She had listened, smiling, to wives whose lives revolved around hosting ever-more bizarre parties, the principal aim of which was to achieve prominent mention in the socialite gossip columns—one had been set on an island park stocked with over two thousand animals from one of the Querl worlds; another was held orbiting in freefall. She dutifully recorded the wisdoms of generals who measured the cost-effectiveness of a battle with a formula that mixed money, fatalities, and five categories of casualty; of media chiefs who sold rights to dictate what slant should be put on news stories; and of “image consultants” who had built a respectable profession out of presenting things to the world as other than they were, and coaching influential people in the art of lying convincingly from a screen.
Somewhere, she had told herself, there had to be a place where words meant what they said and not the opposite, and reality was what it seemed. And then she heard of the amazing planet that had been discovered in the course of exploring more distant star systems following development of a new, range drive—a planet whose inhabitants wove dreams into worlds of thought, created forms for no other purpose than to delight the senses, and described realms of vision and being that confounded all of the professors and scientists. Fads and fashions extolling Terran art and creativity appeared all over the Chrysean worlds. The ingenuity and imaginativeness of Terran minds stimulated great demand among Chrysean industries. And Luodine talked her way into an assignment there.
At first she had found herself bewildered by this world of chaotic, colorful craziness. But then, as she traveled and learned to reorient her thinking, she began to discover ways of looking at life, its values, that Hyadeans could never have conceived—unless, as some maintained, they had once known such things in a distant past age and forgotten them. There was the advertising executive in Sweden who gave up a secure, lucrative career and mortgaged his house to raise capital because he had always wanted to make a movie. She met a couple in Iran who for two years had been bicycling around the world—utterly pointless to the average Hyadean; captivating to Luodine. There were the religious missionaries in Africa who taught and treated the children of strangers with no prospect of gain other than the following of their convictions. There were dozens of stories from every continent.
And then Luodine found that the real policy being enacted was to turn them all into Hyadeans. Not only that; they were expected to be grateful. Sometimes, apparently, a little help was needed to make them see the benefits.
* * *
“Look, I’ve already told you, one of them had come from the United States; I don’t know who the other one was.” Luodine turned in front of the table in the room at Tevlak’s house and regarded the officer in charge of the Hyadean security unit, who was dictating notes to a communicator pad. Cade and Marie had already been taken away in two of the six personnel carriers that had arrived. Since the officer had disclosed that Vrel had been identified, she wasn’t giving anything away by repeating it. “We refused even to consider recording the kind of story they wanted. They realized they were wasting their time, and they left.”
“Heading where?” the officer asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not the kind of thing people in their situation would shout to everyone.”
The officer looked at her uncertainly. He was young and seemed not very experienced. Luodine was taking the only line that held any promise of getting her and Nyarl out. “You’re saying that none of this was actually used?” He gestured at the equipment set up in the room, which the technicians had examined and pronounced clean of any recent recordings.
“They were talking about subversive material!” Luodine looked and sounded shocked. “Claims directed at undermining our Terran policy! Would you believe that?” She shook her head. “We’d simply been told there would be an interview involving some important, undisclosed people. After all, that’s our job. That’s what we’re here for. We didn’t know anything about fugitives from the U.S. We set up and prepared, sure. When they arrived, and we found out what it was all about, we said no.” Luodine shrugged, turned away, and then back again. “And the rest I’ve already told you.”