Free The Peace War by Vernor Vinge Page A

the mud road, the air was warm and still.
    Wili slogged along, reveling in the strength he felt returning to his limbs. He been fine
these last few weeks. In the past, he always felt good for a couple months after being
really sick, but this last winter had been so bad he'd wondered if he would get better.
They had left Santa Ynez three hours earlier, right after the morning rain stopped. Yet he
was barely tired and cheerfully refused the others' suggestions that he get back into the
cart.
    Every so often the road climbed above the surrounding trees and they could see a ways.
There was still snow in the mountains to the east. In the west there was no snow, only the
rolling rain forests, Lake Lompoc spread sky-blue at the base of the Dome — and the
whole landscape appearing again in that vast, towering mirror.
    It was strange to leave the home in the mountains. If Paul were not with them, it would
have been more unpleasant than Wili could admit.
    Wili had known for a week that Naismith intended to take him to the coast, and then
travel south to La Jolla — and a possible cure. It was knowledge that made him more
anxious than ever to get back in shape. But it wasn't until Jeremy Kaladze met them at
Santa Ynez that Wili realized how unusual this first part of the journey might be. Wili
eyed the other boy surreptitiously. As usual, Jeremy was talking about everything in
sight, now running ahead of them to point out a peculiar rockfall or side path, now falling
behind Naismith's cart to study something he had almost missed. After nearly a day's
acquaintance, Wili still couldn't decide how old the boy was. Only very small children in
the Ndelante Ali displayed his brand of open enthusiasm. On the other hand, Jeremy was
nearly two meters tall and played a good game of chess.
    "Yes, sir, Dr. Naismith," said Jeremy — he was the only person Wili had ever heard call
Paul a doctor — "Colonel Kaladze came down along this road. It was a night drop, and
they lost a third of the Red Arrow Battalion, but I guess the Russian government thought
it must be important. If we went a kilometer down those ravines, we'd see the biggest pile
of armored vehicles you can imagine. Their parachutes didn't open right." Wili looked in
the direction indicated, saw nothing but green undergrowth and the suggestion of a trail.
In L.A. the oldsters were always talking about the glorious past, but somehow it was
strange that in the middle of this utter peace a war was buried, and that this boy talked
about ancient history as if it were a living yesterday. His grandfather, Lt. Col. Nikolai
Sergeivich Kaladze, had commanded one of the Russian air drops, made before it became
clear that the Peace Authority (then a nameless organization of bureaucrats and
scientists) had made warfare obsolete.
    Red Arrow's mission was to discover the secret of the mysterious force-field weapon
the Americans had apparently invented. Of course, they discovered the Americans were
just as mystified as everyone else by the strange silvery bubbles, baubles — bobbles? — that
were springing up so mysteriously, sometimes preventing bombs from exploding, more
often removing critical installations.
    In that chaos, when everyone was losing a war that no one had started, the Russian
airborne forces and what was left of the American army fought their own war with
weapon systems that now had no depot maintenance. The conflict continued for several
months, declining in violence until both sides were slugging it out with small arms. Then
the Authority had miraculously appeared, announcing itself as the guardian of peace and
the maker of the bobbles. The remnant of the Russian forces retreated into the mountains,
hiding as the nation they invaded began to recover. Then the war viruses came, released
(the Peace Authority claimed) by the Americans in a last attempt to retain national
autonomy. The Russian guerrillas sat on the fringes of the world and watched for some
chance to move. None came.