Yassem looked Marie up and down. “With all that blood, I’m not sure anyone could tell what it is,” she said.
They arrived at a camp of wooden and corrugated steel huts, depot facilities, an airstrip, and defensive positions, set inside a perimeter of double wire fences. Beyond were grassy hills cloaked by scatterings of trees. The camp was bustling with Terran and Hyadean aircraft arriving and departing, presumably in support of the operations still in progress elsewhere. Yassem declined a suggestion of the base medical officer to put her and Marie in the sick bay for a couple of days, which would straightaway have required information on who they were and from what unit. Staying on their feet would leave them more in control of their own affairs. So instead, they were shown to quarters where they were given clean clothes and left to freshen up.
Later, when they came out, and tottered over to the officers’ mess for breakfast with more effort than they let show, it turned out that their story was not anyone’s special concern just for the moment, anyway. The big news was that in the north, the governor of California, William Jeye, had declared the secession of the Federation of Western America. The talk among the Brazilian officers was about whether an all-out North American war was imminent, and if so, where they would stand in it. But the most astounding thing was when the newscaster replayed notable incidents from the days leading up to the declaration. One event cited as having had a profound effect on the American people was a documentary released from unofficial Hyadean sources to the Western news media. It was none other than the one featuring Cade and Marie that Luodine had made. It had gotten through! At least, it had as far as California. Marie stared disbelievingly. Yassem watched her in puzzlement before making a connection between the face on the screen and the swollen, discolored one next to her swathed in dressings—and even then, probably only because Hudro had told her about it. Marie excused herself to go back to their quarters. It wasn’t only to recover from the shock and absorb the implications. Even with the dressings, she couldn’t rid herself of the conviction that it would only have taken minutes for somebody in the room to recognize her. Some time passed by before Yassem joined her.
“I’ve been getting a picture of the situation,” she told Marie. “It doesn’t sound good. Segora was heavily attacked yesterday. It’s in government hands now. Vrel and the others would have been right in the middle of it all if they got there the night before. We have to try to contact them. Obviously we’re on borrowed time here. Do you know the number of Vrel’s phone—the one Roland sent the file to?”
Marie shook her head. “There was never any reason to think I’d need it.”
Yassem looked vexed. “Communications is my specialty. We talk routinely to people on Chryse. There must be some way. . . .”
It took Yassem ten minutes of pacing about the room and frowning out the window to realize what she had said. “Chryse!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Luodine and Nyarl’s flyer—the one that’s still in Bolivia, somewhere. It carries Hyadean communications that can be reached from there. The registration record to Luodine’s agency on Chryse will have its call code, and it’s accessible via the Hyadean equipment here at the base. We can get through to them that way!”
“You’re going to connect via some other star system, to talk to somebody maybe a couple of hundred miles from here?” Marie was incredulous.
“Probably safest,” Yassem said, smiling. “With the situation, all the local systems are likely to be watched. But Hyadeans make calls home all the time. Let me go see if I can find a friendly operator.”
For once, things went as straightforwardly as hoped. Yassem got through, and it turned out that Vrel, Luodine, and Nyarl, after narrowly escaping the day before, were still shaken but all right. Currently, they were at a remote Indian village to the north that Luodine had known, and hadn’t formulated any plans yet. Of course they would wait there if there were some way Yassem and Marie could join them. Once again Yassem was determined that it had to be possible. Marie could only marvel at Hyadean tenacity, once they had set their minds to something.