The Peace War (17 page)

"They raided everybody... Just like Paul said, they finally decided to clean us all out."
Anger was back in Mike's voice.

Where was the girl, Della Lu? He looked back and forth over the forlorn group of
prisoners. She was so short. Either she was standing in back, or she was not there. Some
of the buses were leaving. Maybe she had already been taken.

They had had amazing luck avoiding the bobble, avoiding detection, and avoiding the
hotel raid. That luck must end now: They had lost Jeremy. They had lost the equipment at
the hotel. Aztlán territory extended northward three hundred kilometers. They would
have to walk more than a hundred klicks through wilderness just to reach the Basin. Even
if the Authority was not looking for them, they could not avoid the Jonque barons, who
would take Wili for a runaway slave — and Rosas for a peasant till they heard him talk,
and then for a spy.

And if by some miracle they could reach Middle California, what then? This last was the
most depressing thought of all. Paul Naismith had often talked of what would happen
when the Authority finally saw the Tinkers as enemies. Apparently that time had come.
All across the continent (all across the world? Wili remembered that some of the best
chip engraving was done in France and China) the Authority would be cracking down.
The Kaladze farm might even now be a smoking ruin, its people lined up with hands on
heads, waiting to be shipped off to oblivion. And Paul would be one of them — if he
wasn't already dead.

They sat in the cleft of the boulders for a long time, moving only to stay ahead of the
tide. The sounds of soldiers and vehicles diminished. One by one the searchlights went
out. One by one the buses rolled away — what had seemed marvelous carriages of speed
and comfort just a few days before, now cattle cars.

If the idiots didn't search the beach, he and Rosas might have to walk north after all.

It must have been about three in the morning. The surf was just past its highest
advance. There were still troopers on the hill near the hotel, but they didn't seem
especially vigilant. Rosas was beginning to talk about starting north while it was still
dark.

They heard a regular, scritching sound on the rocks just a few meters away. The two
fugitives peeked out of their hiding place. Someone was pushing a small boat into the
water, trying to get it past the surf.

"I think that girl could use some help," Mike remarked.

Wili looked closer. It was a girl, wet and bedraggled, but familiar: Della Lu had not
been captured after all!

Paul Naismith was grateful that even in these normally placid times there were still a few
paranoids around — in addition to himself, that is. In some ways, 'Kolya Kaladze was an
even worse case than he. The old Russian had devoted a significant fraction of his
"farm's" budget to constructing a marvelous system of secret passages, hidden paths,
small arms caches, and redoubts. Naismith had been able to travel more than ten
kilometers from the farm, all the way around the Salsipuedes, without ever being exposed
to the sky — or to the unwelcome visitors that lurked about the farm.

Now well into the hills, he felt relatively safe. There was little doubt the Authority had
observed the same event he had. Sooner or later they would divert resources from their
various emergencies and come to investigate the peculiar red smoke plume. Paul hoped
to be long gone before that happened. In the meantime, he would take advantage of this
incredible good luck. Revenge had waited, impotent, these fifty years, but its time might
now come.

Naismith geed the horse. The cart and horse were not what he had come to the farm
with. 'Kolya had supplied everything — including a silly, old-lady disguise which he
suspected was more embarrassing than effective.

Nikolai had not stinted, but neither had he been happy about the departure. Naismith
slouched back on the padded seat and thought ruefully of that last argument. They had
been sitting on the porch of the main house. The blinds were drawn, and a tiny singing
vibration in the air told Naimsith that the window panes were incapable of responding to
a laser-driven audio probe. The Peace Authority "bandits" what an appropriate cover —
had made no move. Except for what was coming over the radio, and what Paul had seen,
there was no sign that the world was turning upside down.

