The Peace War (13 page)

In the years following the great collapse, the Authority had stripped the rest of the
world of high energy technology. The most dangerous governments — such as that of the
United States — were destroyed, and their territories left in a state that ranged from the
village anarchy of Middle California, to the medievalism of Aztlán, to the fascism of
New Mexico. Where governments did exist, they were just strong enough to collect the
Authority Impost. These little countries were in some ways sovereign. They even fought
their little wars-but without the capital industry and high energy weapons that made war
a threat to the race.

Della doubted that, outside the Enclaves, there existed the technical expertise to
reproduce the old inventions, much less improve on them. And if someone did discover
the secret of the bobble, Authority satellites would detect the construction of the power
plants and factories needed to implement the invention.

"I know, I may sound paranoid. But one thing you youngsters don't understand is how
technologically stultified the Authority is." He glanced at her, as though expecting
debate. "We have all the universities and all the big labs. We control most degreed
persons on Earth. Nevertheless, we do very little research. I should know, since I can
remember my father's lab right before the War — and even more, because I've made sure
no really imaginative projects got funded since.

"Our factories can produce most any product that existed before the War," he slapped
his hand against the bulkhead. "This is a good, reliable craft, probably built in the last
five years. But the design is almost sixty years old."

He paused and his tone became less casual. "During the last six months, I've concluded
we've made a serious mistake in this. There are people operating under our very noses
who have technology substantially in advance of pre-War levels."

"I hope you're not thinking of the Mongolian nationalists, sir. I tried to make it clear in
my reports that their nuclear weapons were from old Soviet stockpiles. Most weren't
usable. And without those bombs they were just pony sol-

"No, my dear Della, that's not what I am thinking of." He slid a plastic box across the
table. "Look inside."

Five small objects sat in the velvet lining. Lu held one in the sunlight. "A bullet?" It
looked like an 8-mm. She couldn't tell if it had been fired; there was some damage, but
no rifling marks. Something dark and glossy stained the nose.

"That's right. But a bullet with a brain. Let me tell you how we came across that little
gem.

"Since I became suspicious of these backyard scientists, these Tinkers, I've been trying
to infiltrate. It hasn't been easy. In most of North America, we have tolerated no
governments. Even though it's cost us on the impost, the risk of nationalism seemed too
high. Now I see that was a mistake. Somehow they've gone further than any of the
governed areas — and we have no easy way to watch them, except from orbit.

"Anyway, I sent teams into the ungoverned lands, using whatever cover was appropriate.
In Middle California, for instance, it was easiest to pretend they were descendents of the
old Soviet invasion force. Their instructions were to hang around in the mountains and
ambush likely-looking travelers. I figured we would gradually accumulate information
without any official raids. Last week, one crew ambushed three locals in the forests east
of Vandenberg. The quarry had only one gun, a New Mexico 8-mm. It was nearly dark,
but from a distance of forty meters the enemy hit every one of the ten-man crew — with
one burst from the 8-mm.

"The New Mexico 8-mm only has a ten-round clip. That's — "

"A perfect target score, my dear. And my men swear the weapon was fired on full
automatic. If they hadn't been wearing body armor, or if the rounds had had normal
velocity, not one of them would have lived to tell the story. 'Ten armed men killed by one
man and a handmade gun. Magic. And you're holding a piece of that magic. Others have
been through every test and dissection the Livermore labs could come up with. You've
heard of smart bombs? Sure, your air units in Mongolia used them. Well, Miss Lu, these
are smart bullets.

"The round has a video eye up front, connected to a processor as powerful as anything
we can pack in a suitcase — and our suitcase version would cost a hundred thousand
monets. Evidently the gun barrel isn't rifled; the round can change attitude in flight to
close with its target."

Della rolled the metal marble in her palm. "So it's under the control of the gunman?"

