“Arcadia’s a professional. She can take care of herself.”
“So was Ruby.”
They arrived at the bus and waited while several others ahead of them boarded. Chen, a youthful Hyadean member of the household, was waiting, smiling, to usher them inside. Two of the native house stewards were standing with him. An additional attraction for wealthy Hyadeans acquiring estates on Earth was the availability and willingness of domestic help, which they regarded as a big status symbol. Employing menial labor on Chryse entailed political problems and was generally a privilege enjoyed by only the most prestigious or influential. Screening the flood of native applicants was a full-time job for specialized Hyadean security experts aided by Terran psychologists. Armed native guards supervised by a Hyadean officer watched from a discreet distance in the background.
The interior of the bus was like a luxurious but uninspired waiting room, with Hyadean-size seating and a front-end display screen, at present blank. The doors closed. The bus rose on an invisible cushion and moved away smoothly and silently. The sight of rolling lawns, lakeside walks among trees alive with birds and crossing ornamented bridges, knots of llamas and alpacas staring curiously from grassy glades and rocky stream banks dispelled further thoughts of assassinations and political coverups for the moment. Toddrel lounged back and looked enviously out over the scene and at the mountains beyond. What, he wondered, would be the prospects for somebody who cooperated sufficiently with the Hyadeans one day finding a niche in a place like this too? What a change it would make from the familiar environments he had come to detest, of stultifying boardrooms and choking, congested cities.
Denham’s voice brought him back. “One item that the Hyadeans are going to bring up is a proposal to supply remote-detonatable munitions to Earth from now on, and retrofit existing stocks. It’s the ideal answer to matériel disappearing. Wherever it’s gone to, you can press a button and explode it. How’s that for a deterrent?”
Toddrel frowned. “Hmm. . . . It’s inviting high collateral. There’d be a lot of outcry, bad press. Do we need more right now?”
“That could actually help us,” Denham pointed out. “The scarier the publicity, the better. Nobody would dare touch any of the stuff. Just what we want.”
“Let’s see what the general reaction at the meeting is when it’s proposed,” Toddrel suggested.
They came to one of the outlying residences, which had been made ready with conference facilities, a catering and domestic staff, and additional guards. They got out, and Denham and Insing moved ahead as they approached the building. Just as they entered, a high-pitched tone came from the compad in Drisson’s jacket. He drew it out and looked at Toddrel meaningfully. “Emergency band. This could be something new.” Denham and Insing stopped to look back. Toddrel motioned for them to go on, and that he and Drisson would catch up. They looked around and moved into a more secluded space off the entrance hallway. Toddrel watched the screen as Drisson activated it. The face and shoulders of a Hyadean appeared, in a tunic carrying military insignia. “Borfetz—Hyadean security,” Drisson muttered.
The Hyadean peered out at them guardedly. “You are not alone. I need to speak urgently.”
“It’s okay,” Drisson said. “This is Toddrel. He’s with us.”
Borfetz nodded but didn’t look happy about it. “We have located them, both—the man and the woman,” he reported. “They are at a house that belongs to an eccentric Hyadean, two hundred miles from Uyali. They don’t seem to be planning to depart anytime soon. We can be there within an hour.”
“Not another cowboy circus this time,” Toddrel murmured in Drisson’s ear. “We need them to talk. I have to find out how much they know and who else they’ve passed it on to. Everything could depend on this.”
“Minimum force, no lethality,” Drisson relayed. “They’re wanted alive.”
“I understand,” the Hyadean acknowledged.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE MIDDAY NEWS BROUGHT REPORTS that two of the freighters used to transport Hyadean-processed minerals out via the Amazon had been sunk by planted bombs. The Brazilian Air Force was conducting retaliatory strikes against suspected guerrilla bases and support centers in the area. In Bolivia, a section of one of the conveyor lines in the extraction region west of Uyali had been blown up. The newscaster expressed fears that this might be the beginnings of a major sabotage campaign against the Hyadean operations. A government commentator attributed it to a sudden increase in external aid to MOPAN—Movimento por la Autonomía Nacional was the name of the general resistance movement formed out of various opposition groups that had grown throughout the region. Asian sources were suspected. Weapons of Asian manufacture in captured guerrilla supplies were presented as evidence, and there was some insinuation of Chinese companies acting as fronts. The commentator feared that more potent Hyadean weapons might find their way through via the same route. He cited the recent assassinations carried out in the U.S. with a Hyadean plasma cannon as a precedent.