The Peace War (9 page)

"And the ammunition?"

"That too. One clip anyway"

Naismith smiled a jagged smile. "'Kolya really coddles you youngsters-but I'm glad of it.
Okay," he seemed to reach a decision, "it's going to depend on you, Jeremy. I didn't bring

anything that heavy... An hour walk from here is a trail that goes south. We should be
able to reach it by twilight. A half hour along that path is a bobble. I know there's a clear
line of sight from there to your farm. And the bobble should confuse our `friends,'
assuming they aren't familiar with the land this close to the coast.

New surprise showed on Jeremy's face. "Sure. We know about that bobble, but how did
you? It's real small."

"Never you mind. I go for hikes, too. Let's just hope they let us get there."

They proceeded down the road, even Jeremy's tongue momentarily stilled. The sun was
straight ahead. It would set behind Vandenberg. Its reflection in the Dome edged higher
and higher, as if to touch the true sun at the moment of sunset. The air was warmer and
the green of the trees more intense than in any normal sunset. Wili could hear no
evidence of the men his friends said were pursuing.

Finally the two suns kissed. The true disk slipped behind the Dome into eclipse. For
several minutes, Wili thought he saw a ghostly light hanging over the Dome above the
point of the sun's setting.

"I've noticed that, too," Naismith replied to Wili's unspoken question. "I think it's the
corona, the glow around the sun that's ordinarily invisible. That's the only explanation I
can think of, anyway."

The pale light slowly disappeared, leaving a sky that went from orange to green to
deepest blue. Naismith urged Berta to a slightly faster walk and the two boys swung onto
the back of the cart. Jeremy slipped a new clip into his rifle and settled down to cover the
road.

Finally they reached the cutoff. The path was as small as any Jeremy had pointed to
during the day, too narrow for the cart. Naismith carefully climbed down and unhitched
Berta, then distributed various pieces of equipment to the boys.

"Come on. I've left enough on the cart to satisfy them... I hope." They set off southward
with Berta. The trail narrowed till Wili wondered if Paul was lost. Far behind them, he
heard an occasional branch snap, and now even the sound of voices. He and Jeremy
looked at each other. "They're loud enough," the boy muttered. Naismith didn't say
anything, just switched Berta to move a bit faster. If the bandits weren't satisfied with the
wagon, the three of them would have to make a stand, and evidently he wanted that to be
further on.

The sounds of their pursuers were louder now, surely past the wagon. Paul guided
Berta to the side. For a moment the horse looked back at them stupidly. Then Naismith
seemed to say something in its ear and the animal moved off quickly into the shadows. It
was still not really dark. Wili thought he could see green in the treetops, and the sky held
only a few bright stars.

They headed into a deep and narrow ravine, an apparent cul-de-sac. Wili looked ahead
and saw —
three
figures coming toward them out of a brightly lit tunnel!
He bolted up the
side of the ravine, but Jeremy grabbed his jacket and pointed silently toward the strange
figures: Now one of
them
was holding another and pointing.
Reflections.
That's what he
was seeing. Down there at the back of the ravine, a giant curved mirror showed Jeremy
and Naismith and himself silhouetted against the evening sky.

Very quietly, they slid down through the underbrush to the base of the mirror, then
began climbing around its sides. Wili couldn't resist: Here at last was a bobble. It was
much smaller than Vandenberg, but a bobble nevertheless. He paused and reached out to
touch the silvery surface — then snatched his hand back in shock. Even in the cool evening
air, the mirror was warm as blood. He peered closer, saw the dark image of his head
swell before him. There was not a nick, not a scratch in that surface. Up close, it was as
perfect as Vandenberg appeared from a distance, as transcendentally perfect as
mathematics itself. Then Jeremy's hand closed again on his jacket and he was dragged
upward around the sphere.

