by Vernor Vinge
Both sides of the stage were full now, two hundred teenagers in school uniforms of red on the north and checkered green on the south: students who had their own “far cooperation” requirements to satisfy. Altogether they comprised parts of two choruses and two orchestras, seven thousand miles apart, with only cheapnet in between. Persuading them to try this scheme had been a miracle in itself. Success would look mundane to outsiders, yet failure was a real possibility. Well, things didn’t go too badly in rehearsal.
“And now—” Juan grabbed for still greater import “—and now ladies and gentlemen, the Orchestra of the Americas will perform their very own adaptation of Beethoven’s EU Anthem, with lyrics by Orozco and Gu, and network synchrony by Gu and Orozco!” He gave a hammy bow and ran back to the sidelines to sit by Robert. Sweat was streaming down his face, and he looked pale.
“You did good, kid,” said Robert.
Juan just nodded, shaking.
The hybrid orchestra began to play. Now it was up to these kids and Robert’s jitter algorithm. The sounds of cellos and basses rose from the young musicians in Boston and from the other end of the world. The kids’ adaptation had a faster beat than the usual EU style. And every note came across hundreds of hops of randomly changing networkery, with delays that could vary by several hundred milliseconds.
There was the same synchronization problem that had made Winnie’s choir at the library such a noisy affair.
Juan’s lyrics climbed up, the chorus from the north singing his English version, and the one from the south his Spanish. Their student collaborators had created a flexible work with its own conductor interface; that helped some. Plus they were surprisingly good musicians and singers. But the performance still needed the magic of the adaptive delays that Robert’s scheme injected into the transmissions (well, okay, and maybe also the far deeper magic that was Beethoven’s).
Robert listened. His contribution was not perfect. In fact, this was worse than the rehearsals. Too many people were watching, and too suddenly. He’d been afraid this might happen. The problem was not bandwidth. He glanced at the variance plot he had put in his private view. It showed the presence of several million people suddenly observing, grabbing resources so fast that they confused his poor little prediction program—and changed the nature of what was observed.
And yet, the synch survived. The hybrid did not fragment.
Ten seconds to go. The performance hit some slightly ragged crescendos, and then, by some miracle, everything came together for the last two seconds. Juan’s lyrics ended, and the central melody swept into silence.
The joint orchestra/chorus looked out at the audience. They were smiling, some perhaps a little embarrassed—but they had brought it off!
There was applause, wildly enthusiastic from some quarters.
Poor Juan looked absolutely drained. Fortunately, he didn’t have to venture out on the field to wind things up. The performers were making their bows and trooping to the north and south ends of the stage—back to their respective corners of the world. Juan’s smile was a little sickly as he waved to the local audience. His voice came sideways to Robert. “Hey, I don’t care what grade it gets. We did it and we’re done!”
34
THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE BRITISH LIBRARY
The kids rushed off the bleachers, only slightly impeded by the fact that Chumlig & Co could review the evening and determine just who had been unacceptably bumptious. Juan and Robert were slower, hanging with the other demo students and exchanging congratulations. Grades for the demos wouldn’t be available for another twenty hours or so. They would have plenty of time to agonize over their failings. Nevertheless, Louise Chumlig looked quite cheerful, giving each student her congratulations—and deflecting all manner of questions about whether this or that deficit should truly be of any grading significance.
Still no sign of Miri or Bob. Robert’s attention was filled with the kids and Chumlig and Juan Orozco—this last person alternating between hysterical relief and the conviction of failure.
So it was without forewarning that Robert found himself face-to-face—almost nose-to-nose—with Winston Blount. Behind the former dean, Tommie Parker was standing hand-in-hand with Xiu Xiang. Now, that was surely the strangest pairing to come out of this adventure! The little guy was grinning ear-to-ear. He flashed a thumbs-up at Robert.
