by Vernor Vinge
“Confinement spheres—bobbles—are not so much force fields as they are partitions, separating the in- and outside of their surfaces into distinct universes. Gravity alone can penetrate. The Tucson bobble was originally generated around an ICBM over the arctic. It fell to earth near its target, the missile fields at Tucson. The hell bomb inside exploded harmlessly, in the universe on the far side of the bobble’s surface.
“As you know, it takes the enormous energy output of the Authority’s generator in Livermore to create even the smallest confinement sphere. In fact, that is why the Peace Authority has banned all energy-intensive usages, to safeguard this secret of keeping the Peace. But once established you know that a bobble is stable and requires no further inputs to maintain itself.”
“Lasting forever,” put in old Schelling. It was not quite a question.
“That’s what we all thought, sir. But nothing lasts forever. Even black holes undergo quantum decay. Even normal matter must eventually do so, though on a time-scale beyond imagination. A decay analysis has not been done for confinement spheres until quite recently.” He nodded to an assistant who passed three heavy manuscripts across the table to the NM officials. Schelling scarcely concealed his eagerness as he flipped past the Peace Authority Secret seal—the highest classification a government official ever saw—and began reading.
“So, gentlemen, it appears that—like all things—bobbles do decay. The time constant depends on the sphere’s radius and the mass enclosed. The Tucson blast was a tragic, fluke accident.”
“And you’re telling us that every time one of the damn things goes, it’s going to make a bang as bad as the bombs you’re supposed to be protecting us from?”
Avery permitted himself to glare at the general. “No, I am not. I thought my description of the Tucson incident was clear: There was an exploded nuclear weapon inside that confinement.”
“Fifty years ago, Mr. Avery, fifty years ago.”
Hamilton stepped back from the podium. “Mr. Halberstamm, can you imagine what it’s like inside a ten-meter bobble? Nothing comes in or goes out. If you explode a nuke in such a place, there is nowhere to cool off. In a matter of milliseconds, thermodynamic equilibrium is reached, but at a temperature of several million degrees. The innocent-seeming bobble, buried in Tucson all these decades, contained the heart of a fireball. When the bobble decayed, the explosion was finally released.”
There was an uneasy stirring among the Strategic Studies Committee as those worthies considered the thousands of bobbles that littered North America. Geraldo Alvarez, a presidential confidant of such power that he had no formal position whatsoever, raised his hand and asked diffidently, “How frequently does the Authority expect this to happen?”
“Dr. Schelling can describe the statistics in detail, but in principle the decay is exactly like that of other quantum processes: We can only speak of what will happen to large numbers of objects. We could go for a century or two and not have a single incident. On the other hand, it is conceivable that three or four might decay in a single year. But even for the smallest bobbles, we estimate a time constant of decay greater than ten million years.”
“So they go off like atoms with a given half-life, rather than chicken eggs hatching all at once?”
“Exactly, sir. A good analogy. And in one regard, I can be more specific and encouraging: Most bobbles do not contain nuclear explosions. And large bobbles—even if they contain ‘fossil’ explosions—will be harmless. For instance, we estimate the equilibrium temperature produced by a nuke inside the Vandenberg or Langley bobbles to be less than one hundred degrees. There would be some property damage around the perimeter, but nothing like in Tucson.
“And now, gentlemen, I’m going to give our side of the meeting over to Liaison Officers Rankin and Nakamura.” He nodded at his third-level people. “In particular, you must decide with them how much public attention to give this incident.” And it better not be much! “I must fly to Los Angeles. Aztlán detected the explosion, and they deserve an explanation, too.”
He gestured to his top Albuquerque man, the usual Peace rep to the highest levels of the Republic, to leave with him. They walked out, ignoring the tightened lips and red faces across the table. It was necessary to keep these people in their place, and one of the best ways of doing that was to emphasize that New Mexico was just one fish among many.
Minutes later they were out of the nondescript building and on the street. Fortunately, there were no reporters. The NM press was under fair control; besides, the existence of the Stategic Studies Committee was itself a secret.
