The Peace War (26 page)

Wili shook his head. "No, Wise One. You'd need more power though still nothing like
the fusion power the Authority uses. But even more important, this little generator isn't
fast enough. The biggest it can make is about four hundred meters across, and to do that
takes special conditions and several minutes setup time."

"Bah. So it's a toy. You could decapitate a few Authority troopers with it maybe, but
when they bring out their machine guns and their aircraft you are dead." Señor
Loudmouth was back in form. He reminded Wili of Roberto Richardson. Too bad this
was going to help the likes of them.

"It's no toy, My Lord. If you follow the plan Paul Naismith has devised, it can rescue
all the hostages." Actually it was a plan that Wili had thought of after the first test, when
he had felt Jill's test bobble sliding around in his arms. But it would not do to say the
scheme came from anyone less than Paul. "There are things about bobbles that you don't
know yet, that no one, not even the Authority, knows yet."

"And what are those things, sir?" There was courtesy without sarcasm in the Alcalde's
voice.

Across the hall, a couple entered the room. For an instant all Wili could see was their
silhouettes against the piped sky light. But that was enough. "You two!" Mike looked
almost as shocked as Wili felt, but Lu just smiled.

"Kaladze's representatives," the Alcalde supplied.

"By the One God, no! These are the Authority's representatives!"

"See here," it was Loudmouth, "these two have been vouched for by Kaladze, and he's
the fellow who got all this organized."

"I'm not saying anything with them around."

Dead silence greeted this refusal, and Wili felt sudden, physical fear. The Jonque lords
had very interesting rooms beneath their castles, places with... effective... equipment for
persuading people to talk. This was going to be like the confrontation with the Kaladzes,
only bloodier.

The Alcalde said, "I don't believe you. We've checked the Kaladzes carefully. We've
even dismissed our own court so that this meeting would involve just those with the need
to know. But" — he sighed, and Wili saw that in some ways he was more flexible (or less
trusting, anyway) than Nikolai Sergeivich — "perhaps it would be safer if you only spoke
of what must be done, rather than the secrets behind it all. Then we will judge the risks,
and decide if we must have more information just now."

Wili looked at Rosas and Lu. Was it possible to do this without giving away the secret
— at least until it was too late for the Authority to counter it? Perhaps. "Are the hostages
still being held on the top floor of the Tradetower?"

"The top two floors. Even with aircraft, an assault would be suicide."

"Yes, My Lord. But there is another way. I will need forty Julian-33 storage cells" —
other brands would do, but he was sure the Aztlán make was available — "and access to
your weather service. Here is what you have to do..." It wasn't until several hours later
that Wili looked back and realized that the cripple from Glendora had been giving orders
to the rulers of Aztlán and the wisemen of the Ndelante Ali. If only Uncle Sly could have
seen it.

Early afternoon the next day:

Wili crouched in the tenement ruins just east of the Downtown and studied the display.
It was driven by a telescope the Ndelante had planted on the roof. The day was so clear
that the view might have been that of a hawk hovering on the outskirts of the Enclave.
Looking into the canyons between those buildings, Wili could see dozens of automobiles
whisking Authority employees through the streets. Hundreds of bicycles — property of
lower-ranking people — moved more slowly along the margins of the streets. And the
pedestrians: There were actually crushes of people on the sidewalks by the larger
buildings. An occasional helicopter buzzed through the spaces above. It was like some
vision off an old video disk, but this was real and happening right now, one of the few
places on Earth where the bustling past still lived.

Wili shut down the display and looked up at the faces both Jonque and black — that
surrounded him. "That's not too much help for this job. Winning is going to depend on
how good your spies are."

"They're good enough." It was Ebenezer's sour-faced aide. The Ndelante Ali was a big
organization, but Wili had a dark suspicion that the fellow recognized him from before.
Getting home to Paul would depend on keeping his "friends" here intimidated by
Naismith's reputation and gadgets. "The Peacers like to be served by people as well as
machines. The Faithful have been in the Tradetower as late as this morning. The hostages
are all on the top two floors. The next two floors are empty and alarm-ridden, and below
that is at least one floor full of Peace Troopers. The utility core is also occupied, and you
notice there is a helicopter and fixed-wing patrol. You'd almost think they're expecting a
twentieth century armored assault, and not..."

