'Only thirty-one percent?' said Ben with a groan. 'But we need this done in less than twenty-four hours!'
Greth stood next to him at the railing and let out a weary ffff. 'We'll get it done. I think.'
'You think?'
'The second shift is coming on now, and they're much quicker than the first. Plus, we just finished up a gig for the Elanners, so we'll have some more coders to put on the job. Look, over there.'
Greth Tar Griveth pointed at the rightmost row of programmers, where Ben could see the Surina/Natch templates slipping silently into the production line. One by one, the workers in that quadrant of the floor completed their current projects and watched blue and pink chunks of code pop up in their MindSpace bubbles. Small bricks in the Gothic castle that was the MultiReal engine. Other coders were gazing numbly at pieces of the Probabilities ROD. If any of them suspected they were plugging away at the world's most notorious compendium of bio/logic code, they showed no sign.
Nor did the salty assembly-line floor manager have a clue what program her crew was laboring away on. Ben had made sure that the words Natch, MultiReal and Surina did not escape his lips, and he praised the Fates that his apprenticeship to the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp was not yet common knowledge in Creed Elan circles. Still, he took no chances, and made sure a fat sheaf of credits was sitting in Greth's Vault account to dissuade her from asking questions.
'Here's the real test,' said Greth, pointing to a gangly kid in the epicenter of the floor whose workbench could have rivaled Horvil's in sloppiness. 'They call that kid The Robot. Arrived just after you left, and already he's leading the floor in output. Never complains, never says much of anything.'
Ben fastened his gaze on The Robot, who was wrapping up work on someone else's tangled web of a program. Indeed, the young man was tearing through the template with astounding speed. Ben watched as The Robot whirled the mass around with one hand, grabbed the programming bar he needed with the other, and then caught the template backhanded, just in time to make the appropriate connection. 'So why's this guy a good test?' said Ben.
'Because he's got absolutely no imagination,' replied Greth. She stretched, nearly poking Benyamin in the eye with a stray elbow. 'Give him your ordinary coding job and he'll sweep through it in record time. But make the slightest flaw in your template, and he just folds. Look.'
True to her words, as soon as the kid moved on to his next job-a golden program that looked like a bowl of fruit-he froze up. The bio/logic programming bars in his hands hovered in place, vibrating like stuck gears. Ben could practically hear the ConfidentialWhisper conversation from his supervisor guiding him through the obstruction. After a ten-minute pause, The Robot hesitantly got back to work. Soon, he was a blur of motion once again.
'If he can handle the templates your cousin put together,' said Greth Tar Griveth drily, 'we'll be okay.'
Ben held his breath as The Robot finished up his current assignment and made the swirling-hand motion signaling his readiness to accept a new template. A pink blob, one small corner of the MultiReal engine, appeared in front of him.
The Robot whipped through the template in twenty-two minutes.
Greth loosened her grip on the railing and let out a deep breath. 'It'll be close, but I think we'll get your job done on time. Maybe even twenty or thirty minutes early.'
Ben inhaled a draught of cool air, expelling a warm puff in return. The billow of air failed to accomplish the calming effect he had intended. 'That's cutting it a little too close.'
'Yes,' replied Greth, not bothering to contradict her predecessor. It is.'
Horvil had almost forgiven the Surina guest lodge for the lumps in its mattress and found a route to sleep, when an urgent ConfidentialWhisper reached his mental inbox. The engineer accepted it. He found himself flailing against the wall under the galewind force of an angry Jara.
'Emergency meeting!' she cried. 'Emergency meeting now! Everyone report to the Enterprise Facility!'
Horvil groggily threw on yesterday's clothes and made his way across the Surina compound, discovering along the way that he had put on only one sock. The central courtyard was aflurry with security officers going about their midnight routine, questioning passersby, relentlessly patrolling, checking their weapons and loading dart canisters from their belts. Horvil was not surprised to find the Islander Quell in their midst. He told the newest fiefcorp apprentice about the meeting, and the two quickly followed Jara's beacon to a conference room on the fifth floor of the Enterprise Facility.
They wandered into a piece of SeeNaRee titled Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grandejatte. Jara stood beside a cool river rendered in tiny pinpricks of color, while Parisian matrons in ridiculous hooped petticoats sauntered on the opposite bank. Her fiery mood made a sharp contrast with the calm pointillist trees. Horvil was about to chide Quell for his SeeNaRee program's poor selection when he caught sight of Merri in the river a few meters down, wading barefoot and watching the ducks. Obviously, the channel manager had arrived here first.
Benyamin showed up moments later, and the five apprentices sat at a plain conference table overlooking the river. 'So what's the emergency?' said Ben Jauntily.
Jara gestured to the empty chair at the head of the table. 'Natch.'
'What's wrong with him this time?'
'He's disappeared.'
Four blank faces gazed back at her.
'You mean-he hasn't been in touch with you at all?' cried Horvil. 'I thought he was supposed to be at that meeting with Robby Robby this afternoon.'
Merri shook her head. 'He didn't show up.'
'Well, where the fuck is he? Hasn't anybody talked to him since the last fiefcorp meeting?'
Nobody answered. A cloud of black and gray dots descended on them from the east, threatening to dump pixels of rain on the congregating Parisians.
'I've tried requesting a multi connection,' said Jara, rubbing the pulsing vein on her temple. 'I've sent him at least twenty Confiden- tialWhispers. Nothing. I even tried Margaret, but her secretary says she's been holed up with those diss L-PRACG people for three days straight now. Natch isn't there.'
'Did you try Serr Vigal?' asked Merri.
Jara nodded grimly. 'He's not answering me either, although that's not a big surprise. I checked the schedule of that conference in Beijing. He's probably delivering the keynote address right about now.'
'Maybe Natch is ... testing us or something,' said Ben to nobody in particular. 'Maybe he's just trying to make sure we're on our toes. I know he has some pretty unconventional management tactics.'
'Unconventional, yes,' replied Horvil. 'Totally fucking insane, no.'
'Doesn't the man have any private security?' asked Quell.
Jara glared at the Islander as if he had grown a horn from his forehead. 'Are you kidding?'
Quell let out an animalistic grunt. 'I can't believe this,' he snarled. 'No common sense, just like Margaret. Natch knows he has enemies, doesn't he? The Patel Brothers, the Defense and Wellness Council, the Pharisees, all those programmers and ROD coders and drudges he's pissed off over the years. The list is practically endless.'
'Don't forget Lucas Sentinel,' put in Horvil, counting on his fingers. 'And the Meme Cooperative. Brone. Creed Thassel. Creed Elan. My Aunt Berilla-'
Ben groaned out loud.
'All right, that's enough!' shrieked Jara, slapping one open hand against the table and sending a loud thwak echoing through the SeeNaRee. The Parisians snapped their heads up in surprise, as did the rest of the fiefcorp. 'It doesn't matter right now. We could sit here for a week naming people who hold a grudge against Natch. What we need to do is stay focused. We've got a presentation tomorrow at four o'clock, and I intend for us to be ready for it.'
Horvil felt a smile slowly creep onto his face. There was no officially designated Number Two in the fiefcorp hierarchy, but Quell, Merri and Benyamin seemed ready to follow Jara to the heart of a simmering volcano. At that moment, Horvil was too. 'So what do you want us to do?' ventured the engineer.
'I want you to go looking for Natch,' said Jara. 'You've known him longer than any of us, Horvil. See if you can get into his apartment and look for clues. Go everywhere he might possibly be hiding. Quell, I want you to comb every centimeter of the Surina compound and make absolutely sure he's not holed up here somewhere. As for you
