Yes. And there have been no outgoing calls from them. However, the Colonel's ten-day promise lapses tomorrow. Then Kaladze would no doubt let Lu call her "family" in San Francisco. But if she hadn't called in the army already, she must not have anything critical to report to her bosses.

Wili had not told Paul what he knew of Mike and Lu. Perhaps he should. But after trying to tell Kaladze.... Instead he'd been trying to identify Della Lu with independent evidence. More than ten percent of Jill's time was spent in the effort. So far she had nothing definite. The story about relatives in the Bay Area appeared to be true. If he had some way of tapping Peacer communication or records, things would be different. He saw now he should have disabled their recon satellites alone. If their comsats were usable, it would give them some advantage - but perhaps he could eventually break into their high crypto channels. As it was, he knew very little about what went on inside the Authority.

...and sometimes, he really wondered if Colonel Kaladze might be right. Wili had been half-delirious that morning on the boat; Mike and Della had been several meters away. Was it possible he'd misinterpreted what he heard? Was it possible they were innocent after all? No! By the One True God, he had heard what he had heard. Kaladze hadn't been there.

TWENTY FIVE

Sunlight still lay on the hills, but the lowlands and Lake Lompoc were shrouded in blue shadows. Paul sat on his veranda and listened to the news that Wili's electronic spies brought in from all over the world.

There was a small cough and Naismith looked up. For an instant he thought it was Allison standing there. Then he noticed how carefully she stood between him and the holo surface built into the wall. If he moved more than a few centimeters, parts of the image would be cut off: This was only Jill.

"Hi." He motioned for her to come and sit. She stepped forward, careful to generate those little moving sounds that made her projection seem more real, and sat in the image of a chair. Paul watched her face as she approached. There really were differences, he realized. Allison was very pretty, but he had made Jill's face beautiful. And of course the personalities were subtly different, too. It could not have been otherwise considering that he had done his design from memories forty-five years stale (or embellished), and considering that the design had grown by itself in response to his reactions. The real Allison was more outgoing, more impatient. And Allison's mere presence seemed to be changing Jill. The interface program had been much quieter these last days.

He smiled at her, "You've got the new bobble theory all worked out?"

She grinned back and was more like Allison than ever. "Your theory. I do nothing but crunch away-"

"I set up the theory. It would take a hundred lifetimes for me to do the symbolic math and see the theory's significance." It was a game they - he - had played many times before. The back and forth had always made Jill seem so real. "What have you got?"

"Everything seems consistent. There are a lot of things that were barred under your old theory, that are still impossible: It's still impossible to burst a bobble before its time. It's impossible to generate a bobble around an existing one. On the other hand - in theory at least- it should be possible to balk an enemy bobbler."

"Hmm... " Simply carrying a small bobble was a kind of defense against bobble attack - a very risky defense, once noticed: It would force the attacker to project smaller bobbles, or off-center ones, trying to find a volume that wasn't 'banned.' A device that could prevent bobbles from being formed nearby would be a tremendous improvement, and Naismith had guessed the new theory might allow such, but...

"Betcha that last will be an engineering impossibility for a long time. We should concentrate on making a low-power bobbler. That looks hard enough."

"Yes. Wili's right on schedule with that."

Jill's image suddenly froze, then flicked out of existence. Naismith heard the veranda door slide open. "Hi, Paul," came Allison's voice. She walked up the steps. "You out here by yourself?"

"...Yes. Just thinking."

She walked to the edge of the veranda and looked westward. These last weeks, every day had brought more change in Paul's life and in the world beyond the mountains than a normal year. Yet for Allison, it was different. Her world had turned inside out in the space of an hour. He knew the present rate of change was agonizingly slow for her. She paced the stone flags, stopping occasionally to glare off into the sunset at the Vandenberg Bobble.

Allison. Allison. Few old men had dreams come quite so stunningly true. She was so young; her energy seemed to flash about her in every stride, in every quick movement of her arms. In some ways the memories of Allison lost were less hurtful than the present reality. Still, he was glad he had not succeeded in disguising what became of Paul Hoehler.

Allison suddenly looked back at him, and smiled. "Sorry about the pacing."

"No problem. I...."

She waved toward the west. The air was so clear that-except for the lake and the coastline reflected in its base - the Dome was almost invisible. "When will it burst, Paul? There were three thousand of us there the day I left. They had guns, aircraft. When will they come out?"

A month ago he would not have thought of the question. Two weeks ago he couldn't have answered. In those weeks a theory had been trashed and his new theory born. It was totally untested, but soon, soon that would change. "Uh. My answer's still guessing Allison: The Authority technique, the only way I could think of then, is a brute force method. With it, the lifetime is about fifty years. So now I can represent radius or mass as a perturbation series about a fifty-year decay time. The smallest bobbles the Authority made were about ten meters across. They burst first. Your sortie craft was trapped in a thirty-meter bobble; it decayed a little later." Paul realized he was wandering and tried to force his answer into the mold she must want. He thought a moment. "Vandenberg ought to last fifty-five years."

"Five more years. Damn it." She walked back across the veranda. "I guess you'll have to win without them. I was wondering why you hadn't told your friends about me you haven't even told them that time stops inside the bobbles. I thought maybe you expected to surprise the Peacers with their long-dead victims suddenly alive."

"You're close. You, me, Wili, and the Moraleses are the only ones who know. The Authority hasn't guessed - Wili says they've carted your orbiter up to Livermore as if it were full of clues. No doubt the fools think they've stumbled on some new conspiracy.... But then, I guess it's not so stupid. I'll bet you didn't have any paper records aboard the orbiter."

"Right. Even our notepads were display flats. We could trash everything in seconds if we fell among unfriendlies. The fire would leave them with nothing but slagged optical memory. And if they don't have the old fingerprint archives, they're not going to identify Fred or Angus."

"Anyway, I've told the Tinkers to be ready, that I'm going to tell them how to make bobble generators. Even then, I may not say anything about the stasis effect. That's some thing that could give us a real edge, but only if we use the knowledge at the right time. I don't want some leak to blow it...

Allison turned as if to pace back to the edge of the veranda, then noticed the display that Paul had been studying. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder as she leaned over to look at the displays. "Looks like a recon pattern," she said.

"Yes. Wili and Jill synthesized it from the satellites we're tapping. This shows where Authority aircraft have been searching."

"For you."