The Peace War (5 page)

On rainy days, when the weather around Vandenberg blew inland, he stayed indoors
and helped Irma with cleaning. He had scarcely more enthusiasm for this, but it did give
him a chance to snoop: The mansion had no interior court, but in some ways it was more
elaborate than he had first imagined. He and Irma cleaned some large rooms hidden
below ground level. Irma would say nothing about them, though they appeared to be for
meetings or banquets. The building's floor space, if not the available food supply, implied
a large household. Perhaps that was how these innocents protected themselves: They
simply hid until their enemies got tired of searching for them. But it didn't really make
sense. If he were a bandit, he'd burn the place down or else occupy it He wouldn't simply
go away because he could find no one to kill. And yet there was no evidence of past
violence in the polished hardwood walls or the deep, soft carpeting.

In the evenings, the two treated him more as they should the adopted son of a lord. He
was allowed to sit in the main living room and play Celest or chess. The Celest was every
bit as fascinating as the one in Santa Ynez. But he never could attain quite the accuracy
he'd had that first time. He began to suspect that part of his win had been luck. It was the
precision of his eye and hand that betrayed him, not his physical intuition. Delays of a
thousandth of a second in a cushion shot could cause a miss at the destination. Bill said
there were mechanical aids to overcome this difficulty, but Wili had little trust for such.
He spent many hours hunched before the glowing volume of the Celest, while on the
other side of the room Bill and Irma watched the holo. (After the first couple of days, the
shows seemed uniformly dull — either local gossip, or flat television game shows from the
last century.)

Playing chess with Bill was almost as boring as the holo. After a few games, he could
easily beat the caretaker. The programmed version was much more fun than playing Bill.

As the days passed, and Naismith did not return, Wili's boredom intensified. He
reconsidered his options. After all this time, no one had offered him the master's rooms,
no one had shown him the appropriate deference. (And no tobacco was available, though
that by itself was something he could live with.) Perhaps it was all some benign labor
contract operation, like Larry Faulk's. If this were the Anglo idea of adoption, he wanted
none of it, and his situation became simply a grand opportunity for burglary.

Wili began with small things: jeweled ashtrays from the subterranean rooms, a pocket
Celest he found in an empty bedroom. He picked a tree out of sight behind the pond and
hid his loot in a waterproof bag there. The burglaries, small as they were, gave him a
sense of worth and made life a lot less boring. Even the pain in his gut lessened and the
food seemed to taste better.

Wili might have been content to balance indefinitely between the prospect of inheriting
the estate and stealing it, but for one thing: The mansion was haunted. It was not the air
of mystery or the hidden rooms. There was something alive in the house. Sometimes he
heard a woman's voice — not Irma's, but the one he had heard talk to Naismith on the trail.
Wili saw the creature once. It was well past midnight. He was sneaking back to the
mansion after stashing his latest acquisitions. Wili oozed along the edge of the veranda,
moving silently from shadow to shadow. And suddenly there was someone behind him,
standing full in the moonlight. It was a woman, tall and Anglo. Her hair, silver in the
light, was cut in an alien style. The clothes were like something out of the Moraleses
old-time television. She turned to look straight at him. There was a faint smile on her face.
He bolted — and the creature twisted, vanished.

Wili was a fast shadow through the veranda doors, up the stairs, and into his room. He
jammed a chair under the doorknob and lay for many minutes, heart pounding.
What had
he seen?
How he would like to believe it was a trick of the moonlight: The creature had
vanished as if by the flick of a mirror, and large parts of the walls surrounding the
veranda were of slick black glass. But tricks of the eye do not have such detail, do not
smile faint smiles. What then? Television? Wili had seen plenty of flat video, and since
coming to Middle California had used holo tanks. Tonight went beyond all that. Besides,
the vision had turned to look
right at him.

So that left... a haunting. It made sense. No one — certainly no woman — had dressed like
that since before the plagues. Old Naismith would have been young then. Could this be
the ghost of a dead love? Such tales were common in the ruins of L.A., but until now
Wili had been skeptical.

