Vision returned a second after that. Bob was alone in the living room, staring at the door of the ground-floor den. He stood there for a few moments, then circled the living room and dropped himself down in his favorite chair. He pulled a book off the coffee table. That was one of the three physical books downstairs—and even it was a just-in-time fake.
Robert Gu quietly shut his bedroom door and returned to his chair. He thought a moment, then tapped on his virtual keypad.
Robert --> Miri: What was that all about?
Miri was twenty feet down the hall. So why didn’t he just walk a few feet and knock on her door? Or present virtually? Maybe it was the habit of staying out of her way. Maybe it was easier to hide behind words.
Maybe he wasn’t the only one hiding. It was almost a minute before a reply floated back.
Miri --> Robert: They’re not mad at you.
Robert --> Miri: Okay. But what is the problem?
Miri --> Robert: There is no problem. That was the whole message, but then Miri sent another.
Miri --> Robert: Alice is getting ready for some new job. That’s always hard on her. And then Bob gets mad. There was another pause.
Miri --> Robert: This is Corps business, Robert. I’m not supposed to know about it. You’re even more not. I’m sorry. EOF.
EOF. That was space cadet for “that’s all she wrote.” Robert waited; nothing more came. But this had been more real conversation with Miri than he’d had in two months. What did that little girl do with her secrets? They were surely more significant than he had ever guessed. She had better communications facilities than all of twentieth-century civilization, but her prissy standards kept her from sharing her pain. Or maybe she has friends she can talk to?
Robert Gu, Sr., didn’t have any friends, but he didn’t need any; tonight he had plenty of crisis and suspense to distract him. He kept an eye on the front bathroom, and another on the door to the den. Bob was still reading, every so often sliding a look of his own at the den.
“Is now a good time for us to talk, Professor?” The voice came from just behind his shoulder.
The shock all but levitated Robert from his chair. He swung on the sound. “Jeez!”
It was Zulfikar Sharif.
Sharif backed away, startlement in his face.
“You could have knocked,” Robert said.
“I did, Professor.” Sharif sounded faintly hurt.
“Yes, yes.” Robert still hadn’t figured out all the quirks of Epiphany’s “circle of friends” feature. He gestured for Sharif to stay. “What’s on your mind?”
Sharif did a creditable job of sitting on a chair without sinking halfway through. “Well, I was hoping we could just talk.” He thought a moment. “I mean, we might continue with my questions about your Secrets of the Ages.”
Still no action downstairs. “…Very well. Ask.” So who is this? True-Sharif? Stranger-Sharif? SciFi-Sharif? Or some ungodly combination? Whatever, it was too much coincidence that he showed up just now. Robert sat back to watch and listen.
“Um…I don’t know.” Miserably forgetful? But then Sharif abruptly perked up. “Ah! One thing I’m hoping to get at in my thesis is the balance of worth between the beauty of expression and the beauty of underlying truth. Are they separate?”
A question to be answered in cryptic depth. Robert paused significantly and then launched into flimflam. “You should know by now, Zulfi, even if you can’t create poetry yourself, that the issues can’t be separated. Beauty captures truth. Read my essay in the Carolingian…” blah blahblah
Sharif nodded earnestly. “Then do you ever expect an end to one and therefore the other? Beauty and truth, I mean?”
Huh? Now, that was sufficiently bizarre to derail him. Robert parsed and reparsed the stupidity. Will you run out of beauty? And the answer for me is yes; I can’t create beauty any more. So maybe this was just Stranger-Sharif jerking him around while they both waited for the little gray box to do its thing.
“I suppose…there could be an end.” And then he thought about the other half of the question. “Hell, Sharif, truth—new truth—ended long ago. We artists sit atop a midden ten thousand years deep. The diligent ones of us know everything of significance that’s ever been done. We churn and churn, and some of us do it brilliantly, but it’s just a glittering rehash.” Did I just say that?
“And if they’re linked, then beauty is gone too?” Sharif had leaned forward his elbows on his legs, his chin cupped in his hands. His eyes were large and serious.
