Rainbows End (13 page)

“Wait — ” She reached for her project.

 

“I didn’t break it. This is even better. Come on over and I’ll show you.” His words were all so open and friendly. But he was already walking away.

Xiang chased after him, but she didn’t act like a kid would when someone grabs their property. She walked along beside Gu, her head tilted to get a look at the wrecked transport tray. “But there’s no way to use that mechanical advantage with just the batteries it’s rated for — ” The rest of what she said was mathematical; Juan just saved it.

As Gu swept by the Radner twins, his right arm flicked out, grabbing a jar of metal beads that Fred and Jerry were using for their orrery.

 

“Hey!” The Radners jumped to their feet and followed him, not saying much out loud. The Adult Ed students were like untouchables. You didn’t mess with them and vice versa.

Jerry — > Juan: What did we miss, Juan?
Fred — > Juan: Yeah. What did you say to him?
Juan danced backwards, lifting his hands to say that he was an innocent bystander.

Almost an innocent bystander. As Gu walked past his workbench, he jerked his chin toward the tent entrance. “Make yourself useful, Orozco. Get me some line current.”

Juan scooted ahead. There were 110VAC sources on campus, though most were indoors. He looked up public utilities and saw a big arrow pointing down into the lawn. This outlet was used to power building reconfiguration when they needed an extra auditorium. It had a thirty-foot extension reel. He ran to the spot and pulled the line up from the fresh-cut grass.

Now all the kids — minus Schley’s team, which was suddenly overjoyed by the improvement in their fliers’ performance — were following them out of the tent.
The car coming up the traffic loop was gliding to a stop at the curb behind him. It was Ms. Chumlig, back from lunch.

Robert Gu caught up, Xiang right behind him and looking upset. Gu was no longer making nice noises. He grabbed the power cord from Juan and plugged it into the transport tray’s universal, bypassing the teeny battery pack that Dr. Xiang had used. He tilted the tray on edge and poured the metal beads from the Radners’ project into the top-edge opening.

Chumlig was out of the car. “What’s going on — ”

The crazy man smiled at her. “My shop project, Louise. I’ve had enough of ‘no user-serviceable parts within.’ Let’s take a look.” He leaned over the car’s front hood and ran his finger down the printed words forbidding customer maintenance. The kids stood in clusters, awed. Juan had never heard of anyone at Fairmont High going wacko. Robert Gu was making history. The old man set the transport tray against the automobile.
So where is your battle laser, Mr. Spaceman
? Gu sighted along the edge of the tray, then glanced to his right, at the Radner brothers. “You really don’t want to be standing there.”

Xiu Xiang was frantic, shouting at the twins. “Get back, get back!” And now Juan was getting way unbelievable answers from his mechanics program. He hopped back from the transport tray. Robert Gu didn’t need a battle laser. For this job, he had something just as good.

Gu powered up the tray. The noise was like tearing cloth but
loud
, a crack-of-doom sound. Real sparks sprayed from where the transport tray touched the car’s hood. Twenty feet ahead of the car, where the Radners had been standing, there was an oleander hedge. Some of the branches were as thick as Juan’s arm. Now the white flowers were dancing like there was a breeze; one of the largest branches snapped and fell on the sidewalk.

Gu slid the tray along the curve of the automobile, driving dozens of metal beads per second into the hood, cutting an eighth-inch-wide slit in the composite. He turned the tray — the
cutter
— and made a corner. Now the lawn near his feet was ripped by the invisible ricochets.

In less than ten seconds, Gu had brought the cut around to itself. The carved section fell into the dark of the car’s drive compartment.

Gu tossed Xiu Xiang’s project onto the lawn. He reached into the drive compartment and flipped out the loose hull section. A ragged and maybe disdainful cheer rose from the kids behind him. “Hey, dork! There has to be a latch. Why didn’t you scam the lock?”

Gu didn’t seem to hear. He leaned forward to look into the interior. Juan edged closer. The compartment was in shadow, but he could see well enough. Not counting damage, it looked just like the manual said. There were some processor nodes and fiber leading to the dozens of other nodes and sensors and effectors. There was the steering servo. Along the bottom, just missed by Gu’s cutting, was the DC bus to the left-front wheel. The rest was empty space. The capacitor and power cells were in the back.

