The Peace War (20 page)

Wili stopped short, seemed to realize that the rush of words was carrying his cause
backward.

Kaladze asked, "Could you really hear all they were saying?"

"N-no. There was the wind, and I was very dizzy. But-"

"That's enough, boy." Sy Wentz's voice boomed across the clearing. "We've known Mike
since he was younger than you. Me and the Kaladzes shared his upbringing
.
He grew up
here
-" not in some Basin ghetto"-and we know where his loyalties are. He's risked his life
more than once for customers. Hell, he even saved Paul's neck a couple of years ago."

"I'm sorry, Wili," Kaladze's voice was mild, quite unlike Sy's. "We do know Mike. And
after this morning, I'm sure Miss Lu is what she appears. I called some friends in San
Francisco: Her folks have been heavy-wagon 'furbishers for years up there. They
recognized her picture. She and her brother went to La Jolla, just as she says."

Has she no limits?
thought Rosas.

"Caray,
I
knew you'd not believe. If Paul was here The boy glared at Kaladze's sons.
"Don't worry. I'll remain a gentleman." He turned and walked stiffly out of the clearing.

Rosas struggled to keep his expression one of simple surprise. If the boy had been a bit
cooler, or Delia a bit less superhuman, it would have been the end of Miguel Rosas. At
that moment, he came terribly close to confessing what all the boy's accusations could
not prove. But he said nothing. Mike wanted his revenge to precede his own destruction.

Nikolai Sergeivich and Sergei Nikolayevich were pale mauve sitting on the driver's
bench ahead of Wili. The late night rain was a steady hushing all around them. For the
last four kilometers, the old Russian's "secret tunnel" had been aboveground: When the
cart got too near the walls, Wili could feel wet leaves and coarse netting brush against
him. Through his night glasses, the wood glowed faintly warmer than the leaves or the
netting, which must be some sort of camouflage. The walls were thickly woven, probably
looked like heavy forest from the outside. Now that the roof of the passage was soaked, a
retarded drizzle fell upon the four of them. Wili shifted his slicker against the trickle that
was most persistent.

Without the night glasses the world was absolutely black. But his other senses had things
to tell him about this camouflaged path that
was taking them inland, past the watchers the
Authority had strung around the farm. His nose told him they were far beyond the groves
of banana trees that marked the eastern edge of the farm. On top of the smell of wet wood
and roping, he thought he smelled lilacs, and that meant they must be about halfway to
Highway 101. He wondered if Kaladze intended to accompany him that far.

Over the creaking of the cart's wheels, he could hear Miguel Rosas up ahead, leading
the horses.

Wili's lips twisted, a voiceless snarl. No one had believed him. Here he was, a virtual
prisoner of the people who should be his allies, and the whole lot of them were being led
through the dark by the Jonque traitor! Wili slipped the heavy glasses back on and glared
at the mauve blob that was the back of Rosas' head. Funny how Jonque skin was the same
color as his own in the never-never world of the night glasses.

Where would their little trip end? He knew that Kaladze and son thought they were
simply going to the end of the tunnel, to let Wili return to Naismith in the mountains.
And the fools thought that Rosas would let them get away with it. For twenty minutes he
had been almost twitchy, expecting a flash of real light ahead of them, sharp commands
backed up by men in Authority green with rifles and stunners, the La Jolla betrayal all
over again. But the minutes stretched on and on with nothing but the rain and the
creaking of the cart's high wheels. The tunnel bent around the hills, occasionally
descending underground, occasionally passing across timbers built over washouts.
Considering how much it rained around Vandenberg, it must have taken a tremendous
effort to keep this pathway functioning yet concealed. Too bad the old man was throwing
it all away, thought Wili.

"Looks like we're near the end, sir." Rosas' whisper came back softly — ominously? — over the quiet drone of the rain. Wili rose to his knees to look over the Kaladzes'
shoulders: The Jonque was pushing against a door, a door of webbed branches and leaves
which nevertheless swung smoothly and silently. Brilliant light glowed through the
opening. Wili almost bolted off the cart before his glasses adjusted and he realized that
they were still undiscovered.

