by Vernor Vinge
Vaz stayed behind, finishing his drink. It was amazing how fast his table space shrank, accommodating a family of North African tourists. Alfred was used to virtual artifacts changing in a blink of the eye, but a clever restaurateur could do almost as well with physical reality when there was money involved.
In all Europe, Barcelona was the city Alfred loved the most. The Rabbit was right about this city. But was there time to be a real tourist? Yes. Call it his annual vacation. Alfred stood and bowed to the table, leaving payment and tip. Out on the street, the crowds were getting rather extreme, the stilt people dancing wildly about among the tourists. He couldn’t see the entrance of the Sagrada Familia directly, but tourism info showed the next certain tour slot was ninety minutes away.
Where to spend his time? Ah! Atop Montjuïc. He turned down an alley. Where he emerged on the far side, the crowds were thin…and a tourist auto was just arriving for him. Alfred sat back in the single passenger cockpit and let his mind roam. The Montjuïc fortress was not the most impressive in Europe, and yet he had not seen it in some time. Like its brethren, it marked the bygone time when revolutions in destruction technology took decades to unfold, and mass murder could not be committed with the press of a button.
The auto navigated its way out from the octagonal city blocks of the Barcelona basin and ran quickly up a hillside, grabbing the latch of a funicular that dragged them swiftly up the side of Montjuïc. No tedious switchback roadway for this piece of automation. Behind him, the city stretched for miles. And then ahead, as they came over the crest of the hill, there was the Mediterranean, all blue and hazy and peaceful.
Alfred got out, and the tiny auto whipped around the traffic circle, heading for the cable-car installation that would take its next customer in an overflight across the harbor.
He was at just the spot he had ordered on the tourist menu, right where twentieth-century guns faced out from the battlements. Even though these cannon had never been used, they were very much the real thing. For a fee, he could touch the guns and climb around inside the place. After sundown there would be a staged battle.
Vaz strolled to the stone barrier and looked down. If he blocked out all the tourism fantasy, he could see the freight harbor almost two hundred meters below and a kilometer away. The place was an immensity of freight containers rambling this way and that, chaos. If he invoked his government powers, he could see the flow of cargo, even see the security certificates that proclaimed—in ways that were validated by a combination of physical and cryptographic security—that none of the ten-meter boxes contained a nuke or a plague or a garden-variety radiation bomb. The system was very good, the same as you would find for heavy freight anywhere in the civilized world. It had been the result of decades of fear, of changing attitudes about privacy and liberty, of technological progress. Modern security actually worked most of the time. There hadn’t been a city lost in more than five years. Every year, the civilized world grew and the reach of lawlessness and poverty shrank. Many people thought that the world was becoming a safer place.
Keiko and Günberk—and certainly Alfred—knew that such optimism was dead wrong.
Alfred looked across the harbor at the towers beyond. Those hadn’t been here the last time he visited Barcelona. The civilized world was wealthy beyond the dreams of his youth. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, the rulers of modern states realized that success did not come from having the largest armies or the most favorable tariffs or the most natural resources—or even the most advanced industries. In the modern world, success came from having the largest possible educated population and providing those hundreds of millions of creative people with credible freedom.
But this utopia was a Red Queen’s Race with extinction.
In the twentieth century, only a couple of nations had the power to destroy the world. The human race survived, mostly by good luck. At the turn of the century, a time was in view when dozens of countries could destroy civilization. But by then, the Great Powers had a certain amount of good sense. No nation-state could be nuts enough to blow up the world—and the few barbaric exceptions were Dealt With, if necessary with methods that left land aglow in the dark. By the teens, mass death technology was accessible to regional and racial hate groups. Through a succession of happy miracles—some engineered by Alfred himself—the legitimate grievances of disaffected peoples were truly addressed.
Nowadays, Grand Terror technology was so cheap that cults and small criminal gangs could acquire it. That was where Keiko Mitsuri was the greatest expert. Even though her work was hidden by cover stories and planted lies, Keiko had saved millions of lives.
The Red Queen’s Race continued. In all innocence, the marvelous creativity of humankind continued to generate unintended consequences. There were a dozen research trends that could ultimately put world-killer weapons into the hands of anyone having a bad hair day.
Alfred walked back to the nearest cannon, paying the touch fee with a wave of his hand. He leaned against the warm metal, sighting out over the blue mediterranean haze, and imagining a simpler time.
Poor Günberk. He had the truth exactly backwards. Effective YGBM would not be the end of everything. In the right hands, YGBM technology was the one thing that could solve the modern paradox, harnessing the creativity of humankind without destroying the world in the process. In fact, it was humankind’s only hope for surviving the twenty-first century. And in San Diego, I am so close to success. He had insinuated his project into the bio labs three years earlier. The great breakthrough had come less than a year ago. His test at the soccer match had proven the delivery system. In another year or so, he’d have developed higher semantic controls. With that, he could reliably control those immediately around him. Much more important, he could spread the new infection across whole populations and engineer a few universally viewed transmissions. Then he would be in control. For the first time in history, the world would be under adult supervision.
That had been the plan. Now incredibly bad luck had jeopardized it. But I should look at the bright side; Günberk came to me to fix the problem! Alfred had spent a lot of effort digging up “Mr. Rabbit.” The fellow was clearly inexperienced, and every bit the egotistical fool that Günberk believed. Rabbit’s successes were just barely impressive enough to make him acceptable. They could manage Rabbit. I can manage Rabbit. From inside the labs, Alfred would feed the Rabbit just the right misinformation. In the end neither Rabbit nor Alfred’s colleagues in the Indo-European Alliance would realize they had been fooled. And afterward, Alfred could continue undisturbed with what might well be the last, best chance for saving the world.
Alfred climbed into the gun turret and admired the fittings. The Barcelona tourist commission had spent some real money on rebuilding these artifacts. If their mock battle this evening meshed with this physical reality, it would be very impressive. He glanced at his Mumbai schedule—and decided to stay in Barcelona a few more hours.
02
THE RETURN
Robert Gu should be dead. He knew that, he truly did. He had been a long time dying. He wasn’t really clear on how long. In this unending present, he could see only blurs. But that didn’t matter, since Lena had turned the lights down so low that there was nothing to see. And the sounds: for a while he had worn things in his ears, but they were devilishly complicated and always getting lost or worn out. Getting rid of them had been a blessing. What sounds remained were vague mumblings, sometimes Lena complaining at him, pushing and poking. Following him into the john, for God’s sake. All he really wanted was to go home. Lena wouldn’t let him do that simple thing. If it really was Lena at all. Whoever, she wasn’t very nice. I just want to go home…
AND YET, HE never did quite die. The lights were often brighter now, though blurry as ever. There were people around and voices, the high-pitched tones he remembered from home. They talked as if they expected to be understood.
Things had been better before, when everything was a mumbling blur. Now he hurt all
over. There were long drives to see the doctor, and afterward the pain was always worse. There was some guy who claimed to be his son, and claimed that wherever he was now was home. Sometimes they rolled him outside to feel the bright sun on his face and listen to the birds. No way was this home. Robert Gu remembered home. There had been snow on big mountains he could see from his folks’ backyard. Bishop, California, U.S.A. That was the place, and this wasn’t it.
But even though this wasn’t home, his little sister was here. Cara Gu had been around before, when things were dark and mumbling, but she’d always been just out of sight. This was different. At first he was just aware of her high, piping voice, like the wind bells his mother kept on the porch at home. Finally, one day he was out on the patio, feeling the sunlight brighter and warmer than it had seemed in a long time. Even the blurs were sharp and colorful. There was Cara’s high little voice asking him “Robert this” and “Robert that” and—
“Robert, would you like it if I showed you around the neighborhood?”
“What?” Robert’s tongue felt all sticky, his voice hoarse. It suddenly occurred to him that with all the mumbling and darkness maybe he hadn’t spoken in some time. And there was something else that that was even more strange. “Who are you?”
There was silence for a moment, as if the question were foolish or had been asked many times before. “Robert, I’m Miri. I’m your grand—”
He jerked his hand as much as it would move. “Come closer. I can’t see you.”
The blur moved directly in front of him, into the middle of the sunlight. This was not some hint of presence behind his shoulder or in his memory. The blur became a face just inches from his own: he could see the straight black hair, the small round countenance smiling at him as if he were the greatest guy in the world. It really was his little sister.
Robert reached forward, and her hand was warm in his. “Oh, Cara. It’s so good to see you.” He wasn’t home, but maybe he was close. He was quiet for a moment.
“I’m…I’m glad to see you, too, Robert. Would you like to go for a ride around the neighborhood?”
“…Yes, that would be nice.”
Things happened fast then. Cara did something and his chair seemed to spin around. It was dark and gloomy again. They were inside the house and she was fussing like she always did, this time getting him a hat. She still teased though, as in asking him if he needed to go to the bathroom. Robert sensed that the thug who claimed to be his son was lurking just to one side, watching it all.
And then they were out—what, the front door?—and onto a street. Cara stayed beside his wheelchair as they strolled and rolled down an empty street lined with tall, thin trees…palm trees, that’s what they were. This wasn’t Bishop. But this was Cara Gu—though on her very best behavior. Little Cara was a good kid, but she could only be good for so long and then she would find some devilish tease and have him chasing her all over the house, or vice versa. Robert smiled to himself and wondered how long the angelic phase would last this time. Maybe she thought he was sick. He tried unsuccessfully to turn in his chair. Well, maybe he was sick.
“See, we live on Honor Court. Over there, that’s the Smithsons’ house. They transferred here from Guam last month. Bob thinks they’re growing five—oops, but I’m not supposed to talk about that. And the boyfriend of the base commander lives in that house by the corner. I’m betting they’ll be married by the end of the year…And there are some kids from school I don’t want to talk to just now.” Robert’s wheelchair took an abrupt turn, and they were heading down a side street.
“Hey!” Robert tried again to turn in his chair. Maybe those kids were friends of his! Cara was teasing after all. He slumped down in the chair. There was the smell of honey. Bushes seemed to hang low above them. The houses were gray and greenish blurs. “Some tour!” he groused. “I can’t see a Dam Ned thing.”
The wheelchair abruptly slowed. “Really?” The little wretch was all but chortling. “Don’t worry, Robert! There’s some devious twiddling that can fix your eyes.”
Grump. “A pair of glasses would fix them, Cara.” Maybe she was hiding them from him.
There was something about the brightness and the dry wind that swept these streets—wherever this was. It made him wonder what he was doing tied down to a wheelchair. They toured around a couple more blocks. Cara fussed endlessly over him. “Are you too warm, Robert? Maybe you don’t need that blanket.” “The sun is going to burn your head, Robert. Let me tilt your cap down a little bit.” At one point there were no houses. It seemed that they were on the edge of a long slope. Cara claimed they were looking off toward the mountains—but all Robert could see was a hazy line of tan and faded ochre. They were nothing like the mountains that shouldered into the sky above Bishop, California, U.S.A.
Then they were back indoors, in the house they had started from. Things were as dark and gloomy as ever, the room lights swallowed up in darkness. Cara’s bright voice was gone. She was off to study for her classes, she said. No classes for Robert. The thug was feeding him. He still claimed to be Robert’s son. But he was so big. Afterward there was another ignominious potty stop, more like a police interrogation than a trip to the can. And then Robert was left mercifully alone, in the darkness. These people didn’t even have television. There was just the silence, and the dim and faraway electric lights.
