3

THE PHOENIX
PROJECT

Merri sat on Natch's chair-and-a-half and watched the fiefcorp master make frantic circles through the garden. When he started, he was treading on turf, but as their conversation absorbed more of his attention, he gradually strayed into the patch of daisies. Soon he was carelessly stepping on flower petals and tracking dirt onto the carpet.

"So in another eighteen months, it'll be ..." Natch stopped and squinted, as if the future were a distant object hovering outside the window.

"May," replied Merri.

"It'll be May," continued Natch. "That's right. So if we extend your contract until then and your shares stay on target, then I expect they'll be worth-this...." He waved his hand at the viewscreen, mutating the psychedelic Tope painting into a more prosaic spreadsheet. A sizable boldfaced number sat in the bottom-right corner of the screen. "And that's a conservative estimate. Now that we've hit number one on Primo's, it's only going to go up. So how's this figure suit you?"

Merri gave a slight nod, but Natch could see she had some reservations. Not over money, he was fairly certain; even in this economy, she was not likely to get a better compensation package anywhere else. No, it probably had something to do with the swirled black-and-white logo prominently displayed on her breast pocket, the insignia of a Creed Objectivv truthteller.

Natch gave the woman a long appraising stare while she read over the apprenticeship contract one more time. Merri might have been Jara's diametric opposite. Her large frame dwarfed Jara's, though it did not quite reach Horvil-sized proportions. She had blonde features that spoke of Nordic ancestry and a demeanor both easy and reserved. Over the past six months, there had been times when Natch felt like slap ping that pious look right off Merri's face-but for process' preservation, one could get only so angry at a woman who possessed such an encyclopedic knowledge of the bio/logics world.

"You're concerned about the workload," said a voice on the opposite side of the room. Merri turned to face Serr Vigal, who had been hovering quietly in the shadows like a spook. Natch hadn't been quite sure whether the neural programmer was even paying attention.

"Well, partly," conceded Merri with a sidelong glance at Natch. "But I'm also not sure how comfortable I feel being a channel manager. I was trained for bio/logic analysis, you know."

Natch faced the window and scowled. He was not about to give up such a precious asset as a channel manager who had taken the Objective truthtelling oath. Whatever the reality was, people believed that honest salespeople sold better products. "This is a small fiefcorp, Merri. Everyone gets to do a little bit of everything around here. Shit, you can even grab a pair of programming bars and take on some of Horvil's workload, for all I care."

Merri brightened and gave one of her typical placating smiles. For a devotee of Creed Objectivv, she fakes her emotions pretty well, Natch thought. "Would it be all right if I ... thought about it for a few days?" asked the blonde channel manager.

The entrepreneur shrugged. "Fine."

"Okay, then ..." And with that, Merri cut the multi connection and returned her mind to a red square tile several hundred thousand kilometers away on Luna.

Natch gazed out into the gloom of the Shenandoah dusk. Dark clouds were assembling on the westward horizon and rattling their sabers, threatening a violent thundershower. In all probability, the Shenandoah L-PRACGs had already petitioned the Environmental Control Board to steer the worst of the storm clear of downtown using its geosynchron bots. But still, the clouds felt like a heavy-handed omen to Natch. Something was hiding in those clouds, some cruel and brutal creature with Natch's name roiling in its murky consciousness.

He shifted his attention to Serr Vigal. "We've had this discussion before," he said.

The neural programmer had sunk back into the shadows, invisible but for the occasional beard hairs glinting like flecks of silver. "It's common sense, Natch," he replied. "Now that you're constantly neckand-neck with the Patels, there's a real danger of overworking your apprentices. I think you need to bring more people onboard."

"I hired Merri."

"But she's not taking any of the workload off Horvil and Jara."

Natch knew his old mentor was correct, that eventually the two apprentices would snap under the strain of eighteen-hour days in the trenches fighting the Patel Brothers. They would get tired of the sorties in the middle of the night, the maneuvering for field position. The endless exchange of small-arms fire.

But as soon as business started pouring in, Horvil and Jara had forgotten all about their bewilderment and indignation surrounding the black code incident. Natch's interviews with Sen Sivv Sor and John Ridglee had spawned a drudge feeding frenzy, which in turn produced a tidal wave of sales. Suddenly, important engineers were contacting Horvil for advice and dissecting his recursive functions as if they were ancient Sanskrit texts. And Jara, who was used to shuffling money between fiefcorp accounts to placate some creditors and put off others, was now trying to find places to invest the overflow.

"Horvil and Jara will be fine," mumbled Natch. "Oh, I know you're right, Vigal. I'll need to bring more people aboard at some point. It's just that I don't trust anyone else."

"Maybe you need to give those two a holiday," said Serr Vigal. "The fiefcorp is running pretty smoothly. There's no reason you can't slow down for a week or two."

Natch, his arms folded over his chest, turned to glare at the neural programmer. NiteFocus 50c allowed him to peer through the veil of shadow and see the concerned look on his mentor's face. "No," he said, "there is a reason."

"Ah, the message."

"Something's coming up, Vigal. I can feel something out there, coming up fast. A tidal wave. Something."

Natch nodded towards the viewscreen that was still displaying Merri's apprenticeship contract. He called up a message in its place and enlarged the type so it was readable from across the room.

Natch,

I would like to personally congratulate you on achieving number one in the Primo's bio/logic investment guide. Several members of my administrative staff are devoted users of your programs. Your sleep deprivation utilities, I'm afraid, are particularly popular around here.

As you may have heard, Creed Surina will be holding a cultural festival next week to celebrate what would have been Sheldon Surina's 400th birthday. We are looking for able bio/logic programmers such as yourself to contribute to a presentation on my ancestors' legacy to the world. I would be honored to have you as my guest for dinner at Andra Pradesh this Wednesday, November 23, to discuss the details.

Towards Perfection,

Margaret Surina

Master of the Surina Perfection Memecorp Bodhisattva of Creed Surina

The letters hung on the screen before him, waiting for some gesture or flicker of the eyeballs to indicate which way Natch wanted to scroll. Finally, the fiefcorp master blinked hard and sent the missive away.

"I'm afraid I don't understand why you're so worried, Natch," said his guardian. "It looks like a perfectly normal invitation to me."

"It just doesn't feel right," said Natch. "I can't explain it. It's like

... Like a vast collection of numbers that have some hidden kabbalistic connection to one another. Like a constellation millions of light years across, and you're sitting in the middle trying to decipher what it looks like from a distance. "Let me ask you this, Vigal. Why invite me to dinner? It means that Margaret doesn't want to see me in multi-she wants me to trek halfway around the globe to talk to her in person. That seems awfully formal for a first meeting. Does she think there's some security risk? Or maybe she has a business proposition for me. You know the etiquette -

important business deals happen through personal meetings."

The neural programmer frowned. "Maybe you should just take this at face value."

"Face value," Natch scoffed. "I never take anything at face value."

Vigal rose from his chair with a creaky sigh, then walked over and clapped a virtual hand on his protege's shoulder. "Perhaps you need to get some rest, Natch." He gave the shoulder a gentle squeeze and then stepped back, looking the young programmer up and down wistfully. "Rest-that's advice I think I'm going to follow myself. Make sure you Confidential Whisper me if you need anything."

Minutes later, Natch was alone.

The fiefcorp master prived himself to all incoming communication and darkened the windows. Then he called up the invitation on the viewscreen once more and crouched on his haunches in front of it.

Could this be some trick by the Patel Brothers? A punishment for filching the lead on Primo's for those brief forty-seven minutes? He verified the message's digital signature against the one in the public directory, and the directory declared it authentic. The message had not come from the hand of some Surina flunky either, but straight from the bodhisattva herself. Signatures could be forged, of course, but it was a fiendishly difficult task. Natch knew all the standard tricks for lowlevel signature forgery, and this message used none of them.

He collapsed onto his sofa and instructed InfoGather 96a to find as much up-to-date information about Margaret Surina as possible. The program launched a volley of data agents onto the measureless ocean of information and began bouncing the results off its analysis engines, deducing connections, drawing conclusions, cooking up bite-sized summaries.

Seconds later, the viewscreen lit up with the image of a woman around Serr Vigal's age. The drudges described the heir to the Surina family mantle as a glamorous figure, but Natch could see little glamour in this nondescript woman. Margaret was neither tall nor short, neither heavy nor thin; she could have been one of those composite sketches of women compiled from a hundred different ethnicities. The plain gray pantsuit she wore belied her vaunted sense of fashion, and even her raven-black hair lay unostentatiously on her shoulders. If she did not have the prominent Surina family nose and her father's eyes, preternaturally large and shining with fierce intelligence, Natch would not have believed that this woman was the heiress to the world's largest programming fortune.

MARGARET SURINA (301-)

read the caption that floated next to the woman on the screen.

The bodhisattva of Creed Surina and master of the Surina Perfection Memecorp, Margaret Surina is heiress to the Surina family fortune and the vast empire left her after the untimely death of her father Marcus. She lives in Andra Pradesh at the residence constructed in honor of her ancestor, Sheldon Surina, the Father of Bio/Logics.

Natch skipped ahead to the section that detailed Margaret's business interests:

Surina has been the subject of gossip and speculation over the past twenty years since she founded the memecorp that bears her name. To date, the company has released no products and purportedly receives 100% of its funding from Creed Surina. Partisans of the Surinas believe the memecorp is at work on another technological breakthrough on par with such previous family accomplishments as bio/logics and teleportation. Surina supporters have even given this undefined new technology a name: "The Phoenix Project." Detractors, however, suspect that no such project exists and that Margaret Surina is instead using her memecorp to funnel money into libertarian and pro-Islander political causes.

Natch leaned forward and tried to cajole InfoGather into providing him more about this mysterious Phoenix Project, but no tangible details were forthcoming. Pundits on the Data Sea had been scrutinizing Margaret's every move for years now, gossiping about every new visitor to her compound in Andra Pradesh in ancient India, seeking evidence of some iibertechnology that might or might not exist. So far, they had come up empty.

The pressure on her must be enormous, Natch reflected. At Margaret's age, Sheldon Surina had already written his seminal paper, Towards the Science of BiolLogics and a New Direction for Humanity, the work that jolted the world out of its post-Revolt stupor and signaled the beginning of a new age. Sheldon's grandson Prengal Surina had already published the Universal Law of Physics at this stage of his life. Even Margaret's father, the poor doomed Marcus, had become a worldwide icon and pioneer of teleportation by the time he was fifty. The public was growing restless. What would Margaret's contribution to the world of science be?

The entrepreneur remembered his days of infamy following the Shortest Initiation and grimaced. Why does she need to make any contribution? he thought. What if she just wants to be left alone?

Natch studied the image of Margaret Surina carefully. The photog rapher appeared to have taken Margaret by surprise; she seemed frozen in the act of turning towards the camera. But there were no surprises written in those unnaturally large blue eyes. Margaret's eyes showed a woman in complete control of her surroundings, a woman capable of swallowing life's surprises whole without the least bit of discomfort. Natch finally had to admit to himself that this woman had him intrigued.

And could this Phoenix Project be that thing just beyond the horizon that he had been waiting for his entire career? Was that why the very words tugged at his soul like a magnet?

He sent a terse reply to Margaret's invitation:

I would be honored to accept your invitation and make your acquaintance.

Towards Perfection,

Natch, Master of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp

The city of Andra Pradesh had few municipal building codes. Tenement high-rises and office buildings hobnobbed with parks and shopping areas and even farmland, all jumbled together without regard to style or function. Andra Pradesh was a city that had rolled down from a mountaintop and sprouted haphazardly out of the wreckage.

On that mountaintop were the Surinas.

Natch saw the massive Surina compound as soon as he stepped off the tube. Even a kilometer away, it dominated the skyline. He could easily make out the austere buildings of the Gandhi University of Andra Pradesh where Sheldon Surina had taught and the absurd towers of the Surina family's private residence. Somewhere below his level of sight were the administrative offices of Creed Surina, the Surina Enterprise Facility, and the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation. Above them all, a lone spire jutted obscenely into the clouds from the middle of the compound. Natch had heard somewhere that this was the tallest man-made structure built since the Reawakening. Down in the city below, dozens of buildings competed for the right to claim second place.

The tube could have deposited Natch right at the gates of the Surina compound, but he wanted the full effect of approaching it from a distance. I've already wasted several hours on the tube, he thought. Why not a few more minutes on foot?

Natch hustled through the crowded streets and tried to keep his mind blank. The people of Andra Pradesh rushed about at a frenetic pace as if galvanized by the presence of the Surinas in their midst. Conversations were louder, clothing more vivid. People of all colors, classes and creeds seemed to blend in here, much like the buildings that surrounded them. L-PRACG security guards, street performers, vendors of exotic fruits and vegetables, businesspeople, assembly-line programmers, hoverbird traders and cargo haulers, rambunctious children: here in Andra Pradesh, distinctions blurred.

Finally, he reached the base of the mountain. A dozen guards stood before the gate wearing the green and blue uniforms of Creed Surina. Was it just a figment of Natch's imagination, or were they fingering the triggers of their dartguns with a little too much anxiety?

After a few minutes of identity checking, the guards waved Natch through the gate. Two grim-faced women in uniform motioned for him to follow them up the steep mountainside road to a courtyard large enough for a small army procession. They found their way to the Center for Historic Appreciation, a squat pentagonal building in the classic Greek style. It was a scientific museum of sorts, full of haphazardly arranged curio tables and marble statues of the Surina dynasty laid out in solemn, self-important poses. There was even a statue of Margaret as a child sitting rapturously at the feet of her father.

Security guards were everywhere, dartguns drawn and signaling to one another with choppy gestures that Natch could only assume was a form of battle language. The complex appeared to be devoid of visitors, however. Finally, the two guards led Natch down a long hallway and, without a word, deposited him at the door at its end. He opened the door, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

Natch immediately found himself on a floating platform in a massive library. There was no sign of the exterior hallway; the door he had come through stood by itself with no visible means of support.

SeeNaRee, thought Natch with distaste.

