Infoquake (46 page)

Benyamin was experiencing deja vu, but it had nothing to do with any
of Natch's bio/logic programs.

He was standing on the balcony overlooking his mother's
assembly-line floor where he had stood for most of the past year. Two
hundred workbenches lay in a grid below him. He was younger than
many of the programmers, and had less coding experience than almost
all of them. It felt like nothing had changed in the past few months,
like he had never decided to step out from under Berilla's oppressive
wing and seek a job in the fiefcorp sector.

As always, Ben listened for some undercurrent of resentment running through the staff. Were they jealous of this kid who had
leapfrogged to the management office straight out of initiation? Did
they resent the fact that the monthly interest on his trust fund
exceeded half their salaries combined? The answer to these questions, it seemed, was still no. If there was any embittered muttering going
on here, it was drowned out by the rumble caused by hundreds of
clanking bio/logic programming bars. The assembly-line coders were
oblivious. Too busy concentrating on tunes from the Jamm and
holding Confidential Whisper conversations with distant companions.

"Thirty-one percent done," came a smoky female voice, late forties
or early fifties.

Benyamin turned to find Greth Tar Griveth, the woman who had
replaced him as floor manager, walking onto the balcony from his old
office. Her office now. Ben sensed that the job, which had been a
whistle stop on the track to success for him, was more like a post of
permanent exile for Greth. She had only been here for six weeks, but
she had already adapted the vacant stare, the careless flip of the hand,
the bored mid-sentence yawn that had been hallmarks of Ben's seventh
and eighth months.

"Only thirty-one percent?" said Ben with a groan. "But we need
this done in less than twenty-four hours!"

Greth stood next to him at the railing and let out a weary ffff.
"We'll get it done. I think."

"You think?"

"The second shift is coming on now, and they're much quicker
than the first. Plus, we just finished up a gig for the Elanners, so we'll
have some more coders to put on the job. Look, over there."

Greth Tar Griveth pointed at the rightmost row of programmers,
where Ben could see the Surina/Natch templates slipping silently into
the production line. One by one, the workers in that quadrant of the
floor completed their current projects and watched blue and pink
chunks of code pop up in their MindSpace bubbles. Small bricks in the
Gothic castle that was the MultiReal engine. Other coders were gazing
numbly at pieces of the Probabilities ROD. If any of them suspected
they were plugging away at the world's most notorious compendium
of bio/logic code, they showed no sign.

Nor did the salty assembly-line floor manager have a clue what
program her crew was laboring away on. Ben had made sure that the
words Natch, MultiReal and Surina did not escape his lips, and he
praised the Fates that his apprenticeship to the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp
was not yet common knowledge in Creed Elan circles. Still, he took no
chances, and made sure a fat sheaf of credits was sitting in Greth's
Vault account to dissuade her from asking questions.

"Here's the real test," said Greth, pointing to a gangly kid in the
epicenter of the floor whose workbench could have rivaled Horvil's in
sloppiness. "They call that kid The Robot. Arrived just after you left,
and already he's leading the floor in output. Never complains, never
says much of anything."

Ben fastened his gaze on The Robot, who was wrapping up work
on someone else's tangled web of a program. Indeed, the young man
was tearing through the template with astounding speed. Ben watched
as The Robot whirled the mass around with one hand, grabbed the
programming bar he needed with the other, and then caught the template backhanded, just in time to make the appropriate connection.
"So why's this guy a good test?" said Ben.

"Because he's got absolutely no imagination," replied Greth. She
stretched, nearly poking Benyamin in the eye with a stray elbow. "Give
him your ordinary coding job and he'll sweep through it in record
time. But make the slightest flaw in your template, and he just folds.
Look."

True to her words, as soon as the kid moved on to his next job-a
golden program that looked like a bowl of fruit-he froze up. The
bio/logic programming bars in his hands hovered in place, vibrating
like stuck gears. Ben could practically hear the ConfidentialWhisper
conversation from his supervisor guiding him through the obstruction.
After a ten-minute pause, The Robot hesitantly got back to work.
Soon, he was a blur of motion once again.

"If he can handle the templates your cousin put together," said Greth Tar Griveth drily, "we'll be okay."

Ben held his breath as The Robot finished up his current assignment and made the swirling-hand motion signaling his readiness to
accept a new template. A pink blob, one small corner of the MultiReal
engine, appeared in front of him.

The Robot whipped through the template in twenty-two minutes.

Greth loosened her grip on the railing and let out a deep breath.
"It'll be close, but I think we'll get your job done on time. Maybe even
twenty or thirty minutes early."

Ben inhaled a draught of cool air, expelling a warm puff in return.
The billow of air failed to accomplish the calming effect he had
intended. "That's cutting it a little too close."

"Yes," replied Greth, not bothering to contradict her predecessor.
It is."

Horvil had almost forgiven the Surina guest lodge for the lumps in its
mattress and found a route to sleep, when an urgent ConfidentialWhisper reached his mental inbox. The engineer accepted it. He found
himself flailing against the wall under the galewind force of an angry
Jara.

"Emergency meeting!" she cried. "Emergency meeting now!
Everyone report to the Enterprise Facility!"

Horvil groggily threw on yesterday's clothes and made his way
across the Surina compound, discovering along the way that he had put
on only one sock. The central courtyard was aflurry with security officers going about their midnight routine, questioning passersby, relentlessly patrolling, checking their weapons and loading dart canisters
from their belts. Horvil was not surprised to find the Islander Quell in
their midst. He told the newest fiefcorp apprentice about the meeting,
and the two quickly followed Jara's beacon to a conference room on the fifth floor of the Enterprise Facility.

