The Legend That Was Earth (26 page)

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.

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."

"I think I know where that is," Vrel said. "It'll just take a few minutes. How will I know you?"

Ramona laughed. "I think is better if I look for you, no?"

* * *

Vrel found the Gold City without difficulty. It had a window with orange lights inside looking out over the street, a flashing neon sign overhead, and a bright red door. It was only when Vrel was halfway through the door that it occurred to him that he might just have walked into the most elementary trap imaginable. But if so, the place would be staked and he was already spotted. Hudro would never have done this. He swore inwardly at his own naïveté, braced himself, and went in.

Inside was a long bar with mirrors behind running the length of one wall, a dance floor taking up one corner of the room, the rest being filled with tables and chairs. The place was busy and crowded. The throng included several Hyadeans, all male, in a knot clustered at one end of the bar, clearly military although out of uniform. A few others were scattered around at the tables, and two somewhat clumsily and self-consciously working hard at mastering the mystique of dancing. While Vrel was still looking around, a petite dark-skinned girl with wavy, shoulder-length hair and wearing a bright red, tight-fitting dress materialized in front of him. "You are Mr. V.?" she said.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I learn to tell these things." Without further preliminaries, Ramona took Vrel's elbow and steered him toward some tables by a wall forming the side of some stairs going up. None of the tables was empty, but Ramona said something in Spanish to two girls seated at one of them, and they got up and left after a brief exchange. Ramona sat down and waved for Vrel to take the other chair. She had a lot of the artificial coloring that many Terran women wore around the mouth and eyes, he saw. Makeup was unknown among Hyadeans—although he had heard recently that some youngsters were causing all kinds of reactions by introducing the practice back home. A waiter came to take their order. Ramona asked for simply "a beer." Vrel decided he had better stick with fruit juice.

"So Luodine didn't talk to you directly," Vrel said.

"No. A friend that she has called me. I guess maybe she thinks someone might be checking her calls, eh? Sounds like some kind of trouble." Ramona shrugged in a way that said whatever it was, it didn't worry her. "Luodine has many friends everywhere. She travels around, makes movies of people. People like her. She listens to what they say. Too many of the aliens, they don't listen." She gave Vrel an approving nod. "See, you are listening. You're okay too."

"Have you met Luodine yourself?" Vrel asked.

"Oh sure. A couple of months ago, when everything here is like a camp. She is making a movie about the Terrans that Hyadeans meet when they come here to work—and then when they are not at work. She is very interested in the working girls who come to the mining town. It sounds like a lot of people where you come from are not too happy about it, eh?" Ramona eyed Vrel saucily and smiled. Vrel realized with a start that she was one of the Terran women who hired themselves out for sexual pleasure. Such a thing was highly illegal on Chryse, even its depiction in fictional settings being banned. There had been calls from home to have the Terran authorities close such practices down on parts of Earth where young Hyadean soldiers were posted. The Americans that Vrel had met in California called them "fishers"... or something like that. His first impulse was to express some kind of disapproval. But he controlled it and forced himself to see things the way he had learned to since coming to Earth.

"The girls, they all like her too, when they get to know her better," Ramona completed.

Vrel pulled himself back to matters of the moment. "On the phone, you started to talk about Luodine needing something," he said.

"Yes. The person who talks to me for her says that she thinks her... what do you call those things like little airplanes without wings?"

"Flyer?" That was what most Terrans seemed to call them.

"Right. Luodine thinks hers is being tracked somehow. Anywhere she goes, the computers will know. Maybe is normal for you guys, I don't know. But it sounds like she doesn't want this."

The drinks arrived. Vrel paid. "Okay," he said slowly after the waiter left. It meant that Luodine was mobile. So, assuming that Tevlak's house had been raided after his and Hudro's departure, it sounded as if she—and probably Nyarl too—had been released. But she thought it likely their blue-and-yellow flyer was being monitored, which was probably true. That all made sense.

