Across Realtime

TWENTY

Parties and fairs were common among the West Coast Tinkers. Sometimes it was difficult to tell one from the other, so large were the parties and so informal the fairs. As a child, the high points of Rosas' existence had been such events: tables laden with food, kids and oldsters come from kilometers around to enjoy each other's company in the bright outdoors of sunny days or crowded into warm and happy dining rooms while rain swept by outside.

The La Jolla crackdown had changed much of that. Rosas strained to appear attentive as he listened to a Kaladze niece marvel at their escape and long trek back to Middle California. His mind roamed grim and nervous across the scene of their welcome-home party. Only Kaladze's family attended. There was no one from other farms or from Santa Ynez; even Seymour Wentz had not come. The Peacers were not to suspect that anything special was happening at Red Arrow Farm.

But Sy was not totally missing. He and some of the neighbors had shown up on line of sight from their homes inland. Sometime this evening they would have a council of war.

I wonder if I can face Sy and not give away what really happened in La Jolla?

Wilma Wentz - Kaladze's niece and Sy's sister-in-law, a woman in her late forties - was struggling to be heard over music that came from a speaker in a nearby tree. "But I still don't understand how you managed once you reached Santa Barbara. You and a black boy and an Asian woman traveling together. We know the Authority had asked Aztlÿn to stop you. How did you get past the border?"

Rosas wished his face were in shadows, not lit by the pale glow bulbs that were strung between the trees. Wilma was only a woman, but she was clever and more than once had caught him out when he was a child. He must be as careful with her as anyone. He laughed. "It was simple, Wilma - once Della suggested it: We stuck our heads right back into the lion's mouth. We found a Peacer fuel station and climbed into the undercarriage of one of the tankers. No Aztlÿn cop stops one of those. We had a nonstop ride from there to the station south of Santa Ynez." Even so, it had not been fun. There had been kilometer after kilometer of noise and diesel fumes. More than once during the two-hour trip they had nearly fainted, fallen past the spinning axles onto the concrete of Old 101. But Lu had been adamant: Their return must be realistically difficult. No one, including Wili, must suspect.

Wilma's eyes grew slightly round. "Oh, that Della Lu. She is so wonderful. Don't you think?"

Rosas looked over Wilma's head to where Della was making herself popular with the womenfolk. "Yes, she is wonderful." She had them all agog with her tales of life in San Francisco. No matter how much (and how suicidally) he might wish it, she never slipped up. She was a supernaturally good liar. How he hated that small Asian face, those clean good looks. He had never known anyone - man, woman or animal - who was so attractive and yet so evil. He forced his eyes away from her, trying to forget the slim shoulders, the ready smile, the power to destroy him and all the good he had ever done....

"It's marvelous to have you back, Mikey," Wilma's voice was suddenly very soft. "but I'm so sorry for those poor people down at La Jolla and in that secret lab."

And Jeremy. Jeremy who was left behind forever. She was too kind to say it, too kind to remind him that he had not brought back one of those he had been hired to protect. The kindness rubbed unknowingly on deeper guilt. Rosas could not conceal the harshness in his voice. "Don't you worry about the biosci people, Wilma. They were an evil we had to use to cure Wili. As for the others - I promise you we'll get them back." He reached out to squeeze her hand. All but Jeremy.

"Da," said a voice behind him. "We will get all the rest back indeed." It was Nikolai Kaladze, who had snuck up on them with his usual lack of warning. "But now that is what we are ready to discuss, Wilma, my dear."

"Oh." She accepted the implied dismissal, a thoroughly modern woman. She turned to gather up the women and younger men, to leave the important matters to the seniors.

Della looked momentarily surprised at this turn of events. She smiled and waved to Mike just as she left. He would like to think he'd seen anger in her face, but she was too good an actress for that. He could only imagine her rage at being kicked out of the meeting. He hoped she'd been counting on attending it.

In minutes, the party was over, the women and children gone. The music from the trees softened, and insect sounds grew louder. Seymour Wentz's holo remained. His image could almost be mistaken for that of someone sitting at the far end of the picnic table. Thirty seconds passed, and several more electronic visitors appeared. One was on a flat, black-and-white display - someone from very far indeed. Rosas wondered how well his transmission was shielded. Then he recognized the sender, one of the Greens from Norcross. With them, it was probably safe.

Wili drifted in, nodded silently to Mike. The boy had been very quiet since that night in La Jolla.

"All present?" Colonel Kaladze sat down at the head of the table. Images far outnumbered the flesh-and-blood now. Only Mike, Wili, and Kaladze and his sons were truly here. The rest were images in holo tanks. The still night air, the pale glow of bulbs, the aged faces, and Wili - dark, small, yet somehow powerful. The scene struck Rosas like something out of a fantasy: a dark elfin prince, holding his council of war at midnight in faerie-lit forest.

The participants looked at each other for a moment, perhaps feeling the strangeness themselves. Finally, Ivan Nikolayevich said to his father, "Colonel, with all due respect, is it proper that someone so young and unknown as Mr. Wachendon should sit at this meeting?"

Before the eldest could speak, Rosas interrupted, a further breach of decorum. "I asked that he stay. He shared our trip south and he knows more about some of the technical problems we face than any of us." Mike nodded apologetically to Kaladze.

Sy Wentz grinned crookedly at him. "As long as we're ignoring all the rules of propriety, I want to ask about our communications security."

Kaladze sounded only faintly irritated by the usurpations. "Rest assured, Sheriff. This part of the woods is in a little valley, blocked from the inland. And I think we have more confusion gear in these trees than there are leaves." He glanced at a display. "No leaks from this end. If you line-of-sighters take even minimum precautions, we're safe." He glanced at the man from Norcross.

"Don't worry about me. I'm using knife-edges, convergent corridors - all sorts of good stuff. The Peacers could monitor forever and not even realize they were hearing a transmission. Gentlemen, you may not realize how primitive the enemy is. Since the La Jolla kidnappings, we've planted some of our bugs in their labs. The great Peace Authority's electronic expertise is fifty years obsolete. We found re searchers ecstatic at achieving component densities of ten million per square millimeter." There were surprised chuckles from around the table. The Green smiled, baring bad teeth. "In field operations, they are much worse."

"So all they have are the bombs, the jets, the tanks, the armies, and the bobbles."

"Correct. We are very much like Stone Age hunters fighting a mammoth: We have the numbers and the brains, and the other side has the physical power. I predict our fate will 'be similar to the hunters'. We'll suffer casualties, but the enemy will eventually be defeated."

"What an encouraging point of view," Sy put in dryly:

"One thing I would like to know," said a hardware man from San Luis Obispo. "Who put this bee in their drawers? The last ten years we've been careful not to flaunt our best products; we agreed not to bug the Peacers. That's history now, but I get the feeling that somebody deliberately scared them. The bugs we've just planted report they were all upset about high tech stuff they found in their labs earlier this year.... Anybody want to fess up?"

He looked around the table; no one replied. But Mike felt a sudden certainty. There was at least one man who might wish to rub the Authority's nose in the Tinkers' superiority, one man who had always wanted a scrap. Two weeks ago, he would have felt betrayed by the action. Mike smiled sadly to himself; he was not the only person who could risk his friends' lives for a Cause.

The Green shrugged. "If that's all there were to it, they'd do something more subtle than take hostages. The Peacers think we've discovered something that's an immediate threat. Their internal communications are full of demands that someone named Paul Hoehler be found. They think he's in Middle California. That's why there are so many Peacer units in your area, 'Kolya."

"Yes, you're quite right," said Kaladze. "In fact that's the real reason I asked for this meeting. Paul wanted it. Paul Hoehler, Paul Naismith -whatever we call him - has been the center of their fears for a long time. Only now, he may be as deadly as they believe. He may have something that can kill the 'mammoth' you speak of, Zeke. You see, Paul thinks he can generate bobbles without a nuclear power plant. He wants us to prepare-

Wili's voice broke through the ripple of consternation that spread around the table. "No! Don't say more. You mean Paul will not be here tonight, even as a picture?" He sounded panicked.

Kaladze's eyebrows rose. "No. He intends to stay thoroughly... submerged... until he can broadcast his technique. You're the only person he-"

Wili was on his feet now, almost shaking. "But he has to see. He has to listen. He is maybe the only one who will believe me!"

The old soldier sat back. "Believe you about what?"

Rosas felt a chill crawl up his back. Wili was glaring down the table at him.

"Believe me when I tell you that Miguel Rosas is a traitor!" He looked from one visitor to the next but found no response. "It's true, I tell you. He knew about La Jolla from the beginning. He told the Peacers about the lab. He got J- J- Jeremy killed in that hole in the cliffs! And now he sits here while you say everything, while you tell him Paul's plan."

Wili's voice rose steadily to become childish and hysterical. Ivan and Sergei, big men in their late forties, started toward him. The Colonel motioned them back, and when Wili had finished, he responded mildly, "What's your evidence, son?"

"On the boat. You know, the `lucky rescue' Mike is so happy to tell you of?" Wili spat. "Some rescue. It was a Peacer fake."

"Your proof, young man!" It was Sy Wentz, sticking up for his undersheriff of ten years.

"They thought they had me drugged, dead asleep. But I was some awake. I crawled up the cabin stairs. I saw him talking to that puts de la Paz, that monster Lu. She thanked him for betraying us! They know about Paul; you are right. And these two are up here sniffing around for him. They killed Jeremy. They-"

Wili stopped short, seemed to realize that the rush of words was carrying his cause backward.

Kaladze asked, "Could you really hear all they were saying?"

"N-no. There was the wind, and I was very dizzy. But-"

"That's enough, boy." Sy Wentz's voice boomed across the clearing. "We've known Mike since he was younger than you. Me and the Kaladzes shared his upbringing. He grew up here-" not in some Basin ghetto"-and we know where his loyalties are. He's risked his life more than once for customers. Hell, he even saved Paul's neck a couple of years ago."

"I'm sorry, Wili," Kaladze's voice was mild, quite unlike Sy's. "We do know Mike. And after this morning, I'm sure Miss Lu is what she appears. I called some friends in San Francisco: Her folks have been heavy-wagon 'furbishers for years up there. They recognized her picture. She and her brother went to La Jolla, just as she says."

Has she no limits? thought Rosas.

"Caray, I knew you'd not believe. If Paul was here The boy glared at Kaladze's sons. "Don't worry. I'll remain a gentleman." He turned and walked stiffly out of the clearing.

Rosas struggled to keep his expression one of simple surprise. If the boy had been a bit cooler, or Delia a bit less superhuman, it would have been the end of Miguel Rosas. At that moment, he came terribly close to confessing what all the boy's accusations could not prove. But he said nothing. Mike wanted his revenge to precede his own destruction.

TWENTY-ONE

Nikolai Sergeivich and Sergei Nikolayevich were pale mauve sitting on the driver's bench ahead of Wili. The late night rain was a steady hushing all around them. For the last four kilometers, the old Russian's "secret tunnel" had been aboveground: When the cart got too near the walls, Wili could feel wet leaves and coarse netting brush against him. Through his night glasses, the wood glowed faintly warmer than the leaves or the netting, which must be some sort of camouflage. The walls were thickly woven, probably looked like heavy forest from the outside. Now that the roof of the passage was soaked, a retarded drizzle fell upon the four of them. Wili shifted his slicker against the trickle that was most persistent.

Without the night glasses the world was absolutely black. But his other senses had things to tell him about this camouflaged path that was taking them inland, past the watchers the Authority had strung around the farm. His nose told him they were far beyond the groves of banana trees that marked the eastern edge of the farm. On top of the smell of wet wood and roping, he thought he smelled lilacs, and that meant they must be about halfway to Highway 101. He wondered if Kaladze intended to accompany him that far.

Over the creaking of the cart's wheels, he could hear Miguel Rosas up ahead, leading the horses.

Wili's lips twisted, a voiceless snarl. No one had believed him. Here he was, a virtual prisoner of the people who should be his allies, and the whole lot of them were being led through the dark by the Jonque traitor! Wili slipped the heavy glasses back on and glared at the mauve blob that was the back of Rosas' head. Funny how Jonque skin was the same color as his own in the never-never world of the night glasses.

Where would their little trip end? He knew that Kaladze and son thought they were simply going to the end of the tunnel, to let Wili return to Naismith in the mountains. And the fools thought that Rosas would let them get away with it. For twenty minutes he had been almost twitchy, expecting a flash of real light ahead of them, sharp commands backed up by men in Authority green with rifles and stunners, the La Jolla betrayal all over again. But the minutes stretched on and on with nothing but the rain and the creaking of the cart's high wheels. The tunnel bent around the hills, oc-casionally descending underground, occasionally passing across timbers built over washouts. Considering how much it rained around Vandenberg, it must have taken a tremen-dous effort to keep this pathway functioning yet concealed. Too bad the old man was throwing it all away, thought Wili.

"Looks like we're near the end, sir." Rosas' whisper came back softly - ominously? -over the quiet drone of the rain. Wili rose to his knees to look over the Kaladzes' shoulders: The Jonque was pushing against a door, a door of webbed branches and leaves which nevertheless swung smoothly and silently. Brilliant light glowed through the opening. Wili al-most bolted off the cart before his glasses adjusted and he realized that they were still undiscovered.

Wili slipped his glasses off for a second and saw that the night was still as dark as the back of his hand. He almost smiled; to the glasses, there were shades of absolute black. In the tunnel, the glasses had only their body heat to see by. Outside, even under a thick cloud deck, even in the middle of a rainy night, there must be enough ordinary light for them. This gear was far better than the night scope on Jeremy's rifle.

Rosas led the extra horse into the light. "Come ahead." Sergei Nikolayevich slapped the reins, and the cart squeezed slowly through the opening.

Rosas stood in a strange, shadowless landscape, but now the colors in his slicker and face didn't glow, and Wili could see, his features clearly. The bulky glasses made his face un-readable. Wili shinnied down and walked to the center of the open space. All around them the trees hung close. Clouds glowed through occasional openings in the branches. Beyond Rosas, he could see an ordinary-looking path. He turned and looked at the doorway. Living shrubs grew from the cover.

The cart pulled forward until the elder Kaladze was even with the boy. Rosas came back to help the old man down, but the Russian shook his head. "We'll only be here a few minutes," he whispered.

His son looked up from some instrument in his lap. "We're the only man-sized animals nearby, Colonel."

"Good. Nevertheless, we still have much to do tonight back at home." For a moment, he sounded tired. "Wili, do you know why we three came the way out here with you?"

"No, sir." The "sir" came naturally when he talked to the Colonel. Next to Naismith himself, Wili had found more to respect in this man than anyone else. Jonque leaders - and the bosses of the Ndelante Ali - all demanded a respectful manner from their stooges, but old Kaladze actually gave his people something in return.

"Well, son, I wanted to convince you that you are impor-tant, and that what you must do is even more important. We didn't mean insult at the meeting last night; we just know that you are wrong about Mike." He lifted his hand a couple of centimeters, and Wili stifled the fresh pleading that rose to his lips. "I'm not going to try to convince you that you're wrong. I know you believe all you say. But even with such disagreement, we still need you desperately. You know that Paul Naismith is the key to all of this. He may be able to crack the secret of the bobbles. He may be able to get us out from under the Authority."

Wili nodded.

"Paul has told us that he needs you, that without your help his success will be delayed. They're looking for him, Wili. If they get him before he can help us - well, I don't think we'll have a chance. They'll treat us all like the Tinkers in La Jolla. So. We brought Elmir with us." He gestured at the mare Rosas had been leading. "Mike says you learned how to ride in L.A."

Wili nodded again. That was an exaggeration; he knew how not to fall off. With the Ndelante Ali, getaways had occasionally been on horseback.

"We want you to return to Paul. We think you can make it from here. The path ahead crosses under Old 101. You shouldn't see anyone else unless you stray too far south. There's a trucker camp down that way."

For the first time Rosas spoke. "He must really need your help, Wili. The only thing that protects him is his hiding place. If you were captured and forced to talk -"

"I wont talk," Wili said and tried not to think of things he had seen happen to uncooperative prisoners in Pasadena.

"With the Authority there would be no choice."

"So? Is that what happened to you, Jonque senor? Somehow, I don't think you planned from the beginning to betray us. What was it? I know you have fallen for the Chinese bitch. Is that what it was?" Wili heard his voice steadily rising. "Your price is so low?"

"Enough!" Kaladze's voice was not loud but its sharpness cut Wili short. The Colonel struggled off the driving bench to the ground, then bent till his face - eyes still obscured by the night glasses - was even with Wili's. Somehow, Wili could feel those eyes glaring through the dark plastic lenses.

"If anyone is to be bitter, it should be Sergei Nikolayevich and I, should it not? It is I, not you, who lost a grandson to the Authority bobble. If anyone is to be suspicious it should be I, not you. Mike Rosas saved your life. And I don't mean simply that he got you back here alive. He got you in and out of those secret labs; seconds either way and it would be all of you left trapped inside. And what you got in there was life itself. I saw you when you left for La Jolla: if you were so sick now, you would be too weak to afford the luxury of this anger."

That stopped Wili. Kaladze was right, though not about Rosas' innocence. These last eight days had been so busy, so full of fury and frustration, that he hadn't fully noticed: In previous summers his condition had always improved. But since he started eating that stuff, the pain had begun leaching away - faster than ever before. Since getting back to the farm, he had been eating with more pleasure than he had at any time in the last five years.

"Okay. I will help. On a condition."

Nikolai Sergeivich straightened but said nothing. Wili continued, "The game is lost if the Authority finds Naismith. Mike Rosas and the Lu woman maybe know where he is. If you promise - on your honor - to keep them for ten days away from all outside communication, then it will be worth it to me to do as you say."

Kaladze didn't answer immediately. It would be such an easy promise to give, to humor him in his "fantasies," but Wili knew that if the Russian agreed to this, it would be a promise kept. Finally, "What you ask is very difficult, very inconvenient. It would almost mean locking them up. He glanced at Rosas.

"Sure. I'm willing." The traitor spoke quickly, almost eagerly, and Wili wondered what angle he was missing.

"Very well, sir, you have my word." Kaladze extended a thin, strong hand to shake Wili's.

"Now let us be gone, before twilight herself joins our cozy discussions."

Sergei and Rosas turned the horse and cart around and carefully erased the marks of their presence. The traitor avoided Wili's look even as he swung the camouflaged door shut.

And Wili was alone with one small mare in darkest night. All around him the rain splattered just audibly. Despite the slicker, a small ribbon of wet was starting down his back.

Wili hadn't realized how difficult it was to lead a horse in such absolute dark; Rosas had made it look easy. Of course, Rosas didn't have to contend with odd branches which - if not bent carefully out of the way - would swipe the animal across the face. He almost lost control of poor Elmir the first time that happened. The path wound around the hills, disappeared entirely at places where the constant rains had enlarged last season's gullies. Only his visualization of Kaladze's maps saved him then.

It was at least fifteen kilometers to Old 101, a long, wet walk. Still, he was not really tired, and the pain in his muscles was the healthy feeling of exercise. Even at his best, he had never felt quite so bouncy. He patted the thin satchel nestled against his skin and said a short prayer to the One True God for continued good fortune.

There was plenty of time to think. Again and again, Wili came back to Rosas' apparent eagerness to accept house arrest for himself and the Lu woman. They must have something planned. Lu was so clever... so beautiful. He didn't know what had turned Rosas rotten, but he could almost believe that he did it simply for her. Were all chicas chinas like her? He had never seen a lady, black, Anglo, or Jonque, like Della Lu. Wili's mind wandered, imagining several final, victorious confrontations, until - night glasses and all - he almost walked over the edge of a washout half-full of racing water. It took him and Elmir fifteen minutes to get down and back up the mud-slicked sides of the gully, and he almost lost the glasses in the process.

It brought him back to reality. Lu was beautiful like oleander - or better - like a Glendora cat. She and Rosas had thought of something, and if he could not guess what it was, it could kill him.

Hours later he still hadn't figured it out. Twilight couldn't be far off now, and the rain had ceased. Wili stopped where a break in the forest gave him a view eastward. Parts of the sky were clear. They burned with tiny spots of flame. The trees cast multiple shadows, each a slightly different color. A long section of 101 was visible between the shoulders of the hills. There was no traffic, though to the south he saw shifting swaths of light that must be Authority road freighters. There was also a steady glow that might be the truckers' camp Kaladze had mentioned.

Directly below his viewpoint, a forested marsh extended right up to Old 101. The highway had been washed out and rebuilt many times, till it was little more than a timber bridge over the marshlands. He would have his choice of any of a hundred places to cross under.

It was farther away than it looked. By the time they were halfway there, the eastern sky was brightly lit, and Elmir seemed to have more faith in what he was doing.

He chose a lightly traveled path through the wet and started under the highway. Still he wondered what Lu and Rosas had planned. If they couldn't get a message out, then who could? Who knew where to look for Naismith and was also outside of Red Arrow Farm? Sudden understanding froze him in his tracks; Elmir's soft nose knocked him to his knees, but he scarcely noticed. Of course! Poor stupid little Wili, always ready to give his enemies a helping hand.

Wili got to his feet and walked back along Elmir, looking carefully for unwanted baggage. He ran his hand along the underside of her belly, and on the cinch found what he was looking for: The transmitter was large, almost two centimeters across. No doubt it had some sort of timer so it hadn't begun radiating back where the Kaladzes would have been sure to notice. He weighed the device with his hand. It was awfully big, probably an Authority bug. But Rosas could have supplied something more subtle. He went back to the horse and inspected her and her gear again, much more carefully. Then he took off his own clothes and did the same for them. The early morning air was chill, and muck oozed up between his toes. It felt great.

He looked very carefully, but found nothing more, which left him with nagging doubts. If it had just been Lu, he could understand....

