The Legend That Was Earth (43 page)

"Dee, I have to go. We'll call you right back as soon as we know any more. You might want to call Hudro and the others out at Edwards. At least we know they're okay."

"Vrel's talking to them now.... Okay, Roland, we'll be waiting to hear from you."

Cade directed the flyer to a section of street where several police cars were parked haphazardly in a cluster, another visible from above, approaching a block away. Several uniformed figures were in a group, trying to take in the situation, while others ran to check a partly collapsed house alongside, and another directed an ambulance that was just drawing up. The surroundings looked as if they had been combed by a giant lawn rake. There had been a grotesque rain of bodies—probably the protestors who had been picketing the mission. The police in front of the cars looked up as the flyer descended; two of them waved it toward a clear area on one side. "Forward slow, two o'clock," Cade instructed. "Lower.... Hold it here. Take it straight down, vertically."

"
Confirm landing vicinity free of personnel and obstructions?
" the AI requested.

"You're clear."

"
Landing and terminating.
"

"System off."

It was worse outside the insulating confines of the flyer's cabin. Stinging dust and fumes assailed Cade's eyes and nostrils. Sirens whooped and howled from the surrounding streets; police radios cackled. In the lulls between, he could hear screams and terrified shouting not far away.

There was little more to be learned at this juncture. The officers had been among the first to arrive. None of them knew what had happened. One speculated that something had come down from orbit. They took details of the Hyadeans at Edwards and Anaheim and how they could be contacted, of Cade's involvement with the mission, and relayed the information to headquarters. One reported to Cade that Clara Norburn had just heard the news and was on her way. Meanwhile, a helicopter had appeared and was circling overhead; more ambulances, a string of fire engines, and a truck filled with soldiers arrived. A police mobile command post began setting up to coordinate rescue and casualty-clearing operations among the surrounding city blocks. But it was already plain that nobody within the mission building itself or its close vicinity could have survived.

Cade called for Hudro and Dee to get over and gave the location. By the time they arrived in Dee's car, the scene resembled a small war. Clara Norburn appeared with staff and military liaison people in a flotilla of cars and escorts; shortly afterward, a National Guard helicopter touched down, bringing Hudro, Yassem, and Nyarl from Edwards.

What they should do next was not obvious. Going back to the house wouldn't address the immediate issue of four Hyadeans who no longer belonged anywhere. Clara arranged for them all, including Cade, Marie, and Luke, to be taken to her department at the municipal offices near the Civic Center. Vrel was still in shock and unable to communicate much that was coherent. So far, just he and five others who had been elsewhere for various reasons were all that was left of the Hyadean West Coast Trade and Cultural Mission.

THEY SAT DESPONDENTLY around a staff room that had been put at their disposal until something could be worked out. Luke had gone to call Henry and tell him to put a hold on clearing the house in case they were about to receive some unexpected house guests. A meal had been brought in but nobody had touched very much of it. Only now were the Hyadeans recovering their faculties to a degree anywhere within sight of normality.

"Just when we had achieved what Luodine was working for," Nyarl said, staring at the carpet. "It was done to shut down the channel to Chryse. So we must have been having effect there. Now she will never know."

"She should have lived long enough to have known," Yassem agreed.

"Is Chryse that has problem, but missiles are from Terran submarine," Hudro said. "So who commands this? These politics are all double faces."

Vrel just sat, holding Dee's hand. He had remarked several times that if he hadn't decided to stop at her office on the spur of the moment on his way back to the mission, he would have been there too.

Cade sat to one side, saying little. Marie was with Clara in Clara's office, following the reports coming in via Sacramento. For once, he didn't know what to say. Despite the time he had spent with Hyadeans, he didn't have any privileged insight into the inner workings of their the minds. And just at the moment, he was having enough trouble with the conflicting thoughts welling up from the deeper recesses of his own mind.

