Worlds in Chaos (79 page)

Fragments that didn’t make it as stars cooled to form the gas giants, which when meeting and entering into capture with a star or another gas giant threw off what became minor planets, their satellites, comets, and the other debris that formed planetary systems. These were the times when space became an electrically active medium, transmitting forces that disrupted orbits to bring about the encounters that renewed and revitalized worlds. During the quiescent periods between, the interplanetary plasma would organize into an insulating configuration in which gravity was allowed to predominate. Local observations conducted during a few centuries of such a quiet period had led Earth’s astronomers to overgeneralize such conditions as representing the permanent situation.

However, many surface characteristics of bodies in the Solar System were impossible to reconcile with the conventional picture of nothing having essentially changed for billions of years.

Furthermore, the farthest, hence oldest, objects visible in the cosmos—such as quasars—were the most massive and energetic: precisely the opposite of what gradual condensation from initially rarefied matter would predict. And the detection of vast structures of galaxy-cluster “walls” and voids at the largest scales of observation indicated processes having been operating in the universe for far longer than the fifteen billion years that the Big Bang model allowed since its inception.

But things like that didn’t fit with the theory.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cade hadn’t put a lot of trust in the messages he sent out electronically via the net. They had been worded cryptically, with obscure references that only the recipients would recognize. A friend who worked on communications had told him that most computers these days were required to carry chips that tagged messages with invisible codes enabling senders to be traced. As was his custom, he’d had more faith in word of mouth.

He had no idea how to go about finding a channel to contact Marie directly. People who knew about such things told him if she were indeed back in the U.S. and was working with CounterAction, she would be using a different name and operating in an environment carefully structured such that she
couldn’t
be located. However, Cade knew a minister in San Pedro by the name of Udovich, a staunch Republican disapproving of Ellis’s Washington regime, who ran a church and a shelter for evicted families by day, and at other times disappeared on long camping and hiking trips up into the Sierra. One of the people that Cade talked to whispered that Udovich was involved with some kind of conduit that routed arms in via Mexico to paramilitary groups up in the mountains. Californian laws would have made this impossible in earlier years. But by this time, even law enforcement agencies were rebelling against the Washington line and turning blind eyes. Many took it as seeds of revolution in the wind. That suggested Udovich could have connections with Sovereignty, and through them access into the higher levels of their militant arm, CounterAction, somewhere. If so, Cade reasoned, they ought to have a way of getting a message through to Marie, even if it meant going all the way back up the tree and then down again via China. Around noon on the day following the boat trip, he drove up to San Pedro and talked with Udovich over iced teas at a sidewalk table outside a sports bar called O’Reilly’s, down by the bay.

After opening small talk, Cade mentioned casually that ministers were traditionally respected for keeping confidences, and therefore often trusted to convey sensitive communications. Smiling out at the ocean, Udovich agreed that this was often so. Cade hazarded the guess that a man of Udovich’s convictions probably wouldn’t be overenamored by the current policies being enacted in Washington. Dreadful, Udovich agreed. Professional middle-class Americans being sold out like cheap labor. Cade regarded the minister long and hard, stroking his chin as if the thought had just occurred to him for the first time, and remarked that Udovich didn’t strike him as the kind of person who would sit back and watch it happen. If there were people organizing in opposition, he’d want to get involved. Well, certainly anyone with principles and a conscience would want to do something, Udovich told the ocean, giving away nothing.

His oblique references not having been rebuffed, Cade interlaced his fingers, leaned closer across the table, and came to the point. “I want to contact somebody who I believe might be with one of the underground political groups in this country. I’ve reason to think you might have connections who might pass a message in the right direction. Can you help?”

Udovich’s pink, moonlike, bespectacled features—surely the most incongruous image for the kind of thing Cade was asking—didn’t register surprise. He had clearly been expecting something like this. His manner, however, shed its protective cover of vague geniality and became businesslike. “Who is this person?” he murmured.

“My former wife, who went to China. I’ve heard that she’s back now, with CounterAction. I have someone who needs to leave the country invisibly. CounterAction are supposed to have ways.”

“What kind of problem prevents this person from buying a ticket and getting on a plane?” Udovich asked.

“Giving the wrong people a bad press can get you into bad favor these days,” Cade answered. “If the people who don’t like what you say have the power to take you off the streets, things can get awkward.”

