Marooned in Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  Mike laughed, his grip relaxing slightly. “Panic Nikolai Sergeivich? You might as well think to panic a charging bear.”

  Della did not fully plan what she did next, and that was very unusual for her. Her free hand moved up behind his neck, caressing the short cut hair. She raised herself to kiss him. Rosas jerked back for an instant, then responded. After a moment, she felt his weight on her and they slid to the soft padding that covered the floor of the tree house. Her arms roamed across his neck and wide shoulders and the kiss continued.

  She had never before used her body to ensure loyalty. It had never been necessary. It certainly had never before been an attractive prospect. And it was doubtful it could do any good here. Mike had fallen to them out of honor; he could not rationalize the deaths he had caused. In his way, he was as unchangeable as she.

  One of his arms wrapped around her back while his free hand pulled at her blouse. His hand slid under the fabric, across her smooth skin, to her breasts. The caresses were eager, rough. There was rage…and something else. Della stretched out against him, forcing one of her legs between his. For a long while the world went away and they let their passion speak for them.

  …Lightning played its ring dance along the Dome that towered so high above them. When the thunder paused in its following march, they could hear the shish of warm rain continue all around.

  Rosas held her gently now, his fingers slowly tracing the curve of her hip and waist. “What do you get out of being a Peace cop, Della? If you were one of the button-pushers, sitting safe and cozy up in Livermore, I could understand. But you’ve risked your life stooging for a tyranny, and turning me into something I never thought I’d be. Why?”

  Della watched the lightning glow in the rain. She sighed. “Mike, I am for the Peace. Wait. I don’t mean that as rote Authority mumbo jumbo. We do have something like peace all over the world now. The price is a tyranny, though milder than any in history. The price is twentieth-century types like me, who would sell their own grandmothers for an ideal. Last century produced nukes and bobbles and war-plagues. You have been brushed by the plagues—that alone is what turned you into ‘something you never thought you’d be.’ But the others are just as bad. By the end of the century, those weapons were becoming cheaper and cheaper. Small nations were getting them. If the War hadn’t come, I’ll bet subnational groups and criminals would have had them. The human race could not survive mass-death technology so widely spread. The Peace has meant the end of sovereign nations and their control of technologies that could kill us all. Our only mistake was in not going far enough. We didn’t regulate high tech electronics—and we’re paying for that now.”

  The other was silent, but the anger was gone from his face. Della came to her knees and looked around. She almost laughed. It looked as if a small bomb had gone off in the tree house; their clothes were thrown all across the floor pads. She began dressing. After a moment, so did Mike. He didn’t speak until they had on their rain slickers and had raised the trapdoor.

  He grinned lopsidedly and stuck his hand out to Della. “Enemies?” he said.

  “For sure.” She grinned back, and they shook on it.

  And even as they climbed out of the tree, she was wondering what it would take to move old Kaladze. Not panic; Mike was right about that. What about shame? Or anger?

  Della’s chance came the next day. The Kaladze clan had gathered for lunch, the big meal of the day. As was expected of a woman, Lu had helped with the cooking and laying out of the dinnerware, and the serving of the meal. Even after she was seated at the long, heavily laden table, there were constant interruptions to go out and get more food or replace this or that item.

  The Authority channels were full of the “Treason against Peace” trials that Avery was staging in LA. Already there had been some death sentences. She knew Tinkers all across the continent were in frantic communication, and there was an increasing sense of dread. Even the women felt it. Naismith had announced his prototype bobble generator. A design had also been transmitted. Unfortunately, the only working model depended on processor networks and programs that would take the rest of the world weeks to grow. And even then, there were problems with the design that would cost still more time to overcome.

  The menfolk took these two pieces of news and turned lunch into a debate. It was the first time she had seen them talk policy at a meal; it showed how critical the situation was. In principle the Tinkers now had the same ultimate weapon as the Authority. But the weapon was no good to them yet. In fact, if the Authority learned about it before the Tinkers had generators in production, it might precipitate the military attack they all feared. So what should be done about the prisoners in Los Angeles?

