At the front, Rocco turned and shouted back instructions. One of those behind clambered up to man the machine gun, while another hooked up the ammunition belt from the feeder box. Everyone else clung tight as the pilot went into a violent evasive maneuver. Cade was thrown outward from his seat, then hard back on the wall. He and Marie braced their arms on the sides and tried to steady themselves against each other. . . .
And then nothing.
Fragments of awareness. Blurred smears of sensations coalescing from a vacuum.
Spinning patches of light. . . . Churning noise. . . . Lurching motion.
Thirsty. Sweating. Touch of damp fabric.
Cade was lying down. Every lurch tossed him to the side and back again, causing pain to shoot through his head. His head didn’t feel good at all. It felt bloated on one side and numb at the back. The thought came and went hazily. His head was wrapped in something. Stiff. Aching everywhere. . . . None of him felt good at all.
He heard the whirr of an engine revving, then gears being shifted. The lurching resolved itself into the jolting of a truck on a rough road. He tried to open his eyes but they seemed to be stuck. Even the effort made the shooting pains in his head worse. The thirst was unbearable, as if his throat were filled with dry furnace ash. He groaned.
Voices somewhere floated incomprehensibly. A hand lifted his head. He winced, feeling as if his neck would break. Something touched his mouth. Water! Not cool, but priceless. He tried to gulp greedily but the hand restrained him, allowing him only to sip. A wet cloth was swabbed over his face and eyes. He tried opening them again and succeeded with an effort. A face was looking down at him. His faculties still hadn’t returned sufficiently for him to recognize anything. He sipped more from the water bottle and registered slowly that he was in a truck. Only then did he begin to remember that he had been in a helicopter.
Another face, blue-gray in hue, materialized behind the first. He flexed his lips. “Vrel?” he managed.
“No.” The face looked concerned. “This is Hudro.”
Oh, right. Vrel hadn’t been there. So how come a truck now? “What . . . ? Did we crash?”
“Was more than a day ago now,” Hudro said. “Was fighting at Segora. We were hit.”
Cade contemplated the statement in a detached kind of way. It didn’t take on any immediate great significance. His head had been injured, and it hurt. Pink lights. He remembered the gunfire. Then it all started coming back.
“Marie!” He focused and looked up. “How is Marie?” The Hyadean face stared down at him in what seemed a long silence. “Where is she? What’s up?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cade,” Hudro said. “She didn’t make it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
The flyer sped low on a southwestward course, a few thousand feet above the barren salt wastes of the southern Altiplano. Ahead and to the right, the line was coming into view of the new roadway with its procession of robot trucks carrying produce from the extraction operations north to the Amazon outlet, and a return flow of vehicles either empty or bringing construction materials and supplies. Vrel and Hudro were over an hour out from leaving Tevlak’s house and getting close to Uyali.
“What do you make of it?” Vrel asked Hudro. He meant the news they had heard at Tevlak’s that morning of the escalation of sabotage and guerrilla attacks in the Amazon region, and the retaliatory actions by government forces. They were speaking, naturally, in Hyadean.
“Somebody, somewhere gave them a signal. Someone who has been building up backing and support.”
“The Asians?”
“They get a lot of the blame publicly, but I’m pretty sure there’s more to it. The Asian economy isn’t affected that much. A lot of Western finance would like to see a slowdown in the operations here.”
“I thought they were supposed to be with us,” Vrel said.
“It’s all complicated . . . trying to understand what goes on. I don’t really understand it.”
Vrel watched Hudro staring out through the view panels. His face was troubled. “So what are you going to do?” Vrel asked. There was a pause.
“There is a girl that I know up in Brazil—it’s best if you don’t know her name . . .” Hudro seemed to think better of whatever he had been about to say. “We have plans,” he ended simply.
“A Terran girl?”
“No. She is Hyadean.”
“I know a Terran girl in Los Angeles,” Vrel said. “Very pretty. Blond hair, cut like this at the front.” He made a line with his hand to indicate a fringe. “Sometimes I think of going off to live a Terran life—like Tevlak.”
“You do?” Hudro seemed more than just casually interested. He was about to say more, when a tone interrupted from the Terran phone that Vrel was carrying. Vrel frowned, took it out, and answered guardedly, “Who is this?”
“Vrel?” A Terran voice.
Vrel switched to English. “Yes.”
“It’s Roland. No time to talk. I’m downloading the file. You have to get it to Chryse somehow.”
File? It could only mean the file they had recorded with Luodine. Vrel was confused. “What—” he began.
“Just do it!”
Hudro was looking at him questioningly. Vrel waved a hand to indicate that he couldn’t explain. “Some kind of trouble,” he muttered, at the same time keying in the code to direct input to the phone’s integral storage. “Ready,” he said into it. He could make out noise at the other end: voices shouting; distant bangs and crashes. An indicator showed that the file was coming through. In a few seconds, it was done. “Hello? . . . Hello, Roland?” Vrel tried. But the connection was already gone.
“Roland? You mean it was Cade? What did he want?” Hudro demanded. “What kind of trouble?”
“I’m not sure. It sounded as if there was fighting going on there. Roland sent the file. It’s here, in the phone. He wants me to get it to Chryse.”
