Rainbows End

by Vernor Vinge

  “I do. And I realize there may still be complications,” and attempts by you to create complications. “One of our people will run liaison with you and your surface ops.”

  Vaz --> Braun, Mitsuri: Keiko?

  Mitsuri --> Braun, Vaz: I’m on it.

  Rabbit gave a last flippant wave, and suddenly the little room with the plastic walls and the concrete floor was free of all taint of Rabbit. Alfred shut down the remaining internet links. Now there was just the pile of old clothes, the handcart, the hole in the middle of the floor…and their one human casualty.

  The comforting sounds of mayhem continued to waft down the hill from the library.

  Vaz --> Braun: How does the lab data look? The inspection equipment had been transmitting for some minutes now. Were the lies being believed? Could Günberk give up his precious theories?

  Braun --> Vaz: They’re seventy percent complete. We have a lot of post-analysis to do, but at first glance these labs look innocent.

  Yes!

  GREATER SCOOCH-A-MOUT --> Lesser Scooch-a-mout: Forward, now, my man! The Hacek bastards are giving way!

  And Hacekeans were falling back, at least in the area ahead of Timothy Huynh. He walked his forklift into the gap, crushing what spider bots got in the way. The arc of contention had shifted round till he was almost due south of the library’s main entrance. Here the enemy was in retreat. The Scoochis had more real people on the ground and that meant more backup for the visual effects. But the Hacekeans had perhaps two hundred thousand folk from afar compared with half that many virtual Scoochis. On the far side of the library, on the hill by the loading dock, there was no room for a real human mob. Over there, Hacek—the worldwide belief—was in ascendance. Dangerous Knowledge hung out there, more spectacular than ever, orchestrating a sky show that boomed over the north-side valley. His reinforcements swarmed downward on lances of light.

  Tim did his best to follow the big picture, though just now he was very busy stomping on every spider bot that he could lay a foot-platter on. He had seen marvels on both sides tonight, things that their belief circles could feast on for at least the next year. And yet there was still room for a clear win. Tonight Scooch-a-mout could transcend what had been a fringe market and reach the same worldwide big time as the Hacek and the Pratchett and the Bollywood empires. They needed something awesome, something that would put clear sky between them and the Hacekeans. He marched his Mind Sum, his being of mist and steel, back and forth across the front, crushing all that remained of the spider bots. He could think of nothing more spectacular to do. Damn.

  But there was a world of Scoochis out there, and cleverness to match.

  Greater Scooch-a-mout --> Lesser Scooch-a-mout: Release the overrides on my forklift.

  Huynh did so.

  The figure of the Greater Scooch-a-mout was motionless for a moment, but in his technician’s view, Huynh could see its power cells charging capacitors well into the burnout range.

  And then the Greater Scooch-a-mout sprinted forward like a human athlete and…by God broad-jumped thirty feet, to the lawn by the Snake Path. It looked over the north-side valley and shouted down at Dangerous Knowledge in a voice that was both virtual and real. And the real was noise unto pain.

  “Hey there! Little Bitty Knowledge! We’re equally matched, don’t you think?”

  From the valley by the loading dock, Dangerous Knowledge shook his fist at the teetering forklift. “Too equally matched!”

  “But one of us should clearly win, don’t you think?”

  “Of course! And that would be meself, as all the world knows.” Dangerous Knowledge waved at its virtual—millions! (But a big part of that count was faked images, Tim could tell.)

  “Maybe.” The Greater Scooch-a-mout jumped again, this time to the edge of the drop-off over the loading dock. There was something awesome in the maneuver, knowing the tons of real machine behind it. “But what is this whole conflict about?” It waved its arms, a cheerleader god, and Scoochis screamed with all the amplification they could muster:

  “We want our floor space!”

  “We want our library!”

  “And most of all, we want our REAL books!”

  “YES!” said the Scooch-a-mout. “It’s the Library we’re all fighting about. It’s the Library that should decide!”

  And with that all the Scoochi sound effects chopped to nothing. An uncertain silence spread across the Scoochis. Sometimes the belief thing got caught in its own metaphors and wound up spouting nonsense. Huynh looked back and forth, gauging the reaction the Greater Scooch had provoked. It sounded good to enlist the library itself, but what did that mean?

  Down in the north-side valley, there was a flare of laughter. The enemy had come to the same conclusion. We are screwed, thought Huynh. But then he noticed that Dangerous Knowledge was not laughing. The creature came partway up the hill, confronted the Greater Scooch-a-mout eye-to-eye. And now there was eerie silence on all sides.

  Somehow, Dangerous Knowledge knew what the Scooch-a-mout was talking about. “So,” the Hacek godling said at last, and its voice had a silken tone even though it echoed off the library and settled deep in the mind of every one in the world who was watching. “Ye want the Library itself to decide who should care for it and who should have its space?”

  “And how real the books should really be,” the Greater Scooch-a-mout said, with a smile that seemed almost friendly. “I propose that we put the question to the library—and whichever of us it chooses will be deemed the blessed.”

  “Ah!” Now Dangerous Knowledge was smiling, too, but it was a fierce stretching of the face. The creature backed down the hillside, but grew with each step so that its eyes stayed on a level with the Greater Scooch-a-mout. Ordinarily, such a cheap visual wouldn’t have earned any respect, but the move seemed to fit the moment. Besides, whoever was behind the creature’s design had saved some marvelous fractal armor for just this extension of height.

  Dangerous Knowledge turned to face the virtual millions behind him. “The challenge is just. I say to all Followers of Knowledge: Join me in a final torque upon the enemy. Show the Library that we are its future and its greatest supporters. And let the Library show its choice to the world!”

  The silence was ended as the millions discovered new amplifiers on campus—or somehow usurped and reused the ones that the Scooch-a-mout had appropriated.

  The galaxy of players—mechs and humans, real and virtual—all came alive in renewed conflict. Knights and Librarians dumped fire on the Scoochi side. Huynh’s Mind Sum was once again stomping and kicking. The ensemble resumed its vasty turn about the university library, and the spiral arms of the battle front flared even brighter than before. But now the battle cries were appeals to the Library itself. And the library glowed in a light that seemed to come from infinitely high above. That light was purely virtual, but it was seen in every view.

  As Huynh tromped along with the screaming multitudes, he was almost totally taken by the moment. Almost. This had gone farther and higher than he had ever imagined. Part of the success was simply the audience, a significant part of the waking world. Part of it was the unexpected acquiescence of GenGen and the UCSD administration, and the awesome possibility of future revenue that might come streaming in from the various entertainment producers that now lurked all around. And none of that would have happened if not for the content that had suddenly appeared when they went to battle. Content from both sides, content that was as artistic as new designs and as physical as what they had done with their bottish legions.

  But now everyone’s hopes, Hacek and Scoochi, were hostage to the impossible. If the Library did not “reply,” or if the reply was simply more imagery, then in about another thirty seconds, the momentum would begin to dissipate and a very large number of people—among them Timothy Huynh—would begin to feel a little foolish. It was the fate of many flash crowds, especially those that at first seemed the most successf
ul. Big promises earned big rewards, up to the point that the promises had to come true.

  What could the Greater Scooch-a-mout have in mind? Huynh used his technician’s view and his artist’s. He looked out from Scoochi cams, from the aerobots above, even GenGen utilities. The best he could imagine was some pallid surprise, something to distract everyone from the promise that could not be kept.

  As the battlefronts tightened around the library, point and counterpoint came from the opposing armies and together made a concerted rhythm. Music seeped into the shouting. After a few moments, every local voice was synched to the sound and everyone was swaying to the beat. It came louder and louder, and Huynh noticed that the amplifiers included police and fire-department equipment. Someone had committed real vandalism to make this even more spectacular.

  It would be for nothing without some definite result.

  In fact, the singing held together just a few more seconds. Then it faltered as nothing more happened, and no one could imagine anything more happening. But…there was another sound, a trembling vibration that crept up from the ground. Ten years ago, Timothy Huynh had felt something similar. The Rose Canyon earthquake.

  Huynh freaked, dropping all the fantasy overlays. He stared out in panic with his own naked eyes. Real lights flashed back and forth, flickering across the faces of the thousands of real rioters, picking out the angular bodies of the larger mechs. Now there was no pillar of light from heaven. The library was occasionally lit, but more often a silhouette against the lights on the other side.

  The trembling in the earth grew stronger. The walls and overhanging floors of the library seemed to shiver. The magnificent double pyramid that had survived the decades, that had survived the Rose Canyon Quake—it was shaking, all the thousands of tons of real concrete.

  In time to the rising music.

  There were screams. Lots of people remembered Rose Canyon. But lots of others were taken by the spectacle—and their singing resumed and was picked up by the vision of the night and blasted out across the world.

  The library swayed. Parts dipped; parts rose. It was not shaking as much as it was dancing. Not a bouncy riverdance. The building was dancing like a man with feet planted firmly in the ground. And Huynh realized there was no earthquake; somebody had hijacked the building’s stabilization system. He had once read that a well-powered building could survive almost any quake short of a great crack opening up beneath it. But here that power was being turned upon itself.

  The rhythmic swaying became more pronounced, twelve feet left and right, and up and down, with parts of the building shifting away and together. The shrugging, swaying dance of the overhanging floors shifted to the outlying pillars. There was a sound that might have been real and might have been ingenious invention. It might have been both. It was the sound of mountains being torn from their roots.

  The pillars shifted and the library…walked. It was not as spectacular as fake imagery could be, but Huynh was seeing it with his naked eyes. In halting cadence, first one fifty-foot pillar and then another rose visibly from the ground, moved several yards in the direction of the Greater Scooch-a-mout, and descended with the sound of rock penetrating rock. The rest of the building shifted with them, twisting on the utility core that was the library’s central axis.

  The Greater Scooch-a-mout stepped forward and embraced a corner of the nearest pillar. The music became triumphal. Cheering blasted across the world, wondering and still a bit frightened.

  Hanson --> Night Crew: Hey is this an Event or is this an Event?

  The Library had chosen.

  25

  YOU CAN’T ASK ALICE ANYMORE

  Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz: By damn! Homeland Security will respond to this. Has Mr. Rabbit gone mad?

  Mitsuri --> Braun, Vaz: He claims his ‘library dance’ will only trigger FBI intervention, and all together give us more time.

  Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz: Okay. I have the complete dump from our inspection equipment. God willing, that’s everything we need to prove what’s been going on in these labs.

  Alfred was already working through the exit checklist. He had fooled his friends, but…what of his attack on Alice Gong? If she was still functioning, it might not matter what he did.

  “FBI REQUESTS CLEARANCE to take charge of the riot area.”

  “On what grounds?” Bob Gu spoke without looking away from the library. Even the unfudged video was remarkable. This was a 1900s concrete behemoth, originally as dumb as snot. Yet it had moved without collapsing.

  “The grounds are the frank evidence of violation of federal law, namely—” a stream of legal references spewed across Bob’s vision. “FBI argues that this is effectively an attack on a federal building.”

  Bob hesitated. There were criminal violations here, though UCSD had made no formal complaint. At this point, there was no watch-related service FBI could render; they would simply be law enforcement. The watch priority—his priority—was to snoop and swoop. Snoop, then swoop. What might this disorder be a cover for? He glanced at the bio-lab status. Still all green. Finally he replied, “Request denied. There is an ongoing Homeland Security investigation here. However, give the first layer of our analysis to San Diego Police and Rescue and the UCSD Campus Police. Be prepared to support emergency networking.”

  “Layer one to SDPD and Campus Police. Yes, sir.”

  Bob’s eyes turned back to the library. It was still standing, but this was damn dangerous foolishness.

  His analyst pool certainly thought so. In the last thirty seconds, the node structure had come close to turning inside out. For the moment, Alice let the engineers dominate. The text clouds were full of gibber about how the library “walk” had been accomplished and the dangers there might be for the people in and around it. USMC nodes were lodged deep in the discussions, his own people thoroughly caught up in the excitement. That was not acceptable.

  Bob leaned forward and spoke: “All squads! Move to Launch Alert.” The chances of an actual launch were still near zero, but this would get his people into their assault craft. More important, it got their attention. The USMC nodes moved away from all the speculation and into the tight coordination of marines in a launch prep. Bob stared at the distracted analyst pool for a moment more. Alice was already drawing them away from the library. The structural engineers were no longer the center of the tangle. The library had walked. So what might that be covering? His marines’ duty was to guard against the deadliest grand surprises. For instance, were the bio labs still secure? What was going on in the rest of CONUS Southwest?

  He turned and jogged out of his bunker, into the narrow tunnel that led to his own launcher. The analyst display followed along, hanging just to his right. Alice had grabbed another fifteen hundred analysts, more bioscience and drug research people.

  The ceiling curved low at the end of the tunnel. His assault craft was a tiny vehicle, its design a compromise between time to target and the desire to make the local combat manager invisible. From the ingress tunnel all that was visible of it was the open hatch and a portion of the dead black fuselage. He settled into his place, but did not zip up.

  What is Alice doing? He watched the analyst pool grow, now larger than for most worldwide operations. But all the attention was on the bioscience labs around UCSD. True, the situation there was strange. Even though lab security was in the green, the staff was topside in the riot. That justified some attention, but it also made lab surveillance even easier. Damn! Now Alice was stealing analysts tasked with cargo tracking throughout all of CONUS Southwest.

  Squelching your top analyst was a black mark on everyone, but there was no help for it. Even in combat, this sort of monomania would be bizarre.

  As it happened, Alice acted first. Emergency flags came up in every view. The assault craft’s hatch slid shut and his acceleration pod zipped tight. LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH flashed in his eyes, and a launch clock appeared, counting down from thirty seconds. This was analyst preemp
tion, the sort of drama that happens when analysts realize that their own forces are about to be nuked in their bunkers. Everything would go at once and sort itself out in midflight.

  But the analyst pool showed no such threat.

  The launch target was UCSD.

  The gee pod was inflating tight around him. The countdown clock showed twenty-five seconds. He brought up a view of his top analyst. “Alice! Advise reason for launch.”

  Alice’s eyes were wide. “It’s very simple. Onset was slow, but now insight has saturated. This one is undergoing threatful integration. Neuromodulator pathway Gat77 has been subverted. Signaling cascade has too many control points for MCog analysis, but reference”—some kind of arXiv pointer—“demonstrates the progression.” She frowned at him, and suddenly she was shouting: “Don’t you understand? This one is failing! Conformational changes are preventing adaptive response! This one—”

  Ten seconds to launch. Alice Gu’s medicals were off the chart.

  Eight seconds to launch. Bob overrode the launch order and relieved his top analyst: STANDDOWN STANDDOWN STANDDOWN. The gee pod relaxed around him. He scarcely noticed. Alice’s head was down, but she was still talking, desperate. Drool spattered her blouse. And he couldn’t notice that either. He promoted her second-in-analysis, a CIA spook who’d been far too passive tonight. But then what could one do when a star like Alice crashed?

  The spook was trying her best. “I’ll have us up in two minutes, Sir.”

  In the meantime, Bob Gu was blinded and the Watch was just a mob of bright people watching a million data feeds. One of those feeds was medical: Alice had suffered a JITT stick, the most violent and sudden of her career. Despite all her desperation to communicate, she was stuck in molecular biology.