“I—” Faces rose up in Robert’s mind. He’d been in the English Department at Stanford for thirty years. There were lots of faces. Some of them belonged to people who were years younger than he was. Where were they now?
Bob nodded at his silence. “Right. Not one has visited you, nor even tried to contact you. I should know. Even before today, I figured that when you got your strength back you’d start hurting whoever was nearest—and that would be Miri. So I’ve been trying to farm you out to one of your old buddies. And you know what, Dad? There’s not one who wants anything to do with you. Oh, there are newsies. You won’t have to look far to find as many fans as ever—but among them all there’s not a single friend.” He paused. “Now you don’t have any options. Finish the semester; learn what you can. And then get out of our house.”
“But Lena. What about Lena?”
Bob shook his head. “Mom’s dead. You had no use for her except when you needed a servant or a kickball. Now it’s too late. She’s dead.”
“But—” There were memories, but they clashed with one another. The last decade at Stanford. The Bollingen Prize and the Pulitzer. Lena had not been there to share them. She had divorced him just about the time Bob joined the Marines. And yet—“You remember. Lena got me into that rest home, Rainbows End. And then she was here, when things got really dark. She was here with Cara”—his little sister, still ten years old, and dead since 2006. His words stumbled to a halt.
Something glittered in his son’s eyes. “Yes, Mom was here, just like Cara. A shame attack won’t work on me, Dad. I want you out of this house. End of the semester at the latest.”
And that was the longest conversation Robert had had with anyone since Saturday.
It was cold. He’d walked a long way into the desert. The night had risen part way up the sky. Stars hung over a flat land that stretched forever beyond him. Maybe that should be the “Secret of the One Who Came Back”…that he just wanted to go away again, walking forever into the bluish dark. He walked a bit farther, then slowed, stopped beside a huge rough rock—and stared into the night.
After some minutes, he turned and started back into the bright twilight.
JUAN GOT SIDETRACKED from Big Lizard’s quest. School began to seriously intrude. Chumlig wanted them to complete their projects and she wanted real results. Worst of all, the school board had suddenly decided the class must demo their creative compositions at Parents’ Night—in place of the final exam. Low grades and Chumlig’s disappointment in him were bad enough; Juan already knew he was a loser. But such public humiliation was something he desperately wanted to avoid.
So for a while he was on a different quest: finding someone to team with in composition class. The problem was, Juan was no good at writing. He wasn’t more than so-so with math or answerboards. Ms. Chumlig said the secret of success was “to learn to ask the right questions.” But to do that she also said you had “to know something about something.” That wisdom and “everyone has some special talent” were the drumbeats of her classes. But it didn’t help. Maybe the best he could hope for was a team so big the losers would shield each other.
Today he sat at the back of the shop tent with Fred and Jerry. The twins had missed their proper shop class that morning, so now they were wasting the rest of the day here rather than in study hall. It was kind of fun. The two were pretending to work on a magnetic orrery—a plagiarism so obvious that their plans still had the source URLs written on them. About half the class had completed something. Doris Schley’s paper airplanes were flying, but just this afternoon her team had discovered terrible stability problems. They didn’t know about Fred and Jerry’s unofficial project: The twins had hijacked the tent’s air-conditioning. While they kicked back and fooled with the orrery, they were using the fans to tumble Schley’s fliers.
Xiu Xiang sat hunched over the transport tray she had been working on lately. She didn’t look so blank and despairing these days, even if she had warped the transport surface to where it wasn’t good for anything. Xiang practically had her nose buried in the equipment. Every so often she drew back and studied her view-page, then returned to the unmoving wreck she had created.
Winston Blount had been scarce since Juan had put him onto the Lizard’s quest. Juan counted that as encouraging; maybe Mr. Blount was working on the affiliance.
