Geosynchron

by David Louis Edelman

  And Natch concludes: yes, he has made a difference.

  Just as the small bonus he helped provide to the OrbiCo workers on the Practical did not lift anyone out of poverty, so too his efforts on 49th Heaven are incremental at best. The gains he has made here are tenuous and constantly in danger of slipping away. But they are real.

  There has been an ever-so-slight drop in the number of the colony's homicides over the past quarter. A legislator in the 49th Heaven LPRACG is garnering votes for a proposal to dismantle Grub Town. Natch can see a trivial rise in the number of ordinary families trekking through the outer rings. Almost statistically insignificant progress.

  How long would it take to completely cleanse the colony? Will there ever be a point in time when every single person in 49th Heaven can walk through every ring free and unafraid and unenslaved by their desires? Could he do it in two hundred years? A thousand? Ten thousand?

  Natch realizes he cannot stay here forever. Soon he will return to the world at large-whether as Natch or Nohwan or some as-yetunknown third identity he doesn't know, but it will happen. And he wonders, will the tide of misery come flooding back to 49th Heaven even stronger after I've left? Will the Chomp trade resume? Or will the colony build on such tenuous beginnings and right itself? Will the colony still be a cesspool of privation and affliction a hundred years from now?

  He falls into a fitful sleep in his hotel room and wakes to find Margaret Surina standing before him in her blue-and-green robe.

  Towards Perfection, Natch, she says. The man who coined that phrase believed in Perfection. He believed it was attainable by human beings, and he believed it was the destiny of the human spirit to strive for that summit. In many ways, you are the very embodiment of the qualities Sheldon Surina sought to accentuate in the human race: continuous struggle, continuous improvement, continuous lust for Perfection, regardless of costs or consequences.

  You are the guardian of MultiReal. You are its keeper. Do what you think is right.

  Natch tries to close his eyes, tries to banish the apparition away. But the visage of Margaret Surina remains even in the darkness, even with eyes closed.

  What does she want from him? What is she trying to tell him? What is he supposed to do now?

  26

  Horvil could calculate the trajectory of a feather on the wind with devastating accuracy, just by eyeballing it. He could factor large polynomials without resorting to computational assistance. But he couldn't begin to deduce how they were going to locate Natch in the middle of the floating pandemonium that was 49th Heaven.

  The engineer found himself in the unique position of being the most organized and responsible member of the party. Left to their own devices, Serr Vigal and Richard Taylor would flounder around the colony for days on end, getting hooked by distraction after distraction-of which 49th Heaven had an endless supply. There were dancing girls performing salacious routines that would get them banned by most Terran L-PRACGs. There were dancing boys whose routines made the girls' look positively saintly. There were black code programs of every variety being passed around in little silver canisters. There were exclusive dramas and exotic sporting events and esoteric cuisines and exquisite works of art....

  After three days in which absolutely nothing productive was accomplished, Horvil called a meeting in their hotel. It was the least gaudy establishment the engineer could find that still bore an appearance of cleanliness and still accepted full payment in Vault credits. Even in the least gaudy hotel on 49th Heaven, the small circular conference table in their suite was colored neon pink.

  "Okay, first things first," said Horvil. "Richard, any sign of your fellows in the ... Order of the, um, the Unchained-"

  "The Faithful Order of the Children Unshackled," replied Taylor cheerfully, unperturbed at Horvil's complete inability to remember the name of his organization. "And to directly answer your question, Horvil-no, I've been unable to locate any of my fellow devotees. They appear to have packed up and left town, if I'm using your idiom correctly."

  "Can't you message them or something?"

  "You forget, my friend, that most of us in the so-called Pharisee Territories don't even have your OCHRE machines installed, much less turned on to receive messages. I suppose it would be possible to use the unconnectible interface on a window terminal and send a text message care of the Order. But I suspect that if the delegation here has left 49th Heaven, they're probably headed back down to Earth to New Jerusalem, and aren't likely to be checking their mail. Now, I could also consider-"

  Horvil let the Pharisee prattle on for a minute and indulge in his characteristic habit of using ten words where three would do. The engineer closed his tired eyes and tried to imagine living in the Pharisees' world, where instantaneous communication was unknown. You could be standing in the next room from someone, each trying to get in contact with the other, and fail because of incompatible protocols or because someone didn't think to check for messages. Not so different from what's happening right now, thought Horvil. Who's to say that Natch hasn't booked the room next door?

