The Peace War (3 page)

"Boss, he'd eat 'em alive," Rosas patted his bandaged arm.

"Well, hell, you think of something better, Mike. We've got four thousand customers.
There must be someone who can help... A lost child with no one to take care of him — it's
unheard of!"

Some child!
But Mike couldn't forget Sally and Arta. "Yeah."

Through this conversation, Naismith had been silent, almost ignoring the two peace
officers. He seemed more interested in the view of Old 101 than what they were talking
about. Now he twisted in the wooden chair to face the sheriff and his deputy. "I'll take the
kid on, Sy."

Rosas and Wentz looked at him in stupefied silence. Paul Naismith was considered old
in a land where two thirds of the population was past fifty. Wentz licked his lips,
apparently unsure how to refuse him. "See here, Paul, you heard what Mike said. The kid
practically killed him this afternoon. I know how people your, uh, age feel about
children, but-"

The old man shook his head, caught Mike with a quick glance that was neither
abstracted nor feeble. "You know they've been after me to take on an apprentice for
years, Sy. Well, I've decided. Besides trying to kill Mike, he played Celest like a master.
The gravity-well maneuver is one I've never seen discovered unaided."

"Mike told me. It's slick, but I see a lot of players do it. We almost all use it. Is it really
that clever?"

"Depending on your background, it's more than clever. Isaac Newton didn't do a lot
more when he deduced elliptical orbits from the inverse square law."

"Look, Paul... I'm truly sorry, but even with Bill and Irma, it's just too dangerous."

Mike thought about the pain in his arm. And then about the twin sisters he had once
had. "Uh, Boss, could you and I have a little talk?"

Wentz raised an eyebrow. "So...? Okay. 'Scuse us a minute, Paul."

There was a moment of embarrassed silence as the two left the room. Naismith rubbed
his cheek with a faintly palsied hand and gazed across Highway 101 at the pale lights just
coming on in the Shopping Center. So very much had changed and all the years in
between were blurred now. Shopping Center? All of Santa Ynez would have been lost in
the crowd at a good high-school basketball game in the 1990s. These days a county with
seven thousand people was considered a thriving concern.

It was just past sunset now, and the office was growing steadily darker. The room's
displays were vaguely glowing ghosts hovering in the near distance. Cameras from down
in the shopping areas drove most of those displays. Paul could see that business was
picking up there. The Tinkers and mechanics and 'furbishers had trotted out their wares,
and crowds were hanging about the aerial displays. Across the room, other screens
showed pale red and green, relaying infrared images from cameras purchased by Wentz's
clients.

In the next room the two officers' talk was a faint murmur. Naismith leaned back and
pushed up his hearing aid. For a moment the sound of his lung and heart action was
overpoweringly loud in his ears. Then the filters recognized the periodic noises and they
were diminished, and he could hear Wentz and Rosas more clearly than any unaided
human. Not many people could boast such equipment, but Naismith demanded high pay
and Tinkers from Norcross to Beijing were more than happy to supply him with better
than average prosthetics.

Rosas' voice came clearly: "... think Paul Naismith can take care of himself, Boss. He's
lived in the mountains for years. And the Moraleses are tough and not more than fifty-five.
In the old days there were some nasty bandits and ex-military up there

"Still are," Wentz put in.

"Nothing like when there were still a lot of weapons floating around. Naismith was old
even when they were going strong, and he survived. I've heard about his place. He has
gadgets we won't see for years. He isn't called the Tinker wizard for nothing. I

The rest was blotted out by a loud creaking that rose to near painful intensity in
Naismith's ear, then faded as the filters damped out the amplification. Naismith looked
wildly around, then sheepishly realized it was a microquake. They happened all the time
this near Vandenberg. Most were barely noticeable — unless one used special
amplification, as Paul was now. The roar had been a slight creaking of wall timbers. It
passed... and he could hear the two peace officers once more.

