Rainbows End (12 page)

”
Sit
!” the boy grown up had said to his father, in a tone that Robert had never heard from him before. And Robert had dropped onto the sofa. His son towered over him for a moment. Then Bob sat down opposite him and leaned close. “Miri won’t talk about the details, but it’s clear what you did this afternoon, mister.”

“Bob, I was just — ” “Shut up. My little girl has enough problems, and you
will not
add to them!” His glare was long and steady.

 

“… I didn’t mean any harm, Bob. I had a bad day.” Some distant part of him realized that he was
whining
, and that he couldn’t stop. “Where is Lena, Bob?”

 

Bob’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve asked me that before. I wondered if it was an act.” He shrugged. “Now I don’t care. After today, I just want you out of here, but… have you looked at your finances, Dad?” It was going to come down to that. “Yes… there’s a finance package in my WinME. My savings, I was a multimillionaire in 2000.”

“That’s three bubbles back, Dad. And you guessed wrong on every one. But at this point you’re nearly certified as self-sufficient. You’d have a hard time scaring up any public assistance. The taxpayers are not kind to seniors; old people run too much of the country already.” He hesitated. “And after today, my generosity has run out. Mom died two years ago — and dumped you decades before that. But maybe you should wonder about other things. For instance, where are all your old pals from Stanford?”

“I — ” Faces rose up in Robert’s mind. He’d been in the English Department at Stanford for thirty years. There were lots of faces. Some of them belonged to people who were years younger than he was. Where were they now?

Bob nodded at his silence. “Right. Not one has visited you, nor even tried to contact you. I should know. Even before today, I figured that when you got your strength back you’d start hurting whoever was nearest — and that would be Miri. So I’ve been trying to farm you out to one of your old buddies. And you know what, Dad? There’s not one who wants anything to do with you. Oh, there are newsies. You won’t have to look far to find as many fans as ever — but among them all there’s not a single friend.” He paused. “Now you don’t have any options. Finish the semester; learn what you can.
And then get out of our house
.”

“But Lena. What about Lena?”

 

Bob shook his head. “Mom’s dead. You had no use for her except when you needed a servant or a kickball. Now it’s too late. She’s dead.”

“But — ” There were memories, but they clashed with one another. The last decade at Stanford. The Bollingen Prize and the Pulitzer. Lena had
not
been there to share them. She had divorced him just about the time Bob joined the Marines. And yet — “You remember. Lena got me into that rest home, Rainbows End. And then she was
here
, when things got really dark. She was here with Cara” — his little sister, still ten years old, and dead since 2006. His words stumbled to a halt.

Something glittered in his son’s eyes. “Yes, Mom was here, just like Cara. A shame attack won’t work on me, Dad. I want you out of this house. End of the semester at the latest.”

 

And that was the longest conversation Robert had had with anyone since Saturday.

It was cold. He’d walked a long way into the desert. The night had risen partway up the sky. Stars hung over a flat land that stretched forever be-yond him. Maybe that should be the “Secret of the One Who Came Back”… that he just wanted to go away again, walking forever into the bluish dark. He walked a bit farther, then slowed, stopped beside a huge rough rock — and stared into the night.

After some minutes, he turned and started back into the bright twilight.

Juan got sidetracked from Big Lizard’s quest. School began to seriously intrude. Chumlig wanted them to complete their projects and she wanted real results. Worst of all, the school board had suddenly decided the class must demo their creative compositions at Parents’ Night — in place of the final exam. Low grades and Chumlig’s disappointment in him were bad enough; Juan already knew he was a loser. But such public humiliation was something he desperately wanted to avoid.

So for a while he was on a different quest: finding someone to team with in composition class. The problem was, Juan was no good at writing. He wasn’t more than so-so with math or answerboards. Ms. Chumlig said the secret of success was “to learn to ask the right questions.” But to do that she also said you had “to know something about something.” That wisdom and “everyone has some special talent” were the drumbeats of her classes. But it didn’t help. Maybe the best he could hope for was a team so big the losers would shield each other.