"Only indirectly, and only at `launch' time. There must be a processor on the gun that
queues the targets, and chooses the firing instant. The processor on the bullet is more
than powerful enough to latch the assigned target. Rather interesting, eh?"

Della nodded. She remembered how delicate the attack gear on the A51 1's had been —
and how expensive. They'd needed a steady supply of replacement boards from Beijing.
If these things could be made cheaply enough to throw away...?

Hamilton Avery gave a small smile, apparently satisfied with her reaction. "That's not
all. Take a look at the other things in the box."

Della dropped the bullet onto the velvet padding and picked up a brownish ball. It was
slightly sticky on her fingers. There were no markings, no variations in its surface. She
raised her eyebrows.

"That is a bug, Della. Not one of your ordinary, audio bugs, but full video — we expect
in all directions, at that. Something to do with Fourier optics, my experts tell me. It can
record, or transmit a very short distance. We've guessed all this from x-ray micrographs
of the interior. We don't even have equipment that can interface with it!"

"You're sure it's not recording right now?"

"Oh yes. They fried its guts before I took it. The microscopists claim there's not a
working junction in there.

"Now I think you see the reason for all the precautions."

Della nodded slowly. The bobble bursts were not the reason; he expected their true
enemies already knew all about those. Yes, Avery was being clever — and he was as
frightened as his cool personality would ever allow.

They sat silently for about thirty seconds. The chopper made another turn, and the
sunlight swept across Della's face. They were flying east over Long Beach toward
Anaheim — those were the names in the history books anyway. The street pattern
stretched off into gray-orange haze. It gave a false sense of order. The reality was
kilometer on kilometer of abandoned, burned-out wilderness. It was hard to believe that
this threat could grow in North America. But, after the fact, it made sense. If you deny
big industry and big research to people, they will look for other ways of getting what they
need .

...And if they could make these things, maybe they were clever enough to go beyond all
the beautiful quantum-mechanical theories and figure a way to burst bobbles.

"You think they've infiltrated the Authority?"

"I'm sure of it. We swept our labs and conference rooms. We found seventeen bugs on
the West Coast, two in China, and a few more in Europe. There were no repeaters near
the overseas finds, so we think they were unintentional exports. The plague appears to
spread from California."

"So they know we're on to them."

"Yes, but little more. They've made some big mistakes and we've had a bit of good
luck: We have an informer in the California group. He came to us less than two weeks
ago, out of the blue. I think he's legitimate. What he's told us matches our discoveries but
goes a good deal further. We're going to run these people to ground. And do it officially.
We haven't made an example of anyone in a long time, not since the Yakima incident.

"Your role in this will be crucial, Della. You are a woman, and outside the Authority the
frailer sex is disregarded nowadays."

Not only
outside
the Authority,
thought Della.

"You'll be invisible to the enemy, until it's too late."

"You mean a field job?"

"Why, yes, my dear. You've certainly had rougher assignments."

"Yes, but-"
but I was a field
director in
Mongolia.

Avery put his hand on Della's. "This is no demotion. You'll be responsible only to me.
As communications permit, you'll control the California operation. But we need our very
best out there on the ground, someone who knows the land and can be given a credible
cover." Della had been born and raised in San Francisco. For three generations, her
family had been 'furbishers — and Authority plants.

"And there is a very special thing I want done. This may be more important than all the
rest of the operation." Avery laid a color picture on the table. The photo was grainy,
blown up to near the resolution limit. She saw a group of men standing in front of a barn:
northern farmers — except for the black child talking to a tall boy who carried an NM 8-mm. She could guess who these were.

"See the guy in the middle — by the one with the soldier frizz."

His face was scarcely more than a blotch, but he looked perfectly ordinary, seventy or
eighty years old. Della could walk through a crowd in any North American enclave and
see a dozen such.

"We think that's Paul Hoehler." He glanced at his agent. "The name doesn't mean
anything to you, does it? Well, you won't find it in the history books, but I remember
him. Back in Livermore, right before the War. I was just a kid. He was in my father's lab
and... he's the man who invented the bobble."

