On arriving, they found that a cordon of barriers and soldiers backed by military vehicles had been placed outside the mission's perimeter fence. Facing them were groups of demonstrators numbering maybe several hundred, displaying banners and placards. They were orderly as of the moment but seemed surly and restless. Cade couldn't pretend to be totally surprised.
Inside, they were greeted by Wyvex, still wearing his Navajo patch. He was pleased and intrigued to meet Marie at last. Vrel was out at UCLA with Mike Blair. They would be back later. "What's going on outside?" Cade asked as they walked through into the building.
"Some anti-Hyadean feeling is surfacing. The documentary you two sent from South America didn't help. Some Eastern units have been using Hyadean weapons in Arkansas. It makes us all the enemy to some people." Cade nodded. It was pretty much as he had guessed.
The elaborate security procedures at reception were gone—a sign of independence from the Hyadean Washington office, Cade presumed—and Wyvex conducted them straight through to the open-plan work areas with their cream-painted walls and dull metal furnishings. On the way, they talked about events that had taken place with both of them since Cade's departure for Atlanta, including another account of Julia's demise. Cade saw that many of the screens were shut down, and none of those that were functioning showed the kinds of scenes that he remembered from direct connections to Chryse and the other Hyadean worlds.
There were more people about than had been usual before—Hyadean and Terran. Seemingly, the mission had become a collecting center for stray Hyadeans left in the western half of the country after the secession. Also, to ease travel problems, a number of Terrans who worked here had moved in. They took an elevator to the top floor. Wyvex showed Cade and Marie into Orzin's office, and then left.
Orzin greeted them with smiles that made his unusually rounded Hyadean features look rubbery. He had shed his tunic top for a tan, casual jacket which he wore open over a shirt with a low-tone colored design. But it was colored—the Hyadean equivalent of a Wall Street banker showing up at the office in a beach shirt. Of course, Orzin was delighted to meet Marie. They went over a summary of the same salient events that Wyvex had gone through.
"So what exactly is going on here, Orzin?" Cade asked when they had settled down. "It seems like you've taken over the mission. Where does it stand? Are you some kind of independent, one-building, Hyadean nation state now, or what?"
"We are Chryse," Orzin replied.
Cade shot Marie a puzzled look. She shook her head. "What do you mean?" he asked Orzin.
"We shall find again what Chryse once was. It will begin here." Orzin spread a pair of pudgy, blue, oversize hands. "Here in this mission. Not, as you say, a one-building nation-state. A one-building planet! When I first came here from Chryse, I saw only the things that confirmed what we had been told. Earth was disintegrating in chaos and disorder. We had come to save it by introducing our system of organization and discipline. Of course, there were stubborn elements of the old structure that would not give up their traditional powers so easily. But, with the cooperation of the more enlightened interests that you have termed the Globalist Coalition, they could be induced to come around." He held up a hand before either Cade or Marie could say anything.
"However, that wasn't the way things were. This system that Hyadeans have been conditioned to serve is a lie by which a layer of social parasites drains them of everything they produce. They do it by convincing them of the need to subjugate themselves to a higher authority that knows and represents the greater good of all. In doing so, they rob them not only of the right to think as individuals, but even of awareness of their ability to. And so they are made into expendables: sacrificial objects to enrich the lives of others.
"What I began to see on Earth after I had been here some time was not what I had been told to see. I saw a world of individuals, with different ideas and choices about how they wanted to live their lives. And yes, at times those differences caused disagreement and strife. But it was not a pathological world destroying itself in chaos; it was world of variety and vigor asserting its nature: the right to be free." Orzin showed his hands in a despairing gesture. "Yet in spite of all that, the same forces that enslaved Chryse are operating here. And those are the forces that we have been allying with. Other Hyadeans see it too. That is why Luodine and Nyarl are here. And Hudro and Yassem . . . and many others."
