Thirsty. Sweating. Touch of damp fabric.
Cade was lying down. Every lurch tossed him to the side and back again, causing pain to shoot through his head. His head didn’t feel good at all. It felt bloated on one side and numb at the back. The thought came and went hazily. His head was wrapped in something. Stiff. Aching everywhere. . . . None of him felt good at all.
He heard the whirr of an engine revving, then gears being shifted. The lurching resolved itself into the jolting of a truck on a rough road. He tried to open his eyes but they seemed to be stuck. Even the effort made the shooting pains in his head worse. The thirst was unbearable, as if his throat were filled with dry furnace ash. He groaned.
Voices somewhere floated incomprehensibly. A hand lifted his head. He winced, feeling as if his neck would break. Something touched his mouth. Water! Not cool, but priceless. He tried to gulp greedily but the hand restrained him, allowing him only to sip. A wet cloth was swabbed over his face and eyes. He tried opening them again and succeeded with an effort. A face was looking down at him. His faculties still hadn’t returned sufficiently for him to recognize anything. He sipped more from the water bottle and registered slowly that he was in a truck. Only then did he begin to remember that he had been in a helicopter.
Another face, blue-gray in hue, materialized behind the first. He flexed his lips. “Vrel?” he managed.
“No.” The face looked concerned. “This is Hudro.”
Oh, right. Vrel hadn’t been there. So how come a truck now? “What . . . ? Did we crash?”
“Was more than a day ago now,” Hudro said. “Was fighting at Segora. We were hit.”
Cade contemplated the statement in a detached kind of way. It didn’t take on any immediate great significance. His head had been injured, and it hurt. Pink lights. He remembered the gunfire. Then it all started coming back.
“Marie!” He focused and looked up. “How is Marie?” The Hyadean face stared down at him in what seemed a long silence. “Where is she? What’s up?
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cade,” Hudro said. “She didn’t make it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE FLYER SPED LOW on a southwestward course, a few thousand feet above the barren salt wastes of the southern Altiplano. Ahead and to the right, the line was coming into view of the new roadway with its procession of robot trucks carrying produce from the extraction operations north to the Amazon outlet, and a return flow of vehicles either empty or bringing construction materials and supplies. Vrel and Hudro were over an hour out from leaving Tevlak’s house and getting close to Uyali.
“What do you make of it?” Vrel asked Hudro. He meant the news they had heard at Tevlak’s that morning of the escalation of sabotage and guerrilla attacks in the Amazon region, and the retaliatory actions by government forces. They were speaking, naturally, in Hyadean.
“Somebody, somewhere gave them a signal. Someone who has been building up backing and support.”
“The Asians?”
“They get a lot of the blame publicly, but I’m pretty sure there’s more to it. The Asian economy isn’t affected that much. A lot of Western finance would like to see a slowdown in the operations here.”
“I thought they were supposed to be with us,” Vrel said.
“It’s all complicated . . . trying to understand what goes on. I don’t really understand it.”
Vrel watched Hudro staring out through the view panels. His face was troubled. “So what are you going to do?” Vrel asked. There was a pause.
“There is a girl that I know up in Brazil—it’s best if you don’t know her name . . .” Hudro seemed to think better of whatever he had been about to say. “We have plans,” he ended simply.
“A Terran girl?”
“No. She is Hyadean.”
“I know a Terran girl in Los Angeles,” Vrel said. “Very pretty. Blond hair, cut like this at the front.” He made a line with his hand to indicate a fringe. “Sometimes I think of going off to live a Terran life—like Tevlak.”