Rainbows End

The Missing Apostrophe

Zulfikar Sharif was no longer in the graduate program at Oregon State. Robert encountered a very old-fashioned error message: "No longer a registered student, no longer at OSU." Even Sharif's enum was a stub labeled "vacated." That was a little scary. Robert hunted around. Worldwide, there were about a thousand matches for "Z* Sharif." None of the accessible ones were a good match. The rest were people trying with various degrees of competence to keep their privacy.

But the Zulfi Sharif whom Robert sought was still a techno-bumpkin. After an hour or two, Robert had tracked him down to the University of Kolkata.

Sharif was very subdued. "Professor Blandings dimissed me."

"From the OSU graduate program? In my time, we professors were not so powerful."

"Professor Blandings had help from your authorities. I spent several weeks trying to explain myself to some very insistent U.S. government agents. They couldn't believe that I was an innocent who had succeeded in being multiply hijacked."

"Hmm." Robert looked away from Zulfi Sharif, at the city all around them. The day looked hot and muggy. Just beyond their small table, crowds swirled, young people laughing and smiling. The skyline had its share of tall and ivory towers. It was the Kolkata of modern Indian vision. For a moment he was tempted to open a second, naysayer channel and try to figure out what was real and what was hype. No, concentrate on figuring what part of Zulfi Sharif is real and what is hype . "I suppose the best evidence the cops think you're innocent is that they let you return to India."

"Indeed so, though sometimes I wonder if I'm not just a fish on a very long line." He gave a wan smile. "I really did want to do my thesis about you, Professor Gu. In the beginning, it was academic desperation. You were the trophy I could sell to Annie Blandings. But the more we talked, the more I — "

"How much was you, Sharif? How many — ?"

"I wondered that too! There were at least two besides myself. It was a most frustrating experience, sir, especially at the beginning. I would be in the middle of speaking with you, going through the questions that I knew would impress Professor Blandings — and then at a whack I was a mere bystander!"

"So you could still hear and see?"

"Yes, often that was so! So often that I think the others were using me to generate some questions for inspiration, and then warping them to their own purposes. In the end — and my confessing this to your police was a great mistake — in the end, I came to treasure these bizarre interventions. My dear hijackers were asking questions I would never have conceived. So I hung around throughout your Librareome conspiracy, and in the end I looked the perfect foreign provocateur."

"And if you hadn't been there the night of the riot, my Miri would have died. What did you see, Zulfi?"

"What? Well, I had been most thoroughly locked out that evening. The other players on my persona had agendas that did not include any discussion of literature. But I kept trying to get through. The police claimed I never would have succeeded without terrorist assistance. In any case, for a few seconds I could see you lying there on the floor. You asked for my help. The lava was creeping up against your arm…" He shivered. "In truth, I couldn't see any more than that."

Robert remembered that conversation. It was one of the sharpest fragments in the jumble.

The two of them, eight thousand miles apart, sat in silence for a few moments. Then Sharif cocked his head quizzically. "Now I am well quit of my perilous literary research. And yet, I cannot resist asking: You are at the beginning of your new life, Professor. Can we expect something new under the sun? For the first time in human history, a new Secret of the Ages?"

Ah. "You're right, there is room for something more. But you know — some secrets are beyond the expression of those who experience them."

"Not beyond you, sir!"

Robert found himself smiling back. Sharif deserved the truth. "I could write something, but it would not be poetry. I got a new life, but the Alzheimer's cure… it destroyed my talent."

"Oh no! I had heard of Alzheimer failures, but I honestly never suspected you. Thinking there might be another canto of the Secrets was about the only good thing I still hoped to come out of this adventure. I am so sorry."

"Don't be too sorry. I wasn't… a very nice person."

Sharif looked down and then back at Robert. "I had heard that. In the days I couldn't get through to you, I interviewed your former colleagues at Stanford, even Winston Blount when he wasn't making conspiracies."

