"It looks like I'm going to get a C in math."
Her eyes widened. "Oh! I'm sorry."
Robert laughed. "No. That's good news. I wouldn't have even understood the problems, back before the Alzheimer's."
She gave him a sickly smile. "Well, that's okay then."
"Hmm. A… friend… of mine told me that the kids in your classes are really good at these things."
"We know the tools."
"I think I could be a lot better in math," said Robert, almost to himself. "It might even be fun." Of course, if his real plans for the next few days worked out, he would have his poetry back and none of this would matter.
This time Miri's smile was happier. "I'll bet you could! You know… I could help you on that. I really like math, and I have all sorts of custom heuristics. Between semesters I could show you how to use them." Her voice slipped into leader mode as she planned out his vacation for him. That's the Alice in her , thought Robert. He almost smiled. "Hold on, there's still finals to get through." And he thought about Juan's latest demo plans. The boy was doing okay. It was Robert who was having trouble with his part, the graphics and the interfaces. "That's where I really need help."
Miri's face snapped around, "I will not help you cheat, Robert!"
They both stopped and stared at each other. "That's not what I meant, Miri!" Then he thought about what he had actually said. Christ. In the old days I insulted people all the time, but I knew when I was doing it . "Honest. I just meant that finals are a problem, okay?"
Lena — > Miri, Xiu: <sm>Be cool, kiddo. Even I don't think Robert's messing with you.</sm>
Xiu — > Lena, Miri: <sm>This is a first for you then.</sm>
Miri glared at him for a second more. Then she made a strange sound that might have been a giggle. "Okay. I should have known a Gu would not cheat. It's just that I get so mad at some of the kids in my study group. I tell them what to do. I tell them not to cheat. And yet they are always chiseling at the collab protocols."
She started walking again, and Robert followed along. "Actually," she said, "I was just making conversation. I have a mission, something I should tell you."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Bob wants to send you out-of-state. He figures you tried to beat up Alice." She paused, as if waiting for some defense.
But Robert only nodded, remembering the look in Bob's eyes. So Rainbows End was too close by. "How long do I have?"
"That's what I want to tell you, not to worry. You see — " It turned out that his rescue came from an unlikely source, namely Colonel Alice herself. Apparently, she hadn't felt the least bit threatened by him. "Alice knew you were just desperate, I mean — " Miri made a verbal dance of avoiding insult and gross language: Basically, Alice already thought he was a crazy old man. Crazy old men have to go to the bathroom all the time; they get overly focused on that problem. Furthermore, Alice didn't regard his manhandling of her as assault. Robert remembered how sore his head was after he tripped over her feet and slammed into the doorjamb. Black-belt whatever must be one of Alice's myriad JITTs. Alice was the dangerous one. Poor Alice, poor Bob. Poor Miri.
"Anyway, she told Bob that he was overreacting, and you really need your schooling here. She says you can stay as long as your behavior is…" Her voice dwindled into silence, and she looked up at him. She couldn't figure how to pass on the rest diplomatically: as long as you don't blast my daughter again .
"… I understand, Miri. I'll be good."
"Well. Okay." Miri looked around. "I, um, I guess that's all I had to say. I'll let you get on with… whatever you're doing. Good luck with finals."
She swung back on her bike and pedaled industriously away. That old bike had only three speeds. Robert shook his head, but he couldn't help smiling.
20
The Officer of the Watch
Robert's finals were over. He had earned a 2.6 average, and a B in Search and Analysis. He had worked harder than he ever had in his life. If it weren't for the imminent irrelevance of it all, he would have been proud of himself.
Now it was Monday afternoon and Robert was counting the hours, almost down to counting the minutes. The Mysterious Stranger had been very scarce lately. The cabal had met a couple of times, with Tommie doling out information on a need-to-know basis. Tommie had read too many spy novels. For now, all Robert knew was that they were meeting at the library at 5:30 tonight.
Meantime, somewhere under Camp Pendleton…
In theory, being officer of the watch for Continental U.S. Southwest was no different than running a snoop-and-swoop operation anywhere in the world. In theory, there could be world-wrecking conspirators at work here. In fact, this was home, in some of the best-connected real estate in the world. The chances they'd have to swoop were near zero. Nevertheless, for the next four hours Lieutenant Colonel Robert Gu, Jr., would be responsible for protecting about one hundred million of his neighbors from mass destruction.
Gu arrived twenty minutes early, checked in with the current officer of the watch, and then looked for DHS screwups. Those were usually the worst thing about CONUS watches. Through the miracle of virtual bureaucracy, Gu's Marine Expeditionary Group was tonight a part of the Department of Homeland Security. This was how DHS kept its budget so, ahem, small. "Like a modern corporation, DHS seamlessly meshes with whatever organizations are needed at the moment." That was the hype. And tonight — well glory be — there was not a single authorization glitch in sight.
Bob walked around the bunker, transformed the green plastic walls into windows on the Southern California night. The air filled with abstractions, the status of his people and his equipment, the reorganization of his share of the analyst pool. He grabbed some coffee from the machine by the door and settled down at a very ordinary desk just a few feet from the launch area.
"Patrick?"
His second-in-command appeared across the table. "Sir?"
"Who-all have we got tonight?" An unnecessary question, but Patrick Westin produced the official list. The Marine Expeditionary Group consisted of four twelve-marine maneuver teams. Call them squads; everyone else did. Back in the twentieth century, Bob's "command" would have rated a second lieutenant. On the other hand, the MEG controlled thousands of vehicles (though most were the size of model airplanes) and enough firepower to finish almost any war in history. Most important to Bob Gu: Everyone in his group had been through combat training as tough as any in the past. They were marines. Patrick called them all in for a short meeting. The room stretched back from around Bob's desk and for a few moments pretended to be an auditorium. Everyone looked cool; it had been a long time since anything had gone Really Wrong within CONUS. And were a big part of the reason why .
"We'll be here four hours," said Bob. "Hopefully, the time will be a very boring snoop. As long as that's the case, you're free to stay in staff areas adjacent to your vehicles. But most of you have been on my watch before. You know I want you to keep your eyes open. Keep up with the analysts." He waved at the analyst pool. For a CONUS Southwest watch, this amounted to about fifteen hundred dedicated specialists, but with connections leading down to hundreds of thousands of services and millions of embedded processors. Tonight, Alice was in charge of the pool, and already the changes were evident, the three-dimensional rat's nest transformed with a clarity rarely seen outside of managers' dreams. Aside from her marvelous reorganization, the display was completely conventional. Between the humans who had clearance and could communicate directly there were hundreds of color-coded associational threads. The mass of the lower levels was constantly aflicker, weights and assessments and connections shifting from second to second.