The Legend That Was Earth (20 page)

Cade still wasn't sure what Hudro's role here was. The "Brezc" turned out to be a designation of military rank, which from his description Marie guessed came closest to "colonel." He had been following the proceedings with a deep, brooding expression. While Nyarl was tidying up notes and details with the equipment, Luodine gave Hudro a questioning look. "So what do you think now?" she asked him.

Hudro took a second to respond. "Even worse than I realize," he said.

"Does that mean you're with us?" Luodine asked. "You'll help?"

Hudro hesitated again, then nodded. "Yes." Cade and Marie were watching, not really comprehending. Hudro turned and explained, "I am like the defector that you talk about. I have been in operations farther north. I see things there that our publics are not telled that disturb me." It seemed Hudro was making do without veebee prompting. "For a long time I am not sure if all is bad. Now I hear it is so. I decide that Hyadean way is wrong. Our training deadens minds. Terrans who know love and carings and make fine things are killed, and their beautiful world is taken. I cannot agree with such things. So, as Hetch Luodine tells, I will help."

"What kinds of things are you talking about—that you say you've seen, Brezc?" Vrel asked curiously.

Hudro gestured toward Thryase. "Is as he says. We train and equip Terran government soldiers that news tells are protecting peoples from bandit terrorists who make own laws. Is not that way. They are moved out of lands. Make space for big-money Hyadeans. Clear forest. Make gardens, big palace houses. Is bandits who try to protect them. We send missiles and terrorize. The Asians—they know." Hudro produced a square, flat container, about the size of a box for a finger ring, from a pocket, opened it on the table, and pushed it toward Luodine. It contained what looked like shiny black pellets, held in restraining slots. "Here you have proof. I show you air strikes, and what it looks like from the ground. Did you ever see children burning or shredded by cluster bombs? Or whole village exploded under fuel-air vapors? All this I have. You show it with what Thryase and Mr. Roland and Ms. Marie all tell. Show all is so."

Luodine took the box, handling it almost reverently. "Can we see some of this?" she asked Nyarl. He nodded. Luodine passed it to him but continued looking at Hudro. "This sounds like..." She looked uncertain, then asked her veebee. "Dinosaur?"

"
Depends what you mean. What context?
"

"Something stunning. Sensational."

"
Dynamite.
"

Luodine didn't bother repeating it. "We need more than just pictures," she told Hudro. "We need an explanation—by someone who was there, who can interpret them. Will you go on-camera too?"

Hudro shook his head. "I can't be identified. You know that." Luodine seemed unwilling to let it go at that, but finally nodded reluctantly. There was a drawn-out silence.

Then Thryase said, "It doesn't have to be Hudro. Why can't the Terrans do it? Let them go on-screen and say it's as told to them by a senior Hyadean officer. That wouldn't even be lying."

Everyone looked at everyone else, waiting for another to come up with a reason why not. Nobody did.

"It's a thought," Vrel agreed finally.

"It's
brilliant
!" Luodine whispered. "The impact on Chryseans would be even greater. They could present it as what's happening to
their
people." She shifted her gaze back to Cade and Marie. "Will you do it?"

By this time there was nothing to ponder. They were already far enough in that it made no difference. Marie nodded. "In any case, I want to see those clips," she told them.

"Tell us what you want us to do," Cade said.

"First, let's take a break," Luodine suggested. "After that we'll play the videos and hear Hudro's story. Then I'll transpose it into interview format and we'll take you through the same routine as we did before."

"You also wanted some native stories from me," Tevlak reminded her, anxious in case he might be left out. "Don't forget that."

"I know, and we will. In the meantime, I'm getting hungry. How about a snack or something?"

"I"ll see what we can do." Tevlak drew in his poncho and bustled out of the room.

Marie picked up a coffee that she still hadn't finished and sat staring distantly at the wall as she sipped. Nyarl rose, stretched, and moved over to do something to one of the cameras. Thryase began dictating in Hyadean to his veebee, which also functioned as portable secretary. Cade went over to join Hudro, who was still in the armchair.

"I'm curious, Colonel," he said. "What turned you around?"

"I haven't moved."

