Worlds in Chaos (94 page)

Rocco acknowledged Cade and Marie with a nod. Cade returned it. “We owe you a big thanks. I never realized we were so well known here already.”

“If Hudro says you’re two important people who could make some difference to this war, that’s good enough for me,” Rocco said.

“So how did you pull it off?”

Rocco indicated Hudro and Yassem. “You have to ask them. They got into the system that controls the Hyadean robot flyers. Brought it down where it wasn’t supposed to go. We were waiting.”

“Where are you from, Rocco?” Marie asked.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. No family left anywhere. All wiped out in the fighting. Now I just live to fight Globs.”

“Globs?” Cade’s brow creased.

“Globalists,” Marie supplied.

“Forces of governments that work for the criminals,” Hudro said. “Is more complicated here than Earth is told.”

“And every day getting more complicated,” Rocco said. “What do you think is going to happen in the north?” he asked Cade and Marie. “Places in the western states ordering federal troops out. Air bases being taken over.”

“We hadn’t heard about it,” Cade said.

“A lot of people say they’re gonna split.”

Cade turned his head to Hudro. “After you left Tevlak’s, we tried to send a file to Vrel via his phone. Did it come through?”

Hudro nodded. “It comes through. But we cannot send to Chryse. Vrel think he knows somebody in California instead. If they ever get it, I don’t know.”

“Where’s Vrel now?” Cade asked.

“Waiting for us. Is with Luodine and Nyarl. When—” Hudro looked away as a call from the pilot up front interrupted. Rocco got up, ducking his head, and shouldered his way forward between the rows of figures hunched over guns and packs. Hudro straightened up on the floor in readiness to rise. Next to Cade, Marie pulled herself closer.

Rocco came back and shouted down to Hudro. “Segora is under attack. We are being warned off. The pilot wants you up front. We’ve got incoming radar from somewhere.”

“What’s Segora?” Cade asked Hudro as he unfolded up from the floor.

“Is where we were supposed to land. Maybe have to change plans now.” Hudro followed Rocco forward. The guerrillas had become alert, straightening up in their seats to watch something outside. Cade turned to look out of the open hatch, past the machine gun. Several miles away, perhaps, an aircraft shaped like a black arrowhead was climbing away from the ground, followed by a second a short distance behind and to one side. A boiling cloud of black smoke mixed with flame rose behind them. More planes were visible as dots higher up.

“Air strike,” Yassem commented needlessly. Smoke was also coming up from other places among the trees. Whether it was due to air attack, artillery, or conflagrations on the ground was impossible to say. A brilliant pink light flashed past the open gun-hatch; then came the jolting of objects hitting the helicopter’s structure. The cold realization came over Cade that they were being shot at. Yassem put her helmet back on and secured it.

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
.”