David Edelman - Infoquake

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?