Wili slipped his glasses off for a second and saw that the night was still as dark as the
back of his hand. He almost smiled; to the glasses, there were shades of absolute black.
In the tunnel, the glasses had only their body heat to see by. Outside, even under a thick
cloud deck, even in the middle of a rainy night, there must be enough ordinary light for
them. This gear was far better than the night scope on Jeremy's rifle.

Rosas led the extra horse into the light. "Come ahead." Sergei Nikolayevich slapped the
reins, and the cart squeezed slowly through the opening.

Rosas stood in a strange, shadowless landscape, but now the colors in his slicker and
face didn't glow, and Wili could see, his features clearly. The bulky glasses made his face
unreadable. Wili shinnied down and walked to the center of the open space. All around
them the trees hung close. Clouds glowed through occasional openings in the branches.
Beyond Rosas, he could see an ordinary-looking path. He turned and looked at the
doorway. Living shrubs grew from the cover.

The cart pulled forward until the elder Kaladze was even with the boy. Rosas came
back to help the old man down, but the Russian shook his head. "We'll only be here a few
minutes," he whispered.

His son looked up from some instrument in his lap. "We're the only man-sized animals
nearby, Colonel."

"Good. Nevertheless, we still have much to do tonight back at home." For a moment,
he sounded tired. "Wili, do you know why we three came the way out here with you?"

"No, sir." The "sir" came naturally when he talked to the Colonel. Next to Naismith
himself, Wili had found more to respect in this man than anyone else. Jonque leaders —
and the bosses of the Ndelante Ali — all demanded a respectful manner from their stooges,
but old Kaladze actually gave his people something in return.

"Well, son, I wanted to convince you that you are important, and that what you must do
is even more important. We didn't mean insult at the meeting last night; we just know
that you are wrong about Mike." He lifted his hand a couple of centimeters, and Wili
stifled the fresh pleading that rose to his lips. "I'm not going to try to convince you that
you're wrong. I know you believe all you say. But even with such disagreement, we still
need you desperately. You know that Paul Naismith is the key to all of this. He may be
able to crack the secret of the bobbles. He may be able to get us out from under the
Authority."

Wili nodded.

"Paul has told us that he needs you, that without your help his success will be delayed.
They're looking for him, Wili. If they get him before he can help us — well, I don't think
we'll have a chance. They'll treat us all like the Tinkers in La Jolla. So. We brought Elmir
with us." He gestured at the mare Rosas had been leading. "Mike says you learned how to
ride in L.A."

Wili nodded again. That was an exaggeration; he knew how not to fall off. With the
Ndelante Ali, getaways had occasionally been on horseback.

"We want you to return to Paul. We think you can make it from here. The path ahead
crosses under Old 101. You shouldn't see anyone else unless you stray too far south.
There's a trucker camp down that way."

For the first time Rosas spoke. "He must really need your help, Wili. The only thing
that protects him is his hiding place. If you were captured and forced to talk —"

"I wont talk," Wili said and tried not to think of things he had seen happen to
uncooperative prisoners in Pasadena.

"With the Authority there would be no choice."

"So? Is that what happened to you, Jonque señor? Somehow, I don't think you planned
from the beginning to betray us. What was it? I know you have fallen for the Chinese
bitch. Is that what it was?" Wili heard his voice steadily rising. "Your price is so low?"

"Enough!" Kaladze's voice was not loud but its sharpness cut Wili short. The Colonel
struggled off the driving bench to the ground, then bent till his face — eyes still obscured
by the night glasses — was even with Wili's. Somehow, Wili could feel those eyes glaring
through the dark plastic lenses.

"If anyone is to be bitter, it should be Sergei Nikolayevich and I, should it not? It is I, not
you, who lost a grandson to the Authority bobble. If anyone is to be suspicious it should
be I, not you. Mike Rosas saved your life. And I don't mean simply that he got you back
here alive. He got you in and out of those secret labs; seconds either way and it would be
all of you left trapped inside. And what you got in there was life itself. I saw you when
you left for La Jolla: if you were so sick now, you would be too weak to afford the luxury
of this anger."