  Lu sat quietly through fifteen minutes of this, until it became clear that caution was winning and the Kaladzes were going to keep a low profile until they could safely take advantage of Naismith/Hoehler’s invention. Then she stood up with a shrill, inarticulate shout. The dining hall was instantly silent. The Kaladzes looked at her with shocked surprise. The woman sitting next to her made fluttering motions for her to sit down. Instead, Della shouted down the long table, “You cowardly fools! You would sit here and dither while they execute our people one by one in Los Angeles. You have a weapon now, this bobble generator. And even if you are not willing to risk your own necks, there are plenty of noble houses in Aztlán that are; at least a dozen of their senior sons were taken in La Jolla.”

  At the far end of the table, Nikolai Sergeivich came slowly to his feet. Even at that distance, he seemed to tower over her diminutive 155 centimeters. “Miss Lu. It is not we who have the bobble generator, but Paul Naismith. You know that he has only one, and that it is not completely practical. He won’t give us—”

  Della slammed the flat of her hand on the table, the pistol-shot noise cutting the other off and dragging everyone’s attention back to her. “Then make him! He can’t exist without you. He must be made to understand that our own flesh and blood are at stake here—” She stepped back from the table and looked them all up and down, then put surprise and scorn on her face. “But that’s not true of you, is it? My own brother is one of the hostages. But to you, they are merely fellow Tinkers.”

  Under his stubbly beard, Kaladze’s face became very pale. Della was taking a chance. Publicly disrespectful women were rare here, and when they surfaced—even as guests—they could expect immediate expulsion. But Della had gone a calculated distance beyond disrespect. She had attacked their courage, their manhood. She had spoken aloud of the guilt which—she hoped—was lying just below their caution.

  Kaladze found his voice and said, “You are wrong, madam. They are not merely fellow Tinkers, but our brothers, too.” And Della knew she had won. The Authority would get a crack at that bobble generator while it was still easy pickings.

  She sat meekly down, her eyes cast shyly at the table. Two large tears started down her cheeks. But she said nothing more. Inside, a Cheshire cat smile spread from ear to ear: for the victory, and for the chance to get back at them for all the days of dumb servility. From the corner of her eye, she saw the stricken look on Mike’s face. She had guessed right there, too. He would say nothing. He knew she lied, but those lies were a valid appeal to honor. He was caught, even knowing, in the trap with the others.

  27

  Aztlán encompassed most of what had been Southern and Baja California. It also claimed much of Arizona, though this was sharply disputed by the Republic of New Mexico. In fact, Aztlán was a loose confederation of local rulers, each with an immense estate.

  Perhaps it was the challenge of the Authority Enclave in old Downtown, but nowhere in Aztlán were the castles grander than in North Los Angeles. And of those castles, that of the Alcalde del Norte was a giant among giants.

  The carriage and its honor guard moved quickly up the well-maintained old-world road that led to El Norte’s main entrance. In the darkened interior, a single passenger—one Wili Wáchendon—sat on velvet cushions and liste
ned to the clopclop of the carriage team and outriders. He was being treated like a lord. Well, not quite. He couldn’t get over the look of stunned surprise on the faces of the Aztlán troops when they saw the travel-grimed black kid they were to escort from Ojai to LA. He looked through tinted bulletproof glass at things he had never expected to see—not by daylight anyway. On the right, the hill rose sheer, pocked every fifty meters by machine-gun nests; on the left, he saw a pike fence half-hidden in the palms. He remembered such pikes, and what happened to unlucky burglars.

  Beyond the palms, Wili could see much of the Basin. It was as big as some countries, and—not even counting the Authority personnel in the Enclave—there were more than eighty thousand people out there, making it one of the largest cities on Earth. By now, midafternoon, the wood and petroleum cooking stoves of that population had raised a pall of darkish smoke that hung just under the temperature inversion and made it impossible to see the far hills.

