Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Their path was now a trek through the maze. Finally, the Mysterious Stranger stopped at a closed door. He paused and spoke soberly. "As you may know, Professor Parker is not fully on board. For the sake of your various goals, I suggest you be careful not to enlighten him."

Robert and Carlos nodded.

The Mysterious Stranger turned and mimed knocking on the plastic door. His hand sounded like a hammer pounding heavy wood. After a moment, the door opened and Winston Blount peered out. "Hello, Carlos." His gaze passed less favorably over Robert and the Stranger. He waved them in.

The room was a triangular wedge trapped between slanting walls. A concrete caisson took up most of the floor space. Tommie Parker sat on the floor beside a handcart that was filled with plastic bags and backpacks. "Hiya, guys. You're right on time." He glanced at his laptop. "You'll be pleased to know that press and police did not notice your arrival. At the moment we're standing in a room that doesn't even exist. This — " he slapped the caisson " — is still visible to the university, but it will happily lie about what we're doing."

Robert edged round the blocky structure. "I remember this." In the 1970s, the caisson had been out-of-doors, covered with a wooden lid. He looked over the edge. Yes, just as before: iron ladder rungs marched downward into darkness.

Tommie stood up. He had his laptop in a sling that left the keyboard and display accessible, but also freed him to move about. In his own way, Tommie Parker had arrived at wearable computing.

Tommie reached into the handcart and lifted out two plastic bags. "Time to leave your Epiphanies behind, guys. I've got new clothes for you."

"You really meant it," said Rivera.

"Yup. Your old clothes will help me fake your location. Meantime the real you will be with me, and using far better equipment."

"Not laptops, I hope," said Winnie, giving Parker's laptop sling a doubtful look. But he and the others shed shirts and pants and shoes. They still had their contact lenses, but now there was nothing to drive them. The real lighting was bright enough, but without external sound and vision, the room felt like a coffin.

Tommie seemed genuinely embarrassed by all the naked flab. But not for long. He pulled open one of the plastic bags and passed around pants and shirts. They looked like plain gray fabric, working clothes. Carlos held his new shirt up to the light and peered at the weave. He folded it between his hands and rubbed the sides together. "These clothes are dumb."

"Yup. No infrared microlasers, no processor nodes. Just the good cotton as God meant us to wear it."

"But — "

"Don't worry, I have processors."

"I was joking about laptops, Tommie."

Tommie shook his head. "No, not laptops, either. I have Hurd boxes."

Huh ? Without his wearable, Robert was stumped.

Carlos looked just as blank, but then some errant natural memory must have popped up: "Oh! Hurd OS! But isn't that obsolete?"

Tommie was rummaging in the second plastic bag. He did not look up. "Not obsolete. Just illegal… Ah, here they are. Genuine Hecho en Paraguay" He handed each of his co-conspirators a black plastic box about the size and shape of a paperback book. There was a real keypad on one side and a metallic clip on the other. "Just snap it on your waistband. Make sure the metal tab is actually touching your skin."

Robert's new pants were too short, and the shirt fit like a tent. He slipped the criminal computer on his waistband and felt the cold touch of metal on his skin. He could see a faint overlay now. It was a picture of a keypad, and when his hand rested on the box at his waist, he saw markers corresponding to his fingertips. What a pitiful interface.

"Don't cover the box with your shirt, Carlos. All the comm ports are on it."

Winnie: "You mean we have to turn in just the right direction to make a connection?"

"Yup. While we're below, our only external routing will be through my laptop. And my laptop's only uplink will be through this." Tommie held up something that looked like a prayer wheel. He gave it a little spin. There was a glint in the air, sliding along a thread too fine to see, to a connector Tommie held in his other hand. He turned and plugged that into a box on the handcart. "Check it out."

Robert pulled his shirt back from his waistband, and turned so the box had a clear view of Tommie's laptop. Nothing. He entered a simple command, and now he could see through the walls again! North of Gilman Drive, there were even more people heading toward the library. Indoors… he drifted back up the hallway. Still deserted. No ! There was a fellow walking purposefully down toward their "secret" room. Then he lost the viewpoint.

"Hey, Tommie — "

"What?"

The Stranger's voice sounded in Robert's ear. The audio was as bad as his old view-page, but he clearly heard: "You didn't see a thing, my man."

"I — " Robert swallowed. "Your fiber link is working fine, Tommie."

"Good, good." Parker walked among them, making sure that everyone could receive and transmit. "Okay. You're all equipped. That was the fun part. Now here's the pack-mule part." He pointed at the backpacks in the handcart.

Robert's pack weighed something like forty pounds. Carlos's looked about the same. Tommie and Winnie had smaller packs. Even so, Blount struggled with his load. Winnie's like an old man . Yeah, Reed Weber's heavenly minefield. Robert looked away before Winnie could take offense. He shrugged his own pack into a more comfortable position and complained, "I thought this was the future, Tommie. Where's the miniaturization? Or at least the automatic freight handlers?"

"Where we're going, the infrastructure ain't friendly, Robert." Tommie glanced at his laptop's display. "Hello, Mr. Sharif. Okay, it looks like we're all ready to go." He bowed them toward the dark hole in the middle of the room. "After you, gentlemen."

22

Alfred waited a decent time before entering the room. No sense in making noise that Rabbit's stooges might hear.

"What did I tell you, Doc! We're in. We're in!" Rabbit danced a merry jig around the caisson. The optical fiber that was giving Rabbit such joy was invisibly thin except when the light caught it just right.

Vaz nodded. He had a different communications success to celebrate; he had reestablished his milnet link across the Pacific.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: U.S. Homeland Security looks calm, Alfred. Alfred watched the stats streaming by. They were from the Alliance's listening posts. The national-security scene was indeed calm, even though the library disturbance had brought crowds to the UCSD campus. Rabbit had created the perfect paradoxical distraction. Almost perfect; the affair was growing too large.

Vaz knelt beside the box that marked the termination point of Thomas Parker's fiber link. The box was a scamful bridge. On one side, it accepted the uncertified data streams from Parker's criminal computers. On the other, it was a "good citizen," running under the government-required Secure Hardware Environment. It hid Parker's data in innocent packages wrapped in all the licenses and permissions needed to survive on the SHE of the Internet. Altogether it was not as secure as Vaz's milnet, but it would suffice for most regions of the contingency tree.

Alfred tweaked the box, and now he was getting Parker's video direct. At last, he was truly a Local Honcho.

The video from Parker's laptop bounced around without a bit of program control. But Vaz recognized the equipment in the walls, and some of the physical signage. Rabbit's stooges had breached bio-lab security. Even more impressive, the delicate game of fooling the lab's automatic security was a continuing success.