"Maybe you"re just not used to looking at the mind of a genius."
"Quiet, Horvil."
Gradual y Natch"s senses rea.s.serted themselves, and he began to comprehend his surroundings once more. This is my apartment. That"s my ceiling.
The cushion underneath me is my couch. And the thing in my hand is-is-Natch looked sideways to find an unfamiliar object creeping through the fingers of his clenched fist. It was something soft, something paper-thin and feather-light. He could feel his mind"s engine turning over but not catching.
A hand gently pressed his head back onto the couch. "You need to relax," said a voice he recognized as Serr Vigal"s. "We"re going to readjust the OCHRE probe and pul back the focus. Are you sure you don"t want to be sedated for this?"
"No," said the entrepreneur at once. "Absolutely not."
"It"s gonna feel weirrrrd," warned the engineer in a child"s singsong voice.
"Try living with black code in your veins for a month," growled Natch. The ident.i.ty of the thing in his hand was dancing just beyond the tip of his tongue....
Vigal emitted an exasperated sigh. "Please, Horvil, can we put the sarcastic remarks on hiatus for a few minutes? Quel "s in enough of a hurry as it is."
The Islander made some kind of phlegmy noise that might have been either an expression of amus.e.m.e.nt or one of dismissal. "Andra Pradesh"l stil be standing in another few hours," he said. His face and bleached ponytail came into view directly over the fiefcorp master"s head. He made some signal in the direction of the office. "Okay, Natch, hold on, you"re about to feel a-"
Natch final y realized that the thing dribbling through his fingers was a crushed daisy from the garden. Then everything blanked out.
Time ceased to exist.
The feeling wasn"t much different from the mental caesura of multivoid. Natch"s senses had not diminished, but he could find no order in them. A flurry of lights, a jumble of glottal sounds, a softness pressing against his back-but what did it al mean? Patterned noise. Raw electrical activity without context.
Natch could not tel if he had lain there for two minutes or two years when ful consciousness snapped back with the suddenness of a cartridge being loaded into a gun.
He sat up and took a swig from the water bottle on the table. Natch could feel a little bit of normalcy returning with every drop. He summoned a mental calendar and verified that he had indeed slid back into the normal groove of elapsing time. It was January 1, New Year"s Day, and in forty-eight hours the fiefcorp would be announcing the winners of the MultiReal lottery. Five days after that was the exposition itself. He glanced at the ceiling, at the holographic fractal patterns that had been tormenting him, and realized he was looking at the standard OCHRE schematic of the human brain.
Vigal, Horvil, and Quel occupied three corners of the room, looking solemn and exhausted. It didn"t escape Natch"s attention that the Shenandoah sun was at a much different place in the sky than it had been before the probe began.
"Wel ?" asked Natch, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with impatience.
"We didn"t find your black code," said Horvil hesitantly. Al traces of the engineer"s levity had slipped away while Natch was off in the netherworld of the OCHRE probe. "But-"
"But what?"
Horvil and Vigal"s eyes swung instantly toward each other as if attracted by magnetic force. Quel folded his arms across his chest in consternation and turned to face the wal . "We found MultiReal," said Vigal under his breath.
"MultiReal? In my head?"
"Yes. It was ... everywhere. Al over your neural system."
"Not the whole program," said Horvil quickly. "Just bits and pieces. But they"re definitely bits and pieces of MultiReal. I think I saw one of those structures in Possibilities just the other day."
"How do you know it"s the same thing?" said Natch, delicately probing his skul with both hands as if it were a precious vase he might crack.
"We took a few samples from your head and plunked "em into Minds.p.a.ce. Then we did a side-by-side comparison with some of the structures from Possibilities. An exact match."
Natch could feel his hands trembling. "Show me."