Robert looked away. Finally, he choked out, “There is still beauty. I will bring it back.” I will regain it.
Sharif smiled, mistaking Robert’s assertion for some general faith in humankind in the future? “That’s wonderful, Professor. This goes beyond your essay in the Carolingian.”
“Indeed.” Robert sat back, wondering just what in heaven’s name was going on.
Sharif hesitated a moment, as if uncertain where to go next. “At the UCSD library, how has your project there progressed?”
Still no action downstairs. Robert said, “You see some connection between my art and…the Librareome?”
“Well, yes. I don’t want to intrude, but ultimately what you do at UCSD seems to be very much a statement about the position of art and literature in the modern world.”
Maybe this was SciFi-Sharif, trying to figure out what Stranger-Sharif was up to. If only I could use one against the other. He gave his visitor a judicious nod. “I’ll talk to my friends about this. Maybe we can arrange something.”
That seemed to satisfy whoever-it-was. They set a time for another chat, and then the visitor was gone.
Robert turned off circle-of-friends access. No more surprise visitations tonight.
And downstairs, there was still no action. He watched through the walls for almost fifteen minutes. That was certainly a productive use of time. Think about something else, damn it.
He blew off the top of the house and looked across West Fallbrook. Unenhanced, the place was very dark, more like an abandoned town than a living suburb. The real San Diego had less skyglow than he remembered from the 1970s. But behind that real view were unending alternatives, all the cyberspace fun Bob’s generation could have ever imagined. Hundreds of millions were playing out there tonight. Robert could feel—Epiphany could make him feel—the thrum of it, beckoning. Instead he tapped out a command Chumlig had mentioned; here and there across North County, tiny lights glowed. Those were the other students in his classes, at least the ones who were studying tonight and had any interest in what the others were doing. Twenty little lights. That was more than two-thirds of the class, a special kind of belief circle, one dedicated to pushing up their cooperation scores as far as possible. He hadn’t appreciated how hard these little third-raters were working.
Robert ghosted over the suburbs, toward the nearest of the lights. He hadn’t tried Epiphany’s “out of body” feature before. There was no feeling of air flowing past, or motion. It was just his synthetic viewpoint slewing across the landscape. He could still feel his butt on the chair in his bedroom. And yet he understood why the directions said to do this sitting down. The viewpoint swooped down into a valley with a speed that was dizzying.
He drifted into a welcoming window. Juan Orozco and Mahmoud Kwon and a couple of others were gathered in a family room, marking out possibilities for tomorrow’s exchange with Capetown. They looked up and said hi, but Robert could tell they weren’t seeing much more than his icon hovering in the room. He could be present virtually, perhaps even look as “real” as Sharif usually did. But Robert just hung in the air, listening to the talk for a few moments and—
Alarm notification!
He cut the connection and was back in his bedroom.
Downstairs, Bob had wandered out of the living room. He stood by Alice’s door and knocked gently. As far as Robert could tell there was no answer. After a moment, Bob tucked his chin in
and turned away. Robert tracked him up the stairs. The sounds of footsteps came down the hall. Bob knocked on Miri’s door, the way he did most evenings. There was mumbled conversation, and Miri’s voice saying, “G’night, Daddy.” It was the first Robert had heard her call Bob that.
Bob’s footsteps came nearer; he paused at Robert’s door, but he didn’t say anything. Robert watched him through the wall as Bob turned and was swallowed up by the privacy of the master bedroom.
Robert hunched over his desk and stared into the downstairs. Alice hardly ever stayed up much beyond Bob. Of course, tonight was not your usual night. Damn. You screw your courage up to an act of family betrayal—and then fate dumps problems all over your dishonorable intent. But even if Alice camped out in the den, eventually she’d have to use the bathroom. Right?
Twenty minutes passed.
