by Vernor Vinge
“A gun!” But it didn’t match anything in Jane’s Small Arms.
“Nah, look under ‘sensor systems.’” She grabbed a loose battery and snugged it under the barrel. “Even point-blank, I bet this couldn’t hurt a fly. It’s an all-purpose active probe. Ground penetrating radar and sonography. Surface reflection x ray. Gated laser. We couldn’t get this at a sporting goods store. It’s just too perfect for offensive snooping.”
“…It’s got attachments, too.”
Miri peered into the box and retrieved a metal rod with a flared end. “Yeah, that’s for the radar; it fits on right here. Supposedly it’s great for scoping out tunnels.” She noticed Juan’s eyeing this latest find and smiled teasingly. “Boys…! There’s another one in the box. Help yourself. Just don’t try it out here. It would set off alarms big time.”
In a few minutes they were both loaded down with batteries, plugged into the probe equipment, and staring at each other through their goggles. They both started laughing. “You look like a monster insect!” she said. In the infra-red, the goggles were big, black bugeyes, and the equipment vests looked like chitinous armor, glowing brightly where there was an active battery.
Juan waved his probe gun in the air. “Yeah. Killer insects.” Hmm. “You know, we look so bizarre…I bet if we find Foxwarner down in Torrey Pines, we might end up in the show.” That sort of thing happened, but most consumer participation was in the form of contributed content and plot ideas.
Miri laughed. “I told you this was a good project.”
MIRI CALLED A CAR to take them to Torrey Pines. They clumped up the stairs and found Mr. Gu standing with William the Goofus. Mr. Gu looked like he was trying to hide a smile. “You two look charming.” He glanced at William. “Are you ready to go?”
William might have been smiling, too. “Any time, Bill.”
Mr. Gu walked the three of them to the front door. Miri’s car was already pulling up. The sun had slipped behind a climbing wall of coastal fog, and the afternoon was cooling off.
They pulled their goggles off and walked down the lawn, Juan in front. Behind him, Miri walked hand in hand with William. Miriam Gu was respectful of her parents, but flippant too. With her grandfather it was different, though Juan couldn’t tell if her look up at William was trusting or protective. It was bizarre either way.
The three of them piled into the car, William taking the back-facing seat. They drove out through East Fallbrook. The neighborhood enhancements were still pretty, though they didn’t have the coordinated esthetic of the homes right by Camp Pendleton. Here and there, homeowners showed advertising.
Miri looked back at the ragged line of the coastal fog, silhouetted against the pale bright blue of the sky. “‘The fog is brazen here,’” she quoted.
“‘Reaching talons across our land,’” said Juan.
“‘Pouncing.’” she completed, and they both laughed. That was from the Hallowe’en show last year, but to the Fairmont students it had a special meaning. There was none of that twentieth century wimpiness about the fog’s “little cat feet.” Evening fog was common near the coast, and when it happened laser comm got whacked—and The World Changed. “Weather says that most of Torrey Pines Park will be under fog in an hour.”
“Spooky.”
“It’ll be fun.” And since the park was unimproved, it wouldn’t make that much difference anyway.
The car turned down Reche Road and headed east, toward the expressway. Soon the fog was just an edge of low clouds beneath a sunny afternoon.
William hadn’t said a word since they got aboard. He had accepted a pair of goggles and couple of batteries, but not an equipment vest. Instead, he carried an old canvas bag. His skin looked young and smooth, but with that sweaty sheen. William’s gaze wandered around, kind of twitchy. Juan could tell that the guy had contacts and a wearable, but his twitchiness was not like a grown-up trying to input to smart clothes. It was more like he had some kind of disease.
Juan searched on the symptoms he was seeing AND’ed with gerontology. The strange-looking skin was a regeneration dressing; that was a pretty common thing. As for the tremors…Parkinson’s? Maybe, but that was a rare disease nowadays. Alzheimer’s? No, the symptoms didn’t match. Aha: “Alzheimer’s Recovery Syndrome.” Ol’ William must have been a regular vegetable before his treatments kicked in. Now his whole nervous system was regrowing. The result would be a pretty healthy person even if the personality was randomly different from before. The twitching was the final reconnect with the peripheral nervous system. There were about fifty thousand recovering Alzheimer’s patients these days. Bertie had even collaborated with some of them. But up close and in person…it made Juan queasy. So okay that William went to live with his kids during his recovery. But their enrolling him at Fairmont High was gross. His major was listed as “hardcopy media—nongraded status”; at least that kept him out of people’s way.