The hexagonal platform was merely one of a thousand identical platforms Natch could see stretching off in every direction, each connected to its neighbors by narrow walkways, like beads on a string. Bookshelves lined four walls of each platform. Thirty-two treepaper books of equal size and weight filled each shelf, as if they were just a small part of an unimaginably vast encyclopedia. Natch looked around in vain for some sign of his host, for any human presence at all. After a few minutes, impatient, he reached for one of the leather-bound volumes and flopped it open on the large conference table in the platform's center.

FSLFJ WOPSF 0 SLJ!

Thwlk po sdl wopi fndvl fdgf poipwytpw, Wtlkd woir z pod. Lsdkf wienhf sdflglsksgd sldkjf? Wogih spapapa slgihd. Qqq! Qqq!

"Never read your Borges, did you?" came a voice behind him. Natch turned and found himself face-to-face with Margaret Surina.

Marcus Surina's daughter had aged quite a bit since that anonymous InfoGather image he had seen the other day. Not even bio/logics could totally conceal the wrinkles on her forehead, the slight stoop of her shoulders, the tinge of gray that permeated her once coal-black hair. Only Margaret's eyes remained intense and unblemished, as if they would remain brightly lit long after the rest of the flesh had withered away.

"Borges?" said Natch.

"Jorge Luis Borges," replied Margaret. "This library is his creation."

The name meant nothing to Natch, and a quick inquiry to the Meme Cooperative fiefcorp listings came up with no results. "Never heard of him," he said. "Is he a programmer?"

A smile descended onto Margaret's face as if from a great height. "He was a writer. From antiquity, from before the Autonomous Revolt. He talked about an infinite library with books that contained every possible combination of words and letters. What you were reading was just one of its countless permutations." She had a grating habit of enunciating every syllable of every word, even those that typically stayed silent or piggybacked on a neighboring phoneme. Ev-e-ry poss- si-ble com-bin-nay-shun. Count-less per-me-yu-tay-shuns.

Natch shook his head in annoyance and slammed the book shut. He enjoyed intellectual puzzles, but had little patience for artists. "So why are we here?"

"It's a new innovation that we recently installed in all the Surina conference rooms," said Margaret. "The room automatically gauges your mood and chooses an appropriate bit of SeeNaRee. We have thousands of varieties in our data banks, virtual environments for every occasion. This is a museum, after all." Vir-tu-al en-vi-run-ments for every occ-ay-zhun.

Natch leaned over the railing and saw only stairs and platforms without end. "I wasn't thinking about any library," he sniffed.

Margaret gave a coy smile as if sharing an inside joke. "Ah, this is an ongoing complaint," she said. "People say that the program doesn't always pick the moods and emotions that they expect. The programmer says we are not always aware of what is going on in our subconscious mind. Personally, I find that to be a rather charming and unexpected benefit. However, if you prefer something more traditional ... With a flick of her wrist, the bodhisattva banished the library to oblivion, to be replaced by a featureless dining room with angular furniture.

Natch felt a surge of irritation rise inside of him, and quickly masked it with a PokerFace 83.4b program. Was Margaret trying to test the limits of his patience, or was this just more paranoia?

"Perhaps you would like a tour of the facilities before we dine," said the bodhisattva.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Natch realized that he and Margaret were not alone. He took a quick glimpse over his shoulder and discovered that they were being shadowed by an imposing hulk of a man with enormous biceps and a pale blonde ponytail slung over one shoulder.

"The atrium of the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation," said

Margaret as they walked into a vast domed space. "I don't know whether you got a chance to see it when you came in." The room was littered with bland statues celebrating the great pioneers of science: Aloretus Monk, Tobi Jae Witt, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton. Sheldon Surina had a prominent place in the canon, of course, as did his protege and sometime rival Henry Osterman. "We try to ease visitors in to the deeper exhibits with something gentle on the eyes," she said, though there were no visitors around to illustrate her point. She motioned at the hallways behind each scientist, all clearly labeled with his or her respective achievement: Relativity Hall. Subaether Court. Gravity Way.

Natch gave a polite nod. The Surinas' inane tourist attractions did not interest him, not when he had to figure out the mystery of this towering figure with the blonde ponytail. The man stayed half a dozen paces behind them like a bodyguard might, and gestured to the sentries lurking at every corner using a hand weighed down with an excessive number of gold rings. But if he were part of the security staff, wouldn't he be wearing the standard green-and-blue Surina livery instead of loose tan breeches and an open-necked shirt?

Then the three of them stepped out of the Center for Historic Appreciation into the central courtyard, and Natch caught sight of a thin copper collar suspended around the man's neck. An Islander!

Natch wondered how he could have missed the other signs: the uneven muscles that sprouted from manual labor instead of electronic OCHRE stimulation, the ruddy complexion from too much time in the sun, the small scars running up and down his arms. Certainly, Margaret couldn't be depending on this man for physical protection. What good were those tree trunk-sized arms without bio/logics?

Who was this man and why was he staring so intently at Natch?

The tour continued for most of the next hour. They made their way through the halls of the Gandhi University and saw the room where Sheldon Surina had lectured for most of his life. Natch peered through the windows of the Creed Surina auditorium and saw the pulpits where teachers and minor bodhisattvas preached the gospel of scientific innovation. He received cursory introductions to a few distant cousins of Margaret's who appeared to be the only civilians wandering the halls. After twenty more minutes of this, Natch grew increasingly bored. Either Margaret had not inherited her father's fabled magnetism, or she was storing up her energy for more important performances.

The Islander, too, appeared to have lost interest in Margaret's spiel. Every time Natch turned around, he found the big man staring at him with two brawny arms tucked in his pockets like siloed missiles. The stare contained neither malice nor menace. If Natch had to choose a word to describe his attitude, it would be skeptical.

A thought occurred to him. Was this whole lap around the Surina compound just an excuse for the Islander to check him out?

As they made their way back to the Center for Historic Appreciation, Natch decided to subject the Islander to a test of his own. He focused all his attention on the Revelation Spire-as the tall protruding spike atop the Surina residence was called-and then pretended to lose his footing. The fiefcorp master would have bet his weight in gold that he would have crashed into Margaret before the Islander could stop him. But in the space of a heartbeat, the Islander lashed out from his rearguard position and gripped Natch firmly at the base of his ribcage. The entrepreneur could feel the rings on the big man's fingers digging into his flesh.

Natch met the Islander's stare, and for a split-second he could see straight through the man's defenses. He saw a look of concern for Margaret's safety that went far beyond any expression a bodyguard would have displayed. This is personal for him, thought Natch. This man is no mercenary.

The husky Islander set Natch back on his feet as he would a toy soldier. For the first time, Natch noticed that the man was about the same age as Margaret. The Islander let a sly grin creep into his countenance. He saw right through Natch's ploy, but instead of being angry, he seemed to appreciate Natch's resourcefulness.

Margaret did not even notice the interruption. The two men exchanged no words as they followed her into the Center for Historic Appreciation and back to the library room, now decorated with a single functional dining table.

Natch made awkward small talk with Margaret as they grazed on authentic Indian cuisine. Curry and cumin danced on the end of his tongue, and he soon found himself settling into a mellow post-vindaloo stupor. Natch was ready to concede to Vigal that his suspicions had been unfounded, that Margaret really just wanted his participation in this upcoming 400th birthday celebration for Sheldon Surina. The Islander popped in and out of the room several times, eating nothing. Natch was no closer to figuring out the man's place in Margaret's retinue, but this was a mystery he could solve another time. For now, Natch wanted desperately to draw the dinner to a close and get back to Shenandoah, where his bio/logic programming bars were waiting.

And then, after the dishes quietly slid into a compartment in a back wall, Margaret leaned forward and pressed her fingertips together. "You are probably wondering why I invited you here," she said.

Natch nodded.

"You are here," said Margaret, "because Len Borda is planning to have me killed next week."

The atmosphere became deathly quiet as Natch tried to think of something pertinent to say. Margaret's eyes suddenly glared at him like spotlights. The Islander stood by the door with the intensity of a coiled snake, looking as if he might pounce at any moment. That explains why all those guards are roaming around with itchy trigger fingers.

"So the Defense and Wellness Council is trying to kill you," said Natch, affecting nonchalance. "What does that have to do with me?"

Margaret drummed her fingers together. "Sheldon Surina used to say that we are all connected in a fundamental-"

"Don't patronize me," Natch snapped. The bodhisattva gave an exaggerated blink of shock, and couldn't resist a sidelong glance at the equally perplexed Islander standing in the doorway. Natch pressed on. "So Len Borda is going to kill you. That's wonderful. Why should I care? If you're so worried, go send a message to Sen Sivv Sor or John Ridglee. I'm sure they'd love to spread the news all over the Data Sea. But me-I've got a business to think about. I don't have time for politics."

Margaret's face toyed momentarily with outrage, ventured into amusement, and finally settled on weary fortitude. She laid her palms flat on the table and leaned forward. "They tell me that the only things you care about are money and power," she said. "Well then ... let me translate this into language you can understand. I am about to present you with an opportunity for more money and more power than you can possibly imagine. Number one on Primo's is a child's fantasy by comparison. You can either hear me out, or leave now and go back to fighting for scraps on Primo's. It is your choice."

Natch could have chosen to be insulted at the way this woman had casually belittled everything he had fought for since the Shortest Initiation. Sharp retorts hovered on the tip of his tongue. But then Natch remembered how easily he had fallen for the bait that the capitalman Figaro Fl had laid out for him all those years ago. I won't be manipulated, he repeated to himself over and over like a mantra. Natch looked at the Islander, who stood, amused, struggling to suppress his laughter. He knew, at least, that Natch had proven his point: Margaret's wealth and pedigree would not intimidate him. So instead of shouting, the fiefcorp master activated a relaxation program called OceanBreez 38 and waited a few seconds for the bio/logic code to suffuse his body with calm.

"I'm listening," he said at length.

The bodhisattva spread out her hands in a gesture of peace. "Let us start at the beginning," she began. "I am guessing that you were born sometime in the 320s ..."

"331," said Natch.

Margaret nodded. "331, then. You know what kind of position the economy was in at that time. My father's death and the collapse of TeleCo left the bio/logics industry in ruins and millions of programmers in the diss. The Economic Plunge of the 310s, they called it, though it lasted longer than that. People in the orbital colonies were starving for the first time since the Autonomous Revolt. Not a good period for business. Not a good period for anybody.

"Of course, by the late 320s, things were already turning around. High Executive Borda had started handing out enormous defense contracts to the fiefcorps, hoping the credits would funnel down to the masses. For ten years, the Council gave subsidies to just about anyone who asked-including me."

Natch's eyes were beginning to glaze over. According to the legends, Sheldon Surina had also been fond of historical digressions. Did I take the tube halfway across the globe and lose an entire day in MindSpace for a civics lesson? "So Len Borda gave you money."

"Yes," she continued. "I approached the Council with blueprints for a new set of memory enhancement programs. Programs to drastically extend the potential of the human brain, based on the technology my father left behind at his death. I painted Borda a picture of Council officers with total recall and soldiers who could memorize the tiniest details of a battlefield. He was impressed."

The fiefcorp master frowned. "I don't understand," he interrupted. "Why did you of all people need Council credits?"

Margaret gave a wry smile, and her face clouded up momentarily with a far-off look. Then she stood, shook off the gloom, and fetched two tiny cups of Turkish coffee from the access panel in the wall. "Natch, my father might have been a scientific visionary, but he was never a prudent businessman." She deposited one of the cups on the table in front of Natch. "Yes, he made breakthroughs in teleportation technology, but he never figured out a way to pay for them. Let us just say that TeleCo was not the only organization Marcus Surina left on the brink of bankruptcy when he died."

Natch sipped the bittersweet brew from the delftware cup and thought about his mother holed up in the towers of Old Chicago. He felt a brief surge of anger, but batted it away. "So Borda anted up," he said.

"Yes. The Surina Perfection Memecorp received one of the largest appropriations of the entire Economic Plunge. You see, it was a winwin situation. We desperately needed financial stability, and the public desperately needed confidence in the future, in their governments. And who could provide a better hope for tomorrow than the Surinas?" Natch listened carefully but could find no trace of irony in her voice. "So everyone got what they wanted. We got the funding we needed to turn ourselves around. Borda got a shining example of prosperity to show off. And the economy recovered.

"Which leads us to today.

"We have not been idle all this time. After trying its hand at a variety of projects, the Surina Perfection Memecorp has spent the last sixteen years in research and development. And now Len Borda is about to find out exactly what he paid for all these years ago." The bodhisattva's voice crackled slightly at the end of her sentence. An expression of fear? Of regret?

"The Phoenix Project," Natch said.

Margaret rolled her eyes and gave a knowing look to the Islander, who responded with a smile rich in irony. "I despise that name. Some drudge coined the term. It wasn't supposed to be so secretive. We really did start out with memory enhancers. We never intended to provoke a twenty-year guessing game on the Data Sea."

"Okay," said Natch, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "So what's this big invention then? Not memory enhancers, I take it."

"No. Not really. It's a bio/logic program. But much more than just a bio/logic program."

"You're going to have to be more specific than that."

Margaret remained maddeningly calm. She blew on her coffee and watched the wisps of steam disperse around the room. Her eyes were a lake of measureless depth. "I can't. Not yet."

The mounting tension was too much for Natch. He let out an irritated puff and threw his hands in the air. "So we're back to the original question. What do you want from me?"

"I want you to license my technology," said Margaret.

Nobody spoke for several moments. Natch bounced his gaze back and forth between Margaret and her silent companion, wondering if somehow the Patel Brothers were behind this, if they had conned Margaret into diverting him here while they solidified their number one position on Primo's. The Islander looked Natch up and down as if taking detailed measurements.

"Let me get this straight," said Natch. "You're asking me to license some new product without telling me what it is? And if that's not enough, the Defense and Wellness Council is willing to kill you to keep the whole project quiet? Well, forget it. I don't want anything to do with this. What makes you think I want Len Borda coming after me?"