Juan leaned into the cool air from the fans. Back here it was nice. It was hot and noisy over by the outside entrance, but that’s where Robert Gu sat. Earlier, the guy had been watching Dr. Xiang. Sometimes she seemed to be watching him back, but even more secretly. Now Mr. Gu mainly stared at the traffic circle, watching the cars that occasionally pulled up, picked up or dropped off passengers, and then departed. The table in front of the fake teenager was littered with BuildIt fragments, and several rickety-looking towers. Juan zoomed in on a couple of them from a viewpoint in the tent above Gu’s head. Huh. The gadgets had no motors, not even any control logic.
So Gu was going to crash in this class just as sure as Juan was in Composition. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe he could resume the Lizard’s game, and take one last whack at finding a teammate for Ms. Chumlig’s project. But I tried him last week. Robert Gu was the best writer Juan had ever known. He was so good he could kill you with his words. Juan tucked his chin in and tried to forget last week.
And then he thought, The guy isn’t wearing, so he’s staring at nothing. He must be bored out of his skull. Juan dithered for another ten minutes, but shop class had thirty minutes more to run and the Radners were way too focused on their anti-aircraft guns.
Jerry --> Juan: Hey, where you going?
Juan --> Radners: Gonna make one more try with Gu. Wish me luck.
Fred --> Juan: It’s unhealthy to want a grade that bad.
Juan meandered across the pavilion, walking along the lab benches as if he were studying the other projects. He ended up beside the strange old man. Gu turned to look at him, and Juan’s casual cover evaporated. Gu’s sweaty face looked almost as young as Fred Radner’s. But the eyes looked right into Juan, cold and cruel. Last week, the guy had seemed friendly—right up to the moment he ripped Juan apart. Now all Juan’s clever opening lines were gone; even the dumb ones were hiding. Finally he managed to point at the crazy towers Robert Gu had been working on. “What’s the project?”
The young-old man continued to stare at Juan. “A clock.” Then he reached into a parts box and dropped three silver balls into the top of the tallest tower.
“Oh!” The balls bounced down connecting stairways. The first tower was directly in front of Juan. Going to the right, each tower was a bit shorter and more complex than the last. Mr. Gu had used most of the “classic parts” that Ron Williams kept in stock. This was a clock? Juan tried to match it against old-time clock patterns. There were no perfect fits, though the thing did have levers that clicked back and forth against a whatchamagoogle…an escape wheel. Maybe the balls tipping down the stairways were like the hands on a clock.
Gu continued to stare at him. “But it’s running fast,” he said.
Juan leaned forward and tried to ignore that stare. He captured about three seconds of the contraption’s motion, enough to identify stationary points and dimensions. There was an old mechanics program that came in handy for medieval gadget games; he fed the description into it. The results were easy to interpret. “You just gotta make that lever a quarter-inch longer.” He poked a finger at a tiny spar.
“I know.”
Juan looked back at him. “But you’re not wearing. How did you figure that out?”
Gu shrugged. “A medical gift.”
“That’s pretty neat,” Juan said uncertainly.
“For what? To do what any child can do already?”
Juan didn’t have any answer for that. “But you’re also a poet.”
“And now I’m good with gadgets.” Gu’s hand twitched out, smashing through the levers and wheels. Parts sprayed in all directions,
some of them breaking under the force of his blow.
That got everyone’s attention. The class was suddenly quiet—and blazing with sming.
It was time to back off. But Juan really really needed help with creative composition. And so he said, “You still know about words, though, right?”
“Yes, I still know about words. I still know about grammar. I can parse sentences. I can even spell—hallelujah, without mechanical aid. What’s your name?”
“Juan Orozco.”
“Yes, I remember. What are you good for, Mr. Orozco?”
Juan tucked his chin in. “I’m learning how to ask the right questions.”
“Do so, then.”
“Um.” Juan looked at the other parts Gu had collected, things he hadn’t used in his clock. There were rotary motors, there were wireless synchs, there were programmable gear trains. There was even a transport tray like the one Dr. Xiang had messed up. “So how come you don’t use any of these gadgets? That would be lots easier.”