Alice’s door opened. She stepped out, turned toward the stairs. Use the ground-floor bathroom, damn you. She turned again and paced angrily around the living room. Paced? There was precision and power in every motion, like a dancer or a martial-arts nut. Not like dumpy frumpy Alice Gong Gu, she of the mild round face and the shapeless dress. And yet this was the real view. It was her real face, even if it was tense with pain, and drenched in sweat. Huh? Robert tried to follow her gliding dance in close-up. The woman was dripping sweat. Her dress was soaked, as if she had just finished a long, frantic run.
Like Carlos Rivera.
It couldn’t be. Alice never got stuck in a foreign language, or in a particular specialty. In any one particular specialty. But he remembered the web discussion of JITT. What about the few strange people who could “train” more than once, who became ever more multitalented, until the side effects finally destroyed them? Where would such wretches get “stuck” if there were dozens of imprints to fall into?
Alice’s gliding dance slowed, stopped. She stood for a moment with her head bowed, her shoulders heaving. Then she turned and walked slowly into the front bathroom.
Finally, finally. And now I should be overcome with relief. Instead, revelation bounced back and forth in his mind. This explained so many little mysteries. It contradicted several certainties. Maybe Alice hadn’t been gunning for him. Maybe she was no more his enemy than anyone in this house.
Sometimes things are not as they seem.
It was very quiet. The old house in Palo Alto had had little squeaks and thumps, and sometimes Bob’s PC playing stolen music. Here, tonight…yes, there were occasional sounds, the house settling into the cool of the evening. Wait. In the utility view, he saw that one of the water heaters had kicked in. He could hear running water.
Not for the first time, Robert wondered what kind of magic that little gray box was. It had not triggered the house watchdogs. Maybe it wasn’t electronic at all, but nineteenth-century gears and cogs driven by a metal spring. Then it had disappeared from Robert’s own naked eyesight. That was something new, not a visual trick. Maybe the box had sprouted little legs and scurried off. But whatever it was, what would it finally do? Maybe the Stranger didn’t need a little blood. Maybe a lot of blood would suit him more. Robert sat stock-still for a second and then bolted to his feet—and froze again. I was so desperate. Credibility is not important if the victim wants to believe so hard that truth must be what the liar claims. So the Stranger had mocked the notion that hurting Alice would be worth such hugger-mugger. And I, desperate, smiled and was convinced.
Robert was out of his room, and flying down the stairs. He dashed through the living room and pounded on the bathroom door. “Alice! Al—”
The door opened. Alice was looking at him, a bit wide-eyed. He grabbed her arm and dragged her into the hallway. Alice was not a large woman; she came easily in his grasp. But then she turned, taking him off balance. Somehow his feet got tangled in hers and he slammed into the doorjamb.
“What! Is it?” she said, sounding irritated.
“I—” Robert looked over his shoulder, into the brightly lit bathroom, then back at Alice. She was dressed in a robe now, and her short hair looked as though she had washed it. And everybody is still in one piece. No pools of blood…except maybe where my head hit the doorjamb.
“Are you okay, Robert?” Concern seemed to rise above her irritation.
Robert felt the back of his head. “Yeah, yes. I’m pretty robust these days.” He thought about how he’d come down the stairs. Even when he was seventeen years old, he had never skipped four steps at a time.
“But—” Alice began. Clearly she was more concerned about his mental state than anything else.
It’s okay, Daughter-in-Law. I thought I was stopping your murder, and now I find it’s a false alarm. Somehow he didn’t think that would be a satisfactory explanation. So why was he down here in the middle of the night, pounding on the door? He looked into the bathroom again. “I, um, I just needed to use the John.”
Her sympathy frosted over. “Don’t let me keep you, Robert.” She turned and headed for the stairs.
“Are you okay, Alice?” Bob’s voice, from the top of the stairs. Robert didn’t have the courage to look, but he could imagine Miri’s little face staring down, too. As he stepped into the bathroom and shut the door, he heard his daughter-in-law’s tired voice. “Not to worry. It was just Robert.”
ROBERT SAT ON the can for a few minutes and let the shakes die away. Maybe there was still a bomb here, but if it exploded, none but the guilty would be blown apart.