Gu stared into the shadows. There was no fire, no explosion. Even if he had chopped into the back, the safeties would have prevented any spectacular outcome. But Juan saw more and more error flags float into view. A junk wagon would be coming real soon.

Gu’s shoulders slumped, and Juan got a closer look at the component boxes. Every one had physical signage: no user-serviceable parts within.

The old guy stood and took a step away from the car. Behind them, Chumlig and now Williams were on the scene, herding the students back into the tent. For the most part, the kids were fully stoked by all the insanity. None of them, not even the Radner brothers, ever had the courage to run amok. When they committed something major, it was usually done in software, like what the guy had shouted from the crowd.

Xiu Xiang gathered up her weird, Gu-improved, project. She was shak-ing her head and mumbling to herself. She unplugged the gadget and took a step toward Robert Gu. “I object to your appropriation of my toy!” she said. There was an odd expression on her face. “Though you did improve it with that extra bend.” Gu didn’t respond. She hesitated. “And I
never
would have run it with line power!”

Gu waved at the guts of the dead car. “It’s Russian dolls all the way down, isn’t it, Orozco?” Juan didn’t bother to look up “Russian dolls.” “It’s just throwaway stuff, Professor Gu. Why would anyone want to fool with it?”

Xiu Xiang leaned around him, saw the nearly empty compartment, and the boxes with their stamped-on labels. She look up at Gu. “You’re worse off than I am, aren’t you?” she said softly.

Gu’s hand twitched up and for a moment Juan thought he was going to punch her out. “You worthless bitch. You were never more than an engineer, and now you have to reeducate even for that.” He turned and walked away along the traffic circle, down the hill toward Pala Avenue.

Xiang took a step or two after Gu. From inside the school, Chumlig was demanding that everyone come indoors; Juan reached out to touch Xi-ang’s arm. “We gotta go back inside, Dr. Xiang.” She didn’t argue, but turned and walked back toward the tent, her transport tray held close. Juan followed her, all the time watching the crazy man as he departed in the opposite direction.

Even with Robert Gu off campus, the rest of the afternoon was fairly exciting. The school board invoked cloture. Well, they tried to invoke cloture. But they had to allow the students contact with home, and most kids regarded this as an opportunity to grab a journo affiliance. Juan had been close enough to provide some of the best pictures of the “great automobile wrecking”; his mother was not happy about that. She’d be even less happy when she noticed that “the madman” was in three of Juan’s classes.

So anyway the campus was famous in San Diego and beyond, competing with the billion other bizarrities of the day, all over the planet. Students from other classes played hookey and came over. Juan saw a young, kind of plump kid talking in person with Ms. Chumlig. Miri Gu.

By 3:00 p.m. the excitement had faded. This was past the end of classes for most students. The Radners’ betting pool on Gu’s punishment had been bought out by some guys in LA. Lucky for the twins. The trouble with instant fame was that there was always something new coming to distract everyone’s attention.

Overall, it had been a wild day, but kind of sad. Juan was almost home when he got a phone call.

A phone call? Well, Classic IM Lite was what Epiphany called it. This must be his great grandpa. “Yes?” he replied, without thinking.

The call came as a window view from a synthetic camera. He was looking upward, into a small bedroom. Bizarre decorations, though: hardcopy books stacked in cardboard boxes. A distorted face filled most of the screen. Then the caller sat back. It was Robert Gu, calling from his view-page. “Hi kid.”

“Hi, Professor.” In person, Robert Gu was fully scary. In this cheap flat view, he just looked small and crumpled.

“Look, kid…” The picture twisted and jerked. Gu was fidgeting with the page. When it settled, the other’s face filled the screen again. “What you were talking about last week. I think I could help out with your writing.”

Yes
! “That would be tragic, Professor Gu.”
Gu gave him a blank look.

“I mean, that would be way cool. And I’d be happy to show you how to wear.” He was already thinking how he would explain this to his ma.

 

“Right.” Gu’s face retreated, and he gave a shrug. “I suppose that would be fine too. If they let me back in school, I’ll see you there.”
09
Make no mistake about it, this job of saving the world was no bed of roses.
Carrot Greens

Alfred glared at Günberk Braun’s latest report: “Covert Search for Grand Terror in San Diego.” Things had been hard enough before Günberk spotted Alfred’s YGBM project, but since the Barcelona meeting, Alfred’s duplicity had become steadily more difficult to maintain. He had never expected that Braun could keep such a careful watch on the San Diego labs. Alfred had had to shut down almost all his activity there, even canceling his regular specimen outshipments; this affair had set his schedule back by months.

