Rainbows End

by Vernor Vinge

  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 shaking 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 Xiang’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

  CARROT GREENS

  Make no mistake about it, this job of saving the world was no bed of roses.

  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 than 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—voila!—the jaws of my operation spring shut.”

  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 bitch 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 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 I’m 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?

&nbs
p; 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.