The bodhisattva's demeanor softened, though whether it was an expression of sympathy or merely a change of tactics Natch could not tell. "Let me ask you a question, Natch. What's the quickest way to neutralize a poison?"

Natch thought for a moment. "Dilute it," he said.

"Precisely. Dump any poison into a large enough ocean, and its effects are nullified."

"Okay, I see what you're driving at."

"The Defense and Wellness Council sees my technology as a poison. My technology, Natch-my life's work, which I've spent sixteen years building." Margaret abruptly looped a bony finger through the handle of the coffee cup and raised it into the air. "But pour this poison into the largest ocean of all-the Data Sea-and it becomes part of the ocean itself. It becomes inert. More importantly, once you release the poison, it cannot be bottled up again. " She raised the cup to her lips and drank it to the dregs in one angry gulp.

Natch was beginning to get the impression he was not here for a business opportunity so much as an audition. He remembered all the scenes he had set up throughout the years: his confrontations with Brone, his challenges to Captain Bolbund, his ascent to the top of Primo's. Margaret Surina had prepared a script, and she had a part for him to play.

He once again shook off the stifling air, the slowly tightening constriction around his throat. "There's something you're not telling me," he said. "If you want to nullify the poison, go ahead and dump the specs on the Data Sea right now and get it over with. Why bother with the hassle of setting up a licensing agreement with a fiefcorp?"

The bodhisattva nodded pensively. "It's not that simple. This is a complex project. If this program fails to capture the public's imagination, then the Council can just swoop in and take control without a single protest. Besides, the Phoenix code is dangerous code, if it's not handled properly. If we just floated the specs out onto the Data Sea, who knows what could happen? I absolutely refuse to have blood on my hands." Margaret held her hands in front of her face and stared at them as if they were alien artifacts. "No, this situation has to be handled with the utmost precision. Which is why you're here, Natch.

"I need a licensee who can do two things. First, he needs to generate enough ripples on the Data Sea to make the Council stay its hand until I unveil the technology. And then he needs to quickly develop a workable prototype to show the world this technology is real."

"Wait a minute," cried Natch, slicing his hand through the air. "You've spent sixteen years building this fucking thing, and you don't even have a workable prototype?"

Margaret was unfazed. "I have many, but none I trust to act flawlessly in front of billions of people. The Council has forced my hand too early."

"All right, fine. So when are you unveiling the Phoenix Project?"

"The end of next week, at the cultural festival honoring Sheldon Surina's four hundredth birthday. Until then, all we need is a little bit of uncertainty. You're an outsider, Natch, and outsiders bring complications. Loose ends. The more Borda fears I have let others in on the Phoenix Project, the more he will hesitate to act."

Natch set his chin on his fist in consternation. He had learned many years ago never to get locked into a situation without an elaborate and many-layered plan for escape. Then he thought of Margaret's words: More money and more power than you can possibly imagine. What were money and power? Mere words, vowels and consonants, scrapings of tongue on tooth. But what they represented: open doors. A way out. A way up.

"So why me?" he said at length.

"Because you are the best," replied Margaret without hesitation. "Because you are young and hungry. Because you work quickly and demand absolute perfection from your team. Because this enterprise requires someone with a flair for ... showmanship." She waved her hand and summoned a message in holographic letters on the table. "I need the person who can accomplish this."

Natch scanned the letters and promptly switched his PokerFace program back on.

PLEASE PROTECT YOUR HOLDINGS

The Vault has detected a DNA-assisted decryption attack directed at your account. Your holdings have not been compromised, but it is advised that you periodically check the security of your Vault account. This advisory has been automatically routed to the custodian of records for your L-PRACG and, depending on your L-PRACG's policies, may also be forwarded to the Defense and Wellness Council.

Natch could have recited the words from memory, but he pretended to read them over two or three times. Obviously, blackmail was not her objective, or Natch would have been greeted at the compound gates by representatives of the Meme Cooperative. "It's a warning from the Vault," he said simply.

The bodhisattva let it go, banishing the missive into the aether. She seemed to be retreating into her shell. Again, Natch caught the hollow look of fear in Margaret's eyes, and the intimate concern radiating from the Islander standing in the doorway.

"You need to understand something," said Natch abruptly. "Investing in a new technology isn't cheap. I'll need to bring on new employees, conduct research. Buy more equipment. Train my people, find more channelers." He tallied up each item with his fingers while he spoke. "All that takes money. Just because my fiefcorp made number one on Primo's doesn't mean we're number one in sales. I don't have that many credits lying around-especially if you expect me to get involved in a new project that isn't going to bring in any money for a long time."

Margaret sighed. "If you are suggesting Surina investment," she said, "I can't funnel money to you through any of our regular channels-not quickly, at any rate. It's too risky, and we can't have anyone suspect that I've put you up to this. For now, you must be a completely independent third party in these negotiations." The bodhisattva glanced over her shoulder at the big man with the blonde ponytail standing in the doorway, and suddenly Natch wondered if he was there to keep others out or to keep Natch in. "There is an entirely different dance I have to perform here with all the different Surina organizations. Let us just say that some here do not appreciate radical moves."

"So you expect me to hit the ground running with no money, and put together a perfect prototype in a couple of weeks."

"Within a week, yes. But I'm not worried, Natch. If I had the slightest doubt you could find the money to do this, you wouldn't be here."

Natch shook his head and snorted in amusement. "I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish."

The descendant of Sheldon Surina leaned forward and touched her lips to her clasped fingers. "Things were not supposed to turn out this way," she said quietly. "You are the contingency plan."

Natch stood up, put his palms flat on the table, and leaned forward with a smoldering stare. "Let's get one thing clear," he hissed. "I am not your contingency plan. If I get involved in this, it'll be for my own reasons. Because you claim I can make a lot of money, and I believe you. If things get too dangerous-for me-or if I think the credits aren't worth the risk-then I'll pull out of this whole thing without a second thought and leave you stranded. I'll be a dead man before I get involved in a scheme like this to save your hide from the Defense and Wellness Council." He turned to face the burly Islander, as if to say, That goes for you too.

Margaret had no reaction. She was beyond affectation right now. "I will forward to you what little information I can at this point," she said in a hoarse monotone.

The entrepreneur nodded and fired another quick glance at the Islander. The big man was smiling openly now. Whatever test he and Margaret had just administered, Natch had passed it with panache.

"Why don't you ask Horvil?" said Serr Vigal.

Natch shook his head. "He's got plenty of credits, but there's no way he can move that kind of money without his Aunt Berilla finding out about it. And she'd rather slice off her own arm than invest in me."

"Another fiefcorp, then. Pierre Loget. Or Lucas Sentinel."

"Sentinel?" spat the fiefcorp master, as if the name were a curse word in a foreign tongue. "Are you kidding? He's still furious at Jara. And don't forget that when I pushed the Patel Brothers down to the number two spot on Primo's, Sentinel's company fell to number three. Loget doesn't like me any better."

"What about that financier you met with all those years ago? He said he liked you, didn't he?"

"Figaro Fi? He joined the Prepared a year and a half ago, Vigal. He's probably dead by now."

Serr Vigal pursed his lips and made a noise of dismissal. Thppt. He got slowly to his feet and ambled over to the window, which was showing some beachside resort full of bronzed children laughing and throwing sand at one another. A welcome change from the dreary November Omaha rain. "I can help you a little bit, of course," said the neural programmer. "The memecorp has some extra equipment lying around that I can lend you. But I just don't have the kind of money you're talking about."

"Which leaves me back where I started," said Natch with disgust. "The capitalmen." He kicked at a tuft of carpet and scowled at the frolicking children through the window. No self-respecting capitalman would lend him such a large sum of money for a project he couldn't even define. They wouldn't care that he ran the number two company on Primo's, or that he was working on Margaret Surina's fabled Phoenix Project-they would just ask to see the specs. Natch couldn't blame them. Margaret had no track record to boast of, no prior business successes to point to. All she had was the Surina family reputation. And that reputation hadn't helped anyone recoup their losses from TeleCo, had it?

"This is my worst nightmare, Vigal," Natch moaned. He waved his hand at the screen and changed the display right under Serr Vigal's nose. His guardian blinked in mild surprise as the beach made way for the trading pit of some Melbourne financial exchange. "The biggest opportunity of my life, and I can't make it happen. Nobody will invest until Margaret unveils the technology at the end of next week. But then it'll be too late. I won't have the resources to get this prototype up and running in time."

Serr Vigal rubbed his goatee quietly for a few minutes, deep in thought. "I wonder what this Phoenix Project really is."

"Margaret said she started out with memory enhancers. You know neural programming, Vigal-where could she go from there?"

"In sixteen years? Just about anywhere."

"Well, it has to be a neurological program, doesn't it? She must have looked at my background-she must know I apprenticed with you. She must know the bulk of our catalog is devoted to optics and mental processes. DeMirage 54, EyeMorph 66a, Mento Calc-U-Later 93.9, NiteFocus 50c-I could go on and on. Why else would she come to me?"

"Why indeed?" said Vigal. "There are hundreds of fiefcorps and memecorps out there capable of handling a project like this. And most of them have more experience in this business than you, not to mention greater resources."

"She said she wanted someone with a flair for showmanship."

"And do you believe her?"

"Stop being so-so elliptical. If you think something's going on here, then just come right out and say it."

Vigal leaned against the viewscreen, screwing up his face with courage. "I don't think anything," he muttered. "I simply fear."

"And what do you fear?"

"I fear that Margaret has picked you for this enterprise because she thinks she can manipulate you." The neural programmer took a long, sad look at the traders tussling with one another on the Melbourne exchange floor. Undoubtedly, most of them were only multi projections, but that did not make the scene any less violent or chaotic to behold.

Natch felt the old alienation swooping down on him and constricting his lungs. He snarled angrily, poking a virtual finger into his guardian's chest. "And so what if she thinks she can manipulate me? That doesn't change anything. I've still got to find a way to get into the Phoenix Project, or I'll never get out of this ... this horse race on Primo's."

"And do you know that this Phoenix Project of Margaret's is a panacea for your problems? I worry that you're throwing everything aside for some vague business venture when you don't even know what it is."

"No. The Phoenix Project is it. This is the answer. This is what I've been searching for. I know it, I can feel it with every cell in my body. You don't think I can just ignore an opportunity like this, do you?"

Vigal smiled wanly. "That is a decision only you can make, Natch."

Merri looked as if she had been in her foyer for hours awaiting Natch's arrival. He frowned briefly. There were few things Natch detested more than someone who was too eager to please. A good employee says no more often than yes, the great Lucco Primo once claimed.

"Towards Perfection, Natch," she said softly.

"Perfection," replied Natch. "Ready?"

"Yes, but ..." Merri flinched, as if raising an objection were the most difficult task in the world. "I was hoping you could shed some light on the role you want me to play today."

Natch checked the Shenandoah central time service. They had almost twenty minutes before the potential investors arrived at the Surina Enterprise Facility. He walked past the channel manager and into her living room, cursing the multi network's insistence on reproducing the wobbly effects of imperfect gravity control. "People don't trust me," Natch said bitterly, taking a seat on a round ottoman covered with a delicate floral pattern. "I've hit number one on Primo's, I've proven myself time and time again, but still nobody worth talking to will do business with me. I need your credibility, Merri."

Merri absorbed all this with an air of mystification. "My credibility?"

"When people look at me, they still see the Shortest Initiation. They look at Horvil and see ... well, we've been working together so long, they see me. And Jara made some powerful enemies when she was on her own. We're all tainted goods, Merri. But you ... Nobody has said a bad word about you on the Data Sea since you graduated from the hive. You've got an honest reputation."

The blonde woman shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "So you're saying you want me there because of this." She nodded at the swirled black-and-white pin displayed prominently on her jacket breast pocket.

"Well, of course it helps that you're an Objectivv," said Natch. "Come on, Merri, you can put two and two together. We're going to a fundraising pitch. You've taken a pledge not to lie."

Merri wrinkled her nose in disappointment. "It's not quite that simple."

Natch shrugged. He had always disdained the creeds and their arbitrary ethical systems-the Surinas with their slavish devotion to science, the Elanners with their hypocritical advocacy for the poor, the Thasselians with their shallow and pointless worship of business. But he reserved a special irritation for the Objectivvs. Natch could not fathom why the public tolerated, even revered, the creed's disciples. The way they babbled about "the search for objective truth" and dissected every utterance of that cryptic old hermit known as The Bodhisattva made Natch cringe.

"We can discuss philosophy some other time," said the fiefcorp master, rising from the ottoman and nodding pointedly at the red square tile in the hallway. "Right now we've got work to do. Get ready to follow my beacon."

"So," stammered Merri, "what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know," said Natch indifferently. "Keep quiet. Act ethical."

He didn't wait for Merri's next disapproving grimace. Instead, Natch closed his eyes, focused on the beaker of concentrated entropy that was Andra Pradesh, and let the cold frisson of multivoid envelop him. Seconds later, he stood at the gates of the Surina compound, staring up at the Revelation Spire. Natch stretched his mind out to the multi network and activated a beacon to tag his spatial coordinates for Merri to follow.

She needn't have worried about getting separated from her master. The blue-and-green-clad security officers kept the two visitors waiting at the compound gates for ten minutes. The Surina guards were busy eyeing a group of white-robed Defense and Wellness Council officers across the way who seemed to have nothing better to do than pace at the bottom of the mountain and polish the barrels of their dartguns. Merri shuddered with relief when she and Natch were finally escorted into the safety of the Surina compound.

The Enterprise Facility was an impressive location for a fundraising pitch: twelve stories of blue stretched stone cantilevered off the side of a mountain in defiance of the natural laws of gravity. Merri followed him silently through the throngs of suits up to a room on the ninth floor. A room blissfully free of irritating SeeNaRee. They entered to find eight capitalmen already seated at the semi-circular conference table. Natch consulted the time and noted with satisfaction that he was exactly twelve minutes late, which was three minutes earlier than he had planned.