Kaladze understood the situation — or thought he did and wanted no part of Naismith's
project. "I tell you honestly, Paul, I do not understand you. We are relatively safe here.
No matter what the Peacers say, they can't act against us all at once; that's why they
grabbed our friends at the tournament. For hostages." He paused, probably thinking of a
certain three of those hostages. Just now, they had no way of knowing if Jeremy and Wili
and Mike were dead or alive, captive or free. Taking hostages might turn out to be an
effective strategy indeed. "If we keep our heads down, there's no special reason to believe
they'll invade Red Arrow Farm. You'll be as safe here as anywhere.
But,"
Nikolai rushed
on as if to forestall an immediate response, "if you leave now, you'll be alone and in the
open. You want to head for one of the few spots in North America where the Peacers are
guaranteed to swarm. For which risk, you get
nothing."

"You are three times wrong, old friend," Paul answered quietly, barely able to suppress
his frantic impatience to be gone. He ticked off the points. "To your second claim: If I
leave right now, I can probably get there before the Authority. They have much else to
worry about. Since we got Wili's invention working, I and my programs have spent every
second monitoring the Peacer recon satellites for evidence of bobble decay. I'll bet the
Authority itself doesn't have the monitor capability I do. It's possible they don't yet
realize that a bobble burst up there in the hills this morning.

"As to your third claim: The risk
is
worth the candle. I stand to win the greatest prize of
all, the means to destroy the Authority. Something or someone is causing bobbles to
burst. So there is some defense against the bobbles. If I can discover that secret-"

Kaladze shrugged. "So? You'd still need a nuclear power generator to do anything with
the knowledge."

"Maybe... Finally, my response to your first claim: You — we — are not at all safe lying
low on the farm. For years, I tried to convince you the Authority is deadly once it sees
you as a danger. You're right, they can't attack everywhere at once. But they'll use the La
Jolla hostages to identify you, and to draw you out. Even if they don't have Mike and the
boys, Red Arrow Farm will be high on their hit-list. And if they suspect I'm here, they'll
raid you just as soon as they have enough force in the area. They have some reason to
fear me."

"They want
you
?" Kaladze's jaw sagged. "Then why haven't they simply bobbled us?"

Paul grinned. "Most likely, their `bandit' reconnaissance didn't recognize me — or
maybe they want to be sure I'm inside their cage when they lock it."
Avery missed me
once before. He can't stand uncertainty.

"Bottom line, 'Kolya: The Peace Authority is out to get us. We must give them the best
fight we can. Finding out what's bursting the bobbles might give us the whole game." No
need to tell 'Kolya that he would be doing it even if the Peacers hadn't raided the
tournament. Like most Tinkers, Nikolai Kaladze had never been in direct conflict with
the Authority. Though he was as old as Naismith, he had not seen firsthand the betrayal
that had brought the Authority to power. Even the denial of bioproducts to children like
Wili was not seen by today's people as real tyranny. But now at last there was the
technical and — if the Authority was foolish enough to keep up its pressure on the likes of
Kaladze-the political opportunity to overturn the Peacers.

The argument continued for thirty minutes, with Naismith slowly prevailing. The real
problem in getting 'Kolya's help was to convince him that Paul had a chance of
discovering anything from a simple inspection of this latest bobble burst. In the end,
Naismith was successful, though he had to reveal a few secrets out of his past that might
later cause him considerable trouble.

The path Naismith followed leveled briefly as it passed over a ridgeline. If it weren't
for the forest, he could see the crater from here. He had to stop daydreaming and decide
just how to make his approach. There was still no sign of Peacers, but if he were picked
up near the site, the old-lady disguise would be no protection.

He guided his horse off the path some thousand meters inland of the crater. Fifty
meters into the brush, he got down from the cart. Under ordinary circumstances there was
more than enough cover to hide horse and vehicle. Today, and here, he couldn't be so
confident.

It was a chance he must take. For fifty years, bobbles and the one up ahead, in
particular — had haunted him. For fifty years he had tried to convince himself that all this
was not his fault. For fifty years he had hoped for some way to undo what his old bosses
had made of his invention.

