And again, there was a solution. The flyer sitting in southern Bolivia, where Nyarl had sent it as a decoy, was no doubt being kept under observation and its log monitored. Using access codes to its control system that she retrieved from the vehicle registry on Chryse, Yassem was able to delete its connections to the Hyadean South American traffic control network, thereby rendering it invisible to the tracking computers. Then she obtained the coordinates of its present location from the on-board local control and fed it instructions to fly to the base in Brazil where she and Marie had been brought. Thus, when the Hyadean adjutant asked about scheduling their return, Yassem could tell him that it was okay, they had made their own arrangements. Transportation was arranged for them. So little curiosity was aroused two hours later, when the blue-and-yellow flyer landed itself on the airstrip. Yassem and Marie bade thanks and farewell to the two Hyadeans who walked out with them to see them aboard. Minutes later, they were climbing and turning north on a course that would cross the Amazon basin. Yassem made sure that the flyer would return a “friendly” identification code if interrogated by a Hyadean or Brazilian antiaircraft fire-control system.
* * *
Marie gazed out at mile after mile of rain-forest canopy sliding by below like a sea of frozen green waves. Finally, she could feel some respite from the chaos assailing her life for the last . . . was it nine days? Ever since Roland walked back into it. She laid her head back into the roomy, Hyadean-size seat and put a hand to her brow wearily. It met bandages. Roland. . . . Years ago she had tried, despaired, and given up. Then he had come back, starting to become what she had always known he could be. . . . And now this. She replayed scenes of the crash in her mind, trying to tell herself there might be a way he could have survived. It had been only a moment before impact when he and Rocco disappeared. They couldn’t have been more than a few feet from the ground by then. But there had been blood pouring from Roland’s head. It was no good. She was trying to create wishful fantasies. Eventually, whatever the reality was would have to be faced. She looked across at Yassem and found the Hyadean watching her with an expression that seemed to read her thoughts. But then, Yassem was having the same problem.
“Hudro’s pretty tough,” Yassem said. “Sometimes I think he is, what did you say once, `charmed’? Like Roland.”
Marie took in the crisp, clean Hyadean military fatigue garb that Yassem had been issued. Everything was so mixed up. Marie was used to thinking in terms close to black and white. There were “us” and “them,” good guys and bad; you knew who was on which side. Hyadeans had always been “them.” In the last week she had found herself trusting them as much as she had ever trusted anyone—which was ironic, for it seemed that the concept of “trust” itself was something that they themselves were learning from Terrans. Now one of them might have died helping to save her and Roland. And the person to whom that one had meant the most was now Marie’s confidante and companion, whose life Marie had recently saved, yet wore the uniform of those who were hunting them. Marie could no longer make any sense of the world.
“How does this happen?” she said. Yassem raised her eyebrows but said nothing. “Hudro was with your counterinsurgency forces. You were with communications, attached to Terran intelligence.” Marie shook her head uncomprehendingly. “I know how people are selected for jobs like that. They look for a particular kind of personality, the kind that identifies with the system it serves and takes pride in loyalty. People like that don’t change their minds and go over to the other side. The one from the federal ISS, Reyvek, that you saw Roland and me talking about on that recording this morning, was an exception. He was very disturbed in some ways that went deep, and the system must have missed it. But normally that doesn’t happen.”