The forest floor was level with the top. A large tree grew at the edge of the soil, its roots
almost like tentacles around the top of the sphere. Wili hunkered down between the roots
and looked back along the ravine. Naismith watched a dim display while Jeremy slid
forward and panned the approaches through his rifle sight. From their vantage Wili could
see that the ravine was an elongated crater, with the bobble — which was about thirty
meters across — forming the south end. The history seemed obvious: Somehow, this
bobble had fallen out of the sky, carving a groove in the hills before finally coming to
rest. The trees above it had grown in the decades since the War. Given another century,
the sphere might be completely buried.

For a moment they sat breathless. A cicada started buzzing, the noise so loud he
wondered if they would even hear their pursuers. "They may not fall for this," Naismith
spoke almost to himself. 'Jeremy, I want you to scatter these around behind us as far as
you can in five minutes." He handed the boy something, probably tiny cameras like those
around the manor. Jeremy hesitated, and Naismith said, "Don't worry, we won't be
needing your rifle for at least that long. If they try to come up behind us, I want to know
about it."

The vague shadow that was Jeremy Kaladze nodded and crawled off into the darkness.
Naismith turned to Wili and pressed a coherent transmitter into his hands. "Try to get this
as far up as you can." He gestured at the conifer among whose roots they crouched.

Wili moved out more quietly than the other boy. This had been Wili's specialty, though
in the Los Angeles Basin there were more ruins than forests. The muck of the forest floor
quickly soaked his legs and sleeves, but he kept close to the ground. As he oozed up to
the base of the tree, he struck his knee against something hard and artificial. He stopped
and felt out the obstacle: an ancient stone cross, a Christian cemetery cross really.
Something limp and fragrant lay in the needle mulch beside it-flowers?

Then he was climbing swiftly up the tree. The branches were so regularly spaced they
might as well have been stair steps. He was soon out of breath. He was just out of
condition; at least he hoped that was the explanation.

The tree trunk narrowed and began to sway in response to his movement. He was
above the nearby trees, pointed, dark forms all around him. He was really not very high
up; almost all the trees in the rain forest were young.

Jupiter and Venus blazed like lanterns, and the stars were out. Only a faint yellow glow
showed over Vandenberg and the western horizon. He could see all the way to the base
of the Dome; this was high enough. Wili fastened the emitter so it would have a clear line
of sight to the west. Then he paused a moment, letting the evening breeze turn his pants
and sleeves cold on his skin. There were no lights anywhere. Help was very far away.

They would have to depend on Naismith's gadgets and Jeremy's inexperienced trigger
finger.

He almost slid down the tree and was back at Naismith's side soon after that. The old
man scarcely seemed to notice his arrival, so intent was he on the little display.
"Jeremy?" Wili whispered.

"He's okay. Still laying out the cameras." Paul was looking through first one and then
another of the little devices. The pictures were terribly faint, but recognizable. Wili
wondered 'how long the batteries would last. "Fact is, our friends are coming in along the
path we left for them." In the display, evidently from some camera Paul had dropped
along the way, Wili could see an occasional booted foot.

"How long?"

"Five or ten minutes. Jeremy'll be back in plenty of time." Naismith took something
out of his pack — the master for the transmitter Wili had set in the tree. He fiddled with
the phase aimer and spoke softly, trying to raise the Strela farm. After long seconds, an
insect-like voice answered from the device, and the old man was explaining their
situation.

"Got to sign off: Low on juice," he finished. Behind them, Jeremy slid into place and
unlimbered his rifle. "Your grandpa's people are coming, Jeremy, but it'll be hours.
Everyone's at the house."

They waited. Jeremy looked over Naismith's shoulder for a moment. Finally he said.
"Are they sons of the originals? They don't walk like old men."

"I know," said Naismith.

Jeremy crawled to the edge of the crater. He settled into a prone position and rested his
rifle on a large root. He scanned back and forth through the sight.

