Robert left Juan and the others when speculation turned to what the regular demos would be like. The kids didn't want to believe that they could be outdone, not after tonight.
Robert spotted two familiar figures on his walk back to the traffic circle. "I thought you were with Winston," he said.
"We were," said Tommie, "but we came back. Wanted to congratulate you on your music-synch gimmick."
Xiu Xiang nodded agreement. Of the two, only she was wearing. A Congrats logo floated out from her. Poor Tommie was still lugging around his laptop, though whatever remained inside surely belonged to the secret police.
"Thanks. I'm proud of it, but emphasize the word 'gimmick.' No one really needs to synch manual music across thousands of miles of cheapnet. And basically, I just took advantage of routing predictabilities plus knowledge of the music being played."
"Plus some timing analysis of the individual performers. Right, right?" said Tommie.
"Yes."
"Plus some counter-jitter you inserted," said Xiu.
Robert hesitated. "You know, it was fun ."
Tommie laughed. "You should do some ego surfing. Your hack was noticed. Back when I was young, you could have got a patent off it. Nowadays "
Xiu patted Tommie's shoulder. "Nowadays, it should be worth a decent grade in a high-school class. You and I we have things to learn, Thomas."
Tommie made a grumbling noise. "She means I should be learning to wear." He glanced at the young-looking woman. "I never dreamed that X. Xiang would end up saving my life. But of course she did it by getting us all arrested!"
Lena > Xiu: <sm>Parker is afraid to try new things, even when he brags about the future. </sm>
They walked in silence for a few steps. There were more golden words from Xiang; she was getting better and better at silent messaging.
Xiu > Robert: <sm><sigh/>Tommie is old, and all the medicine hasn't helped him that much. He's afraid to try new things."</sm>
Robert stifled a startled glance at the woman. Since when had the geek become a parlor shrink? But she could be right about Tommie.
Tommie was surely oblivious of all the sming, but a familiar crafty grin was spreading across his face.
"What?" Robert finally said.
"Just thinking. Our UCSD op was the biggest and most dangerous I've ever been part of. We got used, yeah. But you know, it was like of lot of these modern whatsits these affiliances. We contributed, and in one way, we got what we were aiming for."
Robert thought of the Stranger's promises. "How is that?"
"We nailed the Huertas Librareome Project."
"But the library books are all consumed."
Tommie shrugged. "I kind of like the Library Militant vision. The point is, we terminally embarrassed Huertas."
"That's a triumph?"
They were walking along the traffic circle now, followed by a hopeful automobile.
"Yup. You can't stop progress, but we stopped Huertas long enough for other events to come to our rescue." He glanced at Robert. "You haven't heard? You wear all that fancy equipment and you can't keep up with news."
Tommie didn't wait for a reply: "Y'see, Huertas was in such an awful rush for a reason. It turns out, the Chinese were chewing up the British Museum and Library faster than we ever guessed. And the Chinese have years of experience in semi-nondestructive digitization. They're positively gentle compared to Huertas's shredder operation. They made the San Diego effort look foolish, and they even got haptic data off non-book exhibits. There's clear sky between them and everyone else, including the Google archives. Anyway, we stalled Huertas by a few days, long enough that he can't claim any sort of priority. And it was long enough so that the Chinese were able to frost the cake."
Tommie reached into his jacket and pulled out a three-inch-square piece of plastic. "Here. A present for you, that cost me all of $19.99."
Robert held up the dark plastic. It looked a lot like the diskettes he'd used on his old PC at the turn of the century. He pointed a query at it. La-bels floated in the air: Data Card. 128PB capacity. 97% in use . There was more, but Robert just looked back at Tommie. "Do people still use removables like this?"
"Just paranoid propertarian old farts like me. It's a nuisance to carry around, but I have a reader right here in my laptop." Of course. "The data is all online, along with a lot of cross-analysis that the Chinese will be charging you extra for. But even if you don't have a card reader, I thought you'd be interested in holding this in your own hot little hands."
"Ah." Robert peeked at the top directory. It was like standing on a very high mountaintop. "So this is ?"
"The British Museum and Library, as digitized and databased by the Chinese Informagical Coalition. The haptics and artifact data are lo-res, to make it all fit on one data card. But the library section is twenty times as big as what Max Huertas sucked out of UCSD. Leaving aside things that never got into a library, that's essentially the record of humanity up through 2000. The whole premodern world."
Robert hefted the plastic card. "It doesn't seem like very much."
Tommie laughed. "Well, it's not!"
Robert started to hand it back, but Tommie waved him off. "Like I said, it's a present. Put it on the wall where you can remind yourself that it's all we ever were. But if you really want to see it, just look on the net. The Chinese have it pretty well meshed. And their special servers are really clever."
Tommie stepped back and motioned to the car that was trailing them. The rear door opened and he waved Xiu in ahead of him. For a weird instant Tommie looked like an old rake with some sweet young thing. Just another image from the past that had nothing to do with the truth.
"So Huertas is out of the shredding business, and the Chinese promise their follow-ups will be even gentler than what they did to the British Library. Imagine soft pinky robot hands, patiently picking over all the libraries and museums of the world. They'll be cross-checking, scanning for annotations giving whole new generations of academic types like Zulfi Sharif something to hang their degrees on." He waved at Robert. "Hi ho!"
It was almost midnight when Xiu Xiang got back to Rainbows End. Lena was still up. She was in the kitchen, fixing some kind of snack. Lena's osteoporosis forced her to lean so far forward that her face was just a few inches off the table. It looked strange, but the wheelchair and the kitchen's design gave her plenty of freedom to maneuver.
Xiu eased into the room, feeling entirely embarrassed. "Sorry for cutting you out, Lena "
The other twisted around to give her a direct look. There was a lopsided grin on her face. "Hey, no problem. You young people need your privacy." She waved for Xiu to sit down and have something to eat.
"Yes. Well, Tommie isn't really so young." She felt a blush coming on. "I, um, don't mean physically. He wants to keep up with progress, but he just can't cope with everything that means."
Lena shrugged. "Tommie's mind is better than some." She grabbed a sandwich off her plate and gave it a munch.
"Do you think he'll ever get his edge back?"
"Could be. Science marches on. And even if that doesn't help in Parker's case, we can give him pushes in the right direction. A big part of his problem is that life was too easy for him when he was young. He's too ornery to try anything that's really hard for him." She jabbed a hand in Xiu's direction. "Eat up."
Xiu nodded and reached for a sandwich. They had been over this before. In fact, it had been such discussions that had made all the difference for a certain Dr. X. Xiang. But maybe she had more on the ball than Tommie. Her chief problem in the near future might be in avoiding government "job offers."