The Peace War by Vernor Vinge Page B

through the pine trees at a house, barely
visible in the evening gloom. Wili gasped — it was the building they were sitting in.
    Naismith turned from the screen and smiled. "It's a deer, I think. South of the house. I've
been following her for the last couple of nights." It took Wili a second to realize he was
referring to what was holding the camera. Wili tried to imagine how anyone could catch a
deer and strap a camera on it. Naismith must have noticed his puzzlement. "Just a
second." He rummaged through a nearby drawer and handed Wili a tiny brown ball.
"That's a camera like the one on the critter. It's wide enough so I have resolution about as
good as the human eye. And I can shift the decoding parameters so it will 'look' in
different directions without the deer's having to move.
    `Jill, move the look axis, will you?"
    "Right, Paul." The view slid upward till they were looking into overhanging branches
and then down the other side. Wili and Naismith saw a scrawny back and part of a furry
ear.
    Wili looked at the object Paul had placed in his hand. The "camera" was only three or
four millimeters across. It felt warm and almost sticky in Wili's hand. It was a far cry
from the lensed contraptions he had seen in Jonque villas. So you just stick them to the
fur, true?" said Wili.
    Naismith shook his head. "Even easier than that. I can get these in hundred lots from
the Greens in Norcross. I scatter them through the forest, on branches and such. All sorts
of animals pick them up. It provides just a little extra security. The hills are safer than
they were years ago, but there are still a few bandits."
    "Um." If Naismith had weapons to match his senses, the manor was better protected
than any castle in Los Angeles. "This would be greater protection if you could have
people watching all the views all the time."
    Naismith smiled, and Wili thought of Jill. He knew enough now to see that the
program could be made to do just that.
    Wili watched for more than an hour as Naismith showed him scenes from a number of
cameras, including one from a bird. That gave the same sweeping view he imagined
could be seen from Peace Authority aircraft.
    When at last he went to his room, Wili sat for a long while looking out the garret window
at the snow-covered trees, looking at what he had just seen with godlike clarity from
dozens of other eyes. Finally he stood up, trying to ignore the cramp in his gut that had
become so persistent these last few weeks. He removed his clothes from the closet and
lay them on the bed, then inspected every square centimeter with his eyes and fingers.
His favorite jacket and his usual work pant both had tiny brown balls stuck to cuffs or
seams. Wili removed them; they looked so innocuous in the room's pale lamplight.
    He put them in a dresser drawer and returned his clothes to the closet.
    He lay awake for many minutes, thinking about a place and time he had resolved never
to dwell on again. What could a hovel in Glendora have in common with a palace in the
mountains? Nothing. Everything. There had been safety there. There had been Uncle
Sylvester. He had learned there, too — arithmetic and a little reading. Before the Jonques,
before the Ndelante — it had been a child's paradise, a time lost forever.
    Wili quietly got up and slipped the cameras back into his clothing. Maybe not lost
forever.
SEVEN
    January passed, an almost uninterrupted snowstorm. The winds coming off
Vandenberg brought ever-higher drifts that eventually reached the mansion's second
story and would have totally blocked the entrances if not for the heroic efforts of Bill and
Irma. The pain in Wili's middle became constant, intense. Winters had always been bad
for him, but this one was worse than ever before, and the others eventually became aware
of it. He could not suppress the occasional grimace, the faint groan. He was always
hungry, always eating-and yet losing weight.
    But there was great good, too. He was beyond the frontiers of