Rainbows End

No User-Serviceable Parts Within

After that remarkable Saturday, Robert Gu spent considerably less time at his son's home. He slept there, still in the upstairs room. Sometimes he even ate in the dining room. Miri was always somewhere else. Alice was as impassive as stone. When Bob was around, the hospitality was even more sparse. Robert was living on borrowed time, and it had nothing to do with his medical condition.

He hung out in empty rooms at school, reading from his old books. He surfed the web more than ever. Chumlig showed him some modern utilities that hid in his view-page, things that could not even pretend to be WinME programs.

And he drove around town. That was as much to play with the automatic cars as it was to see what San Diego had become; in fact, the suburban sprawl was just as drab as in the past. But Robert discovered that his new, maimed personality had a thing about gadgets. Cryptic machines were everywhere nowadays. They lurked in walls, nestled in trees, even littered the lawns. They worked silently, almost invisibly, twenty-four hours a day. He began to wonder where it all ended.

One day after school, Robert drove into the far East County, past the endless, ordinary suburbs. The housing didn't thin out until he was well into the mountains. But twenty miles beyond El Cajon, he came to a gap in the housing and what looked like a war in progress. Dust plumes spouted from buildings several hundred yards back from the highway. When he rolled down the window, he heard what might have been artillery fire. A frontage road ran along a high fence. A rusted sign said "UP/Express" something or other.

And then the strange firing range was behind him.

The highway was a long straight climb now, up past four thousand feet. It was farther and farther between off-ramps. The auto slowly accelerated. According to the awkward little dashboard display that he'd found in his WinME game folder, they were doing better than 120 miles per hour. The boulders and scrub along the shoulder were a blur, and the window rolled itself closed. He passed the manual vehicles in far right lanes as though they were standing still. Someday, I have to learn to drive again .

Then he was over the crest. The auto slowed, taking the curves at a mere fifty miles per hour. He remembered driving this way with Lena, on a much smaller Highway 8, maybe in 1970. Lena Llewelyn was new to California, new to the U.S.A. She had boggled at the size of the place compared with her native Britain. She'd been so open then, so trusting. That was even before she decided to specialize in psychiatry.

The hills shed their faded green and stood as piles of rounded boulders. The desert spread endlessly below and beyond. He came down from the mountains, turned off Highway 8, and drove slowly along old desert roads toward Anza Borrego State Park. The last of the suburbs were up on the ridgeline. Down here, things were as they had been when he'd been in grad school — even as they had been for centuries before that.

There were plenty of traffic signs on these smaller roads. Some were rusted and tilted, but they were real. His gaze turned to watch a bullet-punctured stop sign dwindle behind him. It was beautiful. A little farther on he came upon a dusty path that ran off across endless desert. The automobile balked at following it: "Sorry, sir, there's no guidance that way, and I notice you don't have a driver's license."

"Ha. In that case, I'm taking a little walk." Surprisingly, there was no objection to that. He opened the door and stepped out into the breezy afternoon. He could feel his spirit unlimber. He could see forever. Robert walked east along the rutted dirt road. Here at last he had reached the natural world. His foot kicked something metallic. A spent round? No. The gray lump had a triple antenna sticking out of the top. He tossed it into the bushes. He was not beyond the web even here. He pulled out his magic foolscap, surfed the local area. The picture showed the ground around him, from some kind of camera built into the paper; little signs floated above every weed — Ambrosia dumosa this and Encelia farinosa that. Ads for the park's gift shop scrolled across the top of the page.

Robert pressed 411. The expense meter at the corner of the page was running now, almost five dollars a minute. That sort of money meant there was a human at the other end. Robert talked to the paper. "So how far am I from — " from the natural world " — how far am I from unimproved land?"

A tag changed color; his request had been subcontracted. A woman's voice replied, "You're almost there; it's another… two miles in the direction you are heading. If I might suggest, sir, you don't really need 411 to answer questions like this. Just — "

But Robert had already stuffed the paper back in his pocket. He set out eastward, his shadow breaking the trail ahead of him. It had been a very long time since he had walked two miles. Even before the Alzheimer's, walking two miles would have been the stuff of an emergency. But today he was not even out of breath, and the pain in his joints was muted. The most important thing about me is broken, while almost everything else works . Reed Weber was right, it was a heavenly minefield. I am so lucky .