Hudro thought for a few seconds. “Security must have traced them there.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. There are all kinds of ways.”
Vrel tried to think what it meant. If they had been traced to Tevlak’s, Cade’s and Marie’s aliases were already blown. Vrel’s association with them would be revealed by the Hyadean flight records from St. Louis to the base in Maryland and from there to Uyali. Thryase had used his diplomatic pull to keep the flyer’s movements out of the system, but it was a safe bet that a reception party would be waiting at Vrel’s room in the Hyadean sector of Uyali. “I can’t go back,” he told Hudro. “They’ll be onto me as well.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I came in with the two Americans yesterday. It will be in the flight log.” Vrel looked at Hudro dubiously. “How sure can you be about you?”
“Impossible to say.”
“You can’t just report to the military desk at Uyali,” Vrel said. Hudro’s intention had been to find transportation back to his unit in Brazil. “They could be just waiting for you to show up. Maybe that’s why you haven’t had a recall. Why alert you that something’s up? We don’t want to land back there at all—not until we’ve found some way of checking the situation.”
Hudro frowned, obviously not liking Vrel doing his thinking for him. But he couldn’t argue. He interrogated the on-board system about other options and directed it to reroute the flyer to a construction area thirty miles north, where a power generating installation was being built. There, they could try to find some kind of ground transportation, which would be less conspicuous.
Since anything could happen after they landed, the file from Cade needed to be forwarded now. Vrel couldn’t use the flyer’s system to access the direct net link to Chryse, however. The message protocols would involve his personal ID codes, which were bound to have been watch-listed, and reveal his whereabouts. The only alternative was to use his Terran phone and hope that it was clean. That, of course, couldn’t get the file to Chryse. The only way he could think of to do that would be to send it via
the mission in Los Angeles. But communications into there were still likely to be subject to surveillance, as would any to his known contacts if he was being sought—which ruled out using Dee or anyone at Cade’s house.
“You’d better come up with something soon. We’ve got less than five minutes,” Hudro said.
There was a dealer that Dee used for work on her car. Vrel recalled that he was called Vince something. Something to do with ducks. . . . The service manager’s name was Stan. He had wanted to introduce Vrel to golf. Vrel thought, tried to remember. . . . Beak? Drake? Bird? No . . . Walk, waddle? Web! That was what they called their funny feet. Vince Web! Vrel called information but didn’t know enough Spanish to make himself understood. “Can you connect me to an English-speaking operator?” he pleaded. “Er . . . Operador. Habla inglés.”
“Give it to me.” Hudro took the phone. “What do you want?”
“United States directory information. California, Los Angeles area. An automobile dealer called Vince Web—somewhere around Venice.”
While Hudro was waiting for the information, Vrel copied the file into the flyer’s system and encrypted it into Hyadean Code along with a message to Wyvex for it to be forwarded to Chryse. He attached a plaintext note to “Stan, Service Department,” asking him to pass it on urgently to “Wyvex, care of Dee Rainier, who drives the white Pontiac.” Meanwhile, Hudro had obtained the number. Vrel loaded the package back into the phone and sent it off just as the flyer was touching down.
The first thing Hudro did after they landed was get rid of his military-issue Hyadean communicator, which was traceable. Until he knew whether he was compromised or not, he didn’t dare use it. If his name was hot, any message sent from it could trigger a surveillance computer.
They arrived at Uyali late in the afternoon in a Terran truck making a run from the construction area to pick up a piece of equipment that had been ferried from the spaceport at Xuchimbo. Hudro had found a friendly plant engineer, showed his military pass, and explained with a wink that he and his friend needed a ride back to town after a hot double date in one of the villages farther north. The flyer was “borrowed” and would make its own way back. In recognition, Hudro promised to send back a bottle of Terran “risky”—a Hyadean pun based on the English rhyme with “whisky”—with the truck driver from Uyali. “I’ll take two,” the engineer had said, which was the Hyadean way of asking who you think you’re kidding. Hyadeans saw no point in fulfilling one-time obligations. But he had found them a place in the truck anyway.
Hudro had told Vrel that he had a friend he trusted in Hyadean Military Intelligence back in Brazil, who might be able to find out if Hudro was being watched for and what else was going on. Vrel wondered if it was Hudro’s girlfriend, but Hudro didn’t say. Whoever it was, Hudro would only be able to talk about such things over a secure link, which would mean going into the sprawling Hyadean military base at Uyali and getting access to the communications there. He was willing to gamble that even if Hyadean military police were checking the air terminal, the alert would not involve every guard and gate sentry in the area, and that his papers would get him in. Vrel couldn’t offer any better idea. The only thing for Vrel to do in the meantime would be to lose himself, away from prying Hyadean eyes. The best place to do that promised to be the Terran sector. Accordingly, the truck dropped them off outside a store on the part of the road that ran nearest, and Hudro dutifully purchased a half bottle of pisco brandy for the Hyadean driver to take back for the engineer. The driver accepted it appreciatively and seemed amused. Whether or not it would get where it was supposed to go was beyond Hudro’s control.