"Towards Perfection," he said brightly, moving to the focal point of the table. The five men and three women returned his greeting with varying degrees of politeness and curiosity. Merri stood respectfully to one side with her hands clasped behind her back, her Creed Objectivv emblem on prominent display, waiting for some signal from her fiefcorp master.

"Let's not waste any time," announced the fiefcorp master, gesturing to the white open space on the wall behind him. An itemized list of business expenses appeared in blocky fixed-width characters. Natch paused to let the capitalmen absorb his list. As expected, their eyes uniformly zeroed in on the big ticket items at the bottom: ten additional bio/logic programmers and engineers, fifteen channelers, office and meeting space, bio/logic programming equipment, marketing expenses. The total figure spelled out in the bottom right corner was an eyebrow-raising sum. "This is what I need by the end of the week," he declared. "Are there any questions?"

Eight pairs of eyes-nine, counting Merri's-gaped dumbly at the entrepreneur, waiting for some elaboration. But Natch simply stood there and gazed around the room with a smoldering stare. He looked as if he were preparing to either cut his multi connection or march around the table slicing off heads.

Finally, one of the capitalmen raised her hand timidly. Merri sent an inquiry to the public directory and discovered she was the investment manager for a libertarian L-PRACG and no stranger to fundraising pitches. "Exactly what is all this for?" she said with an air of bemusement.

Natch fixed her with an unblinking stare. "For development of Margaret Surina's Phoenix Project, which I am licensing."

The investors gawked at the entrepreneur as if he had just offered to sell them a set of dragon's teeth. The mythical Phoenix Project, the boondoggle to end all boondoggles. Margaret's Folly. Natch could practically hear his audience's frantic ConfidentialWhisper conversations, their frenzied queries to the Data Sea.

"The Phoenix Project?" continued the capitalman in disbelief. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious," replied Natch.

"What is it?"

"You'll have to wait and see."

A sense of shock crusted over their fury at being lured out to India for such a ludicrous presentation. Merri was surprised to see that Natch had been correct about her ties to Creed Objectivv; the pin on her breast pocket might have been the only thing preventing the capitalmen from vanishing in disgust. But even that would only keep the outrage from boiling over for so long. The capitalmen began hurling questions at him in rapid-fire succession, which Natch answered brusquely and without hesitation.

"What can you tell us?"

"I can tell you that if you invest in me, you'll make more money than you've ever dreamed of."

"How much?"

"The sky's the limit."

"What is this Phoenix Project anyway? Is it a bio/logic program? Something you're going to launch on the Data Sea next week?"

"The Phoenix Project is a bio/logic program, but it's much more than just a bio/logic program. No launch schedules have been decided on yet."

"Don't you have any specs you can show us? Technical diagrams? Projections? Anything?"

"No."

"How do we know we can trust you? How do we know you're not just making this all up?"

"If you don't trust me, don't invest."

By the time Natch wrapped up the discussion a scant fifteen minutes after it had begun, Merri's face had turned to stone. She asked no questions and did not react at all when her master said his goodbyes and cut his multi connection. Merri cut her own connection and walked out to the foyer of her apartment, expecting Natch to await her arrival there. But the apartment was empty.

She found him in his own flat in Shenandoah. Natch was already at the window fiddling with a series of bio/logic price graphs as if nothing had happened. He seemed unaware of Merri's presence until she cleared her throat two minutes later. "You should catch up on your work while you can," he said gruffly. "We've got another one of these in an hour and a half, and then a third one late tonight."

The channel manager nervously ran her fingers through her milky hair. "Are you really planning to license a bio/logic program from Margaret Surina?"

"I'm definitely planning to," replied Natch. "I'd give 60-40 odds right now that it'll actually happen."

"And do-do you really think any of those capitalmen are going to invest in you?"

"No."

Merri blanched. "No?"

The fiefcorp master turned to his apprentice with an impatient mien, like a hoverbird engineer trying to teach a child how to construct a paper airplane. "Listen, Merri-I don't expect any of those people to put up a single credit. I'm not going to get any money out of the people we talk to tonight either. That's not what we're doing."

"So. . ."

"So what are we doing? We're stirring the pot. We're creating noise. The people I invited to these fundraising meetings aren't the high rollers; they're the ones who like to gossip. By the end of the day, I guarantee you the people I really want to hear from will have heard the words Natch, Margaret Surina, and Phoenix Project in the same sentence. Listen, you can't just approach investors and ask them to put up money for this sort of thing. Anyone who's willing to take a risk like this is going to contact me privately and insist on complete secrecy. Not only that, but they have to be convinced that investing in the Phoenix Project is their idea."

Merri nodded politely though she understood nothing, and left Natch to his bio/logic price graphs.

Rumors about Natch's investor meeting quickly percolated through the Data Sea. Most of the comments he read were laced with the standard pejoratives Natch had seen attached to his name since childhood: cocky, arrogant, insane. He didn't mind. People could insult him to their hearts' content, but now that he had the Primo's title under his belt, they could no longer dismiss him so easily.

The second and third investor groups were better prepared and had more penetrating questions, but Natch would not crack. He kept a cloud of mystery over the entire project; if anything, he became even vaguer with his answers. What could I possibly reveal to these people anyway? he thought. I don't know much more than they do. As for Merri, she seemed to grow more comfortable with her silent performance the longer the night wore on, now that she had convinced herself that Natch was not actively deceiving anyone.

At seven o'clock that evening, word leaked on the Data Sea that Natch was scoping out investors for a new Surina technology that just might be the legendary Phoenix Project. Twenty minutes later, John Ridglee wrangled a terse no comment out of the Creed Surina spokesperson.

An admission or a denial from the Surinas would have been news. Refusal to comment was big news.

By ten o'clock Shenandoah time, the avalanche of messages had begun. It was mostly the same drivel that had tumbled Natch's way after hitting number one on Primo's a few weeks ago. L-PRACG-sanctioned advertisements for financial software. Pleadings for donations to this or that cause. Servile requests from old business associates who once griped about how Natch had ruined them. Greetings from longlost hivemates whose names he had never cared to learn in the first place. Buried in the rubbish were a few legitimate queries from anonymous capitalmen, none of which led anywhere.

Horvil and Jara began shotgunning messages, ConfidentialWhis- pers, and multi requests to Natch by the dozens trying to figure out what was going on. Natch replied calmly that he would explain everything tomorrow night. Then he prived himself to all of their incoming communications and waited.

The Patel Brothers launched a handful of product upgrades just before midnight, further solidifying their number one position on Primo's. Pierre Loget's PulCorp made a surprising leap to second place, bumping Natch down to number three and Sentinel to number four.

And then, at three-thirty in the morning, as Natch was making yet another circuit around the balcony and glaring at the music that wafted up faintly from Shenandoah's entertainment quarters, the message he had been waiting for arrived. Natch did not know what shape or form it would take, but he knew the instant he opened the message that he had found his investor.

Time is luxury. Action is currency.

-Kordez Thassel

You are cordially invited to breakfast with the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel today, the 25th of November, at 7:45 a.m. Omaha time, in the resplendent Kordez Thassel Complex in the northern reaches of the Twin Cities Megalopolis to discuss mutually beneficial business opportunities.

Natch traced the message signature to a standard administrative account at Creed Thassel. He barely even paused before replying in the affirmative.

Natch lobbed an InfoGather request onto the Data Sea while flipping through his wardrobe for an appropriate suit, then had the results read aloud to him while he dressed.

The creed had been founded almost a hundred years ago by Kordez Thassel, a libertarian philosopher and financier whose only qualification to lead a popular movement was that he had failed at everything else. Somehow, his teachings about the virtues of selfishness had earned him a following in the new breed of fiefcorp power brokers. Then he disappeared from view and left public relations in the hands of anonymous creed spin doctors. For years, Creed Thassel worked diligently to protect its mysteries, going so far as to swear its devotees to secrecy and refusing all but the most cursory participation in the Creeds Coalition. Whispers spoke of blood rites, oaths of fealty, and a mythical master program built by renegade coders.

And then the young drudge Sen Sivv Sor published the expose that made his reputation. Sor's undercover reporting revealed that the blood rites were nothing but parlor tricks, the oaths of fealty were mere confidence schemes, and the mythical master program did not exist. Thasselian membership dwindled, but the core devotees remained. Soon enough, everyone forgot about the scandal, and Creed Thassel abandoned its hokey mystic aura for a more prosaic philosophy of individualism. Membership rolls remained secret, but few cared to pry anymore.

A creed of fools, thought Natch as he walked the early-morning streets of Shenandoah, bound for the hoverbird terminals. But fools who have no love for Creed Surina or the Council. Vigal's words from the previous day rang in his ears: I fear that Margaret has picked you for this enterprise because she thinks she can manipulate you. Natch's blood curdled at the thought of being someone's pawn, and he felt like throttling his guardian for even suggesting it. Nevertheless, he knew it couldn't hurt to have a third party on his side.

The Thasselians' invitation arrived too late for Natch to take the tube, his preferred mode of travel. So instead, he hopped aboard one of the hundreds of hoverbirds that ferried passengers across the continent every hour. His flight from Shenandoah to the Twin Cities was smooth and without incident.

Natch found the Kordez Thassel Complex to be one of the ugliest human constructions he had ever seen. A series of squat, functional buildings skulking among the lowlands, half-hidden in the chill November mist. He followed a narrow bridge from the hoverbird terminal over the Complex's surrounding moat and into the Thasselian headquarters. The inside was no better. Hallways stood at odd angles to one another amidst sloping ceilings and crooked doorways; Natch doubted there was a pair of perpendicular lines anywhere in the place. He knew very little about architecture, but he imagined it took a lot of money and patience to construct such deliberate lopsidedness.

Even at this early hour, hundreds of businesspeople rushed through the hallways with stiff, purposeful gaits. Two burly guards pointed Natch through the labyrinth of corridors and conference rooms to his appointed meeting spot. He found himself facing a nondescript door, the old-fashioned kind you needed to physically pull open. He hesitated for a moment and eyed the mahogany slab of door with suspicion. Natch searched his feelings, yet he could find no reason for his unease. He reached for the doorknob.

As soon as the brass tongue slipped free of its sheath, the knob erupted with a jolt of static electricity. Natch squealed in surprise and snatched his hand away. He quickly called up a grounding program to neutralize the charge, but the damage was done. The fingertips of his left hand would be sore for days.

A hollow laugh echoed inside the room. "You're getting sloppy, Natch!" said a tired voice in a tone reminiscent of an aging diplomat or a patrician. "I could never catch you with that trick back in the old days. Horvil was always much easier to fool. But who says we don't learn from our mistakes?"

Natch shivered involuntarily at the sound of the voice that had been mocking his dreams for years. The voice that embodied his worst fears and deepest shames.

Brone.

He sat on a large thronelike chair in the center of a cavernous room. The room itself was a gigantic hollowed-out diamond of exceptional clarity and brilliance. On the table in front of his chair sat a Spartan breakfast of crackers and crusty bleu cheese.

More SeeNaRee, Natch moaned to himself. Did I miss a trend? Is everyone conducting business in these gaudy fantasy worlds nowadays?

Brone had changed significantly since Natch had last seen him, bundled in the back of that Falcon four-seater in bloody rags. His aura of youthful entitlement was gone. He had gained a considerable amount of weight, but did not carry it in the dignified manner of a Horvil or a Merri, and the handsome face that once inspired sighs from female hivemates was mangled beyond repair. Natch traced a long scar from his chin to his forehead, passing straight through the center of his right eye. The eye gleamed with the sickly emerald of a prosthesis.

"You like my face, I take it?" said Brone, his voice devoid of earthly emotion. "I'll bet you didn't even know the bear did that to me. He would have had the whole head for breakfast, but luckily I was able to satisfy him with a light snack." Brone held up his right arm, and Natch gasped in spite of himself. The flesh came to an abrupt end just below the elbow, where it merged with a pale synthetic hand and forearm.

"Oh, don't feel too sorry for me, Natch," he said, sneering at the look of discomfort on the fiefcorp master's face. "These imitation limbs work quite well. Look!" Brone painstakingly unclenched his prosthetic fingers and reached for the cheese slicer. The utensil did a clumsy dance in his hand but finally went clattering to the floor. By instinct, Natch reached down to pick it up, and fell flat on his face when his fingers passed straight through the metal. SeeNaRee. Brone let out a quiet snort and offered his old rival a hand up-the artificial hand. Natch gripped the slick, rubbery limb and pulled himself to his feet. Contrary to the act he had put on seconds ago, Brone actually seemed to be quite nimble with his prosthesis.

All at once, the purpose of Natch's visit rushed back to him: Margaret Surina, the Phoenix Project, investment capital. He needed to keep his focus. "I was invited to breakfast by the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," said Natch between clenched teeth.

Brone paid Natch no mind; he seemed to be participating in an entirely different conversation. "I suppose you're asking yourself, What about cosmetic surgery? Organ harvesting? Flesh-repairing OCHREs?" He leaned back and brought the fingers of his hands together in front of his face, like a spider contemplating its next meal. The glint of reflected diamond was visible in his teeth. "Certainly science has progressed farther than this."

"I came to discuss-"

"Figaro Fi," said Brone in a commanding voice, cutting Natch off in mid-sentence. "You remember the fat little capitalman Figaro Fi? This whole cripple routine was Figaro's idea. Show off your scars, my boy, he said. Play up your handicaps. Hold out your stump to gain their sympathy, then hold out your good hand to take their money." As he spoke, Brone hunched over in a cruelly effective parody of the little man. Longrepressed memories of the night before initiation came flooding back to Natch, and he nearly retched in disgust.

"Perhaps it was a despicable thing to do," continued Brone, "but it worked! Figaro brought me everywhere in those miserable years after the initiation. He would stand me up in these little auditoriums with a group of capitalmen, put a bio/logic programming bar in my hand, and cheer me on like a monkey while I performed tricks in MindSpace. Figaro's programming cripple, victim of the Shortest Initiation! Who could withhold money from such a sad and noble soul?