Any thought of inheriting the estate was gone. The question was, could he get out of
this alive? — and with how much loot? Wili watched the doorknob with horrified
fascination. If he lived through this night, then it was probably safe to stay a few more
days. The vision might be just the warning of a jealous spirit. Such a ghost would not
begrudge him a few more trinkets, as long as he departed when Naismith returned.

Wili got very little sleep that night.

The horsemen — four of them, with a row of five pack mules — arrived the afternoon of a
slow, rainy day. It had been thundering and windy earlier, but now the rains off
Vandenberg came down in a steady drizzle from a sky so overcast that it already seemed
evening.

When Wili saw the four, and saw that none of them was Naismith, he faded around the
mansion, toward the pond and his cache. Then he stopped for a foolish moment,
wondering if he should run back and warn Irma and Bill.

But the two stupid caretakers were already running down the front steps to greet the
intruders: an enormous fat fellow and three rifle-carrying men-at-arms. As he skulked in
the bushes, Bill turned and seemed to look directly at his hiding place. "Wili, come help
our guests."

Mustering what dignity he could, the boy emerged and walked toward the group. The
old, fat one dismounted. He looked like a Jonque, but his English was strangely accented.
"Ah, so this is his apprentice,
hein?
I have wondered if the master would ever find a
successor and what sort of person he might be." He patted the bristling Wili on the head,
making the usual error about the boy's age.

The gesture was patronizing, but Wili thought there was a hint of respect, almost awe,
in his voice. Perhaps this slob was not a Jonque and had never seen a black before. The
fellow stared silently at Wili for a moment and then seemed to notice the rain. He gave
an exaggerated shiver and most of the group moved up the steps. Bill and Wili were left
to take the animals around to the outbuilding.

Four guests. That was not the end. By twos and threes and fours, all through the
afternoon and evening, others drifted in. The horses and mules quickly overflowed the
small outbuilding, and Bill showed Wili hidden stables. There were no servants. The
guests themselves, or at least the more junior of them, carried the baggage indoors and
helped with the animals. Much of the luggage was not taken to their rooms, but
disappeared into the halls below ground. The rest turned out to be food and drink — which
made sense, since the manor produced only enough to feed three or four people.

Night and, more rain. The last of the visitors arrived — and one of these was Naismith.
The old man took his apprentice aside. "Ah, Wili, you have remained." His Spanish was
as stilted as ever, and he paused frequently as if waiting for some unseen speaker to
supply him with a missing word. "After the meetings, when our guests have gone, you
and I must talk on your course of study. You are too old to delay. For now, though, help
Irma and Bill and do not... bother... our guests." He looked at Wili as though suspecting
the boy might do what Wili had indeed been considering. There was many a fat purse to
be seen among these naive travelers.

"A new apprentice has nothing to tell his elders, and there is little he can learn from
them in this short time." With that the old man departed for the halls beneath his small
castle, and Wili was left to work with Irma and two of the visitors in the dimly lit
kitchen.

Their mysterious guests stayed all that night and through the next day. Most kept to
their rooms and the meeting halls. Several helped Bill with repairs on the outbuilding.
Even here they behaved strangely: For instance, the roof of the stable badly needed work.
But when the sun came out, the men wouldn't touch it. They seemed only willing to work
on things where there was shade. And they never worked outside in groups of more than
two or three. Bill claimed this was all Naismith's wish.

The next evening, there was a banquet in one of the halls. Wili, Bill, and Irma brought
the food in, but that was all they got to see. The heavy doors were locked and the three of
them went back up to the living room. After the Moraleses had settled down with the
holo, Wili drifted away as if to go to his room.

