Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Gu — > Grant: I take the watch, ma'am. He and Grant exchanged salutes. The clock was started. His squads settled into total alertness. They would have to stay that way for four hours — not a long time, but about the longest you could remain watch-alert without drugs.

Bob's job was different. He was like a sheepdog running around the outside of the flock, skittering from topic to topic. He watched where marines and analysts were spending their time. This was partly to stay ahead of hot spots, partly to detect attentional holes. For a moment, he looked down from a popular-press viewpoint over UCSD. This… event… was going to involve a lot of demonstrators, many of them physically present. And network stats showed that a flash crowd situation was possible on top of that. He wondered if Miri was surfing this.

The thought brought him back to the moment. He looked again at the Recusal Advisements. Half of his marines had relatives enrolled at UCSD. That was the big problem with a local snoop. Three of his people were actually part-time students at UCSD. The slang-slinger had a hobby of Scoochi decoration that involved a number of Bangalore fans. If this hadn't been the kid's duty night, he'd be down there on campus right now. But the analysts had done a minute-by-minute on the young fellow, going back fourteen months. There were some illegalities, some enhancement drug abuse, but nothing that would affect the mission.

Bob had searched the entire recusal tree. Now he ran off its pointers, boring deep. Dad didn't show up. And I was sure he'd be mixed up in the Librareome thing . Not that that would be serious grounds for recusal. He was skittering too far afield, a common problem for commanders with latitude —

Xiu Xiang ? The name was vaguely familiar, but it wouldn't have popped out at him if his own name hadn't been in the item. Xiang was one of about three hundred thousand people in CONUS Southwest who were currently of interest for tinkering with hardware. Much of that was illegal, of course; such people could be thrown to the FBI. But it was more productive simply to track them. Most of these people were benign hobbyists or intellectual-property cheats. Some were the hands for terrorist cults. And some were the analyst smarts behind those cults. Xiang had the intelligence and training to be in this last category, but so far the most interesting thing about her was the range of toys she had built, a regular museum of oddball electronics. And she was in one of Dad's classes. That connection was marked "tenuous."

But there was also a reference to Rainbows End Rest Home… This woman was Mom's roomie! And all this time he'd worried about how dull life must be for Mom nowadays. What a team: the mad scientist and his mother the shrink and — Whafs this ? Weeks of do-it-yourself snooping that Miri and Mom and this Xiang had run on Dad. A dozen surmises rose to mind, and — Mission, mission, keep your eyes on the mission . He resolutely pushed all the personal issues aside. The main thing this proved was the stupidity of running watches with local personnel.

Bob grabbed another coffee and settled back to watch the views of UCSD and the night's other hot spots. In the modern military, losing concentration was much the same sin as falling asleep on duty. It was time to get in the groove.

And still, a tiny internal voice did its best to distract: What in heaven's name have Miri and Mom been up to ?

Monday, 5:00 p.m. Finally .

Twilight was still colorful in the sky over La Jolla Shores when Robert drove into the traffic loop north of Warschawski Hall. He headed east on foot, toward the Geisel Library.

"Ready for the big night, my man?" That was the Stranger-Sharif, walking beside him. Passersby didn't seem to see his green-faced companion.

Robert gave the Stranger a sour look. "I'm ready to see you deliver."

"Don't worry. If we succeed tonight, you'll have your peculiar genius fully back, my word on it."

Robert grunted. Not for the first time he speculated on the lunacy of the terminally desperate.

"And don't look so discouraged, Professor. You've already done your hardest part. Tonight it's mainly Tommie Parker who has to get things straight."

"Tommie? I wonder."

"You wonder?" The Stranger's smile broadened. "So you've identified Tommie's 'miracle design bureau'? Poor Tommie. He's the only one of you who thinks he's running free. In fact, he thinks I'm just one of his best collaborators. See, I can be nice when that's absolutely necessary."

There were as many people here as Robert had ever seen on a campus evening in his grad-school days. Up ahead, in the direction of the library, light hung in the sky, brighter than the twilight behind them. Looking down from the tops of the eucalyptus trees, Robert could see crowds along the esplanades south and east of the library. There seemed to be several groups, not mixing. "What's going on?" That must be the distraction Tommie had promised; it was far larger than Winnie's Librareome demonstration.

"Heh. I've planned extraordinary festivities around the library tonight; almost everybody's invited, especially staff from General Genomics labs. But not you. I suggest we detour around the library."

"But that was the rendezvous point — "

"It's already too busy. We'll head for Pilchner Hall direct. This way, please." The Stranger pointed to the right, into dark eucalyptus trees.

Meantime, in the GenGen labs…

Sheila Hanson popped up half an hour into the night shift. "You ready, Tim?"

Tim Huynh sat back from his desk, and gestured up his little helpers. "We're ready, boss." He stepped into the corridor and followed Hanson's come-hither arrows up the stairs. She and the rest of her lab techs were already gathered round the surface entrance. Four or five were recent graduates. The rest — like Timothy Huynh himself — were work-study students. "You're sure this isn't going to lose us our jobs?" Belief-circle gaming was all very well outside of work, but Huynh would never have considered this adventure if his own supervisor hadn't suggested it.

Hanson laughed. "I told you. GenGen regards this battle as a form of public service. Besides, it will embarrass Huertas International." Her glance took in all of them, GenGen's entire night crew except for regulomics. Sheila's explanation was enough for Tim. Once upon a time, he had really looked forward to working at GenGen. How many people got to see — in person — the lab equipment that their college majors were built upon? But more often than not, his job came down to unwedging overenthusiastic cleaning robots, and hauling non-prepped cargo. Yes, sometimes there were real problems, problems where you got to consult with users and help customize their experiment setup. But then you spent days devising automation so that wouldn't happen again. Not one of the crew members, even the ones who weren't Scooch-a-moutis, looked unhappy about tonight's little diversion.

"Okay, everybody," said Sheila, "let's see you look properly formed." They slipped into their Scoochi characters. There were pofu-longs and dwelbs, and a great big shima-ping. The shima-ping was Sheila. She glanced at Huynh. "You can't be the Scooch-a-mout, Tim. That's reserved."

"But I'm commanding the critters." He waved at the helper bots that had followed him up the stairs.

"You're guiding them, Tim. You can be a Lesser Scooch-a-mout."

"Okay." He shifted form. These were all world-class designs, not seen before tonight. He doubted very much that any of them would remain reserved for long, but if Sheila wanted to play the beliefs strictly, he wasn't going to be the one to break the circle.

They trooped out the doors, into the evening twilight. There was still color in the tops of the eucalyptus. South, across the ravines, their goal was a vast double pyramid, glassy-faceted on top, dark and be-vined below. And that was the real, naked-eye view! The Geisel Library. As they moved along, Sheila and others were fitting their vision over the world. This hadn't been rehearsed. It was designed as a surprise for the Hacekeans, but even more as a surprise for the world that would soon be coming down to watch. One by one, the eucs made little popping noises and suddenly were transformed into moonflower trees, their leaves fluorescent in the twilight.