by Vernor Vinge
The other made a noncommittal grunt. Otherwise there was just the sound of his steps in the dirt and the keening of insects in the dry underbrush. They went on another ten meters before Wili abruptly stopped and turned on the other. "Damnation! Why won't you talk? There is no one to hear but the hills and me. You have all the time in the world."
"Okay, Wili, I'll talk." There was little expression in the voice, and Mike's face was scarcely more than a shadow against the sky. "I don't know that it matters, but I'll talk." They continued the winding path upward. "I did everything you thought, though it wasn't for the Peacers and it wasn't for Della Lu.... Have you heard of the Huachuca plaguetime, Wili?"
He didn't wait for an answer but rambled on with a loose mixture of history - his own and the world's. The Huachuca had been the last of the warplagues. It hadn't killed that many in absolute numbers, perhaps a hundred million worldwide. But in 2015, that had been one human being in five. "I was born at Fort Huachuca, Wili. I don't remember it. We left when I was little. But before he died, my father told me a lot. He knew who caused the plagues, and that's why he left." The Rosas family had not left Huachuca because of the plague that bore its name. Death lapped all around the town, but that and the earlier plagues seemed scarcely to affect it.
Mike's sisters were born after they left; they had sickened and slowly died. The family had moved slowly north and west, from one dying town to the next. As in all the plagues, there was great material wealth for the survivors - but in the desert, when a town died, so did services that made further life possible. "My father left because he discovered the secret of Huachuca, Wili. They were like the La Jolla group, only more arrogant. Father was an orderly in their research hospital. He didn't have real technical training. Hell, he was just a kid when the War and the early plagues hit." By that time, government warfare - and the governments themselves - were nearly dead. The old military machinery was too expensive to maintain. Any further state assaults on the Peace must be with cheaper technologies. This was the story the Peacer histories told, but Mike's father had seen its truth. He had seen shipments going to the places that were first to report the plague, shipments that were postdated and later listed as medical supplies for the victims.
He even overheard a conversation, orders explicitly given. It was then he decided to leave. "He was a good man, Wili, but maybe a coward, too. He should have tried to expose the operation. He should have tried to convince the Peacers to kill those monsters. And they were monsters, Wili. By the teens, everyone knew the governments were finished. What Huachuca did was pure vengeance.... I remember when the Authority finally figured out where that plague came from. Father was still alive then, very sick though. I was only six, but he had told me the story over and over. I couldn't understand why he cried when I told him Huachuca had been bobbled; then I saw he was laughing, too. People really do cry for joy, Wili. They really do."
To their left, the ground fell almost vertically. Wili could not see if the drop was two meters or fifty. The Jonques had given him a night scope, but they'd told him its batteries would run down in less than an hour. He was saving it for later. In any case, the path was wide enough so that there was no real danger of falling. It followed the side of the hills, winding back and forth, reaching higher and higher. From his memory of the maps, he guessed they should soon reach the crest. Soon after that, they would be able to see the cabin.
Mike was silent for along time, and Wili did not immediately reply. Six years old. Wili remembered when he was six. If coincidence and foolhardy determination had not thrust him into the truth, he would have gone through life convinced that Jonques had kidnapped him from Uncle Sly, and that - with Sly gone - the Ndelante were his only friends and defenders. Two years ago, he had learned better. The raid - yes, it had been Jonque - but done at the secret request of the Ndelante. Ebenezer had been angered by the unFaithful like Uncle Sly who used the water upstream from the Ndelante reservoir. Besides, the Faithful were ready to move into Glendora, and they needed an outside enemy to make their takeover easier. It worked the other way, too: Jonque commoners without lords protector lived in constant fear of Ndelante raids.
Wili shrugged. It was not something he would say to Mike. Huachuca was probably everything he thought. Still, Wili had infinite cynicism when it came to the alleged motives of organizations.
