The Peace War Read Free Page B

in his cell. Unconscious, he looked even
more starved and pathetic than he had in motion.
    "Ha!" came Faulk's reply over the fiber. "I notice you have the punk locked up; and I
also see your deputy has his arm bandaged." He pointed at Rosas, who stared back almost
sullenly. "I'll bet little Wili has been practicing his people-carving hobby. Sheriff, Wili
Wachendon may have had a hard time someplace; I think he's on the run from the
Ndelante Ali. But I never roughed him up. You know how labor contractors work. Maybe
it was different in the good old days, but now we are agents, we get ten percent, and our
crews can dump on us any time they please. At the wages they get, they're always
shifting around, bidding for new contracts, squeezing for money. I have to be damn
popular and effective or they would get someone else.
    "This kid has been worthless from the beginning. He's always looked half-starved; I
think he's a sicker. How he got from L.A. to the border is... " His next words were
drowned out by a freighter whizzing along the highway beneath the station. Mike glanced
out the window at the behemoth diesel as it moved off southward carrying liquefied
natural gas to the Peace Authority Enclave in Los Angeles. "... took him because he
claimed he could run my books. Now, the little bas — the kid may know something about
accounting. But he's a lazy thief, too. And I can prove it. If your company hassles me
about this when I come back through Santa Ynez, I'll sue you into oblivion."
    There were a couple more verbal go-arounds, and then Sheriff Wentz rang off. He
turned in his chair. "You know, Mike, I think he's telling the truth. We don't see it so
much in the new generation, but children like your Sally and Arta-* "
    Mike nodded glumly and hoped Sy wouldn't pursue it. His Sally and Arta, his little
sisters. Dead years ago. They had been twins, five years younger than he, born when his
parents had lived in Phoenix. They had made it to California with him, but they had
always been sick. They both died before they were twenty and never looked to be older
than ten. Mike knew who had caused that bit of hell. It was something he never spoke of.
    "The generation before that had it worse. But back then it was just another sort of
plague and people didn't notice especially." The diseases, the sterility, had brought a kind
of world never dreamed of by the bomb makers of the previous century. "If this Wili is
like your sisters, I'd estimate he's about fifteen. No wonder he's brighter than he looks."
    "It's more than that, Boss. The kid is really smart. You should have seen what he did to
Tellman's Celest."
    Wentz shrugged. "Whatever. Now we've got to decide what to do with him. I wonder
whether Fred Bartlett would take him in." This was gentle racism; the Bartletts were
black.
    "Boss, he'd eat 'em alive," Rosas patted his bandaged arm.
    "Well, hell, you think of something better, Mike. We've got four thousand customers.
There must be someone who can help... A lost child with no one to take care of him — it's
unheard of!"
    Some child!
But Mike couldn't forget Sally and Arta. "Yeah."
    Through this conversation, Naismith had been silent, almost ignoring the two peace
officers. He seemed more interested in the view of Old 101 than what they were talking
about. Now he twisted in the wooden chair to face the sheriff and his deputy. "I'll take the
kid on, Sy."
    Rosas and Wentz looked at him in stupefied silence. Paul Naismith was considered old
in a land where two thirds of the population was past fifty. Wentz licked his lips,
apparently unsure how to refuse him. "See here, Paul, you heard what Mike said. The kid
practically killed him this afternoon. I know how people your, uh, age feel about
children, but-"
    The old man shook his head, caught Mike with a quick glance that was neither
abstracted nor feeble. "You know they've been after me to take on an apprentice for
years, Sy. Well, I've decided. Besides trying to kill Mike, he played Celest