  Finally, he cut Taylor off with a gentle pat on the arm. "All right, thanks, Richard. The point is, we're not getting anywhere just wandering around the colony. We haven't come up with any real leads yet. So we need to come up with a strategy. We need to start from square one."

  "Not precisely from the first square," objected Taylor. "At least we know that Natch has been here and negotiated with mobsters on behalf of my order."

  Serr Vigal interposed with a hand on the Pharisee's other arm. "You know that. Horvil and I are still not entirely convinced. You must admit that you haven't exactly proven your case. We haven't seen any evidence."

  Taylor thoughtfully ruffled the beaded strands of beard dangling from his chin. "I have a token I was told to give to Natch. They said he would recognize it."

  This was news to Horvil. "What token?"

  Richard Taylor smiled and rummaged around with one hand in the knapsack slung over the back of his chair. The bag emitted a series of jingling and clanking noises as an assortment of objects banged together from his rough handling. After a few seconds, the Pharisee's hand emerged with a small, flat block of wood that looked like it had been shorn from a piece of antique furniture.

  Horvil and Vigal studied the block of wood curiously as Taylor rotated it around in his palm. The look on the neural programmer's face indicated that he had no more idea what this thing was supposed to be than Horvil. More than that, he seemed to be doubting once more the wisdom of keeping the Pharisee involved in their quest. "What is it?" asked the engineer.

  Taylor shrugged and shook his head. "I must admit that I don't know. It seems a rather odd token to me. But I was told that Natch would know what it is."

  Horvil pinged his Vault account on instinct and then doublechecked the nightly fee for the hotel room. A few more weeks of this nonsense, and it's going to put a dent in the account that I'm going to have to explain to Aunt Berilla. Vigal, for his part, lifted his china cup of tea to camouflage a dubious frown.

  "Be that as it may ..." said Horvil, gesturing for Taylor to put the chunk of wood back in the bag. He did. "Whether Natch recognizes that block of wood or not, first we have to figure out where he is. And that means trying to think like him."

  Vigal sipped delicately from his cup of tea and gave a wistful look at the table, as if mentally sampling the long list of Natch's quirks and peculiarities of thought. "If anyone's qualified to do that," he said to Horvil, smiling, "it's you and me."

  "Right. We've already decided to give Richard here the benefit of the doubt and assume that Natch traveled to 49th Heaven. Seems to me our next logical step is to figure out which ring he'd be in. We've got seven to choose from. Which would he pick?" The engineer waved his hand and summoned a virtual diagram of the orbital colony over the center of the table. Seven concentric circles with a single connecting corridor. "We're back to the same dilemma we had before. You'd think Natch would head straight for the
most decadent spot in the colony, because that's the last place anyone would expect to find him." Horvil tapped the innermost ring with his right index finger, causing that circle of the diagram to emit a purplish glow. "But remember that Natch would expect people to look for him in unexpected places. So he might be staying in the outermost ring because it's the place he'd be most comfortable. And who would expect Natch to be in the first place you looked?" He fingered Seventh Ring and set it aglow in red.

  "Or perhaps he might defy both those assumptions and just choose a ring in the middle at random," mused Vigal.

  Horvil ran the tip of his finger up the colony like a harpist doing a glissando. The diagram of 49th Heaven was now colored as brightly as a child's toy.

  "For completeness' sake," added Taylor, "I suggest we also consider the possibility that Natch isn't staying in any one particular place. If this man is as resourceful as you two have indicated, he could potentially be moving from ring to ring."

  The engineer looked at the diagram with a furrowed brow that grew only more wrinkled the longer he stared. How many people lived here in 49th Heaven? Twenty thousand? And that was only the figure from the official census of permanent residents; the colony probably boasted at least twice that number in tourists, junkies, and fugitives from the law. Sixty thousand people. Horvil pictured himself wandering the bleachers of a world-class soccer stadium, trying to find a single body among the bustling, jabbering crowd.