"But — "

"It doesn't matter, sir. I eventually realized that you had lost your sadistic edge."

"Then surely you would have guessed the rest!"

"Do you think so? Do you think your talent and your malevolence were a package deal?" Sharif leaned forward, engaged in a way that Robert had not seen since their interviews of weeks before. "I… doubt that. But researching the issue would be intriguing. For that matter, I have long wondered — and been too timid to ask — what really changed in you? Were you a decent fellow from the time of your dementia cure? Or was the change as in Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol,' with new experience making you kindlier?" He rocked back. "I could make such a splendid thesis out of this!" His eyes swept back to Robert, questioning.

"No way!"

"Yes, yes," said Sharif, nodding. "It is such a great opportunity that I almost forgot my resolutions. And the first of those resolutions is no more activities that get me mixed up with the security authorities." He looked up, as if at unseen watchers. "Do you hear that? I am clean, clean in body and soul and even in my fresh fried clothes!" And then addressing Robert once more: "In fact, I have a new academic major."

"Oh?"

"Yes. It will take several semesters of prerequisite fulfillment, but that will be worth it. You see, the University of Kolkata is starting a new department with new faculty, real go-getters. We have a long way to go considering the competition from the universities in Mumbai — but the people here have funding, and they're willing to take on fresh faces such as myself." He grinned enthusiasm at Robert's puzzled look. "It's our new Institute of Bollywood Studies! A combination of cinema and literature. I'll be studying the influence of twentieth-century lit on the latest Indian arts. And much as I regret our lost opportunities, Professor Gu, I am so happy to be in a major that will keep me out of further trouble with the authorities!"

Robert was actually busy between semesters. His contrived synch hack had raised him to the lowest level of guru-hood. He'd been noticed by a small company called Comms-R-Us. In a way it was a traditional firm. It was old (five years old), and it had three full-time employees. So it wasn't as nimble as some operations, but it had managed several innovations in concurrent communications. Comms-R-Us had paid Robert to consult for a period of three weeks. And though it was clear that the "consult" was mainly an opportunity for Comms-R-Us to decide if Robert Gu had any future, Robert jumped at the chance.

For the first time since he lost his marbles, he was creating something that others valued.

Otherwise, things were not going entirely smoothly. Juan Orozco was gone; his parents had taken him on vacation to Puebla, where they were visiting his mother's grandfather. Juan still showed up occasionally, but Miri was not talking to him.

"I'm trying not to care, Robert. Maybe if I stop bothering her, Miri will let me start over with her." Nevertheless, Robert had the feeling the boy might have camped out on their front steps if his parents had not dragged him away.

"I'll talk to her, Juan. I promise."

Juan had looked at him doubtfully. "But don't make her think I put you up to it!"

"I won't. I'll choose the time carefully."

Robert had decades of experience in choosing the right time to strike. This should have been easy. Miri had wangled an Incomplete grade on her demo project. That meant that when she finally did perform, at the end of the next semester, she would have even higher standards to meet. For now, she was a busybody around the house, mainly taking care of her mother. Alice Gu was a ghost of her former self. The steel of the last fifteen weeks of their acquaintance had been torn out of her. The result was… charming. More evenings than not, Alice and Miri were down in the kitchen, attempting to make hard work out of modern cookery. His daughter-in-law was distant, but her smile wasn't the meaningless reflex it had often seemed before.

Then Bob was out of town again, and Miri seemed to be busier than ever. Every day, she had some news for him about her searches on burns and limb rehabilitation. Real soon now he should use that as an excuse to set her straight about Juan… and about himself.

Maybe tonight was the right night. Bob was still out of town. Alice had retired to the ground-floor den shortly after dinner. None of Miri's "board games" tonight. They were fun, one of the nicer things about life since that terrible night at UCSD — but tonight Robert had finally seen his way through some of his Comms-R-Us problems. Working on them, he lost track of the time. When he came up for air, he had some results, maybe things worth showing his employers. What a good night!