He cut through the kitchen to the side stairs. The thick carpet
made speedy, soundless
progress possible, and a moment later he was peeking round at the entrance to the
meeting hall. There were no guards, but the oak doors remained closed. A wood tripod
carried a sign of gold on black. Wili silently crossed the hall and touched the sign. The
velvet was deep but the gold was just painted on. It was cracked here and there and
seemed very old. The letters said:

NCC

and below this, hand-lettered on vellum
,
was:

2047

Wili stepped back, more puzzled than ever. Why? Who was there to read the sign,
when the doors were shut and locked? Did these people believe in spirit spells? Wili
crept to the door and set his ear against the dark wood. He heard...

Nothing. Nothing but the rush of blood in his ear. These doors were thick, but he
should at least hear the murmur of voices. He could hear the sound of a century-old game
show from all the way up in the living room, but the other side of this door might as well
be the inside of a mountain.

Wili fled upstairs, and was a model of propriety until their guests departed the next
day.

There was no single leave-taking; they left as they had come. Strange customs indeed,
the Anglos had.

But one thing was as in the South. They left gifts. And the gifts were conveniently
piled on the wide table in the mansion's entrance way. Wili tried to pretend disinterest,
but he felt his eyes must be visibly bugging out of his head whenever he walked by. Till
now he had not seen much that was like the portable wealth of Los Angeles, but here
were rubies, emeralds, diamonds, gold. There were gadgets, too, in artfully carved boxes
of wood and silver. He couldn't tell if they were games or holos or what. There was so
much here that a fortune could be taken and not be missed.

The last were gone by midnight. Wili crouched at the window of his attic room and
watched them depart. They quickly disappeared down the trail, and the beat of hooves
ceased soon after that. Wili suspected that, like the others, these three had left the main
trail and were departing along some special path of their own.

Wili did not go back to his bed. The moon's waning crescent slowly rose and the hours
passed. Wili tried to see familiar spots along the coast, but the fog had rolled in, and only
the Vandenberg Dome rose into sight. He waited till just before morning twilight. There
were no sounds from below. Even the horses were quiet. Only the faint buzzing of insects
edged the silence. If he was going to have part of that treasure, he would have to act now,
moonlight or not.

Wili slipped down the stairs, his hand lightly touching the haft of his knife. (It was not
the same one he had flashed at Irma. That he had made a great show of giving up. This
was a short carving knife from the kitchen set.) There had been no more ghostly
apparitions since that night on the veranda. Wili had almost convinced himself that it had
been an illusion, or some holographic scare show. Nevertheless, he had no desire to stay.

There, glinting in the moonlight, was his treasure. It looked even more beautiful than
by lamplight. Far away, he heard Bill turn over, begin to snore. Wili silently filled his
sack with the smallest, most clearly valuable items on the table. It was hard not to be
greedy, but he stopped when the bag was only half full. Five kilos would have to do!
More wealth than Old Ebenezer passed to the lower Ndelante in a year! And now out the
back, around the pond, and to his cache.

Wili crept out onto the veranda, his heart suddenly pounding. This would be the spirit's
last chance to get him. iDio! There was someone out there. Wili stood absolutely still, not
breathing. It was Naismith. The old man sat on a lounge chair, his body bundled against
the chill. He seemed to be gazing into the sky-but not at the moon, since he was in the
shadows. Naismith was looking away from Wili; this could not be an ambush.
Nevertheless, the boy's hand tightened on his knife. After a moment, he moved again,
away from the old man and toward the pond.

"Come here to sit," said Naismith, without turning his head. Wili almost bolted, then
realized that if the old man could be out here stargazing, there was no reason why the
excuse should not also serve him. He set his sack of treasure down in the shadows and
moved closer to Naismith.

"That's close enough. Sit. Why are you here so late, young one?"

"The same as you, I think, My Lord... To view the sky." What else could the old man
be out here for?

"That's a good reason." The tone was neutral, and Wili could not tell if there was a
smile or a scowl on his face; he could barely make out the other's profile. Wili's hand
tightened nervously on the haft of his knife. He had never actually killed anyone before,
but he knew the penalties for burglary.