Multireal

by David Louis Edelman

  Ben ignored her. "Of course I'm not sure they were the same people," he said. "Fuck, I wasn't sure if I really believed Natch's story until an hour ago. But these guys matched the description. Black robes, head to toe. Some kind of red Asian lettering running down the front."

  "Didn't that look a little suspicious?" said Horvil skeptically. The engineer found a shadowy section of couch and slouched into it as far as possible, a poor man's attempt at subterfuge. "I mean, who walks around covered with a robe head to toe?"

  "I don't-I don't know. I only caught a few quick glimpses of them. One guy was standing in a window as we walked by. Nobody else saw anything?"

  The rest of the fiefcorpers remained silent. Jara was glad that Robby Robby wasn't here to see this. The less abject panic he saw, the less chance he would desert them and move on to some other, more stable business venture.

  "I'm not making this up," sulked Benyamin.

  "Nobody's accusing you of making it up," said Jara, placing her hands at her hips. "But even if those were the same people who attacked Natch, how is staying here going to help?"

  "It'll keep us alive, for starters," muttered Horvil.

  "You heard Robby," continued the young apprentice. "The Prime Committee's probably not going to call on any of us to testify. Why can't you just go and let us stay at the hostel?"

  The analyst shook her head and gazed at the Pulgarti sketches on the viewscreen. The abstract geometric shapes and angry black lines reflected her mood. Her thoughts staggered back to a conversation last month when the MultiReal demo in Andra Pradesh was hours away and the fiefcorpers were being similarly irrational. Don't we ever learn anything in this company? she thought. We just keep moving in circles. Around and around and nothing gained.

  "Listen," said Jara finally. "All of you, listen. You can't-we can't keep doing this."

  Merri's attention had wavered to the mesmerizing Pulgarti on the viewscreen as well. "Doing what?" she asked.

  "Hiding. Being ... passive. Acting out of fear." The analyst waved a hand and blanked the viewscreen, snapping Merri back to the room at large. "Those people in the black robes-whoever they are-what's their objective? What are they trying to do? They're trying to scare us. Isn't that why they hit Natch with black code? They wanted to frighten him into calling off the MultiReal demo-or maybe to push him into the Council's arms, I don't know.

  "The same thing goes with Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee. And the Patels, for that matter. The common thread here is that they're all employing scare tactics. They're trying to keep us off balance.

  "And you know what? They succeeded-but they did too good a job. We're so scared that we realize there aren't any safe places left. Come on, Ben, Horvil-do you really think Creed Elan can protect us? Do you think Berilla's servants can protect us?" She gestured toward the bulky security guard down the hall, who seemed accustomed to ignoring guest conversations. "No and no. If we've learned anything these past few months, it's that nobody can protect us. The Defense and Wellness Council can march wherever they please. Assassins can get to Margaret Surina right in the middle of a heavily guarded compound. Magan Kai Lee can yank our business right out from under us with no warning. So what good is hiding going to do? No good at all."

  Jara paused a moment to catch her breath. Merri and Ben were staring at the floor with solemn looks on their faces. Robby Robby had stepped back into the parlor just in time to give a vigorous nod of agreement. Horvil's expression had metamorphosed from a prunish frown into a goofy grin sometime in the past few minutes.

  "Here's what I propose," continued Jara. "I propose we all get some rest, wake up early tomorrow, and have a nice big breakfast. Then I say we march over to that hearing in broad daylight, with our heads held high. We sit in the audience together, like a real company. I don't know what the Prime Committee's going to do about MultiReal. I don't know if we're going to get gunned down by a bunch of people in black robes tomorrow, or a bunch of people in white robes. But I'm not going to just sit here.

  "Listen, I-I'm fighting for this fiefcorp. I really am. I know that some of you don't trust me, but there's nothing I can do about it right now. All I'm asking you to do right now is just hold on, stay with me. We'll get through this."

  Jara half expected a greeting the next morning from Khann Frejohr. Sure, Frejohr had his issues with Natch, but they were all on the same side, weren't they? She figured at least one of the speaker's innumerable functionaries would take advantage of the lull in libertarian protests to bring the Congress's regards.