"What changed your mind? Most Hyadeans don't seem to question. And as you said, military training doesn't help. Why were you different?"

Hudro stared at him. He had troubled, introspective eyes, the kind that were never at rest. "Here I discover your Terran teachings of the spirit. Hyadeans know power and violence, but not your God who saves people who cannot help Him. In our way, you kick when the other is down. The ideas of Earth feed the mind. So I question what I do. One day I will save lives too."

Cade looked around the room. Here, in one house, they had Vrel, who was risking all because he had discovered ethical values previously unknown to him; Thryase had found a new politics of individualism and freedom; Tevlak had forsaken security to immerse himself in a culture; and now here was a military officer finding religion. Bombs and guns—the way that Marie had committed herself to—would never break the Hyadean stranglehold taking hold of Earth. But somewhere, Cade sensed, in these things that he was seeing here, was the way to prevail against them. Not to defeat them, for in a straight contest of strength they couldn't be defeated. But where was the need to defeat anyone, when Hyadeans could become even more Terran than Terrans themselves? Somehow, that was the key. It was all just a question of finding the direction of the flow, and then going with it.

* * *

Tevlak's name had been on the list that Julia had forwarded to her ISS controller as a matter of routine after its mention at Cade's party. One of the items that subsequently found its way into his house was a slightly damaged—hence unsalable—set of nested Russian dolls now standing in a niche in the hallway, next to a Norwegian carved-horn mermaid. The location was not ideal, but even so the chip concealed in the base of the outermost doll had collected a smattering of conversation from all of the occupants of the house, if not a comprehensive account of what was going on there. The chip responded to its periodic interrogation code sent from a Hyadean satellite as it passed overhead, and uploaded the file of what information it had managed to accumulate.

THE U.S. WAS IN UPROAR. Sovereignty had made public an account that it claimed was by an ISS defector they named as Reyvek of how the ISS had engineered the Farden-Meakes assassinations, along with documentary evidence. Officials denied it, of course. Nobody of that name had ever been employed by the ISS, they said. The documents were forgeries. Sovereignty retorted that Reyvek was killed in an assault that the security forces had admitted in Tennessee, the expunging of the record was standard cover-up, and they would soon produce proof of that too. Coming on top of the continuing challenges being voiced to the administration's legality, the story was causing a furore. There was open talk about a secession of western states. National Guard units in California, acting on orders from the state governor, had intervened to obstruct ISS operations.

Besides being concerned at the possible effects on his own personal future, Casper Toddrel was also disgruntled. The news detracted from what would otherwise have been a timely escape to an idyllic setting that he had been looking forward to. The Hyadean estate known as Derrar Dorvan had been built in the Andean foothills of southeast Peru for a leading government figure who had come to Earth on his retirement, accompanied by a retinue of family and special friends. It consisted of a thirty-room principal villa constructed Roman-style around a central court, designed by a specially commissioned Terran architect, situated on a clifftop facing a spectacle of foaming waterfalls plunging between forested mountainsides and rocky towers. A hundred acres of landscaped parkland, pools, and gardens on the reverse slope contained domiciles for lesser members of the tribe. With fast, convenient transportation always at hand, they enjoyed a rich and varied social life with other Hyadean immigrant groups scattered around the region's maze of uplands and canyons, revolving to a large degree around parties and sports, sightseeing trips, and elaborate social games played for recognition, prestige, and romantic intrigue.

Toddrel had arrived the day before with several others also attending the unofficial conference that Denham had arranged. The guest accommodation rivaled the best European hotels. After a champagne breakfast on a glazed veranda looking down over cataracts and greenery, he walked with the Englishman and the ISS colonel Kurt Drisson to the Hyadean hoverbus that would take them to the part of the estate where the talks would be held. With them was General Insing, who was Meakes's replacement—hand-picked by Toddrel and his associates, far more cooperative and understanding than Meakes had been. A significant improvement in relationships with the military was expected from now on. Thoughts for the immediate moment, however, were on damage containment following the story that was breaking in the U.S. The biggest threat right now were the Californian influence peddler Cade and the CounterAction woman known as Kestrel, who had gotten away from the motel in Chattanooga minutes ahead of the security forces after killing the ISS undercover agent Ruby. It was virtually certain that Kestrel was the only surviving witness to have heard Reyvek's story firsthand; Cade would be able to testify for her, and had possibly talked to Reyvek also, if only by phone. Producing them when the moment was right had to be what Sovereignty meant when it promised that proof of the Reyvek cover-up would be forthcoming. Hence, finding and getting to them first was imperative. Combing the Chattanooga area, and putting a watch on communications and on Cade's listed contacts in California had turned up nothing. Some of the intelligence people working on the case wondered if the pair were still in the country.