Downstairs, a door slammed. His eyes were still on his work, but he heard Miri come pounding up the stairs. She raced down the hallway and into her bedroom.

A few minutes later she came out. There was a knock on his bedroom door. "Hi Robert, can I show you some things I discovered today?"

"Sure."

She bounced into the room and grabbed a chair. "I found three more projects that could help your arm."

In fact, the medical condition of Robert Gu's left arm was best characterized by its absence. It was completely burned off at the lower forearm. There were two places near the shoulder where all that was left was a strip of flesh. His "prosthesis" was more like an old-style plaster cast. But interestingly, the medics had passed on the opportunity to whack the thing off and fit him with some modern miracle. Reed Weber — the physician's assistant had resurfaced now that the MDs needed someone to front for them — had explained the situation, though perhaps not in quite the way the doctors would like: "You're a victim of the new field of 'prospective medicine,' Robert. You see, we have prosthetics with five-finger motor control, and with almost the durability of a natural arm. But they're a little heavy and the sensor system is nowhere near the real thing. On the other hand, there are clear trends in nerve– and bone-regeneration tech. Even though no one knows quite how it will happen — or if it will happen — the odds are that in eighteen months they'll be able to grow out from what you have now, into an effective natural arm. And the MDs are afraid that debriding what's left of your arm for a prosthesis might make the later solution much more expensive. So for a while you are stuck with a solution that wouldn't have impressed your own grandfather."

And Robert had nodded and not complained. Every day with this dead weight on his shoulder was a small penance, a reminder of how close his foolishness had come to destroying lives.

Miri was oblivious of all that. In fact, she had dismissed "prospective medicine" as stupidity. Miri believed in making her own medical solutions. "So there are these three teams, Robert. One of them has grown a complete monkey's paw, another is into whole-limb prosthesis, but very lightweight, and the third has some improvements in neurocoding. I bet your Comms-R-Us friends would put you up as a fast-track guinea pig. What do you think?"

Robert touched the plastic shell that held the remains of his arm. "Ah, I think a deal involving a monkey's paw is too risky for me."

"No, no, you wouldn't have a monkey's paw. The monkey's paw was just — " Then she got a Googling look. "Robert! I'm not talking about some old story. I'm trying to help you. I want to more than ever. I owe you."

Yeah, tonight was definitely the night to set her straight. "You don't owe me."

"Hey, I can't remember it, but Bob told me what he saw. You put your arm in the way of molten rock. You held it there." Her face twisted with imagined pain. "You saved me, Robert."

"I saved you, kiddo. Yes. But I created the problem. I played ball with something evil." Or something very strange.

"You were desperate. I knew that. I just didn't know how deep things would get. So we both made a mess."

It really was time to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness. But first let her know why this was beyond forgiveness. The words were hard to say: "Miri, you made a mess trying to fix things. But I… I was the guy who set up your mother for what practically killed her." There. It was said.

Miri sat very still. After a moment, her gaze fell. She said softly, "I know."

Now they both were very still. "Bob told you?"

"No. Alice did." She looked up. "And she told me they still can't figure out how what you did could have brought her down. It's okay, Robert."

Then abruptly, she was crying. And Robert did get on his knees. His granddaughter threw her arms around his neck. She was in full bawl now, her body shaking. She pounded his back with her fists.

"I'm so sorry, Miri. I — "

Miri's wail got even louder, but she stopped beating on him. After half a minute, her weeping trailed off into choking sobs, and then silence. But she still held on to him. Her words were halting and muffled. "I just found out that… Alice is… Alice is back in Training ."

Oh.

"She's not even recovered!" Miri was sobbing again.

"What does your father say?"

"Bob is out of touch tonight."

"Out of touch?" In this day and age?

Miri pushed him back. She started to wipe her face on her sleeve, then grabbed from the box of tissues he set beside her. "Really out of touch. Tactical blackout. D-Don't you follow the news, Robert?"