And there was still the question of what to do with the bug he had found. He got dressed and started to lead Elmir out from under the roadway. In the distance a rumbling grew louder and louder. The timbers began shaking, showering them with little globs of mud. Finally the land freighter passed directly overhead, and Wili wondered how the wooden trestle structure could take it.

It gave him an idea, though. There was that truckers' camp to the south, maybe just a couple of kilometers away. If he tied Elmir up here, he could probably make it in less than an hour. Not just Authority freighters used the stop. Ordi-nary truckers, with their big wagons and horse teams, would be there, too. It should be easy to sneak up early in the twilight and give one of those wagons a fifty gram hitchhiker.

Wili chuckled out loud. So much for Missy Lu and Rosas. With a little luck, he'd have the Authority thinking Naismith was hiding in Seattle!

TWENTY-TWO

She was trapped in some sort of gothic novel. And that was the least of her problems.

Allison Parker sat on an outcropping and looked off to the north. This far from the Dome the weather was as before, with maybe a bit more rain. If she looked neither right nor left, she could imagine that she was simply on a camping trip, taking her ease in the late morning coolness. Here she could imagine that Angus Quiller and Fred Torres were still alive, and that when she got back to Vandenberg, Paul Hoeh-ler might be down from Livermore for a date.

But a glance to the left and she would see her rescuer's mansion, buried dark and deep in the trees. Even by day, there seemed something gloomy and alien about the build-ing. Perhaps it was the owner. The old man, Naismith, seemed so furtive, so apparently gentle, yet still hiding some terrible secret or desire. And as in any gothic, his servants -themselves in their fifties - were equally furtive and closemouthed.

Of course, a lot of mysteries had been solved these last days, the greatest the first night. When she had brought the old man in, the servants had been very surprised. All they would say was that the "master will explain all that needs ex-plaining." "The master" was nearly unconscious at the time, so that was little help. Otherwise they had treated her well, feeding her and giving her clean, though ill-fitting clothes. Her bedroom was almost a dormer, its windows half in and half out of the roof. The furniture was simple but elegant; the oiled burl dresser alone would have been worth thousands back... where she came from. She had sat on the bright patchwork quilt and thought darkly that there better be some explanations coming in the morning, or she was going to leg it back to the coast, unfriendly armies or no.

The huge house had been still and dead as the twilight deepened. Faint but clear against the silence, Allison could hear the sounds of applause and an audience laughing. It took her a second to realize that someone had turned on a television - though she hadn't seen a set during the day. Ha! Fifteen minutes of programming would probably tell her as much about this new universe as a month of talking to "Bill" and "Irma." She slid open her bedroom door and listened to the tiny, bright sounds:

The program was weirdly familiar, conjuring up memories of a time when she was barely tall enough to reach the "on" switch of her mother's TV "Saturday Night?" It was either that or something very similar. She listened a few moments more, heard references to actors, politicians who had died before she ever entered college. She walked down the stairs, and sat with the Moraleses through an evening of old TV shows.

They hadn't objected, and as the days passed they'd opened up about some things. This was the future, about a half-century forward of her present. They told her of the war and the plagues that ended her world, and the force fields, the "bobbles," that birthed the new one.

But while some things were explained, others became mysteries in themselves. The old man didn't socialize, though the Moraleses said that he was recovered. The house was big and there were many rooms whose doors stayed closed. He - and whoever else was in the house besides the servants - was avoiding her. Eerie. She wasn't welcome here. The Moraleses were not unfriendly and had let her take a good share of the chores, but behind them she sensed the old man wishing she would go away. At the same time, they couldn't afford to have her go. They feared the occupy-ing armies, the "Peace Authority," as much as she did; if she were captured, their hiding place would be found. So they continued to be her uneasy hosts.

She had seen the old man scarcely a handful of times since the first afternoon, and never to talk to. He was in the man-sion though. She heard his voice behind closed doors, sometimes talking with a woman - not Irma Morales. That female voice was strangely familiar.

God, what I wouldn't give for a friendly face right now. Someone to talk to. Angus, Fred, Paul Hoehler

Allison slid down from her rocky vantage point and paced angrily into the sunlight. On the coast, morning clouds still hung over the lowlands. The silver arch of the force field that enclosed Vandenberg and Lompoc seemed to float halfway up the sky. No structure could possibly be so big. Even mountains had the decency to introduce themselves with foothills and highlands. The Vandenberg Bobble simply rose, sheer and in-substantial as a dream. So that glistening hemisphere contained much of her old world, her old friends. They were trapped in timelessness in there, just as she and Angus and Fred had been trapped in the bobble around the sortie craft. And one day the Vandenberg bobble would burst....

Somewhere in the trees beyond her vision there was a cawing; a crow ascended above the pines, circled down at another point. Over the whine of insects, Allison heard padded clopping. A horse was coming up the narrow trail that went past her rock pile. Allison moved back into the shadows and watched.

Three minutes passed and a lone horseman came into view: It was a black male, so spindly it was hard to guess his age, except to say that he was young. He was dressed in dark greens, almost a camouflage outfit and his hair was short and unbraided. He looked tired, but his eyes swept atten-tively back and forth across the trail ahead of him. The brown eyes flickered across her.

"Jill! How did you get so far from the veranda?" The words were spoken with a heavy Spanish accent; at this point it was an incongruity beneath Allison's notice. A broad grin split the boy's face as he slid off the horse and scrambled across the rocks toward her. "Naismith says that-" the words came to an abrupt halt along with the boy himself. He stood an arm's-length away, his jaw sagging in disbelief. `Jill? Is that really you?" He swung his hand in a flat arc toward Allison's midsection. The gesture was too slow to be a blow, but she wasn't taking any chances. She grabbed his wrist.

The boy actually squeaked - but with surprise, not pain. It was as if he could not believe she had actually touched him.

She marched him back to the trail, and they started toward the house. She had his arm behind his back now. The boy did not struggle, though he didn't seem intimidated either. There was more shock and surprise in his eyes than fear.

Now that it was the other guy who was at a disadvantage, maybe she could get some answers. "'you, Naismith, none of you have ever seen me before, yet you all seem to know me. I want to know why." She bent his arm a bit more, though not enough to hurt. The violence was in her voice.

"But, but I have seen you." He paused an instant, then rushed on. "In pictures, I mean."

It might not be the whole truth, but... Perhaps it was like those fantasies Angus used to read. Perhaps she was some-how important, and the world had been waiting for them to come out of stasis. In that case their pictures might be widely distributed.

They walked a dozen steps along the soft, needle-covered path. No, there was something more. These people acted as if they had known her as a person. Was that possible? Not for the boy, but Bill and Irma and certainly Naismith were old enough that she might have known them...before. She tried to imagine those faces fifty years younger. The servants couldn't have been more than children. The old man, he would have been around her own age.

She let the boy lead the way. She was more holding his hand than twisting his arm now; her mind was far away, thinking of the single tombstone with her name, thinking how much someone must have cared. They walked past the front of the house, descended the grade that led to a below-ground-level entrance. The door there was open, perhaps to let in the cool smells of morning. Naismith sat with his back to them, his attention all focused on the equipment he was playing with. Still holding his horse's reins, the boy leaned past the doorway and said, "Paul?"

Allison looked past the old man's shoulder at the screen he was watching: a horse and a boy and a woman stood looking through a doorway at an old man watching a screen that.... Allison echoed the boy, but in a tone softer, sadder, more questioning. "Paul?"

The old man, who just last month had been young, turned at last to meet her.

TWENTY-THREE

There were few places on Earth that were busier or more populous than they had been before the War. Livermore was such a place. At its pre-War zenith, there had been the city and the clusters of commercial and federal labs scattered through the rolling hills. Those had been boom times, with the old Livermore Energy Laboratories managing dozens of major enterprises and a dozen-dozen contract operations from their square-mile reservation just outside of town. And one of those operations, unknown to the rest, had been the key to the future. Its manager, Hamilton Avery's father, had been clever enough to see what could be done with a certain staff scientist's invention, and had changed the course of history.

And so when the old world had disappeared behind silver bobbles, and burned beneath nuclear fireballs, and later withered in the war plagues - Livermore had grown. First from all over the continent and then from all over the planet, the new rulers had brought their best and brightest here. Except for a brief lapse during the worst of the plague years, that growth had been near-exponential. And Peace had ruled the new world.

The heart of Authority power covered a thousand square kilometers, along a band that stretched westward toward the tiny bay towns of Berkeley and Oakland. Even the Beijing and the Paris Enclaves had nothing to compare with Livermore. Hamilton Avery had wanted an Eden here. He had had forty years and the wealth and genius of the planet to make one.

But still at the heart of the heart there was the Square Mile, the original federal labs, their century-old University of California architecture preserved amidst the sweep of one-thousand meter bobbles, obsidian towers, and forested parks.

If the three of us are to meet, thought Avery, what more appropriate place than here? He had left his usual retinue on the greensward which edged the Square Mile. He and a single aide walked down the aged concrete sidewalk toward the gray building with the high narrow windows that had once held central offices.

Away from the carefully irrigated lawns and ornamental forests, the air was hot, more like the natural summer weather of the Livermore Valley. Already Avery's plain white shirt was sticking to his back.

Inside, the air-conditioning was loud and old-fashioned, but effective enough. He walked down ancient linoleum flooring his footsteps echoing in the past. His aide opened the conference room's doors before him and Hamilton Avery stepped forward to meet-or confront-his peers.

"Gentlemen." He reached across the conference table to shake first Kim Tioulang's hand, then Christian Gerrault's. The two were not happy; Avery had kept them waiting. And the hell of it is, I didn't mean to. Crisis had piled on top of crisis these last few hours, to the point that even a lifetime of political and diplomatic savvy was doing him no good.

Christian Gerrault, on the other hand, never had had much time for diplomacy. His piggish eyes were even more recessed in his fat face than they seemed on the video. Or perhaps it was simply that he was angry: "You have a very great deal of explaining to do, monsieur. We are not your servants, to be summoned from halfway around the world."

Then why are you here, you fat fool? But out loud he said, "Christian - Monsieur le Directeur - it is precisely because we are the men who count that we must meet here today."

Gerrault threw up a meaty arm. "Pah! The television was always good enough before."

"The `television,' monsieur, no longer works." The Central African looked disbelieving, but Avery knew Gerrault's people in Paris were clever enough to verify that the Atlantic comsat had been out of action for more than twenty-four hours. It had not been a gradual or partial failure, but an abrupt, total cessation of relayed communication.

But Gerrault simply shrugged, and his three bodyguards moved uneasily behind him. Avery shifted his gaze to Tioulang. The elderly Cambodian, Director for Asia, was not nearly so upset. K.T was one of the originals: He had been a graduate student at Livermore before the War. He and Hamilton and some hundred others picked by Avery's father had been the founders of the new world. There were very few of them left now. Every year they must select a few more successors. Gerrault was the first director from outside the original group. Is this the future? He saw the same question in Tioulang's eyes. Christian was much more capable than he acted, but every year his jewels, his harems, his... excesses, became harder to ignore. After the old ones were gone, would he proclaim himself an emperor - or simply a god?