Over the wind, he heard the sound of electric motors torquing up. His car was driving off to do business elsewhere. Robert did not look back.

His shadow grew longer, the air cooler. And finally he had reached the beginning of nature. A little voice spoke in his ear, announcing that he was leaving the tagged section of the park. Beyond this point, only "low-rate emergency wireless" was guaranteed. Robert walked on, across the unlabeled wilderness. So this is the closest thing to being alone these days . It felt good. A cold, clean purity.

For a moment, the recollection of Saturday's confrontation with Bob swept over him, more real than the desert evening. There had been times, years ago, when he raged at his son, trying to shame him for wasting his talents in the military. But last Saturday, the rage had flowed in the other direction.

"Sit !" the boy grown up had said to his father, in a tone that Robert had never heard from him before.

And Robert had dropped onto the sofa. His son towered over him for a moment. Then Bob sat down opposite him and leaned close. "Miri won't talk about the details, but it's clear what you did this afternoon, mister."

"Bob, I was just — "

"Shut up. My little girl has enough problems, and you will not add to them!" His glare was long and steady.

"… I didn't mean any harm, Bob. I had a bad day." Some distant part of him realized that he was whining , and that he couldn't stop. "Where is Lena, Bob?"

Bob's eyes narrowed. "You've asked me that before. I wondered if it was an act." He shrugged. "Now I don't care. After today, I just want you out of here, but… have you looked at your finances, Dad?"

It was going to come down to that. "Yes… there's a finance package in my WinME. My savings, I was a multimillionaire in 2000."

"That's three bubbles back, Dad. And you guessed wrong on every one. But at this point you're nearly certified as self-sufficient. You'd have a hard time scaring up any public assistance. The taxpayers are not kind to seniors; old people run too much of the country already." He hesitated. "And after today, my generosity has run out. Mom died two years ago — and dumped you decades before that. But maybe you should wonder about other things. For instance, where are all your old pals from Stanford?"

"I — " Faces rose up in Robert's mind. He'd been in the English Department at Stanford for thirty years. There were lots of faces. Some of them belonged to people who were years younger than he was. Where were they now?

Bob nodded at his silence. "Right. Not one has visited you, nor even tried to contact you. I should know. Even before today, I figured that when you got your strength back you'd start hurting whoever was nearest — and that would be Miri. So I've been trying to farm you out to one of your old buddies. And you know what, Dad? There's not one who wants anything to do with you. Oh, there are newsies. You won't have to look far to find as many fans as ever — but among them all there's not a single friend." He paused. "Now you don't have any options. Finish the semester; learn what you can. And then get out of our house ."

"But Lena. What about Lena?"

Bob shook his head. "Mom's dead. You had no use for her except when you needed a servant or a kickball. Now it's too late. She's dead."

"But — " There were memories, but they clashed with one another. The last decade at Stanford. The Bollingen Prize and the Pulitzer. Lena had not been there to share them. She had divorced him just about the time Bob joined the Marines. And yet — "You remember. Lena got me into that rest home, Rainbows End. And then she was here , when things got really dark. She was here with Cara" — his little sister, still ten years old, and dead since 2006. His words stumbled to a halt.

Something glittered in his son's eyes. "Yes, Mom was here, just like Cara. A shame attack won't work on me, Dad. I want you out of this house. End of the semester at the latest."

And that was the longest conversation Robert had had with anyone since Saturday.

It was cold. He'd walked a long way into the desert. The night had risen partway up the sky. Stars hung over a flat land that stretched forever be-yond him. Maybe that should be the "Secret of the One Who Came Back"… that he just wanted to go away again, walking forever into the bluish dark. He walked a bit farther, then slowed, stopped beside a huge rough rock — and stared into the night.

After some minutes, he turned and started back into the bright twilight.

Juan got sidetracked from Big Lizard's quest. School began to seriously intrude. Chumlig wanted them to complete their projects and she wanted real results. Worst of all, the school board had suddenly decided the class must demo their creative compositions at Parents' Night — in place of the final exam. Low grades and Chumlig's disappointment in him were bad enough; Juan already knew he was a loser. But such public humiliation was something he desperately wanted to avoid.

