The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (69 page)

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Authors: Vernor Vinge

BOOK: The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge
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“Yeah, you’re essentially right, though the long-haul networks have been around since forever. What gives us flexibility are the network nodes that are scattered all through the environment. See, look around you!” Bertie must have pinged on the sites nearest Juan: there were suddenly dozens of virtual gleams, in the rocks by the road, in the cars as they passed closest to him, on Juan’s own clothing.
Bertie gestured again, and the hills were alive with thousands of gleams, nodes that were two or three forwarding hops away. “Okay, Bertie! Yes, the local nets are important.”
But Bertie was on a roll. “Darn right they are. Thumb-sized gadgets with very low power wireless, just enough to establish location—and then even lower power short-range lasers, steered exactly on to the targeted receivers. Nowadays, it’s all so slick that unless you look close—or have a network sniffer—you almost can’t even see that it’s going on. How many free-standing nodes do you think there are in an improved part of town, Juan?”
That
sort of question had a concrete answer. “Well, right now, the front lawn of Fairmont schools has … 247 loose ones.”
“Right,” said Bertie. “And what’s the most expensive thing about that?”
Juan laughed. “Cleaning up the network trash, of course!” The gadgets broke, or wore out, or they didn’t get enough light to keep their batteries going. They were cheap; setting out new ones was easy. But if that’s all you did, after a few months you’d have metallic garbage—hard, ugly, and generally toxic—all over the place.
Juan abruptly stopped laughing “Wow, Bertie. That’s the project? Biodegradable network nodes? That’s off-scale!”
“Yup! Any progress toward organic nodes would be worth an A. And we might luck out. I’m plugged into all the right groups. Kistler at MIT, he doesn’t know it, but one of his graduate students is actually a committee—and I’m on the committee.” The Kistler people were cutting edge in organic substitution research, but just now they were stalled. The other relevant pieces involved idea markets in India, and some Siberian guys who hardly talked to anyone.
Juan thought a moment. “Hey, Bertie, I bet that literature survey I did for you last month might really help on this!” Bertie looked blank. “You remember, all my analysis on electron transfer during organic decay.” It had been just a silly puzzle Bertie proposed, but it had given Juan a low-stress way to try out his new abilities.
“Yes!” said Bertie, slapping his forehead. “Of course! It’s not directly related, but it might give the other guys some ideas.”
Talking over the details took them through the bottom of the valley, past the newer subdivisions and then down the offramp that led to the old casinos. Bertie and his flying carpet flickered for a second, and then the overlay vanished as his friend lost the battle to find a handoff link.
“Dunno why you have to live in an unimproved part of town,” Bertie grumbled in his ear.
Juan shrugged. “The neighborhood has fixed lasers and wireless.” Actually, it was kind of nice to lose the flying carpet. He let his bike’s recycler boost him up the little hill and then off into Las Mesitas. “So how are we going to work the concurrency on the unlimited test?”
“Easy. I’ll chat up the Siberians in a couple of hours—then shuffle that across to my other groups. I don’t know how fast things will break; it may be just you and me on the Fairmont side. Synch up with me after you get done with Miri Gu tonight, and we’ll see about using your ‘magical memory.’”
Juan frowned and pedaled fast along white sidewalks and turn-of-the-century condos. His part of town was old enough that it looked glitzy even without virtual enhancements.
Bertie seemed to notice his lack of response. “So is there a problem?”
Yes!
He didn’t like Bertie’s unsubtle reference to what the little blue pills did for him. But that was just Bertie’s way. In fact, today was all Bertie’s way, both the good and the bad of it. “It’s just that I’m a little worried about the local test. I know Miri gets good grades, and you say she is smart, but does she really have any traction?” What he really wanted to ask was why Bertie had pushed him into this, but he knew that any sort of direct question along those lines might provoke a Freeze Out.
“Don’t worry, Juan. She’d do good work on any team. I’ve been watching her.”
