Rainbows End (14 page)

A smile stretched across Rabbit’s face. It gave its ears a wiggle, and gestured around Alfred’s inner sanctum. “In a very small way — just a proof of principle, really — those jaws closed on you today. You, the Japanese, the Europeans, you all thought you had me fooled. What of your anonymity now, eh? Eh?”

Alfred glowered at the animal. No need to disguise his upset.
But pray God this is all he has discovered
.

 

Rabbit settled its elbows on Alfred’s desk and continued chattily, “Don’t worry, I’m not being so open with your pals in Japanese and EU Intelligence. I figure it might panic them — and this is a project I’ve come to enjoy, meeting new people, learning new skills. You understand.” It cocked its head as if expecting some confidence in return.

Alfred pretended to consider the matter and finally gave Rabbit a judicious nod. “Yes. Knowing our cover was blown — even to an insider such as yourself — they would likely abort the mission. You did the right thing.”

The numbers above Rabbit’s ears were changing. The available routing information was mostly bogus, but the network latencies — the delays — made his analysts eighty percent confident that Rabbit was coming from North America. Without help from the European signals intelligence people, he wasn’t going to get any better estimate. But telling Günberk about this visit was the last thing Alfred wanted to do.

So I must treat this son of a hitch as a respected colleague
. Alfred sat back and essayed a mild demeanor. “Between us then. What has been your progress?”

The rabbit tossed the butt end of his carrot onto Vaz’s desk and crossed his paws behind his head. “Heh. I’ve almost completed assembling the operational team. That file you’re looking at probably lists some of them, including the esteemed Dean Blount. I can pay off most of these people with my own resources. One of them may play ball in a spirit of good-natured adventure. The others need inducements that the wealth of nations can satisfy. And the one thing the Indo-European Alliance has is the wealth of nations.”

“As long as it is totally untraceable and doesn’t look like the wealth of nations.”

“Trust me. If these loons think about it at all, they’ll figure we really are South American drug lords. Anyway, I’ll have their wish list for you in a week or so. If all goes according to plan, you’ll have full access to the San Diego bio labs for almost four hours, sometime in late December.”

“Excellent.”
“And then maybe you’ll tell me just what you’re looking for in those labs.”
“We believe the Americans are up to something there.”
Rabbit’s eyebrows raised. “A Great Power betraying its own kind?”

“It’s happened before,” though not since the early part of the century, the Sino-American misunderstanding.

 

“Hmm.” For a brief moment, Rabbit seemed almost thoughtful. “I trust you’ll let me in on what you discover.”

 

Alfred nodded. “If we can can keep this between the two of us.” In fact, Rabbit learning about Alfred’s YGBM project would give new meaning to the phrase “worst-case outcome.”

 

Fortunately, Rabbit did not push the issue. “There is one other thing,” said the creature. “One last contact, an interesting fellow — in a way more interesting to me than all your espionage hugger-mugger.” “Very well.” Alfred resolved to accept whatever foolishness the other was spouting.

A picture of a youngish Chinese fellow hung in the air. Vaz’s gaze swept through the attached bio. No, this chap wasn’t young. “That’s Bob Gu’s father? You’re going to fiddle with — ” He spluttered into silence, remembering recent events in Paraguay. For a moment he forgot the need for placid acceptance; some types of foolishness were very hard to swallow. “See here, this operation was to be discreet. How could you — “

“Not to worry. I have zero interest in Junior. It’s just one of those crazy coincidences. See, Bob Gu’s father is Alice Gu’s father-in-law.”

Hmm
? Alfred parsed the contorted language. Then he realized that Rabbit was talking about Alice Gong.
Oh
. Rabbit had left the land of the foolish and was trekking deep into madness. Alfred was speechless.

“Ah, you know about Alice then? Did you know that she is tooling up for a full-scale audit of San Diego bio-lab security? Just think! Real soon now, the Americans are gonna go ask Alice to tighten up the guard there. Tracking her is
muy importante
, old man.”

” .. Yes.” The EU and Japan would bail out if they knew Alice Gong Gu was on this case.
And Alice will surely detect what Ym doing at the bio labs
. “So what are you proposing?”

“I want to make sure Alice is not guarding the labs when we go in. I’ve had Gu Senior on a line for several days. But that’s going too slowly. Besides — ” another challenging, toothy grin ” — I’m dying to talk to the guy directly. We need a zombie contact.” Another picture/bio popped up.

“An Indian national?”

“Subtle, am I not? Yes, though for the last two years Mr. Sharif has been living in the U.S.A. He really has no connection with any Indo-European intelligence service. I’ll contact him like the gentle cloud of coincidence that I am. If the Americans identify him, he will be a perfect red herring. Your EU and Japanese friends would be too cowardly to go for this.
You
, I think, have more courage. So I’m here to give you a heads-up. Cover me on this. Keep your people out of Sharif’s way. Sometimes he will really be me.”

Vaz was silent for a long moment. He had not known that Alice Gong Gu was training for an audit of the San Diego labs. That was bad news. Very bad news. It wasn’t enough that Gong be kept away one night. Then inspiration struck. Alice’s genius came at a terrible sacrifice. He had stumbled on her secret several years ago; in her own way, she risked more than Alfred ever had.
And my weapon, incomplete as it is, could stop her cold
. He looked back at Rabbit. “Indeed, you have my support in this. It should involve just the two of us.”

Rabbit preened.

“But if I may make a suggestion,” Alfred continued, one colleague to another. “It may be best if we schedule things so that Alice Gu
is
on duty the night we go in. With proper preparation, we may be able to turn her presence to our advantage.”

“Really?” Rabbit was literally bug-eyed with curiosity. “How is that?”

“I’ll have the details for you in a few days.” In fact, there were lots of details, but not for Rabbit’s ears. Alfred was already posting the mission requirements to his inner teams. How long would it take to build a Pseudomimivirus appropriate to Alice’s special weakness? What was the surest delivery method? Indirect infection was probably not practical here.

And what cover story would work best with this wretched rabbit?
Said rabbit was still looking at him expectantly.
“Of course,” Vaz continued, “there are aspects of the matter that I should best keep to myself.”

“Heh. Of course. World-shaking plans, and so forth? Never mind, I am content to remain your Great Cutout from Heaven. I’ll be in touch. Meantime — ” Suddenly he was wearing a gray uniform studded with medals and draped with aiguillettes. He stuck his arm out in a hitlerian salute. “Long live the Indo-European Alliance!”

With that, the rabbit’s image vanished like the cheap theatrics it was.

Alfred sat motionless for almost two minutes, not responding to the shrill alarms that pounded through the office network, not responding to the various staff analyses that were already being generated. Alfred was rearranging his priorities. He hadn’t known about Alice Gong Gu, but now he did and with enough time to turn her presence into an advantage. It was a sad thing that he would harm this woman who was actually fighting on his side, who had done more than almost anyone to keep the world safe.

He forced his attention back on track. Besides dealing with Alice, there was another new priority: to learn more about Rabbit, to learn how to destroy him.

Alfred Vaz had no official rank in the External Intelligence Agency, but he had immense power there. Even with modern compartmentalization techniques, he never could have cloaked his research programs otherwise. Now… well, Rabbit’s visit to EIA headquarters was arguably the most spectacular intelligence failure of the decade — but only if outsiders knew to argue about it! Alfred used all his power in the Agency and all the secret political levers he had accumulated over seventy years to keep the news within his own teams. If the EIA inspector general had got a whiff of it, all Alfred’s plans would have unraveled. It was a sad fact that his own government would probably count him as a traitor if it knew of his efforts to save the world.

All this made investigating Rabbit’s jape a delicate affair. Somehow this enemy had penetrated the most secure isolation firewall known. Rabbit had even coopted hi-res localizer support (evident from his perfectly positioned imagery). The obvious explanation was that Rabbit had succeeded in subverting the Secure Hardware Environment. If that were so, then the foundation of all modern security was suspect — and Rabbit’s visit was a clap of doom.

Surely Armageddon would not be announced by a silly rabbit? There followed almost eighty hours of uncertainty as Alfred’s inner teams pounded away at the mystery. Finally, his EIA analysts discovered the true explanation, something at once comforting and deeply embarrassing to them: Rabbit had — admittedly with extraordinary cleverness — exploited a combination of buggy software and foolish registry settings, the kind of flaws that bedevil careless consumers. The bottom line: Rabbit was far more dangerous than Alfred had originally thought, but he was
not
the Next Very Bad Thing.

Vaz suffered through every moment of the suspense. But in the end, the most infuriating aspect of the incident was the piece of carrot that Rabbit left on his desk. With all the resources and expertise of the modern Indian state, it took EIA signals intelligence almost three days to obliterate the logic that injected that image into his office network.

