9
Jara’s grandfather Herschel had been a small man. He had only stood a hundred and sixty centimeters tall, even if you measured from the soles of his feet to the peak of his mountainous hair. But he had died when Jara was still a year shy of puberty, so he had always seemed like a giant to her.
Few of his business colleagues had shared that estimation. Long-suffering Herschel had made a hardscrabble living as a freelance accountant, balancing (and occasionally cooking) books for the unscrupulous, for companies who wobbled on the brink for the entirety of their brief and miserable existences. The little man had done his job uncomplainingly if unenthusiastically.
But when he sat in front of a chess board, the giant would emerge.
Jara had gotten her parents’ permission to accompany Herschel to one of the grand tourneys on 49th Heaven when she was eight years old. Or, more accurately, she had stowed away on his hoverbird and Herschel had pretended not to discover her presence until it was too late to turn back. Watching her grandfather demolish players twice his size in match after match was one of the great memories of her childhood. He had never seemed to waver or lose his temper, no matter how far he had been pushed into a corner. More often than not, the retreat to the corner had been nothing more than a feint, a multidimensional strategy, and Jara would experience the extreme pleasure of seeing Herschel swoop out of nowhere and checkmate an opponent with a few deft moves. Witnessing the sudden transformation of smug and overconfident players into sweating nailbiters had been more of an education than anything in her hive curriculum. Jara’s grandfather had emerged from that tournament among the top hundred players in the world, with a nice pot of winnings that he had quickly blown on gifts for friends and family.
Jara had asked what his secret was over breakfast one morning.
It’s all a question of knowing what to sacrifice, Herschel had told her. You know what I’m talking about?
Jara had built up a reservoir of jam on one side of her plate, then carefully dunked a crepe into the deep end. I guess. Is it like that saying where you lose the battle but win the war?
Sure, her grandfather had replied. Sometimes you’ve got to let the enemy take your knight in order to save your queen. But it’s bigger than that. Sometimes you don’t just have to lose the battle—sometimes you have to lose the whole war in order to get across the point you were trying to make in the first place. Y’know, Jar, sometimes you even have to give up the point you were trying to make if you want to win the biggest game of all.
What’s that?
Life. Herschel had stabbed his fork across the table and speared a chunk of jam-drenched crepe from Jara's plate, then popped it into his mouth with a wink and a smile.
The girl had solemnly chewed upon her grandfather’s words for a while. So how do you know when to win and when to lose?
You just have to figure out what’s important to you, Herschel had said. Do that, and you’re golden. Win, lose, it’s all the same.
Jara felt like this was a particularly apropos lesson for her to remember today, as she sat in the den of the official West London Grandmasters’ League and watched some teenage girl parcel out her ass and hand it to her, move by move, piece by piece. Jara’s bishops were the first to go, followed by both knights and then—agonizingly—her queen. Meanwhile all she had managed to capture was a rook, a bishop and a handful of pawns.
The fiefcorp master wasn’t entirely sure why she had decided to join the Grandmasters’ League in the first place. Like so many of the bizarre things she had tried lately—the visits to esoteric creeds, the sexual exploration on the Sigh, the excruciating sessions of “gong therapy”—this suggestion had come from her fellow fiefcorper Merri. The weeks on the Sigh hadn’t turned out too well; Jara had almost succeeded in forgetting the name of the sandy-haired dimwit who had served as a Natch surrogate in her bed for a few weeks. She had decided that an intellectual challenge was more her speed, something that would keep her mind racing while at the same time distract her from the frustrations of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp.
So, chess.
Jara had begun two weeks ago a surprisingly lousy player. Apparently, skill in chess was neither genetic, nor did it transfer by osmosis. She had endured humiliating defeat after humiliating defeat, trying to keep her grandfather Herschel’s words close at hand.
You just have to figure out what’s important to you. Do that, and you’re golden. Win, lose, it’s all the same.
Only now, two weeks into her chess odyssey, was Jara beginning to see the truth to that advice. The stringy-haired girl across the table was busy eliminating the last defenses around Jara’s king. But suddenly the fiefcorp master noticed that her opponent was still zealously guarding her queen, beyond the point of good strategy or even rationality. This was something she could use in the future, and she would not have discovered it if she had managed to eke out a victory. This was her key to winning the next match with this young upstart, and the next one, and maybe the next one after that.