"K.T, Christian, you've been getting my reports. You know we have what amounts to an insurrection here. Even so, I haven't told you everything. Things have happened that you simply won't believe."

"That is entirely possible," said Gerrault.

Avery ignored the interruption. "Gentlemen, our enemy has spaceflight."

For a long moment there was only the sighing of the airconditioning. Gerrault's sarcasm had evaporated, and it was Tioulang who raised protest. "But Hamilton, the industrial base that requires! The Peace itself has only a small, unmanned program. We saw to it that all the big launch complexes were lost during the War." He realized he was rattling on with the obvious and waited for Avery to continue.

Avery motioned his aide to lay the pictures on the table. "I know, K.T. This should be impossible. But look: A fully functional sortie craft - the type the old USAF was flying just before the War - has crashed near the California-Aztlÿn border. This isn't a model or a mockup. It was totally destroyed in a fire subsequent to its landing, but my people assure me that it had just returned from orbit."

The two directors leaned forward to look at the holos. Tioulang said, "I take your word for this, Hamilton, but it could still be a hoax. I thought all those vehicles were accounted for, but perhaps there has been one in storage all these years. Granted, it is intimidating even as a hoax, but..."

"As you say. But there is no evidence of the vehicle's being dragged into the area - and that's heavy forest around the crash site. We are bringing as much of the wreck as we can back here for a close look. We should be able to discover if it was made since the War or if it is a refurbished model from before. We are also putting pressure on Albuquerque to search the old archives for evidence of a secret US launch site."

Gerrault tipped his massive form back to look at his bodyguards. Avery could imagine his suspicion. Finally the African seemed to reach a decision. He leaned forward and said quietly, "Survivors. Did you find anyone to question?"

Avery shook his head. "There were at least two aboard. One was killed on impact. The other was killed by... one of our investigating teams. An accident." The other's face twisted, and Avery imagined the slow death Christian would have given those responsible for any such accident. Avery had dealt quickly and harshly with the incompetents involved, but he had gotten no pleasure from it. "There was no identification on the crewman, beyond an embroidered name tag. His flightsuit was old US Air Force issue."

Tioulang steepled his fingers. "Granting the impossible, what were they up to?"

"It looks like a reconnaissance mission. We've brought the wreck back to the labs, but there is still equipment we can't identify."

Tioulang studied one of the aerial photos. "It probably came in from the north, maybe even overflew Livermore.

He gave a wan smile. "History repeats. Remember that Air Force orbiter we bobbled? If they had reported what we were up to right at that critical moment... what a different world it would be today."

Days later Avery would wonder why Tioulang's comment didn't make him guess the truth. Perhaps it was Gerrault's interruption; the younger man was not interested in reminiscence. "This then explains why our communication satellites have failed!"

"We think so. We're trying to bring up the old radar watch we maintained through the twenties. It would help if both of you would do this, too.

"However you cut it, it seems we have our first effective opposition in nearly thirty years. Personally, I think they have been with us a long, long time. We've always ignored these 'Tinkers,' assuming that without big energy sources their technology could be no threat to us. `Cottage industry' we called it. When I showed you how far their electronics was ahead of ours, you seemed to think they were at most a threat to my West Coast holdings.

"Now it's clear that they have a worldwide operation in some ways equal to our own. I know there are Tinkers in Europe and China. They exist most places where there was a big electronics industry before the War. You should regard them as much a threat as I do mine."

"Yes, and we must flush out the important ones and... " Gerrault was in his element now. Visions of torture danced in his eyes.

"And," said Tioulang, "at the same time convince the rest of the world that the Tinkers are a direct threat to their safety. Remember that we all need goodwill. I have direct military control over most of China, but I could never keep India, Indonesia, and Japan in line if the people at the bottom didn't trust me more than their governments. There are more than twenty million people in those holdings."

"Ali, that is your problem. You are like the grasshopper, lounging in the summer of public approval. I am the industrious ant," Gerrault looked down at his enormous torso and chuckled at the metaphor, "who has diligently worked to maintain garrisons from Oslo to Capetown. If this is `winter' coming, I'll need no public approval." His eyes narrowed. "But I do need to know more about this new enemy of ours."

He glanced at Avery. "And I think Avery has cleverly provided us with a lever against them. I wondered why you supported their silly chess tournament in Aztlÿn why you used your aircraft to transport their teams from all over the continent. Now I know: When you raided that tournament, you arrested some of the best Tinkers in the world. Oh, no doubt, just a few of them have knowledge of the conspiracy against us, but at the same time they must have many loved ones - and some of those will know more. If, one at a time, we try the prisoners for treason against Peace... why, I think we'll find someone who is willing to talk."

Avery nodded. He would get none of the pleasure out of the operation that Christian might. He would do only what was necessary to preserve the Peace. "And don't worry, K.T, we can do it without antagonizing the rest of our people.

"You see, the Tinkers use a lot of x- and gamma-ray lithography; they need it for microcircuit fabrication. Now, my public affairs people have put together a story that we've discovered the Tinkers are secretly upgrading these etching lasers for use as weapons lasers like the governments had before the War."

Tioulang smiled. "Ah. That's the sort of direct threat that should get us a lot of support. It's almost as effective as claiming they're involved in bioscience research. "

"There." Gerrault raised his hands beneficently to his fellow directors. "We are all happy then. Your people are pacified, and we can go after the enemy with all vigor. You were right to call us, Avery; this is a matter that deserves our immediate and personal attention."

Avery felt grim pleasure in replying, "There is another matter, Christian, at least as important. Paul Hoehler is alive."

"The old-time mathematician you have such a fixation on? Yes, I know. You reported that in hushed and terrified tones several weeks ago."

"One of my best agents has infiltrated the Middle California Tinkers. She reports that Hoehler has succeeded - or is near to succeeding - in building a bobble generator."

It was the second bombshell he had laid on them, and in a way the greater. Spaceflight was one thing; several ordinary governments had had it before the War. But the bobble: For an enemy to have that was as unwelcome and incredible as hell opening a chapel. Gerrault was emphatic: "Absurd. How could one old man fall on a secret we have kept so carefully all these years?"

"You forget, Christian, that one old man invented bobbles in the first place! For ten years after the War, he moved from laboratory to laboratory, always just ahead of us, always working on ways to bring us down. Then he disappeared so thoroughly that only I of all the originals believed he was out there somewhere plotting against us. And I was right; he has an incredible ability to survive."

"I'm sorry, Hamilton, but I have trouble believing, too. There is no hard evidence here, apparently just the word of a woman. I think you always have been overly distressed by Hoehler. He may have had some of the original ideas, but it was the rest of your father's team that really made the invention possible. Besides, it takes a fusion plant and some huge capacitors to power a generator. The Tinkers could never.... " Tioulang's voice trailed off as he realized that if you could hide space-launch facilities, you could certainly do the same for a fusion reactor.

"You see?" said Avery. Tioulang hadn't been in Father's research group, couldn't realize Hoehler's polymath talent. There had been others in the project, but it had been Hoehler on all the really theoretical fronts. Of course, history was not written that way. But stark after all the years, Avery remembered the rage on Hoehler's face when he realized that in addition to inventing "the monster" (as he called it), that the development could never have been kept secret if he had not done the work of a lab full of specialists. It had been obvious the fellow was going to report them to LEL, and Father had trusted only Hamilton Avery to silence the mathematician. Avery had not succeeded in that assignment. It had been his first - and last -failure of resolve in all these years, but it was a failure that refused to be buried.

"He's out there, K.T, he really is. And my agent is Della Lu, who did the job in Mongolia that none of your people could. What she says you can believe.... Don't you see where we are if we fail to act? If they have spaceflight and the bobble, too, then they are our superiors. They can sweep us aside as easily as we did the old-time governments."

TWENTY-FOUR

The sabios of the Ndelante Ali claimed the One True God knows all and sees all.

Those powers seemed Wili's, now that he had learned to use the scalp connect. He blushed to think of all the months he had dismissed symbiotic programs as crutches for weak minds. If only Jeremy - who had finally convinced him to try - could be here to see. If only Roberto Jonque Richardson were here to be crushed.

Jeremy had thought it would take months to learn. But for Wili, it was like suddenly remembering a skill he'd always had. Even Paul was surprised. It had taken a couple of days to calibrate the connector. At first, the sensations coming over the line had been subtle things, unrelated to their real significance. The mapping problem - the relating of sensation to meaning - was what took most people months. Jill had been a big help with that. Wili could talk to her at the same time he experimented with the signal parameters, telling her what he was seeing. Jill would then alter the output to match what Wili most expected. In a week he could communicate through the interface without opening his mouth or touching the keyboard. Another couple of days and he was transferring visual information over the channel.

The feeling of power was born. It was like being able to add extra rooms to his imagination. When a line of reasoning became too complex, he could simply expand into the machine's space. The low point of every day was when he had to disconnect. He was so stupid then. Typing and vocal communication with Jill made him feel like a deaf-mute spelling out letters.

And every day he learned more tricks. Most he discovered himself, though some things - like concentration enhancement and Jill-programming - Paul showed him. Jill could proceed with projects during the time when Wili was disconnected and store results in a form that read like personal memories when Wili was able to reconnect. Using the interface that way was almost as good as being connected all the time. At least, once he reconnected, it seemed he'd been "awake" all the time.

Paul had already asked Jill to monitor the spy cameras that laced the hills around the mansion. When Wili was connected, he could watch them all himself. One hundred extra eyes.

And Wili/Jill monitored local Tinker transmissions and the Authority's recon satellites the same way. That was where the feeling of omniscience came strongest.

Both Tinkers and Peacers were waiting - and preparing in their own ways - for the secret of generating bobbles that Paul had promised. From Julian in the South to Seattle in the North and Norcross in the East, the Tinkers were withdrawing from view, trying to get their gear undercover and ready for whatever construction Paul might tell them was necessary. In the high tech areas of Europe and China, something similar was going on - though the Peace cops were so thick in Europe it was difficult to get away with anything there. Four of that continent's self-producing design machines had already been captured or destroyed.

It was harder to tell what was happening in the world's great outback. There were few Tinkers there - in all Australia, for instance, there were less than ten thousand humans - but the Authority was spread correspondingly thin. The people in those regions had radios and knew of the world situation, knew that with enough trouble elsewhere they might overthrow the local garrisons.

Except for Europe, the Authority was taking little direct action. They seemed to realize their enemy was too numerous to root out with a frontal assault. Instead the Peacers were engaged in an all-out search to find one Paul Naismith before Paul Naismith could make good on his promises to the rest of the world.

Yes, Wili? Nothing was spoken aloud and no keys were tapped. Input/output was like imagination itself. And when Jill responded, he had a fleeting impression of the face and the smile that he would have seen in the holo if he'd been talking to her the old way. Wili could have bypassed Jill; most symbiotic programs didn't have an intermediate surrogate. But Jill was a friend. And though she occupied lots of program space, she reduced the confusion Wili still felt in dealing with the flood of input. So Wili frequently had Jill work in parallel with him, and called her when he wanted updates on the processes she supervised.

