Multireal (46 page)

"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.

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.