They al walked into Natch"s office and stood next to the workbench, over which Possibilities floated in a translucent bubble. The program looked ridiculous crammed in such a smal s.p.a.ce. "There," said his old hivemate. "Look at that right there." He dipped the end of a bio/logic programming bar into Minds.p.a.ce, causing a beam of light to sweep across the bubble. Ma.s.ses of MultiReal code turned transparent as the beam hit them. The light stopped on a yel ow-and-blackstriped module that looked like a mutant insect of some kind. A yel ow jacket, maybe. "Now here"s a copy of the same thing in your neural system...." With a flick of the wrist, Horvil switched the display to a smal chunk of Natch"s OCHRE schematic. The resemblance was unmistakable.
The entrepreneur studied the two blocks of programming logic careful y. He switched back and forth several times. Horvil and Vigal had been correct; the chances of such a structure appearing in two disparate programs by accident were dangerously close to nil.
"So what is it?" asked Natch.
Vigal shrugged. "We"re not entirely sure," he said. "It"s a pretty obscure subroutine, buried quite a ways beneath the surface of the program. We can"t seem to get inside. It"s locked up somehow. I"m guessing this is just a library of logarithmic functions. I don"t think it does anything important-Horvil just happened to recognize it, that"s al ."
"But if Horvil recognized this subroutine, there might be hundreds more in there that he didn"t."
"I think the question we need to ask is how long that yel ow jacket"s been in your head,"
said a frustrated Horvil. "Was it there before those goons. .h.i.t you with black code? Did it come from the black code darts? Or did it show up later?"
Natch noticed that he hadn"t heard a peep from the Islander since he had woken up. He turned his focus on Quel , wishing he had a function that could see through people as easily as code. The Islander had removed himself to the doorway, where he was staring at the yel ow jacket with arms folded and eyebrows furrowed.
Natch eyed him with sudden suspicion. "Is there anything you want to tel me?" he snarled.
Quel emitted a gruff tssk and shook his head. "Like what?"
"Were you behind that group in the black robes? Did you attack me in that al eyway and put MultiReal in my system?"
The Islander burst into laughter. "Don"t be ridiculous! Why would I go to al that trouble when I could plug you right here in your apartment? And why would I do something like that in the first place?"
The fiefcorp master did not back down. "Margaret said the Patels sold out to the Defense and Wel ness Council." He aimed one accusatory finger at the Islander. "Maybe you did too."
Quel clenched his fists and lowered them to his sides. Al traces of humor were swept aside by a red rage swirling in his eyes. "You think I"m working for Len Borda?" he growled. "Me working for Len Borda." The Islander flexed his biceps again and studied Natch as if trying to determine the best way to eviscerate him. Horvil and Vigal backed slowly to opposite sides of the room, nervous, unsure what to do.
But the moment was brief. Quel soon bottled up his fury and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Do you want to know how my father died, Natch?" he said, his voice simmering down to a mumble. "The Council shot him. Len Borda"s people shot him. The war of "34, skirmishes near Manila. I watched my father fal facedown in the sand with a pair of black code darts poking through his eyebal .
Couldn"t even-couldn"t even get his connectible col ar off before the Nul Current took him." Quel let loose a few snorts, his thoughts directed inward. "I know you"re under a lot of stress right now, Natch. But if you ever suggest I"m on the Council"s payrol again, I"l crush your f.u.c.king windpipe."
Natch lowered his chin to his chest, conceding the argument. He stil knew much too little about the Islander for his comfort, but he felt confident now that Quel was not working for Borda. Besides, the Islander had had ample opportunity to plant Natch with black code, or even slit his throat.
But if Quel hadn"t put that yel ow jacket inside him, then who had? Outside of the fiefcorp, the only ones who had access to MultiReal were Quel , Margaret Surina, and the Patels. Pierre Loget had briefly been involved with the project before Frederic and Petrucio, but Margaret hadn"t made it clear whether he had even actual y seen the code. Stil , why would Loget ambush him in the street like that? Or Margaret, for that matter? The Patels had plenty of motive, but Petrucio had disclaimed any knowledge of a black code attack while under the Objectivv truth-tel ing oath. That left Frederic Patelthough Natch"s gut told him that an ambush wasn"t quite Frederic"s style.
"So what the f.u.c.k is going on?" said Natch, throwing his hands up at the ceiling.