And neither did he have the little box that was the point of the comedy. When he showed up at the library, he would be empty-handed. So? After a moment, Robert stood, and looked into the real glass mirror. He favored his reflection with a twisted smile. Maybe he should just bring them a fake; would Tommie even notice? As for the Mysterious Stranger, perhaps his spell had been broken…along with all hope.
His eyes strayed to the countertop. There, sitting away from the clutter, was a small gray box. It hadn’t been there when Alice left. He reached down. His fingers touched warm plastic. Not an illusion. A greater mystery than all the flash and glitter that he was just becoming accustomed to.
He slipped the box into his pocket and quietly returned to his room.
17
ALFRED VOLUNTEERS
Günberk Braun and Keiko Mitsuri: They were top officers in their respective services. Vaz had tracked these two since their college days. He knew more about them than they would ever guess. That was one of the benefits of being very old and very well connected. In a sense, he had guided them into their intel careers, though neither they nor their organizations suspected the fact. They weren’t traitors to the EU or Japan, but Alfred understood them so well that he could subtly guide them.
So he had thought, and so he still hoped. And yet his two young friends’ remorseless efforts to help had become the greatest threat to his plans. As today:
“Yes, yes. There are risks,” Vaz was saying. “We knew that from the beginning. But letting a serious YGBM project escape detection would be much more dangerous. We must find out what’s going on in the San Diego labs. Plan Rabbit can do that.”
Keiko Mitsuri shook her head. “Alfred, I have contacts in U.S. Intelligence that go back years. These aren’t my agents, but they would not tolerate a rogue weapons project. On that, I would trust them with my life. I say we should contact them—very unofficially—and see what they can learn about the San Diego labs.”
Alfred leaned forward. “Would you trust them with your country’s life? Because that’s what we are talking about here. In the worst case, there is not only a YGBM research effort going on in San Diego, but it is supported at the highest levels of the U.S. government. In that case, your friends’ best efforts would simply alert their superiors to our suspicions. The evidence would disappear. When it comes to investigating a threat this serious we simply must do it ourselves.”
In one form or another, this was an argument that dated from their Barcelona meeting. Today’s installment could be decisive.
Keiko
sat back and gave a frustrated shrug. She was presenting in more or less her real appearance and location, a thirty-year-old woman sitting at her desk somewhere in Tokyo. She had transformed one side of Vaz’s office with her minimalist furniture and a picture-window view of Tokyo’s skyline.
Günberk Braun was less prepossessing. His image simply occupied one of Alfred’s office chairs. No doubt Günberk figured that the EU swung enough weight that he could afford a mild disposition. Günberk might be the real problem today, but so far he was just listening.
Okay. Alfred spread his hands. “I truly think the course we set in Barcelona is the most prudent one. Can you deny the progress we have made?” He waved at the biographical reports scattered around the table. “We have hands and minds on the scene—all deniable, and ignorant of what is manipulating them. In fact, they totally misunderstand the significance of this operation. Do you doubt this? Do you think that the Americans have any whiff of our investigation?”
Both youngsters shook their heads. Keiko even gave him a rueful smile. “No. Your SHE-based compartmentalization is truly a revolution in military affairs.”
“Indeed, and our releasing those methods—even to sister services within the Alliance—shows how seriously we at the EIA view the current necessities. So, please. If we delay more than one hundred hours, we might as well start over. What is your problem with giving the final go-ahead?”
Günberk glanced at his Japanese counterpart. She made an impatient gesture for him to go ahead. “I assume your question is rhetorical, Alfred. The problem with Plan Rabbit is Rabbit. Everything depends on him, and still we know almost nothing about him.”
“And neither will the Americans. Deniability is the whole point. Rabbit is everything we could want.”
“He is more, Alfred.” Günberk’s gaze was steady. For all his youth, Braun had the stolid aspect of a turn-of-the-century German. He moved from point to point slowly, inexorably. “In setting up this operation, Rabbit has performed miracles on our behalf. His ability demonstrates that he himself is a threat.”