  But when nine o'clock arrived with no word from anyone, Jara decided there was no reason to wait. She told the fiefcorp to gather in the atrium in thirty minutes.

  Robby Robby was the first to arrive. He instantly sensed her frustration.

  "Don't be too upset, Queen Jara," said the channeler, inexplicably filing his nails into sharp points suitable for a street fight. "I've been telling you all along not to trust the libertarians. Just because they hate Len Borda doesn't make them the good guys. They don't really care about Natch. They don't really care about you. Sure, they'll support you, but only when it suits their purposes, and only until they don't need you anymore."

  "Yeah, I suppose you're right," said Jara with a sour face. "But I wasn't looking for flowers and a bottle of wine. I just wanted a few words of encouragement. And maybe some news about the big, dull speech that Serr Vigal's preparing."

  "You don't give Vigal enough credit," replied Robby. "He's a smart guy. He knows what he's doing."

  The analyst sulked against a pillar without answering. She was slowly coming to realize that the channeler was not the empty shell she had always assumed him to be. But a wise and sensible Robby Robby was more than Jara's worldview could bear at this point. She left him in the atrium and wandered back to the parlor for one last cup of nitro. By the time she made it back, Horvil, Benyamin, and Merri were standing there waiting.

  The Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp looked like a pretty impressive company, Jara admitted to herself. The engineer was surprisingly dashing in his new Persian suit; the black-and-white swirls on Merri's dress subtly evoked the Objectivv logo without being too obvious about it; Benyamin, in his purple-and-red robes, might have passed for a junior bodhisattva of Creed Elan; and there had to be some constituency in the vast reaches of human space that would find Robby's Afro the epitome of style. Jara herself had chosen a vibrant green pantsuit that looked optimistically toward spring.

  When the entire company was assembled, Jara opened the front door of the hostel and was greeted by a raucous noise.

  Horvil grimaced. "What's that?"

  Jara peeked nervously around the doorjamb and widened her eyes. "I guess it's the libertarian welcoming committee," she said.

  The fiefcorpers emerged blinking into the Melbourne morning to the cheers of several hundred zealous demonstrators. People lined the entire cul-de-sac outside the Elan hostel, shouting, waving, beaming bold messages of solidarity in the air over their heads.

  LEN BORDA, Don'tTake Our FREEDOMS

  INFORMATION WANTS INDEPENDENCE!

  THE REAL ISSUE IS THE RIGHT To Do BUSINESS

  LIBERTARIAN RESISTANCE

  There were a number of Libertas devotees bearing the insignia of the rising sun, and a smattering of Islanders to boot. An even larger pack of drudges hovered at the next intersection, watching and taking careful notes.

  Robby Robby gave Jara a wry look and shrugged. She was amused to see that he was using his newly sharpened claws as a pick to fluff his already overfluffed Afro.

  The libertarians were rambunctious, but they kept their distance as the fiefcorpers started down the street. So did the drudges. The crowd diminished as they made their way toward the city center, but did not disappear entirely. Downtown Melbourne was a constant carnival of protests and demonstrations, and it was difficult to tell where one sideshow ended and the next began. A core group escorted them the whole way, shouting righteous slogans for the drudges' benefit. Jara
kept an eye out for menacing figures in black robes. She saw no sign of them, although the menacing figures in white robes and yellow stars were hard to miss.

  And then they turned a corner and came face-to-face with the Tul Jabbor Complex, headquarters of the Prime Committee.

  The building was gargantuan, dwarfing all other government structures in the city. It seemed to have been constructed for a much larger race of beings altogether. The windows stood impossibly high off the ground, while the doors could have comfortably admitted a tube train. The whole structure was slablike and boxy in shape, with a monolithic dome capping one end. From one of the hoverbirds streaming in and out of the adjacent dockyards, Jara supposed the building would look like a giant armless statue.

