Nightfall brought them to a deserted collection of huts and trailer cabins by a dirt road, several demolished, and the rest riddled with bullets—clearly the scene of recent fighting. A number of bodies lay scattered around, including some charred black in a burned-out gun pit. Despite the macabre surroundings, Marie and Yassem could go no further. Finding some packs and cases with unused rations, they scraped together a meal of sorts—even a dash of brandy—and lay down with makeshift blankets in the corner of a relatively unscathed house, away from what appeared to have been the center of the action, to spend the night.
* * *
They were found and awakened next morning by Brazilian soldiers sent to clear up the scene and bury the corpses. Seeing Yassem and her military garb, they fetched the Hyadean officers accompanying their unit. The Hyadeans were tough-looking, confident, reminding Marie of the ones she had seen in the air terminal at Uyali. Yassem had regained much of her strength by now, and answered their questions in Hyadean. From their general manner, Marie got the impression that she and Yassem were considered to be on the same side—certainly not prisoners.
A medic was summoned to check both of them. He pronounced no major injuries but used up a lot of adhesive dressings and gauze on minor things, including a lot of superficial lacerations to Marie's face, which he said would heal. Shortly afterward, a Hyadean military flyer landed, and they were put aboard. One of the Hyadeans and two Terrans would be apparently coming too. Just before entering, they turned to exchange a few final words with others outside. It was Marie and Yassem's first moment of privacy since their awakening that morning.
"What's happening?" Marie asked in a whisper as they sat down.
"I told them I'm one of our communications liaison officers, and you're a Terran aide who works with me," Yassem replied. "We were attached to a Terran unit mixed up in the fighting here, and we were separated. They're taking us back to their base."
Marie couldn't feel totally happy about it. "Won't they check?" she queried.
"Eventually. But it will give us some time."
Marie looked down at the drab gray tunic that she was still wearing, which she had been given at Cuzco. "I'm surprised nobody noticed this prison garb."
Yassem looked Marie up and down. "With all that blood, I'm not sure anyone could tell what it is," she said.
They arrived at a camp of wooden and corrugated steel huts, depot facilities, an airstrip, and defensive positions, set inside a perimeter of double wire fences. Beyond were grassy hills cloaked by scatterings of trees. The camp was bustling with Terran and Hyadean aircraft arriving and departing, presumably in support of the operations still in progress elsewhere. Yassem declined a suggestion of the base medical officer to put her and Marie in the sick bay for a couple of days, which would straightaway have required information on who they were and from what unit. Staying on their feet would leave them more in control of their own affairs. So instead, they were shown to quarters where they were given clean clothes and left to freshen up.
Later, when they came out, and tottered over to the officers' mess for breakfast with more effort than they let show, it turned out that their story was not anyone's special concern just for the moment, anyway. The big news was that in the north, the governor of California, William Jeye, had declared the secession of the Federation of Western America. The talk among the Brazilian officers was about whether an all-out North American war was imminent, and if so, where they would stand in it. But the most astounding thing was when the newscaster replayed notable incidents from the days leading up to the declaration. One event cited as having had a profound effect on the American people was a documentary released from unofficial Hyadean sources to the Western news media. It was none other than the one featuring Cade and Marie that Luodine had made. It had gotten through! At least, it had as far as California. Marie stared disbelievingly. Yassem watched her in puzzlement before making a connection between the face on the screen and the swollen, discolored one next to her swathed in dressings—and even then, probably only because Hudro had told her about it. Marie excused herself to go back to their quarters. It wasn't only to recover from the shock and absorb the implications. Even with the dressings, she couldn't rid herself of the conviction that it would only have taken minutes for somebody in the room to recognize her. Some time passed by before Yassem joined her.
"I've been getting a picture of the situation," she told Marie. "It doesn't sound good. Segora was heavily attacked yesterday. It's in government hands now. Vrel and the others would have been right in the middle of it all if they got there the night before. We have to try to contact them. Obviously we're on borrowed time here. Do you know the number of Vrel's phone—the one Roland sent the file to?"
