Vernor Vinge - Across Realtime

In the western sky, something glittered, metal in sunlight. Dogthings forgotten, Wil stared up. Nothing but blue now. Fifteen seconds passed. Three black specks hung where he'd seen the light. They didn't move across the sky, but slowly grew. A ripple of sonic booms came across the plain.

The fliers decelerated to a smooth stop a couple of meters above the grass. All three were unmarked, unmanned. Wil considered scrambling to the rear of the cave-but he didn't move. If they looked, they would find. Loser or winner, he was damned if he'd cower.

The three hung for a moment in silent conference. Then the nearest slid, silent and implacable, up the air towards Wil.

TWENTY-FIVE

For whatever it might be worth, Wil's side was the winner. He was released by the medics in less than an hour. His body was whole, but stiff and aching; the medical autons didn't waste their time on finishing touches. There were really serious casualties, and only a part of the medical establishment had survived the fight. The worst cases were simply popped into stasis. Della disappeared into her system, with the autons' assurance that she would be substantially well in forty hours.

Wil tried not to think about the disaster that spread all around them, tried not to think that it was his fault. He had thought the search for the cairn would provoke an attack-but on himself and Della, not on all humanity.

That attack had killed almost half the human race. Wil couldn't bring himself to ask Yel‚n directly, but he knew anyway: Marta's plan was dead. He had failed in the only way that mattered. And yet he still had a job. He still had a murderer to catch. It was something to work on, a barricade against grief

Although the price was higher than he had ever wished to pay, the battle had given him the sort of clues he'd hoped Della's system had retrieved the cairn bobble; its content. would be available in twenty-four hours. And there were other things to look at It was clear now that the enemy's only power had lain in his perversion of others' systems. But, at every step, they had underestimated that power. After Marta's murder, they thought it was a shallow penetration, the perversion of a bug in the Korolev system. After Wil found the clue in the diary, they thought the enemy had deeper penetration, but still of Korolev's system alone; they guessed the killer might be able to usurp parts of Yel‚n's forces. And then came the war between the low-techs. It had been a diversion, covering the enemy's final, most massive assault. That assault had been not on Korolev's system alone, but on Genet's and Chanson's and Blumenthal's and Raines'. Every system except Lu's had been taken over, turned to the business of killing Wil and Della.

But Della Lu was very hard to kill. She had fought the other systems to a standstill, then beaten them down. In the chaos of defeat, the original owners climbed out of system-metaphorical bunkers and reclaimed what was left of their property.

Everyone agreed it couldn't happen again. They might even be right. What remained of their computing systems was pitifully simple, not deep enough or connected enough for games of subtle perversion. Everyone agreed on something else: The enemy's skill with systems had been the equal of the best and biggest police services from the high-techs' era.

So. It was a big clue, though small compared to the price of the learning. Related, and at least as significant: Della Lu had been immune to the takeover. Wil put the two together and reached some obvious conclusions. He worked straight through the next twenty-four hours, studying Della's copy of GreenInc -especially the garbled coverage of the late twenty-second. It was tedious work. At one time, the document had been seriously damaged; the reconstruction could never be complete. Facts and dates were jumbled. Whole sections were missing. He could understand why Della didn't use the later coverage Wil kept at it. He knew what to look for... and in the end he found it.

A half-trashed db would not convince a court, but Wil was satisfied: He knew who killed Marta Korolev. He spent an empty, hate-full afternoon trying to figure how to destroy the murderer. What did it matter now? Now that the human race was dead.

That night, Juan Chanson dropped by Wil's new quarters. The man was subdued; he spoke scarcely faster than a normal person. "I've checked for bugs, my boy, but I want to keep this short." Chanson looked nervously around the tiny room that was Wil's share of the refugee dorm. "I noticed something during the battle. I think it can save us all." They talked for more than an hour. And when Chanson left, it was with the promise they would talk again in the morning.

Wil sat thinking for a long time after the other left. My God, if what Juan says is true... Juan's story made sense; it tied up all the loose ends. He noticed he was shivering: not just his hands, his whole body. It was a combination of joy and fear

He had to talk to Della about this. It would take planning, deception, and good luck, but if they played their cards exactly right, the settlement still had a chance!

On the third day, the survivors gathered at Castle Korolev, in the stone amphitheater. It was mostly empty now. The aborted war between New Mexico and the Peace had killed more than one hundred low-techs. Wil looked across the theater. How different this was from the last meeting here. Now the low-techs crowded together, leaving long sweeps of bench completely empty. There were few uniforms, and the insignia had been ripped from most of those. Ungovs, NMs, Peacers sat mixed together, hard to tell apart; they all looked beaten. No one sat on the top benches-where you could look down through the castle's jacarandas at the swath of burn and glaze that had been Town Korolev.

Brierson had seen the list of dead. Still, his eyes searched across the crowd, as if he might somehow see the friends-and the enemy-he had lost. Derek Lindemann was gone. Wil was genuinely sorry about that-not so much for the man, but for losing the chance to prove he could face him without rage. Rohan was dead. Cheerful, decent Rohan. The brothers had taken Wil's warning and hidden beneath their farm. Hours passed. The autons left. Rohan went outside to bring down the last of their equipment. When the bombs fell, he was caught in the open.

Dilip had come to the meeting alone. Now he sat with Gail Parker, talking softly.

"I suppose we can begin." Yel‚n's voice cut across the murmur of the crowd. Only the amplification gave her voice force; her tone was listless. The burden she had carried since Marta died had finally slipped, and crushed her. "For the low-techs, some explanations. You fought a war three days ago. By now, you know you were maneuvered into fighting. It was a cover for someone to grab our high-tech systems and start the larger fight you've seen in near space.... Your war killed or maimed half the human race. Our war destroyed about ninety percent of our equipment." She leaned against the podium, her head down. "It's the end of our plan; we have neither the genetic resources nor the equipment to reestablish civilization.

"I don't know about the other high-tecbs, but I'm not going to bobble out. I have enough resources to support you all for a few years. If I spread it around, what's left of my medical resources should be enough to provide a twentieth-century level of care for many decades. After that... well, our life in the wilderness will be better than Marta's I guess. If we're lucky, we may last a century; S nchez did, and he had fewer people."

She paused, and seemed to swallow something painful. "And you have another option. I-I've cut the suppressor field. You are all free to bobble out of this era." Her gaze moved reluctantly across the audience, to where Tammy Robinson sat. She sat alone, her face somber. Yel‚n had released her from stasis at the first opportunity after the battle. So far, Tammy had done nothing to take advantage of the debacle; her sympathy seemed genuine. On the other hand, she had nothing to lose by magnanimity. The wreckage of the Korolev plan was now hers for the taking.