said.
She had dozed off—warm, he guessed, with her arms lost in his oversized leather jacket and her chin tucked down into the collar—when the immense black truck paused in its crawl not more than ten yard from the gate. It was past dusk now, and the truck’s headlights pivoted to sweep the ground ahead of it in restless arcs.
The crowd had grown considerably. Just before Courtney fell asleep a couple of on-campus Security vehicles had come from town with their sirens howling. Now guys in what looked like rent-a-cop uniforms were waving the crowd back. Courtney was motionless and Bob hunkered down in the driver’s seat, and in all the commotion and darkness the car passed for an empty vehicle someone had parked and left. Within moments, Bob was delighted to see, the bulk of the crowd was actually behind him.
And the gate began to open. On some command from the truck, he guessed. But it was a beautiful sight. That nine-foot-tall reinforced barrier began to swing outward with an oiled ease so smooth it looked digitally rendered.
Jackpot
, Bob thought. “Buckle your seat belt,” he told Courtney.
Her eyes blinked open. “What?”
He made a mental estimate of the clearance ahead of him. “Nothing.” He sparked the engine and stepped hard on the accelerator.
Pocket drones, Elaine explained, were self-guided flying weapons about the size of a Florida grapefruit. She had seen them in use during the Turkish crisis, where they had patrolled no-go lines and contested borders. But she had never heard of them being deployed outside of a war zone.
“They’re simple and pretty dumb,” she told Chris, “but they’re cheap and you can use lots of them and they don’t sit in the ground forever like land mines, blowing legs off kids.”
“What
do
they do?”
“Mostly they just lie there conserving energy. They’re motion-sensitive and they have a few logic templates to identify likely targets. Walk into a no-go zone and they’ll fly up like locusts, target you, spit out small but lethal explosives.”
Chris looked where Elaine had pointed, but in the gathering dusk he could see nothing suspicious. You had to be quick to catch them, Elaine said. They were camouflaged, and if they hopped up without finding an allowed target—disturbed, say, by the rumbling of that huge automated truck on the pavement—they went dormant again very quickly.
Chris thought about that as the truck approached and the increasingly nervous security men shooed gawkers farther back from the road. Made no sense, he decided. The innermost fence around Blind Lake was only one of dozens of security measures already in place. What threat was so formidable that it would require wartime ordnance to keep it out?
Unless the idea was to keep people
in
.
But that made no sense either.
Which didn’t mean the pocket drones hadn’t been deployed. Only that he couldn’t figure out why.
The crowd grew quieter as darkness fell and the truck crawled up within range of the gate and idled for a moment. Some few began to drift away, apparently feeling more vulnerable, or cold, than curious. But a number remained, pressed against the rope restraints the Security people had thrown up. They seemed not to mind the increasingly cutting wind or the unseasonable snowflakes that began to swirl into the truck’s high beams. But they gasped and withdrew a few feet when the gate itself began to swing silently open.
Chris looked behind him at Elaine and caught a passing glimpse of Blind Lake beginning to light up in a mist of flurries, the concentric slabs of Hubble Plaza, the blinking navigation lights on the towers of Eyeball Alley, the warmer light of resident housing in neat, logical rows.
He turned back at the sudden sound of an electric motor much closer than the rumble of the idling truck.
“Video,” Elaine barked. “
Chris
!”
He fumbled with the little personal-server accessory. His fingers were cold and the controls were the size of
She had dozed off—warm, he guessed, with her arms lost in his oversized leather jacket and her chin tucked down into the collar—when the immense black truck paused in its crawl not more than ten yard from the gate. It was past dusk now, and the truck’s headlights pivoted to sweep the ground ahead of it in restless arcs.
The crowd had grown considerably. Just before Courtney fell asleep a couple of on-campus Security vehicles had come from town with their sirens howling. Now guys in what looked like rent-a-cop uniforms were waving the crowd back. Courtney was motionless and Bob hunkered down in the driver’s seat, and in all the commotion and darkness the car passed for an empty vehicle someone had parked and left. Within moments, Bob was delighted to see, the bulk of the crowd was actually behind him.
And the gate began to open. On some command from the truck, he guessed. But it was a beautiful sight. That nine-foot-tall reinforced barrier began to swing outward with an oiled ease so smooth it looked digitally rendered.
Jackpot
, Bob thought. “Buckle your seat belt,” he told Courtney.
Her eyes blinked open. “What?”
He made a mental estimate of the clearance ahead of him. “Nothing.” He sparked the engine and stepped hard on the accelerator.
Pocket drones, Elaine explained, were self-guided flying weapons about the size of a Florida grapefruit. She had seen them in use during the Turkish crisis, where they had patrolled no-go lines and contested borders. But she had never heard of them being deployed outside of a war zone.
“They’re simple and pretty dumb,” she told Chris, “but they’re cheap and you can use lots of them and they don’t sit in the ground forever like land mines, blowing legs off kids.”
“What
do
they do?”
“Mostly they just lie there conserving energy. They’re motion-sensitive and they have a few logic templates to identify likely targets. Walk into a no-go zone and they’ll fly up like locusts, target you, spit out small but lethal explosives.”
Chris looked where Elaine had pointed, but in the gathering dusk he could see nothing suspicious. You had to be quick to catch them, Elaine said. They were camouflaged, and if they hopped up without finding an allowed target—disturbed, say, by the rumbling of that huge automated truck on the pavement—they went dormant again very quickly.
Chris thought about that as the truck approached and the increasingly nervous security men shooed gawkers farther back from the road. Made no sense, he decided. The innermost fence around Blind Lake was only one of dozens of security measures already in place. What threat was so formidable that it would require wartime ordnance to keep it out?
Unless the idea was to keep people
in
.
But that made no sense either.
Which didn’t mean the pocket drones hadn’t been deployed. Only that he couldn’t figure out why.
The crowd grew quieter as darkness fell and the truck crawled up within range of the gate and idled for a moment. Some few began to drift away, apparently feeling more vulnerable, or cold, than curious. But a number remained, pressed against the rope restraints the Security people had thrown up. They seemed not to mind the increasingly cutting wind or the unseasonable snowflakes that began to swirl into the truck’s high beams. But they gasped and withdrew a few feet when the gate itself began to swing silently open.
Chris looked behind him at Elaine and caught a passing glimpse of Blind Lake beginning to light up in a mist of flurries, the concentric slabs of Hubble Plaza, the blinking navigation lights on the towers of Eyeball Alley, the warmer light of resident housing in neat, logical rows.
He turned back at the sudden sound of an electric motor much closer than the rumble of the idling truck.
“Video,” Elaine barked. “
Chris
!”
He fumbled with the little personal-server accessory. His fingers were cold and the controls were the size of
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