Rainbows End (50 page)

“We’re next, kiddo,” said Robert. The only evidence that Juan understood was the way his gaze fixed on their private clock. Xiu — > Juan: You’ll do fine, Juan. Juan — > Xiu: Is Miri watching?

Juan and Robert were last, the only part of the schedule that was really beyond Chumlig’s control. That had not been due to any Juan/Robert cleverness. It had been a consequence of the fact that their demo involved outside groups who had their own scheduling problems.

Juan hesitated a second more. Then he was running out onto the soccer field, waving up a phantom stage parallel to and facing the bleachers. Their performers filed in from both sides of the stage. The imagery was subdued, with no impossibilities. These were real people and real musical instruments, as Juan’s magnified voice explained to the audience.

“Hello, hello,
hello
!” Juan was huckster enthusiastic, and — to Robert’s ears — clearly panicked out of his mind. Robert could have handled the emcee role, or they could have recorded this spiel, maybe have had Juan lip-synch it — but that was just another way to lose points with Chumlig. So Juan made do with his live, cracking voice and words that came out with awkward pauses and forced bravado. “Ladies and gentlemen! Meet the Orchestra of the Americas, created especially for you this evening from the Charles River High School orchestra and chorus, cheapnet live from Boston and — ” he waved to his left ” — the Gimnasio Clasico de Magal-lanes, also cheapnet live but from Punta Arenas, Chile!”

Both sides of the stage were full now, two hundred teenagers in school uniforms of red on the north and checkered green on the south: students who had their own “far cooperation” requirements to satisfy. Altogether they comprised parts of two choruses and two orchestras, seven thousand miles apart, with only cheapnet in between. Persuading them to try this scheme had been a miracle in itself. Success would look mundane to outsiders, yet failure was a real possibility.
Well, things didn’t go too badly in rehearsal
.

“And now — ” Juan grabbed for still greater import” — and now, ladies and gentlemen, the Orchestra of the Americas will perform their very own adaptation of Beethoven’s EU Anthem, with lyrics by Orozco and Gu, and network synchrony by Gu and Orozco!” He gave a hammy bow and ran back to the sidelines to sit by Robert. Sweat was streaming down his face, and he looked pale.

“You did good, kid,” said Robert. Juan just nodded, shaking.

The hybrid orchestra began to play. Now it was up to these kids and Robert’s jitter algorithm. The sounds of cellos and basses rose from the young musicians in Boston and from the other end of the world. The kids’ adaptation had a faster beat than the usual EU style. And every note came across hundreds of hops of randomly changing networkery, with delays that could vary by several hundred milliseconds.

There was the same synchronization problem that had made Winnie’s choir at the library such a noisy affair.

Juan’s lyrics climbed up, the chorus from the north singing his English version, and the one from the south his Spanish. Their student collaborators had created a flexible work with its own conductor interface; that helped some. Plus they were surprisingly good musicians and singers. But the performance still needed the magic of the adaptive delays that Robert’s scheme injected into the transmissions (well, okay, and maybe also the far deeper magic that was Beethoven’s).

Robert listened. His contribution was not perfect. In fact, this was worse than the rehearsals. Too many people were watching, and
too suddenly
. He’d been afraid this might happen. The problem was not bandwidth. He glanced at the variance plot he had put in his private view. It showed the presence of several million people suddenly observing, grabbing resources so fast that they confused his poor little prediction program — and changed the nature of what was observed.

And yet, the synch survived. The hybrid did not fragment.

Ten seconds to go. The performance hit some slightly ragged crescen-dos, and then, by some miracle, everything came together for the last two seconds. Juan’s lyrics ended, and the central melody swept into silence.

The joint orchestra/chorus looked out at the audience. They were smiling, some perhaps a little embarrassed — but they had brought it off!

There was applause, wildly enthusiastic from some quarters.
Poor Juan looked absolutely drained. Fortunately, he didn’t have to venture out on the field to wind things up. The performers were making their bows and trooping to the north and south ends of the stage — back to their respective corners of the world. Juan’s smile was a little sickly as he waved to the local audience. His voice came sideways to Robert. “Hey, I don’t care what grade it gets. We did it and we’re done!”

