by Vernor Vinge
"How—?" Then she gave a sharp little gasp.
There was no scale marker, but the chamber couldn't have been more than a couple of feet across. To the eye of the breadcrumb it was a wide, high-ceilinged meeting room, crowded with dozens of white-furred mice, their dark eyes glittering by the light of a ... fire ... in the middle of the hall.
"I think you have your ‘A', Miriam," William said softly.
Miri didn't answer.
Rank upon rank of mice, crouched around the fire. Three mice stood at the center, higher up—tending the flame? It wobbled and glowed, more like a candle than a bonfire. But the mice didn't seem to be watching the fire as much as they were the breadcrumb. Bertie's little breadcrumb was the magical arrival at their meeting.
"See!" Miri hunched forward, her elbows on her knees. "Foxwarner strikes again. A slow flame in a space like that ... those ‘mice' should all be dead of carbon monoxide poisoning."
The breadcrumbs were not sending spectral data, so who could say? Juan visualized the tunnel system. There were other passages a little higher up, and he had data on the capacity of the inlets and outlets. He thought a few seconds more and gave the problem to his wearable. "No ... actually, there is enough ventilation to be safe."
Miri looked up at him. "Wow. You are fast."
"Your Epiphany outfit could do it in a instant."
"But it would've taken me five minutes to pose the problem to my Epiphany."
Another picture came in, firelight on a ceiling.
"The mice are rolling it closer to the fire."
"I think they're just poking at it."
Another picture. The crumb had been turned again, and now was looking outwards, to where three more mice had just come in from a large side entrance ... rolling another breadcrumb.
But the next picture was a blur of motion, a glimpse of a mostly empty meeting chamber, in thermal colors. The fire had been doused.
"Something's stirred them up," said William, listening again at the stone wall. "I can actually hear them chittering."
"The dungballs are coming back this way!" said Miri.
"The mice are smart enough to understand the idea of poison." William's voice was soft and wondering. "Up to a point, they grabbed our gifts like small children. Then they noticed that the dungballs just kept coming ... and someone raised an alarm."
There were still pictures, lots of them, but they were all thermal IR, chaotic blurs; the mice were hustling. The locator gleams edged closer together, some moving toward an entrance about three feet above the gully floor. The others were approaching the first hole.
Juan touched the probe gun against the wall and pulsed the rock in several places. He was getting pretty good at identifying the flesh-and-blood reflections. "Most of the mice have moved away from us. It's just a rearguard that's pushing out the breadcrumbs. There's a crowd of them behind the crumbs that are coming out by your head, William."
"William, quick! The FedEx mailer. Maybe we can trap some when they come out!"
"I ... yes!" William stood and pulled the FedEx mailer from his bag. He tilted the open carton toward the mouse hole.
A second later there was a faint scrabbling noise, and William's arms moved with that twitchy speed of his. Juan had a glimpse of fur and flying breadcrumbs.
William slapped the container shut, and then stumbled backwards as three more mice came racing out of the lower hole. For a fleeting instant, their glowing blue eyes stared up at the humans. Miri made a dive for them, but they had already fled down the path, oceanward. She picked herself up and looked at William. "How many did you get?"
"Four! The little guys were in such a rush they just jumped out at me." He held the mailer close. Juan could hear tiny thumping noises from inside it.
"That's great," said Miri. "Physical evidence!"
William didn't reply. He just stood there, staring at the carton. Abruptly he turned and walked a little way up the trail, to where the path widened out and the brush and pines didn't cover the sky. "I'm sorry, Miriam." He tossed the mailer high into the air.
The box was almost invisible for a moment, and then its ring of jets lit up. Tiny, white-hot spikes of light traced the mailer's path as it wobbled and swooped within a foot of the rock wall. It recovered, and slowly climbed, still wobbling. Juan could imagine four very live cargo items careening around inside it. Silent to human ears, the mailer rose and rose, jets dimming in the fog. The light was a pale smudge when it drifted out of sight behind the canyon wall.
Miri stood, her arms reaching out as if pleading. "Grandfather, why?"
For a moment, William Gu's shoulders slumped. Then he looked across at Juan. "I bet you know, don't you, kid?"
Juan stared in the direction the mailer had taken. Four mice, rattling around in a half-broken mailer. He had no idea just now what security was like at the FedEx minihub, but it was at the edge of the back country, where the mail launchers didn't cause much complaint. Out beyond Jamul ... the mice could have their chance in the world. He looked back at William and just gave a single quick nod.
* * *
There was very little talk as they climbed back out of the canyon. Near the top, the path was wide and gentle. Miri and William walked hand in hand. There were spatters of coldness on her face that might have been tears, but there was no quaver in her voice. "If the mice are real, we've done a terrible thing, William."
"Maybe. I'm sorry, Miriam."
"...But I don't think they are real, William."
