One last piece of business: Jara has informed me that she has also been called to testify before this hearing, or special session, or whatever the Prime Committee is calling it at this hour. She will be bringing the rest of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp with her. Since you have not been answering her messages either, Jara asked me to tell you that she does not see any benefit in broadcasting your differences to the world at such a perilous time. She has asked me to relay her assurances that her testimony will be both fair and impartial to the best of her ability.
And now I have succeeded in relaying her message, in this long-windedeven-by-my-own-standards way.
Rest assured, Natch, that wherever you choose to go or whatever you choose to do-and whatever becomes of this execrable MultiReal technology-from now until the moment they drag my creaky bones and aching joints off to join the Prepared, I will always, always be with you.
Sincerely,
SerrVigal
29
Lucco Primo once said, Size up your enemy by studying his approach.
Defense and Wellness Council troops usually approached their enemies with the thunderclap of a hundred disruptors and the sonic boom of a hundred hoverbirds in their wake. Such was the Council's edge in technology that Len Borda's officers rarely needed the element of surprise, and their ghostly white robes openly mocked the idea of camouflage.
But when the Council unleashed its legal army, the standard rules of engagement did not apply.
None of the drudges had noticed any unusual activity at the Council's Terran headquarters recently. No streams of departing hoverbirds, no sudden influx of advisors. So when a torrent of white hoverbirds landed at the Melbourne facilities on the thirteenth of January and let loose a merciless tide of lawyers, the public was caught completely by surprise. Sen Sivv Sor and John Ridglee were among the drudges who could be seen dashing out of public multi gateways soon after the procession began. Even staunch governmentalists like Mah Lo Vertiginous were spotted in the crowd in various stages of dishabille or disarray.
The procession continued for over an hour. There were nearly two hundred attorneys, technical specialists, legal programmers, analysts, and researchers dressed in matching suits of crisp gray with a muted version of the five-pointed star embroidered on their chests. They fanned out across Melbourne's broadest boulevard and began a slow yet disciplined march toward the Defense and Wellness Council's administrative offices. Somewhere along the way, they picked up an accompanying scrim of military officers with dartguns drawn and disruptors charged. Half a dozen Council hoverbirds swooped over the street in perfect synchronization. (A dry run, some muttered, for the inevitable pogrom that awaited them all.)
By the time this bureaucratic army reached the Council's undistin guished slab of a building, a sizable crowd had gathered to witness the coming of history. Children sat on the shoulders of their parents. Politicians elbowed each other aside in a struggle for prime positioning. Vendors, advertisers, and salespeople fed off the crowd like leeches, while on the Data Sea, a menagerie of video feeds captured the Council's approach from every possible angle.
At the last minute, several libertarian activists emerged from the crowd and linked hands, cordoning off the steps leading to the Council building. A hush fell upon the crowd. There was a tense standoff between the commander of the white-robed officers and the leader of the libertarians. Several minutes passed, with their arguments growing more heated by the second. Finally, the irritated commander turned his back on the activists and made a gesture to his troops.
The officers shouldered their rifles as one and did not hesitate.
Murderers! cried a few strident voices. Bloodthirsty tyrants! But the Defense and Wellness Council's legal army continued up the steps with nary a pause and disappeared inside the building.
A few moments later, the libertarian activists struggled groggily to their feet, plucking darts from their torsos. They were dazed but otherwise all right.
The three fiefcorpers lined up against the wall of Jara's apartment like troops submitting to an inspection, their spines uncomfortably stiff and their eyes doggedly forward-facing. Jara marched down the aisle and bayoneted each one of them with a sharp stare. She insisted that Horvil comb his hair, that Merri stand up straight and project confidence, that Ben take control of his scowling or stay home.
Jara saw the reactions on their faces and almost backed off. Everyone was bone tired from the stress of the past few days-the disruptions in the tube lines, the demonstrations in the streets, the constant migraine of Council troops around every corner-and their attitudes toward Jara were beginning to slide from mild distrust to outright resentment. She was just a short hop away from breakdown herself.
