Rabbit was into the milnet! He zipped down through Alfred's stealthed aerobot and… once again he was in Vaz's glorious command center in Pilchner Hall. Rabbit took a look at the medicals on the Orozco kid. Still alive. Ol'Alfred wasn't a monster, except when principle demanded it. What was he after? And can I get some ?
Rabbit tiptoed down Alfred's connections into the labs. No surprise, Alfred Vaz was making good use of the devices Rabbit's little friends had planted in the GenGen area, sending oodles of data out to his colleagues in Japan and the EU. Rabbit watched quietly; one doesn't ask pointed questions when one is trying to be invisible. He captured the raw encryption, noted what was talking to what within Alfred's GenGen domain.
Even so… it didn't make sense. The exported data did not match what was locally observed. And then suddenly a big lightbulb went off in Rabbit's mind. Alfred was not searching for anything! He was making sure his Alliance friends did not see what was already there! Alfred, you old devil, running your own program on American equipment and keeping it secret from everybody . And what could be worth such secrecy and such a wild-ass cover-up? Figuring that out was still a guessing game — but Rabbit was the grand master of guessing, better than any Indo-European analyst pool, better even than Alice Gu and all her analysts.
Oops. Something told him Alice was in deep trouble. Rabbit had dutifully played messenger boy for Alfred's mysterious snooping on Alice. That must have been the setup for Alice's downfall. But how had he done it? Suddenly, the underground was more intriguing than ever.
The heart of Alfred's research empire was in a corner of the Molecular Biology of Cognition area. The data from everywhere else was truthful reporting on innocent proprietary research. Rabbit looked more carefully at the lies coming out of the MCog area. The phrase "animal model" leaked from gaps in the encryption. Animal model, animal model. The term usually referred to animals possessing an analog of some human condition– — usually a disease to cure. Somehow, Rabbit didn't think Alfred was trying to cure anything. And there were lots of animals in the MCog area. Of course most were bugs. Gallons of fruit flies, and every itsy-bitsy one labeled and probed. Rabbit dipped into some of the local databases. It looked like Alfred was messing with YGBM, but the details were not easy to understand. Rabbit was not always fast. For hard problems, he was like lesser beings; he had to sleep on the question. Then in the morning, the old intuition would deliver remarkable insights.
In this case, tomorrow would be too late. Five minutes from now might be too late. Alfred's show was almost over, and with it access to the snooper nodes; heck, the gadgets would probably fry themselves. Rabbit hesitated and listened to his inner self. He had a gut feeling about this. Modern intelligence services existed to prevent terrorism. But Alfred… with whatever he was creating here, the dwit might proceed beyond Grand Terror into realms no man was meant to go.
So maybe I should just call DHS . Even without Alice Gu, they could shut down Alfred in five minutes. Rabbit gave the possibility the serious thought it deserved… about two seconds' worth. And then a big grin spread across his concept of face.
Rabbit was full of ideas. And there was one that had been pounding on him since the moment he'd broken into Alfred's milnet. Besides having the greater intellect, I now have the physical advantage ! Alfred was on the scene with very low latencies, very high bit rates, and more hard data. Nevertheless, he was stuck in his little room and all but one of his mechs were topside. But the "Elder Cabal" was still down in the labs. True, they were not in the GenGen area, but they were still reachable at the end of a fiber link. And hello, what's this ? The slightly-overweight-Chinese-ninja princess. She was definitely not part of the original plan, but bless her, there she was. What a strange and marvelous girl.
Back to business. He was already preparing contingency plans, contingency documents. And if I'm very careful, very quiet, I can sneak out along the fiber, tell Robert and Winnie and Carlos and Tommie the right stories. And then I'll have my own physical hands .
What Alfred was planning might go beyond Grand Terror. But that same power in my hands… well, that could be glorious fun !
26
How-to-Survive-the-Next-Thirty-Minutes.pdf
"I told you my planning would pay off! Didn't I?" Tommie Parker stood knee-deep in the remains of the library book collection. The shredda towered behind him like dirty snow, flakes as big as your hand. They had found the Librareome storage at the back of Max Huertas's cavern, just where Tommie had said. It was stored in rows of sturdy cargo containers labeled "Rescued Data." The containers had been no match for Tommie's cutter. He had flooded the floor with the contents of "A-BX." This had been most of the fifth-floor stacks. It seems so much smaller when it's in shreds , thought Robert.
Tommie waved at the drifts of shredded paper. "You guys ready to start with the glue? This will jam Huertas's operation up the wazoo. And where's your reporter guy? I haven't seen Sharif in a while." He went around, handing out spray cans.
Finally, he seemed to notice his pals' silence. "We don't really need Sharif, do we? I mean, we've got our own record." He lifted the laptop in its sling.
Robert looked at Carlos and Winston. Winnie gave a little shake of his head. So none of them had heard from the Mysterious Stranger. "Sure, Tommie," Robert said. "That's — "
"That will be fine, Professor Parker." Sharif's voice from Tommie's laptop. "Perhaps you could have Professor Gu act as cameraman?"
They untangled the laptop from its sling, and the voice directed Robert around to the side. The voice was very picky about where it wanted the laptop pointed, across the edge of the shredda, almost in line with their path into this vacant hall.
Then Robert noticed letters painting silently across his field of view. It was sming… and the letters were green.
Mysterious Stranger — > Robert: <sm>Hey, my man!</sm>
Mysterious Stranger — > Robert: <sm>Ah, ah, ah! Be discreet. We don't want Alfred to know I've come back to help you.</sm>
Alfred ? thought Robert, but he kept quiet.
No one else seemed to notice the Stranger's arrival. Tommie walked back into the drifts of paper, tossing them up in the air, squirting them with his spray can. "Is the camera getting this, Robert?"
Robert looked down at the laptop's screen."… Yes."
Any other time, the effect of Tommie's aerosol glue would have been a showstopper. He threw another armful of loose shredda into the air, and sprayed a mist of glue. Where mist and paper met, the page fragments were suddenly tumbling as one. The mass drifted slowly to earth. Most of the frags never actually touched the ground, but hung permanently in the air. Tommie laughed and pushed at the hazy something. The ensemble of scattered papers rocked back and forth, like bits of fruit in invisible Jell-O.
Tommie whooped. "Try it yourselves. Just don't squirt each other." He threw another armful up, and another. Arches of paper and mist grew around him.
Robert hung back, playing cameraman.
Mysterious Stranger –> Robert: <sm>Look where Alfred has you pointing the camera. See the light? Coming out of the dark?</sm>
There was a tiny pool of light, someone running down the steps into the Huertas cavern.
It was Miri. The girl came pounding across the floor shouting, "Robert! Robert!"
Tommie and the others turned to watch, openmouthed.
Miri came around the edge of the shredda. She was gasping for breath.