The Legend That Was Earth (8 page)

Murmurs and chattering broke out around the room when the formalities were over. People began rising. Everyone looked pleased. Toddrel returned the pen to the holder on the table in front of him and stood up, pausing to exchange a few words with some of the other directors. He declined an invitation from the Hyadeans to lunch, on the grounds that he was flying to Europe later that day and had matters to attend to, and left before getting involved in anything further. Ibsan, his former SEAL/Secret Service bodyguard, joined him in the anteroom outside, and they walked together to the elevators. Toddrel's limo was drawn up in the basement motor lobby when they emerged. Ibsan opened the door for Toddrel, then got in up front to ride with the chauffeur. Drisson was waiting in the rear compartment as arranged. Toddrel leaned forward in the seat next to him to pour a Scotch and water from the decanters beside the entertainment unit. Overtly, Kurt Drisson was a colonel in the Internal Security Service. Covertly, he coordinated operations related to higher policy, of a kind that it was preferred not to have recorded in official orders.

"So, what have we got?" Toddrel asked as the limo began moving out though armored doors, then up a ramp into the downtown streets.

"Not good," Drisson replied. "Reyvek has vanished without trace. Given the last two evaluation profiles we have on him, the indicated conclusion is that he's defected. Since he was involved with Echelon logistics, I'd guess he took that information as collateral. We have to assume that we're compromised."

Toddrel exhaled heavily. "Echelon" was the code designation for the operation to eliminate Farden and Meakes. Toddrel had made arrangements for the meeting at Overly Park ensuring that the two of them would fly together. The last-minute addition of the two Hyadeans had been an unexpected complication, with unthinkable repercussions now if the story got out. The ruin of Toddrel and his accomplices would be the least of it, with a good chance of a life sentence as a gesture toward making interplanetary amends.

"If they had the profiles, why was he allowed to continue on-duty?" he fumed. "Why wasn't he suspended? What's the point of having profiles if nobody's going to act on what they say?"

Drisson made a vaguely placatory gesture. "It's like a lot of things. Sometimes it takes hindsight to make the right interpretation." He waited, as if giving Toddrel time to vent further before being more receptive. Toddrel gulped irascibly from his glass, savored the taste for a moment, then looked out the window. They were en route for the Waldorf, where Toddrel was staying. In one of the side streets, police were keeping an eye on a speaker addressing a ragged-looking gathering from a platform.

"So what do we do?" Toddrel asked, turning back.

Drisson rubbed his chin, indicating that there was no obvious easy option. "The plan was to sanitize the situation by putting it on Scorpion's account and then taking them out," he said.

Toddrel nodded impatiently. Scorpion was the compromised CounterAction cell being set up to take the official rap. "I know what we planned, Kurt. I'm asking what we
do
."

"Obviously, we have to eliminate Reyvek. But the only way we'll find him now is through someone on the inside. So the proposal is this. We put a hold on taking out Scorpion. Instead, we infiltrate somebody into it to find Reyvek."

"Is that likely?" Toddrel queried. "Isn't CounterAction supposed to be highly compartmentalized?"

"I think there's a good chance. With Reyvek being involved in the operation Scorpion is supposed to have carried out, there are good reasons why they might end up meeting. The operative takes out Reyvek. When that part's done, we send in the cleaning team as scheduled. End of problem."

"You make it sound like just part of a regular day's work to put somebody inside CounterAction," Toddrel commented.

"Normally it would be a tough thing to do on demand," Drisson agreed. "But in the case of Scorpion, we might have a break. One of the cell members that we've identified is the former wife of a wheeler-dealer on the West Coast who sets up business deals with Hyadeans. Our people visited him a few days ago on a routine check. He says he doesn't have contact with her anymore, but they weren't convinced. This guy knows everybody and has wires into everything." Drisson shrugged. "If we can get him to locate his ex for us, we've got a conduit through to Scorpion."

"And what makes you think he's likely to do that?" Toddrel asked.

