Worlds in Chaos (91 page)

“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.

Denham’s voice brought him back. “One item that the Hyadeans are going to bring up is a proposal to supply remote-detonatable munitions to Earth from now on, and retrofit existing stocks. It’s the ideal answer to matériel disappearing. Wherever it’s gone to, you can press a button and explode it. How’s that for a deterrent?”

Toddrel frowned. “Hmm. . . . It’s inviting high collateral. There’d be a lot of outcry, bad press. Do we need more right now?”

“That could actually help us,” Denham pointed out. “The scarier the publicity, the better. Nobody would dare touch any of the stuff. Just what we want.”

“Let’s see what the general reaction at the meeting is when it’s proposed,” Toddrel suggested.

They came to one of the outlying residences, which had been made ready with conference facilities, a catering and domestic staff, and additional guards. They got out, and Denham and Insing moved ahead as they approached the building. Just as they entered, a high-pitched tone came from the compad in Drisson’s jacket. He drew it out and looked at Toddrel meaningfully. “Emergency band. This could be something new.” Denham and Insing stopped to look back. Toddrel motioned for them to go on, and that he and Drisson would catch up. They looked around and moved into a more secluded space off the entrance hallway. Toddrel watched the screen as Drisson activated it. The face and shoulders of a Hyadean appeared, in a tunic carrying military insignia. “Borfetz—Hyadean security,” Drisson muttered.

The Hyadean peered out at them guardedly. “You are not alone. I need to speak urgently.”

“It’s okay,” Drisson said. “This is Toddrel. He’s with us.”

Borfetz nodded but didn’t look happy about it. “We have located them, both—the man and the woman,” he reported. “They are at a house that belongs to an eccentric Hyadean, two hundred miles from Uyali. They don’t seem to be planning to depart anytime soon. We can be there within an hour.”

“Not another cowboy circus this time,” Toddrel murmured in Drisson’s ear. “We need them to talk. I have to find out how much they know and who else they’ve passed it on to. Everything could depend on this.”

“Minimum force, no lethality,” Drisson relayed. “They’re wanted alive.”

“I understand,” the Hyadean acknowledged.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The midday news brought reports that two of the freighters used to transport Hyadean-processed minerals out via the Amazon had been sunk by planted bombs. The Brazilian Air Force was conducting retaliatory strikes against suspected guerrilla bases and support centers in the area. In Bolivia, a section of one of the conveyor lines in the extraction region west of Uyali had been blown up. The newscaster expressed fears that this might be the beginnings of a major sabotage campaign against the Hyadean operations. A government commentator attributed it to a sudden increase in external aid to MOPAN—Movimento por la Autonomía Nacional was the name of the general resistance movement formed out of various opposition groups that had grown throughout the region. Asian sources were suspected. Weapons of Asian manufacture in captured guerrilla supplies were presented as evidence, and there was some insinuation of Chinese companies acting as fronts. The commentator feared that more potent Hyadean weapons might find their way through via the same route. He cited the recent assassinations carried out in the U.S. with a Hyadean plasma cannon as a precedent.

Hudro was stationed in Brazil and had taken a few days leave to come down to Bolivia. After hearing the news, he announced that he had to return to his unit immediately. Vrel decided to go with him as far as Uyali. Security would be tightening up, everywhere, and he wanted to make discreet inquiries on his own regarding the options for moving Cade and Marie onward. In the meantime it would be better for them to remain where they were. He would return or send the flyer back for them when he had a firm plan. Vrel and Hudro departed shortly afterward.

The others got back to rehearsing and then recording Cade and Marie’s narration of the material they had gone through with Hudro. Luodine then moved on to the take that she had promised for Tevlak. Finally, she settled down with Nyarl to editing the preliminary version for transmission to her organization on Chryse. “This might start another sensation,” she said as Nyarl worked with the equipment. “Direct news from the front, bypassing the official system. I don’t know if it’s ever been done before.”

“So why are you doing it?” Cade asked her. “Why are you risking your . . . What do you call it. Career? Entitlement.”

Luodine looked at him oddly for several seconds. “Because that’s all we’ve ever lived for. It’s the way we were conditioned. But Terrans find meaning in life beyond whatever it is that our entitlements measure. I want to find it too. So I suppose I’m experimenting.”

“We all are,” Thryase said.

Cade found his curiosity over this strange effect that Earth seemed to have on Hyadeans who spent any time there increasing more and more.

