer ducked into the suite's bedroom to give the still-sleeping Jara a kiss, and then they were off.

  The Cup of Gold was little more than a smattering of tables on a semi-enclosed rooftop deck. The place was thick with fiefcorpers and capitalmen sipping flavored tea drinks and looking to soak up the sun. It seemed an entirely appropriate setting for a mission of hope. There were two immense potted ferns by the railing that reminded Horvil of the Proud Eagle hive-and that, too, seemed appropriate. The two of them found a table between the ferns that would give them some privacy from eavesdroppers. Horvil hadn't found much reason to fear the Defense and Wellness Council since Natch's disappearance. But Quell's mysterious errand and its even more mysterious financier hinted strongly that the fiefcorp had not moved outside the Council's sphere of influence. It couldn't hurt to be cautious.

  "So where do we start?" said Serr Vigal after they had taken their seats and procured cups of chaff.

  Horvil gave the neural programmer an appraising look. Some crucial spark inside Vigal had been ignited during the past twenty-four hours, since he had summoned Horvil and persuaded him to go looking for Natch. He seemed younger, more intense, more interested in his surroundings. Horvil didn't want to squelch that optimism, but he knew that their chances of actually finding the entrepreneur were low indeed.

  "Where do we start?" repeated Horvil. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, an awkward task on iron mesh. "Well, let's think. If you wanted to avoid being found, where would you go?"

  The entire concept seemed alien to Serr Vigal. "The Pacific Islands, I suppose. Or maybe the Pharisee Territories."

  "There's also Furtoid," added Horvil. "And the lawless quadrants of Mars."

  "Let's not forget the diss cities," said Vigal.

  "And some of the unchartered orbital colonies. Or even the chartered ones-they say it's pretty easy to get lost in the inner rings of 49th Heaven." The engineer folded his arms on the table and slumped his head sideways onto one elbow. "Wow, we've really narrowed it down. A couple dozen places spread through millions of kilometers of human space."

  The two of them stared at the mesh table for a few minutes. Horvil felt embarrassed at how quickly their quest to find Natch had gone from merely quixotic to thoroughly ludicrous. The engineer could hear the trio at the next table debating proposed new Union Baseball rules, and he half felt like slipping over there to join them. "I think we're looking at this the wrong way," he said. "We're trying to figure out where we would go if we didn't want to be found. The real question is where Natch would go."

  The neural programmer sipped his chaff and considered this. "And where would Natch go?"

  "Somewhere nobody would expect, of course."

  "Well, therein lies our dilemma," replied Vigal, the smile creeping back to his face. "Natch would expect people to look for him in places nobody would expect."

  The two of them laughed loud enough to temporarily disrupt the baseball conversation at the next table.

  But the jollity soon devolved again into uneasy silence. Vigal's underlying point was that trying to think like Natch was a futile exercise. Certainly Natch had made his share of mistakes-but had he ever made the same mistake twice? He had outthought and outplanned the best strategists in the Defense and Wellness Council for months. He had evaporated into the aether at the Tul Jabbor Complex with a billion spectators watching his every move. If a man like that didn't want to be found, Horvil suspected he would not be found. Ever.

  And that was just the difficulty of finding Natch under ordinary circumstances. Add Natch's precarious emotional state to his cunning intellect, and the problem only grew exponentially. Horvil had seen the way his old hivemate had been acting during the Prime Committee trial, under the pressure of Magan Kai Lee's onslaught, Mar garet's peculiarity, the Patels' duplicity, and the drudges' ruthlessness. Not only that, but Natch had been pumped full of black code-from multiple sources-that had done grievous harm to his sanity. Who could predict where that man would hide?

  "How do we know he's still ... alive?" said Vigal under his breath. Sometime in the past minute, he had raised his mug of chaff to cover a pair of eyes on the verge of tearing up.

  The engineer waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Of course he's alive," he said. "Is there anyone in the world who knows how to take care of himself better than Natch?"

  "That's not proof."

  "You want proof?" Horvil thought quickly. "Here's proof. You and I are both listed in the will Natch filed with his L-PRACGs, right? If he went to the Prepared, they would have contacted us by now."

  "And if he changed his will?"

  Horvil frowned. "Natch wouldn't have done that," he said with an assurance he didn't feel. Hadn't Natch threatened to send the drudges a doctored-up list of all the sketchy things Horvil had done during his whole career? And hadn't he left Serr Vigal lying unconscious on the floor of the Tul Jabbor Complex without making a single move to help him? Those were the actions of a man who might very well cut his best friend and his legal guardian out of his will.

  "What if-what if Natch wasn't able to go to the Prepared?" said Vigal in a hoarse whisper. "What if he ... they might have ..." He couldn't even finish his conjecture.

  Horvil had had enough. "Come on, Vigal," he said, leaning forward and thumping his closed fist lightly on the tabletop. "You're starting to act bipolar here. We can't indulge in all this negativity. If we're going to go through with this-if we're going to drop everything to try to find him-we have to assume he's still alive. We have to. Otherwise, there's no bloody point, is there?"