Drisson looked across the seat and smiled enigmatically. "Ways and means," he replied.

NORTH CAROLINA STATE TROOPERS had set up a checkpoint on the road out of Greenville, a mile before the junction where Kestrel and Len in the battered farm pickup, and Olsen driving the truck laden with fifty-gallon drums of timber preservative, would go separate ways. Kestrel and Len would trace a route through the minor roads crossing the Great Smoky range; Olsen would keep to the interstates, following I-85 south to skirt Atlanta, then taking I-75 to meet up with them again in Chattanooga that night.

The Scorpion cell in Charlotte had been disbanded suddenly on terse instructions from above. Other members were dispersing to destinations known only to themselves and whoever gave the orders; the names Kestrel had known them by had been retired. On joining the Chattanooga cell, she would no doubt cease being "Kestrel" anymore, too. At first, CounterAction had given her the pseudonym Kay, but she rejected it. Care was needed in making sure that code words bore no accidental similarities or connections to the things they were supposed to disguise. Lives had been lost through such coincidences. "Kay" would have been too suggestive of her real name: Cade. Marie Cade.

A couple of jeeps manned by armed National Guard and mounting machine guns were positioned at the sides of the roadblock, ready to go. A sergeant came up to the driver's window, while two troopers went back to probe among the bales of roofing shingles that the pickup was carrying. Len presented a wallet containing the vehicle documentation and his ID, then followed with Marie's, made out in the name of Jenny Lawson, as she passed it across. The sergeant perused them casually, recited the names aloud into a compad and waited a moment for the screen's response.

"Where are you heading?" he inquired, running an eye over the interior of the cab.

"Up to Hiawasee. Stuff for a cabin being remodeled along by the lake there," Len replied. He looked the part: unshaven for two days, with a crumpled tweed hat, plaid shirt and padded work vest, a carpenter's tool belt over blue jeans. His voice was gruff and neutral.

"That wouldn't seem to me too much like a lady's kind of work," the sergeant commented, looking at Marie.

"What century are you from? I'll hammer 'em as good as anyone," she answered defiantly.

"Would you have such a thing as a bill of sale for this material?" the sergeant asked. Len produced one from Lowes in Spartanburg, where they had loaded the prom guns. The sergeant glanced back toward the rear of the pickup, where the troopers had been scanning the load with a hand-held spectral analyzer, explosives sniffer, and a metal sensor. "On your way," he told them, waving. Len eased the pickup away amid rattles and grinding of gears, taking care not to seem too hasty. Marie kept her eyes ahead until they were a good hundred yards clear, then exhaled shakily. In the side mirror, she could see Olsen's truck standing in line behind a couple of cars.

It had been intended that the load would attract attention. The prom guns were inside the double-walled back of the cab and the hidden compartment beneath the bed at the rear, between the chassis girders—both metal-enclosed, opaque to the regular search instruments. The guns Olsen was carrying were inside the false-bottom drums—although a spot check and sampling would have drawn the wood preservative they were supposed to be filled with from an internal chamber.

Interesting weapons, prom guns. They had disappeared from Hyadean stocks in South America, and the only details Marie knew were that they had come into the U.S. via Morocco and the Caribbean. "Prom" was a contraction of "programmable munitions." The gun was the size of an assault rifle and launched a stream of self-propelled projectiles containing lateral-thrusting charges carried in a counter-spinning ring, which could be fired to alter the trajectory in flight. Quite complex control patterns could be programmed into the launcher, enabling targets dug in under cover, hidden around corners, or concealed by obstacles to be hit. A skilled user could seek out a target blocked by combinations of them. Marie had tested and practiced with them in remote parts of the mountains east of Charlotte.

"I don't believe what this country has turned into," Len growled as the pickup ground and shuddered to gain speed. "Roadblocks; people being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night. Things never used to be that way. Yet the media talk about it as if it's normal. People forget. It's alien ways. They're turning us into a colony in our own country."