So for a while he was on a different quest: finding someone to team with in composition class. The problem was, Juan was no good at writing. He wasn't more than so-so with math or answerboards. Ms. Chumlig said the secret of success was "to learn to ask the right questions." But to do that she also said you had "to know something about something." That wisdom and "everyone has some special talent" were the drumbeats of her classes. But it didn't help. Maybe the best he could hope for was a team so big the losers would shield each other.

Today he sat at the back of the shop tent with Fred and Jerry. The twins had missed their proper shop class that morning, so now they were wasting the rest of the day here rather than in study hall. It was kind of fun. The two were pretending to work on a magnetic orrery — a plagiarism so obvious that their plans still had the source URLs written on them. About half the class had completed something. Doris Schley's paper airplanes were flying, but just this afternoon her team had discovered terrible stability problems. They didn't know about Fred and Jerry's unofficial project: The twins had hijacked the tent's air-conditioning. While they kicked back and fooled with the orrery, they were using the fans to tumble Schley's fliers.

Xiu Xiang sat hunched over the transport tray she had been working on lately. She didn't look so blank and despairing these days, even if she had warped the transport surface to where it wasn't good for anything. Xiang practically had her nose buried in the equipment. Every so often she drew back and studied her view-page, then returned to the unmoving wreck she had created.

Winston Blount had been scarce since Juan had put him onto the Lizard's quest. Juan counted that as encouraging; maybe Mr. Blount was working on the affiliance.

Juan leaned into the cool air from the fans. Back here it was nice. It was hot and noisy over by the outside entrance, but that's where Robert Gu sat. Earlier, the guy had been watching Dr. Xiang. Sometimes she seemed to be watching him back, but even more secretly. Now Mr. Gu mainly stared at the traffic circle, watching the cars that occasionally pulled up, picked up or dropped off passengers, and then departed. The table in front of the fake teenager was littered with Buildlt fragments, and several rickety-looking towers. Juan zoomed in on a couple of them from a viewpoint in the tent above Gu's head. Huh. The gadgets had no motors, not even any control logic.

So Gu was going to crash in this class just as sure as Juan was in Composition. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe he could resume the Lizard's game, and take one last whack at finding a teammate for Ms. Chumlig's project. But I tried him last week . Robert Gu was the best writer Juan had ever known. He was so good he could kill you with his words. Juan tucked his chin in and tried to forget last week.

And then he thought, The guy isn't wearing, so he's staring at nothing. He must he bored out of his skull Juan dithered for another ten minutes, but shop class had thirty minutes more to run and the Radners were way too focused on their anti-aircraft guns.

Jerry — > Juan: Hey, where you going?

Juan — > Radners: Gonna make one more try with Gu. Wish me luck.

Fred — > Juan: It's unhealthy to want a grade that bad.

Juan meandered across the pavilion, walking along the lab benches as if he were studying the other projects. He ended up beside the strange old man. Gu turned to look at him, and Juan's casual cover evaporated. Gu's sweaty face looked almost as young as Fred Radner's. But the eyes looked right into Juan, cold and cruel. Last week, the guy had seemed friendly — right up to the moment he ripped Juan apart. Now all Juan's clever opening lines were gone; even the dumb ones were hiding. Finally he managed to point at the crazy towers Robert Gu had been working on. "What's the project?"

The young-old man continued to stare at Juan. "A clock." Then he reached into a parts box and dropped three silver balls into the top of the tallest tower.

"Oh!" The balls bounced down connecting stairways. The first tower was directly in front of Juan. Going to the right, each tower was a bit shorter and more complex than the last. Mr. Gu had used most of the "classic parts" that Ron Williams kept in stock. This was a clock? Juan tried to match it against old-time clock patterns. There were no perfect fits, though the thing did have levers that clicked back and forth against a whatchama-google… an escape wheel. Maybe the balls tipping down the stairways were like the hands on a clock.

Gu continued to stare at him. "But it's running fast," he said.

Juan leaned forward and tried to ignore that stare. He captured about three seconds of the contraption's motion, enough to identify stationary points and dimensions. There was an old mechanics program that came in handy for medieval gadget games; he fed the description into it. The results were easy to interpret. "You just gotta make that lever a quarter-inch longer." He poked a finger at a tiny spar.

"I know."

Juan looked back at him. "But you're not wearing. How did you figure that out?"

Gu shrugged. "A medical gift."

"That's pretty neat," Juan said uncertainly.

"For what? To do what any child can do already?"

