'Please, Petrucio, spare me the sad stories. You slept with half the channelers in the eastern hemisphere behind that woman's back. Don't tell me you've had some kind of eleventh-hour conversion.'
The elder Patel's nostrils flared and his moustache twitched in rage. Natch thought Petrucio would definitely cut his multi connection now, but instead the man stayed and slowly mastered his anger. 'After my companion died, I made some changes in my life,' Patel said in a low voice, whipping aside the lapel of his jacket to reveal a small pin in the shape of a black-and-white swirl.
Natch blinked hard and took a step back in surprise. Petrucio Patel a truthteller? 'Anyone can wear a pin,' Natch gulped.
'Check the membership rolls-it's public information. I took the oath a few weeks after she was gone. The Bodhisattva of Creed Objective himself administered it to me. You know what that means, don't you? It means I would be honor-bound to tell you if I knew anything about any black code.'
'How come this is the first time I've heard anything about it?'
'The creed has several hundred million members. Not all of us who pledge are crass enough to advertise it on our chests, like your friend Merri.'
Natch paced back and forth on the icy plain, his eyes tracing the patterns their footsteps made in the snow. It was not outside the realm of possibility that Petrucio was making the whole thing up, although the details of his story were easily verifiable. More likely he simply planned to not get caught telling lies. According to the drudges, Creed Objectivv's enforcement of the truthtelling oath was only slightly more effective than the Meme Cooperative's enforcement of fiefcorp business ethics.
'So let's say I take you at your word,' said Natch frostily. 'You had nothing to do with this black code attack. You're a devotee of Creed Objective now. You're an honorable businessman. What about Frederic?'
A look of stupefaction dashed across Petrucio Patel's face until his features abruptly morphed into a perfect PokerFace. 'And exactly what are you suggesting?' he said.
Natch narrowed his eyes to slits as he strode up to his rival's face, close enough to take a bite out of his hawkish nose. 'I know all about those Objective tricks,' said Natch. 'You pledge to always tell the truth, so you play subtle word games. `I had nothing to do with this. I didn't hire anybody to ambush you in the street. I've been far too busy preparing for our presentation.' But listen carefully, Petrucio. Until you can prove to me that both you and Frederic are playing on the level, the Patel Brothers are number one on my hit list. And you haven't seen how I do business when I'm really pissed off. I'll tear you to pieces. I'll use every fucking trick outlawed by the Meme Cooperative. I'll throw that MultiReal license to the dogs without thinking twice about it, and fuck the consequences.'
Petrucio nodded almost imperceptibly, the look on his face a hybrid of amusement and respect. Then he was gone.
Shortly after the conclusion of the Patel Brothers' presentation, the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp held a meeting. The apprentices all arrived at the conference room with their belongings in tow, since they were planning to head home immediately afterwards.
Natch was surprised to discover that Margaret Surina had not come down from her perch in the Revelation Spire after the Council's departure, although most of the guards had already been redeployed around the compound. The scuttlebutt among the security staff was that Margaret was busy right now moving her office to an alcove in the spire's peak. But whatever the reason, the bodhisattva had not responded to any of Natch's ConfidentialWhispers. Instead, she sent a token message of congratulations to the entire team, the same kind of pro forma civility they had received from Lucas Sentinel, Prosteev Serly and Billy Sterno, among others.
As for Frederic and Petrucio Patel, their product demo did not go well.
Their misfortune was partly the result of a breaking news story that quickly occluded any other topic on the Data Sea. The Speaker of the Congress of L-PRACGs had been caught in a major embezzlement sting involving a group of highly placed TubeCo lobbyists. That, along with Borda's heavy-handed and highly unpopular speech, had caused a groundswell of support for the libertarians. Opponents were clamoring for a vote of no confidence in the governmentalist Speaker. The drudges were now predicting that, within the next twenty-four hours, control of the Congress would fall to rabid libertarian Khann Frejohr.
