by Vernor Vinge
There was the war, and it was more fantastic than any oldtime movie:
Silver balls floated by the dozens through the sky. Far away, Peacer jets were dark bugs trailing grimy vapor. They swooped and climbed. Their dives ended in flares of color as they strafed Tinker infiltrators on the far side of the valley. Bombs and napalm burned orange and black through the sea of fog. He saw one diving aircraft replaced by a silvery sphere -which continued the plane's trajectory into the earth. The pilot might wake decades from now - as Allison Parker had done - and wonder what had become of his world. That was a lucky shot. Mike knew the Tinker bobblers were small, not even as powerful as the one Wili brought to L.A.. Their range with accuracy was only a hundred meters, and the largest bobble they could cast was five or ten meters across. On the other hand, they could be used defensively. The last Mike had heard, the Bay Area Tinkers had got the minimum duration down to fifteen seconds; just a little better and "flicker" tactics would be possible.
Here and there, peeping out of the mist, were bobbles set in the ground: Peacer armor bobbled during the night fighting or Tinkers caught by the monster in the valley. The only difference was size.
The nose of the crawler dipped steeply, and Mike grunted in surprise, his attention back on his driving. He took the little valley much more slowly than the last one. The forward crawler was almost up the other side when he reached the bottom. His carrier moved quickly through a small stream, and then he was almost laid on his back as it climbed the far side. He pushed the throttle far forward. Power screamed through the treads. The crawler came over the lip of the embankment fast, nose high and fell with a crash.
"The trees ahead. We'll stop there for a couple of minutes." It was Wili's voice. Mike followed the other crawler into an open stand of twisted oaks. Far across the Livermore Valley, two dark gnats peeled off from the general swarm that hovered above the Tinker insurgents and flew toward them. That must be the reason Wili wanted to get under cover. Mike looked up through the scrawny branches and wondered what sort of protection the trees really gave. Even the most primitive thermal sensor should be able to see them sitting here with hot engines.
The jets roared by a couple thousand meters to the west. Their thunder dwindled to nothing. Mike looked again across Livermore Valley.
Where the fighting was heaviest, new bobbles shone almost once a second. With the engines idling, Mike thought he could hear the thunder and thump of more conventional weapons. Two jets dived upon a hidden target and the mists were crisscrossed with their laser fire. The target tried some-thing new: A haze of bobbles - too small to distinguish at this distance - appeared between aircraft and ground. There was a flash of sudden red stars within that haze as the energy beams reflected again and again from the multiple mirrors. It was hard to tell if it made an effective shield. Then he noticed the jets staggering out of their dive. One ex-ploded. The other trailed smoke and flame in a long arc toward the ground. Mike suddenly wondered what would happen to a jet engine if it sucked in a dozen two-centimeter bobbles.
Wili's voice came again, "Mike. The Peacers are going to discover that we have been faking their satellite reception."
"When?" asked Wili.
"Any second. They are changing to aircraft reconnais-sance."
Mike looked around him, wishing suddenly that he were on foot. It would be so much easier to hide a human-sized target than a crawler. "So we can't depend on being `invisible' anymore."
"No. We can. I am also speaking with Peacer control on the direct line-of-sight." These last words were spoken by a deep, male voice. Mike started, then realized he was not talking directly to Wili. The fake had a perfect Oregon accent, though the syntax was still Wili's; hopefully that would go unnoticed in the rush of battle. He tried to imagine the manifold images Wili must be projecting to allies and enemies. "They think we're Peacer recon. They have four-teen other crawlers moving around their inner area. As long as we follow their directions, we won't be attacked.... And they want us to move closer in."
Closer in. If Wili could get just another five thousand meters closer, he could bobble the Peacer generator.
"Okay. Just tell us which way to go."
"I will, Mike. But there's something else I want you to do first."
"Sure."
"I'm going to give you a satellite connection to Authority High Command. Call them. Insist to speak with Della Lu. Tell her everything you know about our tricks -"
Mike's hands tightened on the drive sticks. "No!"
