Quell spent the first half-hour pointing out the MultiReal program's basic hooks to his fellow apprentices. There wasn't enough time for a more in-depth explanation. When the Islander wrapped up his brief overview, Horvil still had no idea what an alternate reality was or why you would want to create one. But now he felt confident he could at least steer this MultiReal vessel, even if the workings of its engine room remained a mystery.
Horvil was gratified to see that his original estimate of the work involved was accurate. Clearly, it would be madness for Quell, Horvil and Benyamin to attempt to make all those thousands of connections in less than seventy-two hours; even Natch would have to admit that. So the two senior engineers spent the next few hours making detailed blueprints for the assembly-line shop and marking up their code on templates even the greenest programmer could follow. There wasn't enough room inside the workbench for Ben to squeeze in, not alongside two men of such bulk. So he kept to the corner of the room, where he took notes on a holographic tablet and stared intently at Quell's finger-weaving technique. Horvil felt like an ancient relic swinging around his clunky bars of metal, but there was nothing he could do about it.
As the day ebbed away and night fell, Benyamin began to grow impatient. He kept sidling up to Horvil and slipping him urgent Con- fidentialWhispers about the time. "I told the assembly-line manager I'd get this to her by midnight," he said.
"What do you want me to do?" 'Whispered Horvil in return. "It's just not done."
"If the shop doesn't get it by midnight, they can't guarantee they'll finish by Tuesday."
"And if we rush to get it to them by midnight, I can't guarantee it will work on Tuesday." Benyamin quieted down.
Midnight passed, but Quell and Horvil labored on. Ben began popping in and out of the room to make use of the multi facility down the hall.
Once the basic blueprint had been constructed and Probabilities sat loosely tethered to the MultiReal engine, another job awaited the fiefcorpers: security. Sending an assembly-line coding shop the full Possibilities program in all its manifold glory would be an invitation to disaster. Horvil wouldn't take such a risk with even an ordinary bio/logic program; there were too many thieves, cutthroat competitors and black coders who would love to get their hands on commercial source code. So Quell and Horvil spent the early morning hours fastidiously cordoning off enormous chunks of programming, locking out sensitive areas and encrypting the sections that would have to remain open.
By the time they finished, the program would look like any other large-scale project that passed through an assembly-line floor. An economic modeling program, perhaps, or the basic subsystem for an internal organ. No one would be able to tell they were really working on Margaret Surina's famous MultiReal engine.
Quell turned out to be an ideal co-worker. He didn't clog up the grinding gears of Horvil's concentration with a lot of chatter, and what he did say was always concise and to the point. After a few hours, the two dropped nouns and verbs altogether and stuck to the lingua franca of mathematics. The engineer had to admit he was starting to like this Islander. And he could swear the feeling was mutual.
Horvil finally tossed aside the bio/logic programming bars a few minutes shy of six in the morning. They had worked through the night without a single break. He gazed at their handiwork, and then exchanged a silent glance with the Islander. The look was unambiguous. MultiReal isn't ready. It's not going to work. But now they were bumping up against the unstretchable limitations of time, and Benyamin was positively apoplectic. The two engineers sighed and nodded as one; it would have to do. "You ready to take the baton, Ben?" said Horvil, stretching his sore arms above his head.
Benyamin's raven-black hair was in complete disarray from the action of nervous fingers. "I've been keeping the shop up-to-date on our progress," he said. "They're all ready to go. Just give me the word, and I'll get them started."
"Do you think they can do all that barwork in time? That's a big mound of coding, and Natch'11 be onstage in less than forty-eight hours."
"I don't know. I've never had to put them on such a tight deadline."
The engineer's eyes narrowed. "No, Ben, don't tell me you're taking it-there. You can't, are you insane?"
Benyamin cast his eyes to the floor and stuck his hands in his pockets, mirroring one of Horvil's standard poses. "We don't have a choice anymore. I had a couple of assembly-line shops willing to take on the job last night, but now this is the only one. And I had to call in a few favors even to get them on board."
Quell watched the cousins' conversation from the opposite corner of the room, where he had stretched out on the floor. "What's going on?"
Horvil let out a tsk. "He's going to bring MultiReal to my Aunt Berilla's shop-his mother's company."
"One of her companies," corrected Ben. "One of her many companies."
"They do good work, I'll give them that-but it's not like they actually have to compete against anybody. Creed Elan throws them all kinds of softball projects without even soliciting bids. Which isn't any real surprise because Berilla is like this with all the Elan bodhisattvas." He held two chunky fingers together like Siamese twins attached at the hip.
"Don't you get it, Horvil?" Ben replied defensively. "Nobody else'll take on the project this late. We have to use them now."
The Islander shook his head in confusion. "So what's the problem?"
"The problem is that Aunt Berilla absolutely hates Natch with a passion. Don't ask me why. She doesn't want anything to do with him. She doesn't want us to have anything to do with him. If she realizes this is Natch's coding job-if she thinks it'll help Natch in any way-she'll yank it right off the floor. No, even worse, she might actually sabotage the fucking thing."
"She won't find out," Ben insisted. "Really, Horv, this is all under control."
Horvil sighed. "Let's hope so."
They returned to the conference room to find Jara and Merri in the midst of a heated debate. Jara had been up all night weeding through marketing theories for a model to use in the presentation until, desperate, she had asked Merri for help. Since the moment she stepped off the teleportation platform, the channel manager had been slingshotting around the globe to sales meetings with Robby Robby. She hadn't even found the opportunity to change out of the horribly unfashionable gray robe TeleCo made its customers wear during the transfer process. Yet, she had readily agreed to help, a decision she now appeared to regret.
A pack of SeeNaRee hyenas studiously watched the back-and-forth from a safe distance in the brush.
"Tell her we need something simple," said Jara, turning to Horvil as if looking for an ally.
Merri frowned. In a futile effort to stop the trembling, a common side effect of teleportation, she was gripping her thighs hard enough to draw blood. "The Four Phases of Technological Evolution are simple. They're not-"
"Creed propaganda."
"They're not creed propaganda. Just because they're part of Objective doctrine doesn't mean they're not universal. Everyone knows the Four Phases-it's a part of the culture now."
"I've heard people talk about them at Creed Elan," said Benyamin.
"You see? It's really very simple. Observation: humanity distinguishes itself from nature. Exploitation: humanity establishes its dominance over nature. Synergy: humanity learns to become one with nature. Transcendence: humanity surmounts the rules of nature altogether. Take the example of teleportation ..."