Juan didn't have any answer for that. "But you're also a poet."

"And now I'm good with gadgets." Gu's hand twitched out, smashing through the levers and wheels. Parts sprayed in all directions, some of them breaking under the force of his blow.

That got everyone's attention. The class was suddenly quiet — and blazing with sming.

It was time to back off. But Juan really really needed help with Creative Composition. And so he said, "You still know about words, though, right?"

"Yes, I still know about words. I still know about grammar. I can parse sentences. I can even spell — hallelujah, without mechanical aid. What's your name?"

"Juan Orozco."

"Yes, I remember. What are you good for, Mr. Orozco?"

Juan tucked his chin in. "I'm learning how to ask the right questions."

"Do so, then."

"um." Juan looked at the other parts Gu had collected, things he hadn't used in his clock. There were rotary motors, there were wireless synchs, there were programmable gear trains. There was even a transport tray like the one Dr. Xiang had messed up. "So how come you don't use any of these gadgets? That would be lots easier."

He expected Gu to spout some Chumliggy thing about solving a problem within constraints. Instead, the other poked angrily at the components. "Because I can't see inside them. Look." He nipped a rotary motor across the table." 'No user-serviceable parts within.' It's stamped right in the plastic. Everything is a black box. Everything is inscrutable magic."

"You could look at the manuals," said Juan. "They show internals."

Gu hesitated. His hands were gathered into fists. Juan edged back a few inches. "You can see internals? You can change them?"

Juan watched the fists. He's flipping crazy . "You can see them easy. Almost everything serves up its own manual. If it doesn't, just Google on the part number." The look on Gu's face sent Juan into fast mode: "As for changing the internals… often they're programmable. But otherwise, the only changes you can make are when you order, back at the design and fab stage. I mean, these are just components . Who'd want to change them once they're made? Just trash 'em if they're not working like you want."

"Just components?" Gu looked out from under the fringes of the shop-class tent. An automobile was tooling up Pala Avenue, heading for the school's traffic circle. "What about the fucking cars?"

"Unh." The whole class was staring. Almost the whole class: Mr. Williams was on break and out of contact.

Mr. Gu twitched for a few seconds. Then suddenly he was standing. He grabbed Juan by the collar. "By God I'm going to have a look."

Juan bounced along just ahead of Robert Gu's angry, pushing hands. "Break open a car? Why would you want to do that?"

"That's the wrong question, kid." At least they were walking away from the traffic circle. Even if he went after an automobile, what damage could he do? The car bodies were a trashy composite, easy to recycle, but strong enough to take a fifty-mile-per-hour crash. Visions of battle lasers and monster sledgehammers came to mind. But this was the real world.

Jerry — > Juan: What is the goofball up to?

Juan — > Radners: I dunno!

Robert Gu marched him across the tent to where Xiu Xiang was sitting. By the time he arrived, the only evidence of madness was the faint twitchiness in his face. "Dr. Xiang?"

The crazy man actually sounded relaxed and friendly, but Xiang hesitated a long moment. "Yes," she said.

"I've been admiring your project. Some kind of mass mover?"

Xiang tilted the warped surface up toward him. "Yes. It's just a toy, but I thought I could get a leverage effect by warping the surface." Talking about the gadget seemed to distract her from Gu's weirdness.

"Very nice!" There was nothing but charm in Gu's voice. "May I?" He picked up the panel and studied the ragged edge.

"I had to cut out gores so the microgrooves wouldn't bind," she said, standing up to point at her work.

Transport trays were for shedding dirt or sliding small containers. For most things, they were better than robot hands, even if they didn't look as impressive. Juan's mother had remodeled their kitchen with fake-marble transports; afterward, everything she wanted was where it should be, in the fridge or oven or on the cutting board, just when she needed it. Usually, the microgrooves couldn't slide anything faster than a couple of inches a second.

What Xiang was saying gave Juan an idea. Maybe the warped board was not broken. He started to put the dimensions into a mechanics program —

But Robert Gu already seemed to know what the thing could do. "You could triple the delivered force if you adjusted it, here." He twisted the tray. It creaked the way ceramics do when you've bent them almost to the breaking point.

"Wait — " She reached for her project.

"I didn't break it. This is even better. Come on over and I'll show you." His words were all so open and friendly. But he was already walking away.