But for the moment, Blount had all his attention. Robert had seen little of Tommie and Winnie since that night at UCSD. They and Carlos had spent several days at Crick’s Clinic. As far as Robert could tell, certain deals had been made, much as in his own case. And now they were loose. The official story was just what Bob had said: The cabal activity had been a protest that got out of hand, but they had never intended to damage laboratory equipment and they were all terribly sorry for that. The unofficial tales of heroic sacrifice helped explain why the University and the bio labs seemed happy not to pursue the matter. If the Elder Cabal kept its collective mouth shut, there would be no Consequences.
Just now there was an odd smile on Winnie’s face. He nodded to Juan and reached out to shake Robert’s hand. “Even though I’ve dropped out of Fairmont, I still I have family here. Doris Schley is my great-grandniece.”
“Oh! She did well, Winston!”
“Thank you, thank you. And you—” Winnie hesitated. In years past, praise for Robert Gu came from all quarters and it had often been used as a club to beat down Winston Blount. “—you wrote something wonderful there, Robert. Those lyrics. I would never have imagined such a thing riding on Beethoven and in English and Spanish. It was…art.” He shrugged, as if waiting for a sarcastic putdown.
“It wasn’t my work, Winston.” And maybe this is a putdown, but I don’t mean it that way. “Juan here did the lyrics. We collaborated all through the semester, but on this I let him go, just critiqued the final effort. Honestly—and this Chumlig character is the death of lies—honestly, Juan is responsible.”
“Oh?” Winnie rocked back, then really seemed to notice Juan. He reached over to shake the boy’s hand. “It was beautiful, son.” And a sideways, still incredulous, glance at Robert. “Do you know, Robert, in its way, that was as good as what you did in the old days?”
Robert thought a second, listening to Juan’s lyrics with his imagination the way he used to listen to his own poetry. No, I was better than that. Much better. But not better like being in a different world. If the old Robert could have seen these lyrics…well, the old Robert couldn’t abide second-raters. Given half an excuse, he would have made sure that Juan’s art died aborning. “You’re right. Juan made a beautiful thing.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what…the years have done, Winston.”
Juan looked back and forth between them. There was the beginning of shining pride on his face, though he seemed to guess that there were words unspoken going between Winnie and Robert.
Winnie nodded. “Yes. Lots of things have changed.” The crowd was diminishing, but that just meant that some of the kids thought they could run around even faster. They were getting jostled by the flow of bodies and the ever louder shouting and laughter. “So if you didn’t do the lyrics, what was your contribution, Robert?”
“Aha! I did the time-lag synchronization.” As much as it could be done.
“Really?” Winnie was trying to be polite, but even after his own choir experience, he didn’t seem especially impressed. Well, it had been a bit ragged.
Xiu --> Lena:
Lena --> Xiu:
Xiu --> Lena:
After a few more pleasantries, Winnie took off in the direction of the Schley family, Tommie and Xiu Xiang in tow. But Robert noticed a line of golden text drifting out behind Xiang.
Xiu --> Robert:
Juan was oblivious of Xiang’s silent message. “Dean Blount didn’t understand your part in our project, did he?”
“No
. But he liked what he did understand. It doesn’t matter. You and I both did better than we thought we could.”
“Yes, we really did.”
Juan led him back along the bleachers. Even if Bob and Miri weren’t here, Juan’s own parents were. Greetings and congratulations all around, though the Orozcos still didn’t know what to make of Robert Gu.
A CLOT OF family and friends remained on the soccer field for some time. More than anything else, the parents seemed faintly surprised by their children. They loved the little klutzes, but they thought they knew their limits. Somehow Chumlig had transformed them—not into supermen, but into clever creatures who could do things the parents themselves had never mastered. It was a time for pride and a little uneasiness.
Miri was still out of sight. Poor Juan. And I hope Alice got home okay. One-armed, he wasn’t quite good enough to check that in mid-flight.
Robert pressed into the densest part of the crowd, the folks swirling close around Louise Chumlig. She looked happy and tired, and mostly she denied responsibility. “I just showed my students how to use what they have and what the world has.”
He reached across, managed to catch her hand. “Thanks.”
Chumlig looked up at him, a crooked smile on her face. She held onto his hand for a moment. “You! My very strangest child. You were almost the reverse of the problem I had with the others.”
“How’s that?”
“For everyone else, I had to make them reach out to learn what they were. But you…first you had to give up what you had been.” Her smile was fleetingly sad. “Be sorry for what you lost, Robert, but be happy with what you are.”
All along, she knew! But someone else had her attention, and she was gaily assuring them all that the rest of the school year would be even more exciting than what had gone before.
ROBERT LEFT JUAN and the others when speculation turned to what the regular demos would be like. The kids didn’t want to believe that they could be outdone, not after tonight.
Robert spotted two familiar figures on his walk back to the traffic circle. “I thought you were with Winston,” he said.
“We were,” said Tommie, “but we came back. Wanted to congratulate you on your music-synch gimmick.”
Xiu Xiang nodded agreement. Of the two, only she was wearing. A congrats logo floated out from her. Poor Tommie was still lugging around his laptop, though whatever remained inside surely belonged to the secret police.
“Thanks. I’m proud of it, but emphasize the word ‘gimmick.’ No one really needs to synch manual music across thousands of miles of cheapnet. And basically, I just took advantage of routing predictabilities plus knowledge of the music being played.”
“Plus some timing analysis of the individual performers. Right, right?” said Tommie.
“Yes.”
“Plus some counter-jitter you inserted,” said Xiu.
Robert hesitated. “You know, it was fun.”
Tommie laughed. “You should do some ego surfing. Your hack was noticed. Back when I was young, you could have got a patent off it. Nowadays—”
Xiu patted Tommie’s shoulder. “Nowadays, it should be worth a decent grade in a high-school class. You and I—we have things to learn, Thomas.”
Tommie made a grumbling noise. “She means I should be learning to wear.” He glanced at the young-looking woman. “I never dreamed that X. Xiang would end up saving my life. But of course she did it by getting us all arrested!”
Lena --> Xiu:
They walked in silence for a few steps. There were more golden words from Xiang; she was getting better and better at silent messaging.
Xiu --> Robert:
Robert stifled a startled glance at the woman. Since when had the geek become a parlor shrink?…But she could be right about Tommie.
Tommie was surely oblivious of all the sming, but a familiar crafty grin was spreading across his face.
“What?” Robert finally said.
“Just thinking. Our UCSD op was the biggest and most dangerous I’ve ever been part of. We got used, yeah. But you know, it was like of lot of these modern whatsits—these affiliances. We contributed, and in one way, we got what we were aiming for.”
Robert thought of the Stranger’s promises. “How is that?”
“We nailed the Huertas Librareome project.”
“But the library books are all consumed.”
Tommie shrugged. “I kind of like the Library Militant vision. The point is, we terminally embarrassed Huertas.”
“That’s a triumph?”
They were walking along the traffic circle now, followed by a hopeful automobile.
“Yup. You can’t stop progress, but we stopped Huertas long enough for other events to come to our rescue.” He glanced at Robert. “You haven’t heard? You wear all that fancy equipment and you can’t keep up with news.”
Tommie didn’t wait for a reply: “Y’see, Huertas was in such an awful rush for a reason. It turns out, the Chinese were chewing up the British Museum and Library faster than we ever guessed. And the Chinese have years of experience in semi-nondestructive digitization. They’re positively gentle compared to Huertas’s shredder operation. They made the San Diego effort look foolish, and they even got haptic data off non-book exhibits. There’s clear sky between them and everyone else, including the Google archives. Anyway, we stalled Huertas by a few days, long enough that he can’t claim any sort of priority. And it was long enough so that the Chinese were able to frost the cake.”