And not one scrawny teenager and his miniature bobble blower,
Wili silently
completed the other's dour implication. He glanced at his hands: skinny maybe, but if he
kept gaining weight as he had been these last weeks, he would soon be far from scrawny.
And he felt like he could take on the Authority and the Jonques and the Ndelante Ali all
at once. Wili grinned at the
sabio.
"What I've got is more effective than tanks and bombs.
If you're sure exactly where they are, I'll have them out by nightfall." He turned to the
Alcalde's man, a mild-looking old fellow who rarely spoke but got unnervingly crisp
obedience from his men. "Were you able to get my equipment upstairs?"

"Yes, sir," Sir!

"Let's go, then." They walked back into the main part of the ruin, carefully staying in
the shadows and out of sight of the aircraft that droned overhead. The tenement had once
been thirty meters high, with row on row of external balconies looking west. Most of the
facing had long ago collapsed, and the stairwells were exposed to the sky. The Alcalde's
man was devious, though. Two of the younger Jonques had climbed an interior elevator
shaft and rigged a sling to hoist the gear and their elders to the fourth-storey vantage
point that Wili required.

One by one, Ndelante and Jonques ascended. Wili knew such cooperation between the
blood enemies would have been a total shock to most of the Faithful. These groups
fought and killed under other circumstances-and used each other to justify all sorts of
sacrifices from their own peoples. Those struggles were real and deadly, but the secret
cooperation was real, too. Two years earlier, Wili had chanced on that secret; it was what
finally turned him against the Ndelante.

The fourth-floor hallway creaked ominously under their feet. Outside it had been hot;
in here it was like a dark oven. Through holes in the ancient linoleum, Wili could see into
the wrecks of rooms and hallways below. Similar holes in the ceiling provided the
hallway's only light. One of the Jonques opened a side door and stood carefully apart as
Wili and the Ndelante people entered.

More than a half-tonne of Julian-33 storage cells were racked against an interior wall.
The balcony side of the room sagged precariously. Wili unpacked the processor and the
bobble generator and set about connecting them to the Julians. The others squatted by the
wall or in the hallway beyond. Rosas and Lu were here; Kaladze's representatives could
not be denied, though Wili had managed to persuade the Alcalde's man to keep them —
especially Della — away from the equipment, and away from the window.

Della looked up at him and smiled a strange, friendly smile; strange because no one
else was looking to be taken in by the lie.
When will she make her move?
Would she try
to signal to her bosses, or somehow steal the equipment herself? Last night, Wili had
thought long and hard about how to defeat her. He had the self-bobbling parameters all
ready. Bobbling himself and the equipment would be a last resort, since the current
model didn't have much flexibility — he would be taken out of the game for about a year.
More likely, one of them was going to end up very dead this day, and no wistful smile
could change that.

He dragged the generator and its power cables and camouflage bag close to the ragged
edge of the balcony. Under him the decaying concrete swayed like a tiny boat. It felt as if
there was only a single support spar left.
Great.
He centered his equipment over the
imagined spar and calibrated the mass- and ranging-sensors. The next minutes would be
critical. In order that the computation be feasibly simple, the generator had to be clear of
obstacles. But this made their operation relatively exposed. If the Authority had had
anything like Paul's surveillance equipment, the plan would not have stood a chance.

Wili wet his finger and held it into the air. Even here, almost out of doors, the day was
stifling. The westerly breeze barely cooled his finger. "How hot is it?" he asked
unnecessarily; it was obviously hot .. enough

"Outside air temperature is almost thirty-seven. That's about as hot as it ever gets in
L.A., and it's the high for today."

Wili nodded.
Perfect.
He rechecked the center and radius coordinates, started the
generator's processor, and then crawled back to the others by the inner wall. "It takes
about five minutes. Generating a large bobble from two thousand meters is almost too
much for this processor."