"And Figaro was right! How amazingly simple it is-all you have to do is admit that the world has defeated you, and the money will come pouring in. It's an intoxicating feeling. And if you make the right connections, if you stroke enough egos, if you convince enough of those shallow, soulless capitalmen that their gifts have soothed your pain-why, you win the game. The capitalmen begin throwing you private contracts. You can work outside the auspices of the Meme Cooperative, where you don't have to worry about the constraints of Dr. Plugenpatch. You can toss that Primo's bio/logic investment guide in the dungheap where it belongs!"

Brone began rubbing his chin in far-away contemplation, and Natch had to use every ounce of his willpower not to wrap his hands around his throat and begin squeezing as hard as he could. He looked around for something to sit on, and found nothing but diamond outcroppings that were almost certainly illusions.

"I can see you're restless," said Brone, turning to Natch as if noticing him for the first time. He leaned back in the gargantuan chair and laid his arms on the throne, like a withered and haunted king. "You want to sit, you want to stand, you want to move, you want to stay still-it's been like this your whole life, hasn't it?

"Well, let me tell you, Natch, I know where you're heading, and I've been there. There's a whole economy up in that rarefied air that the drudges know nothing about. And I made riches up there. Riches! You fantasize about living in a lunar estate some day? I own one, Natch, and it's worth every bloody credit. Sunrises over the lip of Tycho while you watch and sip chaff in a gravity-controlled dome ... servants at your beck and call ... pretty young gardeners pruning all those twisted moon plants. There's nothing like it.

"But the lunar estate grows tiresome after a while. So do the sycophants and the bootlickers. It sounds like a cliche, but it's true. I bought myself the gaudiest estate I could, and the private hoverbird service, and the baubles and jewels and gadgets. And then I asked myself: Now what?

"So I went searching again.

"First, I went to the medical specialists. Hack the body, and the mind will follow-isn't that what Sheldon Surina said? But can you believe what a superstitious world we live in, Natch? The Autonomous Revolt was hundreds of years ago-and yet the Prime Committee still won't allow a simple tank-grown limb! The only place for human flesh is on the human body, they say." His voice rumbled up to a dangerous level, as if he were playing to the rafters in some imaginary amphitheater.

"So they gave me the next best thing." And then, as Natch looked on in horror, Brone unsnapped his fake arm and thrust it onto the table, where it landed on the bleu cheese with a sickening thwup. A circle of plastic prongs shone wetly on the end of Brone's stump, like octopus teeth. "Completely self-contained, no nerves or blood required: a miracle of engineering. You would be surprised to know how quickly one can tweak it to work in MindSpace like a bio/logic programming bar. And, of course, having an artificial limb gives one certain ... advantages." When the fingers of the disembodied hand began twitching of their own accord, Natch leapt back and nearly sprawled on his face again. The fingers tore through the rind of the cheese and performed a gooey dance, spackling the floor with bits of white.

Natch felt sick. He recognized his own ruthless utilitarian tactics at work. What was it that old Kordez Thassel had said? Do not let taboos and social restrictions stop you from gaining advantage over your enemy. OCHREs rushed to defuse the acid in his stomach, and Natch would have supplemented their soothing effects with a bio/logic program if he thought it would help. "I-I came here today," he stuttered, "to-"

Brone completely ignored him. "So the replacement arm and the replacement eye were dead ends," he said with a shrug. "I knew as soon as they were installed that I had been using my handicap as an escape. It was an easy way to distract me from what I really wanted to do, from the one thing that would make me happy.

"And that was killing you."

Natch edged back, flailing his arm behind him in search of the door. He realized with dismay that it had vanished. He didn't want to know anymore why Brone had invited him here this morning, or what his interest in the Phoenix Project was; Natch just wanted out. But the diamond walls completely surrounded him now. He was trapped.

Brone leaned back in his throne and regarded Natch with sepulchral eyes, like someone watching from a separate plane of existence. The disembodied forearm began tapping out a mad rhythm on the cheese plate. "I spent months planning the whole scenario. I followed you around, Natch, did you know that? I scouted out a thousand locations for the perfect ambush. Should I follow you to Cisco and shoot you down in the forest? Or plug you full of black code on a sidestreet in London? Or just push you off your own balcony in Shenandoah and be done with it?"

Natch rubbed his back against the diamond wall and did not breathe. The door had to be there somewhere ... if he could just pierce the veil of this confounded SeeNaRee....

"But don't worry, Natch," said Brone, his voice one big sneer. "You're not in any danger here today." He spread his hand and stump wide in a conciliatory gesture. His smile was the smile of a ghoul. "You see, I have found religion."

The fiefcorp master stared at his old enemy, not comprehending. "The Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," Natch croaked under his breath. "Where is he?"

Brone gave a long and uncomfortable pause, like a robot in suspended animation. "I am the Bodhisattva of Creed Thassel," he said at last.

It took a minute for the words to penetrate Natch's defenses. He turned them around in his head, breaking them down into small digestible pieces to try and make sense of them. Brone the head of the Thasselians?

Before he could get a grip on the situation, the SeeNaRee changed.

Suddenly, they were hurtling through black space in a small starcraft not much bigger than the Falcon that transported them home from initiation all those years ago. Rocks and chunks of ice whizzed by at breakneck speed. Natch looked out the starboard window just in time to see an asteroid the size of a tube train hurtle past them, missing the ship by half a meter.

"I could turn you in to the Prime Committee," Natch gasped. "You can't hide exits like that. It's against the law. And you can't just switch environments on the fly without giving me fair warning."

Brone sat back in his padded captain's chair, toying idly with the steering panel that rose before him from the floor like a metallic mushroom. He did not react at all to the first asteroid collision, which made the rickety craft shudder as if it were a few bolts away from completely collapsing. "How ironic," Brone croaked. "Natch threatening to turn me over to the law? Here at Creed Thassel, we take a more laissez-faire approach to laws. As old Kordez used to say, Rules are for those who follow rules. "

"But-" The rusted hull of a dead spaceship slammed into the side of their craft, sending Natch sprawling onto the floor once again with his teeth chattering. He bit the inside of his cheek with an audible chomp. Brone remained comfortably seated, and Natch noted that the disembodied arm sat motionless on the table. Yet another infraction, thought the fiefcorp master bitterly. Inconsistent laws of physics.

"Creed Thassel was really in abysmal shape when I found it," continued Brone, studying the fingernails of his good hand intently. "You'd be surprised how many people think Creed Thassel ceased to exist twenty years ago. There was that expose by Sen Sivv Sor. Financial scandals. A real paucity of leadership. The imbeciles running the organization were even on the brink of losing control of the Kordez Thassel Complex. So when I got religion, Natch, I got it for a real bargain-basement price. They needed my money. They needed my vision and my initiative."

Cosmic debris continued to slam into the ship, leaving Natch huddled on the floor with his hands over his head. OCHREs had already staunched the bleeding in his mouth, but he couldn't help probing the scar with his tongue. He knew he cut quite a ridiculous figure to his old rival, but survival was all he cared about at this point.

"Forgive me," sighed the bodhisattva, his voice devoid of supplication. "I suppose I've gotten carried away." He waved his hand in the air-the hand of flesh and bone-and the cluttered field of debris outside the ship vanished. The virtual gravity stabilized. "So let us discuss business, you and I."

Natch warily got to his feet and brushed himself off. It seemed strange that an hour ago, the only thing occupying his mind was his dire need for capital. Now suddenly, he was treading water in a sea of old landmines. "Do I have any choice?" he muttered.

"Game playing!" shouted Brone abruptly, his eyes ablaze. He arose from the chair and stood at the port window, his stump resting wearily against the glass. "All these games we've played throughout the years, you and I. And this whole setup-the invitation, the SeeNaRee, throwing the arm on the table-just another move in the game. A way to put you off guard. But believe it or not, after all the hurt and pain and suffering you have caused me, Natch, I am capable of forgiving you."

Natch gritted his teeth. Forgiving me for what? he thought.

"Soon, we will all be moving beyond games," continued Brone. "All of us ... you, me, the drudges, Horvil, the idiots at the Defense and Wellness Council, all those narrow-minded bean counters at Primo's. Soon, it will make no difference who the winners and losers are."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about Margaret Surina, of course. I'm talking about the Phoenix Project'." Natch could practically hear the belittling quotation marks.

"I don't know-"

"Oh, please!" snapped the bodhisattva in a sudden fit of pique. "Don't waste your breath. The Phoenix Project is the whole reason you held those little fundraising charades of yours, isn't it? It's the whole reason you're here. But even if you hadn't held those meetings, Natch, I would have come looking for you. I know all about your visit to Andra Pradesh. Thasselian agents were watching when you walked in and out of those gates at the Surina compound, and they attended your little performances yesterday too. That's the advantage of having an organization with a secret membership.

"Let me be forthcoming. You're a step behind in this game, Natch, just as you've always been a step behind me in everything else. The struggle for the Phoenix Project was well underway before you butted your nose into it. I have no problem with your pathetic attempts to grab a little portion of the pot, but don't think you can walk away with the whole thing. There are too many people who know too much."

Natch gave a haughty sniff in Brone's direction. "And what do you know that I don't?"

"I know what you have been trying to find out-I know what this technology of Margaret's is." Natch could practically feel Brone's grim smile, even though he was facing the other direction. "Let me tell you, it is everything you suspect it is, and more. Perhaps even more than Margaret imagines."

The fiefcorp master hesitated and felt Serr Vigal's suspicions rushing in to fill the hole in the pit of his stomach. Could Brone be telling the truth? The Thasselians continued to pledge their devotees in secret, after all, and there were no Creeds Coalition bylaws preventing people from pledging to more than one creed. "So what are you wasting time with me for?" said Natch with affected nonchalance. "If you're so far ahead of me, go talk to Margaret yourself."

"I have tried, many times. The Surina woman does not listen."

"Perhaps she's put off by your winning way with people."

Natch's wisecrack did not succeed in penetrating Brone, now standing at the window rubbing his chin with his handless stump. Natch couldn't help but shiver. "Obviously, you cannot see the forest for the trees, Natch. I wish I could say this surprises me, but it does not. So let me tell you the truth of the situation that has so far eluded you." Brone spread the fingers of his good hand out against the window, as if straining to reach something beyond the black void. "I have seen the future, Natch. And the future is you and I, in business together, selling the Phoenix Project."

The thought made Natch nauseous. "Bullshit."

"I understand your dilemma, Natch," said Brone, his voice barely a whisper now. "You want to walk out the door right now and never see me again." He nodded towards the rear of the spacecraft, where a plain metal door suddenly materialized out of nowhere. "But Margaret Surina has dangled the carrot just beyond your reach, like everything has always been just beyond your reach. You need my help. Nobody is buying your fundraising pitch, and you're running out of time. You need the money that I can provide-money that's just sitting in the coffers of Creed Thassel waiting for a worthwhile investment. I can transfer the credits to your Vault account before the hour is up."

The entrepreneur snorted. "And what do you get in return?"

"Nothing at all. This is simply a cash loan. Repayment over five years with Vault standard interest rates."

Natch stared uncomfortably at the plastic teeth of Brone's stump. He could feel the wheels of his mind spinning and spinning but gaining no traction. "Why would you do that?"

"Because," replied Brone with maddening calm, "you need money and I need a foot in the door. If I attached strings to the offer, you wouldn't take it."

"Let me see the contract," Natch grunted.

Brone stepped away from the fiefcorp master's side, and gave a sweeping bow towards the window. The twinkling stars of space were replaced with the dull black-and-white text of a legal document. Natch scanned the length of the contract in less than a minute, then read it over twice more to make sure he wasn't missing anything. The contract was conspicuously short and completely free of legal doubletalk or hidden provisos.

"I don't get it," Natch rasped.

"That is because you have a limited intellect," said Brone. "This is an act of trust, Natch. It is a concept beyond your understanding."

The fiefcorp master looked back and forth between his wraithlike nemesis, the grubby hand on the table, and the blocky letters on the viewscreen. If I had the slightest doubt you could find the money to do this, Margaret had said, you wouldn't be here. He checked his internal calendar and looked once more at the menacingly small block of days remaining until Margaret's planned unveiling of the Phoenix Project.

Suddenly, with his mind's eye, he saw a raging bear in the wilderness. A battered and bleeding boy lying in the back seat of a Falcon hoverbird. An act of trust?

Natch quelled the inner voice screaming dire words of doom. He blocked out the chortling of Figaro Fi and Captain Bolbund and the Patel Brothers that echoed through his head. Then he reached out with his mind and affirmed the contract.

Brone smiled. His detached hand dragged itself painstakingly to the edge of the table and then threw itself to the ground, where it wriggled like a fish out of water.

Horvil studied the viewscreen with as much concentration as he gave his bio/logic programs. "If you ask me-"

"Which I'm not," muttered Jara.

"If you ask me, daisies would work much better in here than violets." The engineer put his nose up to the viewscreen as if trying to give individual attention to every pixel. Then, in feng shui mode, he glanced around Jara's apartment with eyes narrowed. "A garden of violets is going to stick out in here like a sore thumb," said Horvil. "But daisies, they're so ... light and ... airy. They'd look terrific with this blank wall effect you have going on here." He made an expansive gesture at the unadorned white plaster running the length and breadth of the room.

Jara snorted loudly. Was this clod actually serious for once, or was he just being sarcastic? She couldn't tell which option was worse. The fact that Horvil had absolutely no taste or personal style whatsoever only compounded the problem. Then again, Jara thought bitterly, why would you need to have fashion sense if you've got enough money to buy it instead? She remembered the rare ceramic sculpture Horvil had hanging on his wall with a stray glob of peanut butter encrusted on its bottom edge, and she cringed.

The analyst forced herself to stop this dreadful internal monologue. She couldn't blame Horvil for her failure to carve a home out of this tiny apartment. She could only blame herself. And that was why Jara had decided she was going to order a new garden and wall hangings today. Who cared if she could ill afford them on her apprentice's salary. She had to draw the line somewhere. "I'm going with violets," she said between tense grinding teeth, and gave the viewscreen a silent command.

