Worlds in Chaos (127 page)

Laura walked past Drisson to where Toddrel was lying, stooped to press his hand around the gun that she had used, and then tossed it on the floor in the middle of the room. Then she dug deeper into her purse, took out a plastic bag stuffed with napkins, and from them carefully extracted the glass Drisson had been drinking from in the Fairway lounge earlier. She looked around, and after a moment set it on the countertop above the room’s mini refrigerator, along with a half bottle of bourbon which she had partly emptied. She had no idea, really, what the police would make of it; but she had every confidence in their ability to come up with something ingenious and satisfying.

The final thing that caught her eye as she checked over the room was a picture frozen on the viewscreen of two people facing the camera in front of a background of planes releasing missiles at targets on what looked like the outskirts of a city. It was the man called Cade, from California, who seemed to have been involved wherever trouble broke out during the past few weeks. The woman with him was his former wife, who had been with the CounterAction terrorists. Casper had developed some kind of an obsession about them.

As Laura walked away along the corridor, she reflected that curiously it was those same two who, in a way, had been instrumental in bringing about the events that had just transpired in Room 651. Ever since the first documentary they had appeared in, which a few renegade Hyadeans made in South America, Laura had found herself seized by a growing feeling of revulsion at the pictures of burning villages, maimed children, pain, suffering, terror on the faces of defenseless people—the real price that had been paid to make possible the life she had enjoyed. Now, somehow, she felt cleansed of it, as if, to some degree at least, she had atoned.

Had Toddrel had some kind of premonition that they would be a cause of this? she wondered as she waited for the elevator. She had never really had much time for things like that. By some accounts that she’d read, Hyadeans found such possibilities intriguing. And they seemed pretty smart. Maybe it would be something to look into.

A feeling of relief enveloped her as she came out into the night air without incident. Getting away from Washington and the East Coast in general for a while seemed like a wise move in any case, she decided. As she walked away along the street, the thought occurred to her that maybe the kind of work she heard was going on in California could use some help: putting the U.S.A. back together again along the lines that had been intended—or maybe along new lines that were even better; learning to work with the Hyadeans in ways that would benefit everybody; discovering the other sides to life there were besides just making money. Maybe she would even get a chance there to meet this mysterious Mr. Cade and his ex—Marie, was it?—in person there. Now
that
sounded interesting and different.

She came to an intersection, managed to stop one of the few cabs that were back on the streets, and gave the address of the hotel across town that Drisson had checked her into.

Something challenging, creative, and useful to people. A way, maybe, to make up to some degree for a life that so far hadn’t had a lot going for it that she felt particularly good about or proud of. Yes, Laura decided as she settled herself back in the rear seat of the cab. That was the kind of change she wanted.

EPILOGUE

Cade had seen pictures of the Hyadean launch complex at Xuchimbo in western Brazil, which gave him a general idea of what to expect. But none of them had quite prepared him for the scale of the engineering—even “grandeur” would not have been an inappropriate word, despite the characteristically dull and utilitarian flavor of all things Hyadean. The optimists and visionaries on both worlds were saying that would all change very quickly now in the years ahead.

He stared out at it from a medium-size Hyadean passenger transport completing its flight from Denver. The pointed gray, white, and silver spires of the landers stood amid immense service gantries towering above the pad and associated constructions like a metallic castle from some giants’ fairyland dominating the surrounding landscape of forested hills and steep-sided valleys. On the near side, several miles from the launch complex, was the landing area for conventional craft toward which they were descending, attended by a conglomeration of base facilities, roadways, bridges, pipe systems, and conveyor lines. One of the Querl officers in the party picked out a tall shape of pale gray, flaring at the tail into cruciform deltas set between a booster cluster. Cade studied it, intrigued. That was the ferry that would carry them up tomorrow morning to join the orbiting Querl mother ship due to depart for Chryse.

Marie was with Cade, looking for once the part of a presentable, urbane Western woman instead of a desperado, in a cream jacket-skirt set with chocolate blouse and trim. Vrel was there too, insistent on being their self-appointed tour guide and general attendant on Chryse. And Dee was with Vrel too, of course. And finally, making up their group, was Nyarl, going home by popular demand to meet millions for whom his face had become a phenomenon on display screens, and receive a public honor decreed by the provisional administration that the Querl had installed to take stock of the Chrysean condition.

A month had gone by since the people of Earth—bewildered and frightened; resolute and defiant—had emerged from foxholes, come out onto streets, listened to announcements in refugee centers, turned on radios and TV screens, to learn that the war which yesterday had seemed about to explode into ever greater levels of ferocity and consume the whole planet, was over. It didn’t mean that the world’s problems or the future of Terran-Hyadean dealings was solved, or that anyone had clear ideas as yet of how to solve them. Nobody knew what form the reconstruction of what had been the United States was to assume, based on what formulation Constitution. It was not even agreed where the capital would be, which was why negotiations were taking place in Denver: as effectively neutral as anywhere, and the nearest principal city to the Querl’s first landing. But what it did signify was something akin to a collective version of the shaking up experienced after an automobile accident that could have killed everyone. If all the pain, grief, and loss of those three weeks of mass insanity—and it had been substantial—had been for anything, it was the imperative now acknowledged across both worlds that the fundamental values that life should be seeking were in drastic need of reexamination. And the people who needed to make the judgment were not the ones who so far had been allowed to be in charge.