Jara handed over her king with a nod and a smile.
* * *
She left the clubhouse of the West London Grandmasters’ League and quickly found herself surrounded by drudges, in much the same way her king had been surrounded on the chess board by pawns.
“Towards Perfection!” said John Ridglee, merging smoothly into step beside the fiefcorp master. His fingers danced across a crisp black van dyke that might have taken him two hours to groom. “Nice day for a stroll, isn’t it?”
“It was,” replied Jara, eyeing Ridglee’s competitor Sen Sivv Sor, who was flanking her other side. With his shock of white hair and angry red birthmark on his forehead, he might have been the yin to Ridglee’s yang. Or the Tweedledee to his Tweedledum, thought Jara sourly.
“Interest you in a cup of chai?” said Sor.
“You’re buying?” said Jara.
“Of course.”
The fiefcorp master shrugged. “All right then.”
There had to be some urgency to Ridglee and Sor’s mission if it had inspired the hated rivals to join forces. A few scant weeks ago, she would have bolted at the sight of either one, possibly stopping to deliver a kick to the crotch first. There had been so many inquisitive media types hounding the fiefcorp then that Jara had been able to use them as a shield from the Defense and Wellness Council. But that was aeons ago, back when the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp was a real, functioning company. The drudge attention had all dissipated when Natch disappeared. Now she could stroll around London at her leisure without being accosted by a single frenzied drudge or menacing figure dressed in the white robe and yellow star.
Meanwhile, the company name had become something of a joke: Margaret Surina was dead, Natch had turned phantom, and MultiReal had evaporated with him. All the fiefcorp had left was a handful of bad bio/logic products they had purchased from Lucas Sentinel, and a lawsuit against them by the Surina family which was already growing so tangled and pointless it verged on the Kafkaesque.
Perhaps if both John Ridglee and Sen Sivv Sor were seeking her attention, there might be some news worth hearing. Maybe even some news about—
“Natch,” said Ridglee five minutes later, sliding a steaming mug of chai across the table at the local pub.
Jara wafted the cinnamon towards her face and inhaled deeply. “What about him?”
“Have you seen him?”
“No. You?” The fiefcorp master lifted the mug with two hands and sipped delicately. “John, you asked me the same thing last week and the week before. What makes you think anything’s changed?”
“Come on, Jara,” said Sor, “we all know that Natch hasn’t had an unchoreographed moment his whole life. You expect us to believe he didn’t plan that circus at the Tul Jabbor Complex?”
Jara frowned. It was truly bizarre how much cachet Natch’s name had acquired during his absence. It was only a month ago that drudges like Sor and Ridglee were ranting about Natch’s shady business tactics and accusing him of murdering Margaret Surina. Now, it seemed, Natch had become some sort of demigod. Suddenly he was the man who had topped the Primo’s bio/logic investment guide faster than anyone in history, the man who had taken on the Patel Brothers and the Defense and Wellness Council, the man who had shrugged off an assassination attempt by Len Borda and disappeared right under the noses of a billion spectators. The drudges were starting to spout phrases like as cunning as Natch and a problem only Natch could solve, which made Jara want to retch.
“Sen,” said Jara, “you really think Natch planned that attack at the Tul Jabbor Complex? Boy, he must really be a masochist. Go ahead, tell me why he would possibly goad the Council into trying to murder him.”
“You know why,” said Ridglee, his voice hinting at a friendly familiarity that he and Jara didn’t share.
The fiefcorp master caught the attention of the woman behind the counter, mouthed the word scone, and pointed to the tabletop. “No. In fact, I don’t know why at all.”
Sen Sivv Sor gave a furtive look around at the bar patrons who couldn’t have been paying less attention. He opened a ConfidentialWhisper channel. “The lawsuit,” he said, using a melodramatic stage whisper even over silent mental chat.
Jara laughed, barely refraining herself from spraying the drudge with a mouthful of chai. “Suheil and Jayze Surina’s lawsuit?” she said aloud, making no effort to modulate her voice. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely,” replied the drudge, unfazed by her ridicule.