" - except that we control these two crawlers."
"But why?"
"Do it, Mike. If you call now, you'll be able to give away our satellite trick before they have proof. Maybe they will think you're still loyal. It will distract them, anyway. Give away anything you want. I'll listen, too. I'll learn more what's passing at their center. Please, Mike."
Mike gritted his teeth. "Okay, Wili. Put 'em on."
Allison Parker grinned savagely to herself. She hadn't driven a crawler in almost three years - fifty-three if you counted years like the rest of the universe. At the time, she'd thought it a silly waste of taxpayer's money to have recon specialists take a tour with a base security outfit. The idea had been that anyone who collected intelligence should be familiar with the groundside problems of security and deception. Becoming a tank driver had been fun, but she never expected to see the inside of one of these things again.
Yet here she was. Allison gunned the engines, and the little armored carrier almost flew out of the thicket of scrub oak where they'd been hiding. She recognized these hills, even with the hovering spheres and napalm bursting in the dis-tance. Time didn't change some things. Their path ran parallel to a series of cairn-like concrete structures, the ruins of the power lines that had stretched across the Valley. Why, she and... Paul... had hiked along precisely this way... so long ago.
She tried to shake free of the painful double images. The sun was fast burning off the morning fog. Soon the conceal-ment the Tinkers were using to such advantage would be gone. If they couldn't win by then, they never would.
In her earphone, she heard a strange voice reporting their position to the Peacer command center. It was eerie: She knew the message came ultimately from Wili. But he was sit-ting right behind her and had not spoken a word. The last time she looked, he seemed asleep.
The deception was working. They were doing what Peacer control said, but they were also coming closer and closer to the edge of the inner security area.
"Paul. What I saw from orbit is only about six thousand meters north of here. We'll be closest in another couple of minutes. Is that close enough?"
Paul touched his scalp connector, seemed to think. "No. We'd have to be motionless for almost an hour to bobble from that range. The best trade-off is still four thousand meters. I - Wili - has a spot in mind; he and Jill are doing prelim computations on the assumption we can reach it. Even so, he'll need about thirty seconds once we get there."
After a moment Paul added, "In a couple minutes, we'll break our cover. Wili will stop transmitting and you'll drive like hell straight for their bobbler."
Allison looked through the periscoped hull. The crawler was so close to the security perimeter, the towers and domes of the Enclave blocked her view to the north. The Enclave was a city, and their final dash would take them well inside its boundaries. "We'll be sitting ducks." Her sentence was punctuated by the swelling roar of a stub-winged jet that swept almost directly over them. She hadn't seen or heard it till that instant. But the aircraft wasn't strafing. It was loafing along at less than one hundred meters per second, a lowlevel recon.
"We have a good chance," Wili's voice came suddenly in her earphone. "We won't make our run until the patrol planes are in good position. We should be in their blind spot for almost five minutes."
"And they'll have other things to worry about," said Paul. "I've been talking to the Tinkers coming in on foot. They all know the site of the Peacer generator now. Some of them have gotten p
retty close, closer than we. They don't have our equipment - but the Authority can't know that for sure. When Wili gives the signal, they'll come out of hiding and make their own dash inwards."
The war went far beyond their crawlers, beyond even the Livermore Valley. Paul said a similar battle was being played out in China.
Even so, victory or defeat seemed to depend on what happened to this one crawler in the next few minutes.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Della slipped on the earpiece and adjusted the microphone to her throat. She had the undivided attention of Avery, Maitland, and everyone else in earshot. None of them except Hamilton Avery had heard of one Miguel Rosas, but they all knew he had no business on a maximum security channel. "Mike?"
A familiar voice came from the earpiece and the speaker on the terminal. "Hello, Della. I've got some news for you."
"Just calling on this line is news enough. So your people have cracked our comm and recon system."
"Right the first time."
"Where are you calling from?"
