His own.
Natch has spoken those words, and yet he has not. He remembers making the vocalizations that echo in his mind; he remembers saying those things, as much as the concept makes sense. But the ideas came from elsewhere. Outside.
He can feel more words forming at his nonexistent lips, and he cannot stop them. It took me years to perfect this little piece of black code, Natch. You would be quite impressed if you had more time to explore it. The ultimate loopback! Much more interesting than some silly cloaking program. All sensory input rerouted, all sensory commands blocked off. Think of it as a dam of sorts, planted in the brain stem. Except I have the ability to open and close channels at will. Witness....
An instantaneous sword thrust of pure, unalloyed agony. The Urpain, the primordial concept itself.
Gone.
A sudden reemergence of sound. Low voices muttering, the distant bark of the mongrel. Staccato scrapes that might come from the confluence of boots and rubble.
Nothing.
Don't try to blame me for this state of affairs, says the voice. If you want to blame someone, you can blame yourself. You've done a much better job isolating yourself than I could have ever done. All I've done is take advantage of it.
Yes, thanks to you, Natch, your disappearance will arouse little suspicion. I'm sure the drudges will speculate about you for a while. Some will suspect foul play; some will suspect that the Council has done away with you. But most people? Most people will assume you've fallen prey to your own paranoia, gotten sucked into your own self-delusions. Like Henry Osterman and Sheldon Surina. Like Marcus Surina at the end. They'll think that one of your uncountable enemies finally caught up to you on a dark road somewhere.
I daresay even those few you label your friends will give up on you soon enough.
People will wonder what happened to MultiReal. The drudges will have heated debates about it, and some of the bigger fie/corps will attempt to dupli cate it-unsuccessfully, of course. Some will conclude that the whole thing was a hoax to begin with.
And then-once the rumors have died down, once the subject has become nothing more than a myth, once even the Defense and Wellness Council has concluded that MultiReal is lost in the deep eddies of the Data Sea-Creed Thassel will emerge. We'll launch Possibilities 2.0 and proclaim an end to the tyranny of cause and effect, forever.
An end to the Council. An end to centralized authority. A new beginning.
It is a strange thing, speaking the words of another. Natch feels the vibrations of his vocal cords, the swaying of his tongue-the idea of his vocal cords, the idea of his tongue-but he knows indisputably that the sentiments behind the words belong to someone else. And yet, the mere act of stringing together such words in his memory is causing him to reverse engineer the sounds back into their component thoughts.
The voice continues.
I hoped that we could work together, Natch. I really hoped that we might put aside our differences and launch Possibilities 2.0 as a team. I wasn't lying about that. It would have made for great symbolism-two enemies joining forces to announce the end of the zero-sum game! And it will take much longer to finish the programming without you. Maybe years longer.
But I see now that it's not fated to be. I was right to send that strike team after you. I was right to take out this little piece of insurance. You'll never willingly join my Revolution of Selfishness; as long as you live, you'll be a hindrance. I would simply keep you cooped up in this prison of mine until the launch of Possibilities, but I'm not that foolish. You would figure a way out of here eventually.
And so we come now to the final choice. Your last choice.
Don't think I take any pleasure in this, Natch. No sane human being enjoys taking the life of another But you must agree that sometimes it's necessary. Sometimes we must sacrifice our own lives in order that others may be free. And that's what you'll do. Your gift of MultiReal to the world will engender a future of boundless freedom for all. You can take some consolation in the fact that you'll be a hero, a martyr for humankind.
Natch feels the raw fury inside him. It's threaded through every cell in his body, and now he summons it all. Anger. The righteous, white-blazed inferno of need and struggle and drive, shaped into a dagger of willpower. The terrible madness of the Shortest Initiation. The humiliation of Captain Bolbund's poetry. The sting of being outmaneuvered by Magan Kai Lee. The howl of frustration he feels at locking horns with Jara. All concentrated and compounded to the utmost degree.
