even when they were going strong, and he survived. I've heard about his place. He has gadgets we won't see for years. He isn't called the Tinker wizard for nothing. I
The rest was blotted out by a loud creaking that rose to near painful intensity in Naismith's ear, then faded as the filters damped out the amplification. Naismith looked wildly around, then sheepishly realized it was a microquake. They happened all the time this near Vandenberg. Most were barely noticeable — unless one used special amplification, as Paul was now. The roar had been a slight creaking of wall timbers. It passed... and he could hear the two peace officers once more.
'... at he said about needing an apprentice is true, Boss. It hasn't been just us in Middle California who've been after him. I know people in Medford and Norcross who are scared witless he'll die without leaving a successor. He's hands down the best algorithms man in North America — I'd say in the world except I want to be conservative. You know that comm gear you have back in the control room? I know it's close to your heart, your precious toy and mine. Well, the bandwidth compression that makes possible all those nice color pictures coming over the fiber and the microwave would be plain impossible without the tricks he's sold the Tinkers. And that's not all —'
'All right!' Wentz laughed. 'I can tell you took it serious when I told you to specialize on our high tech clients. I know Middle California would be a backwater without him, but-'
'And it will be again, once he's gone, unless he can find an apprentice. They've been trying for years to get him to take on some students or even to teach classes like before the Crash, but he's refused. And I think he's right. Unless you are terribly creative to begin with, there's no way you can make new algorithms. I think he's been waiting — not taking anyone on — and watching. I think today he found his apprentice. The kid's mean... he'd kill. And I don't know what he really wants besides money. But he has one thing that all the good intentions and motivation in world can't get us, and that's brains. You should have seen him on the Celest, Boss...'
The argument — or lecture — went on for several more minutes, but the outcome was predictable. The wizard of the Tinkers had at long last got himself an apprentice.
THREE
Night and triple moonlight. Wili lay in the back of the buckboard, heavily bundled in blankets. The soft springs absorbed most of the bumps and lurches as the wagon passed over the tilting, broken concrete. The only sounds Wili heard were the cool wind through the trees, the steady clapclapclap of the horse's rubberized shoes, its occasional snort in the darkness. They had not yet reached the great black forest that stretched north to south; it seemed like all Middle California was spread out around him. The sea fog which so often made the nights here dark was absent, and the moonlight gave the air an almost luminous blue tone. Directly west- the direction Wili faced — Santa Ynez lay frozen in the still light. Few lights were visible, but the pattern of the greets was clear, and there was of a hint of orange and violet from the open square of the bazaar.
Wili wriggled deeper in the blankets, the tingling paralysis in his limbs mostly gone now; the warmth in his arms and legs, the cold air on his face, and the vision spread below him was as good as any drug high he'd ever stolen in Pasadena. The land was beautiful, but it had not turned out to be the easy pickings he had hoped for when he had defected from the Ndelante and headed north. There were unpeopled ruins, that was true: He could see what must have been the pre-Crash location of Santa Ynez, rectangular tracings all overgrown and no lights at all.
The ruins were bigger than the modern version of the town, but nothing like the promise of the L.A. Basin, where kilometer after kilometer of ruins — much of it unlooted -stretched as far as a man could walk in a week. And if one wanted some more exciting, more profitable way of getting rich, there were the Jonque mansions in the hills above the Basin. From those high vantage points, Los Angeles had its own fairyland aspect: Horizon to horizon had sparkled with little fires that marked towns in the ruins. Here and there glowed the incandescent lights of Jonque outposts. And at the center, a luminous, crystal growth, stood the towers of the Peace Authority Enclave. Wili sighed. That had all been before his world in the Ndelante Ali had fallen apart, before he discovered Old Ebenezer's con... If ever he returned, it would be a contest between the Ndelante and the Jonques over who'd skin him first.
Wili couldn't go back.
But he had seen one thing on this journey north that made it worth being chased here. That one thing made this landscape forever more spectacular than LAs. He looked over Santa Ynez at the object of his wonder:
The silver dome rose out of the sea, into the moonlight. Even at this remove and altitude, it still seemed to tower. People called it many things, and even in Pasadena he had heard of it, though he'd never believed the stories. Larry Faulk called it Mount Vandenberg. The old man Naismith — the one who even now was whistling aimlessly as his servant drove their wagon into the hills — he had called it the Vandenberg Bobble. But whatever they called it, it transcended the name.
In its size and perfection it seemed to transcend nature itself. From Santa Barbara he had seen it. It was a hemisphere at least twenty kilometers across. Where it fell into the Pacific, Wili could see multiple lines of moonlit surf breaking soundlessly against its curving arc. On its inland side, the lake they called Lompoc was still and dark.
Perfect, perfect. The shape was an abstraction beyond reality. Its mirror-perfect surface caught the moon and held it in a second image, just as clear as the first. And so the night had two moons, one very high in the sky, the other shining from the dome. Out in the sea, the more normal reflection was a faint silver bar lying straight to the ocean's horizon. Three moon's worth of light in all! During the day, the vast mirror captured the sun in a similar way. Larry Faulk claimed the farmers planted their lands to take advantage of the double sunlight.
Who had made Vandenberg Dome? The One True God? Some Jonque or Anglo god? And if made by man, how? What could be inside? Wili dozed, imagining the burglary of all burglaries — to get inside and steal what treasures would be hidden by a treasure so
