Or maybe these people in black robes wanted Natch to kill you, Vigal had mused out loud in Borda's direction, oblivious to the seven or eight Council disruptors that suddenly spun towards his sparsely carpeted head.
Borda himself had not expressed the slightest inkling of fear at the neural programmer's suggestion. I'd like to see them try it, he had said, his amusement registering on some subconscious level of the conversation.
And now, as Natch stood at the stage door watching Borda wrap up his impromptu speech, another possibility came streaking to the forefront of Natch's mind. What if the thugs who had assaulted him in that Shenandoah alleyway were working for the Defense and Wellness Council?
He thought about the offhanded way in which Len Borda had tossed him an additional twenty minutes of speech prep time while pretending to give him only ten. The High Executive was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. What if this entire episode was some kind of trap? What if the assailants in the black robes had been sent to push him straight into Borda's clutches-and Natch had unwittingly done their bidding?
After the High Executive cut his multi connection and vanished, Natch looked at the millions in the crowd and tried to will himself to take those last few steps to center stage. But doubts weighed at his heels like shackled cannonballs. What if he had made the wrong decision to enlist the Council's help? What if he couldn't get MultiReal to work? What if his demonstration caused another infoquake?
The anxiety crescendoed to a mind-splitting intensity-and then suddenly switched off.
The presentation did not matter. None of this really mattered.
Natch was already doomed.
Black code prowled his system like a merciless reaper, relentless, insatiable, and ready to mow him down at any time. Even if the Council was dealing honestly with him-even if they had no involvement with the shadowy figures in the black robes and sincerely wanted to protect him-Natch doubted that Borda could act swiftly enough to stop the rogue program from taking his life. The black code had become a part of him. An internal attack could happen at any moment, between one breath and the next. It could happen now.
He took the first tentative step up the narrow ramp towards center stage. It was a straight path, without detours or alternate routes. Natch could either walk away, or he could soldier on and trust that he would get through the presentation in one piece. He would have to trust that Borda would abide by his promise; he would have to trust that Jara's script would wow the crowd; he would have to trust that Horvil and Quell's engineering had done the job, that Benyamin's assembly-line shop had performed as advertised, and that Merri and Robby had wedged open enough minds in the audience to give him a chance.
Natch reached center stage an empty husk.
Millions upon millions of people stood arrayed before himpeople of all shapes and sizes and colors and creeds swirled together. Chattering insects. The temporary organic effluence of the Null Current, dredged from the water for a brief flickering instant between tides, an aspect of the endless sea of nothingness that surrounded them all.
Jara's words floated to the front of his mind.
'Towards Perfection,' said Natch. The auditorium amplified his words to every corner of the arena. He was surprised to find his voice rich and melodic and unstressed.
Natch paused for a moment to scan the crowd, then did a doubletake, exactly as Jara's script dictated. Five hundred million pairs of eyes were scanning him back. The entrepreneur made an incredulous gesture towards the stage door, where a fictitious staff stood egging him on. 'That's funny,' he said. 'I expected to be talking to you about what's real and what's MultiReal-but I didn't expect this whole setting to be so surreal.' The joke was not really funny at all, and yet millions of people were laughing anyway. Of course, the presence of sev eral thousand grim Council officers standing at attention with dartri- fles drawn did lend a certain absurdity to the whole scene.
The fiefcorp master smiled and continued. 'MultiReal is the creation of new realities,' Natch announced. 'Alternate realities. Separate realities. The ability to visualize many things at once in order to do one thing exactly as you want.
'And what will we do with these realities?
'We'll do the same things we've always done, of course-eat, work, strive, struggle, make love-only better. Smarter. With more control.
'Now, my engineers wanted me to stand up here and blather on about the architecture of our program. All those MindSpace connections, all those complex mathematical formulas Margaret Surina has worked so hard on for the last decade and a half. And my analysts, they wanted me to talk about budgets and cost/benefit ratios and a lot of nonsense I didn't understand.
'But I said-why don't we just show them a simple demonstration?'
The fiefcorp master blinked and summoned from the arena a Kyushu Clubfoot bat and regulation baseball, just as he had done twenty minutes earlier. He shifted his grip ever so slightly, trying to find the perfect spot on the bat, the spot that his fingers melted into like an extension of his own multi projected fingers. There would be no opportunity for mistakes.
'There's an ancient legend about a player who could hit a baseball wherever he pointed. He would point to a seat in the stands, wait for the pitch, and then-wham! Knock the ball right there. They say he was the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Well, today I'm going to try to channel some of that magic for you.'
Natch broke into a grin, stretched out his arm, and then whirled around in a 360-degree arc. His pointing finger encompassed the whole crowd.
He tossed the ball high into the air and swung the bat.
He activated Possibilities 1.0.
A resounding crack echoed through the arena.
Jara had found a comfortable position in the middle of the crowd where she could get an objective reading of the audience. So far, the speech she had written was performing as planned. Natch's folksy tone of voice was soothing nerves and smoothing wrinkles, providing an antidote to the poisonous invective the drudges had been spewing over the past few days.
Her apprehension began when Natch did his spinning-andpointing routine. The script had been clear, hadn't it? Natch was supposed to point at an audience member-a single audience memberand start popping fly balls his way, one after another in quick succession, then repeat as necessary. What kind of fool stunt was the fiefcorp master trying to pull?
Jara nearly collapsed in shock and horror when Natch swung the bat.
There was just one ball flying through the air-and Natch was making no motion to hit another.
Already Jara had begun a mental search for scapegoats. Was Natch unable to activate the Possibilities program? Had Horvil and Quell bungled the coding somehow and caused the MultiReal engine to sputter? Did Benyamin's assembly-line shop miss a few connections? Was this another of the Patel Brothers' perfidious acts of sabotage, or the work of the black code flowing in Natch's veins?
And of all the hundreds of millions of people to choose from, why had Natch decided to hit the ball directly to her?
Jara stretched out her hand and winced as the ball landed squarely in her palm with a soft thud. She felt the light sting of horsehide on flesh. The analyst turned the ball over in her hand and brought it closer to read the letters printed around the stitching.
The fiefcorp apprentice blinked, shook her head, and looked at her empty palm. You're daydreaming, Jara, she told herself. There's no baseball in your hand.
But this was no daydream. The baseball had been there-and now it wasn't.
A few seconds later, gasps of astonishment simultaneously burst out of five hundred million spectators as comprehension slowly filtered through their brains. Five hundred million stinging palms, five hundred million empty hands. A collaborative process.
Jara smiled in spite of herself.
'You have just experienced the awesome power of Possibilities,' said Natch after the initial shock had worn off.
'Five hundred million swings of the bat. Five hundred million possible catches. Five hundred million possible
