Squelching your top analyst was a black mark on everyone, but there was no help for it. Even in combat, this sort of monomania would be bizarre.

As it happened, Alice acted first. Emergency flags came up in every view. The assault craft's hatch slid shut and his acceleration pod zipped tight. LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH flashed in his eyes, and a launch clock appeared, counting down from thirty seconds. This was analyst preemption, the sort of drama that happens when analysts realize that their own forces are about to be nuked in their bunkers. Everything would go at once and sort itself out in midnight.

But the analyst pool showed no such threat.

The launch target was UCSD.

The gee pod was inflating tight around him. The countdown clock showed twenty-five seconds. He brought up a view of his top analyst. "Alice! Advise reason for launch."

Alice's eyes were wide. "It's very simple. Onset was slow, but now insight has saturated. This one is undergoing threatful integration. Neuromodulator pathway Gat77 has been subverted. Signaling cascade has too many control points for MCog analysis, but reference" — some kind of arXiv pointer — "demonstrates the progression." She frowned at him, and suddenly she was shouting: "Don't you understand? This one is failing! Conformational changes are preventing adaptive response! This one — "

Ten seconds to launch. Alice Gu's medicals were off the chart.

Eight seconds to launch. Bob overrode the launch order and relieved his top analyst: STANDDOWN STANDDOWN STANDDOWN . The gee pod relaxed around him. He scarcely noticed. Alice's head was down, but she was still talking, desperate. Drool spattered her blouse. And he couldn't notice that either. He promoted her second-in-analysis, a CIA spook who'd been far too passive tonight. But then what could one do when a star like Alice crashed?

The spook was trying her best. "I'll have us up in two minutes, sir."

In the meantime, Bob Gu was blinded and the watch was just a mob of bright people watching a million data feeds. One of those feeds was medical: Alice had suffered a JITT stick, the most violent and sudden of her career. Despite all her desperation to communicate, she was stuck in molecular biology.

The CIA analyst was back. "Sir, are you all right?"

"I — I'm fine." Bob considered the analyst display. The spook had hung the operation off the rest of the CONUS watches. There was close backup now. Big chunks of Alice's network were improperly connected, but the spook was healing it, forcing connections and possible correlations. Maybe she was still too heavy on UCSD. She seemed to think that Alice's last words pointed to enemy action there. Okay, after everything else tonight, that had to be followed up. "I'm fine."

Over the past twelve weeks, Rabbit had learned a lot; he had grown , you might say. Tonight it all came together. Topside, the riot was at climax — better than sex could ever be, Rabbit was sure. I am the reality arm of the Scoochi belief circles, yeah ! There were surprises, too. The affair had called into existence (or simply into his notice?) a creature who might be his equal. Rabbit had played both sides through the first part of the riot… but now Dangerous Knowledge had been taken over by something very creative, something who was having as much fun tonight as Rabbit himself. So he had millions of new affiliates, some of them as capable as a human could ever be. And he'd found a special new friend, to boot.

His riot fully outclassed the espionage hugger-mugger it was designed to protect. It was amusing that despite the carrot greens and all the other generous clues Rabbit had provided, Alfred & Co had not realized whence his powers came, or how great they were. But something told Rabbit that in the long run, what was happening underground was important too. Alfred was playing out his mysterious game down there. Now was the time Rabbit had planned to find out just what Alfred was looking for — hey, and maybe get a piece of it.

Now was the time, but Rabbit was locked out. Damn Alfred . The fiber link was behind Alfred's milnet. Short of tipping off DHS — and destroying the wonderful jape Rabbit had so carefully planned — Rabbit was balked. Heh! But what did Alfred's milnet talk to? Why, just a few thousand very clever Indo-European analysts! And they didn't get to be so clever by hiding in government holes. They each had their own creative lives. Rabbit hopped from Brussels to Nice, to Mumbai and Tokyo, and — natch — listened to his own inner self. Now that he needed to think about it, he saw how the tricks he had used with American security might be applied. Rabbit tweaked a thousand affiliances, and he listened to a million conversations that he really had no intention of consciously reviewing. One last piece of SHE magic, and viola :

Rabbit was into the milnet! He zipped down through Alfred's stealthed aerobot and… once again he was in Vaz's glorious command center in Pilchner Hall. Rabbit took a look at the medicals on the Orozco kid. Still alive. Ol'Alfred wasn't a monster, except when principle demanded it. What was he after? And can I get some ?

Rabbit tiptoed down Alfred's connections into the labs. No surprise, Alfred Vaz was making good use of the devices Rabbit's little friends had planted in the GenGen area, sending oodles of data out to his colleagues in Japan and the EU. Rabbit watched quietly; one doesn't ask pointed questions when one is trying to be invisible. He captured the raw encryption, noted what was talking to what within Alfred's GenGen domain.

Even so… it didn't make sense. The exported data did not match what was locally observed. And then suddenly a big lightbulb went off in Rabbit's mind. Alfred was not searching for anything! He was making sure his Alliance friends did not see what was already there! Alfred, you old devil, running your own program on American equipment and keeping it secret from everybody . And what could be worth such secrecy and such a wild-ass cover-up? Figuring that out was still a guessing game — but Rabbit was the grand master of guessing, better than any Indo-European analyst pool, better even than Alice Gu and all her analysts.

Oops. Something told him Alice was in deep trouble. Rabbit had dutifully played messenger boy for Alfred's mysterious snooping on Alice. That must have been the setup for Alice's downfall. But how had he done it? Suddenly, the underground was more intriguing than ever.

The heart of Alfred's research empire was in a corner of the Molecular Biology of Cognition area. The data from everywhere else was truthful reporting on innocent proprietary research. Rabbit looked more carefully at the lies coming out of the MCog area. The phrase "animal model" leaked from gaps in the encryption. Animal model, animal model. The term usually referred to animals possessing an analog of some human condition– — usually a disease to cure. Somehow, Rabbit didn't think Alfred was trying to cure anything. And there were lots of animals in the MCog area. Of course most were bugs. Gallons of fruit flies, and every itsy-bitsy one labeled and probed. Rabbit dipped into some of the local databases. It looked like Alfred was messing with YGBM, but the details were not easy to understand. Rabbit was not always fast. For hard problems, he was like lesser beings; he had to sleep on the question. Then in the morning, the old intuition would deliver remarkable insights.

In this case, tomorrow would be too late. Five minutes from now might be too late. Alfred's show was almost over, and with it access to the snooper nodes; heck, the gadgets would probably fry themselves. Rabbit hesitated and listened to his inner self. He had a gut feeling about this. Modern intelligence services existed to prevent terrorism. But Alfred… with whatever he was creating here, the dwit might proceed beyond Grand Terror into realms no man was meant to go.