The Peace War

between the trees. Wilma was only a woman, but she was clever and more than once had caught him out when he was a child. He must be as careful with her as anyone. He laughed. 'It was simple, Wilma — once Della suggested it: We stuck our heads right back into the lion's mouth. We found a Peacer fuel station and climbed into the undercarriage of one of the tankers. No Aztlan cop stops one of those. We had a nonstop ride from there to the station south of Santa Ynez.' Even so, it had not been fun. There had been kilometer after kilometer of noise and diesel fumes. More than once during the two-hour trip they had nearly fainted, fallen past the spinning axles onto the concrete of Old 101. But Lu had been adamant: Their return must be realistically difficult. No one, including Wili, must suspect.

Wilma's eyes grew slightly round. 'Oh, that Della Lu. She is so wonderful. Don't you think?'

Rosas looked over Wilma's head to where Della was making herself popular with the womenfolk. 'Yes, she is wonderful.' She had them all agog with her tales of life in San Francisco. No matter how much (and how suicidally) he might wish it, she never slipped up. She was a supernaturally good liar. How he hated that small Asian face, those clean good looks. He had never known anyone — man, woman or animal — who was so attractive and yet so evil. He forced his eyes away from her, trying to forget the slim shoulders, the ready smile, the power to destroy him and all the good he had ever done...

'It's marvelous to have you back, Mikey,' Wilma's voice was suddenly very soft. 'but I'm so sorry for those poor people down at La Jolla and in that secret lab.'

And Jeremy. Jeremy who was left behind forever. She was too kind to say it, too kind to remind him that he had not brought back one of those he had been hired to protect. The kindness rubbed unknowingly on deeper guilt. Rosas could not conceal the harshness in his voice. 'Don't you worry about the biosci people, Wilma. They were an evil we had to use to cure Wili. As for the others — I promise you we'll get them back.' He reached out to squeeze her hand. All but Jeremy.

'Da,' said a voice behind him. 'We will get all the rest back indeed.' It was Nikolai Kaladze, who had snuck up on them with his usual lack of warning. 'But now that is what we are ready to discuss, Wilma, my dear.'

'Oh.' She accepted the implied dismissal, a thoroughly modern woman. She turned to gather up the women and younger men, to leave the important matters to the seniors.

Della looked momentarily surprised at this turn of events. She smiled and waved to Mike just as she left. He would like to think he'd seen anger in her face, but she was too good an actress for that. He could only imagine her rage at being kicked out of the meeting. He hoped she'd been counting on attending it.

In minutes, the party was over, the women and children gone. The music from the trees softened, and insect sounds grew louder. Seymour Wentz's holo remained. His image could almost be mistaken for that of someone sitting at the far end of the picnic table. Thirty seconds passed, and several more electronic visitors appeared. One was on a flat, black-and-white display — someone from very far indeed. Rosas wondered how well his transmission was shielded. Then he recognized the sender, one of the Greens from Norcross. With them, it was probably safe.

Wili drifted in, nodded silently to Mike. The boy had been very quiet since that night in La Jolla.

'All present?' Colonel Kaladze sat down at the head of the table. Images far outnumbered the flesh-and-blood now. Only Mike, Wili, and Kaladze and his sons were truly here. The rest were images in holo tanks. The still night air, the pale glow of bulbs, the aged faces, and Wili — dark, small, yet somehow powerful. The scene struck Rosas like something out of a fantasy: a dark elfin prince, holding his council of war at midnight in faerie-lit forest.

The participants looked at each other for a moment, perhaps feeling the strangeness themselves. Finally, Ivan Nikolayevich said to his father, 'Colonel, with all due respect, is it proper that someone so young and unknown as Mr. Wachendon should sit at this meeting?'

Before the eldest could speak, Rosas interrupted, a further breach of decorum. 'I asked that he stay. He shared our trip south and he knows more about some of the technical problems we face than any of us.' Mike nodded apologetically to Kaladze.

Sy Wentz grinned crookedly at him. 'As long as we're ignoring all the rules of propriety, I want to ask about our communications security.'

Kaladze sounded only faintly irritated by the usurpations. 'Rest assured, Sheriff. This part of the woods is in a little valley, blocked from the inland. And I think we have more confusion gear in these trees than there are leaves.' He glanced at a display. 'No leaks from this end. If you line-of-sighters take even minimum precautions, we're safe.' He glanced at the man from Norcross.

'Don't worry about me. I'm using knife-edges, convergent corridors — all sorts of good stuff. The Peacers could monitor forever and not even realize they were hearing a transmission. Gentlemen, you may not realize how primitive the enemy is. Since the La Jolla kidnappings, we've planted some of our bugs in their labs. The great Peace Authority's electronic expertise is fifty years obsolete. We found researchers ecstatic at achieving component densities of ten million per square millimeter.' There were surprised chuckles from around the table. The Green smiled, baring bad teeth. 'In field operations, they are much worse.'

'So all they have are the bombs, the jets, the tanks, the armies, and the bobbles.'

'Correct. We are very much like Stone Age hunters fighting a mammoth: We have the numbers and the brains, and the other side has the physical power. I predict our fate will 'be similar to the hunters'. We'll suffer casualties, but the enemy will eventually be defeated.'

'What an encouraging point of view,' Sy put in dryly: