The Peace War (4 page)

a room under the eaves. The only light was the moon's, coming through a window more
than large enough to escape by.

"Tienes hambre?"
the woman asked him.

Wili shook his head dumbly, surprised at himself. He really wasn't hungry; it must be
some residual effect of the stunner. She showed him a toilet in an adjoining room and
told him to get some sleep.

And then he was left alone!

Wili lay on the bed and looked out over the forest. He thought he could see a glint from
the Vandenberg Dome. His luck was almost past marveling at. He thanked the One God
he had not bolted at the entrance to the mansion. Whoever was the master here knew
nothing of security and employed fools. A week here and he would know every small
thing worth stealing. In a week he would be gone with enough treasure to live for a long,
long time!

Captain Allison Parker's new world began with the sound of tearing metal.

For several seconds she just perceived and reacted, not trying to explain anything to
herself. The hull was breached. Quiller was trying to crawl back toward her. There was
blood on his face. Through rents in the hull she could see trees and pale sky.
Trees?

Her mind locked out the wonder, and she struggled from her harness. She snapped the
disk pack to her side and pulled down the light helmet with its ten-minute air supply.
Without thinking, she was following the hull-breach procedures that had been drilled into
all of them so many times. If she had thought about it she might have left off the helmet —
there were sounds of birds and wind-rustled trees — and she would have died.

Allison pulled Quiller away from the panel and saw why the harness had not protected
him: The front of the shuttle was caved in toward the pilot. Another few centimeters and
he would have been crushed. A harsh, crackling sound came clearly through the thin shell
of her helmet. She slipped Quiller's in place and turned on the oxygen feed. She
recognized the smell that still hung in her helmet: The tracer stench that tagged their
landing fuel.

Angus Quiller straightened out of her grasp. He looked around dazedly. "Fred?" he
shouted.

Outside, the improbable trees were beginning to flare. God only knew how long the
forward hull would keep the fire in the nose tanks from breaking into the crew area.

Allison and Quiller pulled themselves forward... and saw what had happened to Fred
Torres. The terrible sound that had begun this nightmare had been the left front of the
vehicle coming down into the flight deck. The back of Fred's acceleration couch was
intact, but Allison could see that the man was beyond help. Quiller had been very lucky.

They looked through the rent that was almost directly over their heads. It was ragged
and long, perhaps wide enough to escape through. Allison glanced across the cabin at the
main hatch. It was subtly bowed in; they would never get out that way. Even through
their pressure suits, they could now feel the heat. The sky beyond the rent was no longer
blue. They were looking up a flue of smoke and flame that climbed the nearby pines.

Quiller made a stirrup with his hands and boosted the NMV specialist though the
ragged tear in the hull. Allison's head popped through. Under anything less than these
circumstances she would have screamed at what she saw sitting in the flames: an
immense dark octopus shape, its limbs afire, cracked and swaying. Allison wriggled her
shoulders free of the hole and pulled herself up. Then she reached down for the pilot. At
the same time, some part of her mind realized that what she had seen was not an octopus
but the mass of roots of a rather large tree which somehow had fallen downward on the
nose of the sortie craft. This was what had killed Fred Torres.

Quiller leaped up to grab her hand. For a moment his broader form stuck in the
opening, but after a single coordinated push and tug he came through — leaving part of his
equipment harness on the jagged metal of the broken hull.

They were at the bottom of a long crater, now filled with heat and reddish smoke.
Without their oxygen, they would have had no chance. Even so, the fire was intense. The
forward area was well involved, sending rivulets of fire toward the rear, where most of
the landing fuel was tanked. She looked wildly around, absorbing what she saw without
further surprise, simply trying to find a way out.

Quiller pointed at the right wing section. If they could run along it, a short jump would
take them to the cascade of brush and small trees that had fallen into the crater. It wasn't
till much later that she wondered how all that brush had come to lie
above
the orbiter
when it crashed.

Seconds later they were climbing hand-over-hand up the wall of brush and vines. The
fire edged steadily through the soggy mass below them and sent flaming streamers ahead
along the pine needles imbedded in the vines. At the top they turned for a moment and
looked down. As they watched, the cargo bay broke in half and the sortie craft slumped
into the strange emptiness below it. Thus died all Allison's millions of dollars of optical
and deep-probe equipment. Her hand tightened on the disk pack that still hung by her
side.

The main tank blew, and simultaneously Allison's right leg buckled beneath her. She
dropped to the ground, Quiller a second behind her. "Damn stupidity," she heard him say
as debris showered down on them, "us standing here gawking at a bomb. Let's move out."

Allison tried to stand, saw the red oozing from the side of her leg. The pilot stooped
and carried her through the damp brush, twenty or thirty meters upwind from the crater.
He set her down and bent to look at the wound. He pulled a knife from his crash kit and
sawed the tough suit fabric from around her wound.

"You're lucky. Whatever it was passed right through the side of your leg. I'd call
this a
nick, except it goes so deep." He sprayed the area with first-aid glue, and the pain
subsided to a throbbing pressure that kept time with her pulse.

