Jump 255 - Multireal Part 27

She saw no sign of them, although the menacing figures in white robes and yel ow stars were hard to miss.

And then they turned a corner and came face-to-face with the Tul Jabbor Complex, headquarters of the Prime Committee.

The building was gargantuan, dwarfing al other government structures in the city. It seemed to have been constructed for a much larger race of beings altogether. The windows stood impossibly high off the ground, while the doors could have comfortably admitted a tube train. The whole structure was slablike and boxy in shape, with a monolithic dome capping one end. From one of the hoverbirds streaming in and out of the adjacent dockyards, Jara supposed the building would look like a giant armless statue.

Horvil tapped her on the shoulder. "That's where we're going," he explained, pointing at the dome. "That's where-"

"Where the Prime Committee meets, yes, I know." The a.n.a.lyst smiled and tapped the side of her head. "I can access the Data Sea too, Horv." The engineer blushed.

The inside of the Tul Jabbor Complex was no less intimidating than the exterior. One broad corridor made a winding path through the center of the Complex like intestines. The sides of the corridor were six levels high and lined with an endless grid of office cubicles behind smoky gla.s.s. The corridor itself had no roof. Everywhere they could see public servants striding purposeful y back and forth, sporting a hundred different uniforms.

Midway through the complex in a circular clearing stood an enormous hologram of High Executive Tul Jabbor, fifteen meters tal . The stern, Ja.n.u.s-like faces of the Defense and Wel ness Council's first commander tracked the fiefcorpers mercilessly both as they approached and as they walked past. Jara shuddered and quickened her step until the curving corridor put Jabbor out of sight.

At long last, they reached the dome.

The a.n.a.lyst was suffering from sensory overload as she walked into the auditorium.

Twenty-nine chairs of miserable black iron ringed a floor measuring some thirty-five meters in diameter. Behind and above this row of twenty-nine chairs sat another dozen concentric rings of normal, cus.h.i.+oned seats for the plebes. Each ring rested at an impossibly steep angle above the one in front of it, as if the rings were built for the hologram of Tul Jabbor to climb.

The a.n.a.lyst looked down at the floor and felt her heart curdle in fear. It was the most intimidating setting she could possibly imagine. Facing the entire Committee at once was impossible, and there were no chairs to sit on. From the floor, Jara supposed that the audience members must look like they were stacked on top of one another. Even an extraordinarily tal person would have to crane his neck at an uncomfortable angle to see them. There would be no multi tricks here, no abandoning of Cartesian s.p.a.ce in the audience; whether out of security concerns or out of tradition, no multi projections were al owed in the Tul Jabbor Complex auditorium.

"What a nightmare!" said Ben-and then instantly clamped his hand to his mouth. The place was an acoustic disaster. Ben's exclamation bounced around the wal s and quickly devolved into complete dissonance. Raising your voice only seemed to amplify the problem. Jara suddenly noticed that the place was rustling with the ghostly sound of a thousand whispers, which only added to the creepiness factor.

The fiefcorpers gave one another PokerFace glances and started down the narrow stairway. They headed for the pet.i.tioners' ring-the ring immediately above the Prime Committee, and the fiefcorp's new home until the MultiReal issue was resolved, one way or another.

Ten minutes later, Natch and Serr Vigal arrived. Jara stifled a gasp, then quickly looked around to make sure there were no drudges nearby.

Natch had not shown his face in public for nearly five days, but he might have aged fifteen years in that time. He seemed haggard and noticeably underfed. His left hand was thrust deep into his suit coat pocket as if weighted there by some dense object. Vigal, on the other hand, was so inwardly focused that he completely failed to notice the intimidating stage below. Jara wondered how the neural programmer had managed to reach Natch and whether the entrepreneur had helped Vigal prepare his speech. By the diffident way Natch was treating his old guardian, she suspected that he was hardly aware of Vigal's presence at al . The entrepreneur seemed momentarily confused as they reached the pet.i.tioners' ring, until Vigal's hand clutched his elbow and steered him toward a chair a quarter of the way around the ring from the fiefcorp.

