The Peace War

greedy, but he stopped when the bag was only half full. Five kilos would have to do! More wealth than Old Ebenezer passed to the lower Ndelante in a year! And now out the back, around the pond, and to his cache.

Wili crept out onto the veranda, his heart suddenly pounding. This would be the spirit's last chance to get him. iDio! There was someone out there. Wili stood absolutely still, not breathing. It was Naismith. The old man sat on a lounge chair, his body bundled against the chill. He seemed to be gazing into the sky-but not at the moon, since he was in the shadows. Naismith was looking away from Wili; this could not be an ambush. Nevertheless, the boy's hand tightened on his knife. After a moment, he moved again, away from the old man and toward the pond.

'Come here to sit,' said Naismith, without turning his head. Wili almost bolted, then realized that if the old man could be out here stargazing, there was no reason why the excuse should not also serve him. He set his sack of treasure down in the shadows and moved closer to Naismith.

'That's close enough. Sit. Why are you here so late, young one?'

'The same as you, I think, My Lord... To view the sky.' What else could the old man be out here for?

'That's a good reason.' The tone was neutral, and Wili could not tell if there was a smile or a scowl on his face; he could barely make out the other's profile. Wili's hand tightened nervously on the haft of his knife. He had never actually killed anyone before, but he knew the penalties for burglary.

'But I don't admire the sky as a whole,' Naismith continued, 'though it is beautiful. I like the morning and the late evening especially, because then it is possible to see the —' there was one of his characteristic pauses as he seemed to listen for the right word ' satellites. See? There are two visible right now.' He pointed first near the zenith and then waved at something close to the horizon. Wili followed his first gesture, and saw a tiny point of light moving slowly, effortlessly across the sky. Too slow to be an aircraft, much too slow to be a meteor: It was a moving star, of course. For a moment, he had thought the old man was going to show him something really magical. Wili shrugged and somehow Naismith seemed to catch the gesture.

'Not impressed, eh? There were men there once, Wili. But no more.'

It was hard for Wili to conceal his scorn. How could that be? With aircraft you could see the vehicle. These little lights were like the stars and as meaningless. But he said nothing and a long silence overcame them. 'You don't believe me, do you, Wili? But it is true. There were men and women there, so high up you can't see the form of their craft.'

Wili relaxed, squatted before the other's chair. He tried to sound humble, 'But then, Lord, what keeps them up? Even aircraft must come down for fuel.'

Naismith chuckled. 'That from the expert Celest player! Think, Wili. The universe is a great game of Celest. Those moving lights are swinging about the Earth, just like planets on a game display.

Del Nico Dio! Wili sat on the flags with an audible thump. A wave of dizziness passed over him. The sky would never be the same. Wili's cosmology had-until that moment-been an unexamined flatland image. Now, suddenly, he found the interior cosmos of Celest surrounding him forever and ever, with no up or down, but only the vast central force field that was the Earth, with the moon and all those moving stars circling about. And he couldn't disguise from himself the distances involved; he was far too familiar with Celest to do that. He felt like an infinitesimal shrinking toward some unknowable zero.

His mind tumbled over and over in the dark, caught between the relationships flashing through his mind and the night sky that swung overhead. So all those objects had their own gravity, and all moved-at least in some small way-at the behest of all the others. An image of the solar system not too different from the reality slowly formed in his mind. When at last he spoke, his voice was very small, and his humility was not pretended, 'But then the game, it represents trips that men have actually made? To the moon, to the stars that move? You... we... can do that?'

'We could do that, Wili. We could do that and more. But no longer.'

'But why not?' It was as though the universe had suddenly been taken back from his grasp. His voice was almost a wail.

'In the beginning, it was the War. Fifty years ago there were men alive up there. They starved or they came back to Earth. After the War there were the plagues. Now... now we could do it again. It would be different from before, but we could do it... if it weren't for the Peace Authority.' The last two words were in English. He paused and then said, 'Mundopaz.'

Wili looked into the sky. The Peace Authority. They had always seemed a part of the universe as far away and indifferent as the stars themselves. He saw their jets and occasionally their helicopters. The major highways passed two or three of their freighters every hour. They had their enclave in Los Angeles. The Ndelante Ali had never considered hitting it; better to burgle the feudal manors of Aztlan. And Wili remembered that even the lords of Aztlan, for all their arrogance, never spoke of the Peace Authority except in neutral tones. It was fitting in a way that something so nearly supernatural should have stolen the stars from mankind. Fitting, yet now he knew, intolerable.

'They brought us peace, Wili, but the price was very high.' A meteor flashed across the sky, and Wili wondered if that had been a piece of man's work, too. Naismith's voice suddenly became businesslike, 'I said we must talk, and this is the perfect time for it. I want you for my apprentice. But this is no good unless you want it also. Somehow, I don't think our goals are the same. I think you want wealth: I know what's in the bag yonder. I know what's in the tree behind the pond.'

Naismith's voice was dry, cool. Wili's eyes hung on the point where the meteor had swept to nothingness. This was like a dream. In Los Angeles, he would be on his way to the headsman now, an adopted son caught in treachery. 'But what will wealth get you,