Horvil whimpered incoherently.
Jara cut in. 'Natch, I don't see any record of Probabilities 4.9 on the Data Sea.' She narrowed her eyes, casting her mind out in a wider net. Primo's ratings, fiefcorp launch schedules, Meme Cooperative filings, drudge reviews, InfoGathers-all came up empty. 'As far as I can tell, this program was never released. It doesn't even look like it's been run through Dr. Plugenpatch.'
'Well, of course,' said Natch, irony oozing from his pores. 'Do you think we'd put the code to our top-secret weapon out on the Data Sea, where anybody could see it?'
'You wouldn't let me release it,' whined Horvil. 'You said it was shit.'
Merri interposed a hand into the middle of the table, attempting a peacemaking gesture. 'Horvil, if our MultiReal demo is riding on this program-'
'And all our contracts too,' snarled Jara.
-then maybe you'd better tell us what it is.'
Horvil gathered his breath and sucked in his voluminous gut. He started reciting a sales pitch that had long since calcified in memory. 11 'Probabilities 4.9 is designed to take chaotic real-world events and quantify their random elements into a meaningful array suitable for prediction. Its intended audience is any person looking for an array of random elements on which to place a wager. For instance, Probabilities 4.9 might track the number of dust motes in a particular square meter and determine the odds of any one dust mote hitting the ground first ...''
'It's a gambling calculator,' said Jara, shaking her head. 'We've quit the bio/logics business to sell a gambling calculator?'
'Actually, it's more like a statistical distribution engine that-'
'Probabilities 4.9 is absolutely not a gambling calculator!' said Natch, rising from his chair and waving his fist like a tin-pot dictator. 'It's the turbine that powers Possibilities 1.0, the first in a revolutionary line of MultiReal products based on the principles of Margaret Surina! It will quantify and order multiple realities! It will find the patterns within the chaos!'
Jara's temples were beginning to throb. She could feel panic lapping up against the seawalls of her mind, threatening to spill over and flood her synapses. All our contracts and our shares are riding on some tossedoff contraption of Horvil's...... So what's the plan then, Natch? Are we just going to go out there and pretend this Probabilities thing is MultiReal?'
'No, I'm afraid Horvil's right. It's a piece of shit.'
'Hey!'
'Probabilities 4.9 is really just going to be the front end for Margaret's MultiReal code. When Quell gets here, we'll hook the two programs together in MindSpace. They operate in the same general field. There ought to be some similarities we can work with. Enough to get us through the demonstration, at least.'
Merri had been watching the back-and-forth between Natch and Jara like a spectator at a duel. 'I think I'm beginning to understand,' she said. 'Horvil knows the Probabilities code inside and out ... Presumably, this apprentice of Margaret's knows the MultiReal code inside and out ... So, if we can just build a bridge between the two, we can make this demo work.'
'Precisely.'
Horvil had already pushed aside the injury to his pride for the more pressing issue of an intellectual challenge. Using the tip of his finger, he was busy sketching lengthy equations on a virtual slate. The engineer ended up with a very large and unwieldy number at the bottom. 'Totally impossible,' he said.
'What?' asked Natch.
'This is going to take a lot of grunt work, Natch. A lot. If this MultiReal program is as complex as Margaret says it is, it's bound to have thousands of nodes we'll need to hook up. Tens of thousands, maybe. Even if you and me and Quell and Ben work on this nonstop, we couldn't get it done until'-Horvil scribbled his way through a maze of algebra-'December 19th.'
'You see?' cried Jara. 'There's no way we can do all this by Tuesday. No way.'
The fiefcorp master flashed her the barest hint of a suggestive look, which Jara could feel right between the shoulder blades. Natch extended his finger towards Benyamin. 'You've managed assemblyline coders,' he said. 'Do you know a shop that can pull this off at the last minute?' The young man looked wide-eyed at his cousin, inhaled deeply, then nodded. 'Good, then it's settled.'
Jara felt the tingling between her shoulder blades diffuse down her back and into her spine. She remembered getting this feeling while playing chess against her grandfather, a professional who had jousted with the masters in the 49th Heaven tournaments. Inevitably, halfway through every game, she would discover that her grandfather had accounted for all of her two-dimensional feints, that the moves she had taken at face value were but the smallest strokes of an overarching blueprint that had been in place since the first tentative pawnstep forward. Natch possessed this same talent. Had he known where Benyamin would fit in the grand scheme when he hired him? Had he known all those years ago that Horvil's Probabilities code would one day prove useful? Did he have some hidden purpose reserved for her?
'So that still leaves Jara and me,' said Merri quietly. 'What should we be doing?'
'Yeah, I suppose we get to stay behind and keep the home fires burning,' Jara snapped with a swagger she didn't feel.
Natch focused the full force of his sapphire orbs on Jara. 'You have the most difficult job of all. You write the script.'
'That's not difficult. I bleed marketing copy, Natch.'
'But this isn't like any marketing copy you've ever written before, Jara. Those people out there-they hate me.' He made a sweeping arc with one hand that encompassed nearly the entire veldt. 'By the time I step out on that stage on Tuesday, the drudges will have convinced everyone I'm a public menace. You need to counter their propaganda-and explain a completely foreign technology-and get the audience revved up-all in fifteen minutes or less.'
'Fifteen minutes?' the analyst yelped.
'Margaret's speech was too long. Much too long. Ours needs to be different. We need to get the audience keyed up in an emotional way. I don't want anybody thinking too much about this technology. I just want one simple demonstration that cuts to the chase. How simple? A four-year-old should understand MultiReal after I'm done speaking, that's how simple it's got to be.'
Merri cleared her throat politely. 'And me?'
'Work with Robby Robby and his channelers. Start warming up the leads. And then, the instant the presentation's over, bang! I want a fucking sales blitzkrieg out there. Take no prisoners.'
Jara looked around and saw nothing but eager faces spiked with adrenaline. All the apprentices had feared this new fiefcorp was flailing around in the dark, aimlessly searching for direction. But Natch has a plan, Jara thought. We should have known. He always has a plan.
'There's one more topic we need to cover,' Natch said with an abrupt change of tone. Either he was suddenly being sincere, or he had made new strides in his mask of personableness. 'The Defense and Wellness Council is out there, and they don't want this demonstration to go forward. You all saw what happened at Margaret Surina's speech. When this meeting is over and I send out the announcement of our demo, we've got seventy-two hours til showtime-and once Len Borda knows that, he might resort to something desperate.'
'What about the Patels?' said Jara. 'Are they going to come after us too?'
Natch scratched his elbow thoughtfully. 'I don't know. I can't see the angle in them resorting to violence. And Frederic and Petrucio never do anything without an angle.'
Horvil eyed a pack of hyenas in the distance as if they might be Council informants. 'So what do you want us to do? Lock our doors? Hire bodyguards?'
'Maybe we should just lie low until Tuesday,' suggested Ben. 'Find somewhere the Council can't get to us.'
Merri gave the young apprentice a dark look. 'Like where?'
There was a long pause. Somewhere in the distance, a cluster of African bats shrieked. The Defense and Wellness Council had a presence in every city on the globe, every chartered settlement on Luna and Mars, every jerrybuilt outpost orbiting the sun from Earth to the asteroid belt. Was there anyplace in the whole of human civilization where Borda couldn't find them?
Natch leaned forward, balancing his chin on the tips of his two index fingers. 'All right, then,' he said.
