The more respectable Hyadeans were drifting back to their own sector, which was fenced, orderly, and felt safer after sunset. Those who remained prowled around in ones and twos or groups, acting too self-assuredly: off-duty troops; engineers with billfolds full of Terran money; lonely clerks light-years from home—all curious to sample the forbidden fruits they’d heard about. Mind-altering drinks that it was illegal to possess on Chryse; the atmosphere of a place where Terrans sang, danced, and for a while let their feelings take over—some Hyadean doctors said it could be beneficial; an experience with a Terran woman, perhaps? Hyadean and Terran military police patrolled the district in pairs of either one race or the other. Vrel felt himself tensing when any of them came too close or treated him to anything more than a cursory glance. But so far he hadn’t been troubled. If anyone was looking for him, he could only presume they were concentrating on the air terminal, where he would be expected to appear.
Six years ago, Vrel would have looked at a scene like that around him now with a sense of incomprehension at the purposelessness of the ways Terrans chose to spend so much of their lives, and contempt for their inability or refusal to do anything to improve themselves—especially with the Hyadean example before them. So much time and energy wasted on things that weren’t needed. No plan. Contrived evasion of what should have been duty. The incredible inefficiency of it all. And underneath, there would have been a feeling that didn’t need to be expressed, since the facts were so obvious, of the innate superiority of the Hyadean—the kind of smugness that he had detected in so many Hyadeans since, and now found mildly sickening. It was only in the latter part of his time here that he had finally come to grasp one of the most profound insights that the whole Terran worldview and way of life expressed, which most Hyadeans weren’t within a lifetime of understanding: The purpose of existing, what mattered, was simply to experience it. Just that. Nothing more. If one chose to seek additional satisfaction from achieving or striving, then that was fine too. But it didn’t matter. Dee had told him once that she thought they put statues up to the wrong people: usually those who had lasted the longest in contests of wiping each other out, or invented the most ingenious ways for legalizing thievery.
“Who should they put them up to, then?” Vrel had asked her.
“The people who do the important things. Except, there wouldn’t be enough room.”
“Why? What are the important things?”
Dee had shrugged. “Raising kids. Fixing roofs. Clearing drains. I think the others are really Hyadeans with unblue skin. Why don’t you take them back?”
A musical tone sounded from the phone in Vrel’s pocket. He snatched it out and said “Yes?” in Hyadean, just checking himself from blurting Hudro’s name. But the voice that answered was that of a Terran female.
“Is this Mr. V.?”
“Er . . . yes.” Instant befuddlement.
“I am Ramona. I get a message from Luodine asking me to call you.”
Vrel faltered, then managed finally, “Where is she?”—probably irrelevant, but nothing else suggested itself.
“The person who called me didn’t say. But it’s important that you don’t go back to the house. I guess you know what that means, eh?”
“Yes. . . . I had already figured it out.”
“And there is more. Luodine needs . . .” Ramona’s voice trailed off, as if something had just occurred to her. “She said you would most likely be in Uyali. Is that right?” Her English was simple—not her natural language, Vrel guessed. Probably, she had been told he was not a Spanish speaker.
“Yes,” he replied.
“I am here too. Maybe it is easier if we meet somewhere. Do you know the Terran sector?”
“Yes.”
“How long it would take you to get there?”
“That’s where I am now,” Vrel said.
“No kidding?! Where in the Terran sector?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Okay, then I tell you where I will be. There is a bar called the Gold City. You find Central, which is the street in the center—it makes sense, eh?—and the bar is halfway along. Or ask anyone.”