Across Realtime

by Vernor Vinge

  She looked up at him, keeping her expression innocent and friendly. He doesn't look weak. He doesn't look like a man mho would betray his people.... And yet he had. So his motives were very important if they were to manipulate him further. Finally she said, "We want to thank you for uncovering the lab in La Jolla."

  The undersheriff's face became rigid, and he straightened.

  Lu cocked her head quizzically. "You mean you didn't guess who I am?"

  Rosas slumped back against the railing, looked dully over the side. "I suspected. It was all too pat: our escape, these fellows picking us up. I didn't think you'd be a woman, though.

  That's so old-fashioned." His dark hands clenched the wood till the knuckles shone pale. "Damn it, lady, you and your men killed Jere -killed one of the two I was here to protect. And then you grabbed all those innocent people at the tournament. Why? Have you gone crazy?"

  The man hadn't guessed that the tournament raid was the heart of Avery's operation; the biolab had been secondary, important mainly because it had brought Miguel Rosas to them. They needed hostages, information.

  "I'm sorry our attack on the lab killed one of your people, Mr. Rosas. That wasn't our intent." This was true, though it might give her a welcome leverage of guilt. "You could have simply told us its location, not insisted on a Judas kiss' identification. You must realize, we couldn't take any chance that what was in the lab might get out.... "

  Rosas was nodding, almost to himself. That must be it, Lu thought. The man had a pathological hatred of bioscience, far beyond the average person's simple fear. That was what had driven him to betrayal. "As for the raid on the tournament, we had very good reasons for that, reasons which you will someday understand and support. For now you must trust us, just as the whole world has trusted us these last fifty years, and follow our direction."

  "Direction? The hell you say. I did what I had to do, but that's the end to my cooperation. You can lock me up like the rest."

  "I think not. Your safe return to Middle California is a high priority with us. You and I and Wili will put ashore at Santa Barbara. From there we should be able to get to Red Arrow Farm. We'll be heroes, the only survivors of the infamous La Jolla raid." She saw the defiance on his face. "You really have no choice, Miguel Rosas. You have betrayed your friends, your employers, and all the people we arrested at the tournament. If you don't go along, we will let it be known you were behind the raids, that you have been our agent for years."

  "That's a damn lie!" His outburst was clipped short as he realized its irrelevance.

  "On the other hand, if you do help us... well, then you will be serving a great good - " Rosas did not sneer, but clearly he did not believe it either, "- and when all this is over you will be very rich, if necessary protected by the Peace for the rest of your life." It was a strategy that had worked on many, and not just during the history of the Peace: Take a weak person, encourage him to betrayal (for whatever reason), and then use the stick of exposure and the carrot of wealth to force him to do far more than he'd ever have had the courage or motive for in the beginning. Hamilton Avery was confident it would work here and had refused her the time for anything more subtle. Miguel Rosas might get them a line on the Hoehler fellow.

  Della watched him carefully, trying to pierce his tense expression and see whether he was strong enough to sacrifice himself.

  The undersheriff stared at the gulls that circled the boat and called raucously to their brethren as the first catch was drawn aboard. For a moment he seemed lost in the swirl of wings, and his jaw muscles slowly relaxed.

  Finally he looked back at her. "You must be very good at chess. I can't believe the Authority has chess programs that could play the way you did against Wili."

  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 Aztlÿn 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.

  TWENTY

  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 Aztlÿn 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 Aztlÿn 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 re searchers 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 l
ab. 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-"

  Wili stopped short, seemed to realize that the rush of words was carrying his cause backward.

  Kaladze asked, "Could you really hear all they were saying?"

  "N-no. There was the wind, and I was very dizzy. But-"

  "That's enough, boy." Sy Wentz's voice boomed across the clearing. "We've known Mike since he was younger than you. Me and the Kaladzes shared his upbringing. He grew up here-" not in some Basin ghetto"-and we know where his loyalties are. He's risked his life more than once for customers. Hell, he even saved Paul's neck a couple of years ago."

  "I'm sorry, Wili," Kaladze's voice was mild, quite unlike Sy's. "We do know Mike. And after this morning, I'm sure Miss Lu is what she appears. I called some friends in San Francisco: Her folks have been heavy-wagon 'furbishers for years up there. They recognized her picture. She and her brother went to La Jolla, just as she says."