"Damn," said Paul. "All those years of clever planning, and I never..."
"Oh, Paul," she said softly. "You are a genius. But you couldn't know everything about everything. You couldn't be a one-man revolution."
"Yeah," said Mike. "And he couldn't convince the rest of us that there was anything worth revolting against."
Wili just stared, his eyes wide, his jaw slack. It would be harder than anything he had done before but, "Maybe you do not need spies, Allison. Maybe we can.... I've got to think about this. We've still got days. True, Mike?"
"Unless we have real bad luck. With good luck we might have weeks."
"Good. Let me think. I must think.... " He stood up and walked slowly indoors. Already the veranda, the sunlight, the others were forgotten.
It was not easy. In the months before he learned to use the mind connect, it would have been impossible; even a lifetime of effort would not have brought the necessary insights. Now creativity was in harness with his processors. He knew what he wanted to do. In a matter of hours he could test his ideas, separate false starts from true.
The recon problem was the most important-and probably the easiest. Now he didn't want to block Peacer reception. He wanted them to receive... lies. A lot of preprocessing was done aboard the satellites; just a few bytes altered here and there might be enough to create false perceptions on the ground. Somehow he had to break into those programs, but not in the heavy-handed way he had before. Afterward, the truth would be received by them alone. The enemy would see what Paul wanted them to see. Why, they could protect not just themselves, but many of the tinkers as well!
Days passed. The answers came miraculously fast, and perilously slow. At the edge of his consciousness, Wili knew Paul was helping with the physics, and Allison was entering what she knew about the old USAF comm/recon system. It all helped, but the hard inner problem - how to subvert a system without seeming to and without any physical contact remained his alone.
They finally tested it. Wili took his normal video off a satellite over Middle California, analyzed it quickly, and sent back subtle sabotage. On the next orbit, he simulated Peacer reception: A small puff of synthetic cloud appeared in the picture, just where he had asked. The satellite processors could keep up the illusion until they received coded instructions to do otherwise. It was a simple change. Once operational, they could make more complicated alterations: Certain vehicles might not be reported on the roads, certain houses might become invisible.
But the hard part had been done.
"Now all we have to do is let the Peacers know their recon birds are `working' again," said Allison when he showed them his tests. She was grinning from ear to ear. At first Wili had wondered why she was so committed to the Tinker cause; everything she was loyal to had been dead fifty years.
The Tinkers didn't even exist when her orbiter was bobbled. But it hadn't taken him long to understand: She was like Paul. She blamed the Peacers for taking away the old world. And in her case, that was a world fresh in memory. She might not know anything about the Tinkers, but her hate for the Authority was as deep as Paul's.
"Yeah," said Paul. "Wili could just return the comm protocols to their original state. All of a sudden the Peacers would have a live system again. But even as stupid as they are, they'd suspect something. We have to do this so they think that somehow they have solved the problem. Hmm. I'll bet Avery still has people working on this even now."
"Okay," said Wili. "I fix things so the satellites will not start sending to them until they do a complete recompile of their ground programs."
Paul nodded. "That sounds perfect. We might have to wait a few more days, but-"
Allison laughed. " - but I know programmers. They'll be happy to believe their latest changes have fixed the problem."
Wili smiled back. He was already imagining how similar things could be done to the Peacer communication system.
THIRTY-ONE
War had returned to the planet. Hamilton Avery read the Peace Authority News Service article and nodded to himself. The headline and the following story hit just the right note: For decades, the world had been at peace, thanks to the Authority and the cooperation of peace-loving individuals around the world. But now - as in the early days, when the bioscience clique had attempted its takeover - the power lust of an evil minority had thrown the lives of humankind into jeopardy. One could only pray that the ultimate losses would not be as great as those of the War and the plagues.
The news service story didn't say all this explicitly. It was targeted for high tech regions in the Americas and China and concentrated on "objective" reporting of Tinker atrocities and the evidence that the Tinkers were building energy weapons-and bobble generators. The Peace hadn't tried to cover up that last development: A four-hundred-meter bobble floating through the skies of L.A. is a bit difficult to explain, much less cover up.
Of course, these stories wouldn't convince the Tinkers themselves, but they were a minority in the population. The important thing was to keep other citizens - and the national militias -from joining the enemy.
The comm chimed softly. "Yes?"
"Sir, Director Gerrault is on the line again. He sounds very... upset."
Avery stifled a smile. The comm was voice-only, but even when alone, Avery tried to disguise his true feelings. "Director" Gerrault indeed! There might still be a place for that pupal Bonaparte in the organization, but hardly as a Director. Best to let him hang a few hours more. "Please report to Monsieur Gerrault - again - that the emergency situation here prevents my immediate response. I'll get to him as soon as humanly possible."
"Uh, yes, sir.... Agent Lu is down here. She also wishes to see you."
"That's different. Send her right up."
Avery leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Beyond the clear glass of the window wall, the lands around Livermore spread away in peace and silence. In the near distance - yet a hundred meters beneath his tower - were the black-and-ivory buildings of the modern centrum, each one separated from the others by green parkland. Farther away, near the horizon, the golden grasses of summer were broken here and there by clusters of oaks. It was hard to imagine such peace disrupted by the pitiful guerrilla efforts of the world's Tinkers.
Poor Gerrault. Avery remembered his boast of being the industrious ant who built armies and secret police while the American and Chinese Directors depended on the people's good will and trust. Gerrault had spread garrisons from Oslo to Capetown, from Dublin to Szczecin. He had enough troopers to convince the common folk that he was just another tyrant. When the Tinkers finally got Paul Hoehler's toy working, the people and the governments had not hesitated to throw in with them. And then... and then Gerrault had discovered that his garrisons were not nearly enough. Most were now overrun, not so much by the enemy's puny bobble generators, as by all the ordinary people who no longer believed in the Authority. At the same time, the Tinkers had moved against the heart of Gerrault's operation in Paris. Where the European Director's headquarters once stood, there was now a simple monument: a three-hundred-meter silver sphere. Gerrault had gotten out just before the debacle, and was now skulking about in the East European deserts, trying to avoid the Teuton militia, trying to arrange transportation to California or China. It was a fitting end to his tyranny, but it was going to be one hell of a problem retaking Europe after the rest of the Tinkers were put down.
There was a muted knock at the door, and Avery pressed "open," then stood with studied courtesy as Della Lu stepped into the room. He gestured to a comfortable chair near the end of his desk, and they both sat.