Across Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  "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. "To 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 his discovery, and it was more important than his life, perhaps even more important than his hatred of the Peace Authority.

  EIGHTEEN

  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 crawl-ing along just as cautiously as she. Paul lost sight of her the last three or 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 strug-gle, 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?"

  Naismith realized with wry bleakness that she had not seen through his disguise: She thought she'd landed some dazed crone. Perhaps that was best. He had no idea what she imagined was going on, but it could hardly be any ap-proximation to reality. There was no truthful answer she would understand, much less believe. Naismith licked his lips in apparent nervousness and whispered back, "They're after. me, too. If they catch us they'll kill us, just like your friend." Oops. "We've got to turn from the way you're going. I saw one of 'em hiding just ahead."

  The young woman frowned, her suspicion clear. Naismith's omniscience was showing. "So you know a way out?"

  He nodded. "My horse and wagon are southeast of all this ruckus. I know ways we can sneak past these folks. I have a little farm up in -"

  His words were lost in a steadily increasing roar that passed almost overhead. They looked up and had a quick impression of something large and winged, fire glowing from ports at wings and tail. Another troop carrier. He could hear others following. This was the beginning of the real in-vasion. The only place they could land would be on the main road north of the crater. But given another half hour, there would be wall-to-wall troopers here and not even a mouse could escape.

  Naismith rolled to his knees and pulled at her hand. She had no choice now. They stood and walked quickly back the way he had come. The sound of the jets was a continuous rumble; they could have shouted and still not been heard. They had perhaps fifteen minutes to move as fast as they were able.

  Greenish twilight had fallen on the forest floor. In his mot-tled brown dress, Naismith would be hard to spot, but the girl's flight fatigues made her a perfect target. He held her hand, urging her to paths he thought safe. He glanced at his wrist again and again, trying to see where the invaders were posted. The girl was busy looking in all directions and didn't notice his display.

  The sounds fell behind them. The jets were still loud, but the soldiers' voices were fading in the distance. A dove lilted nearby.

  They were trotting now, where the undergrowth thinned. Naismith's lungs burned and a steady pain pushed in his chest. The woman had a limp, but her breath came effortlessly. No doubt she was slowing her pace to his.

  Finally he was forced to a stumbling walk. She put her arm around his shoulder to keep him steady. Naismith grimaced but did not complain. He should be grateful that he could even walk, he supposed. But somehow it seemed a great injustice that a short run could be nearly fatal to someone who still felt young inside. He croaked directions, telling the girl where the horse and cart were hidden.

  Ten minutes more, and he heard a faint nickering. There was no sign of an ambush. From here, he knew dozens of trails into the mountains, trails that guerrillas of bygone years had worked hard to conceal. With even a small amount of further luck, they could escape. Paul sagged against the side of the cart. The forest rippled and darkened before him. Not now, Lord, not now!

  His vision cleared, but he didn't have the strength to hoist himself onto the cart. The young woman's arm slipped to his waist, while her other went under his legs. Paul was a little taller than she, but he didn't weigh much anymore, and she was strong. She lifted him easily into the back, then almost dropped him in surprise. "You're not a

  Naismith gave her a weak grin. "A woman? You're right. In fact, there's scarcely a thing you've seen today that is what it seems." Her eyes widened even further.

  Paul was almost beyond speech now. He pointed her at one of the hidden paths. It should get them safely away, if she could follow it.

  And then the world darkened and fell away from him.

  NINETEEN

  The ocean was placid today, but the fishing boat was small.

  112

  Della Lu stood at the railing and looked down into the sunsparkled water with a sick fascination. In all the Peace, she had as much counter-subversive experience as anyone. In a sense her experience had begun as soon as she was old enough to understand her parents' true job. And as an adult, she had planned and participated in airborne assaults, had directed the embobbling of three Mongolian strongholds, had been as tough as her vision of the Peace demanded... but until now she had never been in a watercraft bigger than a canoe.

  Was it possible she could be seasick? Every three seconds, the swell rose to within a couple meters of her face, then sank back to reveal scum-covered timbers below the waterline. It had been vaguely pleasant at first, but one thing she'd learned during the last thirty-six hours was that it never ended. She had no doubt she would feel fine just knowing the motion could be stopped at her whim. But short of calling off this charade, there was no way to get away from it.

  Della ordered her guts to sleep and her nose to ignore the stench of sardines. She looked up from the waterline to the horizon. She really had a lot to be proud of. In North America - and in Middle California, especially - the Authority's espionage service was an abomination. There had been no threats from this region in many, many years. The Peace kept most of the continent in a state of anarchy. Satellite reconnaissance could spot the smallest agglomeration of power there. Only in the nation states, like Aztlÿn and New Mexico, did the Directors see any need for spies. Things were very different in the great land ocean that was Central Asia.

  But Della was managing. In a matter of days, she had improvised from her Asian experience to come up with something that might work against the threat Avery saw here. She had not simply copied her Mongolian procedures. In North America, the subversives had penetrated -at least in an electronic sense -some of the Authority secrets. Communications for instance: Della's eyes caught on the Authority freighter near the horizon. She could not report directly from her
little fishing boat without risking her cover. So she had a laser installed near the waterline, and with it talked to the freighter-which surcrypted the messages and sent them through normal Authority channels to Hamilton Avery and the operations Della was directing for him.

  Laughter. One of the fisherman said something in Spanish, something about "persons much inclined to sleep." Miguel Rosas had climbed out of the boat's tiny cabin. He smiled wanly at their jokes as he picked his way past the nets. (Those fishermen were a weak point in her cover. They were real, hired for the job. Given time, they would likely figure out whom they were working for. The Authority should have a whole cadre of professionals for jobs like this. Hell, that had been the original purpose in planting her grandparents in San Francisco: The Authority had been worried about the large port so close to the most important enclave. They reasoned that 'furbishers would be the most likely to notice any buildup of military material. If only they had chosen to plant them among Tinkers instead. As it was, the years passed and no threat developed, and the Authority never ex-panded their counter-underground.)

  Della smiled at him, but didn't speak till the Californian was standing beside her. "How is the boy?"

  Rosas frowned. "Still sleeping. I hope he's okay. He's not in good health, you know."

  Della was not worried. She had doctored the black kid's bread, what the fishermen fed him last night. It wouldn't do the boy any harm, but he should sleep for several more hours. It was important that she and Rosas have a private conversation, and this might be the last natural opportunity for it.