They had a meal of spicy meat and vegetables on rice in a café on the outskirts and then strolled around to familiarize themselves with the area. It seemed to have grown around three main streets, one crossing the other two like the lines of a Terran English H. The Terrans were happy to see Hyadeans in their sector because Hyadeans drew large paychecks. After further thought, Hudro bought a man’s leather wallet—hand-sewn and richly decorated—some pieces of jewelry, and a mechanical, spring-powered Terran watch that had to be wound by hand every day, which Hyadeans found intriguing and prized even on Chryse, where the twelve-hour cycle meant nothing. “You never know. I might need to bribe somebody in there,” he explained to Vrel as they came out of the store. “It never hurts to be prepared.”
“I’m impressed,” Vrel complimented. Coming from a Hyadean, it meant just that.
“Military training,” Hudro said.
“Out of curiosity, just what do you do in the military?” Vrel asked.
“Counterinsurgency intelligence. Infiltration. The guys you don’t hear about, who live on the other side of the lines.”
The final item that Hudro bought was a regular Terran pocket phone with clean codes and a prepaid call quota that he could use without opening an account. So at least, he would be able to make calls over the Terran system that wouldn’t attract attention. He left after arranging to meet up with Vrel again later. If there were an emergency, now they could call each other.
One thing about being on an alien planet was the guarantee of always getting a lift from one’s own kind. Hudro waited no more than a few minutes on one of the approach roads to the base before a Hyadean military vehicle carrying both uniformed figures and others in regular dress pulled up in response to his wave. He would arouse less curiosity that way than if he arrived on foot, he had decided. The crew turned out to be surveyors and construction supervisors who had been out planning a water pipeline, and a detail of Army guards. There were no Terrans, and at the gate they were waved straight through, although the occupants of a bus taking Terran workers inside were being rigorously checked and searched. So obstacle number one was out of the way as easily as that.
Hudro was back in the Hyadean world now. Already, it felt different. The surroundings were functional, businesslike, designed for getting things done. Time seemed to snap along at a Hyadean pace. People moved briskly, with purpose. They wore uniforms and working clothes that he recognized, giving them roles that were familiar—like a picture that had suddenly come into focus. There were weapons emplacements inside the perimeter fence, a transportation depot with a landing area inside the gate, where an officer was supervising a fatigue detail unloading an air-truck, and other figures crossed to and fro on various errands. A Military Police post stood on the other side, with signs indicating directions to such locations as 12th close support battalion; 76th air assault hq; tac com cmd ops; qmsup off. 19th inftry rec grp. Hudro followed a path of fused rock chippings painted white to a multistory configuration of office and service modules designated the Administration Center, which was where Headquarters Command was indicated to be situated. He found it after checking with the desk sergeant inside the door, taking an elevator up two levels from the lobby, and following a corridor into the next riser. Inside the door was a waiting area consisting of seats set around three sides of a low table, with the fourth open to a desk-counter at which sat a female Officer of the Day—a captain. Hudro took a seat, picked up one of the reformattable, universal-book folios from the table, loaded a journal at random, and for maybe fifteen minutes scanned it idly while getting a feel for the place and watching the routine. Then he went back down to the entrance. Just as he was about to leave the building, he turned back as if struck by an afterthought, and went over to desk.
“Excuse me, Sergeant.” Although not wearing uniform, he had presented his pass showing his rank when he entered earlier.
“Sir?”
“Can you bring up the Forces Directory for me there?” He indicated the desk terminal. “I need this base’s address for somebody to send something to me here.”
The sergeant called up the file giving publicly posted information on Hyadean military installations and units, on Earth, Chryse, other worlds, orbiting stations, and elsewhere. He located the entry for Uyali, giving permanent offices, units currently stationed there with addresses, mail codes, command
ing officers, and other details. “There. That’s us here.”
Hudro studied the screen. “So for the HQ Command office upstairs I’d use . . . that one?” He pointed.
“You’ve got it.”
Hudro asked for something to write the details on. The sergeant raised his eyebrows as he passed across a slip of paper. The normal thing would have been to copy it into one’s personal communicator. Hudro had thrown his away after landing at the construction site. “In my jacket,” Hudro said. The sergeant frowned. Hudro sighed. “I know, I know.” He cited the regulation: “. . . to be kept on the person at all times. If it were you I could give you a citation.” He noticed that the sergeant was wearing a Terran windup watch. “Nice piece of work,” he said.
“You like it? It’s got elegance, hasn’t it?” The sergeant turned his wrist to show the band.
“It’s amazing what these people can do.” Hudro produced the watch he had just bought in the Terran sector. “What do you think of that?”
“Wow! Pretty nice.”
“I just got it—for someone when I get back home.”
The sergeant held it admiringly alongside his own. “Do you know something?” he confessed. “I don’t even know how to read what they say.”
“Me neither,” Hudro whispered as he took it back. There was a rapport. So at least he had a friend here already if the need arose. Infiltration training. Think and prepare.
Outside the building, he found a quiet spot and used his phone to call the Terran number of the Hyadean intelligence unit at the Brazilian police facility in Acre province that Yassem worked with. A clerk located her and transferred the call.
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