The British Museum and the British Library

The kids rushed off the bleachers, only slightly impeded by the fact that Chumlig & Co could review the evening and determine just who had been unacceptably bumptious. Juan and Robert were slower, hanging with the other demo students and exchanging congratulations. Grades for the demos wouldn’t be available for another twenty hours or so. They would have plenty of time to agonize over their failings. Nevertheless, Louise Chumlig looked quite cheerful, giving each student her congratulations — and deflecting all manner of questions about whether this or that deficit should truly be of any grading significance.

Still no sign of Miri or Bob. Robert’s attention was filled with the kids and Chumlig and Juan Orozco — this last person alternating between hysterical relief and the conviction of failure.

So it was without forewarning that Robert found himself face-to-face — almost nose-to-nose — with Winston Blount. Behind the former dean, Tommie Parker was standing hand-in-hand with Xiu Xiang. Now, that was surely the strangest pairing to come out of this adventure! The little guy was grinning ear-to-ear. He flashed a thumbs-up at Robert.

But for the moment, Blount had all his attention. Robert had seen little of Tommie and Winnie since that night at UCSD. They and Carlos had spent several days at Crick’s Clinic. As far as Robert could tell, certain deals had been made, much as in his own case. And now they were loose. The official story was just what Bob had said: The cabal activity had been a protest that got out of hand, but they had never intended to damage laboratory equipment and they were all terribly sorry for that. The unofficial tales of heroic sacrifice helped explain why the university and the bio labs seemed happy not to pursue the matter. If the Elder Cabal kept its collective mouth shut, there would be no Consequences.

Just now there was an odd smile on Winnie’s face. He nodded to Juan and reached out to shake Robert’s hand. “Even though I’ve dropped out of Fairmont, I still I have family here. Doris Schley is my great-grandniece.”

“Oh! She did well, Winston!”

“Thank you, thank you. And you — Winnie hesitated. In years past, praise for Robert Gu came from all quarters and it had often been used as a club to beat down Winston Blount. ” — you wrote something wonderful there, Robert. Those lyrics. I would never have imagined such a thing riding on Beethoven and in English and Spanish. It was… art.” He shrugged, as if waiting for a sarcastic putdown.

“It wasn’t my work, Winston.”
And maybe this is a putdown, but I don’t mean it that way
. “Juan here did the lyrics. We collaborated all through the semester, but on this I let him go, just critiqued the final effort. Honestly — and this Chumlig character is the death of lies — honestly, Juan is responsible.”

“Oh?” Winnie rocked back, then really seemed to notice Juan. He reached over to shake the boy’s hand. “It was beautiful, son.” And a sideways, still incredulous, glance at Robert. “Do you know, Robert, in its way, that was as good as what you did in the old days?”
Robert thought a second, listening to Juan’s lyrics with his imagination the way he used to listen to his own poetry.
No, I was better than that
. Much better. But not better like being in a different world. If the old Robert could have seen these lyrics… well, the old Robert couldn’t abide second-raters. Given half an excuse, he would have made sure that Juan’s art died aborning. “You’re right. Juan made a beautiful thing.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what… the years have done, Winston.”

Juan looked back and forth between them. There was the beginning of shining pride on his face, though he seemed to guess that there were words unspoken going between Winnie and Robert.

Winnie nodded. “Yes. Lots of things have changed.” The crowd was diminishing, but that just meant that some of the kids thought they could run around even faster. They were getting jostled by the flow of bodies and the ever louder shouting and laughter. “So if you didn’t do the lyrics, what was your contribution, Robert?”

“Aha! I did the time-lag synchronization.”
As much as it could be done
.

 

“Really?” Winnie was trying to be polite, but even after his own choir experience, he didn’t seem especially impressed. Well, it had been a bit ragged.

Xiu — > Lena: For God’s sake, say something to him, Lena!
Lena — > Xiu: Buzz off, you!
Xiu — > Lena: Then I will speak for you.

After a few more pleasantries, Winnie took off in the direction of the Schley family, Tommie and Xiu Xiang in tow. But Robert noticed a line of golden text drifting out behind Xiang.