  The neural programmer would never know if Vigal was convinced by this bit of desperate logic. Because at that moment, an enormous shadow fell over them as someone stepped up to the table and blocked out the sun.

  The engineer looked up, startled, and found himself face-to-face with the Pharisee from the courtroom.

  Not only were the Pharisee's features totally occluded by the sun, but he was dressed in a robe as black as midnight, with a massive head of tightly curled black hair and a large black beard to match. Bits of gold jewelry dangled from his neck and ears, catching the sun and tossing it mischievously into the air. The man's nose was almost large enough to merit its own L-PRACG.

  "I'm sorry to intrude," said the Pharisee in a pleasant baritone, his accent thick and unplaceable. "But since I'm desperately in need of speaking with the two of you, I suppose it's necessary. Yes, necessary. To me, of course, and also to you, though you don't know that yet. I'm certain that I'll need to convince you of that fact-which I am absolutely prepared to do."

  Horvil cast as subtle a glance towards Vigal as he could muster. He was relieved to see that the neural programmer was just as flummoxed by this gust of empty wordage. Other patrons of the chaff bar were craning their necks to stare at this odd person standing in the middle of the chai bar like a refugee from ancient times. A Pharisee? Here? Horvil could hear someone say. Not knowing
what else to do, the engineer waved the Pharisee towards an extra chair at the next table. The big man appropriated it from the table's occupants with a respectful bow, then moved it over and sat down.

  "Can we ... help you?" said Horvil.

  "Yes, yes, you can help me," replied the Pharisee. His voice carried a mixture of intensity and geniality that was surprising for someone whom Horvil had considered a threat only twenty-four hours ago. "But also, as I mentioned before, I'm certain that I can help you. So. Let me back up, as they say, and begin at the beginning. Towards Perfection." The Pharisee paused, looked Horvil and Vigal in the eye as if waiting for a response. "Oh. My apologies.... May you always move towards Perfection."

  "And Towards Perfection to you too," offered Vigal timidly.

  "You are, if I am not mistaken, members of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp. Horvil the engineer and Serr Vigal the programmer, am I correct? You, sir, I have seen in the courtroom in the company of the bio/logic analyst Jara," he said to Horvil.

  The man had badly mangled the pronunciation of all three names, but Horvil was in no hurry to correct him. "And you are ... ?"

  "Forgive me for my rudeness! My name is Richard Taylor." He reached into a knapsack slung over one shoulder and produced a small business card that was actually made from cardboard paper stock. Horvil took the card and stared at it. He supposed it provided some evidence of Taylor's identity, but the engineer had no idea what would prevent an imposter from printing out the same cards. "I am currently the secretary of protocol for the Faithful Order of the Children Unshackled, based out of Khartoum. Two and a half years into a fouryear term. I am-" Taylor reached up and parted the thicket of hair and beard to reveal the dull metal gleam of a connectible collar. "I am part of that group I believe you know as the Pharisees, though that term is not one we ourselves use."

  Horvil was amazed how quickly the menace had sloughed off the man. Beneath the hair and the trinkets, he appeared to have a similar ethnic background to Horvil's. Horvil guessed that the unfamiliar accent had originated in the British Isles and taken a bumpy side road through the past two centuries.

  But Serr Vigal was clearly beginning to feel the weight of their self-appointed task growing heavier by the second. He shifted in his seat. The engineer could read his thoughts: We pledged ourselves to find Natch. We don't have time for these kinds of distractions.

  "Listen, uh, Richard Taylor," said Horvil, interrupting the Pharisee before he could start reciting his entire family tree. "I hate to be rude, but we are in the middle of important business, so ..."

  "Important business, yes!" Taylor leaned forward and put his massive hands on the table. He had perhaps the hairiest knuckles Horvil had ever seen. "Yes, you do have important business! And I believe we three may have some important business together."

  "Which is?"

  "Forgive me for taking so long to get to the point. I have been tasked by my order to find your friend Natch."

  Horvil could see Serr Vigal withdraw even farther at Taylor's mention of the entrepreneur. It was all part of the profound absurdity that was Natch. No matter where you turned or who you talked to, he seemed to be reflected in every facet of life. "I'm afraid we don't know where he is," said Vigal guardedly.

  "He's been missing since, uh, January," put in Horvil. "Vanished into thin air right in the middle of a Prime Committee hearing."

  "The incident at the Tul Jabbor Complex," said Taylor, nodding soberly. "Yes, out in Khartoum we did hear about that strange affair. So heart-wrenching! So tragic!"

  Horvil could only imagine what someone from an unconnectible society like the Pharisees would have made of the calamity and chaos at the Tul Jabbor Complex. He pictured lots of head shaking and moralizing: You see, this is why the connectible way of life is untenable. Somehow, he was not surprised that news of the event had even slunk off the Data Sea and into lands where people still got their information from wired machines and treepaper. "So you see, Richard, I really don't think we'll be able to help you-"

  Taylor leaned his head back and laughed. People at neighboring tables who had just managed to relegate this odd Pharisee to the realm of background noise suddenly cast curious glances his way again. "I see, I see!" he bellowed. His mirth was infectious, and Horvil found his lips curling into a smile despite his best efforts. "You suspect I'm looking to take advantage of your fiefcorp master-you're trying to get rid of me!" Taylor continued. "And this is entirely my fault. I can't blame you for your caution, I have not explained myself well. Horvil, let me assure you-I have approached you not only because I am seeking your help in finding Natch but also because I have information that may help you find him."