"Something's wrong with Natch," said Merri.

"What do you mean, something's 'wrong' with him?" asked Horvil. "There's always been something wrong with him."

"Yes, but ... his eyes."

Jara noticed it too, even from this distance. The flesh around Natch's eye sockets looked as if it had been rouged with something dark and sinister.

Any half-decent OCHRE system should take care of that, thought the a.n.a.lyst. Natch, what's happening to you?

A vein in her temple began to throb. She watched the neural programmer nod and mumble to himself like a student prepping for exams, while Natch simply stared straight ahead. Jara waited for him to glance around at the audience; he wouldn't have to tilt his head that far to the left to see the fiefcorp.

But the entrepreneur did not avert his eyes from a spot of void hovering about three meters before his face. Jara slumped down in her seat. With Vigal delivering the libertarians' opening statement and Khann Frejohr lying low, she had pinned her hopes for this hearing on Natch. But Natch was obviously in no shape to persuade the Prime Committee of anything.

"How long do you have to go without sleep to get bloodshot eyes in this day and age?"

mused Ben, half to himself.

Jara darted a glance at Robby Robby, but the channeler was either completely oblivious to their conversation or faking it wel . She wondered if he was off shopping for hairdos on the Data Sea or holding a pep ral y with his sales force.

Moments later, the delegation from the Congress of L-PRACGs arrived. It was the first time Jara had ever seen the legendary Speaker Khann Frejohr in person. He appeared calm and at ease in his bronze robe, looking every bit the wily and experienced politician. Frejohr and his accompanying band of libertarian activists found seats in the pet.i.tioners' ring toward Natch's side of the floor.

Yet Jara couldn't help but notice that the speaker refused to look in the entrepreneur's direction, and he made no move to take the vacant chair on Natch's right.

Horvil shot her a ConfidentialWhisper. "He real y p.i.s.sed Frejohr off, didn't he?" Jara didn't answer.

And then the doors opened for the Defense and Wel ness Council.

Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee stood in the nucleus of a smal pack of lawyers, administrators, and high-ranking Council officers. He looked almost Lil iputian in such an immense s.p.a.ce. Jara recognized a few of the other lieutenant executives from drudge reports; she recognized Magan's flunky Papizon from personal experience. Jara felt a slight twitch of terror in her gut, remembering that Magan had unfinished business with her. She sneered it down.

"Don't tel me that Lieutenant Executive Lee is going to be delivering their opening statement?" said Benyamin.

Merri craned her neck forward. "Does anybody see any sign of-"

The doors slammed open once more, and Jara felt her heart sink. The Blade.

Rey Gonerev, the chief solicitor of the Defense and Wel ness Council, strode through the doors with the confidence of a panther. Her long braids framed a face which mirrored that confidence. The Blade walked past the libertarian delegation, barely acknowledged Khann Frejohr's respectful nod, and headed for the governmentalist contingent on the opposite site of the auditorium. She was in her element here.

And yet, for al Gonerev's bl.u.s.ter and bravado, where was the Council's legal army? What had happened to the hundreds of lawyers, functionaries, and advisors who had marched confidently through the streets of Melbourne yesterday?

Evidently that display had just been a show for public consumption, because few of them were present today.

Jara studied the twenty-nine empty chairs in the ring above hersseats for the Prime Committee, the ultimate government authority, the people whose word superseded that of the L-PRACGs. Even the armed officers of the Defense and Wel ness Council spread around the auditorium took their orders from the Committee, at least in theory. If anyone could give Natch a fair hearing, it was the people who would shortly be fil ing those chairs. But would they listen with open ears?

The a.n.a.lyst had a distressing thought. Did she want the government to give Natch a fair hearing? The Prime Committee had the power to overturn everything Magan Kai Lee had done and restore Natch to the head of his fiefcorp, to bring back the status quo and put MultiReal in his hands once more.

Would that be a good thing?

At that moment, a more exclusive set of doors opened, and the Prime Committee entered.

31.

