David Edelman - Infoquake

"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.