Show me the status of the search for Paul.

Wili's viewpoint was suddenly suspended over California. Silvery traces marked the flight paths of hundreds of aircraft. He sensed the altitude and speed of every craft. The picture was a summary of all Jill had learned monitoring the Authority's recon satellites and Tinker reports over the last twenty-four hours. The rectangular crisscross pattern was still centered over Northern California, though it was more diffuse and indecisive than on earlier days.

Wili smiled. Sending Della Lu's bug north had worked better than he'd hoped. The Peacers had been chasing their tails up there for more than a week. The satellites weren't doing them any good. One of the first fruits of Wili's new power was discovering how to disable the comm and recon satellites. At least, they appeared disabled to the Authority. Actually, the recon satellites were still broadcasting but ac cording to an encryption scheme that must seem pure noise to the enemy. It had seemed an easy trick to Wili; once he conceived the possibility, he and Jill had implemented it in less than a day. But looking back - after having disconnected -Wili realized that it was deeper and trickier than his original method of tapping the satellites. What had taken him a winter of mind-busting effort was an afternoon's triviality now.

Of course, none of these tricks would have helped if Paul had not been very cautious all these years; he and Bill Morales had traveled great distances to shop at towns farther up the coast. Many Tinkers thought his hideout was in Northern California or even Oregon. As long as the Peacers didn't pick up any of the few people who had actually visited here-say at the NCC meeting-they might be safe.

Wili frowned. There was still the greatest threat. Miguel Rosas probably did not know the location, though he must suspect it was in Middle California. But Wili was sure Colonel Kaladze knew. It could only be a matter of time before Mike and the Lu woman ferreted out the secret. If subtlety were unsuccessful, then Lu would no doubt call in the Peace goons and try to beat it out of him. Are they still on the farm?

Yes. And there have been no outgoing calls from them. However, the Colonel's ten-day promise lapses tomorrow. Then Kaladze would no doubt let Lu call her "family" in San Francisco. But if she hadn't called in the army already, she must not have anything critical to report to her bosses.

Wili had not told Paul what he knew of Mike and Lu. Perhaps he should. But after trying to tell Kaladze.... Instead he'd been trying to identify Della Lu with independent evidence. More than ten percent of Jill's time was spent in the effort. So far she had nothing definite. The story about relatives in the Bay Area appeared to be true. If he had some way of tapping Peacer communication or records, things would be different. He saw now he should have disabled their recon satellites alone. If their comsats were usable, it would give them some advantage - but perhaps he could eventually break into their high crypto channels. As it was, he knew very little about what went on inside the Authority.

...and sometimes, he really wondered if Colonel Kaladze might be right. Wili had been half-delirious that morning on the boat; Mike and Della had been several meters away. Was it possible he'd misinterpreted what he heard? Was it possible they were innocent after all? No! By the One True God, he had heard what he had heard. Kaladze hadn't been there.

TWENTY FIVE

Sunlight still lay on the hills, but the lowlands and Lake Lompoc were shrouded in blue shadows. Paul sat on his veranda and listened to the news that Wili's electronic spies brought in from all over the world.

There was a small cough and Naismith looked up. For an instant he thought it was Allison standing there. Then he noticed how carefully she stood between him and the holo surface built into the wall. If he moved more than a few centimeters, parts of the image would be cut off: This was only Jill.

"Hi." He motioned for her to come and sit. She stepped forward, careful to generate those little moving sounds that made her projection seem more real, and sat in the image of a chair. Paul watched her face as she approached. There really were differences, he realized. Allison was very pretty, but he had made Jill's face beautiful. And of course the personalities were subtly different, too. It could not have been otherwise considering that he had done his design from memories forty-five years stale (or embellished), and considering that the design had grown by itself in response to his reactions. The real Allison was more outgoing, more impatient. And Allison's mere presence seemed to be changing Jill. The interface program had been much quieter these last days.

He smiled at her, "You've got the new bobble theory all worked out?"

She grinned back and was more like Allison than ever. "Your theory. I do nothing but crunch away-"

"I set up the theory. It would take a hundred lifetimes for me to do the symbolic math and see the theory's significance." It was a game they - he - had played many times before. The back and forth had always made Jill seem so real. "What have you got?"

"Everything seems consistent. There are a lot of things that were barred under your old theory, that are still impossible: It's still impossible to burst a bobble before its time. It's impossible to generate a bobble around an existing one. On the other hand - in theory at least- it should be possible to balk an enemy bobbler."

"Hmm... " Simply carrying a small bobble was a kind of defense against bobble attack - a very risky defense, once noticed: It would force the attacker to project smaller bobbles, or off-center ones, trying to find a volume that wasn't 'banned.' A device that could prevent bobbles from being formed nearby would be a tremendous improvement, and Naismith had guessed the new theory might allow such, but...

"Betcha that last will be an engineering impossibility for a long time. We should concentrate on making a low-power bobbler. That looks hard enough."

"Yes. Wili's right on schedule with that."

Jill's image suddenly froze, then flicked out of existence. Naismith heard the veranda door slide open. "Hi, Paul," came Allison's voice. She walked up the steps. "You out here by yourself?"

"...Yes. Just thinking."

She walked to the edge of the veranda and looked westward. These last weeks, every day had brought more change in Paul's life and in the world beyond the mountains than a normal year. Yet for Allison, it was different. Her world had turned inside out in the space of an hour. He knew the present rate of change was agonizingly slow for her. She paced the stone flags, stopping occasionally to glare off into the sunset at the Vandenberg Bobble.

Allison. Allison. Few old men had dreams come quite so stunningly true. She was so young; her energy seemed to flash about her in every stride, in every quick movement of her arms. In some ways the memories of Allison lost were less hurtful than the present reality. Still, he was glad he had not succeeded in disguising what became of Paul Hoehler.

Allison suddenly looked back at him, and smiled. "Sorry about the pacing."

"No problem. I...."

She waved toward the west. The air was so clear that-except for the lake and the coastline reflected in its base - the Dome was almost invisible. "When will it burst, Paul? There were three thousand of us there the day I left. They had guns, aircraft. When will they come out?"

A month ago he would not have thought of the question. Two weeks ago he couldn't have answered. In those weeks a theory had been trashed and his new theory born. It was totally untested, but soon, soon that would change. "Uh. My answer's still guessing Allison: The Authority technique, the only way I could think of then, is a brute force method. With it, the lifetime is about fifty years. So now I can represent radius or mass as a perturbation series about a fifty-year decay time. The smallest bobbles the Authority made were about ten meters across. They burst first. Your sortie craft was trapped in a thirty-meter bobble; it decayed a little later." Paul realized he was wandering and tried to force his answer into the mold she must want. He thought a moment. "Vandenberg ought to last fifty-five years."

"Five more years. Damn it." She walked back across the veranda. "I guess you'll have to win without them. I was wondering why you hadn't told your friends about me you haven't even told them that time stops inside the bobbles. I thought maybe you expected to surprise the Peacers with their long-dead victims suddenly alive."

"You're close. You, me, Wili, and the Moraleses are the only ones who know. The Authority hasn't guessed - Wili says they've carted your orbiter up to Livermore as if it were full of clues. No doubt the fools think they've stumbled on some new conspiracy.... But then, I guess it's not so stupid. I'll bet you didn't have any paper records aboard the orbiter."

"Right. Even our notepads were display flats. We could trash everything in seconds if we fell among unfriendlies. The fire would leave them with nothing but slagged optical memory. And if they don't have the old fingerprint archives, they're not going to identify Fred or Angus."

"Anyway, I've told the Tinkers to be ready, that I'm going to tell them how to make bobble generators. Even then, I may not say anything about the stasis effect. That's some thing that could give us a real edge, but only if we use the knowledge at the right time. I don't want some leak to blow it...

Allison turned as if to pace back to the edge of the veranda, then noticed the display that Paul had been studying. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder as she leaned over to look at the displays. "Looks like a recon pattern," she said.

"Yes. Wili and Jill synthesized it from the satellites we're tapping. This shows where Authority aircraft have been searching."

"For you."

"Probably" He touched the keyboard at the margin of the flat, and the last few days' activity were displayed.

"Those bums." There was no lightness in her voice. "They destroyed our country and then stole our own procedures. Those search patterns look SOP 1997 for medium level air recon. I bet your damn Peacers never had an original thought in their lives.... Hmm. Run that by again." She knelt to look closely at the daily summaries. "I think today's sorties were the last for that area, Paul. Don't be surprised if they move the search several hundred klicks in the next day or two." In some ways, Allison's knowledge was fifty years dead and useless - in other ways, it could be just what they needed.

Paul gave a silent prayer of thanks to Hamilton Avery for having kept the heat on all these years, for having forced Paul Hoehler to disguise his identity and his location through decades when there would have otherwise been no reason to. "If they shift further north, fine. If they come all the way south. Hmm. We're well hidden, but we wouldn't last more than a couple days under that sort of scrutiny. Then... " He drew a finger across his throat and made a croaking noise.

"No way you could put this show on the road, huh?"

"Eventually we could. Have to start planning for it. I have an enclosed wagon. It may be big enough for the essential equipment. But right now, Allison... Look, we don't yet have anything but a lot of theories. I'm translating the physics into problems Wili can handle. With Jill, he's putting them into software as fast as he can."

"He seems to spend his time daydreaming, Paul."

Naismith shook his head. "Wili's the best." The boy had picked up symbiotic programming faster than Paul had ever seen, faster than he'd thought possible. The technique improved almost any programmer, but in Wili's case, it had turned a first-rank genius into something Naismith could no longer completely understand. Even when he was linked with Wili and Jill, the details of their algorithms were beyond him. It was curious, because off the symbiosis Wili was not that much brighter than the old man. Paul wondered if he could have been that good, too, if he had started young. "I think we're nearly there, Allison. Based on what we understand now, it ought to be possible to make bobbles with virtually no energy input. The actual hardware should be something Jill can prototype here."

Allison didn't come off her knees. Her face was just centimeters from his. "That Jill program is something. Just the motion holo for the face would have swamped our best array processors.... But why make it look like me, Paul? After all those years, did I really mean so much?"

Naismith tried to think of something flippant and diversionary, but no words came. She looked at him a second longer, and he wondered if she could see the young man trapped within.

"Oh, Paul." Then her arms were around him, her cheek next to his.

She held him as one would hold something very fragile, very old.

Two days later, Wili was ready.

They waited till after dark to make the test. In spite of Paul's claims, Wili wasn't sure how big the bobble would be, and even if it did not turn out to be a monster, its mirrorlike surface would be visible for hundreds of kilometers to anyone looking in the right direction in the daytime.

The three of them walked to the pond north of the house. Wili carried the bulky transmitter for his symb link. Near the pond's edge he set his equipment down and slipped on the scalp connector. Then he lit a candle and placed it on a large tree stump. It was a tiny spot of yellow, bright only because all else was so dark. A gray thread of smoke rose from the glow.