"The ridgeline southwest of you. I don't want to say more - I still don't trust your friends.... It's just that I trust mine even less." This last was spoken low, almost muttered. "Look. There are other things you don't know. The Tinkers know exactly where your bobbler is hidden."
"What?" Avery turned abruptly to the situation board and motioned for Maitland to check it out.
"How can they know? You have spies? Carry-in bugs?"
Mike's forced chuckle echoed from the speaker. "It's a long story, Della. You would be amused. The old US Air Force had it spotted -just too late to save the world from you. The Tinkers stumbled on the secret only a few weeks ago."
Della glanced questioningly at the Director, but Avery was looking over Maitland's shoulder, at the terminal. The general's people were frantically typing queries, posting results. The general looked up at the Director. "It's possible, sir. Most of the infiltrators are north and west of the Enclave. But the ones closest to the inner zone boundary are also the closest to the generator; they seem to have a preference for that sector."
"It could be an artifact of our increased surveillance in that area."
"Yes, sir." But now Maitland did not sound complacent. Avery nodded to himself. He hadn't believed his own explanation. "Very well. Concentrate tactical air there. I see you have two armored vehicles already tracking along the boundary. Keep them there. Bring in more. I want what infantry we have moved there, too."
"Right. Once we locate them, they're no threat. We have all the firepower."
Della spoke again to Mike. "Where is Paul Hoehler -the man you call Naismith?" Avery stiffened at the question, and his attention returned to her, an almost physical force.
"Look, I really don't know. They have me working a pointer relay; some of our people don't have their own satellite receivers."
Della cut the connection and said to Avery, "I think he's lying, Director. Our only lever on Mike Rosas is his hatred for certain Tinker potentials, in particular bioscience. He'll resist hurting his personal friends."
"He knows Hoehler?" Avery seemed astounded to find someone so close to the ultimate antagonist. "If he knows where Hoehler is..." The Director's eyes unfocused. "You've got to squeeze that out of him, Della. Take this conversation off the speaker and talk to him. Promise him anything, tell him anything, but find Hoehler." With a visible effort he turned back to Maitland. "Get me Tioulang in Beijing. I know, I know. Nothing is secure." He smiled, an almost skeletal grimace. "But I don't care if they know what I tell him."
Della resumed the link with Mike. Now that the speaker was off, his voice would sound in her ear only. And with the throat mike, her side of the conversation would be inaudible to those around her. "This is just you and me now, Mike. The brass thinks they got everything they can out of you."
"Oh yeah? And what do you think?"
"I think some large but unknown percentage of what you are telling me is bullshit."
"I guessed that. But you're still talking."
"I think we're both betting we can learn more than the other from talking. Besides - " Her eyes fixed on the Renaissance trigger box sitting on the table before Hamilton Avery. With a small part of her attention she followed what Avery was saying to his counterpart in Beijing. "Besides, I don't think you know what you're up against."
"Enlighten me."
"The Tinker goal is to bobble the Livermore generator.
Similarly for the attack on Beijing. You don't realize that if we consider the Peace truly endangered, we will embobble ourselves, and continue the struggle decades in the future."
"Hmm. Like the trick we played on you at Mission Pass."
"But on a much larger scale."
"Well, it won't help you. Some of us will wait - and we'll know where to wait. Besides, the Authority's power isn't just in Livermore and Beijing. You need your heavy industry, too."
Bella smiled to herself. Mike's phrasing was tacit admission he was still a Tinker. There were deceptions here deceptions she could penetrate given a little time -but neither of them was pretending loyalties they did not have. Time to give away a little information, information that would do them no good now: "There are a few things you don't know. The Peace has more than two bobble generators."
There was a moment of silence in her ear. "I don't believe you -How many?"
Della laughed quietly. Maitland glanced up at her, then turned back to his terminal. "That is a secret. We've been working on them ever since we suspected Tinker infiltration -spies, we thought. Only a few people know, and we never spoke of it on our comm net. More important than the num-ber is the location; you won't know about them till they come out at you."