Today he sat at the back of the shop tent with Fred and Jerry. The twins had missed their proper shop class that morning, so now they were wasting the rest of the day here rather than in study hall. It was kind of fun. The two were pretending to work on a magnetic orrery — a plagiarism so obvious that their plans still had the source URLs written on them. About half the class had completed something. Doris Schley’s paper airplanes were flying, but just this afternoon her team had discovered terrible stability problems. They didn’t know about Fred and Jerry’s unofficial project: The twins had hijacked the tent’s air-conditioning. While they kicked back and fooled with the orrery, they were using the fans to tumble Schley’s fliers.

Xiu Xiang sat hunched over the transport tray she had been working on lately. She didn’t look so blank and despairing these days, even if she had warped the transport surface to where it wasn’t good for anything. Xiang practically had her nose buried in the equipment. Every so often she drew back and studied her view-page, then returned to the unmoving wreck she had created.

Winston Blount had been scarce since Juan had put him onto the Lizard’s quest. Juan counted that as encouraging; maybe Mr. Blount was working on the affiliance.

Juan leaned into the cool air from the fans. Back here it was nice. It was hot and noisy over by the outside entrance, but that’s where Robert Gu sat. Earlier, the guy had been watching Dr. Xiang. Sometimes she seemed to be watching him back, but even more secretly. Now Mr. Gu mainly stared at the traffic circle, watching the cars that occasionally pulled up, picked up or dropped off passengers, and then departed. The table in front of the fake teenager was littered with Buildlt fragments, and several rickety-looking towers. Juan zoomed in on a couple of them from a viewpoint in the tent above Gu’s head. Huh. The gadgets had no motors, not even any control logic.

So Gu was going to crash in this class just as sure as Juan was in Composition. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe he could resume the Lizard’s game, and take one last whack at finding a teammate for Ms. Chumlig’s project.
But I tried him last week
. Robert Gu was the best writer Juan had ever known. He was so good he could kill you with his words. Juan tucked his chin in and tried to forget last week.

And then he thought,
The guy isn’t wearing, so he’s staring at nothing. He must he bored out of his skull
Juan dithered for another ten minutes, but shop class had thirty minutes more to run and the Radners were way too focused on their anti-aircraft guns.
Jerry — > Juan: Hey, where you going?

Juan — > Radners: Gonna make one more try with Gu. Wish me luck. Fred — > Juan: It’s unhealthy to want a grade that bad.

Juan meandered across the pavilion, walking along the lab benches as if he were studying the other projects. He ended up beside the strange old man. Gu turned to look at him, and Juan’s casual cover evaporated. Gu’s sweaty face looked almost as young as Fred Radner’s. But the eyes looked right into Juan, cold and cruel. Last week, the guy had seemed friendly — right up to the moment he ripped Juan apart. Now all Juan’s clever opening lines were gone; even the dumb ones were hiding. Finally he managed to point at the crazy towers Robert Gu had been working on. “What’s the project?”

The young-old man continued to stare at Juan. “A clock.” Then he reached into a parts box and dropped three silver balls into the top of the tallest tower.

“Oh!” The balls bounced down connecting stairways. The first tower was directly in front of Juan. Going to the right, each tower was a bit shorter and more complex than the last. Mr. Gu had used most of the “classic parts” that Ron Williams kept in stock. This was a clock? Juan tried to match it against old-time clock patterns. There were no perfect fits, though the thing did have levers that clicked back and forth against a whatchama-google… an escape wheel. Maybe the balls tipping down the stairways were like the hands on a clock.

Gu continued to stare at him. “But it’s running fast,” he said.

Juan leaned forward and tried to ignore that stare. He captured about three seconds of the contraption’s motion, enough to identify stationary points and dimensions. There was an old mechanics program that came in handy for medieval gadget games; he fed the description into it. The results were easy to interpret. “You just gotta make that lever a quarter-inch longer.” He poked a finger at a tiny spar.

“I know.” Juan looked back at him. “But you’re not wearing. How did you figure that out?” Gu shrugged. “A medical gift.” “That’s pretty neat,” Juan said uncertainly. “For what? To do what any child can do already?” Juan didn’t have any answer for that. “But you’re also a poet.”