Naturally, it was Benyamin who chose to speak up. "Can't you give it a rest for once, Jara?"
The analyst walked up to the young apprentice and stood within spitting distance. "I've had just about enough of you," she said with a grimace. "There could be ten billion people watching us tomorrow at that Prime Committee hearing. Do you understand that? Literally ten billion people. We need to look our best."
"They'll understand, Jara," said Merri, her voice stretched and hoarse. "Everyone's feeling a little surreal right now. The audience is going to be discombobulated too."
Horvil nodded. "She's right. We're not a theater troupe. You can't expect us to be onstage every day when we've got work to concentrate on. Do you realize how little we've gotten done this past month because of all this political crap?"
Jara stared at the engineer, momentarily speechless. His words might have been harsh, but his tone was mellow, almost supportive. She found her thoughts slipping, like fingers losing their grip on the rung of a ladder, falling back to that scene in the museum at Andra Pradesh. The feel of his chubby hand enclosing hers. The radiating concern. That warm, uncomplicated, perpetually adolescent face beaming at her with an emotion raw and undistilled. Who wouldn't feel embarrassed to be on the receiving end of such a look?
Ben cut through her reverie with a heavy sigh.
Jara only stopped herself from throttling Benyamin by a tremendous act of will. She flipped through her mental library and dusted off GrimFace 202, one of the intense glares she had programmed for such an occasion. "Do you trust me?" she said. "All of you. Do you trust me?"
A pause. A few frowns. Merri, sheepish, answered. "Yes. Of course we trust you."
"Good." Jara walked up to Benyamin and stabbed his chest with the nail of her right index finger. "Then fucking listen and do what I say. All right?"
The fiefcorpers nodded and followed her out the door.
Jara berated herself for that petulant little outburst all the way to the tube station. Isn't that exactly the kind of shit you criticized Natch for? she thought. Yelling at everybody for no reason. Refusing to explain yourself. She was practically marinating in irony. One week in charge of a major fiefcorp, and all you can do is imitate Natch. Natch, the worst manager you've ever known. Pathetic. She debated making some kind of apologetic gesture to the rest of the fiefcorpers all the way to the tube platform.
She still hadn't made a decision when the train arrived and everyone stepped aboard. Moments later, they were off.
The fiefcorp maintained complete silence for several hours after the train whooshed out of the station, and there was no one else in their part of the car to fill the void. So they kept watch out the windows. The dilapidated tunnels and debris-strewn lowlands of Britain, practically untouched since the Autonomous Revolt, soon made way for the comforting dull gray of the sea. After that, Africa. Sea became shore, shore became forest.
The silence was finally broken by the arrival of a freshly minted Latin accent during the stop at Cape Town. "Looks like the crew's all here!" said Robby Robby, oozing down the aisle with a jaunty grin.
"All the ones who aren't dead, accused of murder, or in prison," replied Horvil, deadpan.
Benyamin jabbed his cousin in the side. "What about Serr Vigal?"
&
nbsp; "He works in a memecorp, doesn't he?" said Horvil. "I call that prison."
Jara allowed herself a smile. "Glad you could come," she told the channeler, and for once she meant it. If anyone knew how to whip up a dish of false confidence for the drudges, politicians, and pundits awaiting them, it was Robby. The fact that he had taken several days out of his schedule to come to Melbourne spoke volumes about his faith in the cause. The channeler took a seat next to Merri as the train got under way again. Soon he had sucked the fiefcorp apprentices into a low-stakes game of holo poker.
Jara found an empty section of train and tried to prepare a statement for her Prime Committee testimony, but it was hopeless. What did she have to say about MultiReal that hadn't been said a thousand times already? It was a powerful and potentially dangerous program. It could make her fiefcorp a lot of money. Didn't the whole world already know this? Jara stared glumly at the changing landscape, writing nothing, and hoped the Committee wouldn't actually need her testimony after all.
As for Serr Vigal-what was he thinking? Jara had no doubt the neural programmer's heart was in the right place. She had no doubt his opening statement before the Committee would be cogent and foursquare and thoroughly respectable. But Vigal just did not possess the gift of oratory. His politics were moderate. Having him usher in the libertarian side of the MultiReal debate with one of his dry, meandering speeches was an unmistakably bad idea.
But who else is there? thought the analyst. Who else is going to stand up before ten billion people and testify that MultiReal belongs in Natch's hands? There was Khann Frejohr, of course, except Frejohr had thoroughly rebuffed Serr Vigal's overtures. Jara wondered what Natch had done to antagonize him. She figured it had something to do with that obviously forged Council memo, but she decided she didn't want to know. She had already seen enough low-level forgery to last her a lifetime.
It only took Natch a week to make a powerful ally, use him, and then toss him aside, she thought, shaking her head. That must be a new record.
The track from Cape Town to Melbourne was one long stretch of undifferentiated seascape, punctuated by the occasional pit stop on dry land or artificial crossroads. Waves, sun, sky.
Jara didn't remember falling asleep, but suddenly she was being woken by a gentle hand on her shoulder. Horvil. "I thought you might want to see this," said the engineer.
The analyst sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Thought I'd want to see wha-"
Then she looked out the window.
The city of Melbourne lay sprawled out below them, a tapestry of neatly arranged buildings and flickering lights. The tube train sat suspended on a ridiculously high track over Port Phillip Bay, like a roller coaster of old, watching the city slide gracefully into dusk. Jara remembered reading about this; some arcane procedure involving military security, or underwater transfer conduits, or something. Many believed it was just a ruse by the Melbourne L-PRACGs to impress visitors with the majesty of the centralized government. Jara could buy that. From this angle, the city looked so orderly, so perpendicular with purpose, it might have been carefully laid there by some omnipotent force in an era long before human confusion.
Then the tube abruptly plunged into Melbourne at breakneck speed, and the illusion was shattered. The train came to a stop some five minutes later.
By the time Jara shouldered her bag and made it off the train, the rest of the fiefcorp was already waiting-as was a group of handlers in garish purple-and-red robes, courtesy of Creed Elan. Horvil and Benyamin seemed right at home in their midst. One of the men took Jara's bag with a deep, respectful bow, as if she had entrusted him with crown jewels rather than a few changes of clothing and assorted toiletries.
"Don't suppose anybody brought a thermos of nitro," grumbled the analyst with a yawn.
"There's plenty at the hostel," replied one of the creed handlers. "Lo-grade, hi-grade, you name it."
Jara nodded. "Then what are we waiting for?"
The purple delegation led the fiefcorpers through a vast maze of bureaucratic buildings, each more stodgy and architecturally unimaginative than the last. They passed the headquarters for OrbiCo, TeleCo, and GravCo, the offices of major lobbying firms and political parties, the Meme Cooperative's lone Earthside presence, creed bureaus, and drudge organizations.
There was something strange and out-of-place about the cityscape that Jara could sense but not name. Merri saw her perplexed look. "You notice it too?" she asked.
"I notice something," said Jara. "I'm just not sure what."
"The buildings-they're not moving."
That was it. Melbourne's governmental quarter was entirely devoid of collapsible buildings. At this hour, most downtowns would be exhibiting a conspicuous ripple as the skyline rearranged itself for the night shift. Melbourne did not budge. If Jara didn't know for a fact that the city had been substantially rebuilt after the riots of 318, she might have guessed it had been permanently frozen right before the Autonomous Revolt.
"Government buildings that don't move," said Horvil. "There's a metaphor if I've ever seen one."
Robby Robby's grin widened by a few degrees.
Jara felt the mental tug of an incoming ConfidentialWhisper. "Don't look now," said Ben, sounding clipped and nervous, "but I think we're being followed."
The analyst counted to ten, then took a casual glance around. The streets were crowded with security officers from a hundred different organizations striding this way and that, guarding every solid structure in sight. Pedestrians added a thousand more organizational insignias to the mix. Everyone in Melbourne, it seemed, had some kind of parliamentary affiliation.