That last was news to Juan. Aloud he said, “I know she has a stupid brother over in senior high.”
“Heh! William the Goofus? He
is
a dud, but he’s not really her brother, either. No, Miri Gu is smart and tough. Did you know she grew up at Asilomar?”
“In a detention camp?”
“Yup. Well, she was only a baby. But her parents knew just a bit too much.”
That had happened to lots of Chinese-Americans during the war, the ones who knew the most about military technologies. But it was also ancient history. Bertie was being more shocking than informative.
“Well, okay.” No point in pushing.
At least, Bertie let me on his unlimited team.
Almost home. Juan coasted down a short street and up his driveway, ducking under the creaking garage door that was just opening for him. “I’ll get over to Miri’s this evening and start the local team stuff while you’re in East Asia.”
“Fine. Fine,” said Bertie.
Juan leaned his bike against the family junk, and walked to the back of the garage. He stopped at the door to the kitchen. Bertie had gotten every single thing he had wanted. Maybe not.
I bet he still plans on messing with my local exam
. “But one thing. Miri’s handshake—she was
real
definite, Bertie. She doesn’t want you coming along, even passively. Okay?”
“Sure. Fine. I’m off to Asia. Ta!” Bertie’s voice ended with an exaggerated
click.
JUAN’S FATHER WAS HOME, OF COURSE. LUIS OROZCO WAS PUTTERING around the kitchen. He gave his son a vague wave as the boy came in the room. The house had a good internal network, fed from a fixed station in the roof. Juan ignored the fantasy images almost automatically. He had no special interest in knowing what Pa was seeing, or where he thought he was.
Juan eeled past his father, into the living room. Pa was okay. Luis Orozco’s own father had been an illegal back in the 1980s. Grandpa had lived in North County, but in the cardboard shacks and dirt tunnels that had hid amid the canyons in those days. The Orozco grandparents had worked hard for their only son, and Luis Orozco had worked hard to learn to be a software engineer. Sometimes, when he came down to earth, Pa would laugh and say he was one of the world’s greatest experts in Regna 5.
And maybe for a year or two that had been an employable skill.
So three years of education had been spent for a couple years of income. That sort of thing had happened to a lot of people; Pa was one of those who just gave up because of it.
“Ma, can you talk?” Part of the wall and ceiling went transparent. Isabel Orozco was at work, upstairs. She looked down at him curiously.
“Hey, Juan! I thought you were going to be at finals until very late.”
Juan bounced up the stairs, talking all the while. “Yes. I have a lot to do.”
“Ah, so you’ll be working from here.”
Juan came into her work room and gave her a quick hug. “No, I was just gonna get supper and then visit the student I’m doing the local project with.”
She was looking right at him now, and he could tell he had her full attention. “I just saw about the local exam; it seems like a great idea.” Ma thought it was so important to get down on the real ground. When Juan was younger, she always dragged him along when she went on her field trips around the county.
“Oh, yes,” said Juan. “We’ll learn a lot.”
Her look sharpened. “And Bertram is not in this, correct?”
“Um. No, Ma.” No need to mention the unlimited exam.
“He’s not here in the house, is he?”
“Ma!
Of course not.” Juan denied all snoop access to his friends when he was in the house. Mother knew that. “When he’s here, you see him, just like when my other friends visit.”
“Okay.” She looked a little embarrassed, but at least she didn’t repeat her opinion that “little Bertie is too slippery by half.” Her attention drifted for a moment, and her fingers tapped a quick tattoo on the table top. He could see that she was off in Borrego Springs, shepherding some cinema people from LA.
“Anyway, I was wondering if I could take a car tonight. My teammate lives up in Fallbrook.”
“Just a second.” She finished the job she was working on. “Okay, who is your teammate?”
“A really good student.” He showed her.
Ma grinned uncertainly, a little surprised. “Good for you … . Yes, she is an excellent student, strong where you are weak—and vice versa, of course.” She paused, checking out the Gus. “They are a private sort of family, but that’s okay.”