Xiang chased after him, but she didn't act like a kid would when someone grabs their property. She walked along beside Gu, her head tilted to get a look at the wrecked transport tray. "But there's no way to use that mechanical advantage with just the batteries it's rated for — " The rest of what she said was mathematical; Juan just saved it.

As Gu swept by the Radner twins, his right arm flicked out, grabbing a jar of metal beads that Fred and Jerry were using for their orrery.

"Hey!" The Radners jumped to their feet and followed him, not saying much out loud. The Adult Ed students were like untouchables. You didn't mess with them and vice versa.

Jerry — > Juan: What did we miss, Juan?

Fred — > Juan: Yeah. What did you say to him?

Juan danced backwards, lifting his hands to say that he was an innocent bystander.

Almost an innocent bystander. As Gu walked past his workbench, he jerked his chin toward the tent entrance. "Make yourself useful, Orozco. Get me some line current."

Juan scooted ahead. There were 110VAC sources on campus, though most were indoors. He looked up public utilities and saw a big arrow pointing down into the lawn. This outlet was used to power building reconfiguration when they needed an extra auditorium. It had a thirty-foot extension reel. He ran to the spot and pulled the line up from the fresh-cut grass.

Now all the kids — minus Schley's team, which was suddenly overjoyed by the improvement in their fliers' performance — were following them out of the tent.

The car coming up the traffic loop was gliding to a stop at the curb behind him. It was Ms. Chumlig, back from lunch.

Robert Gu caught up, Xiang right behind him and looking upset. Gu was no longer making nice noises. He grabbed the power cord from Juan and plugged it into the transport tray's universal, bypassing the teeny battery pack that Dr. Xiang had used. He tilted the tray on edge and poured the metal beads from the Radners' project into the top-edge opening.

Chumlig was out of the car. "What's going on — "

The crazy man smiled at her. "My shop project, Louise. I've had enough of 'no user-serviceable parts within.' Let's take a look." He leaned over the car's front hood and ran his finger down the printed words forbidding customer maintenance. The kids stood in clusters, awed. Juan had never heard of anyone at Fairmont High going wacko. Robert Gu was making history. The old man set the transport tray against the automobile. So where is your battle laser, Mr. Spaceman ? Gu sighted along the edge of the tray, then glanced to his right, at the Radner brothers. "You really don't want to be standing there."

Xiu Xiang was frantic, shouting at the twins. "Get back, get back!"

And now Juan was getting way unbelievable answers from his mechanics program. He hopped back from the transport tray. Robert Gu didn't need a battle laser. For this job, he had something just as good.

Gu powered up the tray. The noise was like tearing cloth but loud , a crack-of-doom sound. Real sparks sprayed from where the transport tray touched the car's hood. Twenty feet ahead of the car, where the Radners had been standing, there was an oleander hedge. Some of the branches were as thick as Juan's arm. Now the white flowers were dancing like there was a breeze; one of the largest branches snapped and fell on the sidewalk.

Gu slid the tray along the curve of the automobile, driving dozens of metal beads per second into the hood, cutting an eighth-inch-wide slit in the composite. He turned the tray — the cutter — and made a corner. Now the lawn near his feet was ripped by the invisible ricochets.

In less than ten seconds, Gu had brought the cut around to itself. The carved section fell into the dark of the car's drive compartment.

Gu tossed Xiu Xiang's project onto the lawn. He reached into the drive compartment and flipped out the loose hull section. A ragged and maybe disdainful cheer rose from the kids behind him. "Hey, dork! There has to be a latch. Why didn't you scam the lock?"

Gu didn't seem to hear. He leaned forward to look into the interior. Juan edged closer. The compartment was in shadow, but he could see well enough. Not counting damage, it looked just like the manual said. There were some processor nodes and fiber leading to the dozens of other nodes and sensors and effectors. There was the steering servo. Along the bottom, just missed by Gu's cutting, was the DC bus to the left-front wheel. The rest was empty space. The capacitor and power cells were in the back.

Gu stared into the shadows. There was no fire, no explosion. Even if he had chopped into the back, the safeties would have prevented any spectacular outcome. But Juan saw more and more error flags float into view. A junk wagon would be coming real soon.

Gu's shoulders slumped, and Juan got a closer look at the component boxes. Every one had physical signage: no user-serviceable parts within.

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 shak-ing 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 Xi-ang'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