"The point is," Robby was saying, "our man Natch is cynical to the core. Are you sure he's okay with this?"
"I've given you access to a whole library of detailed analysis, Robby. You've got an entire history of the Surina name, a list of the Surina clan's accomplishments and inventions, and all those stellar Primo's ratings Natch has been accumulating over the past few years. Robby, this is going to be one of the biggest technological advances the world has ever seen, and Natch wants you with us on the ground floor! Trust me, he can definitely do everything in that script." Merri paused to take a deep breath. She couldn't remember the last time she had been so agitated.
"I'm curious, though," Robby mused with a sly look. "If Natch is so committed to this Surina stuff, how come he didn't show up for the meeting today?" He gestured ever so slightly towards the empty chair at the opposite end of the table.
Merri had been wondering precisely the same thing, but she was not about to tell Robby that. She felt the keen temptation to lie, to slip free from the bonds of her Objectivv oath, if only just this once. Natch had some last-minute coding to finish up. He's doing an interview with Mah Lo Vertiginous right now. He's meeting with Margaret across the courtyard in the Surina residence. Who would be the wiser?
The depths of this game had suddenly become unfathomable to Merri. Even with company allies in a private meeting, messages were being broadcast, challenges made, gauntlets thrown down. What place did Absolute Truth have in this cesspool?
Instead of lying, Merri found herself plastering a WinningGrin 44 on her face. "Robby, you know what a perfectionist Natch is," she said. "How he wants everything done his way, down to the last detail. You know he's going to insist that every last connection strand is absolutely perfect before he goes out on that stage."
Again the placating smile, the fake burst of comprehension. "No doubt!" Robby ejaculated. "So that just leaves us with one more topic."
"Yes?"
"The Council." Merri quickly tossed a PokerFace 83.4b atop the WinningGrin. "They've been-heck, Merri, they've been harassing my boys and girls here." He tilted his head in the direction of his "boys and girls," who all murmured their assent.
Suddenly, Merri felt very tired. "What do you mean by `harassing'?"
"It's just your typical Defense and Wellness Council aggravation," said Robby, sweeping his concerns over one shoulder with a long, bony hand. "Requests to see our permits, people following us around, that kind of thing. Friz here got cited for `walking too close to a tube track' the other day." Friz, the junior channeler, jutted his bottom lip forward and gave his best hangdog look. "Nothing we can't handle, of course. But you know, if we have another one of those infoquakes ..."
Robby Robby let the sentence drift off, but Merri was all too ready to complete it. If we have another one of those infoquakes, the Council might swoop down and take MultiRealfrom us by force. The public might get frightened away from the product altogether. The drudges might start calling for Natch's head. Any way you look at it, it's entirely possible none of us will make a single credit off this crazy enterprise.
Again, Merri found herself stretching the bonds of her oath, reaching for the sweet opiate of prevarication. She adopted her most confident tone of voice and enhanced it with bio/logics. "Robby, nobody knows what's really going to happen out there tomorrowmuch less next week or next month! Your team is going to be put on the spot, and you might have to do a lot of improvising. You'll probably have to endure a few more of those bogus citations from the Council. But Natch is utterly committed to this product. He hasn't just staked our careers on it; he's staked his own. And in the years you've known him, has Natch ever steered you wrong?"
The channeler seemed to be weighing his options for a few excruciating seconds. His eyes flickered on the black-and-white swirl of the Objectivv pin riding her left breast. Finally, Robby dispensed one of his Cheshire cat smiles. The same smile quickly rippled down the table until all two dozen channelers were wearing it. "I gotcha, Merri," said Robby. "You're absolutely right. If this is what Natch wants, this is what Natch gets. We trust in Natch."
I wish I did, Merri said to herself glumly.
Benyamin was experiencing deja vu, but it had nothing to do with any of Natch's bio/logic programs.
He was standing on the balcony overlooking his mother's assembly-line floor where he had stood for most of the past year. Two hundred workbenches lay in a grid below him. He was younger than many of the programmers, and had less coding experience than almost all of them. It felt like nothing had changed in the past few months, like he had never decided to step out from under Berilla's oppressive wing and seek a job in the fiefcorp sector.
As always, Ben listened for some undercurrent of resentment running through the staff. Were they jealous of this kid who had leapfrogged to the management office straight out of initiation? Did they resent the fact that the monthly interest on his trust fund exceeded half their salaries combined? The answer to these questions, it seemed, was still no. If there was any embittered muttering going on here, it was drowned out by the rumble caused by hundreds of clanking bio/logic programming bars. The assembly-line coders were oblivious. Too busy concentrating on tunes from the Jamm and holding Confidential Whisper conversations with distant companions.
"Thirty-one percent done," came a smoky female voice, late forties or early fifties.
Benyamin turned to find Greth Tar Griveth, the woman who had replaced him as floor manager, walking onto the balcony from his old office. Her office now. Ben sensed that the job, which had been a whistle stop on the track to success for him, was more like a post of permanent exile for Greth. She had only been here for six weeks, but she had already adapted the vacant stare, the careless flip of the hand, the bored mid-sentence yawn that had been hallmarks of Ben's seventh and eighth months.
"Only thirty-one percent?" said Ben with a groan. "But we need this done in less than twenty-four hours!"
Greth stood next to him at the railing and let out a weary ffff. "We'll get it done. I think."
"You think?"
"The second shift is coming on now, and they're much quicker than the first. Plus, we just finished up a gig for the Elanners, so we'll have some more coders to put on the job. Look, over there."
Greth Tar Griveth pointed at the rightmost row of programmers, where Ben could see the Surina/Natch templates slipping silently into the production line. One by one, the workers in that quadrant of the floor completed their current projects and watched blue and pink chunks of code pop up in their MindSpace bubbles. Small bricks in the Gothic castle that was the MultiReal engine. Other coders were gazing numbly at pieces of the Probabilities ROD. If any of them suspected they were plugging away at the world's most notorious compendium of bio/logic code, they showed no sign.
Nor did the salty assembly-line floor manager have a clue what program her crew was laboring away on. Ben had made sure that the words Natch, MultiReal and Surina did not escape his lips, and he praised the Fates that his apprenticeship to the Surina/Natch Fiefcorp was not yet common knowledge in Creed Elan circles. Still, he took no chances, and made sure a fat sheaf of credits was sitting in Greth's Vault account to dissuade her from asking questions.
"Here's the real test," said Greth, pointing to a gangly kid in the epicenter of the floor whose workbench could have rivaled Horvil's in sloppiness. "They call that kid The Robot. Arrived just after you left, and already he's leading the floor in output. Never complains, never says much of anything."