Clewes, the Canadian, was looking worried—understandably: His country was next door to the developing battle zone, not six thousand miles away. Huia Xianem, the Chinese Air Force colonel, who had asked Hudro a lot of questions earlier, was nodding agreement solemnly. So not everyone was being carried away.
But the cautious were evidently not the ones calling the tune. “Indeed, that’s the whole point,” Mme. Deng answered. “To avoid such a direct conflict. Moving quickly now will eliminate the remnant of Terran power that depends on Hyadean support. By the time the Hyadeans are in a position to deploy significant force here, any reason to use it will have gone away.”
“Is reinforcements arriving already from Chryse,” Hudro started to point out, but Zhao brushed it aside.
“They still think in terms of the local-scale conflicts in South America to protect their elite in their palaces there,” he said. “In taking things to a planetary scale, speed and surprise will be with us.”
“Do you see Hyadeans intervening actively in your country, Mr. Cade?” Imarak asked, as if that made the point.
Maybe for the same reason that there weren’t any Asians either, Cade thought to himself. Yet, anyway. Surely, the spectacle of Chinese troops landing in California to fight alongside Americans against other Americans was unthinkable. But similar enough things were written all through history.
“Is fine, maybe, while East Union army is in Texas and they still hope for help through Mexico,” Hudro said. “But if Union gets in trouble, yes, you likely see Hyadeans fighting there then.”
Zhao seemed unmoved. “You were in California how long ago, a few weeks?” he said to Cade. “CounterAction has been operating for two years there. Did you ever see any direct involvement of Hyadeans with the federal security forces?”
“They supplied equipment, advised on training . . .”
“But were they ever involved in action?”
Cade could only shake his head. “No.” Zhao nodded, satisfied.
“And before they have time to get involved, Washington will have fallen,” Mme. Deng said. “The Hyadeans’ base of political collaboration will have ceased to exist. The only option open to them then will be to renegotiate their position here on new terms.” She looked from Hudro to Cade. “Our terms.”
Cade looked around at their faces. Clewes, and to a lesser degree Colonel Huia, were uneasy, but they weren’t in control here. The rest were committed to their course and intractable. He’d thought that he and Hudro had been brought here for the benefit of their insight and experience. But it was clear that nothing they had to contribute was going to change anything. “What do you want from us?” he asked.
“Your face is known as the American in the movie,” Zhao replied. “You and your former wife . . . What happened to her, by the way?”
“She’s safe—back in California,” Cade said.
“Oh, really? I’m glad.” Zhao gestured at Hudro. “And here is the Hyadean whose story you told. We want to use you both in the same capacity here—at this crucial moment when we are about to launch our maximum effort. Talk to the people. Endorse our cause. Tell them that we are taking back our world from the aliens . . .” His gaze shifted to Hudro. “The human aliens as well as the ones who are propping up the Globalists.”
So that was it. A public-relations campaign to promote the war. Cade sat back heavily in his chair. “You seem to disapprove, Mr. Cade,” Mme. Deng commented. “Do you have some alternative strategy to suggest?”
Until the day before, Cade had thought he had. Especially after Cairns, he had entertained visions of sharing his new understanding of how both races were victims of exploitive minorities who together constituted the real common enemy; how the way to defeat them was not by taking on the Hyadean army but by winning over the mass of the Hyadean people. Why confront when they could undermine? Susan Gray had said.
Although dispirited by what he had heard, now that they were here, he had to try. He spoke with as much force as he could muster about the way Earth affected Hyadeans and how it awakened them to what they believed they could have been, and perhaps once had been. The way to defeat their economic imperialism lay in that direction, Cade said. Missiles and bombs could only bring disaster. Hudro followed, citing his own and Yassem’s experience. Hyadeans didn’t question, he pointed out. On the one hand that made their society easier to control; but it also meant that when they finally found out that they had been lied to, the effect would be incomparably more devastating than to any population on Earth—who pretty much took it for granted anyway. What had just happened to the U.S.A. could happen a hundred times more intensely across the whole of Chryse. “As Roland says, is the way you win here,” he concluded. “Is not with bombs. That way, you, your cities—all goes is destroyed.”