Wili had seen treacheries big and small, organizational and personal. He knew Mike believed all he said, that he'd done in La Jolla what he thought right, that he'd done it and still tried to do the job of protecting Wili and Jeremy that he had been hired for.
The trail dipped, moved steadily downward. They were past the crest. Several hundred meters further on, the scrub forest opened up a little, and they could look into small valley. Wili motioned Mike down. He pulled the Jonque night scope from his pack and looked across the valley. It was heavier than the glasses Red Arrow had loaned him, but it had a magnifier, and it was easy to pick out the house and the trails that led in and out of the valley.
There were no lights in the farmhouse. It might have been abandoned except that he could see two horses m the corral. "These people aren't Tinkers, but they are friends, Mike. I think it's safe. With those horses, we can get back to Paul in just a few days."
"What do you mean `we,' Wili? Haven't you been listening? I did betray you. I'm the last person you should trust to know where Paul is."
"I listened. I know what you did, and why. That's more than I know about most people. And there's nothing there about betraying Paul or the Tinkers. True?"
"Yes. The Peacers aren't the monsters the plaguemakers were, but they are an enemy. I'll do most anything to stop them... only, I guess I couldn't kill Della. I almost came apart when I thought she was dead back in the ruins; I couldn't try again."
Wili was silent a moment. "Okay. Maybe I couldn't either."
"It's still a crazy risk for you to take. I should be going to Santa Ynez."
"They'll likely know about you, Mike. We got out of L.A. just ahead of the news that you ran with Delia. Your sheriff might still accept you, but none of the others, I'll bet. Paul though, he needs another pair of strong hands; he may have to move fast. Bringing you in is safer than calling the Tinkers and telling them where to send help."
More silence. Wili raised the scope and took one more look up and down the valley. He felt Mike's hand on his shoulder. "Okay. But we tell Paul straight out about me, so he can decide what to do with me."
The boy nodded. "And, Wili... thanks."
They stood and started into the valley. Wili suddenly found himself grinning. He felt so proud. Not smug, just proud. For the first time in his life, he had been the strong shoulder for someone else.
THIRTY
What Wili had missed most, even more than Paul and the Moraleses, was the processor hookup. Now that he was back, he spent several hours every day in deep connect. Most of the rest of the time he wore the connector. In discussions with Paul and Allison, it was comforting to have those extra resources available, to feel the background programs proceeding.
Even more, it brought him a feeling of safety.
And safety was something that had drained away, day by day. Six months ago, he had thought the mansion perfectly hidden, so far away in the mountains, so artfully concealed in the trees. That was before the Peacers started looking for them, and before Allison Parker talked to him about aerial reconnaissance. For precious weeks the search had centered in Northern California and Oregon, but now it had been expanded and spread both south and east. Before, the only aircraft they ever saw was the L.A./Livermore shuttle - and that was so far to the east, you had to know exactly where and when to look to see a faint glint of silver.
Now they saw aircraft several times a week. The patterns sketched across the sky formed a vast net- and they were the fish.
"All the camouflage in the world won't help, if they decide you're hiding in Middle California," Mike's voice was tight with urgency. He walked across the veranda and tug
ged at the green-and-brown shroud he and Bill Morales had hung over all the exposed stonework and hard corners of the mansion. Gone were the days when they could sit out by the pond and admire the far view.
Paul protested, "It's no ordinary camouflage, it-"
"I know it was a lot of work. You've told me Allison and the Moraleses spent two weeks putting it together. I know she and Wili added a few electronic twists that make it even better than it looks. But, Paul" - he sat down and glared at Paul, as if to persuade by the force of his own conviction "they have other ways. They can interrogate del Norte - or at least his subordinates. That will get them to Ojai. They've raided Red Arrow and Santa Ynez and the market towns further north. Apparently the few people - like Kaladze who really know your location have escaped. But no matter how many red herrings you've dropped over the years, they're eventually going to narrow things down to this part of the country."
"And there's Della Lu," said Allison.
