The officer seemed perplexed. He went outside the door to consult with a colleague for several minutes, and then retired to another room for privacy while he sought instructions from a remote higher authority.
The remaining Terran security soldiers—those who had not gone with Cade and Marie—had dispersed to other parts of the house or were carrying out routine searches of the people and vehicles outside while the Hyadeans settled their own affairs. Thryase was in the next room, where he could be heard protesting vehemently to officials at the Hyadean General Embassy at Xuchimbo, the principal diplomatic presence on Earth. He was here as a political observer, he insisted. When he was approached in St. Louis to accompany two Terrans introduced to him as social-science academics to South America for what he was told would be a major political news event, of course he had accepted. What did they think he was—some kind of parasite who came to Earth to enjoy the scenery and avoid the work he was paid to do?
Tevlak had taken the line of simply knowing nothing. Sure, he had agreed when somebody from the U.S. contacted him to ask if they could use his house—he was Terran in his ways now: hospitable to everybody. Had he known who they were? No, he didn’t care. How had they known of him? As far as he could make out, Tevlak said, his name had been mentioned at a party in California.
The officer came back in. Luodine confronted him, hands on hips. “Well? Are we supposed to have committed some kind of offense?”
“Ah, no. It appears not. . . .”
“Then I take it we are free to go.” Without waiting for confirmation, Luodine began disconnecting pieces of equipment and motioned at Nyarl to start packing up.
“It would be considered cooperative if you remained while the rest of our business is being concluded,” the officer said.
“Are you making some specific charge or charges?” Luodine asked him.
“No. All the same—”
“Well, we have our business to think of too, and we’ve lost too much time already. If your people in the U.S. had been doing their job, we wouldn’t have their renegades coming down here in the first place. Now, I suggest you follow after them, wherever they’ve been taken, and make sure they don’t get away again, instead of wasting more of everyone’s time here.”
The officer capitulated. Luodine and Nyarl stopped to say a brief farewell to Tevlak and Thryase on the way out to their blue-and-yellow flyer. “We’ll come back when the atmosphere and the company are more conducive to something constructive,” she told Tevlak. “I must do a piece on these art collections of yours! Absolutely fascinating! The viewers back home will love it.” She left, giving them a brief glance that conveyed there had been nothing else she could do. Their looks in turn said that they understood.
Ten minutes later, Luodine and Nyarl were airborne, heading north along the eastern edge of the Altiplano. Evening was approaching. The first thing they needed to do was warn Vrel and Hudro against going back to Tevlak’s.
Luodine still had the phone that Cade had used to send the file. Vrel’s number would still be in its log. After the way Vrel and the others had been traced to Tevlak’s, however, Nyarl was leery about using it. “I wouldn’t risk calling direct,” he said. “It would be safer to go through an intermediary.”
Luodine thought for a moment. “You’re right,” she agreed. “But who? We don’t even know where they are.”
“Hudro was going back to his unit in Brazil, which means they were heading for Uyali. Who have we talked to there, that we know can be trusted?”
Luodine thought back to a documentary they had made about Hyadeans who worked at Uyali and the lives they lived there, and slowly, a smile came into her face. “I think I know just the person,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
IT WAS GETTING DARK in the Terran sector of Uyali. The streets of the shanty city that had grown in months from a jumble of prefabs and mobile units were filling as workers back from the mining operations and construction projects headed for the restaurants, the bars, and the clubs. Vrel still hadn’t heard anything from Hudro. A few other Hyadeans out shopping or curious just to visit the Terran sector had stopped to talk and in a couple of cases invited him to join them, but it had seemed prudent to keep his own company. He sat nursing a fruit juice and nibbling on a roll of flat, crispy bread filled with some kind of cooked vegetable paste in a dingy coffee shop that he had found near one of the three main thoroughfares. It was quiet but not empty, out of the way but not isolated in a way that would make him conspicuous—good for losing himself in for another half hour, say, before moving on to somewhere else.