been trying for years to get him to take on some students or even to teach
classes like before the Crash, but he's refused. And I think he's right. Unless
you are terribly creative to begin with, there's no way you can make new
algorithms. I think he's been waiting ў not taking anyone on ў and watching. I
think today he found his apprentice. The kid's mean... he'd kill. And I don't
know what he really wants besides money. But he has one thing that all the good
intentions and motivation in world can't get us, and that's brains. You should
have seen him on the Celest, Boss..."
The argument ў or lecture ў went on for several more minutes, but the outcome
was predictable. The wizard of the Tinkers had at long last got himself an
apprentice.
THREE
Night and triple moonlight. Wili lay in the back of the buckboard, heavily
bundled in blankets. The soft springs absorbed most of the bumps and lurches as
the wagon passed over the tilting, broken concrete. The only sounds Wili heard
were the cool wind through the trees, the steady clapclapclap of the horse's
rubberized shoes, its occasional snort in the darkness. They had not yet reached
the great black forest that stretched north to south; it seemed like all Middle
California was spread out around him. The sea fog which so often made the nights
here dark was absent, and the moonlight gave the air an almost luminous blue
tone. Directly west- the direction Wili faced ў Santa Ynez lay frozen in the
still light. Few lights were visible, but the pattern of the greets was clear,
and there was of a hint of orange and violet from the open square of the bazaar.
Wili wriggled deeper in the blankets, the tingling paralysis in his limbs mostly
gone now; the warmth in his arms and legs, the cold air on his face, and the
vision spread below him was as good as any drug high he'd ever stolen in
Pasadena. The land was beautiful, but it had not turned out to be the easy
pickings he had hoped for when he had defected from the Ndelante and headed
north. There were unpeopled ruins, that was true: He could see what must have
been the pre-Crash location of Santa Ynez, rectangular tracings all overgrown
and no lights at all.
The ruins were bigger than the modern version of the town, but nothing like the
promise of the L.A. Basin, where kilometer after kilometer of ruins ў much of it
unlooted -stretched as far as a man could walk in a week. And if one wanted some
more exciting, more profitable way of getting rich, there were the Jonque
mansions in the hills above the Basin. From those high vantage points, Los
Angeles had its own fairyland aspect: Horizon to horizon had sparkled with
little fires that marked towns in the ruins. Here and there glowed the
incandescent lights of Jonque outposts. And at the center, a luminous, crystal
growth, stood the towers of the Peace Authority Enclave. Wili sighed. That had
all been before his world in the Ndelante Ali had fallen apart, before he
discovered Old Ebenezer's con... If ever he returned, it would be a contest
between the Ndelante and the Jonques over who'd skin him first.
Wili couldn't go back.
But he had seen one thing on this journey north that made it worth being chased
here. That one thing made this landscape forever more spectacular than LAs. He
looked over Santa Ynez at the object of his wonder:
The silver dome rose out of the sea, into the moonlight. Even at this remove and
altitude, it still seemed to tower. People called it many things, and even in
Pasadena he had heard of it, though he'd never believed the stories. Larry Faulk