He and Brent, the chief liaison officer here, climbed into the limo, and the horses pulled them into the afternoon traffic. Since Avery’s visit was unofficial, he used local vehicles, and there was no escort; he had an excellent view. The layout was similar to that of the capitol of the old United States, if you could ignore the bare mountains that jaggedly edged the sky. He could see at least a dozen other vehicles on the wide boulevard. Albuquerque was almost as busy and cosmopolitan as an Authority Enclave. But that made sense: The Republic of New Mexico was one of the most powerful and populous nations on Earth.
He glanced at Brent. “Are we clean?”
The younger man looked briefly puzzled, then said, “Yessir. We went over the limo with those new procedures.”
“Okay. I want to take the detail reports with me, but summarize. Are Schelling and Alvarez and company as innocently surprised as they claim?”
“I’d stake the Peace on it, sir.” From the look on Brent’s face, the fellow understood that was exactly what he was doing. “They don’t have anything like the equipment you warned us of. You’ve always supported a strong counter-intel department here. We haven’t let you down; we’d know if they were anywhere near being a threat.”
“Hmm.” The assessment agreed with Avery’s every intuition. The Republic government would do whatever they could get away with. But that was why he’d kept watch on them all these years: He knew they didn’t have the tech power to be behind what he was seeing.
He sat back in the padded leather seat. So Schelling was “innocent.”
Well then, would he buy the story Avery was peddling? Was it really a story at all? Every word Hamilton spoke in that meeting was the absolute truth, reviewed and rereviewed by the science teams at Livermore. . . . But the whole truth it was not. The NM officials did not know about the ten-meter bobble burst in Central Asia. The theory could explain that incident, too, but who could believe that two decays would happen within a year after fifty years of stability?
Like chicken eggs hatching all at once. That was the image Alvarez had used. The science team was certain it was simple, half-life decay, but they hadn’t seen the big picture, the evidence that had been trickling in for better than a year. Like eggs hatching . . . When it comes to survival, the rules of evidence become an art, and Avery felt with dread certainty that someone, somewhere, had figured how to cancel bobbles.
11
The bandits’ rifle fire lit the trees. There came another volley and another. Wili heard Jeremy move, as if getting ready to jump up and return fire. He realized the Russians must be shooting at themselves. The reflection that had fooled him had taken them in, too. What would happen when they realized it was only a bobble that faced them? A bobble and one rifle in the hands of an incompetent marksman?
The gunfire came to a ragged stop. “Now, Jeremy!” Naismith said. The larger boy jumped into the open and swung his weapon wildly across the ravine. He fired the whole clip. The rifle stuttered in an irregular way, as though on the verge of jamming. Its muzzle flash lit the ravine. The enemy was invisible, except for one fellow vaguely seen against the light-colored rock at the side of the cleft. That one had bad luck: he was almost lifted off his feet by the impact of bullet on chest, and slammed back against the rock.
Cries of pain rose from all along the ravine. How had Jeremy done it? Even one hit was fantastic luck. And Jeremy Kaladze was the
fellow who in daylight could miss the broad side of a barn.
Jeremy slammed down beside him. “Did I g-get them all?” There was an edge of horror in his voice. But he slipped another clip into his sawed-off weapon.
There was no return fire. But wait. The bandit lying by the outcrop—he was up and running! The hit should have left him dead or crawling. Through the bushes below, he could hear the others picking themselves up and running for the far end of the ravine. One by one, they appeared in silhouette, still running.
Jeremy rose to his knees, but Naismith pulled him down.
“You’re right, son. There’s something strange with them. Let’s not press our luck.”
They lay for a long time in the ringing silence, till at last the animal sounds resumed and the starlight seemed bright. There was no sign of humans inside of five hundred meters.
Projections? Jeremy wondered aloud. Zombies? Wili thought silently to himself. But they could be neither. They had been hit; they had gone down. Then they had gotten up and run in a panic—and that was unlike the zombies of Ndelante legend. Naismith had no speculations he was willing to share.
It was raining again by the time their rescuers arrived.
