Lena abruptly said, "We have more audio from Juan!"

The boy's voice was almost a whisper: "We're still in Pilchner Hall. We're waiting for Miri's grandpa to come back from the basement." Miri's voice came faintly to the microphone: "They're not doing anything ."

"Lemme talk to Miri," said Lena.

Xiu listened to the two for a moment. They couldn't get any video, and Miri's Epiphany had suffered a 3030 error. (Xiu had looked that up; "3030" was a catchall code for a system deadlock caused by licensing conflicts.) Meantime all they had were these very occasional, very brief voice messages through Juan.

"Gotta go," whispered Juan, and the session was ended.

Lena was silent a moment, just watching the familiar dark landscape slide by. "I want to see those kids. They're needing a smart grilling… Any chance the link was faked?"

"Juan is a careful boy. It would be almost impossible to fake his Epiphany's cert — "

Lena harrumphed. "And as far as I can tell that was their voices, but talking in whispers and not saying much except that everything is boringly safe."

It was strange, if the children needed stealth and a low bit rate, that they had not used silent messaging. Maybe someone thought they could fool a pair of old ladies. In fact, with Juan's wearable, I could fake sessions like this ! She glanced at Lena. "Maybe you should call in the marines." Bob and Alice.

"Yes, but if it's a small emergency, they can't do anything more than you or I. And if it's a big emergency — well, they might have to do something awful." Lena hummed a few bars of something nervous. "And Miri says everything is fine. Just fine."

"Maybe we should call the police."

"Ha! Nowadays you don't have to call the police; they just happen to you." Lena was staring at the hillside, her fingers trembling against her lips.

The last couple of months, Lena Gu had been such a reliable source of certainty. What if we both wimp out ? Xiu thought. Now, that was a frightening idea. She tried to think of something really forceful to say: "um, your ex has been 'doing nothing' for almost half an hour. Don't you think that's too long?"

Lena's head bowed, and she said softly, almost to herself, "Oh, Robert. You're up to something terribly stupid, aren't you?" She stared into the dark. "Let's give Miri five more minutes. Then we'll call 911."

"Okay." They tooled along the valley floor, slowly enough that the windows could roll down. The resinous scent of manzanita drifted in. On their left was southbound Highway 5, a lightless torrent of fast-moving vehicles, edged by the blaze of the manual lanes. On their right were steep, dark hills, violet light flickering along the ridgelines. Xiang brought up a local network view, looked back and forth between that and the physical world.

Their little automobile was speeding up again. A pleasant male voice spoke within the passenger cabin: "This portion of Valley Bottom Drive is misfunctioning. You may return after ten a.m. tomorrow."

"What? Now we can't even circle back! There has to be some override, Xiu."

Xiang shook her head. This would be their last drive through here tonight. Xiu had helped design the hardware security layer. It solved so many problems. It made the Internet a safe and workable system. Now she was its victim… She thought again of the bag of tricks that sat on the floor beside her feet. She had spent the whole semester building those gadgets, her mechanical daydreams. Maybe —

"Xiu! Traffic!" Lena was pointing up the hillside.

Xiu leaned over and looked out Lena's side. She saw two spears of light that just now were turning away from them. "It looks like a car on manual," or maybe it was on automatic, but driving on unimproved roadway.

"It must be on the service road." Lena paused, and a map appeared on Xiu's view-page, showing the road they hadn't been able to get on. The road that led to Huertas's old back entrance.

The lights turned back toward them, then disappeared behind an outcropping. Xiu's view-page didn't even show a nav marker for the other vehicle.

"What are they up to?" said Lena.

Their own car was almost to the T-intersection.

"Car!" said Lena. "Turn right."

"Sorry. That's not an existing road. The only legal turn is left."

"Turn right! Turn right!"

"I'm sorry. I'll have you in safe traffic in less than five minutes. Please think about giving me an ultimate destination." Xiu bet herself that company logic had decided it was dealing with a DUI customer. If they didn't come up with something sensible, the vehicle would take them all the way back to Rainbows End.

Lena sucked in a breath. "We're so close. Wait. I got a ping response. It's from Thomas Parker's outfit. They are up there!" And then much louder: "Hey, car, I wanna speak to your supervisor — I mean a human beingf

"Certainly, twenty seconds please." Twenty seconds would put them past the T-intersection.

Lena Gu seemed to shrink down in her wheelchair. Her gaze swept back and forth between the hillside and the approaching intersection. "We've got to stop them, Xiu. I'll wager they could tell us what's going on."

"You'd come out from cover? Let You-Know-Who see you?"

"I'd lurk in the background."

But the question was moot. The intersection was just fifty yards ahead. In a few seconds they'd turn left, and be conveyed ignominiously away.

Or… maybe not. Xiu lifted her backpack onto the seat beside her. She picked up the curved tube with the can of diamond flakes; she had improved her first shop-class project out of all resemblance to the original transport tray. This new model was very much designed with destruction in mind; sometimes you needed to get the machines' attention. She knelt on the back-facing seat and set the tip of the cutter against the dashboard. Given Robert Gu's example, she had a good idea of what to expect.

Oops. "Lena, scrunch down!"

Lena looked at the tube in Xiu's hands. "Yes!" She laughed even as she tried to flatten herself out of Xiang's way.

Xiu pressed the start button — a real physical button! — and a roar ripped through the cabin. Her transport tray, now a very fine accelerator, drove three thousand diamond flecks into the dashboard every second. The recoil was a soft, steady push. It was easy to keep the tip pointed. Some of the diamonds bounced up, embedding in the acoustic ceiling, but most drove straight into the dashboard. She wobbled the cutter's tip and the hole widened. Now she was drilling through drive internals.

The car slowed smoothly to a stop, parking itself just short of the intersection. "System failure," it said. "Emergency backup engaged. Please depart the vehicle and await emergency assistance."

The doors popped ajar on all sides.

"Hah!" said Lena. "I was hoping for a real crash, and you having to cut the doors open." But she was already backing out of the car.

Xiu was speechless. Did I really do this? Timid little X. Xiang ? Lena wheeled around to the front of the car. "We have a hill to climb," she said.

For Alfred Vaz, there had been various pieces of good news. He had completed his fake investigation of the GenGen labs and provided Günberk's clever analysts with evidence that would eventually lead them far away. And finally Alice Gu had collapsed. That had come very late, but it was more spectacular than Alfred had expected; Keiko's people claimed that DHS surveillance was blinded, in chaos. That chaos was unexplained good fortune to her and Günberk. For Alfred, it could mean complete success. Give him a few more minutes and his private research program would be safe not only from Günberk and Keiko, but also from the inevitable American investigations.

And then things went very wrong:

Miri Gu had found the stooges. He had lost his one mech in the labs, and also his fiber link to the stooges. And now —