“Sen, they just want money. You’ve met those two, haven’t you? The only reason Jayze is trying to recover the funds that Margaret poured into the company is because she’s vindictive. And Suheil is just playing along because he has no spine.” The scone arrived. Jara smiled at the waitress and pointed in Sen Sivv Sor’s direction to indicate that he’d be handling the bill. “Natch doesn’t care about money. He wouldn’t pay any attention to this dumb lawsuit, even if he was still running the company.”
“Ah, but this lawsuit isn’t really about money, is it?” interjected Ridglee, leaning forward over the table for emphasis. “It’s about”—he repeated Sor’s conspiratorial glance at the surrounds, and tried to switch the conversation back to ConfidentialWhisper—“MultiReal.”
“We don’t have access to MultiReal anymore,” replied Jara in her natural voice, refusing to follow the drudge’s lead. “Natch ran off with the databases. The Surinas know that, and so do you. Even if we did know where to find MultiReal, it’s been seized by the Prime Committee.” She dug into the pastry on the plate in front of her. Dry. Flaky. Good.
Ridglee and Sor shared a look that hinted at a list of confidential sources being exchanged and compared. As Jara polished off her scone, the knowing glimmer in their eyes only seemed to increase. The fiefcorp master felt the first twitches of doubt.
“Try this on for size,” said Ridglee over the silent channel, sitting back in his seat and folding his arms brashly across his chest. “Natch stages a disappearance at the Tul Jabbor Complex to draw Len Borda off his scent.”
“To draw everybody off his scent,” put in Sor.
“He lets the Surinas proceed with their trial and build up a big head of steam. He waits until they’re at the very edge of victory. Then he shows up as a surprise witness after the Surinas have rested their case with a ton of exculpatory evidence. The court rules in the fiefcorp’s favor, establishing a legal precedent. So when Magan Kai Lee finally overthrows Len Borda—”
Jara made a dismissive noise under her breath. “That’s a big leap.”
“—Natch is in a good position to appeal the Prime Committee’s ruling. Once Borda’s gone, the Committee won’t be under the high executive’s thumb anymore. They might reverse their decision to seize MultiReal. That leaves Natch as the sole supplier in the marketplace of MultiReal products.” John Ridglee gave a self-satisfied nod in Sor’s direction, which Sor echoed right back. “So what do you think?”
The fiefcorp master lifted her cup of chai and slurped the last few centimeters down. Then she placed the cup firmly on the table and stood. “I think you owe the pub twenty-five Vault credits,” she said. “Towards Perfection, gentlemen.”
* * *
“Do you want to know the most annoying part?” said Jara.
Horvil chose to ignore her and concentrate on his dive instead. He stood at the edge of the platform in a plaid robe, loosely sashed, with his hands over his head and fingertips pressed together. He counted to three and made a surprisingly graceful leap off the side. Jara propped herself up on one elbow and watched as Horvil did a pair of loop-de-loops through the air beneath the transparent platform. He landed on the opposite edge, did a tuck-and-roll, and flopped down beside her on the pile of cushions. “No,” he said. “What is the most annoying part?”
Jara knew that the engineer was angling for a laugh, or at the very least, a playful look of exasperation. She gave him a half-smile instead and pressed on with the conversation. “It’s the way the drudges treat Natch like some kind of miracle worker. When Natch was around, they couldn’t stop pointing out what a monster he was. Now that he’s gone, they fawn over him like he’s Sheldon Surina.”
Horvil grinned and lay back with his hands behind his head. “Natch did do a good job of manipulating everyone for a few months,” he said.
“Of course. But the drudges can’t even conceive of the idea that someone might have finally gotten the better of him. You should have heard Ridglee. Natch stages a disappearance at the Tul Jabbor Complex to draw Len Borda off his scent.” She puffed herself up and stroked an imaginary goatee in caricature. “Like Natch is capable of just snapping his fingers and rearranging the world.”
The engineer shrugged and put one arm over her shoulder. Jara wondered fleetingly if she had offended him. Horvil wasn’t the type to take offense easily—but then again, they were talking about Natch, his oldest and best friend. Even when Natch had threatened Horvil’s career a month ago, Horvil had had nothing but excuses for the entrepreneur’s behavior.
“Do you think that Ridglee and Sor might be on to something?” asked Horvil.
“Come on, Natch can’t just stage manage Len Borda like—”
“No, no, forget about Natch for a second. I’m talking about the lawsuit. This isn’t the first strange thing we’ve seen with this case.”