"... at he said about needing an apprentice is true, Boss. It hasn't been just us in Middle
California who've been after him. I know people in Medford and Norcross who are
scared witless he'll die without leaving a successor. He's hands down the best algorithms
man in North America — I'd say in the world except I want to be conservative. You know
that comm gear you have back in the control room? I know it's close to your heart, your
precious toy and mine. Well, the bandwidth compression that makes possible all those
nice color pictures coming over the fiber and the microwave would be plain impossible
without the tricks he's sold the Tinkers. And that's not all —"

"All right!" Wentz laughed. "I can tell you took it serious when I told you to specialize
on our high tech clients. I know Middle California would be a backwater without him,
but-"

"And it will be again, once he's gone, unless he can find an apprentice. They've been
trying for years to get him to take on some students or even to teach classes like before
the Crash, but he's refused. And I think he's right. Unless you are terribly creative to
begin with, there's no way you can make new algorithms. I think he's been waiting — not
taking anyone on — and watching. I think today he found his apprentice. The kid's mean...
he'd kill. And I don't know what he really wants besides money. But he has one thing that
all the good intentions and motivation in world can't get us, and that's brains. You should
have seen him on the Celest, Boss..."

The argument — or lecture — went on for several more minutes, but the outcome was
predictable. The wizard of the Tinkers had at long last got himself an apprentice.

Night and triple moonlight. Wili lay in the back of the buckboard, heavily bundled in
blankets. The soft springs absorbed most of the bumps and lurches as the wagon passed
over the tilting, broken concrete. The only sounds Wili heard were the cool wind through
the trees, the steady clapclapclap of the horse's rubberized shoes, its occasional snort in
the darkness. They had not yet reached the great black forest that stretched north to
south; it seemed like all Middle California was spread out around him. The sea fog which
so often made the nights here dark was absent, and the moonlight gave the air an almost
luminous blue tone. Directly west- the direction Wili faced — Santa Ynez lay frozen in the
still light. Few lights were visible, but the pattern of the greets was clear, and there was
of a hint of orange and violet from the open square of the bazaar.

Wili wriggled deeper in the blankets, the tingling paralysis in his limbs mostly gone
now; the warmth in his arms and legs, the cold air on his face, and the vision spread
below him was as good as any drug high he'd ever stolen in Pasadena. The land was
beautiful, but it had not turned out to be the easy pickings he had hoped for when he had
defected from the Ndelante and headed north. There were unpeopled ruins, that was true:
He could see what must have been the pre-Crash location of Santa Ynez, rectangular
tracings all overgrown and no lights at all.

The ruins were bigger than the modern version of the town, but nothing like the
promise of the L.A. Basin, where kilometer after kilometer of ruins — much of it unlooted
-stretched as far as a man could walk in a week. And if one wanted some more exciting,
more profitable way of getting rich, there were the Jonque mansions in the hills above the
Basin. From those high vantage points, Los Angeles had its own fairyland aspect:
Horizon to horizon had sparkled with little fires that marked towns in the ruins. Here and
there glowed the incandescent lights of Jonque outposts. And at the center, a luminous,
crystal growth, stood the towers of the Peace Authority Enclave. Wili sighed. That had
all been before his world in the Ndelante Ali had fallen apart, before he discovered Old
Ebenezer's con... If ever he returned, it would be a contest between the Ndelante and the
Jonques over who'd skin him first.

Wili couldn't go back.

But he had seen one thing on this journey north that made it worth being chased here.
That one thing made this landscape forever more spectacular than LAs. He looked over
Santa Ynez at the object of his wonder:

The silver dome rose out of the sea, into the moonlight. Even at this remove and
altitude, it still seemed to tower. People called it many things, and even in Pasadena he
had heard of it, though he'd never believed the stories. Larry Faulk called it Mount
Vandenberg.
The old man Naismith — the one who even now was whistling aimlessly as
his servant drove their wagon into the hills — he had called it the Vandenberg Bobble. But
whatever they called it, it transcended the name.

In its size and perfection it seemed to transcend nature itself. From Santa Barbara he
had seen it. It was a hemisphere at least twenty kilometers across. Where it fell into the
Pacific, Wili could see multiple lines of moonlit surf breaking soundlessly against its
curving arc. On its inland side, the lake they called Lompoc was still and dark.

