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flowchart without
moving for at least an hour. Any minute, she expected the ziggurat to
come crashing down on her in a virtual avalanche of data. And then she
would die here, buried under the weight of Natch's lies.
    If you don't want to be here, Horvil had told her, go home. She thought
about the engineer, sweating inside a MindSpace bubble at the other
end of London. The fact that Horvil was also foregoing sleep was small
consolation to her.
    Shortly after sundown, Jara felt the mental ping of an incoming
multi request. Natch.
    The fiefcorp master emerged from nothingness, gave her a cheerful
wave in greeting, and began scrutinizing the flowchart. Jara hadn't
seen him since this morning's meeting in Shenandoah, and his transformation was truly eerie. Gone was Natch the petulant schoolboy,
seemingly shut off with the touch of a button. In his place stood Natch the slick entrepreneur, Natch the salesman, Natch the emblem of positive thinking.

    "So you think we'll achieve maximum penetration if we start
spreading the rumors tonight," he said with one hand pensively rubbing a chin that may have never known stubble.
    Jara nodded wearily. "I've categorized all our acquaintances on
three axes: credibility, connections, and sphere of influence. Then I've
traced the likely flow of rumor from person to person, and plotted out
the percentage chance the rumors hit critical mass." She pointed to the
pinnacle of the tower, a place of convergence. "I figure we need to start
with our most influential friends tonight and work our way to the
bottom of the list by tomorrow morning."
    "Why not the other way around?"
    "These rumors have to have some foundation before they'll take
hold. One carefully planted source is worth more than a hundred pieces
of idle gossip. That's why I'm going to have Horvil talk to his family
connections at Creed Elan later tonight. How can you get more credible than a creed?"
    Natch began a fast-paced circuit around Jara's apartment, but this
time it was less an obsessive march than a confident strut. "I'm
impressed, Jara," he said. It was the first time he had praised her work
in months. "Why the long face?"
    Jara scowled. "Wouldn't you have a long face if you had just called
your own mother UNTRUSTWORTHY?"
    Her sarcasm ricocheted off him like light off a mirror. "You really
are something, Jara," he said. "I don't know how you manage to stay
so detached through all this. My emotions have been all over the place
the past few weeks. I've been irritable and demanding, I know ... but
that's just because I can't seem to find your level of professionalism. In
fact, Horvil said to me the other day that you're really the glue holding
this fiefcorp together ..."
    On and on it went, and Jara found herself responding to his abject flattery in spite of herself. She had a secret weakness for a handsome
face and a sugary voice, and Natch could be devastating when he
turned on the charm. How does he do that? she cursed silently. Didn't
she know by now that Natch's apologies were never sincere, that the
honeyed words were just another weapon in his arsenal?

    Nevertheless, his strategy worked. Somehow he had discovered her
weakness for praise and exploited it. Jara found herself responding to
the low, erotic pulse Natch stirred up in her-that he could stir up in
anyone, male or female, at his discretion-and hated it. Hated it and
hungered for it like she had never hungered for any of the hundred
sexual satisfaction programs she had tried in the thirty years since initiation.
    Or are you just jealous? she asked herself. He's still in his twenties and
he's ready to take over the world. You're past forty, and you're still working as
an apprentice.
    "We're going to be number one on Primo's tomorrow, Jara, and we
couldn't have done it without you," said Natch with a hand on her
shoulder. It was a firm hand, not inappropriate, but still pregnant with
possibilities. "The capitalmen are going to