  Horvil tapped her on the shoulder. "That's where we're going," he explained, pointing at the dome. "That's where-"

  "Where the Prime Committee meets, yes, I know." The analyst smiled and tapped the side of her head. "I can access the Data Sea too, Horv." The engineer blushed.

  The inside of the Tul Jabbor Complex was no less intimidating than the exterior. One broad corridor made a winding path through the center of the Complex like intestines. The sides of the corridor were six levels high and lined with an endless grid of office cubicles behind smoky glass. The corridor itself had no roof. Everywhere they could see public servants striding purposefully back and forth, sporting a hundred different uniforms.

  Midway through the complex in a circular clearing stood an enormous hologram of High Executive Tul Jabbor, fifteen meters tall. The stern, Janus-like faces of the Defense and Wellness Council's first commander tracked the fiefcorpers mercilessly both as they approached and as they walked past. Jara shuddered and quickened her step until the curving corridor put Jabbor out of sight.

  At long last, they reached the dome.

  The analyst was suffering from sensory overload as she walked into the auditorium. Twenty-nine chairs of miserable black iron ringed a floor measuring some thirty-five meters in diameter. Behind and above this row of twenty-nine chairs sat another dozen concentric rings of normal, cushioned seats for the plebes. Each ring rested at an impossibly steep angle above the one in front of it, as if the rings were built for the hologram of Tul Jabbor to climb.

  The analyst looked down at the floor and felt her heart curdle in fear. It was the most intimidating setting she could possibly imagine. Facing the entire Committee at once was impossible, and there were no chairs to sit on. From the floor, Jara supposed that the audience members must look like they were stacked on top of one another. Even an extraordinarily tall person would have to crane his neck at an uncomfortable angle to see them. There would be no multi tricks here, no abandoning of Cartesian space in the audience; whether out of security concerns or out of tradition, no multi projections were allowed in the Tul Jabbor Complex auditorium.

  "What a nightmare!" said Ben-and then instantly clamped his hand to his mouth. The place was an acoustic disaster. Ben's exclamation bounced around the walls and quickly devolved into complete dissonance. Raising your voice only seemed to amplify the problem. Jara suddenly noticed that the place was rustling with the ghostly sound of a thousand whispers, which only added to the creepiness factor.

  The fiefcorpers gave one another PokerFace glances and started down the narrow stairway. They headed for the petitioners' ring-the ring immediately above the Prime Committee, and the fiefcorp's new home until the MultiReal issue was resolved, one way or another.

  Ten minutes later, Natch and Serr Vigal arrived. Jara stifled a gasp, then quickly looked around to make sure there were no drudges nearby.

  Natch had not shown his face in public for nearly five days, but he might have aged fifteen years in that time. He seemed haggard and noticeably underfed. His left hand was thrust deep into his suit coat pocket as if weighted there by some dense object. Vigal, on the other hand, was so inwardly focused that he completely failed to notice the intimidating stage below. Jara wondered how the neural programmer had managed to reach Natch and whether the entrepreneur had helped Vigal prepare his speech. By the diffident way Natch was treating his old guardian, she suspected that he was hardly aware of Vigal's presence at all. The entrepreneur seemed momentarily confused as they reached the petitioners' ring, until Vigal's hand clutched his elbow and steered him toward a chair a quarter of the way around the ring from the fiefcorp.

  "Something's wrong with Natch," said Merri.

  "What do you mean, something's `wrong' with him?" asked Horvil. "There's always been something wrong with him."

  "Yes, but ... his eyes."

  Jara noticed it too, even from this distance. The flesh around Natch's eye sockets looked as if it had been rouged with something dark and sinister. Any half-decent OCHRE system should take care of that, thought the analyst. Natch, what's happening to you?

  A vein in her temple began to throb. She watched the neural programmer nod and mumble to himself like a student prepping for exams, while Natch simply stared straight ahead. Jara waited for him to glance around at the audience; he wouldn't have to tilt his head that far to the left to see the fiefcorp. But the entrepreneur did not avert his eyes from a spot of void hovering about three meters before his face. Jara slumped down in her seat. With Vigal delivering the libertarians' opening statement and Khann Frejohr lying low, she had pinned her hopes for this hearing on Natch. But Natch was obviously in no shape to persuade the Prime Committee of anything.

