“I”ll see what we can do.” Tevlak drew in his poncho and bustled out of the room.
Marie picked up a coffee that she still hadn’t finished and sat staring distantly at the wall as she sipped. Nyarl rose, stretched, and moved over to do something to one of the cameras. Thryase began dictating in Hyadean to his veebee, which also functioned as portable secretary. Cade went over to join Hudro, who was still in the armchair.
“I’m curious, Colonel,” he said. “What turned you around?”
“I haven’t moved.”
“What changed your mind? Most Hyadeans don’t seem to question. And as you said, military training doesn’t help. Why were you different?”
Hudro stared at him. He had troubled, introspective eyes, the kind that were never at rest. “Here I discover your Terran teachings of the spirit. Hyadeans know power and violence, but not your God who saves people who cannot help Him. In our way, you kick when the other is down. The ideas of Earth feed the mind. So I question what I do. One day I will save lives too.”
Cade looked around the room. Here, in one house, they had Vrel, who was risking all because he had discovered ethical values previously unknown to him; Thryase had found a new politics of individualism and freedom; Tevlak had forsaken security to immerse himself in a culture; and now here was a military officer finding religion. Bombs and guns—the way that Marie had committed herself to—would never break the Hyadean stranglehold taking hold of Earth. But somewhere, Cade sensed, in these things that he was seeing here, was the way to prevail against them. Not to defeat them, for in a straight contest of strength they couldn’t be defeated. But where was the need to defeat anyone, when Hyadeans could become even more Terran than Terrans themselves? Somehow, that was the key. It was all just a question of finding the direction of the flow, and then going with it.
* * *
Tevlak’s name had been on the list that Julia had forwarded to her ISS controller as a matter of routine after its mention at Cade’s party. One of the items that subsequently found its way into his house was a slightly damaged—hence unsalable—set of nested Russian dolls now standing in a niche in the hallway, next to a Norwegian carved-horn mermaid. The location was not ideal, but even so the chip concealed in the base of the outermost doll had collected a smattering of conversation from all of the occupants of the house, if not a comprehensive account of what was going on there. The chip responded to its periodic interrogation code sent from a Hyadean satellite as it passed overhead, and uploaded the file of what information it had managed to accumulate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE U.S. WAS IN UPROAR. Sovereignty had made public an account that it claimed was by an ISS defector they named as Reyvek of how the ISS had engineered the Farden-Meakes assassinations, along with documentary evidence. Officials denied it, of course. Nobody of that name had ever been employed by the ISS, they said. The documents were forgeries. Sovereignty retorted that Reyvek was killed in an assault that the security forces had admitted in Tennessee, the expunging of the record was standard cover-up, and they would soon produce proof of that too. Coming on top of the continuing challenges being voiced to the administration’s legality, the story was causing a furore. There was open talk about a secession of western states. National Guard units in California, acting on orders from the state governor, had intervened to obstruct ISS operations.
Besides being concerned at the possible effects on his own personal future, Casper Toddrel was also disgruntled. The news detracted from what would otherwise have been a timely escape to an idyllic setting that he had been looking forward to. The Hyadean estate known as Derrar Dorvan had been built in the Andean foothills of southeast Peru for a leading government figure who had come to Earth on his retirement, accompanied by a retinue of family and special friends. It consisted of a thirty-room principal villa constructed Roman-style around a central court, designed by a specially commissioned Terran architect, situated on a clifftop facing a spectacle of foaming waterfalls plunging between forested mountainsides and rocky towers. A hundred acres of landscaped parkland, pools, and gardens on the reverse slope contained domiciles for lesser members of the tribe. With fast, convenient transportation always at hand, they enjoyed a rich and varied social life with other Hyadean immigrant groups scattered around the region’s maze of uplands and canyons, revolving to a large degree around parties and sports, sightseeing trips, and elaborate social games played for recognition, prestige, and romantic intrigue.