  They reached the southern ramparts and crossed the flagstone perimeter that surrounded the Alcalde’s mansion. They rolled by a long building fronted with incredible sweeps of perfectly matched plate glass. There was not a bullet hole or shatter star to be seen. No enemy had reached this level in many years. The Alcalde had firm control of the land for kilometers on every side.

  The carriage turned inward, and retainers rushed to slide open the glass walls. Wagon, horses, and guard continued inward, past more solid walls; this meeting would take place beyond sight of spying eyes. Wili gathered his equipment. He slipped on the scalp connector, but it was scant comfort. His processor was programmed for one task, and the interface gave him none of the omniscience he felt when working with Jill.

  Wili felt like a chicken at a coyote convention. But there was a difference, he kept telling himself. He smiled at the collected coyotes and set his dusty gear on the glistening floor: This chicken laid bobbles.

  He stood in the middle of the Alcalde’s hall of audience, alone there except for the two stewards who had brought him the last hundred meters from the carriage. Four Jonques sat on a dais five meters away. They were not the most titled nobles in Aztlán—though one of them was the Alcalde—but he recognized the embroidery on their jackets. These were men the Ndelante Ali had never dared to burgle.

  To the side, subordinate but not cringing, stood three very old blacks. Wili recognized Ebenezer, Pasadena Sabio of the Ndelante, a man so old and set in his ways that he had never even learned Spanish. He needed interpreters to convey his wishes to his own people. Of course, this increased his appearance of wisdom. As near as could be over such a large area, these seven men ruled the Basin and the lands to the east—ruled all but the Downtown and the Authority Enclave.

  Wili’s impudence was not lost on the coyotes. The youngest of the Jonque lords leaned forward to look down upon him. “This is Naismith’s emissary? With this we are to bobble the Downtown, and rescue our brothers? It’s a joke.”

  The youngest of the blacks—a man in his seventies—whispered in Ebenezer’s ear, probably translating the Jonque’s comments into English. The Old One’s glance was cold and penetrating, and Wili wondered if Ebenezer remembered all the trouble a certain scrawny burglar had caused the Ndelante.

  Wili bowed low to the seated noblemen. When he spoke it was in standard Spanish with what he hoped was a Middle California accent. It would be best to convince these people that he was not a native of Aztlán. “My Lords and Wise Ones, it is true that I am a mere messenger, a mere technician. But I have Naismith’s invention here with me, I know how to operate it, and I know how it can be used to free the Authority’s prisoners.”

  The Alcalde, a pleasant-looking man in his fifties, raised an eyebrow and said mildly, “You mean your companions are carrying it—disassembled perhaps?”

  Companions? Wili reached down and opened his pack. “No, my Lord,” he said, withdrawing the generator and processor, “this is the bobbler. Given the plans that Paul Naismith has broadcast, the Tinkers should be able to make these by the hundreds within six weeks. For now this is the only working model.” He showed the ordinary-looking processor box around. Few things could look less like a weapon, and Wili could see the disbelief growing on their faces. A demonstration was in order. He concentrated briefly to let the interface know the parameters.

  Five seconds passed and a perfect silver sphere just…appeared in the air before Wili’s face. The bobble wasn’t more than ten centimeters across, but it might have been ten kilometers for the reaction of his audience. He gave it the lightest of pushes, and the sphere—weighing exactly as much as an equivalent volume of air—drifted across the hall toward the nobles. Before it had traveled a meter, air currents had deflected it. The youngest of the Jonques, the loudmouthed one, shed his dignity and jumped off the dais to grab at the bobble.

  “By God, it’s real!” he said as he felt its surface.

  Wili just smiled and imaged another command sequence. A second and a third sphere floated across the room. For bobbles this size, where the target was close by and homogeneous, the computations were so simple he could generate an almost continuous stream. For a few moments his audience lost some of its dignity.

  Finally old Ebenezer raised a hand and said to Wili in English, “So, boy, you have all the Authority has. You can bobble all Downtown, and we go in and pick up the pieces. All their armies won’t stand up to this.”

