Rainbows End

The Mysterious Stranger slipped in front of Tommie and waggled greenish fingers at Robert and Carlos and Wi

No one said anything for a moment, but Robert guessed two things about what they had just done: It was what they had really come here for. It was how the Stranger might make good on his promises. Maybe Carlos and Wi

"Yup, yup," Tommie nodded, oblivious of the Stranger's satisfied look. "Time for analysis later!" He glanced down at his laptop. "In any case this was the hard part. Now we have a clear run to where Huertas stores the shredda."

They didn't set down any more gadgets. Tommie's laptop advised speed, and therefore so did Tommie. Whatever the Mysterious Stranger pla

Suddenly the concrete floor gave way to something that bounced back against their feet. And the sound of their steps was like tapping on a vast and tightly fitted drum.

"When does a tu

Then they were back on concrete. Ahead was another cavern, and this one was almost empty. Huertas country.

Miri ran, but a spotlight followed. No, that was just normal tu

She watched it and listened. If no one was coming after her, that might mean that UCSD security was still working down here.

She tried to probe the walls. She called 911. Again. Nothing. Maybe the Badguy had permanently zapped her Epiphany. She shrugged up some test routines. No, it wasn't dead. She could see her files, but every local node was ignoring her. Then she noticed the pink flicker at the edge of the diagnostic, a wireless response that her Epiphany would normally have discarded as too distant, too erratic. A second passed, heaven knew how many retries, and she got an ID. It was Juan, his wearable.

Miri — > Juan: Please answer!

No reply came back, and she couldn't check his medicals without more access rights. Abruptly Juan's light flared, died. Miri sucked in a breath. Mr. Janitor/Professor was still up there. He had whacked poor Juan again. No, be precise: He had whacked Juan's gear again, maybe just to prevent Miri from forwarding out through it. For a moment, Miri drew in on herself. It was not a good thing that all her pla

Miri looked down the tu

Some minutes later, and still no sign of Robert.

Miri read as she ran along; she had cached plenty about UCSD and the biotechs. There was proprietary and security stuff she couldn't know, but… the cross tu

Miri's run slowed to a walk, then came to a miserable stop. Robert could be anywhere. How much control did the Badguys have down here? Maybe I should just start shouting .

Faintly, behind her, there came a new kind of sound. Soft hammers pounding on a metal drum. But the cadence was like footsteps. And suddenly she had a very good idea of where the others were. Now if only she could match that to where she was. Miri turned and headed back.

24

The Library Chooses

Sheila Hanson's night crew came out of the forest on the path of the great snake of knowledge, just east of the library. The Hacek spiders were already there, and they had the high ground. Tim Huynh rolled and walked his bottish army right to the edge of the enemy force.

Huynh — > Night Crew: Jeez. They're all real! The spiders, that is. Most of the humans were real, too. Hacekean Knights and Libarians were thick behind their robots.

Round the north side of the library came more Scoochi reinforcements, supporters from the Oceanography Library at Scripps Institute. But the Hacekeans had their own reinforcements. From cameras flying above the library, Huynh could see those latest arrivals chasing the Scripps people. So far there had been little property damage. The mechs looked sinister enough, and the humans were mostly milling and shouting. Sheila was still doing pretty well with her "We want our REAL books!" chant.

Something big and virtual came rushing out of the Hacekean side and onto the bottish no-man's-land. It was twelve feet tall, the best Dangerous Knowledge that Timothy Huynh had ever seen. Half Librarian, half Knight Guardian, the creature was Hacek's central paradox. Now it capered almost to the edge of the Scoochi lines and made a grotesque face, tongue long and pointy like a Maori daemon. And when it shouted, every Scoochi heard, but the message was customized to the listener:

"Hoy, Timothy Huynh, you think you's a Lesser Scooch-a-mout. Lesser indeed! All you Scoochi moppets be trashy children's things, shallow and unworthy before our Depth!" Dangerous Knowledge waved at the Hacek critters around and behind it.

That was the usual slur against the Scooch-a-mout mythos, and it always made the Scoochis mad, since naive outsiders might be deceived by the claim. There were counterchants from the Scoochi ranks:

"Hacek is just counterfeit Pratchett!" And that set the Hacek people into a rage, since of course it was only the simple truth.

Huynh pushed past Sheila and Smale and the rest of the night crew, till he stood at the forward edge of his army. Up close, this Dangerous Knowledge was even more spectacularly detailed. Its taloned boots were artfully sunk in the muck beside the serpent's path. Spider bots hummed and hopped around their patron.

The spider bots were real. Where had the Hacekeans gotten such clever things, and on such short notice? He pinged them; not surprisingly, nothing came back. There was an almost living suppleness about the way they scrambled over one another, surging and retreating. The gadgets looked like custom melds of the latest Intel and Legend models. GenGen regu-lomics was upgrading to something like this. He pinged them again, this time with his GenGen technician's authority.