by Vernor Vinge
Rosas’ flash stopped for a moment, freezing one tiny patch of ground in its light. Then the light winked out, but not before Wili saw two tiny spots of red, two . . . fingertips . . . lying in the dirt.
Just centimeters away, Jeremy must lie writhing in pain, staring into the darkness, feeling the blood on his hands. The wound could not be fatal. Instead, the boy would have hours still to die. Perhaps he would return to the labs, and sit with the others—waiting for the air to run out. The ultimate excommunication.
“You have the bag?” Rosas’ voice quavered.
The question caught Wili as he was reaching for the mangled fingers. He stopped, straightened. “Yes.”
“Well then, let’s go.” The words were curt. The tone was clamped-down hysteria.
The undersheriff grabbed Wili’s shoulder and urged him down the jumble of half-seen rocks. The air was filled with dust and the cold moistness of the fog. The fresh broken rock was already wet and slippery. They clung close to the largest boulders, fearing both landslides and detection from the air. The bobble and bluffs cut a black edge into the hazy aura of the lights that swept the ground above. They could hear both trucks and aircraft up there.
But no one was down on the beach. As they crawled and climbed across the rocks, Wili wondered at this. Could it be the Authority did not know about the caves?
They didn’t speak for a long time. Rosas was leading them slowly back toward the hotel. It might work. They could finish the tournament, get on the buses, and return to Middle California as though nothing had happened. As though Jeremy had never existed.
It took nearly two hours to reach the beach below the hotel. The fog was much thinner now. The tide had advanced; phosphorescent surf pounded close by, pushing surging tendrils of foam near their feet.
The hotel was brightly lit, more than he remembered on previous evenings. There were lots of lights in the parking areas, too. They hunkered down between two large rocks and inspected the scene. There were far too many lights. The parking lots were swarming with vehicles and men in Peacer green. To one side stood a ragged formation of civilians—prisoners? They stood in the glare of the trucks’ lights, with their hands clasped on top of their heads. A steady procession of soldiers brought boxes and displays—the chess-assist equipment—from the hotel. It was much too far away to see faces, but Wili thought he recognized Roberto Richardson’s fat form and flashy jacket there among the prisoners. He felt a quick thrill to see the Jonque standing like some recaptured slave.
“They raided everybody. . . . Just like Paul said, they finally decided to clean us all out.” Anger was back in Mike’s voice.
Where was the girl, Delia Lu? He looked back and forth over the forlorn group of prisoners. She was so short. Either she was standing in back, or she was not there. Some of the buses were leaving. Maybe she had already been taken.
They had had amazing luck avoiding the bobble, avoiding detection, and avoiding the hotel raid. That luck must end now: They had lost Jeremy. They had lost the equipment at the hotel. Aztlán territory extended northward three hundred kilometers. They would have to walk more than a hundred klicks through wilderness just to reach the Basin. Even if the Authority was not looking for them, they could not avoid the Jonque barons, who would take Wili for a runaway slave—and Rosas for a peasant till they heard him talk, and then for a spy.
And if by some miracle they could reach Middle California, what then? This last was the most depressing thought of all. Paul Naismith had often talked of what would happen when the Authority finally saw the Tinkers as enemies. Apparently that time had come. All across the continent (all across the world? Wili remembered that some of the best chip engraving was done in France and China) the Authority would be cracking down. The Kaladze farm might even now be a smoking ruin, its people lined up with hands on heads, waiting to be shipped off to oblivion. And Paul would be one of them—if he wasn’t already dead.
They sat in the cleft of the boulders for a long time, moving only to stay ahead of the tide. The sounds of soldiers and vehicles diminished. One by one the searchlights went out. One by one the buses rolled away—what had seemed marvelous carriages of speed and comfort just a few days before, now cattle cars.
If the idiots didn’t search the beach, he and Rosas might have to walk north after all.