Marie shook her head. "There was never any reason to think I'd need it."
Yassem looked vexed. "Communications is my specialty. We talk routinely to people on Chryse. There must be some way. . . ."
It took Yassem ten minutes of pacing about the room and frowning out the window to realize what she had said. "Chryse!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Luodine and Nyarl's flyer—the one that's still in Bolivia, somewhere. It carries Hyadean communications that can be reached from there. The registration record to Luodine's agency on Chryse will have its call code, and it's accessible via the Hyadean equipment here at the base. We can get through to them that way!"
"You're going to connect via some other star system, to talk to somebody maybe a couple of hundred miles from here?" Marie was incredulous.
"Probably safest," Yassem said, smiling. "With the situation, all the local systems are likely to be watched. But Hyadeans make calls home all the time. Let me go see if I can find a friendly operator."
For once, things went as straightforwardly as hoped. Yassem got through, and it turned out that Vrel, Luodine, and Nyarl, after narrowly escaping the day before, were still shaken but all right. Currently, they were at a remote Indian village to the north that Luodine had known, and hadn't formulated any plans yet. Of course they would wait there if there were some way Yassem and Marie could join them. Once again Yassem was determined that it had to be possible. Marie could only marvel at Hyadean tenacity, once they had set their minds to something.
And again, there was a solution. The flyer sitting in southern Bolivia, where Nyarl had sent it as a decoy, was no doubt being kept under observation and its log monitored. Using access codes to its control system that she retrieved from the vehicle registry on Chryse, Yassem was able to delete its connections to the Hyadean South American traffic control network, thereby rendering it invisible to the tracking computers. Then she obtained the coordinates of its present location from the on-board local control and fed it instructions to fly to the base in Brazil where she and Marie had been brought. Thus, when the Hyadean adjutant asked about scheduling their return, Yassem could tell him that it was okay, they had made their own arrangements. Transportation was arranged for them. So little curiosity was aroused two hours later, when the blue-and-yellow flyer landed itself on the airstrip. Yassem and Marie bade thanks and farewell to the two Hyadeans who walked out with them to see them aboard. Minutes later, they were climbing and turning north on a course that would cross the Amazon basin. Yassem made sure that the flyer would return a "friendly" identification code if interrogated by a Hyadean or Brazilian antiaircraft fire-control system.
* * *
Marie gazed out at mile after mile of rain-forest canopy sliding by below like a sea of frozen green waves. Finally, she could feel some respite from the chaos assailing her life for the last . . . was it nine days? Ever since Roland walked back into it. She laid her head back into the roomy, Hyadean-size seat and put a hand to her brow wearily. It met bandages. Roland. . . . Years ago she had tried, despaired, and given up. Then he had come back, starting to become what she had always known he could be. . . . And now this. She replayed scenes of the crash in her mind, trying to tell herself there might be a way he could have survived. It had been only a moment before
impact when he and Rocco disappeared. They couldn't have been more than a few feet from the ground by then. But there had been blood pouring from Roland's head. It was no good. She was trying to create wishful fantasies. Eventually, whatever the reality was would have to be faced. She looked across at Yassem and found the Hyadean watching her with an expression that seemed to read her thoughts. But then, Yassem was having the same problem.
"Hudro's pretty tough," Yassem said. "Sometimes I think he is, what did you say once, `charmed'? Like Roland."
Marie took in the crisp, clean Hyadean military fatigue garb that Yassem had been issued. Everything was so mixed up. Marie was used to thinking in terms close to black and white. There were "us" and "them," good guys and bad; you knew who was on which side. Hyadeans had always been "them." In the last week she had found herself trusting them as much as she had ever trusted anyone—which was ironic, for it seemed that the concept of "trust" itself was something that they themselves were learning from Terrans. Now one of them might have died helping to save her and Roland. And the person to whom that one had meant the most was now Marie's confidante and companion, whose life Marie had recently saved, yet wore the uniform of those who were hunting them. Marie could no longer make any sense of the world.