"So," Ebenezer's man gave him a sour smile, "you are

going to bobble something. Are you ready to share the secret

of just what? Or are we simply to watch and learn?"

On the far side of the room, the Alcalde's man was silent, but Wili sensed his attention.
Neither they nor their bosses could imagine the bobble's being used as anything but an
offensive weapon. They were lacking one critical fact, a fact that would become known
to all — including the Authority — very soon.

Wili glanced at his watch: two minutes to go. There was no way he could imagine
Della preventing the rescue now. And he had some quick explaining to do, or else — when
his allies saw what he had done — he might have deadly problems. "Okay," he said finally.
"In ninety seconds, my gadget is going to throw a bobble around the top floors of the
Tradetower."

"What?"
The question came from four mouths, in two languages. The Alcalde's man,
so mild and respectful, was suddenly at his throat. He held up his hand briefly as his men
started toward the equipment on the balcony. His other hand pressed against Wili's
windpipe, just short of pain, and Wili realized that he had seconds to convince him not to
topple the generator into the street. "The bobble will... pop... later... Time... stops inside,"
choked Wili. The pressure on his throat eased; the goons edged back from the balcony.
Wili saw Jonque and sabio trade glances. There would have to be a lot more explanations
later, but for now they would cooperate.

A sudden, loud click marked the discharge of the Julians. All eyes looked westward
through the opening that once held a sliding glass door. Faint "ah"s escaped from several
pairs of lips.

The top of the Tradetower was in shadow, surmounted and dwarfed by a four-hundred-meter sphere.

"The building, it must collapse," someone said. But it didn't. The bobble was only as
massive as what it enclosed, and that was mostly empty air. There was a long moment of
complete silence, broken only by the far, tiny wailing of sirens. Wili had known what to
expect, but even so it took an effort to tear his attention from the sky and surreptitiously
survey the others.

Lu was staring wide-eyed as any; even her schemes were momentarily submerged. But
Rosas: The undersheriff looked back into Wili's gaze, a different kind of wonder on his
face, the wonder of a man who suddenly discovers that some of his guilt is just a bad
dream. Wili nodded faintly at him. Yes,
Jeremy is still alive, or at least will someday live
again. You did not murder him, Mike.

In the sky around the Tradetower, the helicopters swept in close to the silver curve of
the bobble. From further up they could hear the whine of the fixed-wing patrol spreading
in greater and greater circles around the Enclave. They had stepped on a hornets' nest and
now those hornets were doing their best to decide what had happened and to deal with the
enemy. Finally, the Jonque chief turned to the Ndelante
sabio.
"Can your people get us
out from under all this?"

The black cocked his head, listening to his earphone, then replied, "Not till dark. We've
got a tunnel head about two hundred meters from here, but the way they're patrolling, we
probably couldn't make it. Right after sunset, before things cool off enough for their heat
eyes to work good, that'll be the best time to sneak back. Till then we should stay away
from windows and keep quiet. The last few months they've improved. Their snooper gear
is almost as good as ours now."

The lot of them — blacks, Jonques, and Lu — moved carefully back into the hallway. Wili
left his equipment sitting near the edge of the balcony; it was too risky to retrieve it just
now. Fortunately, its camouflage bag resembled the nondescript rubble that surrounded
it.

Wili sat with his back against the door. No one was going to get to the generator
without his knowing it.

From in here, the sounds of the Enclave were fainter, but soon he heard something
ominous and new: the rattle and growl of tracked vehicles.

After they were settled and lookouts were posted at the nearest peepholes, the
sabio
sat
beside Wili and smiled. "And now, young friend, we have hours to sit, time for you to tell
us just what you meant when you said that the bobble will burst, and that time stops
inside." He spoke quietly, and considering the present situation — it was a reasonable
question. But Wili recognized the tone. On the other side of the hallway, the Alcalde's
man leaned forward to listen. There was just enough light in the musty hallway for Wili
to see the faint smile on Lu's face.