There was a longer silence. She had made a point.
"And what other things make 'Peace' unbeatable?" There was sarcasm and something else in his words. In the middle of the sentence, his voice seem to catch - as if he had just lifted something. As was usual with a high-crypto channel, there were no background sounds. But the data massaging left enough in the voice to recognize tones and sublinguistical things like this sudden exhalation. The sound, almost a grunt, had not been repeated. If she could just get him to talk a little more.
There was a secret that might do it. Renaissance. Besides, it was something she owed him, perhaps owed all the enemy. "You should know that if you force this on us, we'll not let you grow strong during our absence. The Authority" - for once calling it `the Peace' stuck in her throat-"has planted nukes in the Valley. And we also have such bombs on rockets. If we bobble up... if we bobble up, your pretty Tinker culture gets bombed back to the Stone Age, and we'll build anew when we come out."
Still a longer silence. Is he talking to someone else? Has he broken the connection? "Mike?"
"Della, why are you on their side?"
He'd asked her that once before. She bit her lip. "I-I didn't dream up Renaissance, Mike. I think we can win without it. The world has had decades now more peaceful than any in human history. When we took over, the race was at the edge of the precipice. You know that. The nation states were bad enough; they would have destroyed civilization if left to themselves. But even worse, their weapons had become so cheap that small groups - some reasonable, some monstrous-would have had them. If the world could barely tolerate a dozen killer nations, how could it survive thousands of psychotics with rad bombs and warplagues?
"I know you understand what I'm saying. You felt that way about bioscience. There are other things as bad, Mike." She stopped abruptly, wondering who was manipulating whom. And suddenly she realized that Mike, the enemy, was one of the few people she could ever talk to, one of the few people who could understand the... things... she had done. And perhaps he was the only person -outside of herself whose disapproval could move her.
"I understand," came Mike's voice. "Maybe history will say the Authority gave the human race time to save itself, to come up with new institutions. You've had fifty years; it hasn't been all bad.... But no mat
ter what either of us wants, it's ending now. And this 'Renaissance' will destroy whatever good you've done." His voice caught again.
"Don't worry. We'll win fair and square and there'll be no Renaissance." She was watching the main display. One of the crawlers had turned almost directly inward, toward the heart of the Enclave. Della cut audio and got the attention of Maitland's aide. She nodded questioningly at the crawler symbol on the display.
The colonel leaned across from his chair and said quietly, "They saw Tinkers within the perimeter. They're chasing."
The symbol moved in little jerks, updated by the nearly manual control they had been reduced to. Suddenly the crawler symbol disappeared from the board. Avery sucked in his breath. An analyst looked at his displays and said almost immediately, "We lost laser comm. They may have been bobbled... or may be out of sight."
Possible. The ground was rough, even inside the Enclave boundary Riding a crawler over that would be an exciting thing.... And then Della understood the mystery in Mike's speech. "Mr. Director." Her shout cut across all other voices. "That crawler isn't looking for the enemy. It is the enemy!"
THIRTY-NINE
While they drove parallel to the perimeter fence, the ground was not too rough. When they turned inward, it would be a different story. There was a system of ditches running along the fence.
Beyond that was the interior of the Enclave. Allison risked a glance every now and then. It was like the future she had always imagined: spires, tall buildings, wide swaths of green. Paul said Authority ground troops were moving into the area, but right now all was peaceful, abandoned.
Wait. Three men came running out of the ditches. They paused at the fence and then were somehow through. Two of them carried heavy backpacks. So these were their Tinker allies. One waved to their crawler and then they disappeared among the buildings.
"Turn here. Follow them inward," said Paul. "Wili's told the Peacer command we're in hot pursuit."
Allison pushed/pulled on the control sticks. The armored vehicle spun on its treads, one reversed, the other still pulling forward. Through the side periscope she saw Mike's crawler, moving off to the north. No doubt Wili had told him not to turn.