But the Patel Brothers could not completely blame their failure on bad timing. They had compounded their misfortune with a number of poor choices of their own. They had no hands-on demonstration to show the crowd. The PatelReal 1.0 program schematics floated, unused, in an enormous MindSpace bubble above the stage, while Petrucio prattled on about raging waters and safe shores. Frederic wore a hideous chocolate-brown suit that offended the sensibilities of even the most fashion-challenged members of the audience. Afterwards, the drudges spent hours comparing notes on the rampant headaches caused by the thumping bass drum of the Patels' soundtrack. Even those commentators who had been overtly hostile to Natch a day earlier had to admit that the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp had clearly beaten its rival to the punch.
Thus, Natch and his apprentices were in a celebratory mood.
Horvil arranged for a platter full of margaritas to be delivered to the conference room and made a big production of turning off his alcohol-metabolizing OCHREs. He clinked glasses loudly with Jara, Merri, Benyamin and Quell in a show of solidarity. Even the multi- projected Vigal sipped an illusory drink from a virtual glass. Natch had never cared for the unsatisfying sensation of multi food; all taste and no substance. Yet, he too had a confident smile on his face, and his tranquil mood inspired the room to summon a cozy New England SeeNaRee. The conference table sat on a bearskin rug in the midst of an old-fashioned ski lodge, while a fire crackled on the hearth behind them.
'Anybody been scouting around the Data Sea for reactions from the drudges?' said Horvil.
'Of course,' replied Jara. 'Everyone is totally polarized over your demonstration, Natch. Some people are wondering if you released some hallucinogenic black code on the audience. And there's an amusing debate going on about whether or not you actually swung the bat 500 million times.'
'Did you?' asked Ben, a little uncertainly.
Natch laughed. 'Not even close! Five hundred million possible swings, but only one actual one. You want to take a stab at explaining, Horv?'
'It's simple, really,' began Horvil. 'Once MultiReal has reduced the swing of the bat into a formula, you just plug in parameters and create a mathematical progression of realities. So, you swing the bat at 90 degrees and then 91 degrees and then 92 degrees and on and on ... and then you don't actually have to do them all.'
'Then you'd have an infinite number of baseballs,' Benyamin pointed out in confusion.
'No no no.' Horvil conjured up a virtual calculator on the conference table and began drunkenly plugging in numbers. 'See, if you convert the field of vision into a grid of Cartesian space and calculate the coordinates of each audience member, then you can plug x, y, and z values into the MultiReal program and work backwards to generate a baseball hit to that point. Then, of course, you have to factor in wind resistance and gravitational pull-'
'Enough, Horv!' interjected Jara. 'We get the point. What I want to know is why everybody remembered those discarded realities. Quell, you told us nobody would remember them unless they were using MultiReal themselves.'
'Right,' said Quell. 'That was the alteration Horvil made at the last minute.'
'I wasn't even sure it was going to work,' mumbled the engineer. 'Just lucky it did, I guess.'
'The important thing is that few people seem to doubt that the demonstration was genuine,' said Serr Vigal. 'Billions of people watched the whole thing over a video feed, and most of them accept what they saw as the true and actual version of events.'
Quell stretched his beefy arms out behind his head and leaned back in his chair, looking well pleased. 'I can't imagine a better way to introduce MultiReal to the world,' he said. 'A little girl holding a baseball. You don't get much better PR than that.'
'Natch, who is Magan Kai Lee?' blurted Merri out of nowhere.
The fiefcorp master's visage darkened. A sudden gust of wind caused the cabin door to slam open, and a SeeNaRee coyote started baying off in the distance. 'Why?'
'Someone by that name keeps sending me urgent messages,' responded the channel manager sheepishly. 'Four times in three days. He even showed up at my apartment the other day and scared Bonneth out of her wits. He won't say what it's about, but I assume it has something to do with MultiReal.'
Serr Vigal planted his chin on his fist with a look of exhaustion. He exchanged a dark glance with Natch, who