In the blink of an eye, the living room wall shifted back a meter to make room for a row of holographic violets that slid up from the floor. Horvil yelped and quickly scooted out of the way. As Jara searched for a suitable layout, he took a seat at the kitchen table and watched the shifting kaleidoscopic patterns on the floor. "Maybe you could try layout 57, with a few daisies sprinkled in to match th-"

"Horvil, please."

He shut up. Jara settled on a slight arc that spanned the length of the room, and confirmed the order. Delivery tomorrow at 3:25 pm, the system told her. Somewhere on the Data Sea, computational agents for the tenement building cut a thick slice out of Jara's Vault account.

This was all a diversion anyway, a way to pass the time until they could squeeze some information from Natch about what was going on. He had promised to explain everything in a fiefcorp meeting at seven o'clock. But by the time eight-thirty rolled around with no sign of Natch, the three apprentices decided their fiefcorp master wasn't coming. The same thing had been going on for a week. Horvil tried to get in touch with Serr Vigal, but the neural programmer had predictably prived himself to incoming communication, probably off fundraising. So Horvil and Jara spent the next few hours in Jara's apartment listening to Merri explain what little she knew about the Phoenix Project. The three tossed improbable theories back and forth, and got nowhere. Eventually, Merri decided to cut her connection so she could spend some time tending to her companion Bonneth, who was bed-ridden with another one of her crippling fevers.

Jara was ready to kick Horvil out and get some sleep, when she felt an incoming multi request.

Natch appeared in the room, looking as bothered and beautiful as always. He was already pacing the length of the room before he had completely emerged from the haze of multivoid. "Horv, I'm going to need you to interview some new engineers and programmers," he said, as if they had been discussing the topic for hours.

"Are we expanding?" asked Horvil.

"What does it look like?"

Horvil shot a glib look at Jara. "How many do we need?"

"I don't know," replied Natch without missing a beat. "Two. Five. Ten if they're stupid."

The engineer stood with arms akimbo and sucked in his stomach as if girding for battle. "I hear and obey, brave commander," he said, and vanished.

Natch swiveled on the ball of his left foot and stopped directly in front of Jara. The analyst felt the familiar hollow sensation in the pit of her stomach as the entrepreneur locked eyes with her. Sapphires, she thought. "And you," said Natch in a feathery voice. "Why don't you tag along with Merri. She's meeting with Robby Robby to get him up to speed on how we do things around here."

Jara gulped. "Who's Robby Robby?"

"Our new channeling partner. He's a bit of a character, but he's got a staff that could sell you the clothes on your back while you're still wearing them."

The analyst nodded. Her own clothes seemed uncomfortably tight and constricting at the moment. "All right, I'll do that." Then, seeing that Natch was about to cut his multi connection, asked: "So what do you think-violets or daisies?" She tilted her head towards the holographic arch that the fiefcorp master had plowed straight through several times now.

Natch turned and studied the flower arrangement for a moment. "I'd say daisies," he announced, and then severed his multi projection without another word.

Jara cancelled the violets and ordered daisies instead.

Natch's thought processes had always been a mystery to Jara, but she soon began to wonder if he was losing his grip on reality. That night, he went on a titanic shopping spree. Natch bought everyone in the fiefcorp a new workbench with expanded MindSpace capabilities and the fanciest set of bio/logic programming bars on the market. He let Horvil loose on the Data Sea to pick out the best code optimization routines and analysis algorithms. He set up a permanent account at the Surina Enterprise Facility so he could commandeer an office or a conference room at a moment's notice.

Where he got the money for all this, nobody knew. Jara was intimately familiar with the fiefcorp's Vault accounts, and she knew they couldn't withstand this kind of pummeling. True, the jump to number one on Primo's had provided them a good financial cushion. But Natch's reckless spending would soon put them into bankruptcy.

Somehow this prospect cheered Jara up.

So instead of protesting, Jara did as she was told. Over the next few days, she accompanied Merri to several meetings with the channeler Robby Robby. If anything, the man was even more insipid than Natch's description. He dressed in whatever ludicrous fashion the high society brats were wearing at the time-this week it was kimono pants and open-collared silk shirts-and went through programmable accents like other people went through socks. The cost of these silly peccadilloes went on the tab of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp, of course.

Jara soon discovered what made Robby Robby so valuable, however: He was completely unperturbed by the idea of selling a mystery product. "What do you think my channelers do every day?" he said, walking them through a room of baby-faced salespeople holding ConfidentialWhisper conversations from their desks. There were perhaps twenty in all, each impeccably dressed and relentlessly cheerful. "Selling isn't about the product you're offering, Lady Merri. It's about what the customer wants." Every time Robby Robby called her Lady Merri, Jara wanted to give him a swift kick in the knees. But though she was a Creed Objectivv devotee, Merri got along with the slick salesman just fine.

Meanwhile, Horvil worked feverishly through the weekend to find capable engineering candidates who would fit Natch's high standards. He managed to round up a dozen applicants. All had the credentials to work in the top fiefcorps, and all were eager to sign on, which was no small accomplishment in such a tight labor market. But Natch found fault with every one of them. He even managed to send a top-flight engineer from the Deuteron Fiefcorp fleeing an interview in tears.

Finally, an exasperated Horvil brought in his nineteen-year-old cousin Benyamin for an interview. Horvil meant it as something of a joke. Ben's only real-world experience was an apprenticeship managing a floor of assembly-line coders, and he was the youngest son of Horvil's dreaded Aunt Berilla to boot. But to everyone's surprise, Natch made the boy an apprenticeship offer on the spot. Benyamin readily accepted.

"I don't get it," Jara told Horvil after he had relayed the story to her. "No offense, Horv, but Natch has been turning away everyone. How did Benyamin convince that bastard to hire a nineteen-year-old kid with no experience?"

Horvil shrugged. "I dunno."

"So how many hours was Natch grilling him?"

"Less than one. Ben says that Natch listened to his pitch without saying a word, and then asked him just one question. You're not going to go crying to your mother the first time I keep you up three days in a row, are you?"

The outside world did not come to a standstill while the fiefcorp beefed up its operations. In the midst of all the commotion, Pierre Loget released a bevy of upgrades on the Data Sea that sent his PulCorp rocketing to the top of Primo's. Billy Sterno and Lucas Sentinel quickly followed suit. For a couple of hours, the Patel Brothers sank as low as number four before they managed to pump a few more bio/logic programs into the system and reclaim the top spot.

Natch mysteriously shrugged the whole thing off and seemed content to sit in fourth place for the time being. He spent all his time reading the latest news about the Prime Committee and the Defense and Wellness Council. Jara would multi over to his apartment to find him meditating to the libertarian ravings of politician Khann Frejohr. The craggy face of High Executive Borda stared back at her from every window. When the story broke about a battalion of Council officers bivouacking in China, Natch was glued to a map of the Orient for hours.

Jara felt like a spectator in a game she didn't understand, played by titans on a board she could not see. At least the days were passing quickly now, bringing the elusive end of her apprenticeship contract closer all the time.

On Monday morning, Jara awoke and slipped into her comfortable routine like an old shirt. She had barely fired up Doze-B-Gone 91c when she was assaulted by a screaming headline from Sen Sivv Sor:

THE PHOENIX PROJECT UNVEILED

Is This the Long-Awaited New Surina Technology, or Just a Publicity Stunt?

John Ridglee's morning commentary quickly morphed to keep pace, sending his fawning profile of Pierre Loget to an out-of-the-way side column. Before long, the two drudges were engaged in a frenzied competition to see who could quote more unnamed industry sources offering the wildest speculation about the Phoenix Project.

Within an hour, the entire world had shifted its focus to the upcoming 400th birthday celebration of Sheldon Surina. Curious onlookers from Earth to Luna to the farthest orbital colonies began tracking the comings and goings at the Surina compound, hoping to find clues to what Margaret had been up to for the past twenty years. Even those with little interest in bio/logics began streaming into Andra Pradesh to soak up the electric vibe in the air.

Horvil and Jara camped on opposite sofas in the engineer's apartment and watched Surina mania overtake the Data Sea. L-PRACG politicians stood up in open sessions to spout platitudes about the impact of another breakthrough Surina technology. One after another, the creeds released statements spelling out their positions on scientific innovation. The Islanders raised their obligatory protest about technology being thrust upon them against their will; the orbital colonies raised their obligatory protest about technology not reaching them quickly enough. The bio/logics markets careened up and down as investors decided the end was near or the best was yet to come. Even the revered Bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv emerged from seclusion to make some inscrutable pronouncement about the state of Universal Truth in the wake of the Surinas' accomplishments.

"I don't get it," Jara said, throwing her hands up in confusion.

"You've been saying that a lot lately."

"Yes, but think about it for a minute, Horv. People have been talking about this stupid Phoenix Project for years now. Natch was just throwing around rumors about it a few days ago. Why is everybody so interested now? What's changed?"

Horvil bounced his arm off a stack of dirty laundry on the couch, trampoline-like. "It's called public relations. The Surinas are masters at it."

"You think all this hubbub comes from a few leaks to the drudges?"

"That's exactly what I think."

"But-"

"Come on, Jara. Don't you remember what happened a month ago? We've seen firsthand how this shit happens."

The analyst twirled a few stray locks of curly hair, trying to mask her sudden embarrassment. Horvil was right. They had personal expe rience with the capriciousness of the public imagination, and with the ways a few, choice power brokers could channel the energies of sixty billion people to their cause.

Horvil fixed her with a narrow-eyed stare. "What's wrong?" he said.

"If what Merri says about us licensing the Phoenix Project is true, then all this publicity is going to be really good for business."

"But?"

"But once Natch gets in the spotlight, who's to say someone's not going to hijack all this attention and turn it against him?"

Serr Vigal settled back into his chaise longue, mumbling something about how creaky his joints got in erratic gravity and how glad he was to be back from his latest visit to Patronell for memecorp funding. But Natch was distracted, not listening. "Tomorrow will be a momentous day," said the neural programmer, in an effort to catch his protege's attention.

"Tomorrow, I finally get to find out what this Phoenix Project is," said Natch. "It had better be worth all the trouble."

"Margaret still won't tell you?"

"No. I haven't heard a word from her in days. She's totally prived herself to the world. I can't even get her to sit down with me to iron out the details of this contract addendum." Natch shook his head glumly. "I just hope Len Borda gives her the chance to explain herself."

"Why, has he been making more threats?"

The entrepreneur swiveled around and gave his mentor a puzzled expression. "Threats? Haven't you been paying attention to the news? Borda's got several legions of Council troops heading for Andra Pradesh right now. That's not a threat. It's a bloody declaration of war."

A cloud of hoverbirds darkened the sky over Andra Pradesh late Tuesday afternoon. The troops disembarked in the fields west of the city instead of at the commercial hoverbird facility, and before long an army of white was marching towards the Surina compound. Several thousand Defense and Wellness Council officers moved with perfect synchronization through the streets of Andra Pradesh. A few curious vendors hung around to gawk, but most quickly packed up their wares and fled before the advancing army. The soldiers in white trudged on. There would be no looting on High Executive Borda's watch.

The Surina security forces stood their ground at the base of the mountain, looking scared, outgunned and hopelessly outnumbered. The chief of security positioned himself directly in front of the compound gates, trying to present a model of dignity to the green-andblue troops behind him. The Council had not made such a display of force in several years, at least not in a connectible city. One would have to look back to the Melbourne riots during the Economic Plunge to find an incident of actual large-scale combat.

The Defense and Wellness Council troops reached the base of the mountain and came to a halt. Their ranks were neatly bisected by the shadow of the Revelation Spire. Is there any force in the solar system capable of opposing them? the security chief asked himself.

The legion's commanding officer stepped out from her formation and strode calmly up to the chief of Surina security. The chief took stock of the woman's white robe and yellow star, the smock she wore over her shoulders as a mark of office, the gray boots which seemed impervious to the monsoon season's mud. Holstered at her right side was a two-handed dartgun. The Surina security chief wondered what bio/logic code sat on the tips of those darts, waiting for a fresh blood stream to infiltrate.

The chief's own darts were programmed to kill. With Margaret Surina's explicit authorization.

"Towards Perfection," announced the Defense and Wellness Council officer as she flashed a quick hologram of her public profile. Commander Tanis, it read, 242nd Brigade. Volunteering directory profiles was one of the few meaningless gestures Borda had made to public relations over the years. "I have been ordered by High Executive Len Borda to secure the Surina compound and the city of Andra Pradesh." Her tone of voice indicated that the occupation was a foregone conclusion.

The security chief stayed put. "Please convey our thanks to the high executive, but Her Eminence the Bodhisattva of Creed Surina needs no additional protection."

"Nevertheless," replied Tanis icily, "the Council has been charged by the Creeds Coalition to protect its interests here, and protect them we will."

This was a new development. The Surina official scratched his bald pate in puzzlement. "You're here to protect the Creeds Coalition's interests? From what? We are a creed."

Commander Tanis did not hesitate a heartbeat. "Large public gatherings bring a high risk of damage and destruction." Tanis held out her hand, palm up, and displayed a holographic message in the air. "Bodhisattvas of several major creeds have asked the high executive to protect the common cultural heritage of the creeds here at the Surina compound." The security chief examined the letter, confirmed that it stated precisely what the Council woman said, and noted dejectedly that it did indeed bear an authentic signature from the secretary of the Creeds Coalition. But he nearly erupted with laughter when he saw what "common cultural heritage" Borda presumed to be protecting.

A representation of Isaac Newton, on permanent loan from Creed Elan ... A bronzed effigy of Tobi Jae Witt, owned jointly by Creeds Bushido and Dao ... A sculpture of Albert Einstein that Creed Conscientious had lent to the Surinas while their new administrative facility was under construction.

The scientist statues in the Surina Center for Historic Appreciation.

This couldn't really be happening, could it? Len Borda couldn't be so brazen as to march into the Surina compound with such a minuscule figleaf of an excuse, could he? The security chief gazed past Tanis at the row upon row of motionless Council officers, and saw not a single smile or good-natured smirk. Politics, thought the security chief bitterly. How many times have I complained to Margaret that she isn't keeping up good relations with the other creeds? And what did the Council offer those other bodhisattvas to make them roll over so easily?

