The Legend That Was Earth (34 page)

Inguinca had given them instructions for contacting a highway construction foreman who could make arrangements to hide them in one of the robot trucks returning southward. However, as they came onto the main thoroughfare that Evita had mentioned—a tree-lined mall of shops, offices, and restaurants, called El Prado—the phone in a receptacle on the dash panel rang. Evita took it as she drove, listened for a moment, then passed the handset to Cade. "It's for you," she told him. "Neville Baxter again, from New Zealand."

"Hi, Neville."

"Roland. Is it all right to talk?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"Are you anywhere near the city yet?"

"Just coming into it now."

"Good. Look, this might be short notice, but I think we can do better than that schedule you talked about. I'm going to give you a number for somebody there—a business associate of my company. His name's Don. Call him right away. He'll tell you what it's all about. If you move fast, we might be able to swing something your time tonight."

They pulled off and stopped in a side street. Cade called the number. Don was with a shipping office at El Alto Airport, a few miles from the city, that handled local dealings for Baxter's business. He arranged to meet Cade and Hudro in town within the hour.

* * *

The general manager of the telephone company called the chief inspector back. "Okay, I have it. Her name is Carla Mayangua. She is one of our area service technicians." He gave a description of the van and its license number.

The chief inspector wrote down the details and passed the slip to his assistant. "Get a call put out to all units to look out for this vehicle. It is believed to be in the possession of a woman and man who go as Evita and Miguel, harboring two fugitives who are wanted for questioning: Roland Cade, alias Professor Arthur Wintner, an American, and Gessar Hudro, a Hyadean military officer who has gone missing. The occupants are to be apprehended immediately. Have any units sighting them call for full backup."

* * *

Evita and Miguel dropped the two off at a sidewalk cafe along El Prado, where Don had arranged to meet them—he said that Hyadeans were becoming a familiar enough sight in the capital. Don was already waiting at a corner table inside, sipping a Cinzano. He was small and dapper in a dark business suit, with a white handkerchief folded in the breast pocket, and a pencil-line mustache. Cade ordered coffee; Hudro, a Coke. Don's manner was nervous and fastidious. After preliminaries, he began, "Baxter's company imports agricultural machinery."

"I know," Cade said. "We met at a party I held about a month ago—"

Don held up a hand. "Please, it is best if I don't know your backgrounds." Cade nodded for him to continue. "Currently, he is experimenting with fitting his machines with Hyadean low-level Artificial Intelligence control units so they will be able to operate semiautonomously. The units come in at Xuchimbo, and we ship them out from here. Briefly, we have a consignment going out tonight to Auckland via Papeete, in Tahiti. I can get you listed as a Hyadean technical adviser traveling out there to instruct on the equipment, and Mr. Cade as a member of the flight crew. The controls are not strict for people leaving Bolivia. It's the contents of the shipments that they check. They're worried about Hyadean weapons and munitions getting out of the country."

"What about entry to New Zealand?" Cade queried.

"Neville knows people at the Immigration Department. You'll be brought in as political refugees. Low-key, no questions."

Cade recalled what Marie had said about AANS support being widespread, and how they had obtained false papers before traveling to St. Louis. He turned his head toward Hudro in an unspoken question, but there was really nothing to deliberate. At that moment, the wail came of approaching sirens. Traffic on El Prado pulled sluggishly aside as two police cars sped past with lights flashing and turned the block. More sounded distantly, coming from the other direction. Evidently, whatever was going on was quite close.

Don turned his head back and licked his lips. "Something's happening. Maybe it would be better if you lie low in the city for the afternoon. I know somebody who has an apartment you can use. When it gets dark, we'll send a car to bring you to the airport."

Cade looked at Hudro again. This wasn't something for them to judge. "How do we get there?" Cade asked Don.

"I'll take you now. It's not very far, but uphill. Everywhere from here in La Paz is uphill."

"Yes, we heard." Cade looked around. "First, we need to say goodbye to the people who brought us. Can we call them?" Don signaled a waiter and asked for a table phone.

"Maybe see Australia after all very soon now," Hudro said.

"One day at a time," Cade told him. Just one agonizing afternoon to get through. Then they might be finally out of it.