Marie had gone outside. Cade followed and found her standing by the door, taking in the scene of the mountains on one side, the creek running down toward the town on the other. Tevlak was outside the fence with the people who had been waiting there and were now talking excitedly, seemingly all at once, showing him various wares. One of the house guards was standing a few paces behind him.

Marie heard Cade come out and spoke without turning her head. “Why can’t the whole world be more like this? People just living their lives, leaving each other alone. Why does anyone have to care what others believe or think?”

“You tell me. Aren’t you the one who understands causes?”

“I hate it. But what are you supposed to do about the ones who take everything that other people produce, and give nothing back? They couldn’t build a house or make a shoe or even feed themselves without ordinary people like these. . . . Yet because they can steal from them, they call them inferior. I don’t like them getting away with it. It doesn’t matter if they’re ours or Hyadeans.”

The sun was picking out the almost blond parts in Marie’s hair, the sharp angles of her jaw and cheek. She still looked slim and lithe, even in the loose sweater and shapeless dun-colored pants. “Anyway, it may not stay so peaceful for long, by the sound of things,” Cade said. “I guess that’ll slow down all that production we saw yesterday.”

“I wonder who benefits,” Marie said distantly.

Cade moved closer behind her. He could tell that she sensed his nearness, but she didn’t move. “Did you really go to China?”

“Sure. I did the full training routine there: guns and explosives; computers and codes; murder and mayhem. The works. Skiing at Aspen was getting to be so ordinary. You know I have uncommon tastes.”

“I thought they were all totalitarians there. Turn you into marching zombies. Doesn’t it work like that?”

“Oh, that’s all over. They’re discovering individualism now, and hurling themselves into it with the same fanaticism they’ve always shown for everything. They’re like the Arabs—with a tradition of resisting outside influence and interference. That’s why Asia has become the natural center of opposition to what’s going on.”

Cade was about to reply, then snorted. “You see: it isn’t me. You turn everything into politics.”

Marie turned to face him. “But you
asked
me!”

“About China. You could have talked about the Great Wall, or real wonton soup.”

“But China
is
politics right now. All of Asia is. Resistance isn’t going to come from anywhere else. Not on any organized scale.”

“Okay, so I don’t care about China. Right now, I—”

At that moment, a commotion broke out among the people outside the fence, where Tevlak was. Marie and Cade turned to see what was going on. Some were gesturing toward the sky. Aircraft of some kind had appeared to the north and were approaching low and fast. They resolved themselves rapidly into three flattened oval shapes, black in color, flared at the tail, spreading out to make a circuit of the town. As Cade wheeled to follow them, a second flight of three came into sight, following the first.

Nyarl appeared from inside the house. “What’s happening?” he asked, then followed their gaze.

“Hyadean troop carriers,” Marie said tightly. “Their security forces use them. I can only think of one reason that would bring them here.”

“There’s some kind of problem inside too. Luodine is trying to send the file out to Chryse. The system won’t accept. It’s been blocked.”

“Bad news,” Marie muttered.

The first three carriers came out of their turn on a direct course for the house. Two descended toward points a short distance upstream and downstream along the creek bank, while the third passed overhead to the opposite side, presumably to cut off escape in that direction. The second three carriers were heading directly in for the house to complete its encirclement.

“The phone!” Marie said suddenly. “Hyadean communications might be blocked, but ours could still work. We’ve got to get that file out!”

Nyarl turned and stumbled back into the house, Marie following. Cade stopped to look back the other way. Figures in combat gear were leaping from the carriers that had landed, spreading out and advancing. It looked like a mixed force of Hyadeans and Terrans. The people around Tevlak were drawing back, alarmed, some already running instinctively toward the gate as if the house offered protection. Tevlak was standing, bewildered. The house guard drew his gun and ran forward to stop them. Tevlak waved him aside to let them through. As the second wave of carriers touched down, an amplified voice boomed, “YOU ARE SURROUNDED. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESIST, AND NO ONE WILL BE HARMED.” Cade turned away and hastened inside after Marie and Nyarl. Marie was handing a phone to Nyarl, who plugged in a data lead, then frantically connected that to an adaptor hooked to a piece of the Hyadean equipment. Luodine was watching one of the screens with an agonized expression. “I have to reformat,” she told Cade. “Our codes won’t work with the Terran system.”