It must have been about three in the morning. The surf was just past its highest advance. There were still troopers on the hill near the hotel, but they didn’t seem especially vigilant. Rosas was beginning to talk about starting north while it was still dark.
They heard a regular, scritching sound on the rocks just a few meters away. The two fugitives peeked out of their hiding place. Someone was pushing a small boat into the water, trying to get it past the surf.
“I think that girl could use some help,” Mike remarked.
Wili looked closer. It was a girl, wet and bedraggled, but familiar: Delia Lu had not been captured after all!
17
Paul Naismith was grateful that even in these normally placid times there were still a few paranoids around—in addition to himself, that is. In some ways, ‘Kolya Kaladze was an even worse case than he. The old Russian had devoted a significant fraction of his “farm’s” budget to constructing a marvelous system of secret passages, hidden paths, small arms caches, and redoubts. Naismith had been able to travel more than ten kilometers from the farm, all the way around the Salsipuedes, without ever being exposed to the sky—or to the unwelcome visitors that lurked about the farm.
Now well into the hills, he felt relatively safe. There was little doubt that the Authority had observed the same event he had. Sooner or later they would divert resources from their various emergencies and come investigate the peculiar red smoke plume. Paul hoped to be long gone before that happened. In the meantime, he would take advantage of this incredible good luck. Revenge had waited, impotent, these fifty years, but its time might now come.
Naismith geed the horse. The cart and horse were not what he had come to the farm with. ‘Kolya had supplied everything—including a silly, old-lady disguise which he suspected was more embarrassing than effective.
Nikolai had not stinted, but neither had he been happy about the departure. Naismith slouched back on the padded seat and thought ruefully of that last argument. They had been sitting on the porch of the main house. The blinds were drawn, and a tiny singing vibration in the air told Naismith that the window panes were incapable of responding to a laser-driven audio probe. The Peace Authority “bandits”—what an appropriate cover—had made no move. Except for what was coming over the radio, and what Paul had seen, there was no sign that the world was turning upside down.
Kaladze understood the situation—or thought he did—and wanted no part of Naismith’s project. “I tell you honestly, Paul, I do not understand you. We are relatively safe here. No matter what the Peacers say, they can’t act against us all at once; that’s why they grabbed our friends at the tournament. For hostages.” He paused, probably thinking of a certain three hostages. Just now, they had no way of knowing if Jeremy and Wili and Mike were dead or alive, captive or free. Taking hostages might turn out to be an effective strategy indeed. “If we keep our heads down, there’s no special reason to believe they’ll invade Red Arrow Farm. You’ll be as safe here as anywhere. But,” Nikolai rushed on as if to forestall an immediate response, “if you leave now, you’ll be alone and in the open. You want to head for one of the few spots in North America where the Peacers are guaranteed to swarm. For which risk, you get nothing”
“You are three times wrong, old friend,” Paul answered quietly, barely able to suppress his frantic impatience to be gone. He ticked off the points. “First, your second claim: If I leave right now, I can probably get there before the Authority. They have much else to worry about. Since we got Wili’s invention working, I and my programs have spent every second monitoring the Peacer recon satellites for evidence of bobble decay. I’ll bet the Authority itself doesn’t have
the monitor capability I do. It’s possible they don’t yet realize that a bobble burst up there in the hills this morning.
“As to your third claim: The risk is worth the candle. I stand to win the greatest prize of all, the means to destroy the Authority. Something or someone is causing bobbles to burst. So there is some defense against the bobbles. If I can discover that secret—”
Kaladze shrugged. “So? You’d still need a nuclear power generator to do anything with the knowledge.”
“Maybe . . . Finally, my response to your first claim: You—we—are not at all safe lying low on the farm. For years, I tried to convince you the Authority is deadly once it sees you as a danger. You’re right, they can’t attack everywhere at once. But they’ll use the La Jolla hostages to identify you, and to draw you out. Even if they don’t have Mike and the boys, Red Arrow Farm will be high on their hit-list. And if they suspect I’m here, they’ll raid you just as soon as they have enough force in the area. They have some reason to fear me.”