"Cade was friends with a Hyadean political observer called Vrel at their place in Los Angeles," Drisson told the other two. "Three days after the Chattanooga bust, Vrel took a trip to a military base near St. Louis, organized at short notice. Then, yesterday, the Hyadean records show him escorting a couple of academics, who happen to be a man and a woman, to the Hyadean mining center at Uyali in Bolivia."

"You think it's them?" Denham ased.

"I'd bet my next promotion on it. The names are in the system, but so far there's been no independent corroboration that they're real. They were accompanied on the flight by another Hyadean called Thryase, who's a critic of their policy toward Querl and is now questioning what's happening here. It smells from end to end."

"Why Uyali?" Denham asked.

"Who knows? Maybe it seemed out of the way and different—the kind of place nobody would guess. And who would?"

"And she's his ex-wife," Toddrel grumbled. "Does that mean he's been a source for Sovereignty all along? Didn't it occur to anyone?"

"That's exactly the reason Arcadia was put in there more than a year ago," Drisson said defensively. Arcadia was the ISS's live-in agent planted with Cade. "She never found any indication of communication between them."

"A strange way to rekindle an old romance, then," Toddrel commented. "So where are Vrel, this other Hyadean, and the academics now?"

"If they've left Uyali, the vehicle they used isn't registering," Drisson said. "We're giving it maximum effort. The minute anything comes up, I'll be informed."

"So is Arcadia still there—at the house in Los Angeles?" Insing asked.

"For the present, yes."

"Isn't that risky? They must know now about Ruby. If she was supposed to have been an old friend of Arcadia, that implicates Arcadia too."

"Right now, the group in Uyali are the only ones who know," Drisson said.

"All they have to do is get a message back to LA."

"And what would the people there do? Cade's friends are just good at making money. And Hyadean clerks?" Drisson shook his head. "This isn't their line of business. If they're onto her, Arcadia will know in time to get out. In the meantime, with all the uncertainty out there, she's still a valuable resource. She's also the bait if we're wrong about Cade and Kestrel, and they show up there again suddenly."

"It still sounds like a hell of a risk," Insing said heavily. "I read Kestrel's profile. She's good. And she has a big score to settle here."

"Arcadia's a professional. She can take care of herself."

"So was Ruby."

They arrived at the bus and waited while several others ahead of them boarded. Chen, a youthful Hyadean member of the household, was waiting, smiling, to usher them inside. Two of the native house stewards were standing with him. An additional attraction for wealthy Hyadeans acquiring estates on Earth was the availability and willingness of domestic help, which they regarded as a big status symbol. Employing menial labor on Chryse entailed political problems and was generally a privilege enjoyed by only the most prestigious or influential. Screening the flood of native applicants was a full-time job for specialized Hyadean security experts aided by Terran psychologists. Armed native guards supervised by a Hyadean officer watched from a discreet distance in the background.

The interior of the bus was like a luxurious but uninspired waiting room, with Hyadean-size seating and a front-end display screen, at present blank. The doors closed. The bus rose on an invisible cushion and moved away smoothly and silently. The sight of rolling lawns, lakeside walks among trees alive with birds and crossing ornamented bridges, knots of llamas and alpacas staring curiously from grassy glades and rocky stream banks dispelled further thoughts of assassinations and political coverups for the moment. Toddrel lounged back and looked enviously out over the scene and at the mountains beyond. What, he wondered, would be the prospects for somebody who cooperated sufficiently with the Hyadeans one day finding a niche in a place like this too? What a change it would make from the familiar environments he had come to detest, of stultifying boardrooms and choking, congested cities.