They wandered into a piece of SeeNaRee titled Seurat's Sunday
Afternoon on the Isle of La Grandejatte. Jara stood beside a cool river rendered in tiny pinpricks of color, while Parisian matrons in ridiculous
hooped petticoats sauntered on the opposite bank. Her fiery mood
made a sharp contrast with the calm pointillist trees. Horvil was about
to chide Quell for his SeeNaRee program's poor selection when he
caught sight of Merri in the river a few meters down, wading barefoot
and watching the ducks. Obviously, the channel manager had arrived
here first.

Benyamin showed up moments later, and the five apprentices sat
at a plain conference table overlooking the river. "So what's the emergency?" said Ben Jauntily.

Jara gestured to the empty chair at the head of the table. "Natch."

"What's wrong with him this time?"

"He's disappeared."

Four blank faces gazed back at her.

"You mean-he hasn't been in touch with you at all?" cried
Horvil. "I thought he was supposed to be at that meeting with Robby
Robby this afternoon."

Merri shook her head. "He didn't show up."

"Well, where the fuck is he? Hasn't anybody talked to him since
the last fiefcorp meeting?"

Nobody answered. A cloud of black and gray dots descended on
them from the east, threatening to dump pixels of rain on the congregating Parisians.

"I've tried requesting a multi connection," said Jara, rubbing the
pulsing vein on her temple. "I've sent him at least twenty Confiden-
tialWhispers. Nothing. I even tried Margaret, but her secretary says
she's been holed up with those diss L-PRACG people for three days
straight now. Natch isn't there."

"Did you try Serr Vigal?" asked Merri.

Jara nodded grimly. "He's not answering me either, although that's
not a big surprise. I checked the schedule of that conference in Beijing.
He's probably delivering the keynote address right about now."

"Maybe Natch is ... testing us or something," said Ben to nobody
in particular. "Maybe he's just trying to make sure we're on our toes. I
know he has some pretty unconventional management tactics."

"Unconventional, yes," replied Horvil. "Totally fucking insane,
no."

"Doesn't the man have any private security?" asked Quell.

Jara glared at the Islander as if he had grown a horn from his forehead. "Are you kidding?"

Quell let out an animalistic grunt. "I can't believe this," he snarled.
"No common sense, just like Margaret. Natch knows he has enemies,
doesn't he? The Patel Brothers, the Defense and Wellness Council, the
Pharisees, all those programmers and ROD coders and drudges he's
pissed off over the years. The list is practically endless."

"Don't forget Lucas Sentinel," put in Horvil, counting on his fingers. "And the Meme Cooperative. Brone. Creed Thassel. Creed Elan.
My Aunt Berilla-"

Ben groaned out loud.

"All right, that's enough!" shrieked Jara, slapping one open hand
against the table and sending a loud thwak echoing through the
SeeNaRee. The Parisians snapped their heads up in surprise, as did the
rest of the fiefcorp. "It doesn't matter right now. We could sit here for
a week naming people who hold a grudge against Natch. What we
need to do is stay focused. We've got a presentation tomorrow at four
o'clock, and I intend for us to be ready for it."

Horvil felt a smile slowly creep onto his face. There was no officially designated Number Two in the fiefcorp hierarchy, but Quell,
Merri and Benyamin seemed ready to follow Jara to the heart of a simmering volcano. At that moment, Horvil was too. "So what do you
want us to do?" ventured the engineer.

"I want you to go looking for Natch," said Jara. "You've known
him longer than any of us, Horvil. See if you can get into his apartment and look for clues. Go everywhere he might possibly be hiding.
Quell, I want you to comb every centimeter of the Surina compound
and make absolutely sure he's not holed up here somewhere. As for you
two, Ben and Merri-just keep working. If those assembly-line programmers don't finish in time-or if the channelers aren't ready-this
is all going to be a moot point anyway."

"I've got a friend with the Elanners who runs a private detective
agency," said Ben. "Maybe I could-"

Jara cut him off. "No. We don't want word of this to leak out to
anybody outside the fiefcorp. Anybody, do you hear me? Not even Margaret or Robby. The last thing we need is for the drudges to start
spreading rumors. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Natch
is cooped up here with us, working on Possibilities."

"And what are you going to be doing, Jara?" asked Merri.

Jara clawed briefly at the vein in her temple, which had begun to
throb once more. "I'm going to stay here and come up with a plan."

"A plan for what?" said Ben.

"A plan for what to do if Natch doesn't show up tomorrow."

The panic that had been bubbling beneath the surface now struck
the fiefcorp like a miniature infoquake. Merri looked like she might
pass out at any minute, while Quell gripped his connectible collar as
if preparing to snap it in two. Horvil could feel his OCHREs working
to slow a madly racing heart, and he would have bet anything his
cousin was using his faraway look as cover while he reviewed his
apprenticeship contract. Even the painted denizens of the SeeNaRee
were milling around, opening and closing their parasols in confusion.

Only Jara appeared to have mastered her emotions. She stood up
and placed her hands flat on the table. "Listen," she said through
gritted teeth, "there's only so much time we can spend looking for
Natch. You all know him as well as I do. If he doesn't want to be found, he won't be found."

"Why wouldn't he want to be found?" Merri asked.

Glum silence shrouded the table.

"If any of us had the slightest inkling of how Natch thinks, we
wouldn't have signed on to this bloody fiefcorp in the first place," said
Jara. "Let's get moving. It's one-thirty now. Everybody report back
here at nine a.m. sharp."