The Peace War (19 page)

Della almost laughed at the irrelevance of the statement, but she answered honestly.
"You're right; they don't. But I scarcely know the moves. What you all thought was my
computer was actually a phone link to Livermore. We had our hottest players up there
going over my game, figuring out the best moves and then sending them down to me."

Now Rosas did laugh. His hand came down on her shoulder. She almost struck back
before she realized this was a pat and not a blow. "I had wondered. I had really
wondered.

"Lady, I hate your guts, and after today I hate everything you stand for. But you have
my soul now." The laughter was gone from his voice. "What are you going to make me
do?"

No, Miguel, I don't have your soul, and I see that I never will.
Della was suddenly afraid —
for no reason that could ever convince Hamilton Avery — that Miguel Rosas was not their
tool. Certainly, he was naive; outside of Aztlán and New Mexico, most North Americans
were. But whatever weakness caused him to betray the Scripps lab ended there. And
somehow she knew that whatever decision he had just made could not be changed by
gradually forcing him to more and more treacherous acts. There was something very
strong in Rosas. Even after his act of betrayal, those who counted him friend might still
be lucky to know him.

"To do? Not a great deal. Sometime tonight we reach Santa Barbara. I want you to take
me along when we put ashore. When we reach Middle California, you'll back up my
story. I want to see the Tinkers firsthand." She paused. "There is one thing. Of all the
subversives, there is one most dangerous to world peace. A man name Paul Hoehler."
Rosas did not react. "We've seen him at Red Arrow Farm. We want to know what he's
doing. We want to know where he is."

That had become the whole point of the operation for Hamilton Avery. The Director
had an abiding paranoia about Hoehler. He was convinced that the bursting bobbles were
not a natural phenomenon, that someone in Middle California was responsible. Up till
yesterday, she had considered it all dangerous fantasy, distorting their strategy, obscuring
the long-term threat of Tinker science. Now she was not so sure. Last night, Avery called
to tell her about the spacecraft the Peace had discovered in the hills east of Vandenberg.
The crash was only hours old and reports were still fragmentary, but it was clear that the
enemy had a manned space operation. If they could do that in secret, then almost
anything was possible. This was a time for greater ruthlessness than ever she had needed
in Mongolia.

Above and around, the gulls swooped through the chill blue glare, circling closer and
closer as the fish piled up at the rear of the boat. Rosas' gaze was lost among the
scavengers. Della, for all her skill, could not tell whether she had a forced ally or a
double traitor. For both their sakes she hoped he was the former.

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 Aztlán 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 Aztlán 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 researchers 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-"