"How does this happen?" she said. Yassem raised her eyebrows but said nothing. "Hudro was with your counterinsurgency forces. You were with communications, attached to Terran intelligence." Marie shook her head uncomprehendingly. "I know how people are selected for jobs like that. They look for a particular kind of personality, the kind that identifies with the system it serves and takes pride in loyalty. People like that don't change their minds and go over to the other side. The one from the federal ISS, Reyvek, that you saw Roland and me talking about on that recording this morning, was an exception. He was very disturbed in some ways that went deep, and the system must have missed it. But normally that doesn't happen."
Yassem had to think for a while, as if the subject were something new. "On Earth, you mean," she said finally. "That's the way it is here."
"Well, yes. . . ." Marie was surprised. "Wouldn't it be the same anywhere?"
Yassem paused again, searching for words. "Here you have these `religions' and ideologies—big schemes that try to explain everything."
"Are you saying they're bad? I thought you and Hudro wanted to understand religion. That was why you left."
"No, they're not especially bad. They can be wonderfully inventive. But sometimes they program your thinking. Who is right and who is wrong becomes accepted as part of the indoctrination. Then life is simple, and killing who you're told to becomes easy."
"So how is it different with Hyadeans?" Marie asked.
"We just accept what we see. We don't try to make it something else because of ideas of what it should be. So who is right and who is wrong depends not on who people are, but on what they do."
Marie still didn't follow. "So why is your planet supporting a government that's working with the powers here who are exploiting Earth's peoples? Isn't that supposed to be wrong? Why won't they accept that when they see it?"
"Because they never have seen it!" Yassem replied. "Don't you understand? It works both ways. Because Hyadeans don't question, they accept what they're told. And what has happened on Chryse is that for longer than I know, a powerful ruling caste has controlled what Chryseans are given to believe. But when they come here and see for themselves that what they have been told is not true, it's easier for them to decide that what they are doing is wrong and change sides. It happened to Vrel, to Hudro and me, and to others I have known. And it sounds as if it happened to some of the ones you know. That was why Luodine was so anxious to make the recording and get it to Chryse. She knew the effect it would have there. Terrans assume they will be lied to and regard it as normal. But to Hyadean minds that have never questioned, the realization would be devastating. You should have seen the effects in the Hyadean officers' mess this morning after you left. For the first time, some of them are questioning what they are doing. You see—until now they have been told they were helping the people defend themselves against terrorists. It never occurred to them that there might be another story. That was just from watching a news item here, put out by the new Western federation. Can you imagine the effect if it were broadcast all over Chryse?"
Marie stared at Yassem fixedly. Finally, she could see what Roland had glimpsed but not had time to understand. The scientist in Los Angeles that he'd talked about had credited the Hyadeans' ability to see things as they were as the reason why they had built ships that could bring them to Earth, while Earth's scientists were still trying to divine from abstruse mathematics whether or not it was possible, and arguing over whether they had evolved from molecules or been created by a god—neither of which the Hyadeans saw any point in caring about. That same faculty could determine whether or not they would tolerate what was happening on Earth. The Hyadean ruling element and the force they controlled could never be defeated in a straight, stand-up firefight—despite her commitment to CounterAction, deep down Marie knew that. But they would topple if the people back home ever learned the truth. And they knew it too. No wonder they fought with all the fear and repression that came from insecurity. Marie snorted to herself at the offbeat humor: "Security" forces described them pretty well.
* * *
They arrived to a warm but sad welcome from the others, and expressions of added delight from the villagers. Vrel in particular was devastated by the news that both Cade and Hudro were lost. There was concern at Marie's appearance, but she assured them the damage was not as bad as all the bandages and tape suggested. The villagers provided a meal, but even before she was halfway though it, Marie, her body stiff and protesting everywhere by now, felt her eyes closing and exhaustion sweeping over her. Yassem seemed to be in about the same condition. The Indian medicine man, assisted by two of the women, applied medications and poultices of pastes and leaves that worked wonders, and the two new arrivals were asleep before there was a chance to discuss anything further.