The members of the Prime Committee might have been any random selection of pedestrians off the street. Their composition was about as polychromatic as any group of twenty-nine could be. There was a slight preponderance of females and people of Indian descent-what the sociologists glibly cal ed "the Surina effect"-but nothing that could produce an obvious prejudice toward any one demographic. Al were dressed in matching robes of dark blue, filigreed with elaborate gold tracing. The iron symbol of the black ring hung from their necks.

The members filed around the auditorium to find their seats. Jara noticed that the Committee members' row did not intersect with any of the main auditorium stairways. In fact, the steps from the pet.i.tioners' row to the floor actual y ducked under the Committee members' seats with a flourish of architectural bravado.

As the men and women sat on the uncomfortable-looking black chairs, each person's representative organization flashed in hologram before them: The Vault. The Creeds Coalition. Dr. Plugenpatch. The Meme Cooperative. TeleCo.

GravCo. Orbital Colonies. The Congress of L-PRACGS. True to their governing philosophy, none of the members' names were anywhere to be found.

"What do the italics mean?" said Horvil to n.o.body in particular. Jara took a closer look, and sure enough, some of the affiliations were displayed in a slightly smal er, italicized font: Islanders. Data Sea Network Administrators. Pharisees.

The Prepared. TubeCo.

"Nonvoting member," replied Ben, pleased to be the resident expert on something.

"Twenty-nine reps total, but only twenty-three get a vote."

"I thought TubeCo was a voting member," said Merri, scratching her head.

"They were. Got booted off last year, remember? It was-"

Jara waved them al to silence. "They're about to start."

Everyone in the Committee members' ring rose dutiful y and bowed in unison. It was a stirring sight, something Jara had seen often in Data Sea videos but never in person. For a moment, she felt like she was suspended above Melbourne in the tube car again, watching the reasoned and orderly process of government at work.

The members of the Prime Committee remained standing as a blue light swept around the ring three times like a roulette wheel and final y stopped in front of a nondescript woman from the Meme Cooperative. Apparently this meant she would be the randomly selected moderator for the proceedings. Al the other representatives took their seats again.

The woman spoke. Some feat of aural wizardry al owed her voice to boom across the dome without distortion or reverberation. "This special session of the Prime Committee, held here on the fourteenth of January in the three hundred and sixtieth year of the Reawakening, wil now come to order."

There was a brief pause as the Committee members' a.s.sistants shuffled into place beside the representatives and held quick, whispered conversations. Spectators around the auditorium gradual y took their seats, and Council officers took up their posts, though they seemed in little hurry to do so. Jara took a glance at Natch. The entrepreneur simply looked dazed, like a tottering tree that might crash to the floor at any moment.

The Committee moderator continued. Jara got the impression that her words had been prepared ahead of time, that they were only coming from her mouth instead of someone else's out of sheer happenstance.

"We are at an important crossroads in history," said the woman. "For the past two hundred years, libertarians and governmentalists have been debating what the proper role of government should be. What powers should reside with the citizenry and what powers should reside with their governments? Should these governments be centralized or decentralized? Elected or appointed? Where does personal liberty end and public welfare begin?

"The Prime Committee cannot pretend to be the final arbiter of these questions.

"Nor is that our job. Though we may be governmentalists or libertarians in our personal philosophies, here we are al simply members of the Prime Committee. We speak with one voice, and we represent every citizen of the Reawakening. We provide oversight; we provide law and structure; and in times of crisis, we provide stability and judgment.

"It is in that last capacity that we sit before you today. The world is in a crisis. Vortexes of information are causing death and destruction from Earth to Furtoid. One of the beloved icons of the Reawakening has died under mysterious circ.u.mstances. Activists have taken to the streets and jammed the gears of commerce. And at the center of everything lies a powerful new technology the likes of which the world has never seen.

"Government cannot simply stand by and watch matters unfold. For better or worse, government must take action.

"Let it not be said afterward that the Prime Committee had already made up its mind before these sessions had begun. Truth walks through open doors, the Bodhisattva once said. We come to this hearing as representatives of the public welfare with no preconceived agenda, and we ask the observers of this hearing to do the same.