Mike's eyes widened, and Wili could see that the comment had almost unhorsed him. Then he seemed to realize that it was not a jibe. "Yes, there's Lu. I've always thought this place must be closer to Santa Ynez than the other trading towns: I laid my share of red herrings on Della. But she's very clever. She may figure it out. The point is this: In the near future, they'll put the whole hunt on this part of California. It won't be just a plane every other day. If they can spare the people, they might actually do ground sweeps."
"What are you suggesting, Mike?" Allison again.
"That we move. Take the big wagon, stuff it with all the equipment we need, and move. If we study the search patterns and time it right, I think we could get out of Middle California, maybe to some place in Nevada. We have to pick a place we can reach without running into people on the way, and it has to be some ways from here; once they find the mansion, they'll try to trace us.... I know, it'll be risky, but it's our only chance if we want to last more than another month."
Now it was Paul's turn to be upset. "Damn it, we can't move. Not now. Even if we could bring all the important equipment which we can't - it would still be impossible. I can't afford the time, Mike. The Tinkers need the improvements I'm sending out; they need those bobble generators if they're going to fight back. If we take a month's vacation now, the revolution will be lost. We'll be safe in some hole in Nevada-safe to watch every- thing we've worked for go down the tubes." He thought a moment and came up with another objection. "Hell, I bet we couldn't even keep in touch with the Tinkers afterwards. I've spent years putting together untraceable communication links from here. A lot of it depends on precise knowledge of local terrain and climate. Our comm would make us sitting ducks if we moved."
Throughout the discussion, Wili sat quietly at the edge of the veranda, where the sunlight came through the camouflage mesh most strongly. In the back of his mind, Jill was providing constant updates on the Authority broadcasts she monitored. From the recon satellites, he knew the location of all aircraft within a thousand kilometers. They might be captured, but they could never be surprised.
This omniscience was little use in the present debate. At one extreme, he "knew" millions of little facts that together formed their situation; at the other, he knew mathematical theories that governed those facts. In between, in matters of judgment, he sensed his incompetence. He looked at Allison. "What do you think? Who is right?"
She hesitated just a moment. "It's the reconnaissance angle I really know." It was eerie watching Allison. She was Jill granted real-world existence. "If the Peacers are competent, then I don't see how Mike could be wrong." She looked at Naismith. "Paul, you say the Tinkers' revolt will be completely suppressed if we take time out to move. I don't know; that seems a much iffier contention. Of course, if you're both right, then we've had the course...." She gazed up at the dappled sunlight coming through the green-brown mesh. "You know, Paul, I almost wish you and Wili hadn't trashed the Authority's satellite system."
"What?" Wili said abruptly. That sabotage was his big contribution. Besides, he hadn't "trashed" the system, only made it inaccessible to the Authority. "They would find us long ago with their satellites, if I had not done that."
Allison held up her hand. "I believe it. From what I've seen, they don't have the resources or the admin structure for wide air recon. I just meant that given time we could have sabotaged their old comm and recon system - in such a way that the Peacers would think it was still working." She smiled at the astonishment on their faces. "These last weeks, I've been studying what you know about their old system. It's really the automated USAF comm and recon scheme. We had it fully in place right before... everything blew up. In theory it could handle all our command and control functions. All you needed was the satellite system, the ground receivers and computers, and maybe a hundred specialists. In theory, it meant we didn't need air recon or land lines. In theory. OMBP was always twisting our arm to junk our other systems and rely on the automated one instead. They could cut our budget in half that way."
She grinned. "Of course we never went along. We needed the other systems. Besides, we knew how fragile the automated system was. It was slick, it was thorough, but one or two rotten apples on the maintenance staff could pervert it, generate false interpretations, fake communications. We demanded the budget for the other systems that would keep it honest.
"Now it's obvious that the Peacers just took it over. They either didn't know or didn't care about the dangers; in any case, I bet they didn't have the resources to run the other systems the Air Force could. If we could have infiltrated a couple people into their technical staff, we could be making them see whatever we wanted. They'd never find us out here." She shrugged. "But you're right; at this point it's just wishful thinking. It might have taken months or years to do something like that. You had to get results right away."