Cade frowned at the top of the desk with its several displays, rewritable paper pads with strings of Hyadean characters, and assortment of other objects, the function of all of which was not obvious. He feared that Orzin was oversimplifying. Earth's history showed a far less consistent and universal dedication to such values than the picture he was painting. . . . But if that was what he was seeing, Cade wasn't about to muddy the issue now.
Marie was all attention, looking as if she wanted to believe what she was hearing but just couldn't see it. "But you just told us, you're a one-building operation. Do you really think you can change anything?" she said.
"Us, no. But the people of Chryse can. The people of all the Hyadeans worlds . . ." Orzin waved a hand high, as if inviting them to visualize it.
"We were talking about that yesterday," Cade said. "It's what Hudro and I tried to get across in Beijing."
Orzin nodded. "I know. Hudro told me. Hyadeans don't question what they see and what they are told. That was what made them exploitable on such a scale. But that same fact means they won't tolerate deception. Luodine saw the same thing."
"But what can just a few of you do?" Marie asked again.
Orzin gestured as if it should have been obvious. "Show them the deception. Tell the real story to Chryse. That's her business."
"But Xuchimbo controls all the channels," Cade said.
"The official channels, yes," Orzin agreed. "But who said we have to use those?" He turned one of the flatscreen pads around on the desk and pushed it across, at the same time uttering commands. An image appeared that Cade and Marie had seen before in New Zealand and China: themselves, narrating the documentary recorded at Tevlak's house in Bolivia. It took Cade a moment to register that there was something different. The sound had been dubbed. The voices he heard were speaking in Hyadean. He looked up, nonplussed. "I don't understand. What's going on?"
"That's you two," Orzin said needlessly. "You know the item. This is a recording of a version of it that went out across Chryse last night!" He looked from one to the other, noted their incredulous looks with evident satisfaction, and went on before they could ask, "Luodine tried to get her agency to put it out, but the people in charge there wouldn't do it. Too obedient to the system. So Yassem decided that if there was no way through the official net, she'd go around it. She used our facilities here to access the Xuchimbo system, and piggybacked a coded message on their outgoing trunk beam that the Querl intercepted. They're doing the broadcasting for us!"
Marie stared. "Querl? You mean the rebel worlds?"
"Yes! Amazing, isn't it! That was several days ago now. The Querl have positioned an arc of their own relays somewhere outside of Earth—they can't come as far in as orbit, since the Chryseans control near space. So we have our own link now. We lose contact for a little under ten hours each day."
Cade was having trouble taking it in. "Querl?" he repeated. "You mean they've showed up here . . . in our Solar System?"
"Well, they're out there somewhere, anyhow," Orzin replied, waving a hand vaguely. "And you can bet the Chryseans are out there looking for them too. But it's a lot of space to get lost in. And they have sophisticated ways of deploying decoys and switching the incoming return signals around to make it impossible to get a sure fix on where the relays are."
Cade and Marie looked at each other, stupefied. They were being broadcast around alien star systems light-years away . . . ?
"And you two aren't the only news that's going out. Luodine and Nyarl have been collecting material from all over." Orzin voiced more commands in Hyadean. The image on the s
creen changed to show Luodine speaking to the camera, and then soldiers and rescue workers pulling dazed and bleeding figures from wrecked vehicles scattered and upended all ways in front of a background of burning buildings. "A refugee column hit by an air strike near Minneapolis," Orzin commented. It was followed by an aircraft's gun-camera view of missiles flaming away and bursting among trucks halted on the approach to a pontoon bridge. Figures were jumping out, fleeing, falling. . . . "FWA fighter-bombers attacking one of the Mississippi crossing points." Then there was Luodine again, superposed on a desert scene littered with knocked-out armor. "Aftermath of a tank duel south of Odessa, Texas. There's lots more." Orzin looked across at Cade and Marie pointedly—as if this could have significance out of all proportion to appearances. "According to the first reports we're getting back from Querl sources, it's creating a sensation back home. This is the first time anyone has reported anything direct from the other side of what's been happening on Earth. We must be doing something right. Reactions from the Chrysean government are furious. Naturally, they're denouncing it all as Querl propaganda and fakery. But people on Chryse are taking notice. Luodine's face is familiar there. They know she talks straight." Orzin wagged a finger. "But that's not all. She doesn't want to just sit here passing on news that comes in. Her style has always been to go out herself and find it. She's persuaded the Air Force to provide her and Nyarl with a jet to turn into a mobile studio. You'd have to hear her enthusiasm to believe it. I think she has finally discovered what she really wants to do."