"The Committee wishes to emphasize that this is not a trial. As such, we wil fol ow no formal procedures other than simple parliamentary rules of order. The Committee wil cal witnesses as it sees fit, in the order it sees fit, for as long as it takes to satisfy the questions at hand. We hereby command these witnesses to speak truthful y, honestly, and without reservation.

"Such is the agenda of the Prime Committee. Let any objections be entered into the record now."

Jara peered around the audience, wondering who would have the temerity to speak out against such a high-minded opening. But, of course, objections there were-a representative of the diss, demanding a voice in the proceedings and a seat on the Committee; a robed and bejeweled member of the Pharisee tribes, questioning the legitimacy of the entire centralized government; the outlandishly dressed bodhisattva of Creed Nul , proclaiming imminent doom for al and sundry. The woman a.s.signed to be the Prime Committee administrator nodded without comment as each exception was entered into the record. Obviously they had al performed these steps in the dance many times before. The dissenters even had a smal reserved section to themselves right behind the pet.i.tioners' ring.

When the formal objections were complete, the woman took her seat once again. "The Prime Committee hereby cal s upon Serr Vigal of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp to make a statement on behalf of the Congress of L-PRACGs," she said.

Serr Vigal made his way down the stairs and through the pa.s.sageway that ran beneath the Committee members' ring. The pa.s.sage emerged at the edge of the floor and ended in a waist-high gate of frosted gla.s.s. Vigal walked through this gate and found the center of the floor. Then he promptly rotated in place and gave several polite bows to the Committee members.

"Distinguished members of the Prime Committee," said Vigal, his voice resonant with a calm that went beyond bio/logics. "I'm honored to be in your presence today. Usual y when I stand before a government body, I'm there to ask for money. You'l be pleased to know that I plan on making no such appeals today-unless, I suppose, my speech goes very, very wel ."

A chuckle worked its way around the crowd, even levitating the lips of a few in the ruling circle. Jara had to admit that it was a prom ising beginning: disarmingly humble, homespun. She looked over and saw Khann Frejohr and his libertarian comrades displaying bland, pleasant smiles. Natch merely stared straight ahead.

Vigal continued. "So what better issue to begin my inaugural speech of political advocacy than the issue before the Committee today? I speak of the paramount right of humanity. The force that has guided and steered us for a hundred thousand years or more. I speak of freedom.

"Yes, on the surface, it might seem like the debate over MultiReal is a debate over government regulation or business practice or some other arcane matter. That is certainly what Len Borda wants you to think. The drudges would have you think that this is just a clash of forceful personalities. They would tel you that the issue is the stubbornness of one particular fiefcorp master present here today. Natch, stand up so everyone can see you."

A thousand pairs of eyebal s pivoted toward the entrepreneur, who had seemed not to be paying attention. But at Serr Vigal's cal , Natch's face suddenly lit up with humanity as if he had received a charge of electric current. He rose and delivered as warm a smile to the crowd as Jara had ever seen him deliver. Across the floor, Jara could see Magan Kai Lee's icy glare and Rey Gonerev's dour frown.

Five seconds later, Natch was seated once more, his comportment robotic, his skin pale.

"I'm sure many of you have heard the tale that the drudges are spinning," said Vigal.

"You've heard the rumors and innuendo that High Executive Borda has leaked on the Data Sea. You've read selective bits of Natch's personal history and the accusation that he is ethical y chal enged."' The neural programmer made a flippant clicking noise with his tongue. "It is impossible for me to be objective about Natch's moral fitness-a topic that was my primary responsibility for eighteen years while I was his legal guardian-so I won't pretend otherwise. I also hold an advisory position in the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp, so my subjectivity about the company is similarly compromised.

"But these rumors about Natch and his business practices are merely a distraction. A diversion from the real issue at hand. I propose we dispense with such irrelevancies and skip to the heart of the matter instead. The part Len Borda doesn't want you to talk about.

"What is the central issue here? As I said before, the central issue is freedom. Let me draw your attention to one of the adages of the first Bodhisattva of Creed Objectivv: Knowledge wants to flow to freedom like rivers want to flow to the sea.

