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

you feel?"
    "Great," filled with elation, "but tired. The pain has been less these last days, I think.
Who is Ramanujan?"
    "Twentieth-century mathematician. An Indian. There are a lot of similarities: You both
started out without much formal education. You are both very, very good."
    Wili smiled, the warmth of the sun barely matching what he felt. These were the first
words of real praise he had heard from Naismith. He resolved to look up everything on
file about this Ramanujan... His mind drifted, freed from the fixation of the last weeks.
Through the pines, he could see the sun on Vandenberg. There were so many mysteries
left to master...
    EIGHT
    Naismith made some phone calls the next day. The first was to Miguel Rosas at the SYP
Company. Rosas was undersheriff to Sy Wentz, but the Tinkers around Vandenberg hired
him for almost all their police operations.
    The cop's dark face seemed a touch pale after he watched Naismith's video replay.
"Okay," he finally said, "who was Ramanujan?"
    Naismith felt the tears coming back to his eyes. "That was a bad slip; now the boy is
sure to look him up. Ramanujan was everything I told Wili: a really brilliant fellow,
without much college education." This wouldn't impress Mike, Naismith knew. There
were no colleges now, just apprenticeships. "He was invited to England to work with
some of the best number theorists of the time. He got TB, died young."
    ...Oh. I get the connection, Paul. But I hope you don't think that bringing Wili into the
mountains did anything to hurt him."
    "His problem is worse during winters, and our winters are fierce compared to L.A.'s.
This has pushed him over the edge."
    "Bull! It may have aggravated his problem, but he got better food here and more of it.
Face it, Paul. This sort of wasting just gets worse and worse. You've seen it before."
    "More than you!" That and the more acute diseases of the plague years had come close
to destroying mankind. Then Naismith brought himself up short, remembering Miguel's
two little sisters. Three orphans from Arizona they had been, but only one survived.
Every winter, the girls had sickened again. When they died, their bodies were near-skeletons.
The young cop had seen more of it than most in his generation.
    "Listen, Mike, we've got to do something. Two or three years is the most he has. But
hell, even before the War a good pharmaceutical lab could have cured this sort of thing.
We were on the verge of cracking DNA coding and —
    "Even then, Paul? Where do you think the plagues came from? That's not just Peace
Authority jive. We know the Peace is almost as scared of bioresearch as they are that
someone might find the secret of their bobbles. They bobbled Yakima a few years ago
just because one of the their agents found a recombination analyzer in the city hospital.
That's ten thousand people asphyxiated because of a silly antique. Face it: The bastards
who started the plagues are forty years dead-and good riddance."
    Naismith sighed. His conscience was going to hurt him on this — a little matter of
protecting your customers. "You're wrong, Mike. I have business with lots of people. I
have a good idea what most of them do."
    Rosas' head snapped up. "Bioscience labs, even in our time?"
    "Yes. At least three, perhaps ten. I can't be sure, since of course they don't admit to it.
And there's only one whose location is certain."
    'Jesus, Paul, how can you deal with such vermin?"
    Naismith shrugged. "The Peace Authority is the real enemy. In spite of what you say,
it's only their word that the bioscience people caused the plagues, trying to win back for
their governments what all the armies could not. I
know
the Peace," he stopped for a
moment, remembering treachery that had been a personal, secret thing for fifty years.
    "I've tried to convince you tech people: The Authority can't tolerate you. You follow
their laws: You don't make high-density power sources, don't make vehicles or
experiment with nucleonics or biology. But if