“And it’s a safe part of town.”
She chuckled. “Yes,
very
safe.” She respected the school rules and didn’t ask about the team project. That was just as well, since Juan still had no idea what Miri Gu was planning. “But you stay out of Camp Pendleton, hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay, you’re cleared to go as soon as you have supper. I’ve got some big-money customers running, so I can’t take a break just now. Go on downstairs and get your father and yourself something to eat. And learn something from this local project, huh? There are many careers you can have without knowing airy-fairy nonsense.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and patted her shoulder. Then he was running down the stairs. After Pa’s programming career had crashed, Mother had worked harder and harder at her 411 information services. By now, she knew San Diego County and its data as well as anyone in the world. Most of her jobs were just a few seconds or a few minutes long, guiding people, answering the hard questions. Some jobs—like the
Migración
historical stuff—were ongoing. Ma made a big point that her work was really hundreds of little careers, and that almost none of them depended on high-tech fads. Juan could do much worse; that was her message, both spoken and unspoken.
And looking at Pa across the kitchen table, Juan understood the alternative that his mother had in mind; Juan had understood that since he was six years old. Luis Orozco ate in the absent-minded way of a truly hard worker, but the images that floated around the room were just passive soaps. Later in the night he might spend money on active cinema, but even that would be nothing with traction. Pa was always in the past or on another world. So Ma was afraid that Juan would end up the same way.
But I won’t. Whatever the best is, I’ll learn it, and learn it in days, not years. And when that best is suddenly obsolete, I’ll learn whatever new thing gets thrown at me.
Ma worked hard and she was a wonderful person, but her 411 business was … such a
dead end.
Maybe God was kind to her that she never realized this. Certainly Juan could never break her heart by telling her such a thing. But the local world sucked. San Diego County, despite all its history and industry and universities, was just a microscopic speck compared to the world of people and ideas that swirled around them every minute. Once upon a time, Juan’s father had wanted to be part of that wider world, but he hadn’t been fast enough or adaptable enough.
It will be different for me
. The little blue pills would the difference. The price might be high; sometimes Juan’s mind went so blank he couldn’t remember his own name. It was a kind of seizure, but in a moment or two it always went away. Always. So far. With custom street drugs you could never be absolutely sure of such things.
Juan had one jaw-clenched resolve:
I will be adaptable
. He would not fail as his father had failed.
JUAN HAD THE CAR DROP HIM OFF A COUPLE OF BLOCKS SHORT OF THE Gus’ house. He told himself he did this so he could get a feel for the neighborhood; after all, it was not a very public place. But that wasn’t the real reason. In fact, the drive had been just too quick. He wasn’t ready to face his local teammate.
West Fallbrook wasn’t super-wealthy, but it was richer and more modern than Las Mesitas. Most of its money came from the fact that it was right next to Camp Pendleton’s east entrance. Juan walked through the late afternoon light, looking in all directions. There were a few people out—a jogger, some little kids playing an inscrutable game.
With all enhancements turned off, the houses were low and stonylooking, set well back from the street. Some of the yards were beautifully kept, succulents and dwarf pines arranged like large-scale bonsai. Others were workaday neat, with shade trees and lawns that were raked gravel or auto-mowed drygrass.
Juan turned on consensus imagery. No surprise, the street was heavily prepped. The augmented landscape was pretty, in an understated way: the afternoon sunlight sparkled off fountains and lush grass lawns. Now the low, stony houses were all windows and airy patios, some places in bright sunlight, others half-hidden in shadows. But there were no public sensors. There was no advertising and no graffiti. The neighborhood was so perfectly consistent, a single huge work of art. Juan felt a little shiver. In most parts of San Diego, you could find homeowners who’d opt out of the community image—or else demand to be included, but in some grotesque contradiction of their neighbors. West Fallbrook had tighter control than even most condo communities. You had the feeling that some single interest was watching over everything here, ready to act against intruders. In fact, that single interest went by the initials USMC.

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