29
Dr. Xiang Takes Charge
Gnberk and Keiko and Alfred each had their own analyst pools. Ten seconds ago those analysts had agreed: As an active threat, Rabbit was gone, both topside and in the operation's milnet. Dissent clusters hung around the opinion, but they were related to collateral-damage prediction.
Braun > Mitsuri, Vaz: <sm>God willing, we've stopped the monster. </sm>
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>And we have the inspection data we came for. Now it's time to get the hell out!</sm> She brought up a zoomed picture of the contingency tree. They were way out on a limb that led to full loss of deniability. And yet, until they knew for sure the results of their investigation, they needed the Americans kept ignorant.
Alfred presented his latest extraction schedule, the times padded just enough to cover his outshipment activities.
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>Eight minutes! That much?</sm> Keiko still had things covered on the north side of the labs. And the views of the riot showed the Bollywood team still in place by the library but that affair was descending into civil disorder, the sort of thing that brings a direct police response. Meshing Alfred back into the Bollywood people should be easy now; very soon it would be impossible.
Vaz > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>I'll trim every second I can, Keiko. </sm>
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>You'd better! Five minutes is the most I can guarantee.</sm>
Alfred smiled at Keiko's impolitely constrained panic. She and Gnberk would do their best. And in some ways, this chaos was helpful. Fooling Gnberk and Keiko had always been Alfred's biggest problem. His outshipment would've been impossible if they weren't so distracted.
Two minutes passed. Three. His secret team had completed most of the fakery. They had updated the logs to satisfy both Alliance and future U.S. investigators. Now they were working with one small section of the Mus musculus arrays, his true animal model. Alfred hopped from viewpoint to viewpoint, swooping over cabinets that looked like office blocks in some bland, utilitarian city. He couldn't take more than a few of the mice, just a few of those conceived since the last update. His team had already shut down the in-progress experiments and started destruct operations. Now they detached the chosen arrays and began prepping them for launch. Other members of the team were already sending shipping cartridges to the pneumo port atop the cabinet. He could fit one twenty-by-thirty array six hundred mice into each cartridge.
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>Alfred! The public net is failing.</sm>
Vaz swore and glanced at the topside analysis. This wasn't even close to Keiko's deadline.
Braun > Mitsuri, Vaz: <sm>It's a full system failure. Mr. Rabbit has screwed us.</sm>
The analysts were boiling with contrary opinions. Failures like this happened a couple of times a year somewhere in the world, the price that civilization paid for complexity. But here there was a more sinister suspicion, that this failure was collateral damage from the revocation. Maybe Rabbit's riot magic depended on his commandeering the embedded computer systems of the public environment. Now that his certificates were revoked, there was a cascade of failures working through almost everything, just as fast as the certificates failed.
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>Alfred! Clean up and get out!</sm>
The second and third cartridges would be ready in a moment. Alfred glanced at the UP/Ex status. The launcher was close to the MCog area. Most important, it was locally managed, unaffected by the crash outside. He entered a destination in Guatemala and selected a launch vehicle that he'd emplaced some weeks before. It ought to be stealthy enough to get out of U.S. airspace.
Vaz > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>One minute. Can you give me that? </sm>
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>I will try.</sm>
The topside analysts were hard into contingency planning and probability estimates. A thousand little changes were being made across the UCSD landscape, wherever the Indo-European operation had influence. The Bollywood presence would survive as long as any up there.
Alfred forced his attention back into the labs. The second cartridge was loading. The first cartridge was shooting down the pneumo, taking its little passengers to the launcher.
Alfred froze. The Gus were gone from the fruit-fly area. There was movement in another window, at the edge of the mice arrays. A girl and a man running toward the camera. They hadn't been fooled by the fruit flies.
Alfred leaned forward. Okay. One minute. What could his people cook up in that time?
Lena's wheelchair was no hiking machine. It did well enough on the asphalt, even going uphill; Xiu had to trot to keep up. But where the asphalt was carved by gullies, the chair had to walk. The going got very slow.
"Can you even see the road, Lena?" Her view-page was as dark as the natural view.
"No. I think someone has turned off the hillside. Side effect of the riot, maybe." She moved to the middle of the road. "Sst! They're still coming." She waved at Xiu to come forward. "How can we stop them? One way or another, we have to find out what's happening."
"Robert will see you."
"Damnation!" Lena dithered, caught in a dilemma.
"Go back to the side of the road. I can stop them more safely, anyway."
"Hmph," said Lena. But she retreated.
Xiu stood still for a moment. There were the distant sounds of the freeway. From over the hilltop there were noises that might have been chanting. But nearby was just insect sounds, the feel of air cooling in the night, the narrow roadway jumbled and rocky under her feet. She saw light sweep across the outcroppings above her.
"I can hear them, Xiu."
Xiu could, too, the crunch of tires and now the faint whine of electric motors. The mystery car came around a last, unseen bend in the road, and she tensed to dive out of the way.
But on this road, cars could not speed. Its headlights slowly bore down on her. "Make way, make way." The words were loud, and the view-page in her hand came alight with flashing warnings about the penalties for interfering with the California Highway Patrol.
Xiu started to give way, and then she thought, But it's the CHPI want to talk to .
She waved for the car to stop. The vehicle slowed still more, then turned and tried to edge past her on the left. "Make way, make way."
"No!" she shouted and hopped back in front of it. "You stop!"
The car moved even more slowly. "Make way, make way." And it tried to pass her on the other side. Xiu jumped in the way again, this time flailing her backpack as though it could do some damage.
The auto backed up a yard or two, and turned slyly as if preparing an end run. Xiu wondered if she really wanted to jump in front of what happened next.
With every heartbeat, pain spiked through Tommie. After a moment he realized that was good news. He raised his head, saw that he was stretched out on the backseat of a passenger car. That was Winston and Carlos in the facing seats.
"Where's Robert and his little girl?"
Winston Blount shook his head. "They stayed behind."
"We split up, Professor Parker."
Scary memories were coming back. "Oh yeah. Where's my laptop? We gotta call 911."
"We called, Tommie. Everything's okay now, this is a CHP vehicle."
Despite his haziness, that didn't make sense. "It sure doesn't look like one.
"It's got all the insignia, Tommie," but there was dawning uncertainty in Winston's voice.