“They want you?” Kaladze’s jaw sagged. “Then why haven’t they simply bobbled us?”
Paul grinned. “Most likely, their ‘bandit’ reconnaissance didn’t recognize me—or maybe they want to be sure I’m inside their cage when they lock it.” Avery missed me once before. He can’t stand uncertainty.
“Bottom line, ‘Kolya: The Peace Authority is out to get us. We must give them the best fight we can. Finding out what’s bursting the bobbles might give us the whole game.” No need to tell ‘Kolya that he would be doing it even if the Peacers hadn’t raided the tournament. Like most Tinkers, Nikolai Kaladze had never been in direct conflict with the Authority. Though he was as old as Naismith, he had not seen firsthand the betrayal that had brought the Authority to power. Even the denial of bioproducts to children like Wili was not seen by today’s people as real tyranny. But now at last there was the technical and—if the Authority was foolish enough to keep up its pressure on the likes of Kaladze—the political opportunity to overturn the Peacers.
The argument continued for thirty minutes, with Naismith slowly prevailing. The real problem in getting ‘Kolya’s help was to convince him that Paul had a chance of discovering anything from a simple inspection of this latest bobble burst. In the end, Naismith was successful, though he had to reveal a few secrets out of his past that might later cause him considerable trouble.
______
The path Naismith followed leveled briefly as it passed over a ridgeline. If it weren’t for the forest, he could see the crater from here. He had to stop daydreaming and decide just how to make his approach. There was still no sign of Peacers, but if he were picked up near the site, the old-lady disguise would be no protection.
He guided his horse off the path some thousand meters inland of the crater. Fifty meters into the brush, he got down from the cart. Under ordinary circumstances there was more than enough cover to hide horse and vehicle. Today, and here, he couldn’t be so confident.
It was a chance he must take. For fifty years, bobbles—and the one up ahead, in particular—had haunted him. For fifty years he had tried to convince himself that all this was not his fault. For fifty years he had hoped for some way to undo what his old bosses had made of his invention.
He took his pack off the cart and awkwardly slipped it on. The rest of the way would be on foot. Naismith trudged grimly back up the forested hillside, wondering how long it would be before the pack harness began to cut, wondering if he would run out of breath first. What was a casual walk for a sixty-year-old might be life-threatening for someone his age. He tried to ignore the creaking of his trick knee and the rasping of his breath.
Aircraft. The sound passed over but did not fade into the distance. Another and another. Damn it.
Naismith took out some gear and began monitoring the remotes that Jeremy had scattered the night of the ambush. He was still three thousand meters from the crater, but some of the pellets might be in enough sun to be charged up and transmitting.
He searched methodically through the entire packet space his probes could transmit on. The ones nearest the crater were gone or so deeply embedded in the forest floor that all he could see was the sky above them. There had been a fire, maybe even a small explosion, when this bobble burst. But no ordinary fire could have burned within the bobble for fifty years. If a nuclear explosion had been trapped inside, there would have been something much more spectacular than a fire when it burst. (And Naismith knew this one: There had been no nuke in it.) That was the unique thing about this bobble burst; it might explain the whole mystery.
He had fragmentary views of uniforms. Peacer troops. They had left their aircraft and were spreading around the crater. Naismith piped the audio to his hearing aid. He was so close. But it would be crazy to go any nearer now. Maybe if they didn’t leave too many troops, he could sneak in tomorrow morning. He had arrived too late to scoop them and too early to avoid them. Naismith swore softly to himself and unwrapped the lightweight camping bag Kaladze had given him. All the time he watched the tiny screen he had propped against a nearby tree trunk. The controlling program shifted the scene between the five best views he had discovered in his initial survey. It would also alert him if anyone started moving in his direction.
Naismith settled back and tried to relax. He could hear lots of activity, but it must be right down in the crater, since he could see none of it.
