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Data Sea ramblings from the window and let the redwoods show through once
more.
    Yes, Natch's clever MindSpace tricks had enabled him to reverse
the tide of public opinion, if only for a day or two. Even the staunch
governmentalist Mah Lo Vertiginous was grudgingly admitting that
the Council had blundered today. Borda and Lee would not dare pull
another stunt like that anytime soon.
    Natch caught his reflection in the window. So why are you still sitting on a tube train heading in the wrong direction? he asked himself. Why
didn't you get off at the last stop and make your way home?
    He conjured a picture of the city of Shenandoah in his head. Home.
But when he saw those undulating streets and shifting buildings, all
he could think about was the mercenary precision of the black-robed
figures who had ambushed him there. He could still feel the pinpricks
of their black code darts and the icy rush of poisonous OCHREs suffusing his bloodstream. The void, the nothingness.
    Natch stumbled upon an unexpected realization: he was afraid.
    You find yourself capable of strange things when you run out of choices,
Margaret Surina had told him last month.
    Now Natch understood what the bodhisattva meant. For three
weeks, he had been fleeing from the Council, catching the occasional
update from Horvil or Serr Vigal over ConfidentialWhisper, taking
quick glimpses at the evolving Possibilities program whenever he
found a rented MindSpace workbench he could trust. Nobody had
heard a syllable from Margaret in all that time. Nor had the Patel
Brothers stirred from their lair to stop Lucas Sentinel and Bolliwar
Tuban from thrashing them in the Primo's ratings.
    And what about Brone? Natch blacked out the window and
displayed the message he had received the other day in small, precise
lettering.

    Why is the vaunted master of the Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp running away? What does he think he will gain by fleeing from tube train to
tube train? Does he think his enemies are just going to up and disappear?
    How long before he realizes he needs additional allies to complete the
MultiReal programming and bring the program to market? When will he
finally accept the helping hand that an old enemy has held out to him?
When will his need for funding, equipment, privacy, and security outweigh
the irrational hatred he carries around his neck?
    There was no trace of a sender or signature. Natch supposed he
could use some arcane tools of the trade to track down the message's
origin, but of course there was only one person who could have sent it.
    A snippet of dream floated through Natch's head: a bear, screams,
the bloody stump of an arm. Where was Brone? What was he doing?
Certainly after all that had happened during the Shortest Initiation,
after all the machinations Brone had gone through to put Natch in his
debt, he wasn't planning to just sit on the sidelines. After all, he was
the head of a major creed organization, the Thasselians, with vast
stockpiles of credits and half a million anonymous devotees at his disposal. Opportunities for mischief were plentiful.
    It was a time of suspended animation, of delayed choices. And now
Natch's ruse against Magan Kai Lee had set things in motion once
again.
    You've faced challenges before, Natch told himself. Brone, Captain Bolbund, the ROD coders, Figaro Fi, the Patels. What's different? What are you
so afraid of now?
    It was the black code swimming through his veins. Somehow it
had aged him in a way that none of his adversaries had managed to do
before. He could practically feel it tinkering away inside of him,
deconstructing his innards, disassembling his mind. Every day, Natch
sensed that he was losing a small piece of this inner turf to the
encroaching void, to the winter, to the nothingness.

    The nothingness was coming to claim him. And Natch knew that
all the battles he had fought before were merely the opening skirmishes of a much larger campaign against this