 

Xiu — > Robert: That was great, Robert. Juan was oblivious of Xiang’s silent message. “Dean Blount didn’t understand your part in our project, did he?”

 

“No. But he liked what he did understand. It doesn’t matter. You and I both did better than we thought we could.”

 

“Yes, we really did.”

Juan led him back along the bleachers. Even if Bob and Miri weren’t here, Juan’s own parents were. Greetings and congratulations all around, though the Orozcos still didn’t know what to make of Robert Gu.

A clot OF family and friends remained on the soccer field for some time. More than anything else, the parents seemed faintly surprised by their children. They loved the little klutzes, but they thought they knew their limits. Somehow Chumlig had transformed them — not into supermen, but into clever creatures who could do things the parents themselves had never mastered. It was a time for pride and a little uneasiness.

Miri was still out of sight. Poor Juan. And
I hope Alice got home okay
. One-armed, he wasn’t quite good enough to check that in mid-flight.

Robert pressed into the densest part of the crowd, the folks swirling close around Louise Chumlig. She looked happy and tired, and mostly she denied responsibility. “I just showed my students how to use what they have and what the world has.”

He reached across, managed to catch her hand. “Thanks.”
Chumlig looked up at him, a crooked smile on her face. She held on to his hand for a moment. “You! My very strangest child. You were almost the reverse of the problem I had with the others.”

“How’s that?”

“For everyone else, I had to make them reach out to learn what they were. But you… first you had give up what you had been.” Her smile was fleetingly sad. “Be sorry for what you lost, Robert, but be happy with what you are.”

All along, she knew
! But someone else had her attention, and she was gaily assuring them all that the rest of the school year would be even more exciting than what had gone before.

 

Robert left Juan and the others when speculation turned to what the regular demos would be like. The kids didn’t want to believe that they could be outdone, not after tonight.

 

Robert spotted two familiar figures on his walk back to the traffic circle. “I thought you were with Winston,” he said.

 

“We were,” said Tommie, “but we came back. Wanted to congratulate you on your music-synch gimmick.”

Xiu Xiang nodded agreement. Of the two, only she was wearing. A Congrats logo floated out from her. Poor Tommie was still lugging around his laptop, though whatever remained inside surely belonged to the secret police.

“Thanks. I’m proud of it, but emphasize the word ‘gimmick.’ No one really needs to synch manual music across thousands of miles of cheapnet. And basically, I just took advantage of routing predictabilities plus knowledge of the music being played.”

“Plus some timing analysis of the individual performers. Right, right?” said Tommie. “Yes.” “Plus some counter-jitter you inserted,” said Xiu. Robert hesitated. “You know, it was
fun
.”

Tommie laughed. “You should do some ego surfing. Your hack was noticed. Back when I was young, you could have got a patent off it. Nowadays — “

 

Xiu patted Tommie’s shoulder. “Nowadays, it should be worth a decent grade in a high-school class. You and I — we have things to learn, Thomas.”

Tommie made a grumbling noise. “She means I should be learning to wear.” He glanced at the young-looking woman. “I never dreamed that X. Xiang would end up saving my life. But of course she did it by getting us all arrested!”

Lena — > Xiu: Parker is afraid to try new things, even when he brags about the future. They walked in silence for a few steps. There were more golden words from Xiang; she was getting better and better at silent messaging.

Xiu — > Robert: Tommie is old, and all the medicine hasn’t helped him that much. He’s afraid to try new things.”
Robert stifled a startled glance at the woman. Since when had the geek become a parlor shrink?… But she could be right about Tommie.

Tommie was surely oblivious of all the sming, but a familiar crafty grin was spreading across his face. “What?” Robert finally said.

“Just thinking. Our UCSD op was the biggest and most dangerous I’ve ever been part of. We got used, yeah. But you know, it was like of lot of these modern whatsits — these affiliances. We contributed, and in one way, we got what we were aiming for.”

Robert thought of the Stranger’s promises. “How is that?”
“We nailed the Huertas Librareome Project.”
“But the library books are all consumed.”

Tommie shrugged. “I kind of like the Library Militant vision. The point is, we terminally embarrassed Huertas.”