Perfect, perfect. The shape was an abstraction beyond reality. Its mirror-perfect surface
caught the moon and held it in a second image, just as clear as the first. And so the night
had two moons, one very high in the sky, the other shining from the dome. Out in the sea,
the more normal reflection was a faint silver bar lying straight to the ocean's horizon.
Three moon's worth of light in all! During the day, the vast mirror captured the sun in a
similar way. Larry Faulk claimed the farmers planted their lands to take advantage of the
double sunlight.

Who had made Vandenberg Dome? The One True God? Some Jonque or Anglo god?
And if made by man, how? What could be inside? Wili dozed, imagining the burglary of
all burglaries — to get inside and steal what treasures would be hidden by a treasure so
great as that Dome...

When he woke, they were in the forest, rolling upward still, the trees deep and dark
around them. The taller pines moved and spoke unsettlingly in the wind. This was more
of a forest than he had ever seen. The real moon was low now; an occasional splash of
silver shouldered past the branches and lay upon further trees, glistening on their needles.
Over his head, a band of night, brighter than the trees, was visible. The stars were there.

The Anglo's servant had slowed the horse. The ancient concrete road was gone; the
path was scarcely wide enough for the cart. Wili tried to face forward, but the blankets
and remaining effects of the cop's stunner prevented this. Now the old man spoke quietly
into the darkness. Password! Wili doubled forward to see if the cops had discovered his
other knife. No. It was still there, strapped to the inside of his calf. Old men running labor
camps were something he knew a lot about from L.A. He was one slave this old man was
not going to own.

After a moment, a
woman's
voice came back, cheerfully telling them to come ahead.
The horse took up its former pace. Wili saw no sign of the speaker.

The cart turned through the next switchback, its tires nearly soundless in the carpet of
pine needles that layered the road. Another hundred meters, another turn, and —

It was a palace! Trees and vines closed in on all sides of the structure, but it was clearly
a palace, though more open than the fortresses of the Jonque
jefes
in Los Angeles. Those
lords usually rebuilt pre-Crash mansions, installed electrified fences and machine gun
nests for security. This place was old, too, but in other ways strange. There was no
outward sign of defenses — which could only mean that the owner must control the land
for kilometers all around. But Wili had seen no guardian forts on their trip up here. These
northerners could not be as stupid and defenseless as they seemed.

The cart drove the length of the mansion. The trail broadened into a clearing before the
entrance, and Wili had the best view yet. It was smaller than the palaces of L.A. If the
inner court was a reasonable size, then it couldn't house all the servants and family of a
great
jefe.
But the building was massive, the wood and stone expertly joined. What
moonlight was left glinted off metal tracery and shone streaming images of the moon's
face in the polish of the wood. The roof was darker, barely reflecting. There were gables
and a strange turret: dark spheres, in diameters varying from five centimeters to almost
two meters, impaled on a glinting needle.

"Wake up. We are here." Hands undid the blankets, and the old man gently shook his
shoulder. It took an effort to keep from lashing out. He grunted faintly, pretended he was
slowly waking. "
Estamos llegado, chico,"
the servant, Morales, said. Wili let himself be
helped from the cart. In truth he was still a little unsteady on his feet, but the less they
knew of his capabilities the better. Let them think he was weak, and ignorant of English.

A servant came running
out of the main entrance (or could the servants' entrance be so
grand?). No one else appeared, but Wili resolved to be docile until he knew more. The
woman-like Morales, middle-aged-greeted the two men warmly, then guided Wili across
the stone flagging to the entrance. The boy kept his eyes down, pretending to be dopey.
Out of the corner of this eye, though, he saw something more — a silver net like some
giant spider web stretched between a tree and the side of the mansion.

Past the huge careen doors, a light glowed dimly, and Wili saw that the place was the
equal of anything in Pasadena, though there were no obvious art treasures or golden
statuary lying about. They led him up (not down! What sort of
jefe
put his lowest
servants on an upper floor?) a wide staircase, and into