"um."

"Read between the lines. Bob is off somewhere making places and things glow in the dark." She wiped energetically at her face, and her voice returned to something like its usual tones. "Okay, maybe not literally. Bob talks that way when he has to do things he really doesn't want to do. But I watch the rumor mills and I watch Bob and Alice. Between the three I'm a pretty good guesser. Sometimes Bob is out of touch, and I read about something wonderful or something terrible happening in another country. Sometimes Alice goes into Training, and I know that somebody needs help or else very bad things may happen. Right now Bob is away and Alice is back in Training." She hid behind her hands for a moment, then resumed wiping her face. "My g-guess is that the top rumors are right. Something awful happened at the Library Riot, worse than the GenGen takeover. Now all the superpowers are running scared. They think someone has figured how to crack their security. A-Alice almost admitted that tonight. That was her excuse !"

Robert sat down again, but on the edge of his chair. His great confession had vanished into the abyss. "You should talk to Bob when he gets back."

"I will. And he'll argue with her. You've heard that yourself. But in the end he can't stop her."

"This time, maybe he can go over her head, or get the doctors to back him up."

Miri hesitated, seemed to relax a fraction. "Yes. This time is different… I-I'm glad we can talk, Robert."

"Any time, kiddo."

But then she was quiet.

Finally, Robert said, "Are you conspiring, or just Googling?"

Miri shook her head. "N-Neither. I tried to call someone… but they're not answering."

Ah ! "You know, Miri, Juan is in Puebla visiting his great-grandfather. He may not be wearing all the time."

"Juan? I wouldn't call him. He's not very bright, and when the crunch came in Pilchner Hall, he was useless."

"You can't know that!"

"I know I was down in the tunnels by myself."

"Miri, I've talked to Juan almost every day since I started at Fairmont. He wouldn't let you down. Think back to the times you do remember. You two must have conspired a lot to keep track of me. I'll bet he played fair. He could be your good friend, another person you could talk to."

For once, Miri's chin came down. "You know I can't talk to him about these things. I couldn't talk to you, except you already know."

"That's true. There are things you can't tell him. But… I think he deserves better from you."

Miri's eyes flicked up to meet his, but she didn't speak.

"Remember how I told you, you remind me of your great-aunt Cara?"

Miri nodded.

"You were happy to learn that. But I think you know how I treated Cara. It was like the Ezra Pound Incident, over and over again, for years. I never had a chance to make up for that; she died when she was not much older than Alice is now."

Tears were back in Miri's eyes, but she held the tissues tight on her lap. "I went through my whole life like that, Miri. I married a wonderful lady who loved me very much. Lena put up with more than I ever dumped on Cara, and for years longer. Even after I drove her away, you know how she helped me at Rainbows End. And now she is dead, too." Robert looked down, and for a moment all he could think of was lost opportunities. Where was I? Oh : "So… I think you owe Juan. Dumping on him isn't in the same league as my screwups. But you still have a chance to set things right."

He looked at Miri. Her shoulders were hunched. She was shredding the tissues she held in her hands. "Just think about it, okay, Miri? I didn't mean to get carried away."

Finally, she spoke: "Have you ever broken a solemn promise, Robert?"

Where did that come from ? But before he could get his mouth in gear, Miri continued:

"Well, I just did!" And with that, she grabbed the box of tissues and ran from the room.

"Miri!" By the time he got into the hall, Miri had disappeared into her room.

Robert dithered for a moment. He could go down and pound on her door. Or maybe he should message her.

He stepped back into his room, turned — and saw the golden light on the table, right beside where Miri had been sitting. It was an enum, granting some kind of limited message capability. But he already had that and more for Miri. He opened the golden enum and looked inside.

This one was for Lena Llewelyn Gu.

Robert sat beside the enum for almost half an hour. He studied it. He studied the documentation. It was exactly what he thought. Lena lives .