William made no reply. After a moment, Miri said, "You know why? Look at that first picture we got from the mouse meeting hall. It's just too perfectly dramatic. The chamber doesn't have furniture or wall decorations, but it clearly is a meeting hall. Look how all the mice are positioned, like humans at an old town meeting. And then at the center—"
Juan's eyes roamed the picture as she spoke. Yes. There in the center—almost at though they were on stage—stood three large white mice. The biggest one had reared up as it looked at the imager. It had one paw extended ... and the paw grasped something sharp and long. They had seen things like that in other pictures and never quite figured them out. In this natural-light picture, the tool—a spear? —was unmistakable.
Miri continued on, "See, that's the tip-off, Foxwarner's little joke. A real, natural breakthrough in animal intelligence would never be such a perfect movie poster. So. Later tonight, Juan and I will turn in our local team report, and Foxwarner will ‘fess up. By dinnertime at the latest, we'll be famous."
And my own little secret will be outed.
Miri must have understood Juan's silence. She reached out and took his hand, dragging the three of them close together. "Look," she said softly. "We don't know what—if anything—Foxwarner recorded of us. Even now, we're in thick fog. Except for the mice themselves, our gear saw no sensors. So either Foxwarner is impossibly good, or they weren't close snooping us." She gestured up the path. "Now in a few more minutes we'll be back in the wide world. Bertie and maybe Foxwarner will be wisping around. But no matter what you think really happened tonight—" her voice trailed off....
And Juan finished, "—no matter what really happened, we're all best to keep our mouths shut about certain things."
She nodded.
* * *
Bertie followed Juan home from Miri's house, arguing, wheedling, demanding all the way. He wanted to know what Miri had been up to, what all they had done and seen. When Juan wouldn't give him more than the engineering data from the dungballs, Bertie had got fully dipped, kicked Juan off their unlimited team, and rejected all connections. It was a total Freeze Out. By the time Juan got home, he could barely put up a good front for his Ma.
But strangely enough, Juan slept well that night. He woke to morning sunlight splashing across his room. Then he remembered: Bertie's total Freeze Out. I should be frantic. This could mean he'd fail the unlimited and lose his best friend. Instead, more than anything else, Juan felt like ... he was free.
Juan
slipped on his clothes and contacts, and wandered downstairs. Usually, he'd be all over the net about now, synching with the world, finding out what his friends had done while he was wasting time asleep. He'd get to that eventually; it would be just as much fun as ever. But just now the silence was a pleasure. There were a dozen red "please reply" lights gleaming in front of his eyes—mostly from Bertie. The message headers were random flails. This was the first time one of Bertie's Freeze Outs had not ended because Juan came groveling.
Ma looked up from her breakfast. "You're off-line," she said.
"Yeah." He slouched onto a chair and started eating cereal. His father smiled absently at him and went on eating. Pa's eyes were very far away, his posture kind of slumped.
Ma looked back and forth between them, and a shadow crossed her face. Juan straightened up a little and made sure she saw his smile. "I'm just tired out from all the hiking around." Suddenly, he remembered something. "Hey, thanks for the maps, Ma."
She looked puzzled.
"Miri used 411 for recent information on Torrey Pines."
"Oh!" Ma's face lit up. There were a number of 411 services in San Diego County, but this was her kind of thing. "Did the test go well?"
"Dunno yet." They ate in silence for a moment. "I expect I'll know later today." He looked across the table at her. "Hey, you're off-line, too."
She grimaced and gave him a little grin. "An unintended vacation. The movie people dropped their reservations for tour time."
"...Oh." Just what you'd expect if the operation in East County was related to what they'd found in Torrey Pines. Miri would have seen the cancellation as significant evidence. Maybe it was. But he and Miri had turned in their project report last night, the first local exam to complete. If she were right about the mice, Foxwarner was sure to know by now that their project had been outed, and you'd think they'd have launched publicity. And yet, there were no bulletins; just Bertie and a few other students pinging away at him.
Give it till dinnertime. That's how long Miri said it might take for a major cinema organization to move into action. Real or movie, they should know by then. And his own secret? It would be outed ... or not.
Juan had a second serving of cereal.
* * *
Since he had a morning exam, Ma let him take a car to Fairmont. He made it to school with time to spare.
The vocational exam was for individuals, and you weren't allowed to search beyond the classroom. As with Ms. Wilson's math exam, the faculty had dug up some hoary piece of business that no reasonable person would ever bother with. For the vocational test, the topic would be a work specialty.
And today ... it was Regna 5.
When Regna had been hot, back in Pa's day, tech schools had taken three years of training to turn out competent Regna practitioners.
It was a snap. Juan spent a couple of hours scanning through the manuals, integrating the skills ... and then he was ready for the programming task, some cross-corporate integration nonsense.
He was out by noon, with an A.
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