"Then as the night cools, the bobble will rise and be just another floater. By morning it could be many kilometers from here." Paul nodded. "Clever..."
He and Allison backed further away, Wili following. From thirty meters, the candle was a flickering yellow star on the stump. Wili motioned them to sit; even if the bobble was super-large, its lower surface would still clear them.
"You don't need any power source at all?" said Allison. "The Peace Authority uses fusion generators and you can do it for free?"
"In principle, it isn't difficult-once you have the right insight, once you know what really goes on inside the bobbles. And the new process is not quite free. We're using about a thousand joules here — compared to the gigajoules of the Authority generators. The trade-off is in complexity. If you have a fusion generator backing you up, you can bobble practically anything you can locate. But if you're like us, with solar cells and small capacitors, then you must finesse it.
"The projection needs to be supervised, and it's no ordinary process control problem. This test is about the easiest case: The target is motionless, close by, and we only want a one-meter field. Even so, it will involve — how much crunching do we need, Wili?"
"She needs thirty seconds initial at about ten billion flops, and then maybe one microsecond for 'assembly' — at something like a trillion."
Paul whistled. A trillion floating-point operations per second! Wili had said he could implement the discovery, but Paul hadn't realized just how expensive it might be. The gear would not be very portable. And long distance or very large bobbles might not be feasible.
Wili seemed to sense his disappointment. "We think we can do it with a slower processor. It maybe takes many minutes for the setup, but you could still bobble things that don't move or are real close."
"Yeah, we'll optimize later. Let's make a bobble, Wili."
The boy nodded.
Seconds passed. Something — an owl — thuttered over the clearing, and the candle went out. Nuts. He had hoped it would stay lit. It would have been a nice demonstration of the stasis effect to have the candle still burning later on when the bobble burst.
"Well?" Wili said. "What do you think?"
"You did it!" said Paul. The words were somewhere between a question and an exclamation.
Jill did, anyway. I better grab it before it floats away."
Wili slipped off the scalp connector and sprinted across the clearing. He was already coming back before Naismith had walked halfway to the tree stump. The boy was holding something in front of him, something light on top and dark underneath. Paul and Allison moved close. It was about the size of a large beach ball, and in its upper hemisphere he could see reflected stars, even the Milky Way, all the way down to the dark of the tree line surrounding the pond. Three silhouettes marked the reflections of their own heads. Naismith extended his hand, felt it slide silkily off the bobble, felt the characteristic blood-warm heat — the reflection of his hand's thermal radiation.
Wili had his arms extended around its girth and his chin pushed down on the top. He looked like a comedian doing a mock weight lift. "It feels like it will shoot from my hands if I don't hold it every way."
"Probably could. There's no friction."
Allison slipped her hand across the surface. "So that's a bobble. Will this one last fifty years, like the one... Angus and I were in?"
Paul shook his head. "No. That's for big ones done the old way. Eventually, I expect to have very flexible control, with duration only loosely related to size. How long does Jill estimate this one will last, Wili?"
Before the boy could reply, Jill's voice interrupted from the interface box. "There's a PANS bulletin coming over the high-speed channels. It puffs out to a thirty-minute program. I'm summarizing:
"Big story about threat to the Peace. Biggest since Huachuca plaguetime. Says the Tinkers are the villains. Their leaders were captured in La Jolla raids last month... The broadcast has video of Tinker `weapons labs,' pictures of sinister-looking prisoners...
"Prisoners to be tried for Treason against the Peace, starting immediately, in Los Angeles.
"... all government and corporate stations must rebroadcast this at normal speed every six hours for the next two days."
There was a long silence after she finished. Wili held up the bobble. "They picked the wrong time to put the squeeze on us!"
Naismith shook his head. "It's the worst possible time for us. We're being forced to use this," he patted the bobble, "when we've barely got a proof of principle. It puts us right where that punk Avery wants us."
TWENTY-SIX
The rain was heavy and very, very warm. High in the clouds, lightning chased itself around and around the Vandenberg Dome, never coming to Earth. Thunder followed the arching, cloud-smeared glows.
Della Lu had seen more rain the last two weeks than would fall in a normal year in Beijing. It was a fitting backdrop for the dull routine of life here. If Avery hadn't finally gone for the spy trials, she would be seriously planning to escape Red Arrow hospitality — blown cover or not.
Hey, you tired already? Or just daydreaming?" Mike had stopped and was looking back at her. He stood, arms akimbo, apparently disgusted. The transparent rain jacket made his tan shirt and pants glint metallic even in the gray light.
Della walked a little faster to catch up. They continued in silence for a hundred meters. No doubt they made an amusing pair: Two figures shrouded in rain gear, one tall, one so short. Since Wili's ten-day "probation period" had lapsed, the two of them had taken a walk every day. It was something she had insisted on, and — for a change — Rosas hadn't resisted. So far she had snooped as far north as Lake Lompoc and east to the ferry crossing.
Without Mike, her walks would've had to be with the womenfolk. That would have been tricky. The women were protected, and had little freedom or responsibility. She spent most of every day with them, doing the light manual labor that was considered appropriate to her sex. She had been careful to be popular, and she had learned a lot, but all local intelligence. Just as with families in San Francisco, the women were not privy to what went on in the wider world. They were valued, but second-class, citizens. Even so, they were clever; it would have been difficult to look in the places that really interested her without raising their suspicions.
Today was her longest walk, up to the highlands that overlooked Red Arrow's tiny sea landing. Despite Mike's passive deceptions, she had put together a pretty good picture of Old Kaladze's escape system. At least she knew its magnitude and technique. It was a small payoff for the boredom and the feeling that she was being held offstage from events she should be directing.
All that could change with the spy trials. If she could just light a fire under the right people...
The timbered path went back and forth across the hill they climbed. There were many repairs, and several looked quite recent, yet there were also washouts. It was like most things among the Tinkers. Their electronic gadgets were superlative (though it was dear now that the surveillance devices Avery had discovered were rare and expensive items amongst the Tinkers; they didn't normally spy on each other). But they were labor poor, and without power equipment, things like road maintenance and laundry were distinctly nineteenth century. And Della had the calluses to prove it.
Finally they reached the overlook. A steady breeze swept across the hill, blowing the rain into their faces. There was only one tree at the top, though it was a fine, large conifer growing from the highest point. There was some kind of platform about halfway up.
Rosas put his arm across her shoulder, urging her toward the tree. "They had a tree house up here when I was a kid. There ought to be a good view."
Wood steps were built into the tree trunk. She noticed a heavy metallic cable that followed the steps upward. Electronics even here? Then she realized that it was a lightning guide. The Tinkers were very careful with their children.