Only nine o’clock on an April morning and already the air was a hot, humid thirty degrees. Thunderheads hung high on the arch of the Dome. It would rain in the afternoon. Wili Wáchendon and Jeremy Sergeivich Kaladze walked down the wide, graveled road that led from the main farmhouse toward outbuildings by the Dome. They made a strange sight: One boy near two meters tall, white and lanky; the other short, thin, and black, apparently sub-adolescent. But Wili was beginning to realize that there were similarities, too. It turned out they were the same age—fifteen. And the other boy was sharp, though not in the same class as Wili. He had never tried to intimidate with his size. If anything, he seemed slightly in awe of Wili (if that were possible in one as rambunctious and outspoken as Jeremy Sergeivich).
“The Colonel says”—Jeremy and the others never called Old Kaladze “grandfather,” though there seemed to be no fear in their attitude, and a lot of affection—“the Colonel says the farm is being watched, has been since the three of us got here.”
“Oh? The bandits?”
“Don’t know. We can’t afford the equipment Dr. Naismith can buy—those micro-cameras and such. But we have a telescope and twenty-four-hour camera on top of the barn. The processor attached to it detected several flashes from the trees”—he swept his hand toward the ridgeline where the rain forest came down almost to the farm’s banana plants—“that are probably reflections from old-style optics.”
Wili shivered in the warm sunlight. There were lots of people here compared to Naismith’s mansion in the wilderness, but it was not a properly fortified site: There were no walls, watchtowers, observation balloons. There were many very young children, and most of the adults were over fifty. That was a typical age distribution, but one unsuitable for defense. Wili wondered what secret resources the Kaladzes might have.
“So what are you going to do?”
“Nothing much. There can’t be too many of ‘em; they’re awful shy. We’d go out after them if we had more people. As it is, we’ve got four smart rifles and men who can use them. And Sheriff Wentz knows about the situation. . . . C’mon, don’t worry.” He didn’t notice Wili bristle. The smaller boy hid it well. He was beginning to realize that there was scarcely a mean bone in Jeremy’s body. “I want to show you the stuff we have here.”
He turned off the gravel road and walked toward a large, one-story building. It could scarcely be a barn; the entire roof was covered with solar batteries. “If it weren’t for the Vandenberg Bobble, I think Middle California would be most famous for Red Arrow Products—that’s our trade name. We’re not as sophisticated as the Greens in Norcross, or as big as the Qens in Beijing, but the things we do are the best.”
Wili pretended indifference. “This place is just a big farm, it looks like to me.”
“Sure, and Dr. Naismith is just a hermit. It is big and it’s terrific farmland. But where do you think my family got the money to buy it? We’ve been real lucky: Grandmother and the Colonel had four children after the War, and each of them had at least two. We’re practically a clan, and we’ve adopted other folk, people who can figure out things we can’t. The Colonel believes in diversification; between the farm and our software, we’re unsinkable.”
Jeremy pounded on the heavy white door. There was no answer, but it swung slowly inward and the boys entered. Down each side of the long building, windows let in morning light and enough breeze to make it relatively comfortable. He had an impression of elegant chaos. Ornamental plants surrounded scattered desks. There was more than one aquarium. Most of the desks were unoccupied: Some sort of conference was going on at the far end of the room. The men waved to Jeremy but continued with what sounded perilously close to being an argument.
“Lots more people here than usual. Most guys like to work from home. Look.” He pointed to one of the few seated workers. The man seemed unaware of them. In the holo above his desk floated colored shapes, shapes that shifted and turned. The man watched intently. He nodded to himself, and suddenly the pattern was tripled and sheared. Somehow he was in control of the display. Wili recognized the composition of linear and nonlinear transformations: Inside his head, Wili had played with those through most of the winter.
“What’s he doing?”
Jeremy’s normal loudness was muted. “Who do you think implements those algorithms you and Dr. Naismith invent?” He swept his hand across the room. “We’ve done some of the most complicated implementations in the world.”
