Across Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  "Or a charnel house," Rosas muttered.

  The supervisor nodded, seemed only slightly angered. "You say that even when you need us. The plagues warped both you and the Authority. If it hadn't been for those strange accidents, how different things would be. In fact, given a free hand, we could have saved people like this boy from ever having been diseased."

  "How?" asked Wili.

  "Why, with another plague," the other replied lightly, reminding Wili of the "mad scientists" in the old TV shows Irma and Bill watched. To suggest a plague after all the plagues had done. "Yes, another. You see, your problem was caused by genetic damage to your parents. The most elegant countermeasure would be to tailor a virus that moves through the population, correcting just those genotypes that cause the problem."

  Fascination with experiment was clear in his voice. Wili didn't know what to think of his savior, this man of goodwill who might be more dangerous than the Peace Authority and all the Jonque aristocrats put together.

  The supervisor sighed and turned off the display. "And yes, I suppose we are crazier than before, maybe even less responsible. After all, we've pinned our whole lives on our beliefs, while the rest of you could drift in the open light without fearing the Authority....

  "In any case, there are other ways of curing your disease, and we've known them for decades." He glanced at Rosas. "Safer ways." He walked part way down the corridor to a locker and glanced at a display by the door. "Looks like we have enough on hand." He filled an ordinary looking glass bottle from the locker and returned. "Don't worry, no plague stuff. This is simply a parasite - I should say a symbiont." He laughed shortly. "In fact, it's a type of yeast. If you take five tablets every day till the bottle's empty, you'll establish a stable culture in your gut. You should notice some improvement within ten days."

  He put the jar in Wili's hand. The boy stared. "Just- here, take this and all your problems will be gone by morning-" Or in ten days, or whatever. Where was the sacrifice, the pain? Salvation came this fast in dreams alone.

  Rosas did not seem impressed. "Very well. Red Arrow and the others will pay as promised: programs and hardware to your specifications for three years." The words were spoken with some effort, and Wili realized just how reluctant a guide Miguel Rosas had been - and how important Paul Naismith's wishes were to the Tinkers.

  The supervisor nodded, for the first time cowed by Rosas' hostility, for the first time realizing that the trade would produce no general gratitude or friendship.

  Wili jumped down from the table and they started back to the stairs. They had not gone ten steps when Jeremy said, "Sir, you said Eden?" His voice sounded difdent, almost frightened. But still curious. After all, Jeremy was the one who dared the Authority with his self-powered vehicles. Jeremy was the one who always talked of science remaking the world. "You said Eden. What could you do besides cure a few diseases?"

  The supervisor seemed to realize there was no mockery in the question. He stopped under a bright patch of ceiling and gestured Jeremy Sergeivich closer. "There are many things, son. But here is one.... How old do you think I am? How old do you think the others at the winery are?"

  Discounting the greenish light that made everyone look dead, Wili tried to guess. The skin was smooth and firm, with just a hint of wrinkles around the eyes. The hair looked natural and full. He had thought forty before. Now he would say even younger.

  And the others they had seen? About the same. Yet in any normal group of adults, more than half were past fifty. And then Wili remembered that when the supervisor spoke of the War, he talked like an oldster, of time in personal memory. "We" decided this, and "we" did that.

  He had been adult at the time of the War. He was as old as Naismith or Kaladze.

  Jeremy's jaw sagged, and after a moment he nodded shyly. His question had been answered. The supervisor smiled at the boy. "So you see, Mr. Rosas talks of risks - and they may be as great as he claims. But what's to gain is very great, too." He turned and walked the short distance to the stair door

  - which opened in his face. It was one of the workers from the cask room. `Juan," the man began talking fast, "the place is being deep-probed. There are helicopters circling the fields. Lights everywhere."

  SIXTEEN

  The supervisor stepped back, and the man came off the spiral stair.

  "What! Why didn't you call down? Never mind, I know. Have you powered down all Banned equipment?" The man nodded. "Where is the boss?"

  "She's sticking at the front desk. So are the others. She's going to try to brazen it out."

  "Hmm. " The supervisor hesitated only a second. "It's really the only thing to do. Our shielding should hold up. They can inspect the cask room all they want." He looked at the three Northerners. "We two are going up and say hello to the forces of worldwide law and order. If they ask, we'll tell them you've already departed along the beach route."

  Wili's cure might still be safe.

  The supervisor made some quick adjustment at a wall panel. The fungus gradually dimmed, leaving a single streak that wobbled off into the dark. "Follow the glow and you'll eventually reach the beach. Mr. Rosas, I hope you understand the risk we take in letting you go. If we survive, I expect you to make good on our bargain."

  Rosas nodded, then awkwardly accepted the other's flashlight. He turned and hustled Jeremy and Wili off into the dark. Behind them, Wili heard the two bioscientists climbing the stairs to their own fate.

  The dim band turned twice, and the corridor became barely shoulder wide. The stone was moist and irregular under Wili's hand. The tunnel went downhill now and was deathly dark. Mike flicked on his light and urged them to a near run. "Do you know what the Authority would do to a lab?"

