Vernor Vinge: Across Realtime

"This kid has been worthless from the beginning. He's al-ways looked half-starved; I think he's a sicker. How he got from L.A. to the border is... " His next words were drowned out by a freighter whizzing along the highway beneath the station. Mike glanced out the window at the behemoth diesel as it moved off southward carrying liquified natural gas to the Peace Authority Enclave in Los Angeles. "... took him because he claimed he could run my books. Now, the little bas - the kid may know something about accounting. But he's a lazy thief, too. And I can prove it. If your company hassles me about this when I come back through Santa Ynez, I'll sue you into oblivion."

There were a couple more verbal go-arounds, and then Sheriff Wentz rang off. He turned in his chair. "You know, Mike, I think he's telling the truth. We don't see it so much in the new generation, but children like your Sally and Arta-* "

Mike nodded glumly and hoped Sy wouldn't pursue it. His Sally and Arta, his little sisters. Dead years ago. They had been twins, five years younger than he, born when his parents had lived in Phoenix. They had made it to California with him, but they had always been sick. They both died before they were twenty and never looked to be older than ten. Mike knew who had caused that bit of hell. It was some-thing he never spoke of.

"The generation before that had it worse. But back then it was just another sort of plague and people didn't notice espe-cially." The diseases, the sterility, had brought a kind of world never dreamed of by the bomb makers of the previous century. "If this Wili is like your sisters, I'd estimate he's about fifteen. No wonder he's brighter than he looks."

"It's more than that, Boss. The kid is really smart. You should have seen what he did to Tellman's Celest."

Wentz shrugged. "Whatever. Now we've got to decide what to do with him. I wonder whether Fred Bartlett would take him in." This was gentle racism; the Bartletts were black.

"Boss, he'd eat 'em alive," Rosas patted his bandaged arm.

"Well, hell, you think of something better, Mike. We've got four thousand customers. There must be someone who can help.... A lost child with no one to take care of him - it's un-heard of!"

Some child! But Mike couldn't forget Sally and Arta. "Yeah."

Through this conversation, Naismith had been silent, al-most ignoring the two peace officers. He seemed more interested in the view of Old 101 than what they were talking about. Now he twisted in the wooden chair to face the sheriff and his deputy. "I'll take the kid on, Sy."

Rosas and Wentz looked at him in stupefied silence. Paul Naismith was considered old in a land where two thirds of the population was past fifty. Wentz licked his lips, apparent-ly unsure how to refuse him. "See here, Paul, you heard what Mike said. The kid practically killed him this afternoon. I know how people your, uh, age feel about children, but-"

The old man shook his head, caught Mike with a quick glance that was neither abstracted nor feeble. "You know they've been after me to take on an apprentice for years, Sy. Well, I've decided. Besides trying to kill Mike, he played Celest like a master. The gravity-well maneuver is one I've never seen discovered unaided."

"Mike told me. It's slick, but I see a lot of players do it. We almost all use it. Is it really that clever?"

"Depending on your background, it's more than clever. Isaac Newton didn't do a lot more when he deduced elliptical orbits from the inverse square law."

"Look, Paul... I'm truly sorry, but even with Bill and Irma, it's just too dangerous."

Mike thought about the pain in his arm. And then about the twin sisters he had once had. "Uh, Boss, could you and I have a little talk?"

Wentz raised an eyebrow. "So... ? Okay. 'Scuse us a minute, Paul."

There was a moment of embarrassed silence as the two left the room. Naismith rubbed his cheek with a faintly palsied hand and gazed across Highway 101 at the pale lights just coming on in the Shopping Center. So very much had changed and all the years in between were blurred now. Shopping Center? All of Santa Ynez would have been lost in the crowd at a good high-school basketball game in the 1990s. These days a county with seven thousand people was considered a thriving concern.

It was just past sunset now, and the office was growing steadily darker. The room's displays were vaguely glowing ghosts hovering in the near distance. Cameras from down in the shopping areas drove most of those displays. Paul could see that business was picking up there. The Tinkers and mechanics and 'furbishers had trotted out their wares, and crowds were hanging about the aerial displays. Across the room, other screens showed pale red and green, relaying infrared images from cameras purchased by Wentz's clients.

In the next room the two officers' talk was a faint murmur. Naismith leaned back and pushed up his hearing aid. For a moment the sound of his lung and heart action was overpoweringly loud in his ears. Then the filters recognized the periodic noises and they were diminished, and he could hear Wentz and Rosas more clearly than any unaided human. Not many people could boast such equipment, but Naismith demanded high pay and Tinkers from Norcross to Beijing were more than happy to supply him with better than average prosthetics.

Rosas' voice came clearly: "... think Paul Naismith can take care of himself, Boss. He's lived in the mountains for years. And the Moraleses are tough and not more than fifty-five. In the old days there were some nasty bandits and ex-military up there

"Still are," Wentz put in.

"Nothing like when there were still a lot of weapons floating around. Naismith was old even when they were going strong, and he survived. I've heard about his place. He has gadgets we won't see for years. He isn't called the Tinker wizard for nothing. I

The rest was blotted out by a loud creaking that rose to near painful intensity in Naismith's ear, then faded as the filters damped out the amplification. Naismith looked wildly around, then sheepishly realized it was a microquake. They happened all the time this near Vandenberg. Most were barely noticeable - unless one used special amplification, as Paul was now. The roar had been a slight creaking of wall timbers. It passed... and he could hear the two peace officers once more.

"... at he said about needing an apprentice is true, Boss. It hasn't been just us in Middle California who've been after him. I know people in Medford and Norcross who are scared witless he'll die without leaving a successor. He's hands down the best algorithms man in North America - I'd say in the world except I want to be conservative. You know that comm gear you have back in the control room? I know it's close to your heart, your precious toy and mine. Well, the bandwidth compression that makes possible all those nice color pictures coming over the fiber and the microwave would be plain impossible without the tricks he's sold the Tinkers. And that's not all -"

"All right!" Wentz laughed. "I can tell you took it serious when I told you to specialize on our high tech clients. I know Middle California would be a backwater without him, but-"

"And it will be again, once he's gone, unless he can find an apprentice. They've been trying for years to get him to take on some students or even to teach classes like before the Crash, but he's refused. And I think he's right. Unless you are terribly creative to begin with, there's no way you can make new algorithms. I think he's been waiting- not taking anyone on - and watching. I think today he found his apprentice. The kid's mean... he'd kill. And I don't know what he really wants besides money. But he has one thing that all the good intentions and motivation in world can't get us, and that's brains. You should have seen him on the Celest, Boss...."