News that afternoon had been that the tide in Texas had turned, with Federation and turned-around Union tank columns reoccupying Forth Worth and Austin. The lines in front of Houston were declared open. Units defected from the Union cause were moving back toward the Mississippi, while growing agitation among the Southern states was rumored to be destabilizing the rear of the crumbling Union. Cade wondered if the Chinese in Beijing might have had it right all along when they insisted that the Union would cave in before the Hyadeans could intervene effectively. They had the professional military staffs, after all, and should know. Cade didn't. In that case, his fears based on the things he had seen had been wrong. Okay, he could live with that. And Hudro's convictions, based on his own direct experiences, were wrong too. With a slightly bigger push, Cade could accept that. But something still didn't feel right about it.

If the Washington regime's situation was really that precarious, then they would surely know it too. What didn't feel right was that they should choose such a moment for the strike against the mission, which didn't affect the military situation but could easily have the result of outraging the Hyadeans and dividing them to the degree that effective intervention became impossible, just when the East appeared to be in most need of it. It didn't make sense.

Or was he simply refusing to face that everything the Hyadeans he had come to know as friends had striven for, and finally achieved at the cost of today's tragedy, had been for nothing? For if the collapse of the Union was imminent with or without any action on the part of the population of Chryse, then all that Luodine, Orzin, Wyvex, and the others had hoped to bring about was happening anyway.

Cade's phone beeped. It was Marie. Her voice was low but tense. "Roland. I'm still with Clara. Something's come in that you ought to hear about. Can you get up here?"

"Sure." He cut the connection, hesitated, and then stood up. "They want me for something," he said to the Hyadeans. As he walked to the door, he was conscious of their stares following him. He had the strange feeling of abandoning them, as if they were his charges. It was ridiculous.

Clara's office was on the floor above. With the two women were Chester Di Milestro, a Los Angeles-based aide to President Jeye, and Major Gerofsky from the military liaison, both of whom Cade had met earlier. One of the screens on the wall next to Clara's desk showed the east central Pacific with colored lines plotting courses of naval units. Another held a frozen head-and-shoulders picture of an officer with lots of braid on his cap, addressing the camera. "It's big, Roland," Clara said without preamble. "Admiral Varney—commander of the lead carrier force. He's defected."

Cade looked from one to the other. "What do you mean?"

Di Milestro answered. "He issued a proclamation two hours ago, saying he took an oath to defend Americans, not attack them. If the other carrier groups continue on their present course, he will consider it his duty to oppose them with all the force at his disposal. It means he's with us."

Gerofsky waved a hand at the map. "Look—the red there. Varney has turned his force ninety degrees. He's steaming east, converging with the Asian fleet from Hawaii to head them off. With land-based air from Mexico, that sews it all up."

Marie came across and gripped Cade's arm. Her face was ecstatic. "Isn't it incredible news, Roland! You heard about Texas. Now they're expecting Canada to come in at any moment—close the northern edge all the way to the Atlantic. It would
have
to be all over then! We've won!"

"It's a bandwagon," Clara said. "And it's rolling."

Cade searched their faces. They were all intoxicated with the news. And they could be right, too.... But still he couldn't quite bring himself to share it. He sensed again the same relentless certainty and refusal to be deflected that he had seen in Beijing. Yet something kept telling him it felt wrong.

"What's the matter, Roland? I'd have expected to see a little more excitement," Marie said. Of course she was being swept along with it too. She was still the revolutionary. Everything which, for years, she had endured dangers and hardship for, seen her friends die for, was happening.

Cade wasn't sure what to say. He pictured again the four faces that he had just left in the room on the floor below. "I don't know.... I guess maybe because it's
our
bandwagon," he answered.

"I'm not sure I follow," Gerofsky said.

"Us.... Terrans." Cade made a motion with his head to indicate the direction he had come from. "What about those four downstairs? They put everything on the line too, and today they lost everything. It seems as if they're about to be left behind in the dust and forgotten, while we all go on a binge of self-congratulations." But even as he spoke, he knew it was just words to fill the space. It wasn't the reason.

