Read Online The Peace War by Vernor Vinge - Free Book Online

Naismith's books! Paul
claimed that no previous human had insight on the coding problem that he had attacked!
Wili didn't need Naismith's machines now; the images in his mind were so much more
complete. He sat in the living room for hours-through most of his waking time — almost
unaware of the outside world, almost unaware of his pain, dreaming of the problem and
his schemes for its defeat. All existence was groups and graphs and endless
combinatorical refinements on the decryption scheme he hoped would break the problem.
    But when he ate and even when he slept, the pain levered itself back into his soul.
    It was Irma, not Wili, who noticed that the paler skin on his palms had a yellow cast
beneath the brown. She sat beside him at the dining table, holding his small hands in her
large, calloused ones. Wili bristled at her touch. He was here to eat, not to be inspected.
But Paul stood behind her.
    "And the nails look discolored, too." She reached across to one of Wili's yellowed
fingernails and gave it a gentle tug. Without sound or pain, the nail came away at its root.
Wili stared stupidly for a second, then jerked his hand back with a shriek. Pain was one
thing; this was the nightmare of a body slowly dismembering itself. For an instant terror
blotted out his gutpain the way mathematics had done before.
    They moved him to a basement room, where he could be warm all the time. Wili found
himself in bed most of each day. His only view of the outside, of the cloudswept purity of
Vandenberg, was via the holo. The mountain snows were too deep to pass travelers; there
would be no doctors. But Naismith moved cameras and high-bandwidth equipment into
the room, and once when Wili was not lost in dreaming, he saw that someone from far
away was looking on, was being interrogated by Naismith. The old man seemed very
angry.
    Wili reached out to touch his sleeve. "It will be all right, Uncle Syl — Paul. This
problem I have always had and worst in the winters. I will be okay in the spring."
    Naismith smiled and nodded, then turned away.
    But Wili was not delirious in any normal sense. During the long hours an average
patient would have lain staring at the ceiling or watching the holo and trying to ignore his
pain, Wili dreamed on and on about the communications problem that had resisted his
manifold efforts all these weeks. When the others were absent, there was still Jill, taking
notes, ready to call for help; she was more real than any of them. It was hard to imagine
that her voice and pretty face had ever seemed threatening.
    In a sense, he had already solved the problem, but his scheme was too slow; he needed
n*log(n) time for this application. He was far beyond the tools provided by his brief,
intense education. Something new, something clever was needed, and by the One True
God he would find it!
    And when the solution did come it was like a sun rising on a clear morning, which was
appropriate since this was the first clear day in almost a month. Bill brought him up to
ground level to sit in the sunlight before the newly cleared windows. The sky was not just
clear, but an intense blue. The snow was piled deep, a blinding white. Icicles grew down
from every edge and corner, dripping tiny diamonds in the warm light.
    Wili had been dictating to Jill for nearly an hour when the old man came down for
breakfast. He took one look over Wili's shoulder and then grabbed his reader, saying not
a word to Wili or anyone else. Naismith paused many times, his eyes half closed in
concentration. He was about a third of the way through when Wili finished. He looked up
when Wili stopped talking, "You got it?"
    Wili nodded, grinning. "Sure, and in n*log(n) time, too." He glanced at Naismith's
reader. "You're still looking at the filter setting up. The real trick isn't for a hundred more
lines." He scanned forward. Naismith looked at it for a long time, finally nodded. "I, I
think I see. I'll have to study it, but I think... My little Ramanujan. How do