  "A complicated man, this Natch," said Richard Taylor under his breath.

  "You have no idea," replied Horvil.

  "If we can't zero in on his location, maybe we should try focusing on his vocation," said Vigal. "Natch would realize that he couldn't live off his savings forever. Sooner or later, he would need a source of income."

  Taylor nodded. "That makes good sense, Serr Vigal. So where would Natch be likely to find employment here in 49th Heaven?"

  "Listen, we all know that there's really only one kind of business that Natch is likely to pursue," said Horvil. "And that's a bio/logic fiefcorp."

  "It makes sense," Vigal ruminated as he stroked his goatee and stared absentmindedly again at the electric pink tabletop. "49th Heaven is one of the most libertarian enclaves from here to Furtoid. There's almost no government regulation here. I can see Natch thinking that this place might offer him the freedom he lacked on Earth."

  "And it's pretty far away from the Council," added Horvil. "Have you noticed that there are hardly any white-robes up here?"

  "So we have decided on a new course of action then?" said Richard Taylor, almost giddy with the excitement of the chase.

  Horvil nodded. "We research fiefcorps."

  For the next forty-eight hours, the three of them were consumed with fiefcorp research.

  In any other locale, it would be simple enough to find a listing of bio/logic fiefcorps and cross-reference job listings over the past few months. But the programmers who catered to the denizens of 49th Heaven operated on obscure software exchanges and often went out of their way to avoid exposure. Few of them even submitted their wares to the Primo's bio/logic investment guide for ranking. Horvil was appalled to discover that many even skipped Dr. Plugenpatch validation-which might have caused major compatibility issues if there wasn't a thriving black market here for modified OCHREs. It went without saying that the local drudges were a rowdy bunch who had a complicated and not entirely linear relationship with the truth.

  Of course, there was no reason Natch couldn't be working for an ordinary Terran fiefcorp here on 49th Heaven. People commuted to jobs thousands of kilometers away over the multi network every day. But they needed to start making assumptions somewhere to narrow down the scope of their search.

  Vigal started to withdraw into a cocoon of despair, but Horvil quickly put a stop to that. "We knew this wasn't going to be easy, right?" he said. "Let's at least try throwing out some Infogathers before we start moping."

  The two fiefcorpers spent several hours crafting just the right parameters for an Infogather while Richard Taylor looked on in rapt fascination. Horvil and Vigal decided that the key attribute to look for was a sudden fluctuation in a fiefcorp's circumstances during the past two months. Natch couldn't help being a change agent no matter where he went or how he tried to disguise it. Perhaps his presence had caused a company's share prices to suddenly skyrocket or plummet. Maybe there had been an abrupt sales jump for a particular product or unexpected adjustments in a company's board of directors. Crossreference that with known personnel shifts, mentions in the drudge circuit, and a handful of other more subjective indicators.

  After tinkering with the granular details of the Infogather request for another half an hour, Horvil decided to just set the thing loose on the Data Sea already. The three of them sat in their suite and eagerly watched the viewscreen where they had pointed the results.

  If anyone expected a handsome, sandy-haired, blue-eyed entrepreneur to pop up instantaneously at the top of the list, he was disappointed. Instead, Infogather returned a large array of names, ranked in descending order from the unlikely matches to the extremely unlikely matches.

  Serr Vigal tried to forestall the gloom by going out and spotchecking the names on the list. Horvil doubted the neural programmer would find anything illuminating in person that he couldn't pull up on a holo or a viewscreen, but Vigal was probably just looking for an excuse to leave the hotel room and get some solitude. Who could blame him?

  "Perhaps we are approaching this from the wrong direction," said Taylor an hour later. The Pharisee had moved his chair into the corner and hunched in it facing the wall, a position he denoted as his thinking stance.

  "What would you suggest?" said Horvil distantly, sitting at the table and stirring a congealed mass of cold ramen noodles with a fork.