The phone arrived. Cade called the van, while Don sat back to sip his drink. The phone seemed to ring for an unnaturally long time. Then Evita's voice said, "Hello?"

"It's us," Cade said. "Okay, we're done. I guess we can—"

"Hello?" Evita said again.

"Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear."

Only then did Cade register the fear in her voice. "Is everything okay? You—"

"
No! Not okay. You must—
" There was what sounded like a slap, followed by a cry of pain. Cade stared at the phone in his hand, for an instant mystified, and then horrified.

"What's up?" Don demanded.

Cade turned the phone off and stood up suddenly. "Move!" he snapped. "We have to get out of here!"

* * *

Don fished a key from a niche above the door, let them in and then left, saying he would be back later. The apartment was small, plain, modestly furnished, but clean. A man's coats hung on hooks inside the front door, and a couple of soccer posters brightened the kitchen, along with a corkboard showing postcards, local business cards, and family snaps. A corner of the bedroom had been made into a religious shrine with a Sacred Heart statue, flowers, and a candle in a red glass. Cade and Hudro ate a lunch of tortillas and rice that they had picked up on the way, and settled down to wait.

"So how might it affect things for tonight?" Cade asked. They had agreed that what he heard over the phone could only mean that Evita and Miguel had been picked up. Cade still hadn't recovered from the shock of realizing that they themselves must have escaped by mere minutes.

"Is likely they are watching everything at airport," Hudro replied.

"How would they know anything about the airport?"

"Don't have to. They suspect everywhere. Is way police mind works. We just have to wait if plans changed now. Is not our thing to control anymore."

They turned on the news. In the former U.S., the provocations and responses by both sides had escalated to open belligerency. Twenty years ago it wouldn't have been possible. Incredulous, Cade watched Union fighter-bombers attacking bases, rail centers, and highway interchanges in Texas, Colorado, and Utah, apparently to slow communications to what looked like becoming a war front. The situation was confused, and the commentator couldn't make much sense of it. No city areas had been targeted as yet, but tensions and frustrations that had built up over years were suddenly being released, and things could heat up rapidly. Hudro was apprehensive of the effects if Hyadean weaponry were introduced on any significant scale. "So far we only use people-control tactics here," he told Cade. "Police action. You haven't seen what Hyadean war weapons do."

"What if Asia comes in and backs the Federation?" Cade asked.

"Then Asia is finished too."

"That would be practically an all-out planetary war."

"Is not first time. Hyadeans call it imposing the peace. Their way of peace. So you learn order and civilization, and everyone is happy and grateful."

"Unless Earth turns into another Querl," Cade mused. He found he didn't particularly like the image of passive submission.

"Not happen, Mr. Cade. Earth doesn't have Querl army and weapons."

They watched the lights going on across the canyon slopes as day darkened into evening. The phone rang, persisted for a while, but they left it alone. Don returned about thirty minutes later.

"We have to change the plan," he said. "Every Hyadean inside the airport is being checked. But we're going to try something that maybe nobody expects." That was all he would tell them.

He led them back downstairs, where they found a small Fiat waiting with a figure in the driver's seat. Cade and Don got in the back, and Hudro squeezed his bulk into the passenger side in front. The driver had a floppy hat, hooded zipper jacket over a sweater, and features impossible to make out in the darkness. He pulled away in silence and drove up from the city. When they came out onto the plateau he doused the headlights, and for the next half hour they picked their way carefully along roads and tracks, sometimes at little more than walking pace, with Don getting out twice to guide them through a difficult spot with a flashlamp. This brought them onto a dirt track following a chain-link fence with orange and blue runway lights beyond on one side, and knee-high grass on the other. The airport terminal facilities, outlined dimly in a halo of glows, were visible maybe a mile away to the right. After a few hundred yards, they came to a tube-frame gate. Don got out and stood scanning the area for several seconds. Then he walked up to the gate, tried it, then turned and waved his arm. Hudro and Cade got out with muttered thanks to the driver and hurried forward, while the car backed away among some rocks and scrub. The gate had been left unlocked. Don ushered them through, closed the gate carefully behind, and motioned them forward through the grass, checking from side to side at intervals to keep track of their bearings. Finally, he whispered, "Here," and motioned them down. They settled into the grass to wait.

