Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

But Winnie was absolutely right, so right that Robert had to say something on the same side. "This is insanity, Sharif. Apparently, the Librareome Project is someone's idea for photographing and then digitizing the Library. But — " suddenly he was remembering things from his last years at Stanford " — didn't Google already do that?"

"That's true," said Rivera. "In fact, that was our first argument, and perhaps still the best one. But Huertas is a great salesman, and he does have arguments in his favor. What he has in mind is fast and very, very cheap. Past digitizations have not been as global or as unified as this will be. And Huertas has lawyers and software that will allow him to render microroyalty payments across all the old copyright regimes — without any new permissions."

Winnie vented a sour laugh. "The real reason the administration people bought into this is that they like Huertas's money, and maybe even the publicity. But let me tell you, Mr. Sharif, shredding destroys the books. That is the bottom line. We will be left with a useless jumble."

"Oh, no, Professor Blount. Read the overview. The pictures coming from the camera tunnel are analyzed and reformatted. It's a simple matter of software to reorient the images, match the tear marks and reconstruct the original texts in proper order. In fact — besides the mechanical simplicity of it all — that's the reason for the apparent violence. The tear marks come close to being unique. Really, it's not a new thing. Shotgun reconstructions are classic in genomics."

"Oh, yeah?" Robert picked up the much-abused page that he had rescued from the PZ stacks. He held it out like some limp murder victim. "So what perfection of software is going to recover something that was torn from its binding and never photographed?"

Sharif started to shrug and then saw the expression on Robert's face. "Sir, it's really not a problem. There will be some loss, true. Even where everything is properly photoed, the programs will make some mismatches. Potentially, the error rate can be less than a few words per million volumes, far better than even hardcopy republishing with manual copyediting. That's why other major libraries are participating in the project, to get accurate cross-checking."

Other major libraries ? Robert realized that his mouth was hanging open. He shut up; he couldn't think of anything to say.

Tommie stared into his laptop. "You seem suddenly well informed, Mr. Sharif."

"But… well, I am wearing," the young man said.

"Hmpf. And all you really want is to pursue your love of literature."

"… Yes! My thesis advisor has based her entire career on Gu's Secrets of the Ages . And now I find out that the great poet is back from Alzheimer's! It's the opportunity of a lifetime… Look. If you don't believe the Google bio, check in the 411 directories. I have lots of satisfied customers, many of them literature students at UCSD — not that I give them an unethical degree of help! Not at all." Aha. Maybe ghostwritten homework was still a no-no, even in this brave new world. "I don't know what happened with Professor Gu today, but didn't it slow down the Librareome Project? Isn't that what you want?"

Blount and Rivera were both nodding agreement.

"Yup," said Tommie. "You're a horse of some kind."

"I am simply a Lit-in-English student!"

Tommie shook his head. "You could be almost anything. You could be a committee. When you want to sound like a lit-lover, we get chat from a member who knows about poetry." Tommie tilted back his chair. "There's an old saying: The beginning of trust has to be an in-person contact. I don't see any usable chain of trust in your biography."

Sharif stood and walked partway through the table. He looked upward, waving his arms at the sky. "You want in-person? That I can supply. Look down here, at the bench by the footpath."

Tommie tilted his chair still farther back and glanced over his shoulder. Robert walked to the window and looked down. Much of the crowd had dispersed, leaving just a few knots of die-hard demonstrators. The footpath was a tiled serpent that wound its way up the hillside, its head reaching just to the edge of the library terrace. It was a very real mosaic, new artwork since Robert's years at UCSD.

"I came all the way from Corvallis just to see Professor Gu. Please don't turn me away now."

And there by the path was a second Zulfi Sharif, this one not virtual at all. He was looking up at them and waving.

13

For as long as Miri could remember, she'd had this problem with grandparents. Alice's parents — and Alice's grandparents, too — had all been living in Chicago; not one of them had survived. On Bob's side of the family, Robert had been almost dead, but then he came back! Now Miri was afraid she was losing him all over again. And then there was Lena…

Lena Gu was only dead on the record. Lena had persuaded Bob to set up that lie with the Friends of Privacy. Lena even ordered him to keep the details from Miri. But Bob had told Miri what he was doing. That was smart, because Miri would have figured it all out anyway. This way, Miri was imprisoned by her promises to Bob. She hadn't breathed a whisper of the truth to Robert, even when they were still talking and he had been so desperate.

But now Miri was getting desperate. She hadn't seen Lena in five months. Almost, she had called Lena after the Ezra Pound Incident. But that would have only confirmed Lena's opinions of Robert. Bob just wanted to ignore Robert's problems; coward. Alice was no coward, but she was deep in training these days and it wasn't going well. Okay, I can handle this on my own , Miri had told herself. She conceived a clever rehabilitation plan, working with Zulfi Sharif. At first, that had been great. Sharif's wearable had been easy to subvert; she had direct access to Robert. But after Robert's trip to UCSD, she realized that someone else was using Sharif, too.

It was definitely time to visit Lena.

Miri waited till the weekend and took a car down to Pyramid Hill. The place was really busy on Saturdays. Bob said it reminded him of the arcades of his childhood. You had to travel physically to the park, but once you got there you could do touchy-feely with all the best games. It was run by Baja Casinos, but for kids not old enough to legally gamble. The important thing for Miri was that the park had pretty good security. Even if Robert got curious about where she was going, it was unlikely he could follow her through to Lena.

She unhooked her bicycle from the rack on the back of the car, and imaged it as a small jackass. Her own persona was classic anime: big eyes, spiky hair, and tiny mouth. That should turn off anyone who might otherwise try to play with her.

Miri walked her jackass along a path that circled the hill. She overruled the anime imagery to view what was most popular today. Ugh. It was mostly Scooch-a-mouti nonsense. Salsipueds and baba llagas were everywhere. A year ago, no one had heard of the Scoochis, and now they were bigger than some of the corporate names. They had even dented the mega release of the latest Cretaceous Returns . There were hundreds of different types of Scoochi characters. Some were slyly stolen intellectual property. The rest were from folklores at the edge of the world. The imagery was very, very cheap, without any creative center. Maybe that's why little kids were the biggest fans.

Near the top of the hill, a Lesser Scooch-a-mout roared into the sky. That sound was not watts from some synthesizer. The departing Scooch-a-mout was how her view imaged the park's high ride. The ride capsule blasted from deep in the hill, hit four gees before it coasted into the sky, giving its passengers almost a minute of zero-gee before touching down in the park annex. It was the most spectacular ride in Southern California. Nowadays Miri's friends sniffed at it: "Might as well be a UP/Ex package." But when Miri was little, she had spent more than one afternoon bouncing back and forth across the sky.