There was no physical address, but he could write her a simple message. It took him only two hours to do so. Less than two hundred words. They were the most important words that Robert Gu had ever written.

Robert couldn't sleep that night. Morning came, then afternoon.

There was no reply.

Epilogue

Six weeks passed. Robert was watching the news more now; he had learned that the world can bite you. He and Miri compared notes on what they saw. The raids at the edge of the world were allegedly over. Rumors held that little had been discovered. Rumors — and some real news — spoke of scandals in the EU, Indian, and Japanese intelligence services. All the Great Powers remained very nervous about insert-your-favorite-crazyass-theory-here.

On the home front, Bob was back! Robert and Miri took that to mean that some disaster theories were much less likely. Others remained scarily viable. Indeed, Bob blew his stack when he learned about Alice. Things got very tense around the house. Both Robert and Miri sensed heartbreaking battles hiding behind the looks and silences. Miri had years of putting together the clues. Her best guess was that Bob had appealed to the doctors, that he had complained far up the chain of command. None of it mattered. Alice remained in Training.

Somewhere in all of this, Juan returned from Puebla. Miri didn't have much to say about him, but they were talking. The boy was smiling more.

From Lena there was… silence. She lived. His messages didn't bounce and her enum remained accessible. It was like talking into an infinite void. And Robert did keep talking, a message every day — and wondering what more he should do.

Xiu Xiang had left Rainbows End.

"Lena asked me to leave," Xiu told him. "Maybe I pushed her too hard." But I know where she lives now! I could go there. I could make her see how much I've changed . And maybe that would just prove that he had changed in all the ways that didn't matter. So Robert didn't drive out to Rainbows End; he didn't snoop the public cams there. But he continued to write her. And when he was outside, he often imagined that besides the 7-by-24 at-tention of the security authorities, perhaps there was another watcher, one who would someday forgive him.

Meantime, he threw himself into schoolwork. There was so much to learn. And the rest of his time was spent with Comms-R-Us. They liked his work.

Two months after the Great Library Riot, Robert returned to UCSD. He had lost track of Winston and Carlos. It was strange when he thought about it. For a few days the cabal had been such a tight conspiracy, but now they never spoke. The easiest explanation was mutual shame. They had been used, and their various agendas had come close to killing a lot of people. There was truth in all that, but for Robert there was another explanation, something weirder and almost as unsettling: the cabal was like a childhood clique, the animosities and closeness now vanished as his childlike attention morphed in new directions. Sometimes the desperation of the fall semester seemed almost as remote as his life in the twentieth century. There were so many things he wanted to learn and do and be, and they had so little do with what had previously consumed him.

In the end, it was his project with Comms-R-Us that brought him back to campus. Jitter and latency were bad problems in video protocols, worse in voice, and absolute death for touchy-feely interfaces. Haptic robots were getting better and better — but they were almost useless when run over the net. Now, Comms-R-Us wanted Robert to try his crazy synch schemes on haptics.

In the aftermath of the Librareome and the riot, the UCSD administration had dumped further bushel-baskets of cash on the library. In some ways its touchy-feely experience was better than commercial parks like Pyramid Hill. The question was, how could you export that across the net? He had done plenty of reading, studied the design of touchy-feely bots, but until the problem was solved there would be no substitute for firsthand experience. He took a car down to UCSD.

Two months. Not really a long time. The server shacks on the north side of Warschawski Hall had merged. There was a soccer field where the Software Engineering Department had been. Robert could see that this wasn't destruction related to the Library Riot or the marine landings; it was the normal churn of any modern institution.

He took the footpath through the eucalyptus. As always, coming out of the trees gave the naked eye a sudden vision across miles of tableland, into the mountains. And there, standing before it all, was still the Geisel Library.