“Why should I or anyone else care? Why risk it?”

“Because it’s the same cause.” Cade shrugged. “And in any case, you run a ministry. Protecting your flock depends on donations. You know a little bit about me. I can arrange generous contributions from the most unlikely quarters. I’m sure it all helps.”

Udovich considered the proposition for a while, crunching on an ice cube from his tea. “Supposing I
were
able to pass this request on to where you ask, why wouldn’t that be enough?’ he queried at last. “Why does it need to find this ex of yours specifically?”

“It wouldn’t if whoever makes the decicions were happy to take my word for it,” Cade agreed. “But why should they? She and I might have had our differences, but she’d vouch that I can be trusted to play straight. I’m not political. I deal in people. Reputation is my work.” He smiled faintly and gestured across the table. “A bit like you, I guess.”

Udovich nodded slowly and seemed satisfied. “I’d need her name and a little about when you were together,” he said. “And something that would convince her this has come from you.”

Cade supplied the minimum details that seemed necessary. Udovich committed them to memory. The second part was tougher. “Tell her . . . there’s some red coal,” he said finally. Udovich nodded and didn’t ask. In their more romantic days, one of the things Cade and Marie had liked doing together was solving cryptic crossword puzzles. It was an anagrammatic play on his name: ROL
and
CADE; take the conjunction out, and the remaining letters rearranged into
red coal
. With a bit of playing around, Marie would get it.

“No guarantees, but we’ll see,” Udovich pronounced. He finished his tea and stood up. “Well, I must get back to tending my flock.” He looked back over his shoulder as he was about to leave. “We must watch out for the wolves, you see.” He walked away, leaving Cade to take it whichever way he pleased.

Late that afternoon, Dee and Vrel stopped by the house to collect a share of the previous day’s fish catch, which Henry had cleaned, gutted, and set aside in the refrigerator for them. Julia was in the guest suite keeping Rebecca company, since she preferred to stay out of sight of visitors. Cade entertained Vrel and Dee to drinks in the lounge area around the bar.

“Getting daring these days, aren’t we, Vrel?” he quipped as Vrel mixed himself a gin and tonic—with a generous measure of tonic. “Taking fish back to eat at the mission, now, and halfway toward becoming an alcoholic.”

“I think I’m just beginning to realize how insipid our food is,” Vrel said, making a face.

“I hope you’re remembering to take those pills they give you. Wouldn’t want you going down with any of these terrible Terran germs.”

“I know you used to take them once,” Dee said. “But I don’t remember seeing them for ages.”

Vrel made an indifferent shrug. “Maybe, getting to know Earthpeople better has made me start to think that maybe Hyadeans can be a little . . .” He groped for the word, then muttered something to his veebee.

“
Neurotic
,” it supplied.

“Neurotic,” Vrel repeated.

Dee laughed delightedly and squeezed his arm in a way that said she liked him better like this. Vrel grinned.

“How is he going to fit in again when he goes home?” Cade asked her.

Dee pouted. “
Roland!
Don’t talk about him going home.” She looked at Vrel. “That’s not going to be for a long time yet, is it?”

Vrel’s face became more serious. “I don’t know. I suppose a lot depends on what happens here. Two Hyadeans from the mission were harassed and jeered at in a mall near Lakewood yesterday. The police escorted them back. They’ve put extra security around the mission again.”

“Oh. . . . That’s a shame,” Cade said. The outbreaks of protest and violence across the country were causing anti-Hyadean reactions in places. ISS agents landing in a helicopter assault had wiped out what was said to be the base of the group that had mounted the attack in Kentucky, and security units across the nation were cracking down with arrests of suspected CounterAction supporters. Cade had always tried to steer clear of such things. Yet now, he reflected, his action in harboring Rebecca was probably enough to get him on a wanted list already. He hoped Udovich wasn’t being affected. If pressures developed that prevented him from following through, Cade could find himself saddled with having a fugitive from the federal government in the house indefinitely.

He sighed and tasted his drink wearily. One mention of Marie, and life was getting complicated again. Even at this distance—whatever distance; he didn’t even know where she was—and after so long, it seemed her nature was still that of catastrophic upheaval, disrupting what had started to become his predictable, gravitationally stable universe.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN