by Vernor Vinge
The CIA analyst was back. “Sir, are you all right?”
“I—I’m fine.” Bob considered the analyst display. The spook had hung the operation off the rest of the CONUS Watches. There was close backup now. Big chunks of Alice’s network were improperly connected, but the spook was healing it, forcing connections and possible correlations. Maybe she was still too heavy on UCSD. She seemed to think that Alice’s last words pointed to enemy action there. Okay, after everything else tonight, that had to be followed up. “I’m fine.”
OVER THE PAST twelve weeks, Rabbit had learned a lot; he had grown, you might say. Tonight it all came together. Topside, the riot was at climax—better than sex could ever be, Rabbit was sure. I am the reality arm of the Scoochi belief circles, yeah! There were surprises, too. The affair had called into existence (or simply into his notice?) a creature who might be his equal. Rabbit had played both sides through the first part of the riot…but now Dangerous Knowledge had been taken over by something very creative, something who was having as much fun tonight as Rabbit himself. So he had millions of new affiliates, some of them as capable as a human could ever be. And he’d found a special new friend, to boot.
His riot fully outclassed the espionage hugger-mugger it was designed to protect. It was amusing that despite the carrot greens and all the other generous clues Rabbit had provided, Alfred & Co had not realized whence his powers came, or how great they were. But something told Rabbit that in the long run, what was happening underground was important too. Alfred was playing out his mysterious game down there. Now was the time Rabbit had planned to find out just what Alfred was looking for—hey, and maybe get a piece of it.
Now was the time, but Rabbit was locked out. Damn Alfred. The fiber link was behind Alfred’s milnet. Short of tipping off DHS—and destroying the wonderful jape Rabbit had so carefully planned—Rabbit was balked. Heh! But what did Alfred’s milnet talk to? Why, just a few thousand very clever Indo-European analysts! And they didn’t get to be so clever by hiding in government holes. They each had their own creative lives. Rabbit hopped from Brussels to Nice, to Mumbai and Tokyo, and—natch—listened to his own inner self. Now that he needed to think about it, he saw how the tricks he had used with American security might be applied. Rabbit tweaked a thousand affiliances, and he listened to a million conversations that he really had no intention of consciously reviewing. One last piece of SHE magic, and voila:
Rabbit was into the milnet! He zipped down through Alfred’s stealthed aerobot and…once again he was in Vaz’s glorious command center in Pilchner Hall. Rabbit took a look at the medicals on the Orozco kid. Still alive. Ol’ Alfred wasn’t a monster, except when principle demanded it. What was he after? And can I get some?
Rabbit tiptoed down Alfred’s connections into the labs. No surprise, Alfred Vaz was making good use of the devices Rabbit’s little friends had planted in the GenGen area, sending oodles of data out to his colleagues in Japan and the EU. Rabbit watched quietly; one doesn’t ask pointed questions when one is trying to be invisible. He captured the raw encryption, noted what was talking to what within Alfred’s GenGen domain.
Even so…it didn’t make sense. The exported data did not match what was locally observed. And then suddenly a big lightbulb went off in Rabbit’s mind. Alfred was not searching for anything! He was making sure his Alliance friends did not see what was already there! Alfred, you old devil, running your own program on American equipment and keeping it secret from everybody. And what could be worth such secrecy and such a wild-ass cover-up? Figuring that out was still a guessing game—but Rabbit was the grandmaster of guessing, better than any Indo-European analyst pool, better even than Alice Gu and all her analysts.
Oops. Something told him Alice was in deep trouble. Rabbit had dutifully played messenger boy for Alfred’s mysterious snooping on Alice. That must have been the setup for Alice’s downfall. But how had he done it? Suddenly, the underground was more intriguing than ever.
The heart of Alfred’s research empire was in a corner of the Molecular Biology of Cognition area. The data from everywhere else was truthful reporting on innocent proprietary research. Rabbit looked more carefully at the lies coming out of the MCog area. The phrase “animal model” leaked from gaps in the encryption. Animal model, animal model. The term usually referred to animals possessing an analog of some human condition—usually a disease to cure. Somehow, Rabbit didn’t think Alfred was trying to cure anything. And there were lots of animals in the MCog area. Of course most were bugs. Gallons of fruit flies, and every itsy-bitsy one labeled and probed. Rabbit dipped into some of the local databases. It looked like Alfred was messing with YGBM, but the details were not easy to understand. Rabbit was not always fast. For hard problems, he was like lesser beings; he had to sleep on the question. Then in the morning, the old intuition would deliver remarkable insights.
In this case, tomorrow would be too late. Five minutes from now might be too late. Alfred’s show was almost over, and with it access to the snooper nodes; heck, the gadgets would probably fry themselves. Rabbit hesitated and listened to his inner self. He had a gut feeling about this. Modern intelligence services existed to prevent terrorism. But Alfred…with whatever he was creating here, the dwit might proceed beyond Grand Terror into realms no man was meant to go.
So maybe I should just call DHS. Even without Alice Gu, they could shut down Alfred in five minutes. Rabbit gave the possibility the serious thought it deserved…about two seconds’ worth. And then a big grin spread across his concept of face.
Rabbit was full of ideas. And there was one that had been pounding on him since the moment he’d broken into Alfred’s milnet. Besides having the greater intellect, I now have the physical advantage! Alfred was on the scene with very low latencies, very high bit rates, and more hard data. Nevertheless, he was stuck in his little room and all but one of his mechs were topside. But the “Elder Cabal” was still down in the labs. True, they were not in the GenGen area, but they were still reachable at the end of a fiber link. And hello, what’s this? The slightly-overweight-Chinese-ninja princess. She was definitely not part of the original plan, but bless her, there she was. What a strange and marvelous girl.
Back to business. He was already preparing contingency plans, contingency documents. And if I’m very careful, very quiet, I can sneak out along the fiber, tell Robert and Winnie and Carlos and Tommie the right stories. And then I’ll have my own physical hands.
What Alfred was planning might go beyond Grand Terror. But that same power in my hands…well, that could be glorious fun!
26
HOW-TO-SURVIVE-THE-NEXT-THIRTY-MINUTES.PDF
I told you my planning would pay off! Didn’t I?” Tommie Parker stood knee deep in the remains of the library book collection. The shredda towered behind him like dirty snow, flakes as big as your hand. They had found the Librareome storage at the back of Max Huertas’s cavern, just where Tommie had said. It was stored in rows of sturdy cargo containers labeled “Rescued Data.” The containers had been no match for Tommie’s cutter. He had flooded the floor with the contents of “A-BX.” This had been most of the fifth floor stacks. It seems so much smaller when it’s in shreds, thought Robert.
Tommie waved at the drifts of shredded paper. “You guys ready to start with the glue? This will jam Huertas’s operation up the wazoo. And where’s your reporter guy? I haven’t seen Sharif in a while.” He went around, handing out spray cans.
Finally, he seemed to notice his pals’ silence. “We don’t really need Sharif, do we? I mean, we’ve got our own record.” He lifted the laptop in its sling.
Robert looked at Carlos and Winston. Winnie gave a little shake of his head. So none of them had heard from the Mysterious Stranger. “Sure, Tommie,” Robert said. “That’s—”
“That will be fine, Professor Parker.” Sharif’s voice from Tommie’s laptop. “Perhaps you could have Professor Gu act as cameraman?”
They untangled the laptop from its sling, and
the voice directed Robert around to the side. The voice was very picky about where it wanted the laptop pointed, across the edge of the shredda, almost in line with their path into this vacant hall.
Then Robert noticed letters painting silently across his field of view. It was sming…and the letters were green.
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
“I—”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
Alfred? thought Robert, but he kept quiet.
No one else seemed to notice the Stranger’s arrival. Tommie walked back into the drifts of paper, tossing them up in the air, squirting them with his spray can. “Is the camera getting this, Robert?”
Robert looked down at the laptop’s screen. “…Yes.”
Any other time, the effect of Tommie’s aerosol glue would have been a showstopper. He threw another armful of loose shredda into the air, and sprayed a mist of glue. Where mist and paper met, the page fragments were suddenly tumbling as one. The mass drifted slowly to earth. Most of the frags never actually touched the ground, but hung permanently in the air. Tommie laughed and pushed at the hazy something. The ensemble of scattered papers rocked back and forth, like bits of fruit in invisible Jell-O.
Tommie whooped. “Try it yourselves. Just don’t squirt each other.” He threw another armful up, and another. Arches of paper and mist grew around him.
Robert hung back, playing cameraman.
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
There was a tiny pool of light, someone running down the steps into the Huertas cavern.
It was Miri. The girl came pounding across the floor shouting, “Robert! Robert!”
Tommie and the others turned to watch, openmouthed.
Miri came around the edge of the shredda. She was gasping for breath.
Winston looked her up and down and then looked at Robert. “This is another Gu, isn’t it?”
“Um, my granddaughter.”
“I thought we agreed to keep this among ourselves!” Winnie’s glare was as good as any high-tech messaging: You’re going to ruin this for all of us.
But Tommie was more astounded than any of them. “How could she get through security? The cops should be all over.”
“No, no.” Miri managed to speak between gasps for breath. “Must call police!”
The laptop had its say, too: “Pay no attention to this child. Remember why you are here.”
Robert shoved the laptop at Winnie and reached for Miri. “How did you find us, kiddo?”
Her arms went around his middle. “It was Juan and me, and—” she hesitated, looked up at him with her eyes wide. Gone was her usual assurance. Horror looked out. “—somebody’s using you, Robert. I think they maybe, maybe killed Juan!”
“Not so,” said the laptop. “Uh—” The voice hesitated.
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
“Gentlemen,” the voice resumed, “I advise you to remember why you are really here.”
Tommie had come out from his fountains of paper. His spray can dangled unnoticed from his fingers. He looked at Carlos and Winston and Robert. “Yes, what is it that we’re supposed to remember? Why are we really here?”
Carlos and Winnie wouldn’t look him in the eye. Carlos mumbled something in Mandarin.