“And now I’m good with gadgets.” Gu’s hand twitched out, smashing through the levers and wheels. Parts sprayed in all directions, some of them breaking under the force of his blow.

 

That
got everyone’s attention. The class was suddenly quiet — and blazing with sming. It was time to back off. But Juan really really needed help with Creative Composition. And so he said, “You still know about words, though, right?”

 

“Yes, I still know about words. I still know about grammar. I can parse sentences. I can even spell — hallelujah, without mechanical aid. What’s your name?”

“Juan Orozco.”
“Yes, I remember. What are you good for, Mr. Orozco?” Juan tucked his chin in. “I’m learning how to ask the right questions.” “Do so, then.”

“um.” Juan looked at the other parts Gu had collected, things he hadn’t used in his clock. There were rotary motors, there were wireless synchs, there were programmable gear trains. There was even a transport tray like the one Dr. Xiang had messed up. “So how come you don’t use any of these gadgets? That would be lots easier.”

He expected Gu to spout some Chumliggy thing about solving a problem within constraints. Instead, the other poked angrily at the components. “Because I can’t see inside them. Look.” He nipped a rotary motor across the table.” ‘No user-serviceable parts within.’ It’s stamped right in the plastic. Everything is a black box. Everything is inscrutable magic.”

“You could look at the manuals,” said Juan. “They show internals.”

 

Gu hesitated. His hands were gathered into fists. Juan edged back a few inches. “You can see internals? You can change them?”

Juan watched the fists.
He’s flipping crazy
. “You can see them easy. Almost everything serves up its own manual. If it doesn’t, just Google on the part number.” The look on Gu’s face sent Juan into fast mode: “As for changing the internals… often they’re programmable. But otherwise, the only changes you can make are when you order, back at the design and fab stage. I mean, these are just
components
. Who’d want to change them once they’re made? Just trash ‘em if they’re not working like you want.”

“Just components?” Gu looked out from under the fringes of the shop-class tent. An automobile was tooling up Pala Avenue, heading for the school’s traffic circle. “What about the fucking cars?” “Unh.” The whole class was staring. Almost the whole class: Mr. Williams was on break and out of contact.

 

Mr. Gu twitched for a few seconds. Then suddenly he was standing. He grabbed Juan by the collar. “By God I’m going to have a look.”

 

Juan bounced along just ahead of Robert Gu’s angry, pushing hands. “Break open a car? Why would you want to do that?”

“That’s the wrong question, kid.” At least they were walking
away
from the traffic circle. Even if he went after an automobile, what damage could he do? The car bodies were a trashy composite, easy to recycle, but strong enough to take a fifty-mile-per-hour crash. Visions of battle lasers and monster sledgehammers came to mind. But this was the real world.

Jerry — > Juan: What is the goofball up to?
Juan — > Radners: I dunno!

Robert Gu marched him across the tent to where Xiu Xiang was sitting. By the time he arrived, the only evidence of madness was the faint twitchiness in his face. “Dr. Xiang?”

 

The crazy man actually sounded relaxed and friendly, but Xiang hesitated a long moment. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve been admiring your project. Some kind of mass mover?”

 

Xiang tilted the warped surface up toward him. “Yes. It’s just a toy, but I thought I could get a leverage effect by warping the surface.” Talking about the gadget seemed to distract her from Gu’s weirdness. “Very nice!” There was nothing but charm in Gu’s voice. “May I?” He picked up the panel and studied the ragged edge.

 

“I had to cut out gores so the microgrooves wouldn’t bind,” she said, standing up to point at her work.

Transport trays were for shedding dirt or sliding small containers. For most things, they were better than robot hands, even if they didn’t look as impressive. Juan’s mother had remodeled their kitchen with fake-marble transports; afterward, everything she wanted was where it should be, in the fridge or oven or on the cutting board, just when she needed it. Usually, the microgrooves couldn’t slide anything faster than a couple of inches a second.

What Xiang was saying gave Juan an idea. Maybe the warped board was not broken. He started to put the dimensions into a mechanics program —

But Robert Gu already seemed to know what the thing could do. “You could triple the delivered force if you adjusted it, here.” He twisted the tray. It creaked the way ceramics do when you’ve bent them
almost
to the breaking point.