Wili just stared at him. “Look, Wili. I know you have all sorts of wonderful machines up in the mountains. Where do you think they come from?”
Wili pondered. He had never really thought about it! His education had moved very fast along the paths Naismith laid out. One price for this progress was that in most respects Wili’s opinions about what made things work were a combination of mathematical abstraction and Ndelante myth. “I guess I thought Paul made most of them.”
“Dr. Naismith is an amazing man, but it takes hundreds of people all over the world to make all the things he needs. Mike Rosas says it’s like a pyramid: At the top there are just a few men—say Naismith in algorithms or Masaryk in surface physics—guys who can invent really new things. With the Peace Authority Bans on big organizations, these people got to work alone, and there probably aren’t more than five or ten of them in the whole world. Next down in the pyramid are software houses like ours. We take algorithms and implement them so that machines can run them.”
Wili watched the programmatic phantoms shift and turn above the desk. Those shapes were at once familiar and alien. It was as if his own ideas had been transformed into some strange form of Celest. “But these people don’t make anything. Where do the machines come from?”
“You’re right; without hardware to run our programs, we’re just daydreamers. That’s the next level of the pyramid. Standard processors are cheap. Before the plagues, several families from Sunnyvale settled in Santa Maria. They brought a truckload of gamma-ray etching gear. It’s been improved a lot since. We import purified base materials from Oregon. And special-purpose stuff comes from even further: For instance, the Greens make the best synthetic optics.”
Jeremy started for the door. “I’d show you more here except they seem awfully busy today. That’s probably your fault. The Colonel seems real excited about whatever you and Dr. Naismith invented this winter.” He stopped and looked at Wili, as though hoping for some inside information. And Wili wondered to himself, How can I explain? He could hardly describe the algorithm in a few words. It was a delicate matter of coding schemes, of packing and unpacking certain objects very cleverly and very quickly. Then he realized that the other was interested in its effects, in the ability it could give the Tinkers to listen to the Authority satellites.
His uncertainty was misinterpreted, f
or the taller boy laughed. “Never mind, I won’t push you. Fact is, I probably shouldn’t know. C’mon, there’s one thing more I want to show you—though maybe it should be a secret, too. The Colonel thinks the Peace Authority might issue a Ban if they knew about it.”
They continued down the farm’s main road, which ran directly into the side of the Vandenberg Dome some thousand meters further on. It made Wili dizzy just to look in that direction. This close, there was no feeling of the overall shape of the Dome. In a sense, it was invisible, a vast vertical mirror. In it he saw the rolling hills of the farm, the landscape that spread away behind them: There were a couple of small sailboats making for the north shore of Lake Lompoc, and he could see the ferry docked on the near side of the Salsipuedes fiord.
As they walked closer to the bobble, he saw that the ground right at the edge was torn, twisted. Rain off the Dome had gouged a deep river around the base, runoff to Lake Lompoc. The ground shook faintly but constantly with tiny earthquakes. Wili tried to imagine the other half of the bobble, extending kilometers into the earth. No wonder the world trembled around this obstruction. He looked up and swayed
“Gets you, doesn’t it?” Jeremy grabbed his arm and steadied him. “I grew up close to it, and I still fall flat on my behind when I stand here and imagine trying to climb the thing.” They scrambled up the embanked mud and looked down at the river. Even though it hadn’t rained for hours, the waters moved fast and muddy, gouging at the land. Across the river, a phantom Jeremy and Wili stared back. “It’s dangerous to get much closer. The water channel extends a ways underground. We’ve had some pretty big landslides.
“That’s not why I brought you here, anyway.” He led Wili down the embankment toward a small building. “There’s another level in Mike’s pyramid: the folks who make things like carts and houses and plows. The refurbishers still do a lot of that, but they’re running out of ruins, at least around here. The new stuff is made just like it was hundreds of years ago. It’s expensive and takes a lot of work—the type of thing the Republic of New Mexico or Aztlán is good at. Well, we can program processors to control moving-parts machines. I don’t see why we can’t make a moving-parts machine to make all those other things. That’s my own special project.”