Miri had been staring out the window, though Juan had no idea what she was seeing. Suddenly she said, “You know, this is your friend Bertie Toad Vomit.” She pulled an incredible face, a fungus-bedecked toad that drooled nicely realistic slime all the way to the seat between them.
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”
“He’s been on my case all semester, jerking me around, spreading rumors about me. He tricked that idiot Annette, so she’d push me into teaming with you—not that I’m complaining about you, Juan. This is working out pretty well.” She looked a little embarrassed. “It’s just that Bertie is pushy as all get out.”
Juan certainly couldn’t argue against that. But then he suddenly realized: “You two are alike in some ways.”
“What!”
“Well, you’re both as pushy as all get out.”
Miri stared at him open-mouthed, and Juan waited for an explosion. But he noticed that William was watching her with a strange smile on his face. She shut her mouth and glared at Juan. “Yeah. Well. You’re right. Alice says it may be my strongest talent, if I can ever put a cork in it. In the meantime, I guess I can be pretty unpleasant.” She looked away for a moment. “But besides us both being up-and-coming dictators, I don’t see any similarities between me and Bertie. I’m loud. I’m a loner. Bertie Toad is sneaky and mean. He has his warty hands into everything. And no one knows what he really is.”
“That’s not true. I’ve known Bertie since sixth grade; I’ve known him well for almost two semesters. He’s a remote student, is all. He lives in Evanston.”
She hesitated, maybe looking up “Evanston.” “So have you ever been to Chicago? Have you ever met Bertie in person?”
“Well, not exactly. But last Thanksgiving I visited him for almost a week.” That had been right after the pills really started giving Juan results. “He showed me around the museums piggyback, like a 411 tour. I also met his parents, saw their house. Faking all that would be next to impossible. Bertie’s a kid just like us.” Though it was true that Bertie hadn’t introduced Juan to many of his friends. Sometimes it seemed like Bertie was afraid that if his friends got together, they might cut him out of things. Bertie’s great talent was making connections, but he seemed to think of those connections as property that could be stolen from him. That was sad.
Miri wasn’t buying any it: “Bertie is not like us, Juan. You know about Annette. I know he’s wormed into a lot of groups at school. He’s everything to everyone, a regular Mr. Fixit.” Her face settled into a look of brooding contemplation, and she was silent for a moment.
They were off Reche now, and on the southbound. The true view was of rolling hills covered by endless streets and houses and malls. If you accepted the roadway’s free enhancements, you got placid wilderness, splashed with advertising. Here and there were subtle defacements, the largest boulders morphing into trollishness; that was probably the work of some Pratchett belief circle. Their car passed the Pala off-ramp and started up the first of several miles-long ridges that separated them from Escondido and the cut across to the coast.
“Last fall,” Miri said, “Bertram Todd was just another too-smart kid in my language class. But this semester, he’s caused me lots of inconvenience, lots of little humiliations. Now he has Attracted My Attention.” That did not sound like a healthy thing to do. “I’m gonna figure out his secret. One slip is all it takes.”
That was the old saying: Once your secret is outed anywhere, however briefly, it is outed forever. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Juan. “The way to cover a slip is to embellish it, hide it in all sorts of fake secrets.”
“Hah. Maybe he is something weird. Maybe he’s a corporate team.”
Juan laughed. “Or maybe he’s something really weird!” Over the next few miles, he and Miri hit on all the cinema clichés: Maybe Bertie was an artificial boy, or a superbrain stuck in a bottle under Fort Meade. Maybe Bertie was a front for alien invaders, even now taking over the worldwide net. Maybe he was an old Chinese war program, suddenly growing to sentience, or the worldwide net itself that had finally awakened with superhuman—and certainly malignant—powers.