It was by far the oldest building at UCSD, one of the twenty percent that had been rebuilt after the Rose Canyon quake. But that damage had been nothing compared with what befell it during the riot, when the cabal's sponsors literally ripped the east side from its foundations. Any other building on campus would have been razed after such trauma, perhaps restored if it was of sufficient historical value. But neither had happened in the case of the Geisel Library.

Robert walked around the north side of the library, down past the loading dock. He had seen views of the structure immediately after the riot, the floors sloping and sagging, the ad hoc buttresses that the fire department had added as the internal servos burned out, the chunks of twentieth-century concrete that littered the terrace.

Those signs of destruction were gone. The overhanging floors were level once more.

The university had not undertaken a simple restoration. On the west it looked almost unchanged, but there was perceptible distortion above the loading dock, and on the east there was a graceful twisting of the building's great pillars. Where those pillars had moved, where the library had "walked," now the pillars were set. At the base was grass and smooth concrete, the tiled path that was the snake of knowledge. Looking upward, lush ivy followed the curving twist of the concrete. Where the ivy ended, there were lines of colored pebbles set in the pillars, making bands like stress fringes in illuminated crystal. And then above that, the rectangle of each floor was slightly turned from the one beneath it.

From the building specifications, Robert could see that some of the pillars were carbon fibers embedded in lightweight composite. Yet the building was as real and solid as it looked to the naked eye; more than any building on campus, this was real. This building lived.

He took the stairs, stopping at each floor to look around. He recognized the Hacek domain. There were still Librarians Militant here. But I thought their circle got booted out ? In other places, there was craziness he recognized as Scooch-a-mouti. The Scoochi mythos was eclectic nonsense that he had never figured out. How it fit with library metaphors was beyond him. But the Scoochis had "won" the riot and the library.

In other places, both belief circles were running in parallel. You could choose which you wanted, or neither.

Robert concentrated on management and naked-eye views. After all, he was here to study the touchy-feely support. There were haptic robots everywhere — not as many as at Pyramid Hill, but the university had crammed almost as much parallel variety into a few floors of a single building. UCSD had spent an enormous amount of money on the gadgets. There were some free-running models, but most were surface-mounted. These were fast. As quick as a Librarian Militant could reach for the vision of a book, a robot would slide into position, altering its surface just where it would meet the reacher's hand.

Robert stood for a few moments, watching the action. The naked-eye view was like nothing in his experience. When the student — that's what she was without her "Librarian Militant" cover — turned the book in her hands, the haptics flipped in coordination, never losing contact or slipping in a way different from the vision it was supporting. When she set it on a table, the haptics moved instantly to another task — this supporting some Scoochi client in even more unintelligible maneuvering.

He noticed that the girl was staring at him. "Sorry, sorry! I just haven't seen all this before."

"Tragic, not?" and she gave him a wide grin.

"Yes, uh, tragic." Somewhere on a high protocol layer, all this involved books and the contents of books. At the physical layer it was even… more… fascinating. He wandered along, his mind far away, trying to imagine how the intricate dance of the haptics could be replicated on robots that were at some distance on the network. If both sides had human players it would be infernally hard. But if it was an asymmetric service, maybe —

"Hey, Professor Gu! Look up here."

Robert looked in the direction of the voice. The ceiling above him had become transparent, as had the one above that. His view had tunneled through to the sixth floor. Carlos Rivera was looking back down at him, a happy smile on his face. "Long time no see, Professor. Come on up, why don't you?"

"Sure." Robert found his way back to the stairwell. The stairs were free of haptic diversions…

… as was the sixth floor. But there were no more books either. Someone had set up some offices.

Rivera gave him a tour. He seemed to be just about the only one on the floor. "Right now, the team is spread all over. Some of them are working on the new extensions underground."

"So what's your job now? Still library staff, I assume?"

Carlos hesitated. "Well, I have several titles now. It's a long story. Hey, come into my office."

