The Legend That Was Earth (11 page)

His oblique references not having been rebuffed, Cade interlaced his fingers, leaned closer across the table, and came to the point. "I want to contact somebody who I believe might be with one of the underground political groups in this country. I've reason to think you might have connections who might pass a message in the right direction. Can you help?"

Udovich's pink, moonlike, bespectacled features—surely the most incongruous image for the kind of thing Cade was asking—didn't register surprise. He had clearly been expecting something like this. His manner, however, shed its protective cover of vague geniality and became businesslike. "Who is this person?" he murmured.

"My former wife, who went to China. I've heard that she's back now, with CounterAction. I have someone who needs to leave the country invisibly. CounterAction are supposed to have ways."

"What kind of problem prevents this person from buying a ticket and getting on a plane?" Udovich asked.

"Giving the wrong people a bad press can get you into bad favor these days," Cade answered. "If the people who don't like what you say have the power to take you off the streets, things can get awkward."

"Why should I or anyone else care? Why risk it?"

"Because it's the same cause." Cade shrugged. "And in any case, you run a ministry. Protecting your flock depends on donations. You know a little bit about me. I can arrange generous contributions from the most unlikely quarters. I'm sure it all helps."

Udovich considered the proposition for a while, crunching on an ice cube from his tea. "Supposing I
were
able to pass this request on to where you ask, why wouldn't that be enough?' he queried at last. "Why does it need to find this ex of yours specifically?"

"It wouldn't if whoever makes the decicions were happy to take my word for it," Cade agreed. "But why should they? She and I might have had our differences, but she'd vouch that I can be trusted to play straight. I'm not political. I deal in people. Reputation is my work." He smiled faintly and gestured across the table. "A bit like you, I guess."

Udovich nodded slowly and seemed satisfied. "I'd need her name and a little about when you were together," he said. "And something that would convince her this has come from you."

Cade supplied the minimum details that seemed necessary. Udovich committed them to memory. The second part was tougher. "Tell her... there's some red coal," he said finally. Udovich nodded and didn't ask. In their more romantic days, one of the things Cade and Marie had liked doing together was solving cryptic crossword puzzles. It was an anagrammatic play on his name: ROL
and
CADE; take the conjunction out, and the remaining letters rearranged into
red coal
. With a bit of playing around, Marie would get it.

"No guarantees, but we'll see," Udovich pronounced. He finished his tea and stood up. "Well, I must get back to tending my flock." He looked back over his shoulder as he was about to leave. "We must watch out for the wolves, you see." He walked away, leaving Cade to take it whichever way he pleased.

* * *

Late that afternoon, Dee and Vrel stopped by the house to collect a share of the previous day's fish catch, which Henry had cleaned, gutted, and set aside in the refrigerator for them. Julia was in the guest suite keeping Rebecca company, since she preferred to stay out of sight of visitors. Cade entertained Vrel and Dee to drinks in the lounge area around the bar.

"Getting daring these days, aren't we, Vrel?" he quipped as Vrel mixed himself a gin and tonic—with a generous measure of tonic. "Taking fish back to eat at the mission, now, and halfway toward becoming an alcoholic."

"I think I'm just beginning to realize how insipid our food is," Vrel said, making a face.

"I hope you're remembering to take those pills they give you. Wouldn't want you going down with any of these terrible Terran germs."

"I know you used to take them once," Dee said. "But I don't remember seeing them for ages."

Vrel made an indifferent shrug. "Maybe, getting to know Earthpeople better has made me start to think that maybe Hyadeans can be a little..." He groped for the word, then muttered something to his veebee.

"
Neurotic
," it supplied.

"Neurotic," Vrel repeated.

Dee laughed delightedly and squeezed his arm in a way that said she liked him better like this. Vrel grinned.

"How is he going to fit in again when he goes home?" Cade asked her.

Dee pouted. "
Roland!
Don't talk about him going home." She looked at Vrel. "That's not going to be for a long time yet, is it?"