The security chief cast a sidelong glance at the inadequate forces under his command. Inexperienced boys and girls, really. The teeth of the green-and-blue soldier beside him were chattering uncontrollably.

"Stand down," said the commander of the Surina security forces with a sigh.

Tanis nodded and signaled her officers to enter the gates. The security chief watched gloomily as the white armada sailed through the gates and up the path towards the courtyard. None of them, he noticed, were headed for the Center for Historic Appreciation.

Natch thought he was still enveloped in the haze of multivoid when his field of vision turned white. Then he realized that his transmission to Andra Pradesh had gone through after all, and the white glare was the sun's reflection off a Council officer's steely dartgun.

The main courtyard was crawling with figures in white robes where Natch had expected blue and green. The few Surina employees in view were milling about aimlessly, trying to maintain the facade that they were still in charge. Yet the Council troops showed no sign of interfering. Their only agenda at this point, it appeared, was to stand with dart-rifles drawn and act menacing. If they intended to stop people from watching Margaret's presentation, they could do little from the courtyard; even the thickest Council thug had to know that standard crowd control procedures for an event like this would confine all multi projections to inside the auditorium.

Natch scooted quickly along the fence, hoping to make it unnoticed to the Center for Historic Appreciation. But he was not destined for such luck. Two officers immediately zeroed in and corralled him into a corner. As they scrutinized him, Natch waited for the officers to say something-didn't the Council troops in the dramas always say your identification, please or state your name and business?-but they kept eerily silent. He supposed they could gather all the information they needed by feeding his image through the jaws of their vast intelligence databases. Speech was superfluous.

"There you are," growled a voice. "Leave this one alone. He's with me."

Two arms brusquely made a path between the Council officers, into which stepped Margaret's mysterious Islander. His scruffy tunic and wild ponytail stood out like a scar in a courtyard full of crisp white uniforms. Natch didn't know whether to feel scared or comforted when the man put an arm across Natch's chest, like a parent claiming a wayward child.

The larger of the two Council officers eyed the Islander's copper collar with disdain. "So this is Margaret's Islander," he said, elbowing his cohort in the side. "Remember the one with the ponytail that came at us down in Manila? Looked just like this one."

His fellow officer let out a malicious chuckle. "I remember," she said. "Shot him full of darts. Bastard just kept coming."

"Finally had to crack his skull, right?"

The Islander maintained his composure and did not take the bait. "I'll bet he had a stack of Council officers' corpses lying next to him when you finally took him down, too."

"Better watch your manners, unconnectible," sneered the Council man, clearly irritated at the Islander's demeanor. "You're not in the Pacific anymore. Without this, we could have you begging for mercy in two minutes." Then he fearlessly reached one hand up and flicked his finger against the collar.

Before the ping of the vibrating metal had faded away, the Islander was in motion.

Natch had never seen anyone move so fast. One second, the Islander was standing at rest; the next, he had zipped around and placed the offending officer in a chokehold. The second guard reached for her dartgun in a panic, but it was too late. The Islander had already lifted her comrade's weapon from its sheath and aimed it squarely at her forehead. "Ah," he hissed savagely, "but which one of you is going to take it away from me?"

Within seconds, officers all over the courtyard were scrambling towards them with weapons drawn. Natch had never actually faced the barrel of a Defense and Wellness Council dartgun before; now he found himself facing at least thirty of them. The fact that he was present only as a multi projection was slight comfort. It became less comforting still when Natch realized that several of the dartguns pointed at him were actually multi disruptors.

The Islander shook off the tension with a dismissive snort. He released the officer from the crook of his arm and shoved him roughly towards his companions, tossing the dartgun on the ground as an afterthought. Then he flipped his ponytail over one shoulder and parted another path in the crowd as if nothing had happened. "Well?" he called to Natch. "Are you coming or not?" The entrepreneur forced his knocking knees to follow. Scores of Council eyeballs watched in silence as the two walked briskly through the courtyard and into the Center for Historic Appreciation. Natch let out a loud breath of relief as soon as the doors closed behind them.

The atrium was empty of visitors, except for two Council guards standing idly against the wall discussing baseball. Neither gave Natch or the Islander so much as a glance as they threaded their way between the scientist statues and headed down one of the corridors.

"Bloody tracking devices," muttered the Islander. "Do they think we actually want to wear these fucking things?" He reached up with one hand and tugged at the collar as if about to fling it boomerangstyle down the hallway. Natch noticed for the first time that the collar was not actually suspended in air, but balanced on the man's neck over a fine latticework of metallic thread. The contraption looked hideously uncomfortable.

"Did you say that thing is a tracking device?" asked Natch, struggling to keep up with the Islander's giant strides.

"Of course it's a tracking device. Why else would they make them so fucking conspicuous? You can see an Islander with a collar from a kilometer away."

Natch was usually not interested in cross-border politics. But he had to keep this strange man talking, if only so he might figure out his relation to Margaret and the Phoenix Project. "But you need those outside the Islands," he said. "How else you going to survive out here without OCHREs?"

Halfway up a flight of stairs, the Islander stopped dead in his tracks. "You've got a lot to learn about your governments, boy." He reached into his pocket with a scowl and dug out a small disc the size of an ancient coin. "See this little device? You can pin it to your collar, or wear it on a string around your neck. Made from spare parts, and you can see multi projections with it, interact with bio/logic code. Explain that to me."

Natch eyed the circle with embarrassment. "So why aren't you wearing that thing instead?"

Margaret's Islander gazed at Natch with an unspoken accusation of gullibility hovering just behind his eyes. "Because wearing these collars is the law if you're an Islander," he sneered. "And if you don't obey the law, you get visits from the Defense and Wellness Council and the Prime Committee and fuck knows who else." Then he slipped the disc back into his tunic and kept climbing the stairs.

Natch trotted alongside the big man as they crossed a covered walkway over the courtyard and into the Surina Enterprise Facility. A hoverbird bearing the Council insignia zoomed across the skyline directly in front of them. "Where are we going?" said Natch. "That message I got this morning ... Are you taking me to Margaret?"

"No. Margaret's locked herself in the residence, preparing for the speech. You'll see her afterwards-if there's anything left to see."

"So what's this `performance' you need me to do? Or was that it down there in the courtyard?"

The Islander shook his head. He had led them to the end of a wide corridor and an imposing set of double doors. "The performance is in here," he said grimly. "Just be yourself. Stick by me and make sure everyone sees it. Speak if you have to, but don't say anything memorable." The doors slid open of their own accord, but not before the man thrust one hand forward and slammed it against the metal with a bang. "And one more thing you'll need to know: my name is Quell."

Beyond the doors was a large bowl-shaped meeting room. A lavish bouquet stood in the center of the room, underneath a revolving banner that flashed HAPPY 400TH BIRTHDAY, SHELDON SURINA over and over in ten-second intervals. About four or five dozen guests congregated in small clusters around the room, all of whom had turned their attention to the sudden and noisy arrival of Natch and Quell.

It's the whole biollogics industry, Natch thought with a quickly stifled gasp.

If it wasn't quite the entire industry, the guest list for this little reception certainly encompassed its top tier. Natch saw hated rivals and fierce competitors in every corner. Jara's old boss Lucas Sentinel was camped near the bouquet with a group of well-known channelers and capitalmen. A pasty man with a mop of black hair, Sentinel did not tower over his companions so much as sway awkwardly in their midst like a tree. The drudges Sen Sivv Sor and John Ridglee were holding court on opposite sides of the room. Libertarian rabblerouser Khann Frejohr sipped chaff alongside the shrewish programmer Bolliwar Tuban. Natch felt a hand clap him on his shoulder, and turned around to face Billy Sterno. "Nice entrance, pal!" chirped the fiefcorper before scuttling off, his Chinese eyes glinting with mischief.

I need a licensee who can generate enough ripples on the Data Sea to make the Council stay its hand until I unveil the technology, Margaret had said.

I guess that's what we're doing, thought Natch. Generating ripples.

Natch and Quell began a slow stroll around the periphery of the room. The fiefcorp master put on a haughty look and did his best to forestall any conversation. For the most part, it worked. The members of the bio/logics elite seemed content to stay in their balkanized clusters and throw scandalized looks at the fiefcorp master and the Islander from afar. After ten minutes of this, however, Natch started to get restless. Everyone in the room had noticed them already, and the crowd would soon be gathering in the auditorium to await Margaret's speech.

"Okay, have we made enough of a show?" he muttered in a low voice, unsure whether an Islander could respond to a ConfidentialWhisper.

"Not yet," replied Quell calmly. "I want to catch one of the stragglers."

Natch frowned. "Stragglers?" Then he heard a violent cough behind him, and turned to see the bulldog face of Frederic Patel.

Natch did not bother with formal greetings, because he knew he would receive none from Frederic. The short, barrel-chested programmer had not inherited the slick mannerisms and sharp fashion sense that made his older brother Petrucio so popular among the drudges. If they had not inherited the same olive complexion and lithe moustache, one would be hard-pressed to identify the two Patels as brothers. But even during the worst days of their vitriolic competition, Natch had to admit that Frederic was one of the few engineers in the business whose skills stood up to Horvil's.

"Well, if it isn't the thief," snarled Patel.

The fiefcorp master laughed scornfully. "Watch who you're calling a thief. Looks like you've stolen your number one slot back, for a little while at least."

"Primo's." Frederic gave a dismissive flip of the hand, leaving Natch to wonder what else he had stolen from the Patels recently. "A little while. What's that mean?"

"That means, sometimes history repeats itself."

Frederic made a whistling sound with his nose that, after a moment, Natch realized was laughter. He swept his gaze to the Islander, who stared back with an impenetrable glare. Natch suddenly remembered Quell's instructions to say as little as possible, but the big man no longer seemed to care. "You heard your boss's speech yet?" Patel said, addressing Quell.

"No," replied the Islander.

"We're not gonna be bored to death, are we?"

"The world might be a better place if you were," Quell said, deadpan.

Again the whistling sound. "So that's the game you two are playing, eh?" Patel rasped. "Well, fine with me. But now it's our move."

The level of conversation in the room had dipped noticeably since Frederic's approach. Lucas Sentinel had wandered close and kept taking discreet peeks at the confrontation like a nervous hyena. John Ridglee was not even trying to disguise his blatant attempts to read lips.

Natch was trying to decipher Frederic's comments and formulate a response when a loud neutral tone sounded throughout the room. The marquee displaying birthday wishes to the dead Sheldon Surina was now announcing the imminent arrival of his descendant Margaret onstage. Within seconds, industry mavens were cutting their multi connections to the party and preparing to reconnect inside the nearby auditorium.

Frederic Patel vanished without so much as a glance back in their direction. Natch breathed a sigh of relief, following Quell out the same doors they had entered through. The show was about to begin.

"I'm telling you, this can't go on forever. One of these days, the Data Sea is just going to collapse."

"They've been saying that for a century."

"But come on, look at how much more bandwidth we're using these days. Multi, the Jamm, the Sigh. Even quantum computing has its limits."

"One point three billion multi projections at Marcus Surina's funeral, and not a single glitch. That's all I have to say."

"Yeah, but-"

Jara stood and listened to the jabber of the couple beside her as she waited for Margaret Surina to take the stage. Personally, she sided with the doomsayer who feared the imminent collapse of the computational system. She looked around at the thirty-five thousand visible spectators filling the arena and tried to imagine the seraphic order of number needed to describe the bandwidth requirements for so many people.

But the vertigo did not end there. The Surina auditorium statistics told her there were actually 413 million multi projections here waiting for Margaret to reveal the mystery behind the Phoenix Project. 413 million people whose brains were trying to maintain the illusion that they were real bodies inhabiting real Cartesian space, when that was clearly impossible.

The analyst summoned a calculator and wide-eyed her way through the math. 413 million people wedged into a space designed to fit thirty-five thousand real bodies. Which meant that right now almost twelve thousand people from every corner of the solar system believed they were standing in the exact same spot as Jara....

Then she noticed that the attendance had skyrocketed another 150 million spectators. Jara shook her head violently. Human minds could not comprehend such vastness. Better to swallow the sweet lotus of multi and be done with it.

Especially when she had so many more urgent questions to contend with. Like where was the rest of the fiefcorp? What was this "Phoenix Project" that had so entranced the public's imagination and completely absorbed the world's richest woman for years? How did Natch fit into this whole puzzle? And how would this new technology affect her job?

Just then, a young woman in a green-and-blue Surina security uniform passed mere centimeters away from Jara's right side. The woman-no, the girl-had her dartgun drawn and was clearly petrified. I'd be petrified too, thought Jara, if I had a few thousand Defense and Wellness Council troops on my heels.

Which brought up the most perplexing question of all: What was the Council waiting for?

Moments later, Margaret Surina took the stage. Jara hadn't seen her arrive, so she couldn't say for sure whether Sheldon Surina's heir had multied onto the stage. Margaret had chosen a formless robe that draped across the floor like a tent and slowly changed colors from blue to green and back again. Her frosted black hair lay across her shoulders. She seemed completely calm, like the commander who had already greenlighted a battle plan and now waited for its outcome to slowly unfold.

And just as the bodhisattva opened her mouth to speak, a hundred doors slammed open at once, and the Council made its entrance.

With dartguns crossed over their chests and eyes fixed forward, they came marching into the auditorium single file, like robots. The crowd parted anxiously to make way for the soldiers. Some cut their multi connections on the spot, but most quickly recognized that the officers were carrying few disruptors. No, whatever High Executive Borda's intentions were, sowing panic in the crowd was not one of them. The lead Council officers stopped meters away from the stage.

If Margaret feared an imminent death, she did not show it. She regarded the intruders with an icy stare that said, Whatever you have planned for me, you're going to have to do it in front of 700 million people. Jara did not know much about Margaret Surina aside from the standard drudgic platitudes and generalities, but at this moment she felt a great surge of admiration for the woman.

The Council troops stood at attention, their rifles before them, and did nothing.

A hush fell over the crowd as the bodhisattva began to speak.