Tommie reached into his jacket and pulled out a three-inch-square piece of plastic. “Here. A present for you, that cost me all of $19.99.”
Robert held up the dark plastic. It looked a lot like the diskettes he’d used on his old PC at the turn of the century. He pointed a query at it. Labels floated in the air: Data Card. 128PB capacity. 97% in use. There was more, but Robert just looked back at Tommie. “Do people still use removables like this?”
“Just paranoid propertarian old farts like me. It’s a nuisance to carry around, but I have a reader right here in my laptop.” Of course. “The data is all online, along with a lot of cross-analysis that the Chinese will be charging you extra for. But even if you don’t have a card reader, I thought you’d be interested in holding this in your own hot little hands.”
“Ah.” Robert peeked at the top directory. It was like standing on a very high mountain top. “So this is—?”
“The British Museum and Library, as digitized and databased by the Chinese Informagical Coalition. The haptics and artifact data are lo-res, to make it all fit on one data card. But the library section is twenty times as big as what Max Huertas sucked out of UCSD. Leaving aside things that never got into a library, that’s essentially the record of humanity up through 2000. The whole premodern world.”
Robert hefted the plastic card. “It doesn’t seem like very much.”
Tommie laughed. “Well, it’s not!”
Robert started to hand it back, but Tommie waved him off. “Like I said, it’s a present. Put it on the wall where you can remind yourself that it’s all we ever were. But if you really want to see it, just look on the net. The Chinese have it pretty well meshed. And their special servers are really clever.”
Tommie stepped back and motioned to the car that was trailing them. The rear door opened and he waved Xiu in ahead of him. For a weird instant Tommie looked like an old rake with some sweet young thing. Just another image from the past that had nothing to do with the truth.
“So Huertas is out of the shredding business, and the Chinese promise their follow-ups will be even gentler than what they did to the British Library. Imagine soft pinky robot hands, patiently picking over all the libraries and museums of the world. They’ll be cross-checking, scanning for annotations—giving whole new generations of academic types lik
e Zulfi Sharif something to hang their degrees on.” He waved at Robert. “Hi ho!”
IT WAS ALMOST midnight when Xiu Xiang got back to Rainbows End. Lena was still up. She was in the kitchen, fixing some kind of snack. Lena’s osteoporosis forced her to lean so far forward that her face was just a few inches off the table. It looked strange, but the wheelchair and the kitchen’s design gave her plenty of freedom to maneuver.
Xiu eased into the room, feeling entirely embarrassed. “Sorry for cutting you out, Lena—”
The other twisted around to give her a direct look. There was a lopsided grin on her face. “Hey, no problem. You young people need your privacy.” She waved for Xiu to sit down and have something to eat.
“Yes. Well, Tommie isn’t really so young.” She felt a blush coming on. “I, um, don’t mean physically. He wants to keep up with progress, but he just can’t cope with everything that means.”
Lena shrugged. “Tommie’s mind is better than some.” She grabbed a sandwich off her plate and gave it a munch.
“Do you think he’ll ever get his edge back?”
“Could be. Science marches on. And even if that doesn’t help in Parker’s case, we can give him pushes in the right direction. A big part of his problem is that life was too easy for him when he was young. He’s too ornery to try anything that’s really hard for him.” She jabbed a hand in Xiu’s direction. “Eat up.”
Xiu nodded and reached for a sandwich. They had been over this before. In fact, it had been such discussions that had made all the difference for a certain Dr. X. Xiang. But maybe she had more on the ball than Tommie. Her chief problem in the near future might be in avoiding government “job offers”.
Xiu bit into the sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly. But not bad really. “Have you had a chance to do your thing with the various people we saw today?”
“Play shrink, you mean? Yeah, I reviewed your Epiphany log; I posted some anonymous consults. The advice we gave Carlos Rivera was fine. He’s got an ongoing problem, but that’s life. As for Juan, we’ve done our best there, at least for the moment.”