* * *
It was late in the morning when Marie awoke. Yassem was already up, but as yet nobody had agreed on any firm plans. Luodine had wanted to stay to cover the South American situation, and Vrel's thought had been to head across the Pacific, but now they were wondering about trying for the newly formed Federation territory in what had been the U.S.A. Both the flyers were personal short-haul vehicles and didn't have the range for such a journey. However, Nyarl ascertained from the web that commercial flights into western North America were still operating from Quito in Ecuador, which was reachable. To check on the American situation, Vrel tried calling his colleagues at the Hyadean mission in Los Angeles, which he seemed surprised to find was still functioning. He asked to speak to a Hyadean called Wyvex.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
THE PHYSICAL SIMILARITIES between Terrans and Hyadeans, not just in general appearance but in terms of chemistry and genetic codes as well, had been devastating to Earth's prevalent theory of life and its origins, but had come as no particular surprise to the aliens. They had listened skeptically but with interest to the idea of how ooze could turn itself into a jellyfish and a jellyfish into a horse by selectively accumulating random mutations, and when the evidence claimed to support it proved not to, they dismissed it as another of Earth's secular religions, invented to displace an earlier one.
In a way that fitted well with the Hyadeans' catastrophic account of the origins and development of planetary systems, Darwin's original notebooks were filled with observations of evidence written worldwide of epochs of sudden, cataclysmic change. But twenty years later when he published, he had come around to adapting to biology Lyell's principle of gradualism, by then established as the guiding paradigm of geology. Under the new scheme of things, no catastrophic upheavals needed to be invoked to explain the past. Everything could be accounted for by the processes seen to be taking place in the present, provided they were allowed operate for a
sufficiently long time. Hence, from an ideology were constructed the immense spans of time that the Hyadeans found it astonishing anyone from Earth could look at the surface of their own planet and believe in.
Earth's history fascinated the Hyadeans. Revolution in the American colonies and then France had terrified the ruling houses of Europe. Napoleon's armies had carried notions of rising up against traditional authority from Catholic Spain to Tsarist Russia, and by the middle of the nineteenth century the continent was seething with militant political movements advocating socialism. All it needed now was for science to declare that violent upheaval was the natural way of change. The new scheme, however, depicted change as a slow, gradual accumulation of tiny advantages—so slow that little significant difference should be evident even in the course of a lifetime. And on the other hand, an explanation for life that did away with the supernatural served the new, technocratic wealth, based on commerce and industry, by completing the undermining of the authority on which the old power structure rested. Expedient and intellectually satisfying, it was embraced from all sides and rapidly enthroned as science. When the evidence that had been predicted failed to materialize, and contradictions continued to accumulate, ingenious and imaginative possibilities were devised to explain the facts away. No serious consideration was given to the possibility that the reason so little proof could be found of life's having evolved from simple molecules on Earth might be simply that it hadn't; it had arrived there.
Yet it had long been known that bacteria and other microorganisms exhibited an extraordinary tolerance to extremes of such quantities as radiation, temperature, and pressure, that was difficult to account for by any selection process on the surface of the Earth, where such conditions had never existed. But it made them ideally preadapted for space. Carbonized structures uncannily suggestive of familiar forms of microbe had been discovered inside meteorites—and yes, with the possibility of contamination excluded beyond reasonable doubt. Refractive indexes in part of the interstellar clouds matched those of biological objects more closely than any of the alternatives put forward to explain them. Some scientists over the years had pointed to these findings as a case for supposing that the genes that directed life had originated from somewhere else. The mainstream scientific community saw warnings of the theological can of worms opening up again, and their general reaction was to ridicule the suggestion or leave it alone.
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