“You mean the Pharisee?”
Horvil made a noncommittal sound, but Jara could tell she had struck home. She had only met two or three Pharisees her entire life, even through the whole MultiReal experience. But now some representative of the Pharisee tribes had evidently taken an interest in the case. He had attended every day of the preliminaries so far, sitting in the back of the chamber like a shaggy harbinger of doom. He was a bulky man, almost Horvilesque, this representative of the unconnectible tribes living beyond the edges of civilization. But unlike Horvil, who bore such an air of humor and civility that he threatened no one, this Pharisee was a cipher. His body language betrayed nothing. He simply sat in his seat and stared for hours from beneath his tremendous curly hair and beard, tugging irritably at the connectible collar that the Prime Committee mandated he wear in public. It was unnerving.
“Yeah, there’s the Pharisee,” said Horvil. “But that’s not the only odd thing about this lawsuit. Jayze and Suheil have been acting strange too. Did you see the way that their legal team suddenly doubled in size overnight?”
Jara nodded. “Then there are all those Council officers marching in front of the building day and night.”
“Listen, Jara. Ridglee and Sor might be idiots—but you can’t deny they’ve got sources. Lots of sources. They didn’t come up with this idea on their own. Somebody put this bug in their ears.”
“So what do you think is going on?”
Horvil had no answer.
The fiefcorp master lay back against Horvil’s collarbone and tried to fit the pieces together in her head. Some of the oddity could be attributed to the aura of chaos that surrounded everything the Surina clan touched. Undoubtedly people were curious how Jayze and Suheil were going to run the family’s affairs now that Margaret had passed on. People were curious how long their uneasy truce would hold. Yet that didn’t explain the presence of factors beyond the Surinas’ sphere of influence: the Council, the Pharisee, the drudges.
“It feels like I’ve stumbled into one of my grandfather’s chess games,” said Jara. “I’m standing there on the board watching the players execute all these complicated strategies. But I can’t even figure out who’s playing. There are higher powers out there trying to change the outcome of this stupid lawsuit. Why? For a pile of money and the title to a program that’s technically already been seized by the government. So who are these higher powers? And should I be fighting them, or helping them?”
“There’s only one thing to do,” announced Horvil somberly.
“What’s that?”
The engineer burst into a goofy grin. “Forget about it for another half hour, and spend more money on the Sigh.” He flicked his fingers into the air, causing an enormous text box to appear before them. Choose an Environment, said the box. Horvil tapped the drop-down arrow, causing the list to scroll through thousands of absurdly named Sigh environments at ludicrous speed.
Jara suppressed a giggle. Only Horvil could find his libido roused by a discussion about chess. But maybe he was right; angsting about the problem without any data was only likely to produce more angst.
She turned her attention to the list of virtual environments. Remarkable how much fun the Sigh could be if you had a tender and creative partner. For Horvil and Jara, sex could be awkward in the world of flesh and bone. Even though the engineer had taken off almost ten kilograms in the past two months, he was still twice her size. But here on the Sigh, Jara could be a hundred meters tall if she wanted. She could be the pop star Jeannie Q. Christina or a porpoise or a swarm of bees, for that matter.
“How about this one?” said Jara, holding her finger over the list. “ ‘Floating Tapestry of Love’.” The listing burst into mock Arabic script as she pointed to it.
“Hmm,” replied Horvil. “I had my eye on ‘A Rut in the Mud’.”
“Or maybe ‘Romance in Durango’.”
“What about ‘Fawning Slave Girls of the Sultan’?”
“ ‘The Princess and Her Squire’.”
“ ‘Contortionist Whores of 49th Heaven’.”
“ ‘Aquatic Erotic Adventure’.”
“ ‘Vat of Baked Beans’.”
“Horvil, we are not going to have sex in a virtual environment called ‘Vat of Baked Beans’. It’s just not going to happen.”
“Okay, then what about ‘Chocolate Waterfall’…?”
In the end, they decided to do what they always did: let the shifting currents of the Data Sea choose an environment at random. They ended up floating on a cloud of metallic pixie dust while Valkyries did battle with tridents and spears all around them. No matter. Within seconds, their eyes were focused squarely on each other, and the outside world was safely forgotten.