More uneasy silence.
"Al right," grunted the fiefcorp master after a few moments. "I"m not going to just sit here and let this MultiReal code run rampant. Start that OCHRE probe again. Get that f.u.c.king thing out of there."
Quel shook his head. "Natch, that yel ow jacket is everywhere. See?" He walked over to the workbench and stuck his hand in the Minds.p.a.ce bubble.
Natch noticed for the first time that Quel "s fingers were adorned with his Islander programming rings, al owing him to manipulate the virtual blueprint without metal bars. He panned the schematic to a few key intersections where globules of code hung un.o.btrusively like parasites. "We could spend a year hunting those snippets down and stil not find them al ," said Quel . "And if we try to just yank everything out without taking precautions-serious precautionsit could be catastrophic."
"Maybe and maybe not," said Natch, eyeing the black-and-yel ow blob. "We need to crack that son of a b.i.t.c.h open."
"I"ve tried," moaned Horvil. "Believe me."
"Yeah, but did he try it?" Natch reached out, grabbed the Islander"s wrist, and held his hand up in the air. The programming rings twinkled. "With these?
Horvil merely shrugged. He extended his open palm toward the workbench as if to say, Be my guest.
The Islander eyed the bubble warily and removed himself from Natch"s grasp. Then he plunged his hands into the bubble and began weaving a peculiar cat"s cradle with the diffuse strands of data. His face flushed with concentration.
Natch gritted his teeth and clutched the windowsil , expecting another blackout at any moment. He felt a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe you should ... sit down?" said Serr Vigal. Natch shook his head.
He watched Quel "s fingers with a vulture eye, trying to translate the Islander"s finger phrases into the programming bar idioms he knew so intimately.
Some of the moves looked familiar, but others were completely alien. Natch reminded himself that Sheldon Surina and the original bio/logic programmers had coded this way-though they had used a much smal er set of rings and a rudimentary form of Minds.p.a.ce that hardly deserved the name. Surina had built the foundations of bio/logics using such primitive tools. Certainly, it seemed to Natch, the best way to break into code locked by the Surinas was to use the same methods they had used to seal it.
The diagram panned out, swiveled, and changed colors many times. Yet despite Quel "s best efforts, the mutant yel ow jacket remained sealed.
"Maybe we should try to find a different subroutine from MultiReal to crack into,"
offered Horvil, who had crept closer to the workbench to watch Quel "s performance. "We might have better luck." No one answered.
Natch could feel his mind revving up, blasting pistons at a phenomenal rate. Something was hovering just beyond his perception. An arcane destination, off the main road-something peculiar"Quel ," he snapped. "Give me those rings."
The Islander stepped back. "My rings? What-"
"Just do it."
Quel looked to his fel ow engineer, dumbfounded, but Horvil didn"t have any better idea what Natch was up to. Final y Quel shrugged, slid the gold bands off one by one, and handed them to the fiefcorp master.
Natch slipped the stil -warm rings onto his fingers. He hadn"t realized quite how large Quel "s hands were. When he finished donning the programming rings, he felt like a child playing dress-up with his mother"s jewelry. Even the notoriously thickset Islanders couldn"t have standard ring sizes this big.
Natch stepped up to the workbench and raised his hands. The code floating in Minds.p.a.ce seemed to exert a slight magnetic pul on his fingers, much as it did on a set of programming bars.
As Quel , Horvil, and Vigal looked on, Natch began conducting a data symphony with his digits. It started as a delicate tune that hovered in the middle registers. But as the fiefcorp master gradual y gained confidence in his technique, he began to make more daring moves. Sudden staccato bursts al over the imaginary orchestra, glissando stretches from one end of the scale to the other.
After fifteen minutes, Horvil began to grow restless. "If you don"t need me," he said, "I think I"l get back to work...."
"Not yet," barked Natch. The engineer stayed put. Serr Vigal retreated to the chair in the corner and parked himself anxiously upon it.