Or maybe Bertie was a subconscious creation of Juan’s imagination, and Juan was—all unknowing—the monster. This one was Miri’s idea. In a way it was the funniest of all, though there was something a little unsettling about it, al least for Juan.
The car had turned onto Highway 56, and they were going back toward the coast. There was more real open space here, and the hills were green with a gold-edging of spring flowers. The subdivisions were gone, replaced by mile after mile of industrial parks: the automated genomics and proteomics labs spread like gray-green lithops, soaking up the last of the sunlight. People could live and work anywhere in the world. But some things have to happen in a single real place, close enough together that superspeed data paths can connect their parts. These low buildings drove San Diego’s physical economy; inside, the genius of humans, machines, and biological nature collided to make magic.
The sun sank back behind coastal fog as they entered the lagoon area north of Torrey Pines Park. Off the expressway, they turned south along the beach. The pale cliffs of the main part of the park rose ahead of them, the hilltops shrouded by the incoming fog.
The Goofus had remained silent through all their laughter and silly talk. But when Miri got back into her speculation about how this all fit with the fact that Bertie was bothering her so much, he suddenly interrupted. “I think part of it is very simple. Why is Bertie bothering you, Miriam? It seems to me there’s one possibility so fantastic that neither of you have even imagined it.”
William delivered this opinion with that faintly amused tone adults sometimes use with little kids. But Miri didn’t make a flip response. “Oh.” She looked at William as though he were hinting at some great insight. “I’ll think about this some more.”
THE ROAD WOUND UPWARDS through the fog. Miri had the car drop them off at the far side of the driveway circle at the top. “Let’s scope things out as we walk toward the ranger station.”
Juan stepped down onto weedy asphalt. The sun had finally, truly, set. Geez, the air was cold. He flapped his arms in discomfort. He noticed that William had worn a jacket.
“You two should think ahead a little more,” said the Goofus.
Juan pulled a face. “I can stand a little evening cool.” Ma was often onto him like this, too. Plan-ahead addons were cheap, but he had convinced her that they made stupid mistakes of their own. He grabbed his sensor “gun” out of the car and slid it into the long pocket in the back of his vest—and tried to ignore his shivering.
“Here, Miriam.” William handed the girl an adult-sized jacket, big enough to fit over her equipment vest.
“Oh, thank you!” She snugged it on, making Juan feel even more chilly and stupid.
“One for you, too, champ.” William tossed a second jacket at Juan.
It was bizarre to feel so irritated and so grateful at the same time. He took off the probe holster, and slipped on the jacket. Suddenly the evening felt a whole lot more pleasant. This would block about half his high-rate data ports, but hey, in a few minutes we’ll be back in the fog anyway.
The car departed as they started off in the direction of the ranger station. And Juan realized that some of his park information was very out of date. There were the restrooms behind him, but the parking lot in the pictures was all gone except at the edges, where it had become this driveway circle. He groped around for more recent information.
Of course, no one was parked up here. There were no cars dropping people off, either. Late April was not the height of the physical tourist season—and for Torrey Pines Park, that was the only kind of tourist season there was.
They were just barely above the fog layer. The tops of the clouds fluffed out below them, into the west. On a clear day, there would have been a great direct view of the ocean. Now there were just misty shapes tossed up from the fog and above that, a sky of deepening twilight blue. There was still a special brightness at the horizon, where the sun had set. Venus hung above that glow, along with Sirius and the brighter stars of Orion.
Juan hesitated. “That’s strange.”
“What?”
“I’ve got mail.” He set a pointer in the sky for the others to see: a ballistic FedEx package with a Cambridge return address. It was coming straight down, and from very high up.
At about a thousand feet, the mailer slowed dramatically, and a sexy voice spoke in Juan’s ear. “Do you accept delivery, Mr. Orozco?”
“Yes, yes.” He indicated a spot on the ground nearby.
All this time, William had been staring into the sky. Now he gave a little start and Juan guessed the guy had finally seen Juan’s pointer. A second after that, the package was visible to the naked eye: a dark speck showing an occasional bluish flare, falling silently toward them.