Lights appeared in the distance above, grew brighter with the sound of approaching engines, and a plane landed. Several minutes later, another moved out from the terminal, taxied up along the perimeter-way, turned onto the main runway, and took off. Soon after, another followed. Both of them halted within fifty yards of where the three figures were crouching before making their turn prior to the takeoff run. Don checked his watch in the light from his flashlamp, shielding it with a flap of his jacket. "Should be the next one now," he whispered.

The night air was clear and getting cold. There seemed to be activity at the far end of the airfield, where vehicles were moving and searchlights probing, but nothing came closer. Then the sound carried across of another jet starting up, and a low, sleek shape moved out from the terminal area. It rolled toward the perimeter about a mile away and swung around, causing its landing lights to brighten suddenly. Cade tensed as the plane moved toward them. It had four engines slung beneath the wings, he saw as it enlarged, and the tailplane carried atop the fin. Several hundred yards away, it slowed. Cade thought he saw what looked like a light flash several times from a window of the flight deck. Don stood up, raised his flashlamp, and pressed the switch several times. The aircraft moved in front of them—a windowless cargo transport with low-slung body and tail loading doors. As it came to a halt in the gloom, Cade made out the side door already opening and its internal stairs hinging down. Cade and Hudro rose from the grass.

"Now, go!" Don brushed aside their attempts to shake hands and waved them on. At the top of the steps Cade turned to send back a salutation from the doorway, but he had already disappeared.

* * *

The convulsions had caused Miguel to bite through his tongue. Congealing blood covered the front of his bruised, naked body. Evita, her own faced swollen, lips split from the softening-up process, watched with dull horror creeping over her as he was dragged unconscious from the room.

The interrogator turned toward her. "Now, I ask you. Where did you leave the American and the Hyadean?" Evita felt dryness in her mouth. She was unable to swallow. She had heard that the best thing was to say nothing. Once you began to give a little away, there was no stopping it. The voice barked. "Where were they heading for? What was the plan to get them out of the country?" She felt herself shaking, tears running uncontrollably down her face. The interrogator's hand moved toward the box connected to the electrodes. Evita closed her eyes and began to pray.

* * *

The jet lifted into a clear sky filled with stars. Minutes later, the ghostly shapes of Andes peaks were drifting by in the night below. Then they were high over Chile. The Moon appeared slowly over the horizon, and in its cold, expanding light, the dark mass of the Pacific opened out before them, extending endlessly toward the west.

DEE HAD ALWAYS BEEN of that independent turn of mind that led her to be her own person. She didn't like others trying to program her thinking, and when it suited her, took an inner delight in shocking them by daring to be different. That was probably why, when Vrel had contacted the office not really knowing what a travel agent was but needing a guide to show some Hyadeans from the mission around the area, she had elected to take charge of the party personally; and then, when Vrel turned out to be an intriguingly different alien also, in his own kind of way, probably been a little forward in propelling things toward a more personal relationship. The simple Hyadean readiness to accept words for what they meant and people for what they said had come as a welcome relief after the minefield of California dating politics that she was accustomed to, and from then on whatever friends and neighbors thought hadn't figured into it. Vrel had introduced her to Cade and his seemingly limitless list of friends who supplied, arranged, or were looking for just about anything one could name. And life had taken on a progressively more interesting slant ever since.

Then Rebecca had appeared, trying to trace Julia after being referred by a friend of Julia's former husband, and disappeared with Cade about two weeks later. Three days after that, Vrel left for St. Louis suddenly and hadn't been heard of since. There had to be some connection, but without Cade around there were few leads she could follow. Julia had professed to know nothing—and seemed curiously impersonal about it for someone in her situation, for what Dee's opinion was worth. Then, less than a week after Vrel's departure, when the whole country was in uproar over allegations of political assassination by the government, Cade and his former wife, long supposed to have become part of the past, appeared in a Hyadean news documentary, filmed in South America of all places, that exploded the official denials. In something approaching a dream state, Dee had listened to the announcement two days later that she was living in a new country....