by Vernor Vinge
Miri’s run slowed to a walk, then came to a miserable stop. Robert could be anywhere. How much control did the Badguys have down here? Maybe I should just start shouting.
Faintly, behind her, there came a new kind of sound. Soft hammers pounding on a metal drum. But the cadence was like footsteps. And suddenly she had a very good idea of where the others were. Now if only she could match that to where she was. Miri turned and headed back.
24
THE LIBRARY CHOOSES
Sheila Hanson’s night crew came out of the forest on the path of the great snake of knowledge, just east of the library. The Hacek spiders were already there, and they had the high ground. Tim Huynh rolled and walked his bottish army right to the edge of the enemy force.
Huynh --> Night Crew:
Round the north side of the library came more Scoochi reinforcements, supporters from the Oceanography Library at Scripps Institute. But the Hacekeans had their own reinforcements. From cameras flying above the library, Huynh could see those latest arrivals chasing the Scripps people. So far there had been little property damage. The mechs looked sinister enough, and the humans were mostly milling and shouting. Sheila was still doing pretty well with her “We want our REAL books!” chant.
Something big and virtual came rushing out of the Hacekean side and onto the bottish no-man’s-land. It was twelve feet tall, the best Dangerous Knowledge that Timothy Huynh had ever seen. Half Librarian, half Knight Guardian, the creature was Hacek’s central paradox. Now it capered almost to the edge of the Scoochi lines and made a grotesque face, tongue long and pointy like a Maori daemon. And when it shouted, every Scoochi heard, but the message was customized to the listener:
“Hoy, Timothy Huynh, you think you’s a lesser Scooch-a-mout. Lesser indeed! All you Scoochi moppets be trashy children’s things, shallow and unworthy before our Depth!” Dangerous Knowledge waved at the Hacek critters around and behind it.
That was the usual slur against the Scooch-a-mout mythos, and it always made the Scoochis mad, since naive outsiders might be deceived by the claim. There were counter chants from the Scoochi ranks:
“Hacek is just counterfeit Pratchett!” And that set the Hacek people into a rage, since of course it was only the simple truth.
Huynh pushed past Sheila and Smale and the rest of the night crew, till he stood at the forward edge of his army. Up close, this Dangerous Knowledge was even more spectacularly detailed. Its taloned boots were artfully sunk in the muck beside the serpent’s path. Spider bots hummed and hopped around their patron.
The spider bots were real. Where had the Hacekeans gotten such clever things, and on such short notice? He pinged them; not surprisingly, nothing came back. There was an almost living suppleness about the way they scrambled over one another, surging and retreating. The gadgets looked like custom melds of the latest Intel and Legend models. GenGen regulomics was upgrading to something like this. He pinged them again, this time with his GenGen technician’s authority.
Holy Shit!
“Hey!” Huynh shouted. “The Hacek bums have stolen GenGen equipment!” And now that he looked closely at the other side, he recognized fellow employees! There was Katie Rosenbaum. She waved her battle axe and leered at him.
Rosenbaum --> Huynh:
He’d had lunch with Katie and her friends only yesterday. He knew there were Hacek sympathizers in regulomics, so of course his crew had kept their plans under wraps. And all the while the treacherous Hacekeans had been doing the same!
Dangerous Knowledge continued its merry dance through the spider troops, mocking the Scoochis’ surprise. It shouted, “Indignant, be ye now, wee Huynhling? Could it be ye just cheated with too little imagination? What ye brought is old and slow, well matched to the petty concept of your imagery!”
The art behind Dangerous Knowledge was astoundingly good, without precursors. But whoever was pulling the strings was even more impressive, certainly a world-class professional actor. For a moment the Scoochi ranks wavered and their mob of virtual supporters began to melt away. In the view from above, Huynh saw still more Hacekeans piling up around the other sides of the library. If the balance shifted too far, the Scoochis would end in humiliation and defeat.
Then Sheila Hanson’s voice came loud on the public venue, audible across the entire participating world. “Look! The Greater Scooch-a-mout!”
Behind Huynh, one of the forklift mechs stirred to life. Ah! That was just the thing Huynh should have thought to do. Thank goodness Sheila was on the ball.
The forklift stepped forward as delicately as could be imagined for a machine that was twelve feet tall, with a center of gravity that now was over six feet up. It certainly wasn’t running autonomously, but he hadn’t thought Sheila could drive it this well.
Its foot-platters descended slowly, giving humans and chirps and salsipueds plenty of time to clear out of the way. It was impressive, but it was just a forklift. Then Huynh realized he was still watching it with his driver’s view. Meshing with the belief-circle view it was—
Sheila had morphed the blue ionipod into something even more spectacular than Dangerous Knowledge. Now it was the Greater Scooch-a-mout, the most popular of the Scoochi critters. In its short career, the Greater Scooch had been the subject of refurbishments, spinoffs, spinups, mergers, and attempted government takeovers. It was the maximum hero to millions of school children across the poorest lands of Africa and South America, the champion of little people improving their place in the world. And this vision of it, tonight, topped everything in sight.