Vrel's face became more serious. "I don't know. I suppose a lot depends on what happens here. Two Hyadeans from the mission were harassed and jeered at in a mall near Lakewood yesterday. The police escorted them back. They've put extra security around the mission again."

"Oh.... That's a shame," Cade said. The outbreaks of protest and violence across the country were causing anti-Hyadean reactions in places. ISS agents landing in a helicopter assault had wiped out what was said to be the base of the group that had mounted the attack in Kentucky, and security units across the nation were cracking down with arrests of suspected CounterAction supporters. Cade had always tried to steer clear of such things. Yet now, he reflected, his action in harboring Rebecca was probably enough to get him on a wanted list already. He hoped Udovich wasn't being affected. If pressures developed that prevented him from following through, Cade could find himself saddled with having a fugitive from the federal government in the house indefinitely.

He sighed and tasted his drink wearily. One mention of Marie, and life was getting complicated again. Even at this distance—whatever distance; he didn't even know where she was—and after so long, it seemed her nature was still that of catastrophic upheaval, disrupting what had started to become his predictable, gravitationally stable universe.

TWO DAYS PASSED BY. Independent sources on the net circulated critical accounts of "search and intern" sweeps being carried out by airborne security forces landed in remote parts of Appalachia, Colorado, and Utah. The media billed the actions as counterterrorist, directed at the groups who had begun a campaign of political assassination, which the authorities would not tolerate. A number of helicopters were alleged to have been brought down by missiles. An ISS spokesman called for Hyadean defensive equipment to be fitted to government-operated air vehicles as a precaution.

Then, Cade received a phone call one morning when he was with Julia and their accountant, who had stopped by to review some figures. A smoothly articulated masculine voice asked him what the color of coal was. "My kind is red," Cade replied.

"Then I gather I'm speaking to the right person."

Cade asked the accountant to excuse him but this was private and important, and took the phone through to his study. He closed the door and indicated it was okay to go ahead.

"I have a message from Mole Woman. It says you could always be depended on for surprises," the caller informed him.

Despite everything, Cade couldn't contain a smile. This was his proof of validity. "Mole Woman" was one of the names that he used to call Marie in their lighter moments—from the comic-book Catwoman, a joke at the way Marie had of burrowing into the bedclothes on cold mornings to leave just her nose showing.

"It must be my nature," Cade affirmed. "Okay. What do we have?"

"I understand you have a job applicant seeking an overseas position," the voice informed him.

"Looking for less stress and pressure. An escape from the rat race," Cade confirmed.

"The positions we offer normally pay around twenty thousand. Was that the kind of figure your client has in mind?"

It was double talk, spelling out what the service would
cost
. "We could settle for that, yes," Cade agreed.

"Fine. Of course, we would need to arrange an appropriate interview. Where does the applicant currently reside?"

"I guess you could say on the West Coast."

"Hm.... These things are usually managed by our Eastern region. However, if that should be impracticable, it would probably be possible to arrange a preliminary meeting with a local branch representative."

Cade chewed on his lip while he thought about it. The reference to the East probably meant that CounterAction's route for spiriting people out of the country led in that direction, maybe through the Caribbean to Africa, and then Asia via the Middle East. He didn't want to get any more involved here, in his own backyard, he decided. Midnight callers and furtive meetings around the locality would be the last thing he needed. Better to get Rebecca there as quickly as possible. And if something came of it, she would already be partly on her way.

"I'd prefer that the regional office handle it, if they're the proper people," he said.

"You will be contacted in due course." The caller hung up.

* * *

That same evening, a fax came through in Cade's study of a promotional brochure from a hotel called the Metro in downtown Atlanta. Typed across the bottom were terse instructions for the "applicant" to be outside the main doors of the ground-level motor lobby at a given date and time, holding an Atlanta city guide book for recognition.

The date stipulated allowed four days, presumably making allowance for a journey by road. Luke advised against it on the grounds that, with all the trouble in the news, spot checks of travelers on major highways, railroads, and public buses were likely to have been intensified. And besides, he didn't think Rebecca was up to the stresses of a protracted trip. But Cade had never contemplated such alternatives in the first place. What was the point of doing favors for wealthy friends, he asked, if you couldn't ask one back now and again for yourself?