His office was on the southeast corner, with windows overlooking the Snake Path and the esplanades. In fact, this was just where the cabal had held its meetings. Carlos waved him to a seat, and sat behind a wide desk. Carlos himself… he was still overweight, still wore the bottle-glass spectacles and the old-fashioned T-shirt. But there was a difference. This Carlos seemed relaxed, energetic… happy with whatever he was doing. "I was hoping we could talk, but things have just been so busy since — you know, since we almost fucked things up beyond all recognition."

"Yes, I know what you mean. We were… very lucky, Carlos." He glanced around the office. Nowadays, rank could be hard to see in visible things, but much of the furniture and plants were really what they seemed. "You were going to tell me about your job."

"Yes! It's a little embarrassing. I'm the new Director of Library Support. That's the title the university recognizes. In some circles that's not the important title. Downstairs and across the world, you'll find that I'm other things — like Dangerous Knowledge and the Greatest Lesser Scooch-a-mout."

"But those are two different belief circles. I thought — "

"You read that the Scoochis won it all, right? Not quite. When the dust settled, there was a very bizarre — well, 'compromise' isn't quite the right word. 'Alliance' or 'distanced merger' might be better." He leaned back in his chair. "It's scary how close we came to blowing up this end of San Diego. But we stopped just short. And that crazy riot made more money than a new cinema release. More important, it sucked money and creativity from all over, and the school administration was smart enough to take advantage." He hesitated, a little sadness creeping into his voice. "So we failed in everything we told each other we were trying to do. The books are gone. Physically gone. But the Geisel Library lives, and these two crazy belief circles are driving its content all over the world. But you've seen that, right? That's why you came down here?"

"I came down to study your haptics, actually." Robert explained his interest in distanced interactive touch.

"Hey, that's great! Both groups have been beating on me to extend our reach. But at a higher level, what did you think of what they're doing to the library experience?"

"um, the Librarian Militants look the same as before, I guess. It's an amusing interface, if you like that sort of thing. The Scoochis… I tried to see what they're doing, but it doesn't make sense. It's so scattered, almost as if each individual book is its own consensual reality."

"Almost. The Scoochis have always been eclectic. Now that they have a librareome, they're building game consensus down to fine-grained topic levels, often down to individual paragraphs. It's much more subtle than the Hacek stuff, though children pick up on it very quickly. Their real power is that Scoochis can blend realities. That's what's happened with them and the Hacekeans. The Scoochis come from all over, even from the failed states. Now they're feeding the digitizations back outwards. Wherever it fits, the Hacek people are running things. Other places, other visions — but all with access to the entire body of the library. If you can crack the problem of remote interactive touch, it should make their attraction even greater." Carlos looked around his office, where the cabal had plotted for such very different ends. "An awful lot has changed in just two months."

"What do you think really happened that night, Carlos? Was the riot intended to distract from what we four were doing — or was it the other way around?"

"I've thought about that a lot. I think the riot was a diversion, but one that got way out of hand and ended up causing immense — what's the opposite of collateral damage? Collateral benefit? Sharif-whoever — he was more often a rabbit to me — was a merry madman."

Rabbit. That was what his interrogators had called the Mysterious Stranger. It was also what the Stranger had called itself there at the end. "Well, our part of the business was darker. Rabbit manipulated all of us, each according to our own weaknesses."

Carlos nodded. "Yes."

"Rabbit promised each of us our secret wish, then defaulted after we had committed the necessary treachery." Though to be honest, Robert was pretty sure the critter was kaput. Maybe things would have been different if it had survived. His burning hope in the Stranger's promise had powered Robert's treason. That was cold ashes now. Thank God.

Carlos leaned forward. Behind the bottle-glass specs, his eyes looked skeptical.

"Okay," said Robert, "maybe Rabbit didn't promise everyone something. I think the power-assisted scheming was its own reward for Tommie."

"That's probably so." But the librarian did not look convinced.

