Minus the editorial comments, this did look like some of the pdf.
They rounded a corner and saw the source of the sounds.
"Viola , Alfred's three hundred thousand fruit flies, now being folded into convenient shipping cartridges." The Stranger's face and body bore less and less resemblance to the original Sharif. "But I must confess — I know what these little bugs are, but I don't really know what Alfred has planned for them. Surely there are some marvelous diseases — cognitive diseases? — that might come out of such research. Or maybe he wants to get a head start on all the enhancement-drug people. Or maybe he's into YGBM. But I do know — "
The fruit-fly arrays were being folded on a large transport table, much bigger than anything in Ron Williams's shop class. The shipping cylinders rolled across the table, right through the Stranger's body. The creature noticed this a half second late, but did a creditable hop back from the table.
"But I do know that he's trying to ship them off-site."
"So you claim."
"Hey, trust me, Miss Miri. You've met Alfred . He's the fellow who tried to kill Juan Orozco. The guy's an evil loon. Ping the labels on these packages if you don't believe me."
Yes . UP/Ex labels with an encrypted destination. The first of the cylinders was sliding off the table, headed toward the nearest pneumo tube.
Now the Stranger was hopping from one foot to the other. "Only you can save mankind! Just knock the cylinders onto the lower tray. Don't let Alfred win!"
That seemed to convince Miri. She rushed to the table, grabbed the package out of the pneumo tube lock, and tossed it to Robert. He caught it and the next and the next and now his arms were full. The white cylinders were as light as foam.
The Stranger's image froze for a second. Abruptly, animation returned.
"Heh! Excellently done." He waved vaguely at the walls. "See that, Alfred? It doesn't pay to cross the Rabbit!" Rabbit ? The creature turned back in their general direction; by God, it did look a little bit like a rabbit. "That was a near thing, but I won! I mean, we saved mankind." It drew itself up, but its whole body was tilted. "Damn Alfred. He is shutting me down a piece at time. Maybe I should exit with my impression of the Wicked Witch of the West. Dying, that is."
The creature spun around, giving out melodramatic moans, its body dissolving around it. It hesitated, and said offhandedly to Robert, "Oh, don't let the cylinders go untreated. Just drop them onto the lower tray."
Robert didn't move.
"I mean it!" said the Stranger, something like a serious tone creeping into its voice. It flailed about — more dramatic dying, or looking for an explanation? "If the bugs are disease vectors, you're at ground zero! The lower tray will send them to an incinerator, all safe and tidy."
Miri shook her head. "No. That's an alternate path to the UP/Ex launcher."
"Look at my pdf, you fool. The map."
"I looked at my map, the one I cached this afternoon." Miri's smile was triumphant.
There was a two-second lag. Then the creature turned and looked almost straight at Miri. "I hate you, Miri Gu. You evil thing. Everything was going so well till you started meddling. I'll get you for this."
Then it was shouting. "Meantime, I'm gonna get you , Alfred. If I'm out of action, so are you! I'm blowing the whistle on you. I'm — "
The figure stopped moving. There was a moment of silence; then Robert heard a single word, faint and faraway:"… help."
And the creature vanished. Robert and Miri stared at each other. It was just the two of them, and the ranks of cabinets.
"Do you think he's really gone, Miri?"
"I… don't know."
Miri — > Robert: <sm>But if Smart-Aleck wasn't lying about everything, then this Alfred guy is still around.</sm> Aloud, her words were timid. "Maybe we should stay here and wait for the police."
"Okay."
Miri plunked herself down on the floor. She was very quiet for a moment, both publicly and privately. Robert set the packages down and stared off into the dark, looking this way and that. Supposedly there were no mon enemy robots. What could "Alfred" do with the fruit flies now? What couk the fellow do to Miri and Robert himself?
Miri — > Robert: <sm>Things don't sound the same.</sm>
Robert looked a question at her. Miri drew a golden arrow at right angles to the corridor they had arrived from.
Miri — > Robert: <sm>I kept track of everything I heard when I was following you. There's something new going on, most likely in the mouse arrays. Did you do anything over that way?</sm> She quietly came back to her feet.
Robert tapped at his keypad:
Robert — > Miri: <sm>Thts whr we put most of our eqt.</sm>
Miri's chin came up.
Miri –> Robert: <sm>The sounds are like what we heard here . Someone's packaging another shipment out.</sm>
29
Dr. Xiang Takes Charge
Günberk and Keiko and Alfred each had their own analyst pools. Ten seconds ago those analysts had agreed: As an active threat, Rabbit was gone, both topside and in the operation's milnet. Dissent clusters hung around the opinion, but they were related to collateral-damage prediction.
Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: <sm>God willing, we've stopped the monster. </sm>
Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: <sm>And we have the inspection data we came for. Now it's time to get the hell out!</sm> She brought up a zoomed picture of the contingency tree. They were way out on a limb that led to full loss of deniability. And yet, until they knew for sure the results of their investigation, they needed the Americans kept ignorant.
Alfred presented his latest extraction schedule, the times padded just enough to cover his outshipment activities.
Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: <sm>Eight minutes! That much?</sm> Keiko still had things covered on the north side of the labs. And the views of the riot showed the Bollywood team still in place by the library… but that affair was descending into civil disorder, the sort of thing that brings a direct police response. Meshing Alfred back into the Bollywood people should be easy now; very soon it would be impossible.
Vaz — > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>I'll trim every second I can, Keiko. </sm>
Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: <sm>You'd better! Five minutes is the most I can guarantee.</sm>
Alfred smiled at Keiko's impolitely constrained panic. She and Günberk would do their best. And in some ways, this chaos was helpful. Fooling Günberk and Keiko had always been Alfred's biggest problem. His outshipment would've been impossible if they weren't so distracted.
Two minutes passed. Three. His secret team had completed most of the fakery. They had updated the logs to satisfy both Alliance and future U.S. investigators. Now they were working with one small section of the Mus musculus arrays, his true animal model. Alfred hopped from viewpoint to viewpoint, swooping over cabinets that looked like office blocks in some bland, utilitarian city. He couldn't take more than a few of the mice, just a few of those conceived since the last update. His team had already shut down the in-progress experiments and started destruct operations. Now they detached the chosen arrays and began prepping them for launch. Other members of the team were already sending shipping cartridges to the pneumo port atop the cabinet. He could fit one twenty-by-thirty array… six hundred mice — into each cartridge.