The sun slowly drifted west. Another time, Naismith would have admired the beautiful day: temperatures in the high twenties, birds singing. The strange forests around Vandenberg might be unique: Dry climate vegetation suddenly plunged into something resembling the rainy tropics. God only knew what the climax forms would be like.
Today, all he could think of was getting at that crater just a few thousand meters to the north.
Even so, he was almost dozing when a distant rifle shot brought him to full alertness. He diddled the display a moment and had some good luck: He saw a man in gray and silver, running almost directly away from the camera. Naismith strained close to the screen, his jaw sagging. More shots. He zoomed on the figure. Gray and silver. He hadn’t seen an outfit like that since before the War. For a moment his mind offered no interpretation, just cranked on as a stunned observer. Three troopers rushed past the camera. They must have been shooting over the fellow’s head, but he wasn’t stopping and now the trio fired again. The man in gray spun and dropped. For a moment, the three soldiers seemed as stricken as their target. Then they ran forward, shouting recriminations at each other.
The screen was alive with uniforms. There was a sudden silence at the arrival of a tweedy civilian. The man in charge. From his high-pitched expostulations, Naismith guessed he was unhappy with events. A stretcher was brought up and the still form was carted off. Naismith changed the phase of his camera and followed the victim down the path that led northward from the crater.
Minutes later the shriek of turbines splashed off the hills, and a needle-nosed form rose into the sky north of Naismith. The craft vectored into horizontal flight and sprinted southward, passing low over Naismith’s hiding place.
The birds and insects were deathly silent the next several minutes, almost as silent and awestruck as Paul’s own imagination. He knew now. The bursting bobbles were not caused by quantum decay. The bursting bobbles were not the work of some anti-Peacer underground. He fought down hysterical laughter. He had invented the damn things, provided his bosses with fifty years of empire, but he and they had never realized that—though his invention worked superbly—his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.
He knew that now. The Peacers would know it in a matter of hours, if they had not already guessed. They would fly in a whole division with their science teams. He would likely die with his secret if he didn’t slip out now and head eastward for his mountain home.
. . . But when Naismith finally moved, it was not back to his horse. He went north. Carefully, quietly, he moved toward the crater: For there was a corollary to h
is discovery, and it was more important than his life, perhaps even more important than his hatred of the Peace Authority.
18
Naismith stopped often, both to rest and to consult the screen that he had strapped to his forearm. The scattered cameras showed fewer than thirty troopers. If he had guessed their locations correctly, he might be able to crawl in quite close. He made a two-hundred-meter detour just to avoid one of them; the fellow was well concealed and was quietly listening and watching. Naismith suffered the rocks and brambles with equal silence. He carefully inspected the ground just ahead of him for branches and other noise-makers. Every move must be a considered one. This was something he had very little practice at, but he had to do it right the first time.
He was very close to his goal now: Naismith looked up from the display and peered into a small ravine. This was the place! Her suddenly still form was huddled deep within the brush. If he hadn’t known from the scanners exactly where to look, he would not have noticed the flecks of silver beyond the leaves and branches. During the last half hour he had watched her move slowly south, trying to edge away from the troopers at the crater rim. Another fifteen minutes, and she would blunder into the soldier Naismith had noticed.
He slid down the cleft, through clouds of midges that swirled in the musty dampness. He was sure she could see him now. But he was obviously no soldier, and he was crawling along just as cautiously as she. Paul lost sight of her the last three of four meters of his approach. He didn’t look for her, instead eased into the depths of shadow that drowned her hiding place.
Suddenly a hand slammed over his mouth and he found himself spun onto his back and forced to the ground. He looked up into a pair of startlingly blue eyes.
The young woman waited to see if Naismith would struggle, then released his shoulder and placed her finger to her lips. Naismith nodded, and after a second she removed her hand from his mouth. She lowered her head to his ear and whispered, “Who are you? Do you know how to get away from them?”