  "My brother is a hunter. He hunts mostly birds, but I am told he also occasionally ventures down to Africa to hunt more exotic game. Elephants, I believe, or at least so he tells me. Malcolm says that one facet of the art of hunting which men often overlook is that the hunt is not solely a one-sided affair: hunter chasing quarry. You can only pursue your quarry so far, Malcolm said to me once. Once you have tracked the animal to its natural habitat, the animal has you at an advantage. Instead of pursuing the beast, you must persuade it to come to you. "

  Horvil set his fork handle against the edge of the bowl and considered this advice. "Interesting.... What you're saying is, we need to lay a trap for Natch."

  "That is precisely what I am saying."

  "But I know Natch. He'll see us coming from kilometers away."

  "Perhaps," said Taylor. "But that might be inevitable. Our best strategy may be to present ourselves openly and see if Natch is receptive to our inquiry. If you can make him aware that his friends are trying to get in touch with him ... well, he could decide that he wishes to speak with you after all."

  Horvil rubbed his fleshy jowls. "Or we might inspire him to disappear for good."

  "I suppose that is a chance we will have to be taking."

  "He'll suspect the Council put us up to it."

  "If your friend has the wherewithal to avoid them for this long, surely he will be able to ascertain that such is not the case, don't you think?"

  Vigal returned a few hours later, restless from wandering through the corridors of Sixth Ring and scouting out feckless software entrepreneurs. None of Infogather's leads had panned out so far.

  Regardless, Vigal wholeheartedly approved of Richard Taylor's idea of setting a trap for Natch-and had an idea of his own about how that trap might be set.

  Renting street space on the colony's central corridor cost Horvil a small fortune. He scanned the contract from the business arm of the 49th Heaven L-PRACG and quickly grew incensed at the outrageous provisions they ramrodded down vendors' throats. But Vigal reminded him that they weren't intending to stay long. If this plan worked, it would work in a matter of days. If it didn't, they would pack up and move on.

  Horvil squeezed into the
rickety booth he had been assigned between a tarot fortune-teller and a seller of bondage paraphernalia. Why anyone would purchase actual faux-leather gear when they could don it virtually on the Sigh for free was beyond Horvil's grasp. He looked around his booth, frowned at the strange and colorful molds skulking in the corners, and activated a piece of smell-deadening software from Bolliwar Tuban. He decided that this might be tolerable for forty-eight or even seventy-two hours.

  But when Horvil turned around to face the crowd, he realized that this was money well spent after all.

  The booth, odorous and cramped as it was, stood at the major crossroads of 49th Heaven: the passageway that connected the ultrapopular Sixth Ring gambling dens with the orbital colony dock. The walls and ceiling were vibrant with soft blues and yellows in an impressionistic take on the deep sea. Standing in the midst of all this, you could see a veritable cross section of humanity circa Year 360 of the Reawakening. Keen-eyed tourists itching to fritter away Vault credits, businesspeople yammering and making deals as they walked, sex entertainers in scanty costumes, parents herding their children to the familyfriendly hotels down the way in Seventh Ring, politicians and bureaucrats engaged in polling and census-taking operations, graduate students conducting sociological experiments, wasted black code addicts looking to shake someone down. And all of them were walking directly past Horvil's booth, unable to avoid the garish marquee the engineer had cobbled together in an authoritative sans-serif font. The sign read:

  THE PROUD EAGLE

  Hive of the Bio/Logic Entrepreneur Prepare YOUR child for a life in programming

  "If this doesn't attract Natch within a week," Horvil told Serr Vigal confidently, "then he's not here."

  Horvil and Vigal took turns manning the booth and chatting with interested pedestrians while Richard Taylor went off and explored the colony. The engineer had expected that he would spend most of his time studying the outlandish insect population that seemed to have chosen this corner of 49th Heaven as its metropolis. But there was a surprising amount of traffic to the booth for an orbital colony where children were in scarce supply. He found himself fielding actual questions from actual parents, and had to scramble quickly to come up with some real, verifiable information to dispense. By the end of the second day, he was convinced that he had actually sold a few parents on the hive.