Natch reaches out and wrenches control of the voice. What's killing me going to accomplish? he says. You can't be that stupid. Without me, MultiReal is gone forever. It'll float out there on the Data Sea for all eternity-and even when you find it, your little piece of black code won't give you core access. What happens to your fucking Revolution of Selfishness then?
There is a moment of considered silence. He can almost feel the pitying smile on Brone's face, the wretched shake of the head.
I don't think you quite understand, says the voice. You're lying completely defenseless on a street in Old Chicago. There's no one out here but the disc for kilometers. And I have here the gateway to pain beyond your imagining. Unadulterated pain that's all the more potent because it doesn't go through the intermediary step of the nervous system.
You have one last choice left to make, Natch. And I already know what your decision is going to be. When you're racked with anguish beyond anguish and you're given the opportunity to end that suffering-of signing over core access to MultiReal to me and earning a swift death you'll make the only logical choice. I know you will.
Natch tries to reach out and steady himself against something, but there is nothing to steady himself against. He feels the primal fear wash over him, the fear of emptiness, of loneliness, of pain. He yanks away control of his voice one last time. You have no fucking idea what I'll do, he says. Torture me for a thousand years. I'm stronger than you. I'm the most stubborn son-of-a-bitch who ever lived. I'll never hand over MultiReal. Are you listening? Do you hear me? Never. I'll never do it. Never.
He waits for the inevitable retort, for Brone's perfidious last word, but it never comes.
Brone is correct. It is pain beyond imagination, pain reduced to its purest essence and served raw. The snapping of bones in their sockets, the laceration of flesh, the jab of a million simultaneous stabbings, weeks of thirst and starvation, all concatenated into one infinite instant-and Natch can feel it bearing down on him like a tsunami.
And then the nothingness at the center of the universe clasps hold of him, and Natch knows no more.
6
NEW BEGINNINGS
42
Jara arranged to meet Geronimo the day after the disaster at the Tul Jabbor Complex.
She nearly canceled. The thought of letting a Natch look-alike inside her emotional barricades made her feel greasy in places where human beings were not meant to feel greasy. But Jara had spent the day fretting in the Creed Elan hostel, waiting for some scrap of news about Natch, or barring that, information on what the Prime Committee was up to in their closed-door session. She needed a distraction. And she wasn't quite ready to get intimate with Horvil yet, despite the kiss they had shared in the anonymous bureaucrat's office. An afternoon in bed with Geronimo felt like a monumentally stupid thing to do, but it was a stupid thing she needed to do.
Merri wandered in to the common room at some point, looking tired and drained of energy. "How's Bonneth?" Jara asked her.
"Stable for now," replied Merri, propping a smile onto her face. "Access to Dr. Plugenpatch has been really spotty up there for the past twenty-four hours. But she made it to the Objectivv facilities in Einstein. They're looking after her."
Jara felt like the icy hand of death had just gripped her by the throat. She had asked the question as idle chatter; Bonneth's medical challenges in the face of the infoquakes had completely slipped her mind, again. "Are you-are you going back there?"
The blonde channel manager nodded
. "I'm booked on a Lunar shuttle this Saturday." She slumped down in the chair, searching for a comfortable position that remained elusive. "Honestly, I don't think I'm ready to go yet."
"But don't you miss her? You've been Earthside for, what, over a month now."
"It's not that difficult, Jara. We have multi. We have messaging. We even have ... well, we have the Sigh when we need it." A blush tickled Merri's plump cheeks.
Jara thought of her own impending tryst with Geronimo, causing her to fidget in her seat like a teenage girl. Keep it together, she admonished herself. "But it's not the same," she told Merri. "You can't eat meals together. You can't sleep in the same bed. Doesn't the intimacy get strained after a while?"
Merri closed her eyes for a moment as she considered the question. "Of course things get strained after a while. And of course I miss her. But sometimes-sometimes I need a little break from Bonneth, you know? She understands. She knows that sometimes I just need to do what I need to do. But when I'm ready, I'll always be back."