He took his pack off the cart and awkwardly slipped it on. The rest of the way would be
on foot. Naismith trudged grimly back up the forested hillside, wondering how long it
would be before the pack harness began to cut, wondering if he would run out of breath
first. What was a casual walk for a sixty-year-old might be life-threatening for someone
his age. He tried to ignore the creaking of his trick knee and the rasping of his breath.

Aircraft
. The sound passed over but did not fade into the distance. Another and
another. Damn it.

Naismith took out some gear and began monitoring the remotes that Jeremy had
scattered the night of the ambush. He was still three thousand meters from the crater, but
some of the pellets might be in enough sun to be charged up and transmitting.

He searched methodically through the entire packet space his probes could transmit on.
The ones nearest the crater were gone or so deeply embedded in the forest floor that all
he could see was the sky above them. There had been a fire, maybe even a small
explosion, when this bobble burst. But no ordinary fire could have burned within the
bobble for fifty years. If a nuclear explosion had been trapped inside, there would have
been something much more spectacular than a fire when it burst. (And Naismith knew
this one: There had been no nuke in it.) That was the unique thing about this bobble
burst; it might explain the whole mystery.

He had fragmentary views of uniforms. Peacer troops. They had left their aircraft and
were spreading around the crater. Naismith piped the audio to his hearing aid. He was so
close. But it would be crazy to go any nearer now. Maybe if they didn't leave too many
troops, he could sneak in tomorrow morning. He had arrived too late to scoop them and
too early to avoid them. Naismith swore softly to himself and unwrapped the lightweight
camping bag Kaladze had given him. All the time he watched the tiny screen he had
propped against a nearby tree trunk. The controlling program shifted the scene between
the five best views he had discovered in his initial survey. It would also alert him if
anyone started moving in his direction.

Naismith settled back and tried to relax. He could hear lots of activity, but it must be
right down in the crater, since he could see none of it.

The sun slowly drifted west. Another time, Naismith would have admired the beautiful
day: temperatures in the high twenties, birds singing. The strange forests around
Vandenberg might be unique: Dry climate vegetation suddenly plunged into something
resembling the rainy tropics. God only knew what the climax forms would be like.

Today, all he could think of was getting at that crater just a few thousand meters to the
north.

Even so, he was almost dozing when a distant rifle shot
brought him to full alertness.
He diddled the display a moment and had some good luck: He saw a man in gray and
silver, running almost directly away from the camera. Naismith strained close to the
screen, his jaw sagging. More shots. He zoomed on the figure. Gray and silver. He hadn't
seen an outfit like that since before the War. For a moment his mind offered no
interpretation, just cranked on as a stunned observer. Three troopers rushed past the
camera. They must have been shooting over the fellow's head, but he wasn't stopping
and
now the trio fired again. The man in gray spun and dropped. For a moment, the three
soldiers seemed as stricken as their target. Then they ran forward, shouting
recriminations at each other.

The screen was alive with uniforms. There was a sudden silence at the arrival of a
tweedy civilian. The man in charge. From his high-pitched expostulations, Naismith
guessed he was unhappy with events. A stretcher was brought up and the still form was
carted off. Naismith changed the phase of his camera and followed the victim down the
path that led northward from the crater.

Minutes later the shriek of turbines splashed off the hills, and a needle-nosed form rose
into the sky north of Naismith. The craft vectored into horizontal flight and sprinted
southward, passing low over Naismith's hiding place.

The birds and insects were deathly silent the next several minutes, almost as silent and
awestruck as Paul's own imagination.
He knew now.
The bursting bobbles were not
caused by quantum decay. The bursting bobbles were not the work of some anti-Peacer
underground. He fought down hysterical laughter. He had invented the damn things,
provided his bosses with fifty years of empire, but he and they had never realized that — though his invention worked superbly — his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning
to end.

He knew that now. The Peacers would know it in a matter of hours, if they had not
already guessed. They would fly in a whole division with their science teams. He would
likely die with his secret if he didn't slip out now and head eastward for his mountain
home.