Wili didn't really mean the words, but they came anyway. "I understand you won't come along. I understand some silly piece of math is more important."

Worse, the words didn't anger Paul. His head bowed slightly, "Yes. There are some things more important to me than any person. Let me tell you what we saw -"

"Paul, if Mike and Jeremy and Wili are to be in the mouth of the lion, there is no sense in their knowing more right now."

"As you say, 'Kolya." Naismith rose and walked slowly to the door. "Please excuse me."

There was a short silence, broken by the Colonel. "We'll have to work fast to get you three on the way in time. Ivan, show me just what your chess fans want to send with Jeremy. If the Authority is providing transport, maybe Mike and the boys can take a more elaborate processor." He departed with his sons and Jeremy.

That left Wili and Mike. The boy stood and turned to the door.

'Just a minute, you." Mike's voice had the hard edge Wili remembered from their first encounter months before. The undersheriff came around the table and pushed Wili back into his chair. "You think Paul has deserted you. Maybe he has. But from what I can tell, they've discovered something more important than the lot of us. I don't know exactly what it is, or I couldn't go with you and Jeremy either. Get it? We can't afford to let Naismith fall into Authority hands.

"Consider yourself damn lucky we're going through with Paul's harebrained scheme to get you cured. He's the only man on Earth who could've convinced Kaladze to deal even indirectly with the bioscience swine." He glared down at Wili, as if expecting some counterattack. The boy was silent and avoided his eyes.

"Okay. I'll be waiting for you in the dining house." Rosas stalked out of the room.

Wili was motionless for a long time. There were no tears; there had been none since that afternoon very long ago on Claremont Street. He didn't blame Sylvester Washington and he didn't blame Paul Naismith. They had done as much as one man can do for another. But ultimately there is only one person who can't run away from your problems.

Still five meters up, the twin rotor chopper sent a shower of grit across the Tradetower helipad. From her place in the main cabin, Delia Lu watched the bystanders grab their hats and squint into the wash. Old Hamilton Avery was the only fellow who kept his aplomb.

As the chopper touched down, one of her crew slid open the front hatch and waved at the standing VIPs. Through her silvered window, she saw Director Avery nod and turn to shake hands with Smythe, the L.A. franchise owner. Then Avery walked alone toward the crewman, who had not stepped down from the doorway.

Smythe was probably the most powerful Peacer in Southern California. She wondered what he thought when his boss submitted to such a cavalier pickup. She smiled lopsidedly. Hell, she was in charge of the operation, and she didn't know what was coming off either.

The rotors spun up even has she heard the hatch slam. Her crew had their orders: The helipad dropped away as the chopper rose like some magic elevator from the top of the Tradetower. They slid out from the roof and she looked down eighty storeys at the street.

As the helicopter turned toward LAX and Santa Monica, Delia came to her feet. An instant later Avery entered her cabin. He looked completely relaxed yet completely formal, his dress both casual and expensive. In theory, the Board of Directors of the Peace Authority was a committee of equals. In fact, Hamilton Avery had been the driving force behind it for as long as Della Lu had been following inner politics. Though not a famous man, he was the most powerful one in the world.

"My dear! So good to see you." Avery walked quickly to her, shook her hand as if she were an equal and not an officer three levels below him. She let the silver-haired Director take her elbow and lead her to a seat. One might think she was his guest.

They sat down, and the Director looked quickly about the cabin. It was a solid, mobile command room. There was no bar, no carpets. With her priority; she could have had such, but Della had not gotten to her present job by sucking up to her bosses.

The aircraft hummed steadily westward, the chop of the blades muted by the office's heavy insulation. Below, Della could see Peace Authority housing. The Enclave was really a corridor that extended from Santa Monica and LAX on the coast, inland to what had once been the center of Los Angeles. It was the largest Enclave in the world. More than fifty thousand people lived down there, mostly near the News Service studios. And they lived well. She saw swimming pools and tennis courts on the three-acre suburban lots that passed below.

In the north glowered the castles and fortified roads of the Aztlÿn aristocrats. They had governmental responsibility for the region, but without Banned technology their "palaces" were medieval dumps. Like the Republic of New Mexico, Aztlÿn watched the Authority with impotent jealousy and dreamed of the good old days.

Avery looked up from the view. "I noticed you had the Beijing insignia painted over."

"Yes, sir. It was clear from your message that you didn't want people to guess you were using people from off North

America." That was one of the few things that was crystal clear. Three days before she had been at the Beijing Enclave, just returned from her final survey of the Central Asian situation. Then a megabyte of instructions and background came over the satellite from Livermore - and not to the Beijing franchise owner, but to one Della Lu, third-level counter-guerrilla cop and general hatchetman. She was assigned a cargo jet- its freight being this chopper -and told to fly across the Pacific to LAX. No one was to emerge at any intermediate stop. At LAX, the freighter crew was to disgorge the chopper with her people, and return immediately.

Avery nodded approvingly. "Good. I need someone who doesn't need everything spelled out. Have you had a chance to read the New Mexico report?"

"Yes, sir." She had spent the flight studying the report and boning up on North American politics. She had been gone three years; there'd have been a lot of catching up to do even without the Tucson crisis.

"Do you think the Republic bought our story?"

She thought back on the meeting tape and the dossiers. "Yes. Ironically, the most suspicious of them were also the most ignorant. Schelling bought it hook, line, and sinker. He knows enough theory to see that it's reasonable."

Avery nodded.

"But they'll continue to believe only if no more bobbles burst. And I understand it's happened at least twice more during the last few weeks. I don't believe the quantum decay explanation. The old USA missile fields are littered with thousands of bobbles. If decays continue to happen, they won't be missed."

Avery nodded again, didn't seem especially upset by her analysis.

The chopper did a gentle bank over Santa Monica, giving her a close-up view of the largest mansions in the Enclave. She had a glimpse of the Authority beach and the ruined Aztlÿn shoreline further south, and then they were over the ocean. They flew south several kilometers before turning inland. They would fly in vast circles until the meeting was over. Even the Tucson event could not explain this mission. Della almost frowned.

Avery raised a well-manicured hand. "What you say is cor-- rect, but may be irrelevant. It depends on what the true explanation turns out to be. Have you considered the possibility that someone has discovered how to destroy bobbles, that we are seeing their experiments?"

"The choice of `experiment sites' is very strange, sir: the Ross Iceshelf, Tucson, Ulan Ude. And I don't see how such an organization could escape direct detection."