The analyst nodded. "Yeah. I know what you mean." She debated asking Merri's advice about whether she should keep the appointment with Geronimo, but decided against it. In a sense, the channel manager had already answered.
So Jara retreated to her room at the hostel. She closed the door, scuttled into bed, and activated her connection to the Sigh. Within seconds, the real world melted away, and Jara was standing on a glittering patio of solid turquoise. The attendant who greeted her had a wolf's pelt and four tongues.
"What's up, baby?" came a voice. A hand touched her shoulder. Geronimo.
It was the first day that Len Borda had allowed public access to the Sigh since shortly after Margaret's funeral. Consequently lines were long and tempers were frayed. Jara listened to Geronimo describe Jeannie Q. Christina's latest celebrity gabfest in agonizing detail for fifteen minutes while they waited. He seemed completely unaware of the turmoil that had engulfed the world in recent days.
Things didn't get any better when they finally made it to their room. (Black leather, again.) Geronimo put on the sullen pout that had almost become a third partner in their sex life and paid Jara little attention during the act some called lovemaking. Jara stared at the ceiling, wondering if she was being watched by one of Rey Gonerev's flunkies. I don't care, she thought, hoping the defiance was visible on her face. I'm not afraid of her anymore.
Geronimo spent the remaining eighteen minutes of their reservation buzzing along to some hideous cacophony on the Jamm. The drudges called it mocha grind, but to Jara it just sounded like clinking beads and falsetto yelps. Geronimo left with a clumsy squeeze of her ass as farewell.
Jara proceeded to wipe her profile and cancel her subscription to the Doppelganger channel. Well, that's done, she thought, and good riddance. The Sigh immediately sliced a fat wedge out of her Vault account for early termination.
The Prime Committee finally called on Jara to testify the next morning.
As soon as she stepped into the auditorium, she could tell that any extenuating evidence she had to offer would fall on deaf ears. The lowest ring in the auditorium was packed with the twenty-nine Committee members, some fifty staffers, and at least twenty private security teams. No drudges, no spectators, no Defense and Wellness Council guards, no libertarians to be found.
The members of the Prime Committee were furious. Their stares fixed on Jara like searchlights, and their questions stabbed at her like bayonets. She was asked at least a dozen times if she knew what had happened to Natch, who the people in black robes were, and why the infoquake struck when it did. All Jara could do was politely disclaim all knowledge. Even the libertarian members who had reacted enthusiastically to Serr Vigal's speech had little to say; their sights were on history now as they struggled to find pretty, perfumed words of demurral for the official record. Two hours after Jara walked into the auditorium, the Prime Committee dismissed her without allowing her to speak a single word of substance. She promptly returned to the Creed Elan hostel, turned off her alcohol-metabolizing OCHREs, and drank herself into a stupor.
Benyamin approached her in the common room early the next day. He had spent most of the time since the Tul Jabbor Complex fortified in the hostel, along with Vigal, Merri, and Horvil. Jara didn't bother to find out where Robby Robby had gotten off to.
"I know it's not my decision," said the young apprentice, "but I think we should go home."
Jara took a swallow of nitro and tilted her head in thought. He was acting unusually deferential. "Why?"
Ben shrugged. "It could take days for the Prime Committee to make up their mind. Weeks even. You've already testified, and they probably won't call on any of the rest of us. With these infoquakes happening left and right ... well, I'd rather be at home when they come."
The analyst nodded. She had already reached the same conclusion last night after her third vodka banzai, but she wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to improve her rapport with Benyamin. "Good idea, Ben," she said. "I think you're right. Tell the others to go home and get some rest. We'll all touch base in a day or two."
Jara packed up the few toiletries she had brought and was on her way to the tube station in twenty minutes, pausing only to pay her respects to the Elan facility administrators. She didn't even try to coordinate the ride home with any of the other fiefcorpers.