  "How long do you have to go without sleep to get bloodshot eyes in this day and age?" mused Ben, half to himself.

  Jara darted a glance at Robby Robby, but the channeler was either completely oblivious to their conversation or faking it well. She wondered if he was off shopping for hairdos on the Data Sea or holding a pep rally with his sales force.

  Moments later, the delegation from the Congress of L-PRACGs arrived. It was the first time Jara had ever seen the legendary Speaker Khann Frejohr in person. He appeared calm and at ease in his bronze robe, looking every bit the wily and experienced politician. Frejohr and his accompanying band of libertarian activists found seats in the petitioners' ring toward Natch's side of the floor. Yet Jara couldn't help but notice that the speaker refused to look in the entrepreneur's direction, and he made no move to take the vacant chair on Natch's right.

  Horvil shot her a ConfidentialWhisper. "He really pissed Frejohr off, didn't he?" Jara didn't answer.

  And then the doors opened for the Defense and Wellness Council.

  Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee stood in the nucleus of a small pack of lawyers, administrators, and high-ranking Council officers. He looked almost Lilliputian in such an immense space. Jara recognized a few of the other lieutenant executives from drudge reports; she recognized Magan's flunky Papizon from personal experience. Jara felt a slight twitch of terror in her gut, remembering that Magan had unfinished business with her. She sneered it down.

  "Don't tell me that Lieutenant Executive Lee is going to be delivering their opening statement?" said Benyamin.

  Merri craned her neck forward. "Does anybody see any sign of-"

  The doors slammed open once more, and Jara felt her heart sink. The Blade.

  Rey Gonerev, the chief solicitor of the Defense and Wellness Council, strode through the doors with the confidence of a panther. Her long braids framed a face which mirrored that confidence. The Blade walked past the libertarian delegation, barely acknowledged Khann Frejohr's respectful nod, and headed for the governmentalist contingent on the opposite site of the auditorium. She was in her element here.

  And yet, for all Gonerev's bluster and bravado, where was the Council's legal army? What had happened to the hundreds of lawyers, functionaries, and advisors who had marched confidently through the streets of Melbourne yesterday? Evidently that display had just been a show for public consumption, because few of them were present today.

  Jara studied the twenty-nine empty chairs in the ring above hersseats for the Prime Committee, the ultimate government authorit
y, the people whose word superseded that of the L-PRACGs. Even the armed officers of the Defense and Wellness Council spread around the auditorium took their orders from the Committee, at least in theory. If anyone could give Natch a fair hearing, it was the people who would shortly be filling those chairs. But would they listen with open ears?

  The analyst had a distressing thought. Did she want the government to give Natch a fair hearing? The Prime Committee had the power to overturn everything Magan Kai Lee had done and restore Natch to the head of his fiefcorp, to bring back the status quo and put MultiReal in his hands once more. Would that be a good thing?

  At that moment, a more exclusive set of doors opened, and the Prime Committee entered.

  31

  The members of the Prime Committee might have been any random selection of pedestrians off the street. Their composition was about as polychromatic as any group of twenty-nine could be. There was a slight preponderance of females and people of Indian descent-what the sociologists glibly called "the Surina effect"-but nothing that could produce an obvious prejudice toward any one demographic. All were dressed in matching robes of dark blue, filigreed with elaborate gold tracing. The iron symbol of the black ring hung from their necks.

  The members filed around the auditorium to find their seats. Jara noticed that the Committee members' row did not intersect with any of the main auditorium stairways. In fact, the steps from the petitioners' row to the floor actually ducked under the Committee members' seats with a flourish of architectural bravado.

  As the men and women sat on the uncomfortable-looking black chairs, each person's representative organization flashed in hologram before them: The Vault. The Creeds Coalition. Dr. Plugenpatch. The Meme Cooperative. TeleCo. GravCo. Orbital Colonies. The Congress of L-PRACGS. True to their governing philosophy, none of the members' names were anywhere to be found.