* * *
In an NBC news studio at the Rockefeller Center in New York, Casper Toddrel gazed somberly at the camera showing "live" and completed the address that he had prepared as part of a public relations effort being coordinated from the White House. "It will be a painful duty. It will not be a pleasant duty. But it is a necessary duty. For as long as it takes, we cannot speak of these places as belonging to America anymore. They have become an extension of foreign power into this continent. The next step will be a bridgehead for invasion. We, in the East at this hour, stand as the last bastion of defense for the values that America has always stood for. The people in California and Oregon, New Mexico and Montana are not our enemy. The enemy is the corrupt gang of traitors and opportunists who have turned Sacramento into a provincial capital of China. I ask you all to stand by us and our Hyadean allies to reverse this tragic aberration that had befallen us. We can, and we will, not only bring all of America back into the fold, but build out of it a stronger and more united America than has ever existed. A new United States, purged, reformed, revitalized, fit not only to assume again its rightful place as leader among the nations of this world, but to establish this world as a full and equal partner, enjoying all due rights and dignity, in the wider community of our newfound interstellar cousins." Toddrel paused to let his audience contemplate the vision, then nodded solemnly. "Thank you."
The red camera light went out. "Thanks, Mr. Toddrel," the set manager called from behind the lights. "That's was good. That's it. You're done."
Toddrel collected together the notes he had laid on the desk, got up, and headed for the door. Ibsan, his bodyguard, saw him through the glass wall of an adjacent monitor room and came out. "Mr. Toddrel. You'd better see this." Ibsan nodded back over his shoulder.
"What is it?"
"Flash just coming in from Bolivia. That Hyadean mining center at Uyali. Half their military base down there blew up. It's like it got nuked."
"Jesus. . . ."
Toddrel followed Ibsan into the room, which was lined on one side with consoles and screens. Three of the operators were grouped in front of one showing a scene panning across the wreckage and carnage of whole blocks of peculiar Hyadean building-block architecture shattered and twisted into grotesque shapes, with a pall of smoke hanging over the background. Crews from emergency vehicles had started bringing out survivors, while more flyers and Terran-built helicopters descended into view from above. A voiceover was talking excitedly and breathlessly.
"About fifteen minutes ago," one of the operators commented, seeing that Toddrel had joined them. "The whole back end of the place just went up. From the accounts, it sounds as if it was the armory. It was loaded. A shipment of Hyadean ammo and stuff just arrived from orbit. They're counting the death toll in hundreds already." Toddrel watched grimly for a few minutes, but there was nothing of further significance to be learned. He caught Ibsan's eye and jerked his head curtly in the direction of the door as a sign for them to leave. They stopped by a door at the end of a corridor of offices.
"It had to be those new remote-detonatable munitions," Ibsan murmured. "Somehow the wrong people got access to the codes. I don't know what kind of a can of worms it opens up, but I figured you ought to know right away."
Toddrel nodded, still thinking frantically. "You did right, Earl."
He should never have agreed to letting Drisson look into it, he told himself. There were too many factions at large, too many conflicting interests. The opportunities for betrayal should have made the risks unthinkable. In normal circumstances he would never have condoned it. He had no idea who the perpetrators might have been. The Asians or one of their breakaway groups? Part of the guerrilla front? Some other lunatic sect? Drisson himself for some reason? Somebody Drisson was mixed up with, who had an agenda of their own? . . . But whatever, there was one person who was sure to be high on everybody's suspect list.
