Free Multireal by David Louis Edelman Page A

back. The distinct smell of peanut butter drifted through the air.
    "I'm back," agreed the entrepreneur.
    "For real this time, right?" The engineer poked him in the collarbone
with one grubby finger. "Not just another five-minute stop-by in multi?"
    "For real."
    "About time," grumbled a voice from the back of the atrium.
Horvil shuffled aside to reveal his cousin Benyamin, who was rising
from one of the stiff-backed chairs that lined the building's front hall.
"Your apartment won't let us in," he said, stretching his arms up in the
air with fingertips clasped.
    "Well, that's not completely true," said Horvil with a frown.
"Vigal, Jara, and me, we can all override the security just fine. But you
never approved everyone else for emergency access."
    "So we've been stuck working out here," continued Ben.
    "At least the building management was nice about it," said Horvil.
"They could've kicked us out. But they didn't. They even let us drag
the workbench out here once or twice."

    "You can thank her for that." The young apprentice tilted his head
slightly to the left, indicating another roomier chair where the channel
manager, Merri, had taken up residence. Merri struggled to stand, suppressed a yawn, then switched on a stim program to suffuse her with
some energy.
    Natch took in the blonde woman's disheveled dress and the backpack propped slantwise against the leg of an end table. Suddenly he realized that, unlike Benyamin, Merri was here in the flesh and probably
hadn't been home since the demo at Andra Pradesh. "Why are you still
here?" Natch asked incredulously. "Why didn't you go back home?"
    Merri shrugged with embarrassment. "I know how expensive it is to
teleport to Luna," she said. "It's just not worth wasting the company's
money. And I'm not up to one of those long shuttle rides right now."
    "Someone else would've put you up. Horvil's Aunt Berilla has a
fancy estate in London. They must have a thousand spare bedrooms."
    "It's not a big deal, Natch. The local Creed Objectivv hostel works
just fine."
    "But you've got a companion on Luna," Benyamin retorted. "Bonneth needs you, you said. She can barely get across the apartment by
herself-"
    "Bonneth," said Merri with an air of tired finality, "will be fine."
Natch sensed undercurrents of tension between the two fiefcorpers, but
decided this was something he could deal with another time. He shook
his head, stepped around the pleasantly befuddled Horvil, and strode
down the hall to his apartment with three apprentices in tow.
    Jara seemed to have anticipated Natch's arrival before he even made
it in the door. The tiny fiefcorp analyst was perched on the arm of
Natch's sofa, contemplating an ornate holographic calendar floating in
midair. "We need to talk scheduling, Natch," she announced without
even looking up, as if continuing a conversation already in progress.
    The fiefcorp master paused a moment and let the comfortable trappings of home flood his senses: the windows showing bar charts of the bio/logic markets, the workbench in his office with a trapezoidal structure bobbing above it in MindSpace, the sprightly patch of daisies in
the apartment's precise geometric center. A cup of tea on the kitchen
counter gave mute testimony to Serr Vigal's presence. "Where's
Vigal?" asked Natch.

    "Here I am," came the voice of the neural programmer as he wandered in from the balcony. Natch thought he spotted a few more gray
hairs in his old guardian's goatee and an unusual amount of concern
written on his wrinkled forehead. Serr Vigal surprised the both of them
by taking Natch into a tight embrace.
    "I'm glad you're back," mumbled Vigal.
    "Me too," said Natch.
    The moment was brief. There would be plenty of time later for
sentimentality; right now Natch had business to attend to. He stepped
free of the neural programmer's arms and began his normal hectic pace
around the living room. Benyamin and Horvil hustled to find seats.
"Everybody here?