He expected Gu to spout some Chumliggy thing about solving a problem within constraints. Instead, the other poked angrily at the components. “Because I can’t see inside them. Look.” He flipped a rotary motor across the table. “‘No user-serviceable parts within.’ It’s stamped right in the plastic. Everything is a black box. Everything is inscrutable magic.”
“You could look at the manuals,” said Juan. “They show internals.”
Gu hesitated. His hands were gathered into fists. Juan edged back a few inches. “You can see internals? You can change them?”
Juan watched the fists. He’s flipping crazy. “You can see them easy. Almost everything serves up its own manual. If it doesn’t, just Google on the part number.” The look on Gu’s face sent Juan into fast mode: “As for changing the internals…often they’re programmable. But otherwise, the only changes you can make are when you order, back at the design and fab stage. I mean, these are just components. Who’d want to change them once they’re made? Just trash ’em if they’re not working like you want.”
“Just components?” Gu looked out from under the fringes of the shop-class tent. An automobile was tooling up Pala Avenue, heading for the school’s traffic circle. “What about the fucking cars?”
“Unh.” The whole class was staring. Almost the whole class: Mr. Williams was on break and out of contact.
Mr. Gu twitched for a few seconds. Then suddenly he was standing. He grabbed Juan by the collar. “By God I’m going to have a look.”
Juan bounced along just ahead of Robert Gu’s angry, pushing hands. “Break open a car? Why would you want to do that?”
“That’s the wrong question, kid.” At least they were walking away from the traffic circle. Even if he went after an automobile, what damage could he do? The car bodies were a trashy composite, easy to recycle, but strong enough to take a fifty-mile-per-hour crash. Visions of battle lasers and monster sledgehammers came to mind. But this was the real world.
Jerry --> Juan: What is the goofball up to?
Juan --> Radners: I dunno!
Robert Gu marched him across the tent to where Xiu Xiang was sitting. By the time he arrived, the only evidence of madness was the faint twitchiness in his face. “Dr. Xiang?”
The crazy man actually sounded relaxed and friendly, but Xiang hesitated a long moment. “Yes,” she said.
“I’ve been admiring your project. Some kind of mass mover?”
Xiang tilted the warped surface up toward him. “Yes. It’s just a toy, but I thought I could get a leverage effect by warping the surface.” Talking about the gadget seemed to distract her from Gu’s weirdness.
“Very nice!” There was nothing but charm in Gu’s voice. “May I?” He picked up the panel and studied the ragged edge.
“I had to cut out gores so the microgrooves wouldn’t bind,” she said, standing up to point at her work.
Transport trays were for shedding dirt or sliding small containers. For most things, they were better than robot hands, even if they didn’t look as impressive. Juan’s mother had remodeled their kitchen with fake-marble transports; afterward, everything she wanted was where it should be, in the fridge or oven or on the cutting board, just when she needed it. Usually, the micro grooves couldn’t slide anything faster than a couple of inches a second.
What Xiang was saying gave Juan an idea. Maybe the warped board was not broken. He started to put the dimensions into a mechanics program—
But Robert Gu already seemed to know what the thing could do. “You could triple the delivered force if you adjusted it, here.” He twisted the tray. It creaked the way ceramics do when you’ve bent them almost to the breaking point.
“Wait—” she reached for her project.
“I didn’t break it. This is even better. Come on over and I’ll show you.” His words were all so open and friendly. But he was already walking away.
Xiang chased after him, but she didn’t act like a kid would when someone grabs their property. She walked along beside Gu, her head tilted to get a look at the wrecked transport tray. “But there’s no way to use that mechanical advantage with just the batteries it’s rated for—” The rest of what she said was mathematical; Juan just saved it.
As Gu swept by the Radner twins, his right arm flicked out, grabbing a jar of metal beads that Fred and Jerry were using for their orrery.