The minutes passed, and Wili's curiosity slowly increased. What was the old man
planning? What was there about this bobble that could be a threat to anyone? Not that he
wasn't impressed. If they lived through to morning, he would see it by daylight and that
would be one of the first joys of survival. There was something almost alive about the
warmth he had felt in its surface, though now he realized it was probably just the
reflected heat of his own body. He remembered what Naismith once had told him.
Bobbles reflected everything; nothing could pass through, in either direction. What was
within might as well be in a separate, tiny universe. Somewhere beneath their feet lay the
wreckage of an aircraft or missile, embobbled by the Peace Authority when they put
down the national armies of the world. Even if the crew of that aircraft could have
survived the crash, they would have suffocated in short order. There were worse ways to
die: Wili had always sought the ultimate hiding place, the ultimate safety. To his inner
heart, the bobbles seemed to be such.

Voices. They were not loud, but there was no attempt at secrecy. There were footsteps,
the sounds of branches snapping. In Naismith's fast-dimming display, Wili could see at
least five pairs of feet. They walked past a bent and twisted tree he remembered just two
hundred meters back. Wili strained his ears to make sense of their words, but it was
neither English nor Spanish. Jeremy muttered, "Russian, after all!"

Finally, the enemy came over the ridge that marked the far end of the ravine.
Unsurprisingly, they were not in a single file now. Wili counted ten figures strung out
against the starry sky. Almost as a man, the group froze, then dove for cover with their
guns firing full automatic. The three on the bobble hugged the dirt as rounds whizzed by,
thunking into the trees. Ricochets off the bobble sounded like heavy hail on a roof. Wili
kept his face stuck firmly in the moist bed of forest needles and wondered how long the
three of them could last.

"Gentlemen of the Peace Authority, Greater Tucson has been destroyed." The New
Mexico Air Force general slapped his riding crop against the topographical map by way
of emphasis. A neat red disk had been laid over the downtown district, and paler pink
showed the fallout footprint. It all looked very precise, though Hamilton Avery.
suspected it was more show than fact. The government in Albuquerque had
communication equipment nearly on a par with the Peace, but it would take aircraft or
satellite recon to get a detailed report on one of their western cities this quickly: The
detonation had happened less than ten hours earlier.

The general — Avery couldn't see his name tag, and it probably didn't matter anyway —
continued, "That's three thousand men, women, and children immediately dead, and God
knows how many hundreds to die of radiation poisoning in the months to come." He
glared across the conference table at Avery and the assistants he'd brought to give his
delegation the properly important image.

For a moment it seemed as though the officer had finished speaking, but in fact he was
just catching his breath. Hamilton Avery settled back and let the blast roll over him. "You
of the Peace Authority deny us aircraft, tanks. You have weakened what is left of the
nation that spawned you until we must use force simply to protect our borders from states
that were once friendly. But what have you given us in return?" The man's face was
getting red. The implication had been there, but the fool insisted on spelling it out: If the
Peace Authority couldn't protect the Republic from nuclear weapons, then it could
scarcely be the organization it advertised itself to be. And the general claimed the Tucson
blast was incontrovertible proof that some nation possessed nukes and was using them,
despite the Authority and all its satellites and aircraft and bobble generators.

On the Republic's side of the table, a few heads nodded agreement, but those
individuals were far too cautious to say aloud what their scapegoat was shouting to the
four walls. Hamilton pretended to listen; best to let this fellow hang himself. Avery's
subordinates followed his lead, though for some it was an effort. After three generations
of undisputed rule, many Authority people took their power to be Godgiven.
Hamilton
knew better.

He studied those seated around the general. Several were Army generals, one just back
from the Colorado. The others were civilians. Hamilton knew this group. In the early
years, he had thought the Republic of New Mexico was the greatest threat to the Peace in
North America, and he had watched them accordingly. This was the Strategic Studies
Committee. It ranked higher in the New Mexico government than the Group of Forty or
the National Security Council — and of course, higher than the cabinet. Every generation,
governments seemed to breed a new inner circle out of the older, which was then used as
a sop to satisfy larger numbers of less influential people. These men, together with the
President, were the real power in the Republic. Their "strategic studies" extended from
the Colorado to the Mississippi. New Mexico was a powerful nation. They could invent
the bobble and nuclear weapons all over again if they were allowed.