Roger Achim, the program's producer, came through from the set, accompanied by a couple of assistants. "Everything all right, Mr. Toddrel?"
"Yes, just fine," Toddrel responded mechanically.
"Good, good."
"Oh, one thing."
"Yes?"
"Is there somewhere private that I could use? I have to make a confidential call urgently."
"Sure. Susie, find Mr. Toddrel an empty office along there somewhere, would you?"
Minutes later, Toddrel was confronting the blue-purple features of Gazaghin, the Hyadean military commander in Washington. He had heard the news, and his mood was murderous.
"I just wanted to assure you personally that I had absolutely no knowledge of this appalling—"
Gazaghin interrupted. "Don't waste the breath, Toddrel. I don't believe for long time anything you say. It makes no difference now who does this, in any place. I warned you. Now it's not your war now."
"What do you mean?"
"Is too much. We trust to let Terrans in charge. Look what happens. Now there is protest risings and angry questions all over Chryse. We have orders from our government to put the stop. We control now."
"But it's not within their jurisdiction to," Toddrel objected. "You are still aliens within a sovereign territory. . . ."
Gazaghin slammed a hand down on the surface where he was speaking. "When Hyadean dead are hundreds, it is our jurisdiction!" he bellowed. "When illegal propaganda pictures are flooding our world, it's our jurisdiction. Your President Ellis has just signed the order. This country's armed forces are now under my command."
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CADE DECIDED THAT the luxurious Newport Beach mansion offended him. He instructed Henry to have the valuables and personal effects packed and put into storage, and the house made available to the authorities for housing evacuees. The influx would improve the tone of the neighborhood, he told Marie. As for the yacht, Warren was to place it at the disposal of the military for the coastal transportation fleet being hurriedly expanded. He and Marie would move into quarters at the mission. Luke elected to come too, retaining his position as Cade's right-hand man for the duration. Besides putting them close at hand for the work there, it would ease traveling. Marie preferred this arrangement.
* * *
Luodine planned to tour the front-line areas, rear bases, refugee centers, hard-hit zones, collecting original material that the mission would send back to Chryse along with whatever could be got from other sources—the fruition of the idea that had begun forming in her mind during her experi
ences in Segora. The plane that the Air Force provided turned out to be a C22-E twin turbofan military airlift VIP transport, normally carrying sixteen passengers, but in this instance fitted out as a flying communications post. It arrived with a pilot, copilot, and technical sergeant for support at Edwards Air Force Base in the high desert above Palmdale. The base had been hit by intermediate-range conventional missiles launched from over the Rockies but was still flying operations. Yassem flew out there with Hudro and Nyarl in one of the mission's flyers to meet the crew, brief them on the mission, and check over the equipment before tomorrow, when the team was due to depart. Since Hyadean flyers were few and in demand, after being dropped off at Edwards, they sent it on to Newport Beach to collect Cade, Marie, and Luke, and take them to the mission with the belongings they were bringing from the house.
Meanwhile, Luodine was organizing the mission's communications room as a clearing center for forwarding despatches to Chryse. A Colonel Nacey from FWA military intelligence, along with a small staff, was attached to the operation to ensure that sensitive information was not released prematurely. The main item that she had not mentioned in her outgoing reports—although the Union commanders who needed to know would be aware of it from their own sources in any case—was that a mixed AANS force under a Chinese flagship had sailed from Hawaii to intercept the carrier groups moving north, now approaching the equator west of the Galapágos Islands. The officers on Nacey's staff called the situation "Midway in reverse."
But it was becoming clear that the move from Hawaii was just part of a far larger and more audacious plan only now beginning reveal itself. Luodine sat, stunned, alongside Nacey, while on a screen in front of them a spokeswoman from Beijing summarized the action that had been taking place since early that morning. Confused reports had been coming in from various sources about air drops in Mexico and fighting along the Panama Canal Zone, but this was the first coherent account linking it all together. President Jeye himself had been notified officially only within the previous hour—although Nacey thought it likely that he and his military commanders had known privately before then.
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