And then she noticed them. Minions of the Defense and Wellness Council on every corner, following the fiefcorp's progress with great interest. Whenever the fiefcorpers lost sight of one group, another would inevitably turn up on the next block to track them.
Before Jara could formulate a coherent reaction, they came to a culde-sac and passed through an immense set of double doors-the Creed Elan hostel.
The place hardly fit Jara's definition of a hostel at all; it was enormous, richly furnished, and teeming with important-looking men and women in purple. Jara felt like she was back at Berilla's estate. The handlers who had met them at the tube station deposited their bags in a parlor fit for a high executive. Rugs and viewscreens obscured every surface, while flasks of wine sat on countertops for the taking. Benyamin ducked down the hall to pay his respects to the hostel administrator. Jara, meanwhile, found a thermos of piping nitro and began filling up a mug.
Merri sunk into a plush suede couch. "So does anyone know where Natch is staying?" she asked. Nobody answered. "Horvil?"
The engineer shrugged. "You know as much as I do," he said. "Natch hasn't shown his face in public for almost a week, and you all saw how strange he looked at the funeral. I don't know if he's up to testifying before the Prime Committee. Maybe ... maybe they won't actually call him after all."
"Sure they will," said Robby, kicking off his shoes to reveal ten huge prehensile toes. "Natch is a symbol now. The libertarians are rallying around him. This unrest won't stop until he gets his say in front of the Committee."
"What about Vigal?" said Jara. "Where's he staying?"
Horvil: "With Natch, I presume."
"Do you think they're going to call on any of us to testify?" asked Merri.
Robby shrugged. "Anything's possible," he said, channeler-speak for no. He tucked his shoes under his arms and disappeared down the hall, presumably to freshen up.
"Who knows what they're going to do," said Horvil, taking a seat backward on a desk chair. "When was the last time the Prime Com mittee held a special session like this? Nobody even remembers the protocol anymore."
Merri craned her neck to face the engineer. "What is the protocol?"
"No idea. I don't know if there even is one. My guess is they'll just use some fancy version of Let's call people up to testify until we've heard enough. Ben's the one to ask about this stuff, not me." He
stretched and groaned. "I just want this to be over already. I'm sick of the politics. I'm sick of the infoquakes. I'm sick of looking over my shoulder and seeing white robes everywhere. I just want to get back to the bloody engineering."
Jara downed her second straight mug of nitro and took a seat in the corner. "If you don't want to see white robes, you're in the wrong place. Ben saw a bunch of them following us on the way here."
Benyamin returned at just that moment, his face pale as milk. "No," he said, his voice cracking. "That's not what I was telling you, Jara. Didn't you see? I wasn't warning you about the people in the white robes. I was warning you about the ones in the black robes."
30
Horvil and Benyamin voted to stay at the hostel and let Creed Elan security take care of them.
"We're just not getting paid enough for this shit," said Ben, his voice rising to a panicked squeak. "There's Council officers every five steps in this city. They've already taken Quell-has anybody even bothered to look for him? People are rioting and making death threats. Whoever killed Margaret Surina is still out there. And now we have to deal with these lunatics in black robes?" He sat down firmly on an ottoman and hugged his knees. "I don't even know why I came. I'm still-we're all still suspended from the fiefcorp. What's the point?"
Merri leaned over and put a placating hand on the young apprentice's shoulder. "We won't be suspended for long, Benyamin. Don't forget that Jara's arranged for the Patels to testify on our behalf-"
"The Patels. I forgot about the Patels." Ben tucked his chin down and huddled into the fetal position. "I'd rather chew my own leg off than trust them."
Jara knelt down on her haunches in front of the apprentice and fixed him with a no-nonsense stare. "Are you sure those people you saw were the same ones who hit Natch with black code?" she asked.
"There are a lot of groups that wear black," mused Merri as she walked back and forth across the parlor in slow-mo imitation of Natch's frenetic pace. "Creed Bushido's honor guard. The TeleCo board. I think there's a Pharisee group that wears black too...."
Multireal Page 29