Delta's attention snapped back to the photo. She knew she had just been let in on one of
those secrets which was kept from everyone, which would otherwise die with the last of
the old Directors. She tried to see something remarkable in the fuzzy features.

"Oh, Schmidt, Kashihara, Bhadra, they got the thing into projectable form. But it was
one of Hoehler's bright ideas. The hell of it is, the man wasn't — isn't- even a physicist.

'Anyway, he disappeared right after the War started. Very clever. He didn't wait to do
any moral posturing, to give us a chance to put him away. Next to eliminating the
national armies, catching him was one of our highest priorities. We never got him. After
ten or fifteen years, when we had control of all the remaining labs and reactors, the
search for Dr. Hoehler died. But now, after all these years, when we see bobbles being
burst, we have rediscovered him... You can see why I'm convinced the 'bobble decay' is
not natural."

Avery tapped the picture. "This is the man, Della. In the next weeks, we'll take Peace
action against hundreds of people. But it will all be for nothing if you can't nail this one
man."

Allison's wound showed no sign of reopening, and she didn't think there was much
internal bleeding. It hurt, but she could walk. She and Quiller set up camp — more a hiding
place than a camp, really — about twenty minutes from the crash site.

The fire had put a long plume of reddish smoke into the sky. If there was a sane
explanation for all this, that plume would attract Air Force rescue. And if it attracted
unfriendlies first, then they were far enough away from the crash to escape. She hoped.

The day passed, warm and beautiful — and untouched by any sign of other human
life. Allison found herself impatient and talkative. She had theories: A cabin leak on their
last revolution could almost explain things. Hypoxia can sneak up on you before you
know it — hadn't something like that killed three Sov pilots in the early days of space?
Hell, it could probably account for all sorts of jumbled memories. Somehow their reentry
sequence had been delayed. They'd ended up in the Australian jungles... No that wasn't
right, not if the problem had really happened on the last rev. Perhaps Madagascar was a
possibility. That People's Republic would not exactly welcome them. They would have to
stay undercover till Air Force tracking and reconnaissance spotted the crash site... A
strike-rescue could come any time now, say with the Air Force covering a VTOL Marine
landing.

Angus didn't buy it. "There's the Dome, Allison. No country on Earth could build
something like that without us knowing about it. I swear it's kilometers high." He waved
at the second sun that stood in the west. The two suns were difficult to see through the
forest cover. But during their hike from the crash site they'd had better views. When
Allison looked directly at the false sun with narrowed eyes, she could see that the disk
was a distorted oval — clearly a reflection off some vast curved surface. "I know it's huge,
Angus. But it doesn't have to be a physical structure. Maybe it's some sort of inversion
layer effect."

"You're only seeing the part that's way off the ground, where there's nothing to reflect
except sky. If you climb one of the taller trees, you'd see the coastline reflected in the
Dome's base."

"Hmm." She didn't have to climb any trees to believe him. What she couldn't believe
was his explanation.

"Face it, Allison. We're nowhere in the world we knew. Yet the tombstone shows we're
still on Earth."

The tombstone. So much smaller than the Dome, yet so much harder to explain. "You
still think it's the future?"

Angus nodded. "Nothing else fits. I don't know how fast something like stone carving
wears: I suppose we can't be more than a thousand years ahead." He grinned. "An
ordinary Buck Rogers-like interval."

She smiled back. "Better Buck Rogers than
The Last Remake of Planet of the Apes."

"Yeah. I never like it where they kill off all the `extra' timetravelers."

Allison gazed through the forest canopy at the second sun. There had to be some other
explanation.

They argued it back and forth for hours, in the end agreeing to give the "rescued from
Madagascar" theory twenty-four hours to show success. After that they would hike down
to the coast, and then along it till they found some form of humanity