Rainbows End

The Bicycle Attack

Alfred waited a decent time before entering the room. No sense in making noise that Rabbit's stooges might hear.

"What did I tell you, Doc! We're in. We're in!" Rabbit danced a merry jig around the caisson. The optical fiber that was giving Rabbit such joy was invisibly thin except when the light caught it just right.

Vaz nodded. He had a different communications success to celebrate; he had reestablished his milnet link across the Pacific.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: U.S. Homeland Security looks calm, Alfred. Alfred watched the stats streaming by. They were from the Alliance's listening posts. The national-security scene was indeed calm, even though the library disturbance had brought crowds to the UCSD campus. Rabbit had created the perfect paradoxical distraction. Almost perfect; the affair was growing too large.

Vaz knelt beside the box that marked the termination point of Thomas Parker's fiber link. The box was a scamful bridge. On one side, it accepted the uncertified data streams from Parker's criminal computers. On the other, it was a "good citizen," running under the government-required Secure Hardware Environment. It hid Parker's data in innocent packages wrapped in all the licenses and permissions needed to survive on the SHE of the Internet. Altogether it was not as secure as Vaz's milnet, but it would suffice for most regions of the contingency tree.

Alfred tweaked the box, and now he was getting Parker's video direct. At last, he was truly a Local Honcho.

The video from Parker's laptop bounced around without a bit of program control. But Vaz recognized the equipment in the walls, and some of the physical signage. Rabbit's stooges had breached bio-lab security. Even more impressive, the delicate game of fooling the lab's automatic security was a continuing success.

"How far are they from Goal A?" Alfred asked Rabbit. In fact, that was the site of his private research program. He would pretend to inspect it along with the others.

"Almost there." Rabbit waved airily. "They'll start dropping off equipment in less than ten minutes. Don't worry about a thing."

Alfred looked out through his surface viewpoints. "Most of my mobiles are trapped on the north side of Gilman Drive." In conventional combat, his bots would have simply seized the local infrastructure and come storming across. Instead, they were balked by the human and automobile traffic along the roadway. At least one had been struck by an auto.

Rabbit spread its paws in mock sympathy. At least it didn't bring out another carrot. "You can't have everything. Hacek and Scoochi fans have done everything we could pray for: The human staff is out of the labs. The riot is sucking in the local comm resources. It'll be a regular black hole by the time it peaks. And it all looks totally innocent . Don't tell me you could mask this operation any better."

Vaz let that brag go unanswered. He'd come to realize that irritation was the kindliest emotion he could feel for Rabbit. He sat with his back to the concrete caisson and tracked ongoing developments. He could see that the Department of Homeland Security people were watching closely, but they were watching the wrong places. Analyst consensus was that Rabbit had tuned things to match DHS paranoia perfectly. Maybe Alice Gong had been taken down, but undetected by Alliance monitors? Underground, Rabbit's stooges had almost reached Goal A. In ten minutes the "investigation" of that site would begin. In another half hour, he could begin to report his doctored results… and after that it was simply a matter of getting out and letting the stooges be captured. Things were going so smoothly, he could have stayed back in Mumbai. Not that he was complaining!

Analyst red flag . Someone reviewing stale video had noticed something. Alfred brought up the flag report. It was a ten-second snippet from one of his mobiles on the north side of Gilman Drive: Two children with bicycles. They were standing by the roadway and looking at something that might have been a crushed mech. Those are the two I saw earlier . Queries spread outward: Who were the children? Was the mobile one of Alfred's?

Ugly answers came back.

Rabbit didn't have access to the Indo-European analysts, but suddenly the creature sat up and gave an admiring whistle. "Well, I'll be dipped! We've got company, Doc."

Miri left her bike in the rack outside Pilchner Hall. Juan insisted on bringing his fancy foldup into the building. When Miri pointed out the absurdity of this, the boy just shrugged. "My bike is special."

Lena and Xiu were no longer visible, but Lena's voice followed them through the wide-open doors. "There should be better security, Miri. I don't like this."

"It's the emergency overload behavior, Lena. Unoccupied rooms stay locked. The others are open."

Lena said, "And we can't see you anymore."

The sudden drop in data was very strange, but Miri wasn't going to say that. Instead: "I bet high-rate forwarding isn't supported except for around the library."

Xiu said, "Yes, we still have spectacular views from there." The main corridors in Pilchner Hall had searchable viewpoints. There were glimpses of Robert's recent passage. That was enough to guide them downstairs. But now there were places where Juan and Miri could talk only to each other.

"It's like a haunted house." Juan's voice was hushed. His hand reached out and grasped hers; she didn't shake him loose. She needed him to keep cool. Certainly losing connectivity in the middle of an office building was an eerie thing.

They came around a corner, and there was a glimmer of connectivity, enough for sming:

Miri — > Miri Gang: I think we're getting close.

Lena — > Miri Gang: First we lost video. Now we can barely talk. Get out of there.

Miri — > Miri Gang: It's just temporary. I'm sure wikiBell is shifting extra coverage into place. How bad could an entertainment riot get?

Miri imagined Lena was having a similar discussion with Dr. Xiang in a certain car driving around the north side of campus. Grandmother seemed truly anxious.

Xiu — > Miri Gang: I agree with Miri. But give Lena and me regular reports.

Lena — > Miri Gang: Yes! Even if that means you have to backtrack. Where is Robert now?