What’s more, this vision, tonight, had four tons of haptic truth clunking along inside.
The Greater Scooch-a-mout reached the edge of the Scoochi lines, and advanced into spider-bot territory. Now it moved fast, as fast as its stabilizers and motors would carry it. Whoa, who is driving that thing? It danced through the Hacek robots and bellowed insults at Dangerous Knowledge.
Knights and Librarians, pofu-longs and dwelbs and baba llagas—everybody on both sides went wild. Special effects blossomed in the air above them. And then the shouting got even louder. The robots surged into combat. Huynh looked at the melee of robotic special effects. Megamunches and xoroshows were coming out from the bushes; Sheila was throwing their reserves into the maw of battle.
This mech battle was real! When the Greater Scooch-a-mout tap-danced on the backs of spider bots, fragments of carapace and leg flew into the air. In his technician’s view he could see damage reports. Twenty regulomics spiders were listed as “nonresponsive” on the lab’s real-time roster. Dozens of his tweezer bots were destroyed. Three of the sample carriers had lost mobility.
Huynh --> Hanson:
Sheila was at the other end of the front. It looked like she was trying to get the robots to advance into the Knights and Librarians. On Tim’s end, the Greater Scooch-a-mout had already accomplished some of that by dancing toward the edge of the real human players.
Hanson --> Huynh:
His coworkers and the virtual thousands pushed forward. In the network view…jeez, GenGen was getting coverage like you couldn’t pay for, better than in the twentieth century when millions were forced to watch just what the few had decided was Important. There were backbone routers in the UCSD area that had run out of capacity! That wouldn’t last long, since there were endless ad hoc routers and dark fiber everywhere. But the whole world was here tonight.
Step by step, the Scoochis advanced.
“We want our floor space!”
“We want our library!”
“And most of all, we want our REAL books!”
Belief circles normally competed from within, based on their own popularity.
Here, tonight, was a grand exception: belief circles fighting each other directly for attention and respect. In minutes they might burn up months of creativity, but reach an audience beyond all their earlier dreams.
And whoever was driving the Greater Scooch-a-mout chatted with Huynh directly:
Greater Scooch-a-mout --> Lesser Scooch-a-mout:
Okay! Huynh fired up the other forklift. He often dreamed of kicking ass with one of these monsters. He walked carefully through friendly lines, drawing the smaller robots along behind him. From somewhere across the world, Scoochi artists draped the forklift every bit as brilliantly as the Greater Scooch-a-mout. But this vision was mercurial as smoke: Huynh’s forklift was tricked out as Mind Sum, the ambiguous spirit that sometimes helped Scooch-a-mout when enemies were at their wiliest. Its vapors both lagged and led the real device. Dozens of helpers and helper programs made sure that the effect was always in place. The forklift’s hull was dark composite plastic. Unless you looked carefully in the real view, you couldn’t be sure just where the robot might really be.
Tim Huynh took advantage of all this, stomping like a steel mist across the bottish battle zone, high-fiving the Greater Scooch-a-mout…and treading with ambiguous location toward the Knights and Librarians. The Scoochi chant boomed from the forklift’s speakers:
“We want our floor space!”
“We want our library!”
“And most of all, we want our REAL books!”
The advance was a combination of beauty, surprise, and physical intimidation. The Hacek forces fell back and Huynh’s chirps and salsipueds hustled forward to claim new ground. But Katie Rosenbaum’s critters still outnumbered them and were far more agile. The spider bots raced backwards, keeping a battle zone between the contending human forces.
Smale --> Night Crew:
As Huynh walked forward behind his forklift Mind Sum, he was also looking down from above and tracking the reviews. There were more than a hundred million people watching what the two belief circles had created. Not quite a game, not quite a work of art, this was a contest where you won with imagination and calculation and impudence. So far, the world thought that the two sides were matched as to imagination, but the Scoochis were way ahead on calculation and impudence. They had created real physical destruction—all around and among real humans!
Yard by yard, the battle moved round the library. The Scoochis now occupied parts of the south esplanade, the principal axis of the campus. On the roads around campus, cars were bringing people from all over town, the physical counterpart of the far more numerous virtuals. Forty percent of the backbone routers were saturated. The audience had surged past two hundred million. Hundreds of thousands were players, tricked out with new imagery from the depths of Hacek and Scoochi design. The participants, real and virtual, spread out around the central hub that was the university library. Seen from journalist viewpoints a thousand feet up, the conflict looked like a strange spiral galaxy, its arms glowing the brightest where the battle was the fiercest.
There were others present, invisible but for the reporting of the entertainment-trade journalists: the movie and game people, maybe a hundred thousand professionals. Some watched the watchers, sampling and polling. Others were down in the bottish battles, collecting designs. He could see the spoor of SpielbergRowling, GameHappenings, Rio Magic, and the big Bollywood studios.
Tim Huynh could see more. After all, he was running GenGen equipment. He could see nets that merged with the background, collecting and collecting—then subtly affecting. Those must belong to the Fantasists Guild, the richest artists’ cooperative in the world. (Their motto: “We don’t need no stinking middlemen!”)