There was one Lou Zinner, based most of the time in Las Vegas, who had interests in casinos and the entertainment world, and fingers in various associated sleazy dealings. It was Lou, for example, who provided the available girls for Cade's Hyadean parties and boat trips. He remained at a distance behind Cade's more respectable front and didn't deal with the Hyadeans directly. Lou also happened to own an executive jet, which he used for attending business meetings, visiting "family," and flying a seemingly inexhaustible supply of mistresses, young admirers, and hopeful starlets to be entertained in exotic places. Lou was always happy to hear from Cade because high-ranking Hyadeans taking time off talked in big bucks. Hence, he was a hundred percent receptive when Cade called and said he wanted the loan of Lou's plane and its pilot for a day.

The craggy, balding head guffawed heartily on the screen in Cade's study. "What's going on, Rolie? Don't tell me. You're expanding the operation. The boat's too tame for 'em now. You've got aliens that wanna join the twenty thousand club, right?"

"Wrong. No, nothing like that. I need to make a rush delivery across the country. It'll be back the same night."

"Okay, then I'm not askin'. So what's the cut?"

Cade thought for a second. "Maybe I'll be able to get you some high rollers out there yet. You know how those ones that come across from Washington are loaded."

"I'll settle for that. Okay, Rolie, you've got it. Just try to send it back in one piece, willya? I've got it booked for the weekend after."

That solved the immediate problem. But Luke thought that if they were going to have an entire aircraft at their disposal, they could make better use of it. "Just to take one person to Atlanta?" he said to Cade when Cade gave him the news. "Why on her own? What happens if something screws up—say nobody shows, and she finds herself stuck there? We couldn't just leave her like that. One of us ought to go too. I say we keep a good eye on her until we know she's in the right hands."

Cade agreed. "In that case I'll go," he said. "This isn't really your affair. I got us into it." Luke shrugged and nodded in a way that said it was fine by him.

Julia, however, was perturbed when they updated her on their thoughts. "Why risk getting mixed up with CounterAction people directly?" she objected. "If you're seen or identified with them, it could start trouble that will never go away. We've had the ISS here already. You know what's going on all over the country. We don't need to get mixed up in all that."

It seemed a strange turn of attitude after the things Cade had heard. "Because she's an old friend, remember?" he replied. "Look, I'm not planning on getting mixed up with anybody. All I'm doing is taking her as far as a hotel lobby. I don't even need to wait there with her—just close enough to see she gets picked up. That's it. Then I'm on my way back."

Eventually, Julia relented, but she still didn't seem happy about it.

Accordingly, Cade and Rebecca made their preparations the evening before the appointed day. Lou Zinner's jet appeared at the John Wayne/Orange County airport early the next morning as arranged, and they took off on time. En route, the plane was challenged by two Air Force jets that radioed for identification and a mission statement. Fortunately, the pilot had filed a flight plan, stated as serving the private business needs of a Nevada-registered VIP. The plane landed at Hartsfield International Airport, Atlanta, a little over four hours after leaving California.

FRANK PACELLI HAD WORKED night shift stocking supermarket shelves, sold kitchen ware, and part-timed at a gas station to pay his way through college, and emerged with a degree in chemistry and metallurgical engineering. He had worked first with a couple of mining corporations in Minnesota and Colorado, later at a smelting and rolling plant in Korea, done well, and come back to a position as process designer with a company in Minneapolis. Then the Hyadeans began flooding the world markets with bulk minerals extracted from places like Bolivia by methods no Terran industry could compete with; the company folded, and now Frank drove a taxicab. He got pretty mad when he heard about some of the dealings that went on in Washington and the kind of money some people were reputed to make out of them. But with three children of high-school age to think about, he couldn't afford to risk getting directly involved in the more militant protest organizations that everyone pretended not to know about. But sympathizing with them was another thing. Much passed his eyes that he didn't see, came to his ears that he didn't hear, and he helped the cause when he could.