Clara nodded, trying to be diplomatic. "I hear what you're saying, Roland. They did a heroic job—for us, because they decided it was right. And that won't be forgotten. But the part they wrote isn't in the final script. Nobody was to know it would work out this way."

"And it's cleaner," Di Milestro put in. "Fast. Surgical. Without depending on some other planet that nobody understands."

"They're in a nutcracker on both fronts," Gerofsky said. "In the Pacific, and on the mainland. They have to know it's over too. I'd bet even money we could get a peace offer from Washington before the end of today."

Which made it all the more incomprehensible that they should take out the Hyadean mission, Cade told himself. What was there for Washington to gain? Downstairs, the Hyadeans had been just as mystified. "These politics are all double faces," Hudro had said. Then his other words repeated again in Cade's mind: "So who commands this?"

Who commands?!
 

It hit Cade then what was wrong. Of
course
it made no sense for Washington to have ordered the mission strike. The only explanation, then, was that
Washington
hadn't ordered it. At least, not of their own initiation.
They were no longer in charge!
 

"Oh, my God," Cade breathed. He licked his lips and looked quickly around the three faces watching him. "You're wrong," he told them. "All of you—Sacramento, Beijing. You're all wrong. It isn't over. It hasn't even started."

Clara gave the others a puzzled look. Marie alone seemed to have registered the graveness of Cade's expression. "What are you talking about, Roland?" Clara asked him.

He wiped a hand across his brow, still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of it. "The mission... that thing today. The Hyadean high command ordered it. It wasn't anybody in the Washington government. Don't you see what that means? They've taken over. And they've just cut the only independent link back to Chryse that could tell anyone there what happens next. What do you think
that
means?"

Gerofsky fingered his mustache and turned away to confront the shelves on the far wall. "No.... No, it can't be," he muttered.

"That's merely a speculation," Di Milestro said. "It's obviously something that's just occurred to you. You don't
know
." His tone accused Cade for even being capable of conceiving it.

"Then get the Hyadeans up here and see what they think," Cade said. "Hudro as good as said it already. Only he's still too shaken up to put together what it means." He looked around at them again. Di Milestro and Gerofsky were unsure, not wanting to believe him, yet unable to fault what he had said. Marie was persuaded but needed a moment to absorb it. Clara had been around long enough to know that Cade didn't let many things become serious enough to weigh down his life, and when he did, they were serious. But for now she had to consider her official position too.

"Suppose you're right, Roland," she said, standing behind her desk, her knuckles resting on the surface. "How can we change it? What are you suggesting we do? Just capitulate? Are you saying we should try to get Jeye to prevail on the Chinese to call it all off, then back down and accept whatever the Hyadeans choose to dictate?"

"Never!" Gerofsky wheeled back to face them. "And hand the world over as a colony state? I'd see it in flames from end to end first."

Just what they needed, Cade groaned inwardly. Yet this was would probably be the kind of reaction at every level. He realized that he wasn't sure himself exactly what he wanted them to do. Di Milestro talked direct to Jeye, but Cade didn't know him, and right at this moment he was acutely conscious of not commanding Di Milestro's confidence. Di Milestro confirmed it a moment later. "I think you're overreacting, Mr. Cade," he said. "Which is understandable. You've lost a lot of friends. But the way I see it, this attempt to set up a back-door PR link into Chryse was only a supplement to the military effort, anyway—in case we needed extra leverage." He shrugged. "It seems to me we're doing just fine without."

"Just fine? I'd say we're doing pretty damn great," Gerofsky said. "It looks like the Chinese are about to walk right over them in Panama. They don't need any link to Chryse."

Cade sighed and looked away. No, there wasn't a link from China to Chryse because the Hyadean Washington office controlled the channels, and right now they were permitting only approved traffic. That was why Yassem and Luodine had set up their illicit connection to the Querl. Cade blinked as the obvious finally struck him. He thought back to the things he had seen at Cairns: the scientific base and its easygoing independence; the local spirit of cooperation with the aliens and getting to know them. No, there wasn't another independent link. But there
could be
!