“We did what we thought was right,” Winston said.
Yes, each our own vision of what was right, but…Juan murdered? He looked back at Tommie. “We tricked you, Tommie. Someone else is behind this.”
Tommie walked back to the pile, kicked aimlessly at his masterpiece. “But…I thought I had my touch back.” He glanced at Miri and seemed to be putting together all the inconsistencies. His shoulders slumped. “Okay. I was an old idiot. Who was boosting me along, Robert?”
“I don’t know.”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
Apparently, Winnie and Carlos were not seeing the sming.
Miri’s chin came up. “We’ve got to get word out.”
And the laptop said, “It’s not safe to move. Stay where you are.”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
Tommie Parker looked off into the emptiness of the Huertas cavern. He was shaking his spray can, almost an idle gesture. “The gear we planted in GenGen, I thought I made that. Me, the big genius. It could be anything…bombs, poison, some kind of takeover hardware. But we’re at the north edge of the complex.” He waved at the wall that loomed from the dimness just beyond the shredda containers. “That overlooks Sorrento Valley. There are some old entrances. We could have used them instead, except my research said the alarms would be harder to disable—but now I don’t care if busting through them sets off alarms!”
“Stay where you are,” said the laptop. “You are surrounded by lethal weapons!”
Something small and black sidled out of the darkness.
“I saw one of those on Gilman Drive.” Miri took a step toward it. The robot turned toward her. There was a metallic click that sounded very much like a round being chambered.
“Miri—” Robert held her arm, but Tommie was coming around from the other side and the robot turned toward him.
Parker stopped about seven feet from the critter. Some of his old cockiness returned. “I’ll bet it’s just a network-superiority bot. Most of the payload is communications and counternode gear. It’s not much use all by itself.”
“There are hundreds on the floor,” said the laptop. “Don’t force us to act.”
Miri slipped loose of Robert. “I didn’t see any others,” she said, moving closer to the robot.
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
And then several things happened at once: Robert pulled Miri behind him. Tommie stepped forward in a fencer’s lunge that brought his spray can within a foot of the mech. The robot flipped up like a sprung rattrap. Tommie screamed and fell forward.
Robert ran toward the robot and grabbed—hard air. The hardened froth was barely visible, but it held the robot beyond his reach. He spun the gel around, looking for some point closer to the enemy. There! He slammed the carapace into the concrete floor. Again. It was in pieces now, each still embedded in the mist. There was sound of tiny motors, whining to be free. Then Miri and Carlos were stomping on what remained. Sparks flew within the mist, and Robert felt a tingling that raised the hairs on his arms.
And then the robot was just dead composites, the pieces hanging motionless in blocks of invisible fluff.
The only sound was Tommie gasping. Winnie had rolled the little guy on his side. Tommie’s face was bluish, his mouth a gaping grimace of pain.
“What happened, Tommie?”
Parker’s back arched. “Bastard…fried…my pacemaker.”
Carlos was on his knees. He touched Tommie’s shoulder. “Wǒmen shāsĭ le nàgè jīqìrén. We killed the robot, Dr. Parker.”
Tommie grunted acknowledgment, even as he rocked back and forth on the ground.
“We’ll get you out of here, Tommie,” said Blount. He looked up at Robert. “No more games.”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
Robert looked past the greenish letters and nodded to Winston Blount. “No more games.”
Tommie still lay twisting in pain. His voice came out between spasms. “Keycard…in my pocket.”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
le surprise present for Alfred.
The voice from the laptop—Alfred?—was silent.
Carlos looked down at where the laptop sat on the concrete floor. “We should break this. It’s the eye of the enemy.”
Miri walked around the antique computer. “I think if we pull the plug on that fiber, the bad guys are gone.”
“Yup…unplugit!”
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
Miri picked up the laptop and turned it on edge. She studied the unfamiliar physical connectors for a moment, then reached down—
Mysterious Stranger --> Robert:
—and popped the optical fiber out of the laptop.
For a moment they grinned at each other like idiots. Tommie squeezed out a weak laugh. “We’re…off the leash.” He gasped for a few seconds. “Gotta carry me, guys…Sorry. I’ll…show you the exit.”
Winnie looked down at Tommie. “We’ll get you out, Tommie. You’ll be okay.” He lifted Parker under the shoulders, then reached to support him under the knees. Parker didn’t weigh that much, but Blount was staggering.
Robert reached out. “I can carry him, Winnie.”
Blount glared back, and Robert shut up. Then Winnie’s hands slipped and Tommie almost crashed to the ground. “I got him, I got him!”
Miri ran around Blount and slipped her hands under where he was holding Tommie’s left arm. Winnie didn’t object; maybe it was because she didn’t ask. Robert took both legs and they started off along the wall. Carlos followed, carrying the cutter and what other gear might still be of use.
Nothing more followed, nothing they could see. For what it might be worth, Robert’s dumb little waist box showed only utility glimmers in the empty cavern.
Tommie’s breathing was a raspy wheeze. Every few paces he twisted within their grasp. “About hundred yards more…” He shuddered and went limp.