"Damn," said Paul. "All those years of clever planning, and I never..."
"Oh, Paul," she said softly. "You are a genius. But you couldn't know everything about everything. You couldn't be a one-man revolution."
"Yeah," said Mike. "And he couldn't convince the rest of us that there was anything worth revolting against."
Wili just stared, his eyes wide, his jaw slack. It would be harder than anything he had done before but, "Maybe you do not need spies, Allison. Maybe we can.... I've got to think about this. We've still got days. True, Mike?"
"Unless we have real bad luck. With good luck we might have weeks."
"Good. Let me think. I must think.... " He stood up and walked slowly indoors. Already the veranda, the sunlight, the others were forgotten.
It was not easy. In the months before he learned to use the mind connect, it would have been impossible; even a lifetime of effort would not have brought the necessary insights. Now creativity was in harness with his processors. He knew what he wanted to do. In a matter of hours he could test his ideas, separate false starts from true.
The recon problem was the most important-and probably the easiest. Now he didn't want to block Peacer reception. He wanted them to receive... lies. A lot of preprocessing was done aboard the satellites; just a few bytes altered here and there might be enough to create false perceptions on the ground. Somehow he had to break into those programs, but not in the heavy-handed way he had before. Afterward, the truth would be received by them alone. The enemy would see what Paul wanted them to see. Why, they could protect not just themselves, but many of the tinkers as well!
Days passed. The answers came miraculously fast, and perilously slow. At the edge of his consciousness, Wili knew Paul was helping with the physics, and Allison was entering what she knew about the old USAF comm/recon system. It all helped, but the hard inner problem - how to subvert a system without seeming to and without any physical contact remained his alone.
They finally tested it. Wili took his normal video off a satellite over Middle California, analyzed it quickly, and sent back subtle sabotage. On the next orbit, he simulated Peacer reception: A small puff of synthetic cloud appeared
in the picture, just where he had asked. The satellite processors could keep up the illusion until they received coded instructions to do otherwise. It was a simple change. Once operational, they could make more complicated alterations: Certain vehicles might not be reported on the roads, certain houses might become invisible.
But the hard part had been done.
"Now all we have to do is let the Peacers know their recon birds are `working' again," said Allison when he showed them his tests. She was grinning from ear to ear. At first Wili had wondered why she was so committed to the Tinker cause; everything she was loyal to had been dead fifty years.
The Tinkers didn't even exist when her orbiter was bobbled. But it hadn't taken him long to understand: She was like Paul. She blamed the Peacers for taking away the old world. And in her case, that was a world fresh in memory. She might not know anything about the Tinkers, but her hate for the Authority was as deep as Paul's.
"Yeah," said Paul. "Wili could just return the comm protocols to their original state. All of a sudden the Peacers would have a live system again. But even as stupid as they are, they'd suspect something. We have to do this so they think that somehow they have solved the problem. Hmm. I'll bet Avery still has people working on this even now."
"Okay," said Wili. "I fix things so the satellites will not start sending to them until they do a complete recompile of their ground programs."
Paul nodded. "That sounds perfect. We might have to wait a few more days, but-"
Allison laughed. " - but I know programmers. They'll be happy to believe their latest changes have fixed the problem."
Wili smiled back. He was already imagining how similar things could be done to the Peacer communication system.
THIRTY-ONE
War had returned to the planet. Hamilton Avery read the Peace Authority News Service article and nodded to himself. The headline and the following story hit just the right note: For decades, the world had been at peace, thanks to the Authority and the cooperation of peace-loving individuals around the world. But now - as in the early days, when the bioscience clique had attempted its takeover - the power lust of an evil minority had thrown the lives of humankind into jeopardy. One could only pray that the ultimate losses would not be as great as those of the War and the plagues.