The only bright spot was that Günberk and Keiko were going ahead with Plan Rabbit. In fact, Rabbit had resurfaced a week ago, along with his initial survey and his payment demands. The demands had been laughable, basically a wholesale shopping list of enhancement drugs, just what you might think South American drug lords could supply to a bright young businessman. As for his survey — Rabbit had come up with a list of contacts in San Diego and a complicated plan for getting direct surveillance equipment into the labs. Günberk and Keiko had been respectively irritated and amused by the scheme, but all three of them agreed they could make it work. The Americans would know they had been probed, but unless things went very wrong, the operation would be deniable.

Of course, what Günberk and Keiko saw was the easy part. The hard part was what Alfred was hiding beneath Plan Rabbit. When this magnificent intrusion/inspection was complete, there would be no evidence of his research program. Working as the trusted leader of the operation, Alfred was confident that he could accomplish that much. The
triumph
would be to leave credible evidence that would point bird-dog Günberk somewhere far across the world — and leave Alfred’s operation intact in San Diego. Failing that, Alfred would have to rebuild his research setup — and his security — at second-rate sites. He could lose a year or two of development time.

Would such a delay really matter? He had completed the hard part. The honeyed-nougat test had demonstrated that he had a delivery system. In fact, his Pseudomimi viral was far more robust that Günberk realized. If Grand Terror had been Alfred’s goal, he was already in the winner’s circle; he could trigger devastating psychosis, even customize for particular targets. The way to develop higher mental controls was clear. But meantime, the human race was still careening down a mountain road, with no one at the wheel. The Saturday-night specials, the cheap delivery systems, the plagues — there was always the next precipice, the Next Very Bad Thing. What if the Next Very Bad Thing was the final, fatal Bad Thing, and what if they ran into it before he could take control?

So yes, anything he could do to save a few months was worthwhile. He pushed away Günberk’s report and returned to planning just what he would do during the brief hours when this operation put Günberk and Keiko and himself in control of the San Diego labs.

He was so absorbed in his scheming that he almost didn’t hear the sound behind him. There was a small popping noise and a little whoosh of air, typical game sound effects. They were sounds that absolutely did not belong here. Alfred flinched and turned.

Rabbit had grown. “Hi there!” it said. “I thought I’d pop up and give you a special progress report, maybe ask for your help with some details.” Rabbit gave Alfred a bucktoothed grin and sat back to enjoy a carrot. Sat back in the big leather visitor’s chair across from Alfred’s desk. In Alfred’s office. His inner office, the one here in the bombproof catacombs under Mumbai, at the heart of India’s External Intelligence Agency.

Alfred had managed covert operations for almost seventy years. It had been decades since he had been so rudely upset. It was like being young again — not a good feeling. He stared at Rabbit for a moment, absorbing the terrible implications of the creature’s presence.
Perhaps it would be best to ignore those for now
. And so his reply was a random flail: “A progress report? We’ve seen your progress. I personally was somewhat disappointed. You’ve accomplished little — “

“That you can see.”

” — beyond creating a fog of foolishness, self-defeating as often as not. The ‘local agents’ you’ve recruited are incompetent. For example — ” Alfred made a show of fetching records. Meantime, the people in the EIA analyst pool were tracing Rabbit’s intrusion. They opened a graphics window above the creature’s head. Rabbit was coming through routers on three continents.

“For example,” Alfred continued, picking a name almost at random, “take this ‘Winston Blount.’ Years ago, he was a top administrator at UCSD. But he never had any personal connection with the founders of the bio labs, and today…” He waved his hand in dismissal. “These people have so little connection with the San Diego labs that I might validly ask what we are getting for our money.”

The Rabbit leaned across Alfred’s mahogany desk. Its reflection in the deep varnish moved in perfect synchrony. “You might ask. And what great ignorance that would reveal.
You
know what to look for and still this is all you have discovered. Think how invisible this must be to the Americans. I am a phantom that shows as brownian noise until — viola! — the jaws of my operation spring shut.”