by Vernor Vinge
“And . . .” Wili could scarcely trust himself to ask the question, “. . . you all, the three of you, are alone here?”
“Certainly. But don’t worry. You are much safer here than you ever were in the South, I am sure.”
I am sure, too, My Lady. Safe as a coyote among chickens. If ever he’d made a right decision, it had been his escape to Middle California. To think that Paul Naismith and the others had the manor to themselves—it was a wonder the Jonques had not overrun this land long ago. The thought almost kindled his suspicions. But then the prospects of what he could do here overwhelmed all. There was no reason he should have to leave with his loot. Wili Wáchendon, weak as he was, could probably be ruler here—if he was clever enough during the next few weeks. At the very least he would be rich forever. If Naismith were the jefe, and if Wili were to be his apprentice, then in essence he was being adopted by the manor lord. That happened occasionally in Los Angeles. Even the richest families were cursed with sterility. Such families often sought an appropriate heir. The adopted one was usually highborn, an orphan of another family, perhaps the survivor of a vendetta. But there were not many children to go around, especially in the old days. Wili knew of at least one case where the oldsters adopted from the Basin—not a black child, of course, but still, a boy from a peasant family. Such was the stuff of dreams; Wili could scarcely believe that it was being offered to him. If he played his cards right, he would eventually own all of this—and without having to steal a single thing, or risk torture and execution! It was . . . unnatural. But if these people were crazy, he would certainly do what he could to profit by it.
Wili hurried after Irma as she returned to the house.
A week passed, then two. Naismith was nowhere to be seen, and Bill and Irma Morales would only say that he was traveling on “business.” Wili began to wonder if “apprenticeship” really meant what he had thought. He was treated well, but not with the fawning courtesy that should be shown the heir-apparent of a manor. Perhaps he was on some sort of probation: Irma woke him at dawn, and after breakfast he spent most of the day—assuming it wasn’t raining—in the manor’s small fields, weeding, planting, hoeing. It wasn’t hard work—in fact, it reminded him of what Larry Faulk’s labor company did—but it was deadly boring.
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 intensifed. 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 LA, 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.
5
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 Jo
nque, 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.
¡Dio! 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.
“But I don’t admire the sky as a whole,” Naismith continued, “though it is beautiful. I like the morning and the late evening especially, because then it is possible to see the—” there was one of his characteristic pauses as he seemed to listen for the right word, “satellites. See? There are two visible right now.” He pointed first near the zenith and then waved at something close to the horizon. Wili followed his first gesture, and saw a tiny point of light moving slowly, effortlessly across the sky. Too slow to be an aircraft, much too slow to be a meteor: It was a moving star, of course. For a momen
t, he had thought the old man was going to show him something really magical. Wili shrugged and somehow Naismith seemed to catch the gesture.
“Not impressed, eh? There were men there once, Wili. But no more.”
It was hard for Wili to conceal his scorn. How could that be? With aircraft you could see the vehicle. These little lights were like the stars and as meaningless. But he said nothing and a long silence overcame them. “You don’t believe me, do you, Wili? But it is true. There were men and women there, so high up you can’t see the form of their craft.”
Wili relaxed, squatted before the other’s chair. He tried to sound humble. “But then, Lord, what keeps them up? Even aircraft must come down for fuel.”
Naismith chuckled. “That from the expert Celest player! Think, Wili. The universe is a great game of Celest. Those moving lights are swinging about the Earth, just like planets on a game display.
¡Del Nico Dio! Wili sat on the flags with an audible thump. A wave of dizziness passed over him. The sky would never be the same. Wili’s cosmology had—until that moment—been an unexamined flatland image. Now, suddenly, he found the interior cosmos of Celest surrounding him forever and ever, with no up or down, but only the vast central force field that was the Earth, with the moon and all those moving stars circling about. And he couldn’t disguise from himself the distances involved; he was far too familiar with Celest to do that. He felt like an infinitesimal shrinking toward some unknowable zero.
His mind tumbled over and over in the dark, caught between the relationships flashing through his mind and the night sky that swung overhead. So all those objects had their own gravity, and all moved—at least in some small way—at the behest of all the others. An image of the solar system not too different from the reality slowly formed in his mind. When at last he spoke, his voice was very small, and his humility was not pretended, “But then the game, it represents trips that men have actually made? To the moon, to the stars that move? You . . . we . . . can do that?”