"Look, we'd know if any of the promises came true. It would be spectacular. I'll bet Winston wanted to — Where is Winnie these days?" He was looking up the answer, but Carlos already had it:

"Dean Blount was hired by the university last month, in the Division of Arts and Letters."

Robert's gaze skittered across his search result. "But as an entry-level administrative assistant!"

"Yes, it's bizarre. The current Dean of A and L is Jessica Laskowicz. She's another medical retread. Back in the oughts, she was a secretary in the division. Nowadays, the career track for admin assistants doesn't have any ceiling, but Winston is starting awfully far down — and the best gossip is that he and Laskowicz never got along."

Oh my . "I guess maybe Winston finally made peace with his dreams." Like me . In any case, it meant the Mysterious Stranger was really gone, his extravagant promises dead. He looked up at Carlos Rivera. And felt the stirring of a vast surprise. Robert had very little of his old people-sense; nowadays, the obvious had to beat him over the head with a club. "What… what about you? ."

"Do you notice anything different about me, Professor?"

Robert gave him a close look, then glanced again around the real-plush office. Carlos had done well for himself, but Robert had never thought that worldly success would be his demand of the Stranger. "You seem happier, more confident, more articulate." Bingo . "You haven't said one word of Mandarin. Not a single JITT slip!"

Carlos's reply was a smile of purest joy.

"So you've lost the language?"

FIXME: Get this right.

"No. Qishiwo hdi keyishuo zhongwen, bugud buxidng yiqidn name liuli le . And I haven't had a seizure in more than six weeks! The JITT doesn't rule me. Now I can enjoy the language. It has been a great help in working with the Chinese Informagical people. We'll be merging their capture of the British Library with what came out of Huertas's default."

Robert was silent for a long moment. Then he said, "Your cure, it could be coincidence."

"I've… wondered. This is a medical breakthrough that came out of groups in Turkey and Indonesia. It had nothing to do with the Veterans Administration or institutional research programs. But that's the way of most medical breakthroughs these days. And I've had no gloating messages from Rabbit. Everything is in the open, even if the news hasn't got much traction. You see, this treatment for JITT syndrome isn't effective for most victims. They contacted me through Yellow Ribbons because I'm smack in the middle of the likeliest genotypes." He shrugged. "I guess that could be a coincidence."

"Yes." The heavenly minefield.

"But it's an awfully big coincidence," Rivera continued. "I got what I asked for, just a few weeks after I did my part of the bargain. And some of my Scoochi progress has been strange. I've made agreements in weeks that should have taken a year. Somebody's helping me along. I think you're wrong about Rabbit. Maybe he's just lying low. Maybe he can't do all the miracles at once — Professor? Are you okay?"

Robert had turned away, and pressed his forehead against the cool window glass. I don't need this. I am happy with the new me ! He opened his eyes and looked out through tears. Down below was the familiar footpath, the snake of knowledge wriggling up the hillside toward the library. Perhaps the Mysterious Stranger really was a god, or had grown to be one. A trickster god.

"Professor?"

"I'm okay, Carlos. Maybe you're right."

They chatted a few minutes more. Robert wasn't quite sure what they said, though he remembered that Carlos seemed a little worried for him, perhaps mistaking Robert's raw confusion for some kind of medical emergency.

Then he was down the elevator and back on the sunny plaza. And hovering immanent all around him were the worlds of art and science that humankind was busy building. What if I can have it all ?

The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vernor Vinge is a four-time Hugo Award winner (for novels A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep , and novellas "Fast Times at Fairmont High" and "The Cookie Monster") and a four-time Nebula Award finalist. He's one of the bestselling authors in the field and has been featured in such diverse venues as Rolling Stone, Wired, The New York Times, Esquire , and NPR's "Fresh Air."

Highly regarded by scientists, journalists, and business leaders — as well as readers — for his concept of the technological singularity, Vinge has spoken all over the world on scientific subjects. For many years a mathematician and computer-science professor at San Diego State University, he's now a full-time author. He lives in San Diego, California.