Bob pointed at the reddish threat wackos that were always part of the mix. "What have we got to worry about for the next four hours?" The analysts behind the red nodes spewed out their consensus list and supporting pointers.
But even the paranoids didn't have much to say tonight:
Action issues
Possible Anti-Librareome protest at UCSD
Belief circle riot a near certainty
Possible organized participants
Jerzy Hacek belief circle
CIA assessment of Indo-European connection
Scooch-a-mout belief circle
CIA assessment of Central African connection
CIA assessment of Sub-Saharan connection
CIA assessment of Paraguay connection
RIAA report to Congress
Commercial entities
Possible threats to infrastructure
Proximity to Critical National Security Sites
General Genomics
Huertas International
Increased illegal computation imports
Orange County
Los Angeles County
Off-scale low probability estimate linking preceding items
Law enforcement issues
FBI vice raid at Las Vegas Splendor Farm, a near certain event
Possible request for intelligence support
DEA enhancement-drug raids in Kern County
Possible request for intelligence support
Possible out-of-area activity
Pacific Islander settlements in Alberta
Persons of Interest
Arizona
California
San Diego County
Increased short-term South Asian visitors
Others
Nevada
Recusal advisements
Bob let the list hang for a moment.
"Ha," said one of the gunnies. "At least the policias won't be a problem." Denying the law-enforcement requests should be easy tonight, not like for kidnapping or murder prevention.
A tech sergeant flickered highlights across the UCSD event cluster. "This is what will keep us busy." Her light paused, expanding on definitions. "What? This is a fight between belief circles? I never heard of such a thing."
One of the youngest marines laughed. "You're just getting old, Nancy. Cross-belief strife is tragic new."
Bob didn't try to parse the slang, but he'd heard enough from Dad and Miri to get the point. He expanded the description of the expected riot. "It looks like a combination of twentieth-century protest and modern gaming. It should be as safe as most public events. The problem is the location." There was so much bio-lab work near UCSD that any instability was a concern. "This is worth a lot of your attention. Note the stats on foreign interest." He moved on to the links in Persons of Interest. As usual, those expanded into the tens of thousands. At one point or another almost everyone — unless they were dead, in which case they might still count for bioterror paranoia — came under scrutiny. "I'm not going to ask you to dredge through the Pol or this watch will last all year. But follow what the spooks throw up at you — and watch for real-time changes." That last was classic wisdom, proven in dozens of disasters and disasters-avoided so far this century. The analysts always had a million suspicions, but when they hit the hard cold world of real time, success depended on whether the operational folks had been paying attention.
And then there was the item that stood a little down from all the others: Recusal Advisements, that is, team members who might somehow compromise this watch. Normally, that was the most paranoid list of all — but his crew would see no cloud of detail here, not even links. Such advice was Eyes Only for himself and his backups. In practice, if there had been any serious problems there, they would have been taken care of well before this briefing.
"Questions?"
He looked around. There was a moment of silence, marines drinking in the details of the moment, answering a lot of questions for themselves. Then the young slang-slinger spoke up. "Sir, the equipment, is it the same as for a technical-threat overseas mission?"
Bob looked back into the young eyes. "The boost gear is lighter than usual… That's the only difference, Corporal. We're here to protect, but ultimately that means to protect the whole country." The whole world, some would say . "So, yes, we're carrying a full strategic load." He leaned back and gave a look that included all his marines. "I don't expect any problems. If we pay attention and do our jobs, this will be just another peaceful evening for the people of California."
He dismissed the crew, and the room shrank to its true dimensions. Patrick Westin had a few follow-up questions about squad deployment, and then his image departed, too. Bob Gu turned down his augmentation and for a brief moment there was just his table and chair, sitting by the coffee machine. On his right was the doorway that led to real hardware. With luck, he wouldn't see any of that tonight.
Bob — > Alice: <sm>Are you cool?</sm>
Alice — > Bob: <sm>Cool and clear. The UCSD thing will be good practice for my lab audit. Talk to you after.</sm> That is, after the watch was complete. Tonight Alice was top analyst; if she weren't currently Trained for the audit, she might have been the operational commander. She was one of only a handful of people qualified for both jobs. In either role, she was a joy to work with — as long as he didn't have to think about the sacrifices that made her performance possible.
He finished his coffee and brought back his visuals, now fully customized. He checked again with Cheryl Grant. She was ready to go. Okay, for the record:
Gu — > Grant: <sm>I take the watch, ma'am.</sm> He and Grant exchanged salutes. The clock was started. His squads settled into total alertness. They would have to stay that way for four hours — not a long time, but about the longest you could remain watch-alert without drugs.
Bob's job was different. He was like a sheepdog running around the outside of the flock, skittering from topic to topic. He watched where marines and analysts were spending their time. This was partly to stay ahead of hot spots, partly to detect attentional holes. For a moment, he looked down from a popular-press viewpoint over UCSD. This… event… was going to involve a lot of demonstrators, many of them physically present. And network stats showed that a flash crowd situation was possible on top of that. He wondered if Miri was surfing this.
The thought brought him back to the moment. He looked again at the Recusal Advisements. Half of his marines had relatives enrolled at UCSD. That was the big problem with a local snoop. Three of his people were actually part-time students at UCSD. The slang-slinger had a hobby of Scoochi decoration that involved a number of Bangalore fans. If this hadn't been the kid's duty night, he'd be down there on campus right now. But the analysts had done a minute-by-minute on the young fellow, going back fourteen months. There were some illegalities, some enhancement drug abuse, but nothing that would affect the mission.
Bob had searched the entire recusal tree. Now he ran off its pointers, boring deep. Dad didn't show up. And I was sure he'd be mixed up in the Librareome thing . Not that that would be serious grounds for recusal. He was skittering too far afield, a common problem for commanders with latitude —
Xiu Xiang ? The name was vaguely familiar, but it wouldn't have popped out at him if his own name hadn't been in the item. Xiang was one of about three hundred thousand people in CONUS Southwest who were currently of interest for tinkering with hardware. Much of that was illegal, of course; such people could be thrown to the FBI. But it was more productive simply to track them. Most of these people were benign hobbyists or intellectual-property cheats. Some were the hands for terrorist cults. And some were the analyst smarts behind those cults. Xiang had the intelligence and training to be in this last category, but so far the most interesting thing about her was the range of toys she had built, a regular museum of oddball electronics. And she was in one of Dad's classes. That connection was marked "tenuous."