I should be sleepy. He had a vague memory of nights fading off into nights fading off into years, of drowsing sleep that came right after dinner. And then later waking, walking through strange rooms and trying to find home. Arguing with Lena. Tonight was…different. He was still awake. Tonight he was thinking of things that had just happened. Maybe that was because he had made it partway home. Cara. So he hadn’t found his folks’ house on Crombie Street and the bedroom that looked out on the old pine tree and the little cabin he had built in its branches. But Cara was part of all that, and she was here. He sat for a long time, his thoughts slowly crunching forward. Across the room, a single lamp was kind of a whirlpool in the darkness. Barely visible, the thug was sitting by the wall. He was talking to someone, but Robert couldn’t see who.
Robert ignored the guy, and thought hard. After a while he remembered something very scary. Cara Gu had died in 2006. They hadn’t said a word to each other for years before that.
And when she died, Cara had been fifty-one years old.
WEST FALLBROOK HAD been a handy place in the early years of the century. Busy too. Right next to Camp Pendleton, it had been the base’s largest civilian community. A new generation of marines had grown up here…and prosecuted a new generation of war. Robert Gu, Jr., had seen the tail end of that frenzy, arriving at a time when Chinese-American officers were welcomed back to positions of trust. Those had been high and bittersweet days.
Now the town was bigger, but the marines weren’t nearly such a large part of it. Military life had become a lot more complicated. Between little bits of war, Lieutenant Colonel Gu found that West Fallbrook was a nice place to raise a daughter.
“I still think it’s a mistake for Miri to call him ‘Robert.’”
Alice Gu looked up from her work. “We’ve been over this before, dear. It’s how we’ve brought her up. We’re ‘Bob’ and ‘Alice,’ not ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’ or whatever silliness is currently approved. And Robert is ‘Robert,’ not ‘Grandpapa.’” Colonel Alice Gong Gu was short and round-faced and—when she wasn’t deadly stressed—motherly. She had graduated numero uno from Annapolis, back when being short and round-faced and motherly were definite career minuses. She’d be a general officer by now except that higher authority had discovered more productive and dangerous work for her. That accounted for some of her kookie ideas. But not this one; she had always insisted that Miri address her parents as if they were all just pals.
“Hey, Alice, I’ve never minded that Miri calls us by our first names. There’ll come a time when besides loving us, the Little General will also be our peer, maybe our boss. But this is just co
nfusing my old man—” Bob jerked a thumb at where Robert Senior sat, half slumped and staring. “Play back the way Dad was acting this afternoon. See how he lit up. He thinks Miri is my aunt Cara, when they were little kids!”
Alice didn’t answer right away. Where she was, it was midmorning. Sunlight glittered off the harbor behind her. She was running support for the U.S. delegation in Jakarta. Indonesia was joining the Indo-European Alliance. Japan was already a member of that bizarrely named club. The joke was that the “Indo-Europeans” would soon have the world surrounded. There was a time when China and the U.S.A. would not have taken that as a joke. But the world had changed. Both China and the U.S. were relieved by the development. It left them with more time to worry about real problems.
Alice’s eyes flickered this way and that as she nodded at an introduction, laughed at some witty comment. She walked a short distance with a couple of self-important types, chattering all the while in Bahasa and Mandarin and Goodenuf English, of which only the English was intelligible to Bob. Then she was alone again. She leaned a little toward him, and gave him a big grin. “Well that sounds like a good thing!” she said. “Your father has been beyond all rational discourse for how many years? And now suddenly he’s engaged enough to have a good time. You should be thrilled. From here, he’ll only get better. You’ll have your father back!”
“…Yes.” Yesterday, he’d said goodbye to the last of the in-home caregivers. Dad should improve very fast now. The only reason he was still in a wheelchair was that the docs wanted to make sure his bone regeneration was complete before they let him loose in the neighborhood.
She saw the expression on his face, and cocked her head to one side. “Are you chicken?”
He glanced at his father. The Paraguay operation was just a few weeks away. A covert op at the edge of the world. The prospect was coming to seem almost attractive. “Maybe.”