That stopped Wili. Kaladze was right, though not about Rosas' innocence. These last
eight days had been so busy, so full of fury and frustration, that he hadn't fully noticed: In
previous summers his condition had always improved. But since he started eating that
stuff, the pain had begun leaching away — faster than ever before. Since getting back to
the farm, he had been eating with more pleasure than he had at any time in the last five
years.

"Okay. I will help. On a condition."

Nikolai Sergeivich straightened but said nothing. Wili continued, "The game is lost if
the Authority finds Naismith. Mike Rosas and the Lu woman maybe know where he is. If
you promise — on your honor — to keep them for ten days away from all outside
communication, then it will be worth it to me to do as you say."

Kaladze didn't answer immediately. It would be such an easy promise to give, to humor
him in his "fantasies," but Wili knew that if the Russian agreed to this, it would be a
promise kept. Finally, "What you ask is very difficult, very inconvenient. It would almost
mean locking them up. He glanced at Rosas.

"Sure. I'm willing." The traitor spoke quickly, almost eagerly, and Wili wondered what
angle he was missing.

"Very well, sir, you have my word." Kaladze extended a thin, strong hand to shake
Wili's.

"Now let us be gone, before twilight herself joins our cozy discussions."

Sergei and Rosas turned the horse and cart around and carefully erased the marks of
their presence. The traitor avoided Wili's look even as he swung the camouflaged door
shut.

And Wili was alone with one small mare in darkest night. All around him the rain
splattered just audibly. Despite the slicker, a small ribbon of wet was starting down his
back.

Wili hadn't realized how difficult it was to lead a horse in such absolute dark; Rosas had
made it look easy. Of course, Rosas didn't have to contend with odd branches which — if
not bent carefully out of the way — would swipe the animal across the face. He almost lost
control of poor Elmir the first time that happened. The path wound around the hills,
disappeared entirely at places where the constant rains had enlarged last season's gullies.
Only his visualization of Kaladze's maps saved him then.

It was at least fifteen kilometers to Old 101, a long, wet walk. Still, he was not really
tired, and the pain in his muscles was the healthy feeling of exercise. Even at his best, he
had never felt quite so bouncy. He patted the thin satchel nestled against his skin and said
a short prayer to the One True God for continued good fortune.

There was plenty of time to think. Again and again, Wili came back to Rosas' apparent
eagerness to accept house arrest for himself and the Lu woman. They must have
something planned. Lu was so clever... so beautiful. He didn't know what had turned
Rosas rotten, but he could almost believe that he did it simply for her. Were all
chicas
chinas
like her? He had never seen a lady, black, Anglo, or Jonque, like Della Lu. Wili's
mind wandered, imagining several final, victorious confrontations, until — night glasses
and all — he almost walked over the edge of a washout half-f of racing water. It took
him and Elmir fifteen minutes to get down and back up the mud-slicked sides of the
gully, and he almost lost the glasses in the process.

It brought him back to reality. Lu was beautiful like oleander — or better — like a
Glendora cat. She and Rosas had thought of something, and if he could not guess what it
was, it could kill him.

Hours later he still hadn't figured it out. Twilight couldn't be far off now, and the rain
had ceased. Wili stopped where a break in the forest gave him a view eastward. Parts of
the sky were clear. They burned with tiny spots of flame. The trees cast multiple
shadows, each a slightly different color. A long section of 101 was visible between the
shoulders of the hills. There was no traffic, though to the south he saw shifting swaths of
light that must be Authority road freighters. There was also a steady glow that might be
the truckers' camp Kaladze had mentioned.

Directly below his viewpoint, a forested marsh extended right up to Old 101. The
highway had been washed out and rebuilt many times, till it was little more than a timber
bridge over the marshlands. He would have his choice of any of a hundred places to cross
under.

It was farther away than it looked. By the time they were halfway there, the eastern sky
was brightly lit, and Elmir seemed to have more faith in what he was doing.

He chose a lightly traveled path through the wet and started under the highway. Still he
wondered what Lu and Rosas had planned. If they couldn't get a message out, then who
could? Who knew where to look for Naismith and was also outside of Red Arrow Farm?
Sudden understanding froze him in his tracks; Elmir's soft nose knocked him to his
knees, but he scarcely noticed. Of
course!
Poor stupid little Wili, always ready to give his
enemies a helping hand.