'Someone bought them off.'
Natch inhaled sharply. Everywhere he turned, he saw a place someone else had long since scouted out and claimed for his own. 'How do you know?'
'I suppose I don't really know at all,' said Margaret with a weary, far-off look. 'The Patels deny that they're in collusion with anybody. But sometimes we can just sense these things, can't we? Too many coincidences, too many nosey questions, too little fear of the consequences. The entire Patel Brothers Fiefcorp got onboard a hoverbird a few weeks ago and disappeared for two days, I don't know where. They've clearly been bought by someone.'
'So why don't you just break the license? Cancel the agreement.'
'Believe me, I've tried.' She pulled one hand out from under her chin and extended a bony finger off to the east. 'Dozens of legal experts have been working around the clock in the Enterprise Facility trying to find loopholes in the contract. We've got lobbyists rubbing elbows with the Prime Committee, and delegates in the Congress of LPRACGs pushing legislation. That contract is ironclad.'
Natch shook his head in disbelief at the morass Margaret had made out of the whole affair. Did this woman completely lack an imagination? 'Listen, Margaret,' he said, 'it's just a contract. They're just words. Cut the Patel Brothers off from the MultiReal databases and put the burden of proof on them. They'll have to file something with the Meme Cooperative or the L-PRACG courts. Getting a final decision could take years.'
The bodhisattva sighed and turned back to her presentation. 'And give Len Borda the perfect excuse to send another legion of Council troops here? I don't think so.'
Natch threw his hands up in the air, a despondent plea to the halfempty auditorium. Down in the fifth row, the old woman flopped over with a loud snort while Natch looked on in contempt. Margaret had foisted her problems off on him, but he had no such luxury. If someone needed to take action to keep the Phoenix Project out of the Council's hands, that someone would have to be Natch.
You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices.
26
On Saturday morning, Natch was the first to arrive at the Surina Enterprise Facility, and so his mood dominated the conference room SeeNaRee. The fiefcorp apprentices found themselves sitting at a table in the middle of the African veldt. But this wasn't the modern veldt any of them knew, that bustling metropolis crammed full of autonomous business clusters, tube tracks and Sudafrican suburbs; it was the veldt of some mythical African past. Giraffes chomped at lofty tree limbs. Lions roared their displeasure through a thin tissue of mist. Ghosts and spirits floated past in ethereal majesty.
By a quarter past noon, there was still no sign of Quell or the MultiReal programming code. Horvil and Ben would have been content to gossip about family business all day, but Natch had no use for idle time. 'Let's just get started,' the fiefcorp master snapped. 'We can't afford to wait for Quell anymore. Has everyone seen the Patel Brothers' promo?'
His question was met with an uncomfortable silence. All the apprentices had seen it, but their critical faculties were so dulled by weeks of constant surprises that nobody knew what to make of it.
'I don't understand, Natch,' began Jara. 'Margaret just unveiled this MultiReal technology three days ago. And now the Patel Brothers are already selling it?'
'They had a nine-month head start,' put in Merri.
Jara let out a guttural curse. 'Nine months-that's when everyone started catching up with them on Primo's,' she said. 'I just knew there had to be a reason why their programs were such easy targets.'
'I don't understand this whole fucking thing!' cried a frustrated Horvil, banging his fist on the table hard enough to send a flock of marabous scurrying. ' 'Multiple realities' ... `safe shores' . . . It sounds like voodoo to me! Does anybody understand this MultiReal stuff? What the heck would you need an alternate reality for? Has the whole world gone entirely offline?'
'Well, apparently Frederic and Petrucio understand it,' muttered Benyamin.
Natch had been listening to his apprentices' jabber with eyes closed, as if participating in an internal dialogue with an unseen consultant. 'How do you know?' he said.
Jara felt her mental gears grind to a halt. The rest of the apprentices sported dumb looks as well.
'Petrucio didn't say they were going to launch a MultiReal product on Tuesday,' Natch continued. 'All they're doing is holding a demo. As far as we know, the Patel Brothers are months away from launching anything that'll float on the Data Sea.'
'Which means-'
'Maybe Frederic and Petrucio don't understand this technology any better than we do. Maybe they never got much cooperation from Margaret, and now they're frantically trying to put together something that will look halfway decent for their demo. A good channeler can make lots of deals before there's anything to sell. The Patels could be trying to shut out the competition before anyone else realizes there's something to compete over.'
Horvil snorted. 'What about us?'
'Us?' said Jara, starting to comprehend the vector of Natch's thoughts. 'Horv, Margaret never said anything about products in that speech of hers. She called MultiReal a scientific breakthrough. As far as the public knows, we could be planning to hold on to the core technology and collect licensing fees. Or we could be some kind of charitable technology bank.'
'So you think the Patels are bluffing,' said Merri. 'Putting up a a smokescreen to scare everyone else out of the MultiReal business.' As a devotee of Creed Objectivv, she seemed to find the entire possibility distasteful.
'More or less,' said Natch.
Silence briefly engulfed the room. Natch's eyes remained closed. Jara could hear the cawing of vultures overhead, the rustling of amorphous beasts out in the brush. Nobody ever said that SeeNaRee had to be subtle, she thought.
'Well,' said Benyamin faintly, 'why can't we do the same thing?'
Natch's eyelids snapped open, and the blue orbs beneath emitted a ghoulish glow. The virtual sun dipped below the treeline as if on cue and cast them all in shadow. 'That's exactly what we're going to do,' he hissed through a fierce grin. 'The Patel Brothers made the first strike by releasing this promo and scheduling a demo so quickly. But on Tuesday, we're going to beat them at their own game-because we're going to demo our products first.'
Jara groaned. 'And how do you expect us to do that?' she cried, her hands balled into miniature fists. 'It was bad enough when you wanted us to create an entire industry in eight days. Now you want us to do it in three?'
The fiefcorp master did not even pause. 'Yes.'
'Natch, who knows how long the Patels have been preparing for this demo? Days, weeks, months! Horvil's right-we barely even know what this program is. None of us had even heard of MultiReal this time last week. How are we supposed to get started? We don't have the code, we don't have the expertise, we don't have anything to work with.'
'Not true,' Natch replied tersely. 'We have all the bio/logic code we need.'
Merri ran her fingers through her blonde hair quizzically. 'Natch, I thought you started liquidating all our bio/logic programs this morning.'
'All the released programs, yes. But not the old ones we've taken off the market. Not the Routines On Demand.'
'RODs?' yelped Horvil, springing up from his chair. 'I don't believe this. You're pitting us against the Patel Brothers with some of your shitty old ROD programming?'
Natch smiled cruelly. 'Not my old programming, Horvil. Yours.'
All the color drained from the engineer's face. He sat down gingerly, not even bothering to put on a PokerFace to mask his dismay. 'Oh no, Natch. You're not talking about Probabilities 4.9, are you? Man, that program is in sorry shape. It's nowhere near ready for production.'
The fiefcorp master nodded. 'That's the one.'