"She says you have a `clean' flyer," Ramona said. "I guess that means one they're not watching, eh?" That could only mean the flyer that had brought Vrel, Thryase, Cade, and Marie to Tevlak's from Uyali, and which was now at the construction site thirty miles away where Hudro and Vrel had left it. Thryase had somehow arranged for its movements not to be recorded by the traffic system (which eliminated that as an explanation of how they had been traced to Tevlak's).

"Go on," Vrel said.

"Well, it sounds to me like she wants to go someplace without them knowing all the time. She needs to use yours."

Vrel leaned back on the chair, sipped from his glass, and thought about what he should do. In the end, he decided it would probably be best not to do anything until he heard from Hudro. He glanced at his wrist unit unconsciously. Still nothing. Where
was
Hudro? They had agreed to call only in an emergency. Vrel wondered much longer he ought to give it before deciding that this was becoming one.

Ramona had shifted her attention to another presence that had appeared by the table. Vrel looked up to find a Terran glowering at him. He was tall and lean bodied, with a short beard and hair tied by a band at the back, wearing a black shirt under a leather vest, and pants held up by a wide, ornate-buckled belt. Two more were behind him, looking equally mean and ugly. He shot something in Spanish at Ramona, causing an abrupt change in her manner. She gripped her glass tightly, as if to throw it; her eyes flashed. She retorted just as sharply, and an angry exchange in rapidly rising voices followed, accompanied by gestures and challenging looks from the man, at Vrel. Conversation around them died. The Hyadean military by the bar looked questioningly at each other and started to move closer. Somebody ran out the door, and his voice could be heard calling along the street. A man across the room called out in English, "Leave them be. You are assholes. Why don't you mind your own business?"

"When they come here taking our women, it
is
our business," the leader of the three shouted back. "Who the hell are you, pig shit?
You
mind your—"

"I am not anybody's woman!" Ramona spat.

Two Terran military police appeared in the doorway—peaked caps with red bands, white gaiters, drawn batons. Fingers pointed across to the table. They came over. One of them asked what was going on. Several onlookers began telling the story all at once. The Hyadeans by the bar drew back but remained alert. Ramona dropped her aggressiveness, shrugged and shook her head, and answered the MPs' questions meekly. Their attention turned to the three men, still standing their ground, and an argument broke out between onlookers supportive of both sides. The MPs began shouting and waving their batons to try and calm things down.

Ramona looked at Vrel resignedly. "Should I call this friend of Luodine's and give some answer?" she asked him.

"No. There is a colleague of mine here somewhere that I need to hear from first."

"What you want to do now?"

Vrel shook his head. "I don't know. Just wait."

"You don't need this trouble. My place is near here. We can go there and wait to hear from your friend. Will be easier, no?" Ramona looked at him as if there was nothing more to say. Vrel hesitated. She laughed. "If you worry about I might be losing business, you don't need to. Is good for everyone to have a break sometimes. Besides, if it helps get Luodine out of some kind of trouble, then there is nothing to think about. Okay? So, we go." It seemed a good idea. All Vrel needed was for this to turn into an incident that would result in his being identified. They left unnoticed while the argument was still proceeding furiously.

* * *

They walked along Central to one of the two major intersections and crossed it to enter a maze of narrower dirt streets and alleys twisting among trailers and instant buildings, dark except for isolated lights outside doors or occasional glows from some of the interiors. Ramona led the way to a small, flat-roofed cabin set on blocks. It had a split-height door behind a screen, and an outside lamp showing a green cross on an orange background. Vrel waited while she went ahead up several wooden steps to unlock the door, and then followed.

The interior, when she turned on the light, was what he supposed a Terran would describe as feminine and homey—but to Hyadean eyes a riot of decorative ingenuity. "You drink coffee?" Ramona asked.

"After a day like today? Sure, why not?"

Colorful woven tapestries and prints of animal and plant themes filled the walls; a carpet of rich designs covered the floor. All the pictures and curios that Vrel had come to expect of a Terran dwelling were there, with the added touch that females seemed to show for softening the effect with cushions and flowers, and frilly edgings to covers and drapes. It brought to mind Dee's apartment in Los Angeles, though with a distinctly different "style."