"We think the bobble, it will be small, but we don't want to take chances. Jill is going to make its lower edge to snip the top of this candle. Then if we're wrong, and it is huge -"

"Then as the night cools, the bobble will rise and be just another floater. By morning it could be many kilometers from here." Paul nodded. "Clever...."

He and Allison backed further away, Wili following. From thirty meters, the candle was a flickering yellow star on the stump. Wili motioned them to sit; even if the bobble was super-large, its lower surface would still clear them.

"You don't need any power source at all?" said Allison. "The Peace Authority uses fusion generators and you can do it for free?"

"In principle, it isn't difficult-once you have the right insight, once you know what really goes on inside the bobbles. And the new process is not quite free. We're using about a thousand joules here -compared to the gigajoules of the Authority generators. The trade-off is in complexity. If you have a fusion generator backing you up, you can bobble practically anything you can locate. But if you're like us, with solar cells and small capacitors, then you must finesse it.

"The projection needs to be supervised, and it's no ordinary process control problem. This test is about the easiest case: The target is motionless, close by, and we only want a one-meter field. Even so, it will involve- how much crunching do we need, Wili?"

"She needs thirty seconds initial at about ten billion flops, and then maybe one microsecond for 'assembly' - at something like a trillion."

Paul whistled. A trillion floating-point operations per second! Wili had said he could implement the discovery, but Paul hadn't realized just how expensive it might be. The gear would not be very portable. And long distance or very large bobbles might not be feasible.

Wili seemed to sense his disappointment. "We think we can do it with a slower processor. It maybe takes many minutes for the setup, but you could still bobble things that don't move or are real close."

"Yeah, we'll optimize later. Let's make a bobble, Wili."

The boy nodded.

Seconds passed. Something - an owl - thuttered over the clearing, and the candle went out. Nuts. He had hoped it would stay lit. It would have been a nice demonstration of the stasis effect to have the candle still burning later on when the bobble burst.

"Well?" Wili said. "What do you think?"

"You did it!" said Paul. The words were somewhere between a question and an exclamation.

Jill did, anyway. I better grab it before it floats away."

Wili slipped off the scalp connector and sprinted across the clearing. He was already coming back before Naismith had walked halfway to the tree stump. The boy was holding something in front of him, something light on top and dark underneath. Paul and Allison moved close. It was about the size of a large beach ball, and in its upper hemisphere he could see reflected stars, even the Milky Way, all the way down to the dark of the tree line surrounding the pond. Three silhouettes marked the reflections of their own heads. Naismith extended his hand, felt it slide silkily off the bob-ble, felt the characteristic blood-warm heat - the reflection of his hand's thermal radiation.

Wili had his arms extended around its girth and his chin pushed down on the top. He looked like a comedian doing a mock weight lift. "It feels like it will shoot from my hands if I don't hold it every way."

"Probably could. There's no friction."

Allison slipped her hand across the surface. "So that's a bobble. Will this one last fifty years, like the one... Angus and I were in?"

Paul shook his head. "No. That's for big ones done the old way. Eventually, I expect to have very flexible control, with duration only loosely related to size. How long does Jill es-timate this one will last, Wili?"

Before the boy could reply, Jill's voice interrupted from the interface box. "There's a PANS bulletin coming over the high-speed channels. It puffs out to a thirty-minute pro-gram. I'm summarizing:

"Big story about threat to the Peace. Biggest since Huachuca plaguetime. Says the Tinkers are the villains. Their leaders were captured in La Jolla raids last month.... The broadcast has video of Tinker `weapons labs,' pictures of sinister-looking prisoners....

"Prisoners to be tried for Treason against the Peace, start-ing immediately, in Los Angeles.

"... all government and corporate stations must rebroad-cast this at normal speed every six hours for the next two days."

There was a long silence after she finished. Wili held up the bobble. "They picked the wrong time to put the squeeze on us!"

Naismith shook his head. "It's the worst possible time for us. We're being forced to use this," he patted the bobble, "when we've barely got a proof of principle. It puts us right where that punk Avery wants us."

TWENTY-SIX

The rain was heavy and very, very warm. High in the clouds, lightning chased itself around and around the Van-denberg Dome, never coming to Earth. Thunder followed the arching, cloud-smeared glows.

Della Lu had seen more rain the last two weeks than would fall in a normal year in Beijing. It was a fitting back-drop for the dull routine of life here. If Avery hadn't finally gone for the spy trials, she would be seriously planning to es-cape Red Arrow hospitality - blown cover or not.

Hey, you tired already? Or just daydreaming?" Mike had stopped and was looking back at her. He stood, arms akimbo, apparently disgusted. The transparent rain jacket made his tan shirt and pants glint metallic even in the gray light.

Della walked a little faster to catch up. They continued in silence for a hundred meters. No doubt they made an amus-ing pair: Two figures shrouded in rain gear, one tall, one so short. Since Wili's ten-day "probation period" had lapsed, the two of them had taken a walk every day. It was something she had insisted on, and - for a change - Rosas hadn't resisted. So far she had snooped as far north as Lake Lompoc and east to the ferry crossing.

Without Mike, her walks would've had to be with the womenfolk. That would have been tricky. The women were protected, and had little freedom or responsibility. She spent most of every day with them, doing the light manual labor that was considered appropriate to her sex. She had been careful to be popular, and she had learned a lot, but all local intelligence. Just as with families in San Francisco, the women were not privy to what went on in the wider world. They were valued, but second-class, citizens. Even so, they were clever; it would have been difficult to look in the places that really interested her without raising their suspicions.

Today was her longest walk, up to the highlands that over-looked Red Arrow's tiny sea landing. Despite Mike's passive deceptions, she had put together a pretty good picture of Old Kaladze's escape system. At least she knew its magnitude and technique. It was a small payoff for the boredom and the feeling that she was being held offstage from events she should be directing.

All that could change with the spy trials. If she could just light a fire under the right people....

The timbered path went back and forth across the hill they climbed. There were many repairs, and several looked quite recent, yet there were also washouts. It was like most things among the Tinkers. Their electronic gadgets were superlative (though it was dear now that the surveillance devices Avery had discovered were rare and expensive items amongst the Tinkers; they didn't normally spy on each other). But they were labor poor, and without power equipment, things like road maintenance and laundry were distinctly nineteenth century. And Della had the calluses to prove it.

Finally they reached the overlook. A steady breeze swept across the hill, blowing the rain into their faces. There was only one tree at the top, though it was a fine, large conifer growing from the highest point. There was some kind of platform about halfway up.

Rosas put his arm across her shoulder, urging her toward the tree. "They had a tree house up here when I was a kid. There ought to be a good view."

Wood steps were built into the tree trunk. She noticed a heavy metallic cable that followed the steps upward. Electronics even here? Then she realized that it was a lightn-ing guide. The Tinkers were very careful with their children.

Seconds later they were on the platform. The cabin was clean and dry with soft padding on the floor. There was a view south and west, somehow contrived to keep out the wind and rain. They shrugged out of their rain jackets and sat for a moment, enjoying the sound of wet that surrounded this pocket of dry comfort. Mike crawled to the south facing -window. "A lot of good it will do you, but there it is."

The forested hills dropped away from the overlook. The coast was about four kilometers away, but the rain was so heavy that she had only a vague impression of sand dunes and marching surf. It looked like there was a small break-water, but no boats at anchor. The landing was not actually on Red Arrow property, but they used it more than anyone else. Mike claimed that more people came to the farm from the ocean than overland. Della doubted that. It sounded like another little deception.

The undersheriff backed away from the opening and leaned against the wall beside her. "Has it really been worth it, Della?" There was a faint edge in his voice. It was clear by now that he had no intention of denouncing her - and im-plicating himself at the same time. But he was not hers. She had dealt with traitors before, men whose self-interest made them simple, reliable tools. Rosas was not such. He was wait-ing for the moment when the damage he could do her would be greatest. Till then he played the role of reluctant ally.

Indeed, had it been worth the trouble? He smiled, almost triumphantly. "You've been stuck here for more than two weeks. You've learned a little bit about one small corner of the ungoverned lands, and one group of Tinkers. I think you're more important to the Peacers than that. You're like a high-value piece voluntarily taken out of the game."

Della smiled back. He was saying aloud her own angry thoughts. The only thing that had kept her going was the thought that just a little more snooping might ferret out the location of Paul Hoehler/Naismith. It had seemed such an easy thing. But she gradually realized that Mike - and al-most everyone else - didn't know where the old man lived. Maybe Kaladze did, but she'd need an interrogation lab to pry it out of him. Her only progress along that line had been right at the beginning, when she tagged the black boy's horse with a tracer.

Hallelujah, all that had changed. There was a chance now that she was in the best of strategic positions.

Mike's eyes narrowed, and Della realized he sensed some of her triumph. Damn. They had spent too much time together, had too many conversations that were not superficial. His hand closed on her upper arm and she was pulled close to his face. "Okay. What is it? What are you going to spring on us?" Her arm suddenly felt as though trapped in a vice.

Della suppressed reflexes that would have left him gargling on a crushed windpipe. Best that he think he had the age-old macho edge. She pretended shocked speechlessness. How much to say? When they were alone, Mike often spoke of her real purpose at Red Arrow. She knew he wasn't trying to compromise her to hidden listeners - he could do that directly whenever he chose. And he knew Red Arrow so well, it was unlikely they would be bugged without his knowledge. So the only danger was in telling him too much, in giving him the motive to blow the whole game. But maybe she should tell him a little; if it all came as a surprise, he might be harder to control. She tried to shrug. "I've got a couple maybes going for me. Your friend Hoehler - Naismith - says he has a prototype bobble generator. Maybe he does. In any case, it will be a while before the rest of you can build such. In the meantime, if the Peace can throw you off balance, can get you and Naismith to overextend yourselves..."

"The trials."

"Right." She wondered what Mike's reaction would be if he knew that she had recommended immediate treason trials for the La Jolla hostages. He'd made sure there were Kaladzes in earshot when she was allowed to call her family in San Francisco. She had sounded completely innocent, just telling her parents that she was safe among the Middle California Tinkers, though she mustn't say just where. No doubt Rosas guessed that some sort of prearranged signal scheme was being used, but he could never have known how elaborate it was. Tone codes were something that went right by native speakers of English. "The trials. If they could be used to panic Kaladze and his friends, we might get a look at Naismith's best stuff before it can do the Peace any real harm."

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 move 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 warplagues. 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 look 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 L.A. 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 be- came clear that caution was winning and the Kaladzes were going to keep a low profile until they could safely take ad-vantage 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 Aztlÿn 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 pistolshot 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 calcu-lated 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.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Aztlÿn 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, Aztlÿn 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 Aztlÿn 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 Wachendon - sat on velvet cushions and listened 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 Aztlÿn troops when they saw the travel-grimed black kid they were to escort from Ojai to L.A. 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 remember 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 Aztlÿn - 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 Aztlÿn. "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 Spanolnegro through 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 Aztlÿn 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." Senor Loud mouth 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 all this 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 some 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-33 storage cells" - other brands would do, but he was sure the Aztlÿn 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 Aztlÿn and the wisemen 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.