“Hey!” The Radners jumped to their feet and followed him, not saying much out loud. The Adult Ed students were like untouchables. You didn’t mess with them and vice versa.
Jerry --> Juan: What did we miss, Juan?
Fred --> Juan: Yeah. What did you say to him?
Juan danced backwards, lifting his hands to say that he was an innocent bystander.
Almost an innocent bystander. As Gu walked past his workbench, he jerked his chin toward the tent entrance. “Make yourself useful, Orozco. Get me some line current.”
Juan scooted ahead. There were 110VAC sources on campus, though most were indoors. He looked up public utilities and saw a big arrow pointing down into the lawn. This outlet was used to power building reconfiguration when they needed an extra auditorium. It had a thirty-foot extension reel. He ran to the spot and pulled the line up from the fresh-cut grass.
Now all the kids—minus Schley’s team, which was suddenly overjoyed by the improvement in their fliers’ performance—were following them out of the tent.
The car coming up the traffic loop was gliding to a stop at the curb behind him. It was Ms. Chumlig, back from lunch.
Robert Gu caught up, Xiang right behind him and looking upset. Gu was no longer making nice noises. He grabbed the power cord from Juan and plugged it into the transport tray’s universal, bypassing the teeny battery pack that Dr. Xiang had used. He tilted the tray on edge and poured the metal beads from the Radners’ project into the top-edge opening.
Chumlig was out of the car. “What’s going on—”
The crazy man smiled at her. “My shop project, Louise. I’ve had enough of ‘no user-serviceable parts within.’ Let’s take a look.” He leaned over the car’s front hood and ran his finger down the printed words forbidding customer maintenance. The kids stood in clusters, awed. Juan had never heard of anyone at Fairmont High going wacko. Robert Gu was making history. The old man set the transport tray against the automobile. So where is your battle laser, Mr. Spaceman? Gu sighted along the edge of the tray, then glanced to his right, at the Radner brothers. “You really don’t want to be standing there.”
Xiu Xiang was frantic, shouting at the twins. “Get back, get back!”
And now Juan was getting way unbelievable answers from his mechanics program. He hopped back from the transport tray. Robert Gu didn’t need a battle laser. For this job, he had something just as good.
Gu powered up the tray. The noise was like tearing cloth but loud, a crack-of-doom sound. Real sparks sprayed from where the transport tray touched the car’s hood. Twenty feet ahead of the car, wh
ere the Radners had been standing, there was an oleander hedge. Some of the branches were as thick as Juan’s arm. Now the white flowers were dancing like there was a breeze; one of the largest branches snapped and fell on the sidewalk.
Gu slid the tray along the curve of the automobile, driving dozens of metal beads per second into the hood, cutting an eighth-inch-wide slit in the composite. He turned the tray—the cutter—and made a corner. Now the lawn near his feet was ripped by the invisible ricochets.
In less than ten seconds, Gu had brought the cut around to itself. The carved section fell into the dark of the car’s drive compartment.
Gu tossed Xiu Xiang’s project onto the lawn. He reached into the drive compartment and flipped out the loose hull section. A ragged and maybe disdainful cheer rose from the kids behind him. “Hey, dork! There has to be a latch. Why didn’t you scam the lock?”
Gu didn’t seem to hear. He leaned forward to look into the interior. Juan edged closer. The compartment was in shadow, but he could see well enough. Not counting damage, it looked just like the manual said. There were some processor nodes and fiber leading to the dozens of other nodes and sensors and effectors. There was the steering servo. Along the bottom, just missed by Gu’s cutting, was the DC bus to the left-front wheel. The rest was empty space. The capacitor and power cells were in the back.
Gu stared into the shadows. There was no fire, no explosion. Even if he had chopped into the back, the safeties would have prevented any spectacular outcome. But Juan saw more and more error flags float into view. A junk wagon would be coming real soon.
Gu’s shoulders slumped, and Juan got a closer look at the component boxes. Every one had physical signage: NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS WITHIN.