It slowed again at ten feet, and they had a glimpse of the cause of the light: dozens of tiny landing jets around the edge of the package. Animal rights campaigners claimed the micro-turbines were painfully loud to some kinds of bats, but to humans and even dogs and cats, the whole operation was silent…until the very last moment: Just a foot off the ground, there was a burst of wind and a scattering of pine needles.
“Sign here, Mr. Orozco,” said the voice.
Juan did so and started toward the mailer. William was already there, kneeling awkwardly. The Goofus spazzed at just the wrong instant and lurched forward, putting his knee through the mailer carton.
Miri rushed over to him. “William! Are you okay?”
William rolled back on his rear and sat there, massaging his knee. “Yes, I’m fine, Miriam. Damn.” He glanced at Juan. “I’m really sorry, kid.” For once, he didn’t sound sarcastic.
Juan kept his mouth shut. He squatted down by the box: it was a standard twenty-ounce mailer, now with a big bend in the middle. The lid was jammed, but the material was scarcely stronger than cardboard, and he had no trouble prying it open. Inside…he pulled out a clear bag, held it up for the others to see.
William leaned forward, squinting. The bag was filled with dozens of small, irregular balls. “They look like rabbit droppings to me.”
“Yes. Or health food,” said Juan. Whatever they were, it didn’t look like William’s accident had done them any harm.
“Toad Vomit! What are you doing here?” Miriam’s voice was sharp and loud.
Juan looked up and saw a familiar figure standing beside the mailer. Bertie. As usual, he had a perfect match on the ambient lighting; the twilight gleamed dimly off his grin. He gave Juan a little wave. “You can all thank me later. This FedEx courtesy link is only good for two minutes, so I have just enough time to clue you in.” He pointed at the bag in Juan’s hand. “These could be a big help once you get in the park.”
Miri: “You don’t have any time. Go away!”
Juan: “You’re trashing our local exam just by being here, Bertie.”
Bertie looked from one indignant face to the other. He gave Miri a little bow, and said, “You wound me!” T
hen he turned to Juan: “Not at all, my dear boy. The exam proctors don’t show you as embargoed. Technically, you haven’t started your local exam. And I’m simply calling to check in with my loyal unlimited team member—namely you.”
Juan ground his teeth. “Okay. What’s the news?”
Bertie’s grin broadened to slightly wider than humanly possible. “We’ve made great progress, Juan! I lucked out with the Siberian group—they had just the insight Kistler was needing. We’ve actually built prototypes!” He waved again at the bag in Juan’s hand. “You’ve got the first lot.” His tone slipped into persuasion mode. “I’m not on your local team, but our unlimited exam is concurrent, now isn’t it, Juan?”
“Okay.” This was extreme even for Bertie. I bet he had the prototypes ready this afternoon!
“So we need these ‘breadcrumbs’ tested, and since I noticed that my loyal teammate is incidentally on a field trip through Torrey Pines Park, well, I thought…”
Miri glared at the intruder’s image. “So what have you stuck us with? I’ve got my own plans here.”
“Totally organic network nodes, good enough to be field-tested. We left out the communication laser and recharge-capability, but the wee morsels have the rest of the standard function suite: basic sensors, a router, a localizer. And they’re just proteins and sugars, no heavy metals. Come the first heavy rain, they’ll be fertilizer.”
Miri came over to Juan and popped open the plastic bag. She sniffed. “These things stink…I bet they’re toxic.”
“Oh, no,” said Bertie. “We sacrificed a lot of functionality to make them safe. You could probably eat the darn things, Miri.” Bertie chuckled at the look on her face. “But I suggest not; they’re kind of heavy on nitrogen compounds…”
Juan stared at the little balls. Nitrogen compounds? That sounded like the summary work Juan had done earlier this semester! Juan choked on outrage, but all he could think to say was, “This—this is everything we were shooting for, Bertie.”
“Yup,” Bertie preened. “Even if we don’t get all the standard function suite, our share of the rights will be some good money.” And a sure A grade on the unlimited exam. “So. Juan. These came off the MIT organo-fab about three hours ago. In a nice clean laboratory, they work fine. Now how about if you sneak them into the park, and give them a real field test? You’ll be serving your unlimited team at the same time you’re working on your local project. Now, that’s concurrency.”