Representatives from various Terran nations, organizations, institutions, other interests, had been invited to Chryse to begin a joint exploring of which way to go next. The other passengers on the flight from Denver were some of them. More had arrived the day before. And to Cade and Marie’s amazement, they had been invited too. Nyarl, it seemed, wasn’t the only one to have become an instant celebrity among the Chrysean worlds. The Terran couple who had appeared with him and symbolized their world’s defiance and determination to fight through in the face of impossible odds, facing Hyadean war engines, speaking against backgrounds of burning cities, were equally famous. The Chryseans wanted to meet them too.

The transport landed among rows of cavernous cargo-carrying hulls looking vaguely like monstrous, flattened guppy fish; single-stage space-planes that could make orbit, maneuver for hours, and return; assorted special-purpose craft whose nature could only be guessed. From ground level, the peculiar alien structures rising in the background were as imposing as the launch complex had appeared from the air. Cade had the feeling of practically being on a small piece of Chryse already. The transport’s cabin section detached from the airframe as a unit and slid onto a conveyor rail alongside. Moments later, it was being carried toward an opening into the terminal complex.

Hudro and Yassem were installed in Cade’s place at Newport Beach, which was where Vrel would be returning. The area had escaped damage, although the house itself had shown the wear and tear of being used as a shelter for displaced children from the war areas by the time Cade came back to it. Cade wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with the house. It struck him as gaudy and extravagant now, somehow. Luke had suggested making it an open house for visiting Hyadeans. Whatever the outcome, Cade couldn’t see the kind of life being resurrected that he had come to know over the years. It wasn’t so much that the rewards seemed shallow now in comparison to the cost—which was true enough—so much as life having so much more to offer that was too intriguing to ignore. Trying to understand some of the questions that Krossig and Blair had raised, for example; or seeing people in terms of more than just gains to be assessed and realized. And in any case, the prospects, contacts, hangers-on, around whom that life had revolved and depended weren’t going to be around anymore—at least, not in those roles. They all seemed to have changed too in some fundamental ways, just as he had.

As, indeed, had the world. For what else did all the fumbling and reexamination to find a new direction mean than the dawning, finally, of a new perception that sought more than could be captured by Terran monetarist bookkeeping or the Hyadean calculus of efficiency as the sole measure of the worth of a life or the purpose of existence? Maybe now, together, the two races could build the legend the Hyadeans had created of what Earth could have been. If so, then perhaps the war had not been in vain.

The cabin came to a halt beside a platform in a roomy concourse of service desks and seating areas laid out beneath bright panel lights set amid a typically functional configuration of tie beams and roof supports. The arrivals disembarked to a throng of Hyadean officials and agents waiting to receive them. The Hyadean who had accompanied Cade and his companions from Denver conducted them to the two Hyadeans, a male and a female, who had been assigned to look after them. Waiting with them was a familiar purple-and-crimson-haired figure, dressed glaringly in an embroidered Bolivian shawl, straw hat with a band of wildy colored design, and bright green gaucho pants. It was Tevlak, going back on the same ship to spread Terran art on Chryse.

“So how things have changed since we were together,” he said, shaking hands vigorously with Vrel, Cade, and Marie. “Then, the security people invaded us. Now they no longer exist.” He put a hand on Nyarl’s shoulder. “So sorry about Luodine. She should have been here today to see this.”

“It was still as much her doing as anyone’s,” Nyarl told him. The guide from Denver performed the remaining introductions.

“You know, this routine at airports is getting to be kind of old,” Cade said to Marie as they began walking toward a ramp leading though to another space.

“I guess we’re just going to have to get used to being famous for a while,” Marie replied.

“Without the gun, I could get used to it,” Cade said. He snorted. “I never even got to shoot it. I told you I was never cut out for that kind of stuff.”

“So we complement each other. That’s supposed to be a good thing.”

Dee was looking around and up at the utilitarian drabness of what passed for decor, and raw engineering of the architecture. “Is it all going to be like this?” she asked Vrel. “If they’re catching on to our ways there, there has to be a whole load of openings for interior designers.”

“I think there are going to be some big changes very soon,” Vrel said. “We can’t import the Andes valleys or the Amazon forest. So what we lack naturally, we’ll make up with through ingenuity.”

“Ten years from now, Terran tourists will be flocking to sample the exotica of Chryse,” Tevlak assured them.

“That soon, eh?” Dee sounded skeptical.

“It isn’t going to be just enthusiasts like me—just one person on his own,” Tevlak said. “Bringing Earth to Chryse will involve everybody. Lots to do for lots of people.”

Cade glanced at them and thought for a few seconds. “You reckon so, eh? I think I know a few people who could be a big help. Maybe we could sound out a few leads for them as part of the agenda while we’re there.”

Marie nudged him pointedly. “I thought we said that all that’s over. You were going to find a new meaning in life.”