Miri –> Miri Gang: Real close. I can ping him direct.

The twisty hallway was brightly lit, just what you'd expect during a network brownout. Juan's bike coasted along almost silently, all folded up into portability mode. He only had to give it a push every so often. Their footsteps and the faint snicking of its tires were the only sounds. They took another corner. The hall was narrower, with intersections every few feet. This was one of those temporary makeovers that crazy architects-for-a-day liked to do.

For a few dozen feet they had high-rate connectivity. Ads and announcements appeared on the walls; someone's medical research project loomed like a monster on the left. She gave Lena and Xiu a continuous video as they turned another corner — and lost all outside connectivity.

Juan slowed, drew Miri to a stop. "This place is really dead."

"Yeah," said Miri. They walked forward a few more paces. Except for her point-to-point link with Juan, she might as well have been on the far side of the moon. And there was another corner ahead. She pulled Juan forward.

Around the corner, the corridor ended at a closed door. "I can't ping your grandpa anymore, Miri."

Miri looked at the map she had cached. "This has to be where they are, Juan. If we can't get through, we'll just pound on the door." Suddenly she didn't care too much about embarrassing Robert and his friends. This was too strange.

But then the door opened and a man in dark clothes stepped out. He might have been a janitor, or a professor. Either way, he didn't look friendly. "May I help you?" he said.

"How did they find us?"

Rabbit a made warning gesture. "Not out loud, Doc," it hissed. "They might actually hear you." It seemed to look over Alfred's shoulder. "I'd say they're following the girl's grandfather."

Vaz glanced at the heap of clothes that lay by the caisson. He sminged back, voice format: "Those clothes are still transmitting?"

"Well, of course. To the outside, it looks like the old guys are just sitting around, maybe playing cards. I'm faking everything, even their medicals."

Alfred realized he was grinding his teeth.

"That Gu kid is such an pain," Rabbit continued. "Sometimes I think she — "

Alfred waved his hand and the creature disappeared — along with all public network communication. There was now a deep local silence, a hard deadzone.

But his milnet link was still in place, a fragile chain that led through his mobiles to his stealthed areobot and thence across the Pacific. Alfred's analyst pool in Mumbai was estimating sixty seconds till the deadzone got serious attention from the campus police and fire departments.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: This can't be sustained, Alfred.

Vaz — > Braun, Mitsuri: I'll clear the deadzone in a few seconds. This was why successful missions had a Local Honcho. He probed the mobiles that had made it into the building: the children were about thirty feet away, well inside the deadzone, and still coming. He could hear them, right through the plastic wall. He glanced at the door; it was locked. Maybe he could pretend to be empty air while they pounded on the door. No they'd just back off and call the police.

Okay, time for direct action. Alfred set the twe nearest mobiles into motion. These were network-superiority bots with essentially no antipersonnel capacity, but they would be a distraction. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the hall, confronting two children and a folded-up bicycle.

"May I help you?"

Miri tried to glare at the old fellow. Self-rightcous indignation came hard when you were trespassing and trying to think of a good lie. And her link to the outside world was still fully dead.

Juan stepped forward and just blathered out the truth. "We're looking for Miri's grandfather. We ping him somewhere behind you."

The janitor/professor/whatever shrugged. "There's no one here but myself. As you know, network connections are very unreliable this evening. The building shouldn't have allowed you down here. I'll have to ask you to go back to the public area." There was a sign by the door now, one of the standard biohazard symbols that covered a lot of the classrooms and labs in Pilchner Hall. You might think the public net was coming back up — except that Miri still couldn't probe behind her line of sight.

Juan nodded as if the old man made perfect sense. He walked forward a couple more steps, at the same time relaying what he saw back to Miri.

The room beyond was brightly lit. There was some kind of hole in the floor, and she could see the top of a metal ladder.

"Okay," said Juan agreeably. He was fiddling with something on his bike. But point-to-point, his words were on fire:

Juan –> Mid: See the clothes! piled on the floor beside the pit.

Miri — > Juan: Time to go. Get outside, get where they could call the cops. She shrugged, as casually as she could, and said, "We'll be on our way then."

The stranger sighed. "No, it's too late for that." He started toward them. Behind her there was the snick of something hard on the floor and she saw dark things scuttling toward her.

There was no way back and no way forward.

And then Juan made a way forward. He bounced his bike toward the stranger. There was a screech of rubber. The wheels spun up with all the power from the regen brakes, and the bike exploded across the room, smashing into the stranger and the equipment behind him. Miri ran forward, toward the pit. "C'mon, Juan!" She knew where Robert must be, and how she could put out the alarm.

She scrambled over the edge, saw metal rungs. "Juan!"

Mr. Janitor/Professor was back on his feet and staggering forward. He had something pointy in his hand. Miri was frozen for an instant, watching the pointy thing swing toward her.

Orozco was such a runt. He couldn't stop someone like that. But he tried. The bad guy staggered back and the thing in his hand made a bright purple flash. Miri felt a numbing tingle all across her side. She tipped over the edge of the pit, managed to grab a ladder rung with the hand that still had feeling. But her feet swung through emptiness. She pawed with her numb hand, missed, and fell onto very hard concrete.

All her imagery was gone; maybe her Epiphany was fried. But she could see the circle of light above, and she could hear.

"Run Miri! Run — " Juan's shout was cut off by a meaty crunching sound.

Miri ran.

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