An Excellent Thesis Topic

Miri kept a low profile around the house, even though that bothered Alice — which was kind of contradictory, since Bob didn’t want her talking with Robert anytime soon. Either way, they both seemed to think that given the chance, Robert would just hurt her again.

Okay. She let Robert have the living room whenever he pleased. She made sure she was outside when he was in. But she also snooped on him whenever she honorably could.

Halloween was just around the corner. She should be over at her friends’ sites, deep into final planning. She and Annette and Paula had done so much prep with SpielbergRowling. Now it all seemed kind of dumb.

So Miri hung out with farther-away friends. Jin’s parents were shrinks in the Provincial Medical Care Group in Hainan. Jin didn’t speak very good English, but then Miri’s Mandarin was worse. Actually, language wasn’t a problem. They’d get together on his beach or hers — depending on which side of the world was daylight or had the nicest weather — and chatter away in Goodenuf English, the air around them filled with translation guesstimates and picture substitutions. Their little clique had contributed lots to the answerboards; it was the most “socially responsible” of Miri’s hobbies.

Jin was full of theories about Robert: “Your grandfather was way gone-dead before the doctors bring him back. No surprise he feel bad now.” He floated a couple of academic papers in support of his point. Today Jin was hosting several other kids who had senile or otherwise damaged old folks living at home. Mostly they just listened, as sand crabs or simply presence icons. A few presented human forms, maybe their real-world appearance. Now one of those — she looked about ten years old — spoke up. “My great-great-aunt is like that. Back in the twentieth, she was an account executive.” Hmm, account executive didn’t mean anything like the English words might make you think. “By the teens she was all crippled up. I’ve seen pictures. And she got drifty and depressed. My grandma said she lost her edge and then she lost her job.”

One of the sand crabs reared back, a lurker drawn into the open. “So what’s new in that? My brother is all unemployed and depressed, and he’s only twenty. It’s hard to keep up.”

The ten-year-old ignored the interruption. “Gee-grantie was just old-fashioned. Grandma got her a job as a landscape artist — ” The little girl slipped into pure picturing, showing old-time cellphone advertisements for background scenery you could rent for when people call and you’re in the bathroom. “Grantie was good at that, but she never made as much money as before. And then video landscapes went fully irrelevant. Anyway, she lived with my grandma for twelve years. It sounds just like what you’re talking about, Miri.”

Twelve years! Vllgo bonkers after even a year of this
. She glared at the little girl. “So what happened then?”

“Oh, everything turned out fine in the end. My mom found a treatment site. They specialize in upgraded specialties. Forty-eight hours at their clinic and Gee-grantie had the skills of an ad manager.” Which was about the modern equivalent of “account executive.”

Silence. Even some of the crabs looked a little shocked.
After a moment, Jin said, “That sound like JITT to me.”
“Just-in-time training? What if it is?”
“JITT is illegal,” said Miri.
This is not something I want to talk about
.

“It wasn’t illegal back then. And this JITT wasn’t so bad. Gee-grantie lives pretty well as long as she keeps taking her upgrades. She seems happy, ‘cept that she cries a lot.”

 

“Sound like mind control to me,” said Jin.

 

The little girl laughed. “It is not. You should know that, Jin Li! You, Chinese, with two shrink parents.” Her eyes danced about, searching on things the others could not see. “Your parents were in the army, weren’t they? They must know all about mind control. That’s what you Han tried in Myanmar!” Jin came to his feet, and kicked sand through the little girl’s image. “No! I mean, that is year and year ago. Nobody do anything like that now. We certainly don’t!”

Miri decided she didn’t like the little girl. What she said was more or less true, but… Bob had talked to her once about the Myanmar Restoration, back when she was doing a history project in the fifth grade. She had quoted him as “an unamed source high in the American military”; in fact, he said the same thing as most websites. You-Gotta-Believe-Me technology had been a Big Nightmare possibility for years. Myanmar was the only place where YGBM had been tried on a large scale. “It all comes down to the delivery problem,” Bob had said. “The Chinese army had some new drugs, things that were very persuasive in a research lab. But in the field? The Chinese sank half their budget into YGBM and they didn’t get as much payoff as a good propaganda campaign.” Humans had a million years of evolution learning to resist the power of suggestion; there was no magic way to beat that!