the street toward him. He hoped his guardians weren't trigger-happy.
'Did you know?' Rohan began, and his brother continued. ''The Peacer boss was murdered last night. It looks like the N Ms did it.'
'Where did you hear?' He couldn't imagine Yelen spreading the news.
'The Peacer news service. Is it true, Wil?'
Brierson nodded. 'We don't know who did it, though.'
'Damn!' Dilip was as upset as Wil had ever seen him. 'After all the talk about peaceful competition, I thought the NMs and Peacers had changed their ways. If they start shooting, the rest of us are... Look, Wil, back in civilization this couldn't happen. They'd have every police service in Asia down on them. Can-can we count on Yelen to keep these guys out of our way?'
Wil knew that Yelen would die before she'd let the NMs and Peacers fight. But today, dying might not be enough. The Dasguptas saw the tip of a game that extended beyond their knowing-and Wil's. He looked at the brothers, saw unmet i red trust in their faces. What could he do?... Maybe the truth would help. 'We think this is tied up with Marta's murder, Dilip.' He jerked a thumb at Della's flier. 'That',., what I'm checking out now. If there's shooting, I'll bet you see more than low-techs involved. Look. I'll get Yelen to lower he r suppressor field; you could bobble up for the next couple of days.'
'Our equipment, too.'
'Right. In any case, get people spread out and under cover. There was nothing more he could say, and the brothers seemed to know it.
'Okay, Wil,' Rohan said quietly. 'Luck to us all.'
Della's flier was bigger than usual, and there were five poor, strapped around its midsection.
But the crew area didn't have the feel of a combat vehicle It wasn't the lack of control and display panels. When Wil left civilization, those were vanishing items. Even the older mode had provided command helmets that allowed the pilot to see the outside world in terms of what was important to the mission. The newer ones didn't need the helmets; the windows themselves were holo panels on artificial reality. But there were no command helmets in Della's flier, and the windows shower! the same version of reality that clear glass would. The floor way carpeted. Unwindowed sections of the wall were decorated with Della's strange watercolors.
As he climbed aboard, Wil gestured at the strap-on pod,; 'Extra guns?'
'No. Those are defensive. There's a tonne of matter/antimatter in each one.'
'Ugh.' He sat down and strapped in. Defensive-like a flak: jacket made of plastique?
Lu pulled more than two g's getting them off the street; no simple elevator rides today. Half a minute passed, and she cut the drive. Up and up and up they fell, Wil's stomach protesting the way. They topped out around ten thousand meters, where she resumed one g.
It was a beautiful day. The low sun angle put the forested highlands into jagged relief. He couldn't see much of Town Korolev, but Yelen's castle was a shadowed pattern of gold and green. Northwards, clouds hid the lowlands and the sea. To the south, the mountains rose gray above the timberline to snow-topped peaks. The Indonesian Alps were the Rockies writ large.
Lu's eyes were open but unfocused. 'Just want to have some maneuvering room.' Then she looked at Wil and smiled. 'Where to, boss?'
'Della, did you hear what I told the Dasguptas? Yelen should turn off her suppressors. Maybe a few low-techs will bobble out of this era, but she can't just leave everyone exposed.'
'Wil, haven't you been reading your mail?'
'Unh, most of it.' All night long it had been coming in, faster than he could keep up. He'd read all the red-tag stuff, until falling asleep an hour before dawn.
'We don't know the reason, but it's clear now the enemy may try to kill lots of low-techs. For the last sixty minutes, Yelen's been trying to remove bobble suppression from Australasia. She can't do it.'
'Why not? It's her own equipment!' Wil felt stupid the moment he spoke.
'Yes. You could scarcely ask for better proof that her system is perverted, could you?' Her smile widened.
'If she can't turn them off, can you just blow them up?'
'We may decide to try that. But we don't know exactly how her defenses might respond. Besides, the enemy may have his own suppressor system ready to come on the moment Yelen's drops out.'
'So no one can bobble up.'
'It's a large-volume, low-intensity field, good enough to suppress any low-tech generators. But my bobblers can still self-enclose; my best still have some range.'
For a moment, the purpose of this trip was forgotten. There must be some way to protect low-techs. Evacuate them from the suppression zone? That maneuver might put them in even more danger. Fly in high-power bobblers? He abruptly realize( that the high-techs must be giving much deeper thought that he could to the problem. The problem he had precipitated