"That's what we're fighting," Marie reminded him unnecessarily. The hills back from the highway looked green and peaceful. Water behind the trees reflected patches of sky. Marie felt weary of it all: combat training and sabotage; constantly having to be ready to move; always being haunted by the specter of capture, interrogation, and everything that went with it. Why couldn't she just live a safe and familiar day-to-day life somewhere, enjoying little things like friends stopping by to visit, or being alone with her thoughts on a hill after a walk up through a forest?

All that the people needed to take their country back was solidarity and awareness. Even with all their technology and alien backing, the powers that were robbing them of their livelihoods and turning them into property like some modern version of a feudal order could never prevail against a determined majority. But the majority were uninformed and unorganized. What did it take to wake them up to what was going on? Why did Marie care? She could go back to China, find a niche there, and probably never have to worry about being directly affected to any serious degree again. So why had she come back?

For the same reason she had left the comforts and security of her former life in California, she supposed. The restlessness that compelled her to contribute even a token to putting something right with the world. How anyone could remain complacent when there was so much going wrong with it, she was unable to comprehend. How could she once have dreamed of making a life with Roland? Because he was Roland. She still thought of him, even though all that had been a different universe, a million years ago. That was the stupid thing.

"Do you know there was a time when you could drive from anyplace to anyplace anytime you felt like it?" Len said. "Didn't have sensors under the road reading who was leaving the state. Didn't need no ID with a tax compliance sticker to get gas."

"Anywhere? Like New York to California?"

"Yep, if the fancy took you. Just get up and go."

"It sounds unreal." Marie was distant, still partly lost in her own musings.

"People don't remember," Len said again. "Everything's rules and restrictions. We're being turned into an alien military base, that's what it is."

Marie used to wonder why, if their world was so disciplined and orderly, governed under a single ruling system, the Hyadeans possessed a military establishment at all. Their answer was that they needed to protect themselves against a rival power known as the Querl, who inhabited a group of worlds loosely strung across the same star systems. The Querl were of the same race as the Hyadeans, having split off as a rebellious faction and left to found a culture based on their own political and economic principles. According to the Chryseans—which was the correct name for the Hyadeans of the home planet and its subject worlds—these principles were unsound and illogical, resulting in chaotic rule by ill-defined authorities, with consequent depletion and degradation of the Querl planets. The Chryseans would educate Earth and provide guidance to prevent similar things from happening here. And the institutions that were ultimately in control of things—in the West, anyway—were lending themselves readily to bringing their own houses into line. A compliant media establishment spread the word and the imagery, and for years the people, by and large, had been buying the line and not seeing the regimentation, exploitation, and the slow erosion of what had once been their rights. But now they were feeling the effects, and that was changing. Recruitment for Sovereignty was on the increase, and support was quietly spreading across a wide but largely invisible infrastructure of American life that didn't have access to the interplanetary financial markets and saw little prospect of benefiting significantly from the proceeds. As resistance grew, the classical escalating pattern would develop of what one side saw as protest and suppression being viewed by the powers in control as provocation and response. The times would get ugly before they could improve. CounterAction was preparing.

Marie didn't see herself as a subversive fighting against America. By all the principles she had been told about and grown up believing in, she was fighting
for
what America was once supposed to have stood for.

THE MESSAGE ON CADE'S LAPTOP offered a flat introduction fee plus a 2.5 percent commission on net proceeds if Cade could put the sender's brokering agency in touch with a Hyadean concern interested in buying Terran graphical programming services. There was a big demand for Terran software skills on Chryse and its associated worlds. Most programming there was performed by various kinds of AI, with results that were solid, reliable, acceptable... and utterly without trace of any insight or creative flare that went an iota beyond meeting the minimum specification. The efforts of Hyadean manual programmers fared about the same: in Mike Blair's phrase, which was his favorite appellation for just about everything they did, "dull and plodding." Terran programmers, by contrast, could come up with ways of doing things that Hyadean minds were incapable of mimicking. More often than not they worked for companies whose existence was threatened by Hyadean competition.