Seascapes. A light storm off Cape Town. The whisper of the tube engines. Home.
Jara spent the next twenty-four hours lying on the floor of her stillundecorated apartment, trading reminiscences with her sister. The aftershocks from the last infoquake were sending cyclones of chaos around the globe and out to the orbital colonies. Such was the mood of panic that Jara and her sister actually resorted to text messaging in order to save bandwidth. They talked about their father, who had joined the Prepared fifteen years ago, and their mother, who was long overdue to join him. They talked about the ramshackle apartment in Sao Paulo where they had lived during the Economic Plunge. They reenacted some of their old whimsical bedtime stories, all about puckish elves and hidden cauldrons of gold and ordinary princesses propelled into adventure by simply keeping an eye open for the possibilities.
Jara moped for another eighteen hours, staring at the virginal plaster of her blank walls. What to do now? Where to turn? What if Natch really was gone for good this time? Was that simply ... it for the fiefcorp?
Strange territory, this blank existence. It occurred to Jara that this was the first real idle time she had had since joining up with Natch's fiefcorp three and a half years ago. There had always been some project that needed attention, some cracked scheme Natch wanted her to map out. She couldn't remember when-or if-she had taken a single day off in all that time. And now? Now she felt like all of the obsessions that had been crammed inside her skull had been simultaneously erased-Natch, MultiReal, the fiefcorp, Geronimo. What remained?
Horvil answered her Confidential Whisper mere nanoseconds after she sent the request. "Process' preservation, woman," he said, exasperated, "I've been trying to reach you for, like, a day and a half now."
"I know," said Jara. "I'm sorry."
"So ... what's next?"
"You mean, what's next for the company? Or what's next for you and me?"
The engineer let out a ruminating hum. "Both, I guess."
"We're going to have a fiefcorp meeting tomorrow. Ten o'clock sharp London time, at the Surina Enterprise Facility."
"And ... ?"
"You and me? Well ... can you be here in twenty minutes?"
"I can be there in fifteen."
43
Len Borda stood at the porthole of his ship and surveyed the choppy seas. Waves leapt up some fifteen meters high, tossing algorithmically generated sailors around with kraken glee and threatening to drag the fragile ship down to a watery doom. He had lost two of the best in the armada, and the remaining two were only being held together by rope and pitch. But the six French juggernauts that had been cutting off his supply lines were now nothing
but driftwood.
The high executive sent lifeboats out to pick up the wounded and the dying. The death of a virtual sailor was nothing to mourn, of course. But Borda had learned years ago that prisoners made good bargaining tools, and they could be chained to the oars in a pinch.
"Well played," said Magan Kai Lee.
Borda knew better than to betray his surprise at the sudden voice behind him. He had predicted that the lieutenant executive would try to make contact today, even if he couldn't pinpoint the exact time or the method Magan would use. The fact that the lieutenant was forbidden from walking DWCR's corridors-under penalty of deathwouldn't deter him.
"I could have your multi transmission traced," said Borda, without averting his gaze from the porthole.
"You know as well as I do how unreliable that technology is," replied Magan, unperturbed. "And even if you could trace the transmission, you'd need a hundred thousand officers to get to me here."
"I have a hundred thousand officers, many times over."
Pause. "Are you sure?"
The high executive sighed. He didn't doubt that he still commanded enough troops to pry Magan's stray contingents out of whatever hole they were skulking in. But the point was well taken. An era of steady loyalties had come to a messy demise in the Tul Jabbor Complex last week. Now nobody wearing the white robe and the yellow star could look at his fellow officers without second-guessing. These days, justice had many masks. It was remarkable that none of the drudges had picked up on the schism between Magan and Borda yet, but that could only last for so long. Once the story broke-well, things would only get murkier.
Borda turned around to face Magan Kai Lee. His subordinate looked well rested and comfortable, hardly like a man on the run from the most powerful military force in the history of the world. He had kept the white robe but abandoned the gray smock of his position.
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