And of course the police were here, a half-dozen jurisdictions from campus cops up to the FBI.
Greater Scooch-a-mout --> Lesser Scooch-a-mout:
ALFRED WATCHED IT all from under Pilchner Hall. Rabbit’s riot had emptied the bio labs. The Indo-European inspection equipment was in place, and already sending back results (faked results, but that was Alfred’s doing). The stooges who had installed that equipment were now well away from the GenGen area, off where their eventual arrest would provoke diversionary suspicions. But—
“We need at least fifteen minutes more,” said Alfred. The faked data stream from the investigation would complete sooner than that, but cleaning up and getting out would take additional time.
Rabbit shrugged. “Don’t worry, old fellow. I told Huynh ten minutes just to keep him on his toes. Even after the campus police crack down, you’ll have another half hour before the GenGen crew begins to trickle back underground.”
Mitsuri --> Braun, Vaz:
Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz:
Vaz glanced at where Rabbit sat on the edge of the pit, its furry feet dangling into the dark. “What about the girl, Rabbit? Right now she is running around in the tunnels, out of control.”
Rabbit smiled broadly. “So call me the lord god of unintended consequences. When things get complicated, there are side effects, and Miri Gu is just one of them. You’re the Local Honcho. Why don’t you go after her?”
Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz:
In fact, Alfred was tempted. Instead, he had sent down just one mobile to track the girl. It might be enough to distract her. And if she caught up with the stooges, why then they had another option available, something that should surprise Rabbit. Out loud, Vaz said, “I don’t think so. Do you have any other suggestions?”
“The obvious, old fellow: Be flexible, like me. Who knows what opportunities may develop? You can’t locate Miri Gu, but big deal. That must mean she’s nowhere that interests you and your friends, right?” He waggled his ears inquisitively.
Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz:
And that could be very distracting. Rabbit had started on another carrot. The creature grinned around large incisors as it chomped away, as if to say “don’t mind me; sming all you please!”
From far beyond the walls, Alfred could hear the sounds of Rabbit’s diversionary riot. Counterforce analysts reported that Homeland Security was watching UCSD with intense interest, but was otherwise calm. Günberk and Keiko took that as good news. But does that mean Alice Gong is still functioning? For Alfred, that was the question of the moment, far more important than his run-in with the two children.
In any case, it was time to get the inquisitive rabbit out of here. It had to be done without making Günberk and Keiko suspicious. Fortunately, Günberk was already pushing in the right direction. Braun floated a needs-and-goals matrix into view. The colors were shaded to reflect probability, but it was strikingly pure: for the library riot, Rabbit-critical items glowed bright red, a hundred tasks that only he could do if the diversion were to proceed. For the underground labs, there were a dozen Rabbit-critical items, mainly involving getting the stooges underground, guiding them around, and getting them out of the operational area. And every one of those was some shade of green.
Vaz --> Braun, Mitsuri:
Mitsuri --> Braun, Vaz:
; Alfred gave Rabbit a smile. “You are right, Mr. Rabbit. Some of us are sadly inflexible.”
“Hey, no problem.” Rabbit waved magnanimously.
“In fact, you have made things so safe for us down here, my bosses want you to concentrate on topside operations.”
“What are you doing—Hey!”
Vaz reached down and unclipped the fiber-optic line from its scamful bridge.
For a moment the image of the Rabbit was frozen, like some dumb graphic that had lost its remote source. Of course, Rabbit still had its internet link to here; this pause was a moment of simple astonishment. When it passed, the creature hopped to its feet. “Why did you do that?” Its voice and facial expression were almost without affect. Apparently, Rabbit had never conceived the possibility of having to confront real surprise and embarrassment.
The fiber-optic plug dangled loose in Alfred’s hand. It took an effort of will not to flash a gloating smile at the creature. He slipped the line into a transceiver on his belt. What went in and out the fiber would now go through his private milnet.
Braun --> Mitsuri, Vaz:
Mitsuri --> Braun, Vaz:
Rabbit paced along the edge of the hole, its paws waving in a blur that might have been fists. “You are breaking our agreement.” The voice was still flat.
Alfred put on his kindliest expression and spoke without a hint of triumph. “Please, Mr. Rabbit, look at our agreement. We both need the other to profit—and we are each best in our own domain. The equipment is now inserted in the labs. If you will maintain the riot environment for a few more minutes, you will have everything we promised you.”
The Rabbit stared expressionlessly. “You need me down in the labs. Surely…”
He isn’t all-knowing! “Conceivably. I’ll keep you apprised of our situation. What do you say?”
There was a sudden cascade of expression across Rabbit’s face: anger, then a knowing smile quickly covered up as though the operator had not wanted it seen, then an elaborate, overly patient sigh. Yes, the long-suffering Rabbit. “Ah, paranoia triumphant. Very well, I will bow to your wishes—” which it did elaborately, dancing on the edge of the pit “—and retreat to keeping you safe from surface threats.” A flash of unherbivorous teeth: “But I do expect all the agreed payoffs. You know my capabilities.”