  Horvil gave Richard Taylor a skeptical look. He wasn't quite sure whether to regard Taylor as a potential ally, a deliberate saboteur sent here by forces unknown, or just a misguided and possibly delusional head case. Perhaps a bit of all three?

  The engineer had read about how people often projected their desires, fears, and neuroses onto celebrities. He remembered the way people from that bizarre creed had showered the fiefcorp with adulation as they had walked to the Prime Committee hearing two months ago. Horvil would never know exactly who those people were and whether they had really been on the payroll of Speaker Khann Frejohr. But his instincts said that they really were ordinary plebeians-shopkeepers, accountants, analysts, street vendors-who had deliberately tried to insert themselves into the drama of Natch's fight against the government. Their actions had changed nothing, yet surely they were sitting in their homes even now telling friends that they had been a part of that drama.

  Horvil was about to start gently drawing the conversation to a close, but Serr Vigal beat him to the punch. "I really don't mean to be rude, Richard," he began haltingly. "But given all of the people in the world looking for Natch, I find it difficult to believe that you would have some sort of inside information."

  "Both factions of the Council are looking for him," added Horvil. "Gorda and Lee. I'm sure they've got hundreds of officers on the task and millions of credits at their disposal."

  Taylor took no offense at their suspicion. Not that intentions counted for much in such a confused and denigrated world, but as far as Horvil could tell Taylor's were completely in earnest. "Oh, but you see, I have an advantage over both Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee and High Executive Len Borda," he said. "The brothers in my order have actually seen Natch."

  The engineer held his breath for a moment, exhaled. "How recently?"

  "I would say about a month ago."

  "Are you sure it was him? Handsome guy, sandy-colored hair, eyes deep blue. . ."

  "This man's eyes were green, I believe," said Taylor.

  Vigal had momentarily displayed signs of hope, but now he was quickly dismissing them. "You can understand why we're skeptical...."

  The Pharisee nodded. "I understand your skepticism entirely. I can only ask you to listen to my story before you pass judgment on it. I also don't wish to give offense, Horvil and Serr Vigal ... but I believe that you really have nothing to lose by granting me ten minutes of your time to lay my evidence before you. If you choose not to believe me, I will chalk that up to my own poor powers of persuasion and I will not bother you again."

  Horvil wasn't sure if he could endure another ten minutes of Richard Taylor's eclectic mannerisms, but he admitted that the man had a point. So, too, did Vigal. Their own deductions had so far led them absolutely nowhere; they had not a single credible lead on Natch's whereabouts. The two sat back and listened.

  Taylor proceeded to tell them in a circuitous fashion about how one of the chapters of his organization, the Faithful Order of the Children Unshackled, had taken on a number of unwise financial obligations over the past few years. The chapter was beholden to a certain capitalman on 49th Heaven who had subsequently insisted on calling in those loans with threats of violence. ("A mobster," said Horvil. The Pharisee shrugged, not debating his characterization.) And so, the head of the local chapter had
approached a man in the orbital colony who had recently garnered a reputation for negotiating on debtors' behalf. Not only had the man succeeded in getting the capitalman to back off, but he had persuaded him to reduce the principal of the loan by fifty percent.

  "And this man, this negotiator ... was Natch?" said Serr Vigal, unconvinced.

  "I believe it was," replied Taylor. "But my brothers were not given the man's name or his title, so I cannot say for absolute certain."

  "If your order has seen him ... if you've had dealings with him ... then why do you need our help?"

  "He is rather difficult to get hold of. He seems to have decided that, having dealt with my brethren once, he has no need to deal with us again. As far as we have been able to determine, he is a man without an address and without a profile in your Data Sea public directory. He seems to be something of a ghost."

  "And why do you need to find him again?"

  "I bear an important message for him from the head of my order, in Khartoum."

  "Which says?"

  "I do not wish to be rude, as I have said," replied Taylor hesitantly. "But I am told that this message is for Natch's ears alone."

  Horvil didn't want to be too dismissive-as painstakingly polite as this Pharisee acted, he was a member of a foreign culture whose rules of etiquette were a complete mystery-yet the engineer agreed with Vigal. Nothing about the man's story provided any context for believing that the strange benefactor of his order was the world's most wanted former fiefcorp master. If the story was even true, this negotiator could have been anybody.

  "You have to look at this from our point of view, Richard," said Horvil. "We've seen hundreds of drudge postings on the Data Sea from people who claim to have seen Natch or talked to Natch. There's a woman on Luna who's absolutely convinced that she just had Natch's baby." Taylor started to raise his hand to object, but Horvil stopped him. "All we're saying is that you've come to us with a story that doesn't contain any information you couldn't have gotten by trolling the Data Sea. You've gotta give us some reason why we should listen to you. Some distinguishing characteristic. Otherwise ..."