Natch zoomed in on the peculiar bee-shaped structure and began twisting at it with his fingers, over and over again. The coil spun around like a lump of clay under the hands of a skil ed potter. Every few spins, Natch would stab at the coil with his fourth finger.
"What"s he doing?" mumbled Horvil, leaning in until his face was neatly bisected by the edge of Minds.p.a.ce and took on a pinkish glow.
Quel squinted at the bubble dubiously. "Are you sure you know what you"re doing?" he said. "If you keep doing that, you might-"
"Break it?" Natch grinned like a demon and made one final stab with four fingers at once.
And then the darkness spil ed out.
Natch didn"t know how long he lay there before the refreshingly prosaic voice of Horvil came meandering out of the blackness. "I can look after him for a bit, Vigal. You real y need to get some sleep."
He tried to sit up, to respond, but his eyelids felt tied down and he could not open them.
His body simply would not respond to his commands.
"I"m not leaving until I know he"s okay," said Vigal. The neural programmer was almost within arm"s reach. "When is Quel leaving?"
"Dunno. I keep tel ing him he should go to Andra Pradesh already if he"s going to go, but you know how stubborn he is. I think he"s trying to put it off."
Horvil emitted a long, rattling noise of impatience through his sinuses.
Natch attacked the th.o.r.n.y thicket around his eyelids with every gram of strength he had.
Pain flooded down his spinal cord and then abruptly subsided.
He bolted upright to find the concerned faces of Horvil and Serr Vigal staring down at him on the living room sofa. Vigal"s expression was clouded with gloom, while Horvil looked like he had aged a year. Natch noticed that the sun had almost disappeared behind the jagged Shenandoah skyline. How long had he been under?
"You okay?" said Vigal gently.
The fiefcorp master struggled with the snares around his tongue. After a few minutes, he managed to croak out a reply. "I don"t think I"l be doing that again for a while."
Horvil plopped down on the chair-and-a-half. "I"m sorry, Natch," he muttered. "We were hoping to find some answers about the black code. But looks like we just made things more complicated."
"Complicated doesn"t bother me," said Natch, stretching his neck muscles in an effort to unstiffen them. "I don"t mind a complicated answer, as long as I have the answer. Is MultiReal the black code? Or are they separate programs?"
Horvil shook his head despondently and said nothing.
"Come on, Horv!" yel ed Natch. "No clues? Nothing at al ? Vigal, you know neural programming. You have to have some idea."
His old mentor frowned from the kitchen, where he was running his finger aimlessly across the countertop. Natch noticed the remains of a dinner that the three of them must have eaten while he was unconscious. "I don"t think they"re the same thing. I think there"s another il icit program hidden in your OCHRE system. But that"s just an opinion."
Natch, petulant: "So how did the MultiReal code get there?"
"I don"t know," replied Vigal.
"Then what"s it doing?"
Vigal rubbed his chin and stared at the wal , pensive. "Wel , we know that it can put you to sleep for several days...."
"There"s got to be more than that!" shouted Natch, pounding his fist on one of the couch"s throw pil ows. "Why would someone put together a strike team just to slip me a sleeping pil ? If al they wanted to do was prevent me from delivering that demo at Andra Pradesh, the f.u.c.king code would have selfdestructed by now."
Serr Vigal slid into a weary silence.
Natch lurched to his feet, balancing himself against the edge of the sofa until he was confident he would not fal down. Vigal and Horvil both offered him a helping hand, but the fiefcorp master waved them away. "Where"s Quel ?" he grunted.
Horvil pointed wordlessly toward the balcony door. Natch clasped his hands behind his back and strode in that direction. The balcony door swished open as he approached.
Quel the Islander stood outside with his hands firmly clenching the railing, as if he were about to rip it loose and hurl it into s.p.a.ce. His gaze was fixed on a smal group of Council officers standing across the road, exchanging hand signals with other teams in the vicinity. They were clearly watching Natch"s apartment, or at least pretending to. One of the officers went so far as to brandish a dart-rifle ostentatiously in Quel "s direction, as if he might fire it at any moment. His fel ows laughed.