Vernor Vinge: Rainbows End

Robert sat down again, but on the edge of his chair. His great confession had vanished into the abyss. "You should talk to Bob when he gets back."

"I will. And he'll argue with her. You've heard that yourself. But in the end he can't stop her."

"This time, maybe he can go over her head, or get the doctors to back him up."

Miri hesitated, seemed to relax a fraction. "Yes. This time is different… I-I'm glad we can talk, Robert."

"Any time, kiddo."

But then she was quiet.

Finally, Robert said, "Are you conspiring, or just Googling?"

Miri shook her head. "N-Neither. I tried to call someone… but they're not answering."

Ah ! "You know, Miri, Juan is in Puebla visiting his great-grandfather. He may not be wearing all the time."

"Juan? I wouldn't call him. He's not very bright, and when the crunch came in Pilchner Hall, he was useless."

"You can't know that!"

"I know I was down in the tunnels by myself."

"Miri, I've talked to Juan almost every day since I started at Fairmont. He wouldn't let you down. Think back to the times you do remember. You two must have conspired a lot to keep track of me. I'll bet he played fair. He could be your good friend, another person you could talk to."

For once, Miri's chin came down. "You know I can't talk to him about these things. I couldn't talk to you, except you already know."

"That's true. There are things you can't tell him. But… I think he deserves better from you."

Miri's eyes flicked up to meet his, but she didn't speak.

"Remember how I told you, you remind me of your great-aunt Cara?"

Miri nodded.

"You were happy to learn that. But I think you know how I treated Cara. It was like the Ezra Pound Incident, over and over again, for years. I never had a chance to make up for that; she died when she was not much older than Alice is now."

Tears were back in Miri's eyes, but she held the tissues tight on her lap. "I went through my whole life like that, Miri. I married a wonderful lady who loved me very much. Lena put up with more than I ever dumped on Cara, and for years longer. Even after I drove her away, you know how she helped me at Rainbows End. And now she is dead, too." Robert looked down, and for a moment all he could think of was lost opportunities. Where was I? Oh : "So… I think you owe Juan. Dumping on him isn't in the same league as my screwups. But you still have a chance to set things right."

He looked at Miri. Her shoulders were hunched. She was shredding the tissues she held in her hands. "Just think about it, okay, Miri? I didn't mean to get carried away."

Finally, she spoke: "Have you ever broken a solemn promise, Robert?"

Where did that come from ? But before he could get his mouth in gear, Miri continued:

"Well, I just did!" And with that, she grabbed the box of tissues and ran from the room.

"Miri!" By the time he got into the hall, Miri had disappeared into her room.

Robert dithered for a moment. He could go down and pound on her door. Or maybe he should message her.

He stepped back into his room, turned — and saw the golden light on the table, right beside where Miri had been sitting. It was an enum, granting some kind of limited message capability. But he already had that and more for Miri. He opened the golden enum and looked inside.

This one was for Lena Llewelyn Gu.

Robert sat beside the enum for almost half an hour. He studied it. He studied the documentation. It was exactly what he thought. Lena lives .

There was no physical address, but he could write her a simple message. It took him only two hours to do so. Less than two hundred words. They were the most important words that Robert Gu had ever written.

Robert couldn't sleep that night. Morning came, then afternoon.

There was no reply.

Epilogue

Six weeks passed. Robert was watching the news more now; he had learned that the world can bite you. He and Miri compared notes on what they saw. The raids at the edge of the world were allegedly over. Rumors held that little had been discovered. Rumors — and some real news — spoke of scandals in the EU, Indian, and Japanese intelligence services. All the Great Powers remained very nervous about insert-your-favorite-crazyass-theory-here.

On the home front, Bob was back! Robert and Miri took that to mean that some disaster theories were much less likely. Others remained scarily viable. Indeed, Bob blew his stack when he learned about Alice. Things got very tense around the house. Both Robert and Miri sensed heartbreaking battles hiding behind the looks and silences. Miri had years of putting together the clues. Her best guess was that Bob had appealed to the doctors, that he had complained far up the chain of command. None of it mattered. Alice remained in Training.

Somewhere in all of this, Juan returned from Puebla. Miri didn't have much to say about him, but they were talking. The boy was smiling more.

From Lena there was… silence. She lived. His messages didn't bounce and her enum remained accessible. It was like talking into an infinite void. And Robert did keep talking, a message every day — and wondering what more he should do.

Xiu Xiang had left Rainbows End.

"Lena asked me to leave," Xiu told him. "Maybe I pushed her too hard." But I know where she lives now! I could go there. I could make her see how much I've changed . And maybe that would just prove that he had changed in all the ways that didn't matter. So Robert didn't drive out to Rainbows End; he didn't snoop the public cams there. But he continued to write her. And when he was outside, he often imagined that besides the 7-by-24 at-tention of the security authorities, perhaps there was another watcher, one who would someday forgive him.

Meantime, he threw himself into schoolwork. There was so much to learn. And the rest of his time was spent with Comms-R-Us. They liked his work.

Two months after the Great Library Riot, Robert returned to UCSD. He had lost track of Winston and Carlos. It was strange when he thought about it. For a few days the cabal had been such a tight conspiracy, but now they never spoke. The easiest explanation was mutual shame. They had been used, and their various agendas had come close to killing a lot of people. There was truth in all that, but for Robert there was another explanation, something weirder and almost as unsettling: the cabal was like a childhood clique, the animosities and closeness now vanished as his childlike attention morphed in new directions. Sometimes the desperation of the fall semester seemed almost as remote as his life in the twentieth century. There were so many things he wanted to learn and do and be, and they had so little do with what had previously consumed him.

In the end, it was his project with Comms-R-Us that brought him back to campus. Jitter and latency were bad problems in video protocols, worse in voice, and absolute death for touchy-feely interfaces. Haptic robots were getting better and better — but they were almost useless when run over the net. Now, Comms-R-Us wanted Robert to try his crazy synch schemes on haptics.

In the aftermath of the Librareome and the riot, the UCSD administration had dumped further bushel-baskets of cash on the library. In some ways its touchy-feely experience was better than commercial parks like Pyramid Hill. The question was, how could you export that across the net? He had done plenty of reading, studied the design of touchy-feely bots, but until the problem was solved there would be no substitute for firsthand experience. He took a car down to UCSD.

Two months. Not really a long time. The server shacks on the north side of Warschawski Hall had merged. There was a soccer field where the Software Engineering Department had been. Robert could see that this wasn't destruction related to the Library Riot or the marine landings; it was the normal churn of any modern institution.