Meantime, focus on the fun things: What was Alfred trying do do? Sheer destruction? Intellectual theft? Rabbit was beginning to feel mean. He had been willing to settle for a secret back door into Alfred's operation. Now, well, now he meant to steal it all. Starting with the fruit flies.
Rabbit reached out for his hands.
Robert remembered this area. They were back in the heart of GenGen country, the unending rows of gray cabinets, the crystal forests that connected them, the pneumo tubes. But up ahead was a sound like cardboard boxes being crushed.
The Stranger's pdf had explanations for the abbreviations that were printed on the sides of the cabinets:
Dros MCog
Robert > Miri: <sm> Fruit flies? </sm> This was where he had set down almost a third of the little boxes, having to crawl over above and between the cabinets.
Miri > Robert: <sm>Yes. Did you read what Smart-Aleck claims about this? I don't believe it.</sm>
"Hey, hey, my man!" And there was the Mysterious Stranger, Miri's Mr. Smart-Aleck. His skin was practically glowing green, even in the shadows. The face was Sharif's but the smile was inhumanly wide. "Talk as you please. Alfred discovered us here several minutes ago." The Stranger looked around, as if expecting a visible enemy. "So now I don't care if he hears you. Or me! What can you do, Alfred? You're shutting me down, but I wager I'll last another minute or two. Oh, I suppose you could shut down your own operation, too. I'd be instantly gone then." He glanced back at Miri and Robert, and continued sotto voce. "If he does that, he's truly desperate. And it won't help him a bit, since you still have my pdf. You'll still be here to destroy his underhanded plans."
The Mysterious Stranger waved for them to follow. "Did you get to this part of my explanation?" He waved at the cabinets. "Molecular Biology of Cognition. MCog. And Alfred's people have created the ideal animal model for their research."
"Fruit flies?" said Robert.
"I don't believe it," said Miri. "Fruit flies can't think. What could your 'Alfred' or you do with them?"
The Stranger gave out one of its dismissive laughs, and Robert noticed
Miri's face jerk up. She might do better with this manipulator than Robert. After all, she wasn't desperate for his help.
"Ah, Miri, you read but you don't understand. If you had access just now to the wider net and a few hundred hours of research perhaps you'd understand that molecular biology depends more on data depth and analysis than it does on the particular class of organism. In his Drosophila melanogaster alfred is that what you call them, Alfred? we have the metabolic pathways that are the basis for all animal cognition."
Minus the editorial comments, this did look like some of the pdf.
They rounded a corner and saw the source of the sounds.
"Viola , Alfred's three hundred thousand fruit flies, now being folded into convenient shipping cartridges." The Stranger's face and body bore less and less resemblance to the original Sharif. "But I must confess I know what these little bugs are, but I don't really know what Alfred has planned for them. Surely there are some marvelous diseases cognitive diseases? that might come out of such research. Or maybe he wants to get a head start on all the enhancement-drug people. Or maybe he's into YGBM. But I do know "
The fruit-fly arrays were being folded on a large transport table, much bigger than anything in Ron Williams's shop class. The shipping cylinders rolled across the table, right through the Stranger's body. The creature noticed this a half second late, but did a creditable hop back from the table.
"But I do know that he's trying to ship them off-site."
"So you claim."
"Hey, trust me, Miss Miri. You've met Alfred . He's the fellow who tried to kill Juan Orozco. The guy's an evil loon. Ping the labels on these packages if you don't believe me."
Yes . UP/Ex labels with an encrypted destination. The first of the cylinders was sliding off the table, headed toward the nearest pneumo tube.
Now the Stranger was hopping from one foot to the other. "Only you can save mankind! Just knock the cylinders onto the lower tray. Don't let Alfred win!"
That seemed to convince Miri. She rushed to the table, grabbed the package out of the pneumo tube lock, and tossed it to Robert. He caught it and the next and the next and now his arms were full. The white cylinders were as light as foam.
The Stranger's image froze for a second. Abruptly, animation returned.
"Heh! Excellently done." He waved vaguely at the walls. "See that, Alfred? It doesn't pay to cross the Rabbit!" Rabbit ? The creature turned back in their general direction; by God, it did look a little bit like a rabbit. "That was a near thing, but I won! I mean, we saved mankind." It drew itself up, but its whole body was tilted. "Damn Alfred. He is shutting me down a piece at time. Maybe I should exit with my impression of the Wicked Witch of the West. Dying, that is."
The creature spun around, giving out melodramatic moans, its body dissolving around it. It hesitated, and said offhandedly to Robert, "Oh, don't let the cylinders go untreated. Just drop them onto the lower tray."
Robert didn't move.
"I mean it!" said the Stranger, something like a serious tone creeping into its voice. It flailed about more dramatic dying, or looking for an explanation? "If the bugs are disease vectors, you're at ground zero! The lower tray will send them to an incinerator, all safe and tidy."
Miri shook her head. "No. That's an alternate path to the UP/Ex launcher."
"Look at my pdf, you fool. The map."
"I looked at my map, the one I cached this afternoon." Miri's smile was triumphant.
There was a two-second lag. Then the creature turned and looked almost straight at Miri. "I hate you, Miri Gu. You evil thing. Everything was going so well till you started meddling. I'll get you for this."
Then it was shouting. "Meantime, I'm gonna get you , Alfred. If I'm out of action, so are you! I'm blowing the whistle on you. I'm "
The figure stopped moving. There was a moment of silence; then Robert heard a single word, faint and faraway:" help."
And the creature vanished. Robert and Miri stared at each other. It was just the two of them, and the ranks of cabinets.
"Do you think he's really gone, Miri?"
"I don't know."
Miri > Robert: <sm>But if Smart-Aleck wasn't lying about everything, then this Alfred guy is still around.</sm> Aloud, her words were timid. "Maybe we should stay here and wait for the police."
"Okay."
Miri plunked herself down on the floor. She was very quiet for a moment, both publicly and privately. Robert set the packages down and stared off into the dark, looking this way and that. Supposedly there were no mon enemy robots. What could "Alfred" do with the fruit flies now? What couk the fellow do to Miri and Robert himself?
Miri > Robert: <sm>Things don't sound the same.</sm>
Robert looked a question at her. Miri drew a golden arrow at right angles to the corridor they had arrived from.
Miri > Robert: <sm>I kept track of everything I heard when I was following you. There's something new going on, most likely in the mouse arrays. Did you do anything over that way?</sm> She quietly came back to her feet.
Robert tapped at his keypad:
Robert > Miri: <sm>Thts whr we put most of our eqt.</sm>
Miri's chin came up.
Miri > Robert: <sm>The sounds are like what we heard here . Someone's packaging another shipment out.</sm>