Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Vaz said, "But we could arrange things so Rabbit receives operational information just-in-time as the action evolves."

Fortunately, Günberk shot that down immediately: "Ach, no. Such remote micromanagement, it's a guarantee of disaster."

Vaz hesitated a long moment, tried to look as though he were thinking hard, making some hard decision. "Maybe, maybe there's a way we can have everything — the, uh, 'grandiose scheme' and minimal risk from Rabbit. Suppose we don't supply Rabbit with the final details in advance. Suppose we put one of our own people on the ground in Southern California the night of the break-in?"

Mitsuri and Braun stared for a second. "But what about deniability then?" said Keiko. "If we have our own agent breaking in — "

"Think, Keiko. My proposal risks tipping off the Americans, which is something yours guarantees . And we can keep the risk low. We simply put our own agent nearby, in a well-planned position with essentially zero latencies. What the Americans call a Local Honcho."

Günberk brightened. "Like Alice Gong at Ciudad General Ortiz!"

" — Yes. Exactly." He hadn't been thinking of Alice, but Günberk was right. It had been Alice Gong on the ice at Ortiz, almost single-handedly discovering and stopping the Free Water Front. Maybe the Front would have failed anyway. After all, no one had ever tried to scale a Saturday-night special up to three hundred megatons. But if the bomb had successfully detonated, their "statement of principle" would have poisoned the freshwater mining industry off West Antarctica. Gong remained unknown to the outside world, but she was something of a legend within the intelligence communities. She was one of the good guys.

Thank goodness, neither Braun nor Mitsuri seemed to notice Alfred's discomfort at her name.

"Inserting a Honcho now would be difficult," said Keiko. "Are we talking a credible tourist, or cargo-container roulette?" Truly black insertions looked like WMD smuggling; they were hair-raising operations for all concerned. "None of my agents-in-place are rated for this operation. It will take a special person, special talents, special clearance."

"I have some good people in California," said Günberk, "but none of them are at this level."

"It doesn't matter," said Vaz, his voice filled with steely determination. "I'm quite willing to go, myself."

He had surprised them before, but this was a bombshell. Braun sat for a moment, openmouthed. "Alfred!"

"It's that important," Vaz said. He gave them each his most direct and sincere look.

"But you're a desk jockey like us!"

Alfred shook his head. Today he would have to let a little bit of his background story come unglued. Hopefully, it wouldn't all tear apart. Alfred had spent years "fitting in" as a midlevel bureaucrat at the External In-telligence Agency. If he were unmasked, then at best he'd end up like the prime minister, forced back into high-level political hackery. At worst… at worst, Günberk and Keiko might figure out what he was really up to in San Diego.

Vaz — > EIA Inner Office: Clear Biographical Package 3 for joint intelligence viewing.

Aloud, he said, "I do have field experience. In the U.S. in fact, in the early teens."

Braun and Mitsuri both had a long stare. They were busy browsing. BioPack 3 would show them the operations. It was all consistent with what they had known before, but revealed new depths to their Indian pal. Günberk was the first to recover. "I… see." He was silent for a moment, reading more. "You did well. But that was some years ago, Alfred. This will be a heavily network-technical assignment."

Alfred nodded at the criticism. "True. I am not a young man." Mitsuri and Braun thought he was in his early fifties. "On the other hand, my specialty here at the EIA is network issues, so I'm not really out of date."

A surprised grin flashed across Keiko's face. "And you do know this operation better than anyone. So by being on-site you can supply the critical pieces without giving them to Rabbit — "

"Correct."

Günberk was still unhappy: "And yet this is an extraordinarily dangerous operation. We Great Powers compete, that is true. But when it comes to the threat of Weapons, we must stand together. This is the first time in my career that that covenant has been broken."

Alfred nodded solemnly. "We must find out the truth, Günberk. We could be wrong about San Diego. Then we'll thankfully and silently disengage. But whatever the source of this weapon, we must discover it. And if that turns out to be San Diego, the Americans will very likely thank us."

Mitsuri and Braun looked at each other for a long moment. Finally they nodded, and Keiko said, "We'll support the insertion of a Local Honcho, presumably you. I'll put planners on fallback strategies in case you are exposed. We'll provide network and analyst support. It'll be up to you to manage critical data on the ground — "

" — and keep Mr. Rabbit from taking over the whole thing!" said Günberk.

Alfred sat in his office for some minutes after his friends departed. That had been too close a thing.

When the stakes are highest, the threats always multiply. Plan Rabbit was the most sensitive operation that the Indian government had ever (knowingly) been a part of; getting the prime minister's support had not been easy. Today Keiko and Günberk had almost shut him down as thoroughly as the PM could have. As for Rabbit — well, AI might be fantasy, but Rabbit was just as much a threat as Günberk and Keiko feared.

Alfred relaxed slightly, allowed himself a smile. Yes, the threats had multiplied like, well, like rabbits. But here today he had collided some of those threats and neutralized them. For weeks he had been plotting his Local Honcho role. In the end, Günberk and Keiko had provided him with the natural excuse to be present on the ground in San Diego.

18

The cabal still met on the sixth floor of the library, but that was a very different place now. Robert came up in the elevator, avoiding the Hacekeans and their Library Militant. Nevertheless, sticking to reality was difficult. Theodor Geisel still held the lobby, but the administration was franchising mind and touch space everywhere else. Scooch-a-mouti characters had infested the basement. H. P. Lovecraft's were said to lurk in the farther underground, in what had been noncirculating storage.

And the sixth floor… was empty, stripped to the bare shelving. From the elevator entrance at the middle of the floor, Robert could see through skeletal shelving all the way to the windows. The book shredders had come and gone. In the southeast corner, the conspirators were hunkered down like twentieth-century socialists plotting empire in the midst of their obvious ruin.

"So what's held up the Library Militant invasion?" Robert said, and waved at the stark reality of the empty stacks.

Carlos replied, "A delay in finding the newest haptics is the official explanation. In fact, it's politics. The Scoochi partisans want this floor for their universe. The Library Militant is resisting. The administration may disappoint them both and make this floor a simulation of what libraries were like when they were real."

"But with fake imagery of the books, right?"

"Yup." Tommie was smiling. "What do you expect? Meantime we still have the floor to ourselves."

"We are not defeated, gentlemen." Winnie's face was stern. "We've known for weeks now that this was inevitable. We've lost a major battle. But it is only the first battle in the war." He glanced at Tommie.

Parker pointed at the LED on his computer. "The deadzone is in place. It's time to resume our seriously criminal conspiratizing." He was smiling, but his gaze swept across them, catching each in the eye. "Okay. I've done my research. I can get us into the steam tunnels. I've even arranged festivities that will get the lab staff out of our way. I can get us to the shredda containers, and I have the aerosol glue. We can cause the Librareome Project and Huertas in particular a whole lot of pain. Of course, it won't stop progress on this sort of thing, but it will — "