Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Red doubt was hemorrhaging across the analyst pool, spreading from a statistical analysis team at Moscow-Capetown. These were the same chaps who had been consistently right about the Soybean Futures Plot. They had credibility… and they claimed that the views from the north side of the GenGen area were corrupt. Those were not views Alfred had subverted. For better or worse, his colleagues had discovered some other deception.

Now the signals and stat people in all the analyst pools had precedence. A thousand specialists, who a second ago might have been looking at a dozen other problems, were suddenly watching the same data. Computing resources shifted from a myriad drudge tasks, began correlating data from the accessible sensors in the labs. It was as if Indo-European intelligence were an immense cat suddenly come alert, listening and watching for sign of its prey.

Only one of the area cams was offline, but others were subtly misregistered. The inconsistencies were scattered all across the area that the Alliance controlled… but analysis made the Moscow-Capetown guess more and more a certainty. A blotch of deception was moving into the GenGen area at the speed of a fast walk.

There ! A fleeting glimpse of the Gu child. The analysts pounced on the location, dredged two sets of footsteps out of the lying silence. So Rabbit did have troops on the ground.

Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: That damned bunny. We can't stop him. He just keeps coming and coming and coming.

For a moment there was no conversation. Then:

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: I can stop him. I can pull the plug on Credit Suisse.

There was another long pause. Yes. Günberk's discovery that Rabbit depended on a single apex certificate authority. All power in the modern world, from flying the largest aircraft to moving bytes between components in a single processor, it all came down to the exchange of appropriate markers of trust, as enforced by the Secure Hardware Environment. And far at the top of Rabbit's operations, via billions of unknown paths, there was a single source, Credit Suisse CA. Revoking that authority would disarm Rabbit. It would likely destroy the fellow's access to his own most personal files, leaving nothing but what the creature held in his natural mind (unless Rabbit really was an AI, in which case nothing would be left). But the collateral damage would be enormous. Shutting down a top-level certificate authority was a metaphorical weapon of mass destruction. And now it was all that was left to them.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: Mr. Rabbit must be stopped… I have begun the proceedings. Credit Suisse will begin issuing global revocations in fifteen seconds.

Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: I'm sorry, Günberk. Ten percent of the trust apparatus of Europe would slide into chaos in the next half hour. The aftershocks would rattle the world. Whatever else came out of their mission here, for Günberk Braun it was a career-ending failure.

Another kind of failure threatened Alfred Vaz. Shooting down Rabbit had been one of his fondest hopes, but not just now ! Alfred dipped back into the GenGen viewpoints. Downing Rabbit had eliminated all the slack from the schedule. And I need that time for my own cover-up . He was reduced to emergency measures: Alfred brought two more secret teams online. One would use the fruit-fly scam to divert what was left of Rabbit. The other would destroy his lab-within-a-lab, destroy Alfred's work of years. But they would also outship his secret lab's greatest prize through GenGen's UP/Ex launcher.

For Alfred Vaz, some form of success was still possible.

Gu the Eldest and Gu the Youngest hiked southward out of the Huertas cavern. Behind them the shredda containers and the north entrance were swallowed by darkness. The light that traveled above them shone just a few yards in all directions.

"How far till we're in enemy territory?" said Robert.

Miri held a finger up to her lips. She gestured, and silent messaging paraded across his vision.

Miri — > Robert: Your pdf says they only control a small part of GenGen. But I bet they can hear a long ways. Stick with silent messaging.

Robert fumbled with the box at his belt. The keypad display helped, but typing was tedious. All the tricks that Juan had taught him were nearly useless without Epiphany.

Robert — > Miri: Ok.

Miri walked in almost perfect silence, and Robert tried to imitate her. In fact, with Winston and the others gone, things were very quiet in Huertas country. Maybe they were as alone as the Mysterious Stranger had claimed, shielded from friends and enemies alike.

Miri must have been reading as they walked. More sming appeared.

Miri — > Robert: I didn't know about "Alfred."

It was curious that she didn't wonder about the Mysterious Stranger.

He tapped a few cramped words. Robert — > Miri: Wht cn we do?

Miri — > Robert: Well, there's Mr. Smart-Aleck's list. She waved at the air, and a page of the Stranger's pdf popped into view.

Page 17 What you can do to defeat Alfred

First off, even I, your mysterious friend, am not sure exactly what Alfred is up to (but I am afire with curiosity). Here are some possibilities.

(l)To blow up the bio labs, classic straightforward terrorism. But don't you think he went to rather a lot of trouble if that's all he wants to do? It would be a gross under-employment of everyone's talent. If this is the scam, you will be the heroes of the day, my hands in disabling those little boxes you and your friends planted — but your fame will likely be posthumous. My condolences!

(2)To sabotage some component of the labs, maybe in a way that won't become evident till much later disasters. This is almost as stupid as (1).

(3)To install (or cover) some fiendishly clever Man-in-the-Middle software that gives Alfred de facto ownership of research done in that part of lab that you, Robert, infested for him. This would be cool, and it is my personal favorite (see my discussion of fruit flies in Chapter 3). Unfortunately for Alfred, this caper is so far blown that I doubt it will survive the audits that will surely come raining down. In this case, you two can help by grabbing anything that Alfred has not yet hidden.

(4)In the failure of case (3), or perhaps as his original plan, Alfred may take advantage of your cabal's efforts and outship biologically interesting materials from the labs.

[Diagram of the pneumo tube transport system]

[Picture of GenGen's UP/Ex launcher]

To what end? Oh, the usual terrorist possibilities — but more likely, something weird and interesting. I'm confident I can identify such activity, and you — my loyal hands — can physically prevent the loading and outshipment.

For the moment we are all in the dark about this. But once you enter the perverted GenGen area, I should be able to contact you again. Be careful, be quiet, and Watch for Me in Your Sky!

Miri's words were overwriting the text even before Robert finished reading it.

Miri — > Robert: This guy is always so modest.

Robert grinned. Then he read her message a second time. And he thought back to all his conversations with Sharif, to the mystery of True-Sharif and Stranger-Sharif and… SciFi-Sharif. Oh, my God .

Robert — > Miri: How much of sharif ws u?

She glanced up at him and for instant her intensity was transformed into a dazzling smile. Miri — > Robert: I'm not sure. Sometimes we were all mixed together with the real Zulfi. That was almost fun, hearing what the others asked and what you answered. But way too often, I was frozen out and it was just Mr. Smart-Aleck.

Robert — > Miri: The Mysterious Stranger.

Miri — > Robert: Do you really call him that? Why?