"Once upon a time," said Margaret, "we believed in technology.

"Our ancestors were the original engineers. They discovered the laws that govern the universe and learned how to master them. They paved the earth with rock and sent wheeled machines to rumble across it. They spread to the four corners of the earth and, not satisfied, flew to the heavens. Still not satisfied, they flew to the stars.

"And somewhere along the way, they got lost.

"Somewhere between the first man to build stone tools and the first woman to create an artificial intelligence, our ancestors became separated from their innovations. They stopped seeing their creations as extensions of themselves, and started seeing them as external to themselves. Other. Distant. Remote.

"Science became an impersonal god, a grim idol beyond reproach or appeal.

"And once technology was no longer a part of them, it became an enemy to conquer.

"The god that had been embedded within them all became a force to be chained and made to do their bidding. Instead of seeking communion with the god, instead of striving to understand the kernel of truth that is within us all, they sacrificed their own skills to feed him. Our machines will do more so we may do less, they said.

"And so, in the apogee of their folly, our ancestors created the Autonomous Minds."

A rustle of disapproval from the audience. A hateful murmuring.

"The Autonomous Minds: eight machines committed to managing the world economy, eight machines entrusted to safeguarding the environment, eight machines consigned to solving the problems of human diplomacy. Eight intelligences so vastly other that our ancestors feared to `taint' them with human morals and ideals. Imagine having more faith in a lifeless machine than in a human being!

"Our ancestors abandoned their independence to the Autonomous Minds. They delivered the reins of the earth into the hands of the Minds. They trusted in the order of the Keepers to convey their will, using the arcane machine tongues that only the Keepers could speak.

"It was to prove humanity's greatest mistake."

A monolithic structure floating in the midst of the auditorium, a holographic representation of the world's first orbital colony, Yu. Circular platforms within platforms performing an intricate dance to the symphony of G-force. Gardens of unparalleled lushness and beauty like that mythical garden lost in the deeps of time. Citizens basking in the warm spring of eternal Progress under controlled atmospheric domes.

"Yu," Margaret continued. "Humanity's greatest hope. An experiment to bring us out of earth's cradle and into the stars. A self-contained community of ten thousand, constructed in orbit above the earth, stocked with a cross-section of humanity's best and brightest. Yu was the culmination of thousands of years of Chinese art, science and culture-and its controls were placed in the hands of the Autonomous Minds and their Keepers.

"But this arrangement was not destined to last."

Shrieks, sighs, tears of anguish from the crowd at the first detonation. And the second.

Daisy-chain explosions rocking the orbital structure, domes bursting and debris spinning off into the void of merciless space. The spinning discs suddenly still. Pandemonium. Colonists scrambling like mad for their primitive spacecraft. Companions reaching to hold their loved ones in a last embrace. And then the death spiral-the shuddering descent into the earth's atmosphere-the shrieking burning hellfire plunge through the clouds, in an unstoppable trajectory towards the lofty towers of New York City ...

Bracing for impact-

The simulation vanished. Margaret was once again alone onstage.

"We may never know what caused the Minds and their Keepers to strike the first blow in the Autonomous Revolt," she said. "Were the Minds acting in collusion to exterminate the human race, as some have suggested? Or was the sabotage of Yu a power grab by the Ecumenical Council of New Alamo? Did the cloned soldiers of the Allahu Akbar Emirates have an agenda of their own?

"The ultimate truth lay buried beneath the rubble of eight continuous years of war, along with the empty burned-out husks of the Autonomous Minds.

"Humanity's cult of the god had ended.

"The consequences of our ancestors' folly? Nearly two billion dead and the great nation-states of antiquity left in ruins.

"During the Big Divide which followed, the elaborate technologies of our ancestors were gradually forgotten-forgotten, or sabotaged by Luddite mobs intent on destroying all that the Minds had touched. The triumphant engineering works of our ancestors gradually fell into disrepair. New Alamo descended into murderous fundamentalism, the Allahu Akbar Emirates disintegrated, the Chinese Territories and the Democratic American Collective vanished into irrelevance."

A panoply of still pictures now floating about the auditorium, portraits of an age. Skeletal cities. Haggard mobs with makeshift uniforms marching through city streets. Smoke rising from pyres fueled by the gnarled carcasses of inventors and scientists. Demagoguery, fanaticism, starvation. The corpse of a child.

Margaret continued: "And so the surviving nations bowed down before the whims of the mob. Strict anti-technology laws appeared around the globe. The innovators of the age had to present their discoveries on bended knee to the moralists and functionaries and politicians who used the fears of the masses to cling to power. Works of the ancient programmers and physicists moldered in decaying books and unreadable discs written on dead machines.

"Science was on the cusp of extinction. Humanity had fallen into its own death spiral.

"My ancestor Sheldon Surina changed all that."

As Margaret paused for breath, Jara surveyed the crowd. The attendance had settled at 738 million multi projections, if the auditorium figures were to be believed, and who knew how many billions more were watching or listening remotely. Whatever the number, Jara had never seen such a mass of people so mesmerized before. The only sound to be heard throughout the arena was the quiet susurration of shifting fabric and shuffling feet.

Jara looked around and noticed that the Defense and Wellness Council troops remained aloof. No hint of purpose crossed their placid brows.

"Sheldon Surina," intoned Margaret. "The man whom we honor here tonight. The man who would have been four hundred years old today." The Father of Bio/Logics himself floated over her head, a scrawny man with a big nose standing in mid-speech with his arm extended. "My ancestor stood before the proctors at the Gandhi University here in Andra Pradesh-just across the courtyard, in fact-and declared, There is no problem that we cannot solve through scientific innovation. Moments later, he turned this statement into a mission for humanity: There is no problem that we should not solve through scientific innovation.

"Think of the courage that required! Think of telling a world decimated by technology and hobbled by superstition-a world ruled by the draconian edicts of the Ecumenical Council and the crazed prophecies of the New Jesuses-think of telling that world that science could solve all its problems!

"Sheldon Surina did.

"Had he stopped there, the man we have come to know as the Father of Bio/Logics might have ended up just another martyr to the ideals of science. But Sheldon Surina did not just say we should look to science-he came down into the real world and showed us how. He invented the discipline of bio/logics. He designed the first programs to automate the care of the human body. He created the industry that conquered the virus, the industry that tamed the brain, the industry that prolonged life and reengineered birth. All without MindSpace, without bio/logic programming bars, without the Data Sea as we know it today.

"Most of all, Sheldon Surina renewed our faith in the powers of humanity. He taught us that scientific enlightenment does not descend to us from without, but grows from within. He showed us we did not have to forfeit our intellects to Autonomous Minds or suffer from the ignorance of Luddism-instead, we could use technology to empower ourselves. Sheldon Surina's words and ideals were the beginning of the Reawakening, that great age of progress and prosperity which continues to this day.

"Of course, progress did not come without peril. The founder of this house spent many years of his life in hiding from the Texan governments that had sworn to destroy him. He watched his friend and colleague Henry Osterman, founder of the OCHRE Corporation, slowly succumb to bitterness and paranoia. He spent his own latter days combating the forces of tyranny which sought to dominate the world with their ruthless and narrow-minded oppression. A fight that continues to this day."

Margaret's allusion to the Defense and Wellness Council did not go over the audience's head. A low murmur snaked through the crowd. Jara saw one of the white-robed men near her break into a wry grin.

"All things come to an end, and Sheldon Surina's life was no exception. But after Sheldon's death, the Surinas did not shirk their duty to humanity. Through the Center for Historic Appreciation here in Andra Pradesh, through Creed Surina and through the Surina family investments in bio/logics, we have continued to serve humanity's quest for progress and enlightenment.

"And Sheldon Surina was not the last visionary to emerge from Andra Pradesh.

"Six years after his death, Prengal Surina published the Universal Law of Physics, which unlocked the potential of every rock, tree, and blade of grass to serve as a quantum energy source. His work freed us from the dictates of our surroundings, the limitations of our resources, the oppression of ancient Einsteinian physics. Without Prengal Surina and his Universal Law, an event like this one today would not be possible. Multi projections would be a pipe dream, and subaether communication would be an arcane tool of academics.

"In recent years, my father Marcus took up the family's mantle of service. Marcus Surina had spent many years denying his heritage. But when he finally took his rightful place as the heir to the Surina family, he pioneered bold new approaches to teleportation technology. Many believe that, had he not suffered a tragic death in the orbital colonieshad he been given the opportunity to fulfill his mission-Marcus would have brought cheap and efficient teleportation to the world, and we would live in a better place."

Above Margaret's head, the stern visage of Prengal Surina shifted to that of Marcus in all his Adonic beauty. Jara stared at the dead man and felt the same tangled knot of emotions his face always stirred up. Few had inspired so much hope. Few had left so much devastation.

"And so, what have we, the Surinas, contributed to the world?" Margaret continued.

"I believe Sheldon Surina and his descendants have remained true to the highest ideals of humanity. We have used scientific advancement to improve the human condition. We have provided choices and expanded opportunities. We have enlightened the mind instead of constricting it. And it is in that spirit that I stand before you today."

Margaret paused and took a few dramatic steps forward. "Citizens of earth, Luna, Mars and the colonies-Islanders and Pharisees-I stand here on the occasion of Sheldon Surina's four hundredth birthday to announce the ultimate fulfillment of his ambitions."

All at once, several hundred million spectators took a sharp intake of breath. Inside herself, Jara could feel a gathering hurricane of emotion, wrath and hope that threatened to sweep out of control. She could feel the clouds gathering throughout the arena, and for a moment it seemed as if the hopes and dreams of humanity had suddenly coalesced around one blue-eyed woman in Andra Pradesh.

The Council officers began to shift nervously on their feet. Dozens of dartguns and disruptors surreptitiously crept off the floor and into the soldiers' hands.

Margaret Surina continued, her face devoid of emotion.

"The Surina Perfection Memecorp is preparing to unveil one of the most important scientific breakthroughs since the dawn of the Reawakening-possibly the most important advance in the history of humanity.

"It is the ultimate freedom.

"It is the ultimate empowerment.

"It is the path to complete control over our destinies.

"The Surina Perfection Memecorp has discovered a technology to create multiple realities, and we call this technology MultiReal."

And with that, the storm broke.

It began with a low rumbling of information, a mental thunder the likes of which Jara had never experienced. She could actually sense, somewhere off in the distance, a disturbance in the Data Sea's flow. Data agents converging on some far-away point in the informational topography.

Then there was a sudden eruption.

Jara could hear random soundbites echoing through her head, echoes of Margaret's words spoken in a thousand different voices: Ultimate freedom. Complete control over our destinies. Fulfillment of the Sarinas' ambitions. MultiReal. This split-second of chaos was nearly enough to make her lose her balance. The analyst quickly fired up UnDizzify 93 and, by instinct, reached for something to steady herself against-only to discover that the entire crowd was swaying with vertigo. Everywhere Jara looked, spectators were blinking in confusion at the sudden blast of cerebral white noise.

Black code, she thought.

Jara instantly shot off a request to check the security of her possessions. Her Vault accounts, her dismal apartment, the databanks holding all her programming and personal information. Everything seemed fine, but with the deluge of incoming messages and Confiden- tialWhispers washing in from every side, it was hard to tell. The Vault was spouting off warnings and informational bulletins by the dozens, followed in close succession by scores of redundant updates from the Meme Cooperative, the Prime Committee, her L-PRACG. Horvil, Merri, Vigal and her sister sent her two messages apiece asking if she was okay.

Jara closed her eyes and tried to screen out the chaos. She could only imagine the computational mayhem caused by half a billion multi projections spraying billions of simultaneous requests at the Data Sea.

Things were no better when she opened her eyes.

The Council officers were on the move. Men and women in white robes advanced on the stage with grim looks on their faces, dart rifles drawn. A handful of disruptor blasts sent multi projections flickering out into nothingness, clearing a path to the front of the arena. The rest of the crowd began scattering this way and that in confusion. Meanwhile, the Surina security forces had drawn their rifles as well and had formed a rapidly tightening circle around the stage. Several dozen guards on both sides lay twitching on the ground with black code darts jutting from their torsos.

Unbelievably, Margaret was still speaking. Either none of the darts was flying in her direction, or none of them had managed to hit her yet. Her face was ghosted over with panic, yet she stood firm and tried to make herself heard over the tumult.

"The creation of multiple realities," she said. "It sounds like a tale we tell children in the hive. But soon we will consider multiple realities as common as OCHREs, as practical as bio/logic programs, and as necessary as oxygen.

"What would our lives be like if we had made different choices? In the Age of MultiReal, we will wonder no more-because we will be able to make many choices. We will be able to look back at checkpoints in our lives and take alternate paths. We will wander between alternate realities as our desires lead us.

"The ever-changing flux of MultiReal will become reality.

"Just as bio/logics freed us from the tyranny of the body ... just as the Universal Law of Physics freed us from the tyranny of nature ... just as teleportation freed us from the tyranny of distance ... so MultiReal will free us from the tyranny of cause and effect itself.

"Throughout human history, we have been striving towards greater freedom. Freedom is our destiny and our birthright. And in the age to come-in the Age of MultiReal-we will all be empowered to pursue our individual freedoms however we choose.

"And I say this:

"Only when we can truly choose our own destinies will we be completely free."

Jara could not say for certain whether or not Margaret had finished her speech. Because at that moment the Surina security guards elbowed their way onstage, a mere two steps ahead of the Defense and Wellness Council troops. Jara watched with mouth agape as a whiterobed officer raised her dartgun at Margaret Surina and prepared to fire.

But then an enormous man with a blonde ponytail swooped out of nowhere and wrapped his arms around the bodhisattva, shielding her from harm. My goodness, thought Jara, is that an Islander? The Council officer aimed her weapon high and let off a warning shot. Within seconds, the man had whisked Margaret through the stage door. A number of Surina functionaries quickly scrambled after her.

Among those hustling backstage, Jara noted with slack-jawed amazement, was a certain lean fiefcorp master whose wolfish grin she would have recognized anywhere.