The heavy red smoke was drifting steadily away from them. The orbiter itself was
hidden by the crater's edge. The explosions were continuing irregularly but without great
force. They should be safe here. He helped her out of her pressure suit, then struggled out
of his own.

Quiller walked several paces back toward the wreck. He bent and picked up a strange,
careen shape. "Looks like it got thrown here by the blast." It was a Christian cross, its
base still covered with dirt.

"We crashed in a damn cemetery," Allison tried to laugh, but it made her dizzy. Quiller
didn't reply. He studied the cross for some seconds. Finally he set it down and came back
to look at Allison's leg. "That stopped the bleeding. I don't see any other punctures. How
do you feel?"

Allison glanced down at the red on her gray flight fatigues. Pretty colors, except when
it's your own red. "Give me some time to sit here. I bet I'll be able to walk to the rescue
choppers when they come."

"Hmm. Okay, I'm going to take a look around... There may be a road nearby." He
unclipped the crash kit and set it beside her. "Be back in fifteen minutes."

They started on Wili the next morning. It was the woman, Irma, who brought him
down, fed him breakfast in the tiny alcove off the main dining room. She was a pleasant
woman, but young enough to be strong and she spoke very good Spanish. Wili did not
trust her. But no one threatened him, and the food seemed endless; he ate so much that
his eternal gnawing hunger was almost satisfied. All this time Irma talked — but without
saying a great deal, as though she knew he was concentrating on his enormous breakfast.
No other servants were visible. In fact, Wili was beginning to think the mansion was
untenanted, that these three must be housekeeping staff holding the mansion for their
absent lord. That
jefe
was very powerful or very stupid, because even in the light of day,
Wili could see no evidence of defenses. If he could be gone before the
jefe
returned...

"— and do you know why you are here, Wili?" Irma said as she collected the plates
from the mosaicked surface of the breakfast table.

Wili nodded, pretending shyness. Sure he knew. Everyone needed workers, and the old
and middle-aged often needed whole gangs to keep them living in style. But he said, "To
help you?"

"Not me, Wili. Paul. You will be his apprentice. He has looked a long time, and he has
chosen you."

That figured. The old gardener — or whatever he was — looked to be eighty if he was a
day. Right now Wili was being treated royally. But he suspected that was simply because
the old man and his two flunkies were making illegitimate use of their master's house. No
doubt there would be hell to pay when the
jefe
returned. "And, and what am I to do for
My Lady?" Wili spoke with his best diffidence.

"Whatever Paul asks."

She led him around to the back of the mansion where a large pool, almost a lake,
spread away under the pines. The water looked clear, though here and there floated small
clots of pine needles. Toward the center, out from under the trees, it reflected the brilliant
blue of the sky. Downslope, through an opening in the trees, Wili could see thunderheads
gathering about Vandenberg.

"Now off with your clothes and we'll see about giving you a bath." She moved to undo
the buttons on his shirt, an adult helping a child.

Wili recoiled. "No!" To be naked here with the woman!

Irma laughed and pinned his arm, continued to unbutton the shirt. For an instant, Wili
forgot his pose — that he was a child, and an obedient one. Of course this treatment would
be unthinkable within the Ndelante. And even in Jonque territory, the body was
respected. No woman forced baths and nakedness on males.

But Irma was strong. As she pulled the shirt over his head, he lunged for the knife
strapped to his leg, and brought it up toward her face. Irma screamed. Even as she did,
Wili was cursing himself.

"No, no! I am going to tell Paul." She backed away, her hands held between them, as if
to protect herself. Wili knew he could run away now (and he couldn't imagine these three
catching him) — or he could do what was necessary to stay. For now he wanted to stay.

He dropped the knife and groveled. "Please, Lady, I acted without thought." Which
was true. "Please forgive me. I will do anything to make it up." Even, even...

The woman stopped, came back, and picked up the knife. She obviously had no
experience as a foreman, to trust anything he said. The whole situation was alien and
unpredictable. Wili would almost have preferred the lash, the predictability. Irma shook
her head, and when she spoke there was still a little fear in her voice. Wili was sure she
now knew that he was a good deal older than he looked; she made no move to touch him.
"Very well. This is between us, Wili. I will not tell Paul." She smiled, and Wili had the
feeling there was something she was not telling him. She reached her arm out full length
and handed him the brush and soap. Wili stripped, waded into the chill water, and
scrubbed.

"Dress in these," she said after he was out and had dried himself. The new clothes were
soft and clean, a minor piece of loot all by themselves. Irma was almost her old self as
they walked back to the mansion, and Wili felt safe in asking the question that had been
on his mind all that morning: "My Lady, I notice we are all alone here, the four of us — or
at least so it appears. When will the protection of the manor lord be returned to us?"

Irma stopped and after a second, laughed. "What manor lord? Your Spanish is so
strange. You seem to think this is a castle that should have serfs and troops all round."
She continued, almost to herself, "Though perhaps that is your reality. I have never lived
in the South.

"You have already met the lord of the manor, Wili." She saw his uncomprehending
stare. "It's Paul Naismith, the man who brought you here from Santa Ynez."

"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 prospect of what
he could do here overwhelmed all. There was no reason he should have to leave with his
loot. Wili Wachendon, 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 high-born, 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.