Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End

Tommie reached into his jacket and pulled out a three-inch-square piece of plastic. "Here. A present for you, that cost me all of $19.99."

Robert held up the dark plastic. It looked a lot like the diskettes he'd used on his old PC at the turn of the century. He pointed a query at it. La-bels floated in the air: Data Card. 128PB capacity. 97% in use . There was more, but Robert just looked back at Tommie. "Do people still use removables like this?"

"Just paranoid propertarian old farts like me. It's a nuisance to carry around, but I have a reader right here in my laptop." Of course. "The data is all online, along with a lot of cross-analysis that the Chinese will be charging you extra for. But even if you don't have a card reader, I thought you'd be interested in holding this in your own hot little hands."

"Ah." Robert peeked at the top directory. It was like standing on a very high mountaintop. "So this is — ?"

"The British Museum and Library, as digitized and databased by the Chinese Informagical Coalition. The haptics and artifact data are lo-res, to make it all fit on one data card. But the library section is twenty times as big as what Max Huertas sucked out of UCSD. Leaving aside things that never got into a library, that's essentially the record of humanity up through 2000. The whole premodern world."

Robert hefted the plastic card. "It doesn't seem like very much."

Tommie laughed. "Well, it's not!"

Robert started to hand it back, but Tommie waved him off. "Like I said, it's a present. Put it on the wall where you can remind yourself that it's all we ever were. But if you really want to see it, just look on the net. The Chinese have it pretty well meshed. And their special servers are really clever."

Tommie stepped back and motioned to the car that was trailing them. The rear door opened and he waved Xiu in ahead of him. For a weird instant Tommie looked like an old rake with some sweet young thing. Just another image from the past that had nothing to do with the truth.

"So Huertas is out of the shredding business, and the Chinese promise their follow-ups will be even gentler than what they did to the British Library. Imagine soft pinky robot hands, patiently picking over all the libraries and museums of the world. They'll be cross-checking, scanning for annotations — giving whole new generations of academic types like Zulfi Sharif something to hang their degrees on." He waved at Robert. "Hi ho!"

It was almost midnight when Xiu Xiang got back to Rainbows End. Lena was still up. She was in the kitchen, fixing some kind of snack. Lena's osteoporosis forced her to lean so far forward that her face was just a few inches off the table. It looked strange, but the wheelchair and the kitchen's design gave her plenty of freedom to maneuver.

Xiu eased into the room, feeling entirely embarrassed. "Sorry for cutting you out, Lena — "

The other twisted around to give her a direct look. There was a lopsided grin on her face. "Hey, no problem. You young people need your privacy." She waved for Xiu to sit down and have something to eat.

"Yes. Well, Tommie isn't really so young." She felt a blush coming on. "I, um, don't mean physically. He wants to keep up with progress, but he just can't cope with everything that means."

Lena shrugged. "Tommie's mind is better than some." She grabbed a sandwich off her plate and gave it a munch.

"Do you think he'll ever get his edge back?"

"Could be. Science marches on. And even if that doesn't help in Parker's case, we can give him pushes in the right direction. A big part of his problem is that life was too easy for him when he was young. He's too ornery to try anything that's really hard for him." She jabbed a hand in Xiu's direction. "Eat up."

Xiu nodded and reached for a sandwich. They had been over this before. In fact, it had been such discussions that had made all the difference for a certain Dr. X. Xiang. But maybe she had more on the ball than Tommie. Her chief problem in the near future might be in avoiding government "job offers."

Xiu bit into the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. But not bad really. "Have you had a chance to do your thing with the various people we saw today?"

"Play shrink, you mean? Yeah, I reviewed your Epiphany log; I posted some anonymous consults. The advice we gave Carlos Rivera was fine. He's got an ongoing problem, but that's life. As for Juan, we've done our best there, at least for the moment."

Xiu smiled around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly. It had taken her some time to realize what a genius Lena was. After all, psychiatry was such a soft specialty. Lena said little Miri loved to view her grandmother as a some kind of female wizard. She claimed to know that even though the girl never announced the fact. Now Xiu had realized Lena was everything Miri imagined, at least metaphorically. I've never understood other people, but with Lena seeing out of my eyes and chatting in my ear, I am learning .

There were still mysteries: "I don't understand why your granddaughter is pushing Juan away. Sure, the kids don't remember what really happened in Pilchner Hall, but we know they were coming to be friends. If we could only get Miri's logs" — what the government was still withholding.

Lena didn't answer directly. "You know Alice is home from hospital?"

"Yes! I caught the fact from you, no details."

"There won't be any details. 'Alice was sick and now she's better.' In fact, I've known for a long time that Alice plays dice for her own soul. She nearly lost it this time, and somehow that's related to my ex-husband's grand screwup at UCSD. I think Alice will recover. That should help Juan with Miri." Lena sat back in her chair. Or rather, she let the chair tilt into a different posture. On her own, Lena couldn't really straighten up. "We've talked about this before. Miri can be stubborn to the point of being an asshole. She inherited that trait from the SOB, skipping a generation over Bob. And now that stubbornness has latched on to some deep-down guilt: subconsciously Miri feels that she and Juan messed up and did this terrible thing to Alice."

"um, that doesn't really sound like science, Lena."

"I'm sparing you the technicalities."

Xiu nodded. "You get results. There are people at Fairmont High who think I'm some sort of human-relations genius. Me!"

Lena reached her hand a few inches across the table, as far as her twisted bones could go. Xiu took the hand gently in her own. "We've made a good team, haven't we?" said Lena.

"Yes." It wasn't just Lena's way with people. It wasn't just saving Tom-mie and his friends. There had been those dark days at the beginning of her time at Fairmont, when she was sure she could never come back — and Lena wasn't so happy-go-lucky either. Together they had climbed into the daylight. Xiu looked at the little old lady who was ten years younger than herself. Together, Lena and I have become something rather remarkable . Apart… ?

"Lena, do you think I'll ever be good at seeing into people the way you do?"

Lena shrugged and gave a little smile. "Oh, I don't know."

Xiu cocked her head, remembering little incidents here and there across the last few months. Lena Gu almost never lied outright. She seemed to realize what that would do to her credibility. But Lena could deceive, even in the face of a direct question. "Do you know, Lena, when you say 'oh, I don't know' and shrug — that means you're thinking 'not in a million years?'"

Lena's eyes widened. She gave Xiu's hand a squeeze. "um. Well, there you go. Maybe in this case it won't take a million years!"

"Good. Because I want to tell you, Lena… I don't think Robert is the SOB you remember. I think he's really changed."

Lena's hand slipped away from hers. "I take it back. In your case, a million years may not be enough."