Wili shut down the display and looked up at the faces both Jonque and black - that surrounded him. "That's not too much help for this job. Winning is going to depend on how good your spies are."

"They're good enough." It was Ebenezer's sour-faced aide. The Ndelante Ali was a big organization, but Wili had a dark suspicion that the fellow recognized him from before. Getting home to Paul would depend on keeping his "friends" here intimidated by Naismith's reputation and gadgets. "The Peacers like to be served by people as well as machines. The Faithful have been in the Tradetower as late as this morning. The hostages are all on the top two floors. The next two floors are empty and alarm-ridden, and below that is at least one floor full of Peace Troopers. The utility core is also occupied, and you notice there is a helicopter and fixed-wing patrol. You'd almost think they're expecting a twentieth century armored assault, and not..."

And not one scrawny teenager and his miniature bobble blower, Wili silently completed the other's dour implication. He glanced at his hands: skinny maybe, but if he kept gaining weight as he had been these last weeks, he would soon be far from scrawny. And he felt like he could take on the Authority and the Jonques and the Ndelante Ali all at once. Wili grinned at the sabio. "What I've got is more effective than tanks and bombs. If you're sure exactly where they are, I'll have them out by nightfall." He turned to the Alcalde's man, a mild-looking old fellow who rarely spoke but got unnervingly crisp obedience from his men. "Were you able to get my equipment upstairs?"

"Yes, sir," Sir!

"Let's go, then." They walked back into the main part of the ruin, carefully staying in the shadows and out of sight of the aircraft that droned overhead. The tenement had once been thirty meters high, with row on row of external balconies looking west. Most of the facing had long ago collapsed, and the stairwells were exposed to the sky. The Alcalde's man was devious, though. Two of the younger Jonques had climbed an interior elevator shaft and rigged a sling to hoist the gear and their elders to the fourth-storey vantage point that Wili required.

One by one, Ndelante and Jonques ascended. Wili knew such cooperation between the blood enemies would have been a total shock to most of the Faithful. These groups fought and killed under other circumstances-and used each other to justify all sorts of sacrifices from their own peoples. Those struggles were real and deadly, but the secret cooperation was real, too. Two years earlier, Wili had chanced on that secret; it was what finally turned him against the Ndelante.

The fourth-floor hallway creaked ominously under their feet. Outside it had been hot; in here it was like a dark oven. Through holes in the ancient linoleum, Wili could see into the wrecks of rooms and hallways below. Similar holes in the ceiling provided the hallway's only light. One of the Jonques opened a side door and stood carefully apart as Wili and the Ndelante people entered.

More than a half-tonne of Julian-33 storage cells were racked against an interior wall. The balcony side of the room sagged precariously. Wili unpacked the processor and the bobble generator and set about connecting them to the Julians. The others squatted by the wall or in the hallway beyond. Rosas and Lu were here; Kaladze's representatives could not be denied, though Wili had managed to persuade the Alcalde's man to keep them - especially Della - away from the equipment, and away from the window.

Della looked up at him and smiled a strange, friendly smile; strange because no one else was looking to be taken in by the lie. When will she make her move? Would she try to signal to her bosses, or somehow steal the equipment herself? Last night, Wili had thought long and hard about how to defeat her. He had the self-bobbling parameters all ready. Bobbling himself and the equipment would be a last resort, since the current model didn't have much flexibility - he would be taken out of the game for about a year. More likely, one of them was going to end up very dead this day, and no wistful smile could change that.

He dragged the generator and its power cables and camouflage bag close to the ragged edge of the balcony. Under him the decaying concrete swayed like a tiny boat. It felt as if there was only a single support spar left. Great. He centered his equipment over the imagined spar and calibrated the mass- and ranging-sensors. The next minutes would be critical. In order that the computation be feasibly simple, the generator had to be clear of obstacles. But this made their operation relatively exposed. If the Authority had had anything like Paul's surveillance equipment, the plan would not have stood a chance.

Wili wet his finger and held it into the air. Even here, almost out of doors, the day was stifling. The westerly breeze barely cooled his finger. "How hot is it?" he asked unnecessarily; it was obviously hot.. enough

"Outside air temperature is almost thirty-seven. That's about as hot as it ever gets in L.A., and it's the high for today."

Wili nodded. Perfect. He rechecked the center and radius coordinates, started the generator's processor, and then crawled back to the others by the inner wall. "It takes about five minutes. Generating a large bobble from two thousand meters is almost too much for this processor."

"So," Ebenezer's man gave him a sour smile, "you are going to bobble something. Are you ready to share the secret of just what? Or are we simply to watch and learn?"

On the far side of the room, the Alcalde's man was silent, but Wili sensed his attention. Neither they nor their bosses could imagine the bobble's being used as anything but an offensive weapon. They were lacking one critical fact, a fact that would become known to all -including the Authority -very soon.

Wili glanced at his watch: two minutes to go. There was no way he could imagine Della preventing the rescue now. And he had some quick explaining to do, or else -when his allies saw what he had done -he might have deadly problems. "Okay," he said finally. "In ninety seconds, my gadget is going to throw a bobble around the top floors of the Tradetower."

"What?" The question came from four mouths, in two languages. The Alcalde's man, so mild and respectful, was suddenly at his throat. He held up his hand briefly as his men started toward the equipment on the balcony. His other hand pressed against Wili's windpipe, just short of pain, and Wili realized that he had seconds to convince him not to topple the generator into the street. "The bobble will... pop... later.... Time... stops inside," choked Wili. The pressure on his throat eased; the goons edged back from the balcony. Wili saw Jonque and sabio trade glances. There would have to be a lot more explanations later, but for now they would cooperate.

A sudden, loud click marked the discharge of the Julians. All eyes looked westward through the opening that once held a sliding glass door. Faint "ah"s escaped from several pairs of lips.

The top of the Tradetower was in shadow, surmounted and dwarfed by a four-hundred-meter sphere.

"The building, it must collapse," someone said. But it didn't. The bobble was only as massive as what it enclosed, and that was mostly empty air. There was a long moment of complete silence, broken only by the far, tiny wailing of sirens. Wili had known what to expect, but even so it took an effort to tear his attention from the sky and surreptitiously survey the others.

Lu was staring wide-eyed as any; even her schemes were momentarily submerged. But Rosas: The undersheriff looked back into Wili's gaze, a different kind of wonder on his face, the wonder of a man who suddenly discovers that some of his guilt is just a bad dream. Wili nodded faintly at him. Yes, Jeremy is still alive, or at least will someday live again. You did not murder him, Mike.

In the sky around the Tradetower, the helicopters swept in close to the silver curve of the bobble. From further up they could hear the whine of the fixed-wing patrol spreading in greater and greater circles around the Enclave. They had stepped on a hornets' nest and now those hornets were doing their best to decide what had happened and to deal with the enemy. Finally, the Jonque chief turned to the Ndelante sabio. "Can your people get us out from under all this?"

The black cocked his head, listening to his earphone, then replied, "Not till dark. We've got a tunnel head about two hundred meters from here, but the way they're patrolling, we probably couldn't make it. Right after sunset, before things cool off enough for their heat eyes to work good, that'll be the best time to sneak back. Till then we should stay away from windows and keep quiet. The last few months they've improved. Their snooper gear is almost as good as ours now."

The lot of them -blacks, Jonques, and Lu - moved carefully back into the hallway. Wili left his equipment sitting near the edge of the balcony; it was too risky to retrieve it just now. Fortunately, its camouflage bag resembled the nondescript rubble that surrounded it.

Wili sat with his back against the door. No one was going to get to the generator without his knowing it.

From in here, the sounds of the Enclave were fainter, but soon he heard something ominous and new: the rattle and growl of tracked vehicles.

After they were settled and lookouts were posted at the nearest peepholes, the sabio sat beside Wili and smiled. "And now, young friend, we have hours to sit, time for you to tell us just what you meant when you said that the bobble will burst, and that time stops inside." He spoke quietly, and considering the present situation -it was a reasonable question. But Wili recognized the tone. On the other side of the hallway, the Alcalde's man leaned forward to listen. There was just enough light in the musty hallway for Wili to see the faint smile on Lu's face.

He must mix truth and lies just right. It would be along afternoon.

TWENTY-EIGHT

The hallway was brighter now. As the sun set, its light came nearly horizontally through the rips near the ceiling and splashed bloody light down upon them. The air patrols had spread over a vast area, and the nearest tanks were several thousand meters away; Ebenezer's man had coordinated a series of clever decoy operations -the sort of thing Wili had seen done several times against the Jonques.

"iDel Nico Dio!" It was almost a shriek. The lookout at the end of the hall jumped down from his perch. "It's happen-ing. Just as he said. It's flying!"

Ebenezer's sabio made angry shushing motions, but the group moved quickly to the opening, the sabio and chief Jon-que forcing their way to the front. Wili crawled between them and looked through one of the smaller chinks in the plaster and concrete: The evening haze was red. The sun sat half-dissolved in the deeper red beyond the Enclave towers.

And hanging just above the skyline was a vast new moon, a dark sphere edged by a crescent of red: The bobble had risen off the top of the Tradetower and was slowly drifting with the evening breeze toward the west.

"Mother of God," the Alcalde's man whispered to himself. Even with understanding, this was hard to grasp. The bobble, with its cargo of afternoon air, was lighter than the evening air around it, was the largest hot air balloon in history. And sailing into the sunset with it went the Tinker hostages. The noise of aircraft came louder, as the hornets returned to their nest and buzzed around this latest development. One of the insects strayed too close to the vast smooth arc. Its rotor shattered; the helicopter fell away, turning and turning.

The sabio glanced down at Wili. "You're sure it will come inland?"

"Yes. Uh, Naismith studied the wind patterns very carefully. It's just a matter of time - weeks at most - before it grounds in the mountains. The Authority will know soon enough - along with the rest of the world - the secret of the bobbles, but they won't know just when this one will burst. If the bobble ends up far enough away, the other problems we are going to cause them will be so big they won't post a permanent force around it. Then, when it finally bursts..."

"I know, I know. When it finally bursts we're there to rescue them. But ten years is long to sleep."

It would actually be one year. That had been one of Wili's little lies. If Lu and the Peacers didn't know the potential for short-lived bobbles, then It suddenly occurred to him that Della Lu was no longer in his sight. He turned quickly from the wall and looked down the hallway. But she and Rosas were still there, sitting next to a couple of Jonque goons who had not joined the crush at the peephole. "Look, I think we should try to make it back to the tunnel now. The Peacers have plenty of new problems, and it's pretty dark down in the street."

Ebenezer's man smiled. "Now, what would you know about evading armed men in the Basin?" More than ever Wili was sure the sabio recognized him, but for now the other was not going to make anything of it. He turned to the Jonque chief. "The boy's probably right."

Wili retrieved the generator, and one by one they descended via the rope sling to the ruined garages below the apartment house. The last man slipped the rope from its mooring. The blacks spent several minutes removing all ground-level signs of their presence. The Ndelante were careful and skilled. There were ways of covering tracks in the ruins, even of restoring the patina of dust in ancient rooms. For forty years the depths of the L.A. Basin had been the ultimate fortress of the Ndelante; they knew their own turf.