"It's not for nothing that we cal our vast compendium of knowledge the Data Sea. It's no accident that al the droplets of wisdom humanity has learned over its history have ended up here. Because information wants to flow Seaward. I'm not speaking of want here like we want money, or like some of those in the Council desperately want me to stop talking."

Another rumble of laughter. Even Lieutenant Executive Lee raised his eyebrows in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I'm talking about the natural laws of the universe, the tendencies built into its very structure. Gravity pul s things down. Water flows to the sea. And knowledge flows to freedom. That's simply how things work.

"But you can't own the sea, can you?

"Oh, sometimes you can control its flow. You can erect dams; you can bottle up the water and keep it in a safe place. But these are only temporary solutions, aren't they? Eventual y the dam decays. The bottle breaks. Those you have entrusted to keep the water safe wander away, or they grow old and s.h.i.+ft al egiances. And when al else fails, water evaporates and is reclaimed by the sun."

Vigal gestured toward the top of the dome, and many eyes fol owed his gesture as if they might actual y see something besides the dul stone of the curved ceiling.

"High Executive Len Borda has been vigorously pursuing the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp's MultiReal technology," said the neural programmer. "Why? The high executive does not say. But it is widely believed that he wishes to bottle up MultiReal. He wishes to cask it and store it safely in his private vaults.

"Again I ask, why?

"We hear many rumors from the drudges, and sometimes it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. I have read articles claiming that the high executive plans to weaponize MultiReal and put it in the hands of every officer in his Defense and Wel ness Council. There is a suspicious memorandum circulating on the Data Sea which claims that the high executive wil use this technology to conquer the recalcitrant Islander and Pharisee territories once and for al .

Some of the protesters on the streets right now have an even more radical idea-they think Len Borda wil use MultiReal to do away with you, the august members of the Prime Committee.

"Let me suggest something that might surprise you, coming from someone who represents the libertarian wing of the Congress of L-PRACGs. I suggest we give High Executive Borda the benefit of the doubt."

In the libertarian delegation, Speaker Khann Frejohr let out a hearty laugh. Jara couldn't tel if he was laughing at the absurdity of trusting Len Borda or at the coy way Vigal had proposed it.

"High Executive Len Borda," said Vigal, extending a hand toward the group of Council officers. "The man entrusted with the safety and security of sixty bil ion people. The man who steered us through the Economic Plunge and the Melbourne riots and the Islander wars. High Executive Borda, who has faithful y served the Council and the Prime Committee for nearly sixty years. The man who, incidental y, handed a very green programmer named Serr Vigal his first government subsidy some forty years ago. We have no reason not to trust Len Borda, do we?

"So let us dismiss these conspiracy theories about the high executive's intentions and a.s.sume he intends to do the prudent thing. Let us a.s.sume he intends to seal up MultiReal forever in the depths of the government's vaults, never to be touched by human hands again.

"There is too much rancor in modern politics. I say, let us trust him!

"Good ladies and gentlemen of the Prime Committee, I ask you this question: how long can Borda hope to keep MultiReal bottled up?

"The high executive keeps many secrets, but I a.s.sume the secret of immortality is not one of them. Someday-let's hope it's fifty years from now!someday Len Borda wil slip into the Nul Current like we al must, and a new high executive wil be appointed. Maybe you wil be the ones to appoint that high executive, or maybe that task wil fal to another group of equal y dedicated Prime Committee members. You know in your hearts that you're good, decent, honest people. Your dedication to the public welfare is beyond question. But what about your successors? Do you know what wil lie in their hearts? Do you trust them to keep the secrets of MultiReal hidden?

"Then one day, those government servants too wil go off to join the Prepared. Another crop wil rise and enjoy its day in the sun. Do you trust them?

And then another crop wil fol ow. Then another. Fifty, a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years wil pa.s.s. Do you stil trust that every single man and woman to occupy those chairs for time unending wil have the same goodwil and common sense that you do? What if another Zetarysis the Mad worms her way into power? Can you be so certain that none of your thousands of successors wil one day decide to uncork a bottle of that prime vintage of information Len Borda laid down in his cel ars?