  Jeremy was hot on Wili's heels, occasionally bumping into the smaller boy, though never quite hard enough to make them lose their balance. What would the Authority do? Wili's answer was half a pant. "Bobble it?"

  Of course. Why risk a conventional raid? If they even had strong suspicions, the safest action would be to embobble the whole place, killing the scientists and isolating whatever death seed might be stored here. Even without the Authority's reputation of harsh punishment for Banned research, it made complete sense. Any second now, they might find themselves inside a vast silver sphere. Inside.

  Dio, perhaps it had happened already. Wili half stumbled at the thought, nearly losing his grip on the glass jar that was the reason for the whole adventure. They would not know till they ran headlong into the wall. They would live for hours, maybe days, but when the air gave out they would die as all the thousands before them must have died, at Vandenberg and Point Loma and Huachuca and....

  The ceiling came lower, till it was barely centimeters above Wili's head. Jeremy and Mike pounded clumsily along, bent over yet trying to run at full speed. Light and shadow danced jaggedly about them.

  Wili watched ahead for three figures running toward them: The first sign of embobblement would be their own reflections ahead of them. And there was something moving up there. Close.

  "Wait! Wait!" he screamed. The three came to an untidy stop before - a door, an almost ordinary door. Its surface was metallic, and that accounted for the reflection. He pushed the opener. The door swung outward, and they could hear the surf. Mike doused the light.

  They started down a stairway, but too fast. Wili heard someone trip and an instant later he was hit from behind. The three tumbled down the steps. Stone bit savagely into his arms and back. Wili's fingers spasmed open and the jar flew into space, its landing marked by the sound of breaking glass.

  Life's blood spattering down unseen steps.

  He felt Jeremy scramble past him. "Your flashlight, Mike, quick."

  After a second, light filled the stairs. If any Peace cops were on the beach looking inland....

  It was a risk they took for him.

  Wili and Jeremy scrabbled back and forth across the stairs, unmindful of the glass shards. In seconds they had recovered the tablets - along with considera
ble dirt and glass. They dumped it in Jeremy's waterproof hiking bag. The boy dropped a piece of paper into the bag. "Directions, I bet." He zipped it shut and handed it to Wili.

  Rosas kept the light on a second longer, and the three memorized the path they must follow. The steps were scarcely more than water-worn corrugations. The cave was free of any other human touch.

  Darkness again, and the three started carefully downward, still moving faster than was really comfortable. If only they had a night scope. Such equipment wasn't Banned, but the Tinkers didn't flaunt it. The only high tech equipment they'd brought to La Jolla was the Red Arrow chess processor.

  Wili thought he saw light ahead. Over the surf drone he heard a thupthupthup that grew first louder and then faded. A helicopter.

  They made a final turn and saw the outside world through the, vertical crack that was the entrance to the cave. The evening mist curled in, not as thick as earlier. A horizontal band of pale gray hung at eye level. After a moment, he realized the glow was thirty or forty meters away - the surf line. Every few seconds, something bright reflected off the surf and waters beyond.

  Behind him Rosas whispered, "Light splash from their search beams on top of the bluff. We may be in luck." He pushed past Jeremy and led them to the opening. They hid there a few seconds and looked as far as they could up and down the beach. No one was visible, though there were a number of aircraft circling the area. Below the entrance spread a rubble of large boulders, big enough to hide their progress.

  It happened just as they stepped away from the entrance: A deep, bell-like tone was followed by the cracking and crashing of rock now free of its parent strata. The avalanche proceeded all around them, thousands of tons of rock adding itself to the natural debris of the coastline. They cowered beneath the noise, waiting to be crushed.

  But nothing fell close by, and when Wili finally looked up, he saw why. Silhouetted against the mist and occasional stars was the perfect curve of a sphere. The bobble must be two or three hundred meters across, extending from the lowest of the winery's caves to well over the top of the bluff and from the inland vineyards to just beyond the edge of the cliffs.

  "They did it. They really did it," Rosas muttered to himself:

  Wili almost shouted with relief. A few centimeters the other way and they would have been entombed.

  Jeremy!

  Wili ran to the edge of the sphere. The other boy had been standing right behind them, surely close enough to be safe. Then where was he? Wili beat his fists against the blood warm surface. Rosas' hand closed over his mouth and he felt himself lifted off the ground. Wili struggled for a moment in enforced silence, then went limp. Rosas set him down.

  "I know," Mike's voice was a strangled whisper. "He must be on the other side. But let's make sure." He flicked on his light-almost as brightly as he had risked in the cave-and they walked several meters back and forth along the line where the bobble passed into the rocks. They did not find Jeremy, but

  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, surging tendrils of foam to 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, Della 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. Aztlÿn 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 Califor nia, 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: Della Lu had not been captured after all!

  SEVENTEEN

  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 the Authority had observed the same event he had. Sooner or later they would divert resources from their various emergencies and come to 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 Naimsith 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 of those 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."