Outside, the evening cool had begun. Two of the sabio's men moved out ahead, and another two or three brought up the rear. Several carried night scopes. It was still light enough to read by; the sky above the street was soft red with occasional patches of pastel blue. But it was darkening quick-- ly, and the others were barely more than shadows. Wili could sense the Jonques' uneasiness. Being caught at nightfall deep in the ruins would normally be the death of them. The high-level conniving between the Ndelante and the bosses of Aztlÿn did not ordinarily extend down to these streets.

Their point men led them through piles of fallen concrete; they never actually stepped out into the open street. Wili hitched up his pack and fell back slightly, keeping Rosas and Lu ahead of him. Behind him, he could hear the Jonque chief and - much quieter -Ebenezer's sabio.

Out of the buzzing of aircraft, the sound of a single helicopter came louder and louder. Wili and the others froze, then crouched down in silence. The craft was closer, closer. The thwup-thwupthwup of its rotors was loud enough so that they could almost feel the overpressures. It was going to pass directly over them. This sort of thing had happened every twenty minutes or so during the afternoon, and should be nothing to worry about. Wili doubted if even observers on the rooftops could have spotted them here below. But this time:

As the copter passed over the roofline a flash of brilliant white appeared ahead of Wili. Lu! He had been worried she was smuggling some sophisticated homer, and here she was betraying them with a simple handflash!

The helicopter passed quickly across the street. But even before its rotor tones changed and it began to circle back, Wili and most of the Ndelante were already heading for deeper hidey-holes. Seconds later, when the aircraft passed back over the street, it really was empty. Wili couldn't see any of the others, but it sounded as if the Jonques were still rushing madly about, trying to find some way out of the jagged concrete jungle. A monstrously bright light swept back and forth along the street, throwing everything into stark blacks and whites.

As Wili had hoped, the searchlight was followed seconds later by rocket fire. The ground rose and fell under him. Faint behind the explosions, Wili could hear shards of metal and stone snicking back and forth between concrete piles. There were screams.

Heavy dust rose from the ruins. This was his best chance: Wili scuttled back a nearby alley, ignoring the haze and the falling rocks. Another half minute and the enemy would be able to see clearly again, but by then Wili (and probably the rest of the Ndelante) would be a hundred meters away, and moving under much greater cover than he had right here.

An observer might think he ran in mindless panic, but in fact Wili was very careful, was watching for any sign of an Ndelante trail. For more than forty years the Ndelante had been the de facto rulers of these ruins. They used little of it for living space, but they mined most of the vast Basin, and everywhere they went they left subtle improvements - escape hatches, tunnels, food caches - that weren't apparent unless one knew their marking codes. After less than twenty meters, Wili had found a marked path, and now ran at top speed through terrain that would have seemed impassable to anyone standing more than a few meters away. Some of the others were escaping along the same path: Wili could hear at least two pairs of feet some distance behind him, one heavy Jonque feet, the others barely audible. He did not slow down; better that they catch up.

The chopper pilot had lifted out of the space between the buildings and fired no more. No doubt the initial attack had not been to kill, but to jar his prey into the open. It was a decent strategy against any but the Ndelante.

The pilot flew back and forth now, lobbing stun bombs. They were so far away that Wili could barely feel them. In the distance, he heard the approach of more aircraft. Some of them sounded big. Troop Garners. Wili kept running. Till the enemy actually landed, it was better to run than to search for a good hiding place. He might even be able to get out of the drop area.

Five minutes later, Wili was nearly a kilometer away. He moved through a burned-out retail area, from cellar to cellar, each connected to the next by subtle breaks in the walls. His equipment pack had come loose and the whole thing banged painfully against him when he tried to move really fast. He stopped briefly to tighten the harness, but that only made the straps cut into his shoulders.

In one sense he was lost: He had no idea where he was, or how to get to the pickup point the Ndelante and the Jonques had established. On the other hand, he knew which direction he should run from, and - if he saw them - he could recognize the clues that would lead to some really safe hole that the Ndelante would look into after all the fuss died down.

Two kilometers run. Wili stopped to adjust the straps again. Maybe he should wait for the others to catch up. If there was a safety hole around here, they might know where it was. And then he noticed it, almost in front of him: an innocent pattern of scratches and breaks in the cornerstone of a bank building. Somewhere in the basement of that bankin the old vault no doubt-were provisions and water and probably a hand comm. No wonder the Ndelante behind him had stayed so close to his trail. Wili left the dark of the alley and moved across the street in a broken run, flitting from one hiding place to the next. It was just like the old days - after Uncle Sly but before Paul and math and Jeremy except that in those old days, he had more often than not been carried by his fellow burglars, since he was too weak for sustained running. Now he was as tough as any.

He started down the darkened stairs, his hands fishing outward in almost ritual motions to disarm the boobytraps the Ndelante were fond of leaving. Outside sounds came very faint down here, but he thought he heard the others, the surviving Jonque and however many Ndelante were with him. Just a few more steps and he would be in the-"

After so much dark, the light from behind him was blinding. For an instant, Wili stared stupidly at his own shadow. Then he dropped and whirled, but there was no place to go, and the handflash followed him easily. He stared into the darkness around the point of light. He did not have to guess who was holding it.

"Keep your hands in view, Wili," her voice was soft and reasonable. "I really do have a gun."

"You're doing your own dirty work now?"

"I figured if I called in the helicopters before catching up, you might bobble yourself." The direction of her voice changed. "Go outside and signal the choppers down."

"Okay." Rosas' voice had just the mixture of resentment and cowardice that Wili remembered from the fishing boat. His footsteps retreated up the stairs.

"Now take off the pack - slowly - and set it on the stairs."

Wili slipped off the straps and advanced up the stairs a pace or two. He stopped when she made a warning sound and set the generator down amidst fallen plaster and rat droppings. Then Wili sat, pretending to take the weight off his legs. If she were just a couple of meters closer..." How could you follow me? No Jonque ever could; they don't know the signs." His curiosity was only half pretense. If he hadn't been so scared and angry, he would have been humiliated: It had taken him years to learn the Ndelante signs, and here a woman - not even an Ndelante - had come for the first time into the Basin, and equaled him.

Lu advanced, waving him back from the stairs. She set her flash on the steps and began to undo the ties on his pack with her right hand. She did have a gun, an Hacha 15-mm, probably taken off one of the Jonques. The muzzle never wavered.

"Signs?" There was honest puzzlement in her voice. "No, Wili, I simply have excellent hearing and good legs. It was too dark for serious tracking." She glanced into the pack, then slipped the straps over one shoulder, retrieved her handflash, and stood up. She had everything now. Through me, she even has Paul, he suddenly realized. Wili thought of the holes the Hachca could make, and he knew what he must do.

Rosas came back down. "I swung my flash all around, but there's so much light and noise over there already, I don't think anyone noticed."

Lu made an irritated noise. "Those featherbrains. What they know about surveillance could be-"

And several things happened at once: Wili rushed her. Her light swerved and shadows leaped like monsters. There was a ripping, cracking sound. An instant later, Lu crashed into the wall and slid down the steps. Rosas stood over her crumpled form, a metal bar clutched in his hand. Something glistened dark and wet along the side of that bar. Wili took one hesitant step up the stairs, then another. Lu lay facedown. She was so small, scarcely taller than he. And so still now.

"Did... did you kill her?" He was vaguely surprised at the note of horror, almost accusation, in his voice.

Rosas' eyes were wide, staring. "I don't know; I t-tried to. S-sooner or later I had to do this. I'm not a traitor, Wili. But at

Scripps - " He stopped, seemed to realize that this was not the time for long confessions. "Hell, let's get this thing off her." He picked up the gun that lay just beyond Lu's now limp hand. That action probably saved them.

As he rolled her on her side, Lu exploded, her legs striking at Rosas' midsection, knocking him backward onto Wili. The larger man was almost dead weight on the boy. By the time Wili pushed him aside, Della Lu was racing up the stairs. She ran with a slight stagger, and one arm hung at an awkward angle. She still had her handflash. "The gun, Mike, quick!"

But Rosas was doubled in a paroxysm of pain and near paralysis, making faint "unh, unh" sounds. Wili snatched the metal bar, and flew up the steps, diving low and to one side as he came onto the street.

The precaution was unnecessary: She had not waited in ambush. Amidst the wailing of far away sirens, Wili could hear her departing footsteps. Wili looking vainly down the street in the direction of the sounds. She was out of sight, but he could track her down; this was country he knew.

There was a scrabbling noise from the entrance to the bank. "Wait." It was Rosas, half bent over, clutching his middle. "She won, Wili. She won." The words were choked, almost voiceless.

The interruption was enough to make Wili pause and realize that Lu had indeed won. She was hurt and unarmed, that was true. And with any luck, he could track her down in minutes. But by then she would have signaled gun and troop copters; they were much nearer than Mike had claimed.

She had won the Authority their own portable bobble generator.

And if Wili couldn't get far away in the next few minutes, the Authority would win much more. For a long second, he stared at the Jonque. The undersheriff was standing a bit straighter now, breathing at last, in great tormented gasps. He really should leave Rosas here. It would divert the troopers for valuable minutes, might even insure Wili's escape.

Mike looked back and seemed to realize what was going on his head. Finally Wili stepped toward him. "C'mon. We'll get away from them yet."

In ten seconds the street was as empty as it had been all the years before.

TWENTY-NINE

The Jonque nobles believed him when Wili vouched for Mike. That was the second big risk he took to get them home. The first had been in evading the Ndelante Ali; they had walked out of the Basin on their own, had contacted the Alcalde's men directly. Not many Jonques had made it out of the operation, and their reports were confused. But the rescue was obviously a great success, so it wasn't hard to convince them that there had been no betrayal. Such explanations might not have washed with the Ndelante; they already distrusted Wili. And it was likely there were black survivors who had seen what really happened.

In any case, Naismith wanted Wili back immediately, and the Jonques knew where their hopes for continued survival lay. The two were on their way northward in a matter of hours. It was not nearly so luxurious a trip as coming down. They traveled back roads in camouflaged wagons, and balanced speed with caution. The Aztlÿn convoy knew it was prey to a vigilant enemy.

It was night when they were deposited on a barely marked trail north of Ojai. Wili listened to the sounds of the wagon and outriders fade into the lesser noises of the night. They stood unspeaking for a minute after, the same silence that had been between them through most of the last hours. Finally Wili shrugged and started up the dusty trail. It would get them to the cabin of a Tinker sympathizer on the other side of the border. At least one horse should be ready for them there.

He heard Mike close behind, but there was no talk. This was the first time they had really been alone since the walk out of the Basin -and then it had been necessary to keep very quiet. Yet even now, Rosas had nothing to say. "I'm not angry anymore, Mike." Wili spoke in Spanish; he wanted to say exactly what he meant. "You didn't kill Jeremy; I don't think you ever meant to hurt him. And you saved my life and probably Paul's when you jumped Lu."

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.