'I could turn you in to the Council.'
Natch didn't lose a beat. 'Without hard evidence-which I know you don't have-where would that get you? Nobody wants to hire a whiner or a whistle blower. You'd be right back where you were when I found you: blacklisted by the major bio/logic fiefcorps, taking shit from second-rate imbeciles like Lucas Sentinel. And don't tell me the Council will get to the bottom of this, because they won't. Dozens of cases like this cross Len Borda's desk every week, and he's lucky if he can close a tenth of them.'
'Then I'll tell the Meme Cooperative.'
'Don't make me laugh.'
'The drudges. I could send a message to Sen Sivv Sor and John Ridglee right now.'
Natch shrugged, as if the effort of responding to such an inane proposition was beneath him. He caught the spinning donut of code with one hand and began studying its surface once more.
Jara let her hands drop inertly to her sides. Is he right about me? she thought. Is that all I am-a whiner and a whistle blower? She thought back to her days peddling bio/logic analysis to Lucas Sentinel, to all the times she had cursed her fate and threatened to quit. Wouldn't Lucas pull the same stunts that Natch did, if he had the guts or the foresight?
She hadn't really intended to quit, she realized now. Despite all the indignities, Jara couldn't bring herself to hate this cantankerous child. What she had wanted was the opportunity to deliver some kind of high-handed sermon about Pyrrhic victories and the value of interpersonal relationships. She wanted him to take her seriously. 'People could have gotten hurt, Natch,' Jara said quietly.
'They didn't.'
'But they could have.'
Natch finally capitulated and flipped off the MindSpace bubble around his workbench. The holographic donut melted back into the void. 'Jara, everyone who invests in bio/logics knows what's going on. Things like this happen all the time. Do you think the Patel Brothers got to the top without getting their hands dirty? Or Len Borda?'
Jara snorted angrily. 'Oh, I see, the end justifies the means.'
The entrepreneur narrowed his eyes, as if trying to adjust his focus to a shallower depth of field. 'Do you really think number one on Primo's is the end? Then you don't understand anything, Jara. Getting to number one on Primo's isn't an end at all-it's a means. It's part of the process ... just a step on the ladder.'
'So what is the end? Where do all these means lead to?'
Natch stared out into the nothingness for a moment without speaking. She saw him for a brief instant unadorned, between masks. His jaw rocked back and forth, and in his eyes burned a hunger the likes of which Jara had never seen. That fire could consume her schoolgirl lust, swallow it without a trace. She shivered involuntarily.
'I don't have a clue,' said Natch. 'But when I find out, I'll let you know.' And with a peremptory wave of his hand, he cut her multi connection.
Jara found herself standing once more on the red square in her London apartment. It was Wednesday afternoon already. In a few blessed hours, this entire debacle would be a distant memory. On the viewscreen, she could hear the crowds milling about in the public square, restless, impatient, disconsolate.
Jara sank to the floor and cried for a moment, then dragged herself back to her office. There was work to be done.
7
Sleep tore at him, shrieked at him, pummeled him without mercy. His traitorous body was only too happy to succumb, and it took a monumental effort of will for Natch to keep himself awake.
Sheldon Surina, the father of bio/logics, had once defined progress as 'the expansion of choices.' Natch wanted the choice to stay awake. So he switched on PulCorp's U-No-Snooze 93 and let the OCHRE machines in his body release more adrenaline. Within seconds, he was awake and alert.
He was on the tube headed north out of Cisco station, through the great redwood forests that carpeted much of the northwest, and up to Seattle. Natch had been on this route hundreds of times. The tube would shuttle back and forth between the two port cities all afternoon, hauling industrial supplies and a dwindling number of commuters. At this time of the morning, the passenger car was nearly empty. Besides Natch, there was an elderly gentleman who appeared to be killing time; two businesswomen who were probably accompanying their cargo in the trailing cars; and an Islander tugging uncomfortably at the steel collar around his neck. Fickle economics, which had once courted TubeCo with ardor, had moved on to younger and more acrobatic mistresses.
Natch had no business to transact in either Cisco or Seattle. He came to see the trees. To see the trees and to plot his next move.
Everyone in the fiefcorp knew about his ritual of tubing out to the redwood forests whenever he had something to mull over. Nobody understood it, least of all Jara. 'You refuse to eat a meal sitting down because it's a waste of time, but you'll spend three and a half hours riding a hunk of tin across the continent?' she had once scolded him. 'Why tube all the way out there when you can multi instead?'
'It's not the same as being there in person.'
Jara rolled her eyes. He saw the incomprehension written all over her face: This is the same kind of backwards logic that the Islanders and the Pharisees use. I thought you were smarter than that.
'What about a hoverbird?'
'I don't like hoverbirds. Bad memories.'
'Okay, then why don't you teleport? I know, it's expensive. But time is money, isn't it?'
Natch had had no reply. He was not very good at elaborate explanations. He simply knew he did his best thinking while in a tube car staring at giant sequoias. Teleporting or multi projecting out to the redwoods just wasn't the right way to do it. It was wrong, like an imperfect bio/logic program was wrong.
Maybe what he appreciated about the tube was that it was done right. TubeCo had an eye for perfection in everything they did. Their vehicles were not 'hunks of tin,' as Jara had accused. They were sleek and beautiful, the product of a business that had reached its awesome maturity. Transparent from the inside but breathtakingly translucent from the outside, the tube cars floated on a cushion of air just molecules thick and whooshed over slim tracks with quiet grace. Even the armrests on the chairs were sculpted from synthetic ivory and contoured for maximum comfort. Unlike so many technological marvels these days that blended into the background-microscopic OCHREs that regulated the human body, multi projections that were nearly indistinguishable from real bodies, data agents that existed only within the mind-the tube was a visible, palpable manifestation of human achievement. It was progress writ large.
The redwoods, in contrast, were nature writ large. Natch gazed through the transparent wall at the sequoias towering over the tube tracks. These trees had watched over this route long before the tube even existed. Most of them had undoubtedly seen the days of Sheldon Surina and Henry Osterman, the days of bio/logics' founders. Some of the trees had stood here since long before the Autonomous Revolt or even the First American Revolution. All of human history, in fact, was but a footnote to their tranquil and reflective existence.
The tube car completed its circuit through the redwood forest and slid to a graceful stop at the Seattle station, but Natch stayed on for another pass. Then another, and another. He watched the trees, he pondered the future, he formulated plans. Gradually, the effects of the UNo-Snooze program wore off. Natch let his guard down and drifted off to sleep.
In his sleep, he dreamed.
He dreamed he was standing in a grove of redwoods, dwarfed by their majesty. He felt small: a forgotten attribute in the great schema of the universe. He was trapped down here. The forest was endless. Tube trains whizzed by just over the next hill, powerless to do anything but circle around in vain looking for an outlet.
But Natch had found a method of escape. He had prepared for this moment. He was a bio/logic programmer, a master architect of human capability. He had studied in the Proud Eagle hive, apprenticed with the great Serr Vigal, gone up against formidable enemies like the Patel Brothers. And he had brought all his skill and learning to bear when he had crafted the ultimate program: Jump 225.