  Jonque heads jerked around, and Wili knew they understood the question. Most of them understood English and Spañolnegro—though they often pretended otherwise. He could see the processors humming away in their scheming minds: With this weapon, they could do a good deal more than rescue the hostages and boot the Authority out of Aztlán. If the Peacers were to be replaced, why shouldn’t it be by them? And—as Wili had admitted—they had a six weeks’ head start on the rest of the world.

  Wili shook his head. “No, Wise One. You’d need more power—though still nothing like the fusion power the Authority uses. But even more important, this little generator isn’t fast enough. The biggest it can make is about four hundred meters across, and to do that takes special conditions and several minutes setup time.”

  “Bah. So it’s a toy. You could decapitate a few Authority troopers with it maybe, but when they bring out their machine guns and their aircraft you are dead.” Señor Loudmouth was back in form. He reminded Wili of Roberto Richardson. Too bad this was going to help the likes of them.

  “It’s no toy, my Lord. If you follow the plan Paul Naismith has devised, it can rescue all the hostages.” Actually it was a plan that Wili had thought of after the first test, when he had felt Jill’s test bobble sliding around in his arms. But it would not do to say the scheme came from anyone less than Paul. “There are things about bobbles that you don’t know yet, that no one, not even the Authority, knows yet.”

  “And what are those things, sir?” There was courtesy without sarcasm in the Alcalde’s voice.

  Across the hall, a couple entered the room. For an instant all Wili could see was their silhouettes against the piped sky light. But that was enough. “You two!” Mike looked almost as shocked as Wili felt, but Lu just smiled.

  “Kaladze’s representatives,” the Alcalde supplied.

  “By the One God, no! These are the Authority’s representatives!”

  “See here.” It was Loudmouth. “These two have been vouched for by Kaladze, and he’s the fellow who got this all organized.”

  “I’m not saying anything with them around.”

  Dead silence greeted this refusal, and Wili felt sudden, physical fear. The Jonque lords had very interesting rooms beneath their castles, places with…effective…equipment for persuading people to talk. This was going to be like the confrontation with the Kaladzes, only bloodier.

  The Alcalde said, “I don’t believe you. We’ve checked the Kaladzes carefully. We’ve even dismissed our own court so that this meeting would involve just those with the need to know. But”—he sighed, and Wili saw that in s
ome ways he was more flexible (or less trusting, anyway) than Nikolai Sergeivich—“perhaps it would be safer if you only spoke of what must be done, rather than the secrets behind it all. Then we will judge the risks, and decide if we must have more information just now.”

  Wili looked at Rosas and Lu. Was it possible to do this without giving away the secret—at least until it was too late for the Authority to counter it? Perhaps. “Are the hostages still being held on the top floor of the Tradetower?”

  “The top two floors. Even with aircraft, an assault would be suicide.”

  “Yes, my Lord. But there is another way. I will need forty Julian-thirty-three storage cells”—other brands would do, but he was sure the Aztlán make was available—“and access to your weather service. Here is what you have to do…” It wasn’t until several hours later that Wili looked back and realized that the cripple from Glendora had been giving orders to the rulers of Aztlán and the wise men of the Ndelante Ali. If only Uncle Sly could have seen it.

  Early afternoon the next day:

  Wili crouched in the tenement ruins just east of the Downtown and studied the display. It was driven by a telescope the Ndelante had planted on the roof. The day was so clear that the view might have been that of a hawk hovering on the outskirts of the Enclave. Looking into the canyons between those buildings, Wili could see dozens of automobiles whisking Authority employees through the streets. Hundreds of bicycles—property of lower-ranking people—moved more slowly along the margins of the streets. And the pedestrians: There were actually crushes of people on the sidewalks by the larger buildings. An occasional helicopter buzzed through the spaces above. It was like some vision off an old video disk, but this was real and happening right now, one of the few places on Earth where the bustling past still lived.