Analyst red flag . Someone reviewing stale video had noticed something. Alfred brought up the flag report. It was a ten-second snippet from one of his mobiles on the north side of Gilman Drive: Two children with bicycles. They were standing by the roadway and looking at something that might have been a crushed mech. Those are the two I saw earlier . Queries spread outward: Who were the children? Was the mobile one of Alfred's?
Ugly answers came back.
Rabbit didn't have access to the Indo-European analysts, but suddenly the creature sat up and gave an admiring whistle. "Well, I'll be dipped! We've got company, Doc."
Miri left her bike in the rack outside Pilchner Hall. Juan insisted on bringing his fancy foldup into the building. When Miri pointed out the absurdity of this, the boy just shrugged. "My bike is special."
Lena and Xiu were no longer visible, but Lena's voice followed them through the wide-open doors. "There should be better security, Miri. I don't like this."
"It's the emergency overload behavior, Lena. Unoccupied rooms stay locked. The others are open."
Lena said, "And we can't see you anymore."
The sudden drop in data was very strange, but Miri wasn't going to say that. Instead: "I bet high-rate forwarding isn't supported except for around the library."
Xiu said, "Yes, we still have spectacular views from there." The main corridors in Pilchner Hall had searchable viewpoints. There were glimpses of Robert's recent passage. That was enough to guide them downstairs. But now there were places where Juan and Miri could talk only to each other.
"It's like a haunted house." Juan's voice was hushed. His hand reached out and grasped hers; she didn't shake him loose. She needed him to keep cool. Certainly losing connectivity in the middle of an office building was an eerie thing.
They came around a corner, and there was a glimmer of connectivity, enough for sming:
Miri — > Miri Gang: <sm>I think we're getting close.</sm>
Lena — > Miri Gang: <sm>First we lost video. Now we can barely talk. Get out of there.</sm>
Miri — > Miri Gang: <sm>It's just temporary. I'm sure wikiBell is shifting extra coverage into place. </sm> How bad could an entertainment riot get?
Miri imagined Lena was having a similar discussion with Dr. Xiang in a certain car driving around the north side of campus. Grandmother seemed truly anxious.
Xiu — > Miri Gang: <sm>I agree with Miri. But give Lena and me regular reports. </sm>
Lena — > Miri Gang: <sm>Yes! Even if that means you have to backtrack. Where is Robert now?</sm>
Miri –> Miri Gang: <sm>Real close. I can ping him direct.</sm>
The twisty hallway was brightly lit, just what you'd expect during a network brownout. Juan's bike coasted along almost silently, all folded up into portability mode. He only had to give it a push every so often. Their footsteps and the faint snicking of its tires were the only sounds. They took another corner. The hall was narrower, with intersections every few feet. This was one of those temporary makeovers that crazy architects-for-a-day liked to do.
For a few dozen feet they had high-rate connectivity. Ads and announcements appeared on the walls; someone's medical research project loomed like a monster on the left. She gave Lena and Xiu a continuous video as they turned another corner — and lost all outside connectivity.
Juan slowed, drew Miri to a stop. "This place is really dead."
"Yeah," said Miri. They walked forward a few more paces. Except for her point-to-point link with Juan, she might as well have been on the far side of the moon. And there was another corner ahead. She pulled Juan forward.
Around the corner, the corridor ended at a closed door. "I can't ping your grandpa anymore, Miri."
Miri looked at the map she had cached. "This has to be where they are, Juan. If we can't get through, we'll just pound on the door." Suddenly she didn't care too much about embarrassing Robert and his friends. This was too strange.
But then the door opened and a man in dark clothes stepped out. He might have been a janitor, or a professor. Either way, he didn't look friendly. "May I help you?" he said.
"How did they find us?"
Rabbit a made warning gesture. "Not out loud, Doc," it hissed. "They might actually hear you." It seemed to look over Alfred's shoulder. "I'd say they're following the girl's grandfather."
Vaz glanced at the heap of clothes that lay by the caisson. He sminged back, voice format: "Those clothes are still transmitting?"
"Well, of course. To the outside, it looks like the old guys are just sitting around, maybe playing cards. I'm faking everything, even their medicals."
Alfred realized he was grinding his teeth.
"That Gu kid is such an pain," Rabbit continued. "Sometimes I think she — "
Alfred waved his hand and the creature disappeared — along with all public network communication. There was now a deep local silence, a hard deadzone.
But his milnet link was still in place, a fragile chain that led through his mobiles to his stealthed areobot and thence across the Pacific. Alfred's analyst pool in Mumbai was estimating sixty seconds till the deadzone got serious attention from the campus police and fire departments.
Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: <sm>This can't be sustained, Alfred.</sm>
Vaz — > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>I'll clear the deadzone in a few seconds.</sm> This was why successful missions had a Local Honcho. He probed the mobiles that had made it into the building: the children were about thirty feet away, well inside the deadzone, and still coming. He could hear them, right through the plastic wall. He glanced at the door; it was locked. Maybe he could pretend to be empty air while they pounded on the door. No they'd just back off and call the police.
Okay, time for direct action. Alfred set the twe nearest mobiles into motion. These were network-superiority bots with essentially no antipersonnel capacity, but they would be a distraction. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the hall, confronting two children and a folded-up bicycle.
"May I help you?"
Miri tried to glare at the old fellow. Self-rightcous indignation came hard when you were trespassing and trying to think of a good lie. And her link to the outside world was still fully dead.
Juan stepped forward and just blathered out the truth. "We're looking for Miri's grandfather. We ping him somewhere behind you."
The janitor/professor/whatever shrugged. "There's no one here but myself. As you know, network connections are very unreliable this evening. The building shouldn't have allowed you down here. I'll have to ask you to go back to the public area." There was a sign by the door now, one of the standard biohazard symbols that covered a lot of the classrooms and labs in Pilchner Hall. You might think the public net was coming back up — except that Miri still couldn't probe behind her line of sight.
Juan nodded as if the old man made perfect sense. He walked forward a couple more steps, at the same time relaying what he saw back to Miri.
The room beyond was brightly lit. There was some kind of hole in the floor, and she could see the top of a metal ladder.
"Okay," said Juan agreeably. He was fiddling with something on his bike. But point-to-point, his words were on fire:
Juan –> Mid: <sm>See the clothes!</sm> piled on the floor beside the pit.