The Legend That Was Earth (40 page)

The airfield at Fairbanks was busy with traffic landing and showed recently added antiaircraft defenses and dugouts, still being worked on in places. A tense but purposeful atmosphere prevailed in the terminal building during the four-hour stopover. There were a lot of evacuees from the fighting areas in the continental states to the south, some dispersing in Alaska, others en route to more distant destinations in Asia. One family that Cade talked to were from Chicago, which had become a scene of street-to-street fighting, with the Sears Tower and other high-rise observation points heavily damaged.

Communications were restricted, with military and official use getting priority. Apparently, there had been much attrition of Federation-controlled satellites. The Asians were rumored to be providing additional capacity, but so far it wasn't making up the difference. Cade was unable to put a call through to Marie at the house, although he did leave a message with Wyvex at the Hyadean mission saying they were on their way. The mission seemed to be functioning in some kind of autonomous role, independent of the official Hyadean presence in Washington. It seemed that Orzin was in charge, but Cade couldn't quite figure out where he stood amid the shifting politics.

The flight down the Canadian coast passed without incident. One of the crew told Cade that the plane was fitted with "special" equipment to confuse the Hyadean surveillance satellites. It implied a degree of cooperation from at least some faction of the aliens. Interesting, he and Hudro agreed between themselves. Hudro wasn't sure what to make of it.

* * *

They landed at March Air Force Base, thirty miles east of Los Angeles, at around the middle of the day following their departure from Beijing. It presented the same scene of recently initiated defenses and protective works that Cade had seen in Bolivia and Alaska. This time, however, he was startled to see evidence of actual attacks. The hulks of about a dozen burned-out aircraft had been bulldozed off the cratered apron area, which was still being cleared and repaired. Parts of the base facilities and hangars had been destroyed, with damage extending to surrounding buildings and houses. The regular control tower was demolished, and a temporary structure erected alongside the remains, while a dispersed annex of army tents and trailers kept other essential services functioning.

A bus painted Air Force gray took the arrivals to a section of the terminal buildings that had survived, where they went through the routine of presenting papers and answering questions for a clerk completing forms at a folding table. When it came to Cade and Hudro's turn, a tall woman with black hair piled high and tied in a band detached herself from the knot of people waiting in the background and came forward. It took Cade a moment to recognize her, in the slacks and unadorned zipper jacket that she was wearing over a military-style shirt, as Clara Norburn, once the fashion-conscious, upwardly mobile star of the former state governor's office. The last time Cade saw her, she had been talking about ways of marketing California's high-tech skills profitably on Chryse for the state's benefit. She nodded to an inquiring look from the clerk processing the papers and murmured, "Yes, these are the ones. It's been taken care of," then looked at Cade while the clerk initialed boxes and appended stamps. "Welcome back, Roland. You've been getting around. Into some trouble too, I see." Cade still had marks on his face, a remaining light dressing, and patches of regrowing stubble from the injuries he'd received in Brazil. "How is it looking?"

Cade grinned. "It's rumored that I'll live. You people haven't been exactly idle here yourselves. I leave you alone for a few weeks and look at the trouble you've gotten yourselves into already." One of the men in the group at the back was with Clara. Cade introduced Hudro. "What happened to the socialite?" He waved at Clara's appearance. "You look as if you've taken up driving a truck."

"I guess personal aggrandizement got put on the back burner. We've all got a common cause now." They began walking toward a double door at the end of the room.

"So what are you doing, specifically?" Cade asked.

"Coordinating with the mission in Lakewood. They're still operating, but not tied to the Washington office anymore—obviously."

"I know—I talked to Wyvex."

The first person Cade saw among the groups waiting on the far side of the doors was Marie, looking something like the way she had when he first saw her in Chattanooga; a lightweight patterned sweater, loose slacks, and suede hook-lace boots. He approached warily. They stared at each other. Even now, after everything, each seemed unsure of exactly what reaction would be appropriate. Her face was blotchy, still carrying angry black and red marks from the crash. None looked as if they would scar permanently. She was looking at him, seemingly equally unsure....

And then she was pressed against him clinging, and his arms enveloped her, pulling her close. He smelled her hair, felt the slenderness of her body through the sweater. It was the first intimate contact they had experienced since their reunion. To his surprise, she was trembling. "I thought it was all over... before anything began," she whispered, raising her face. "And then Luke told us. It was days after you called him."

"He had reasons," Cade murmured.

"Yes, I know."

Luke was there too, Cade saw—waiting patiently, a faint and rare smile on his lips. And Yassem—whom Cade had barely met during the ill-fated helicopter flight. And Vrel and Dee were there too, clustering around Yassem and Hudro, who were hugging ecstatically, Yassem weeping. Just for a brief moment, the war was far away and forgotten.

They went out to one of the mission's Hyadean flyers, parked at the rear of the building among an assortment of cars, trucks, and military vehicles, and within minutes were airborne over Riverside. The freeway traffic was thin compared to what used to be normal. Clara said the gasoline restrictions were having a big effect. Southern Californian oil installations had been hit, and a tanker from Asia had been sunk off Santa Rosa Island the previous day. Cade saw damage to some of the freeway intersections, in one case amounting to total demolition and causing a crush of diverted traffic in the surrounding streets. Aircraft flying sorties up the coast from Mexico had been trying to take out key nodes of the road system with offshore-launched missiles, but so far with limited success. Links through the Rockies were under constant attack, the southern I-10 route to Phoenix and El Paso being completely cut. It would get a lot worse if the carrier groups now moving north in the Pacific got within striking range. There had been a lot of air combat over the Gulf.

For Cade, only just returned, it was all a new experience. Even with the tensions that had been mounting for years and the more recent instances of open domestic violence, he was unable to conceive jets carrying the insignia that had always meant USAF swooping in from the Pacific to attack targets in places like Anaheim or Pasadena, Bakersfield or San Diego. He looked down at the wreckage of an interchange that they were passing over. A swath of devastation extended through the nearby houses. "How can this be happening?" he asked Clara. "Isn't it obvious that there's been a corrupt administration on the other side for years? How can anyone there support it?"

"They're building a stronger America by allying with a superior power," she said. "We've been duped into becoming tools of the Asians. If we're not stopped, Chinese armies will be landing within a month and pouring through to make us a colony again."

Cade stared at her. "They believe that?"

"It's what they're being told. I'll run you some New York news clips and propaganda spiels when we get back."

"This
is
Roland I'm listening to?" Marie checked, still holding on to his arm.

From Luke and Vrel, Cade learned the story of Julia's untimely end. Marie had the grace not to say anything that might have sounded vengeful. Cade was dumbfounded. If he hadn't warned Luke, every one of those around him, Clara excepted, wouldn't have been there now.

Dee had moved out of travel agenting and was helping with school reorganization following separation from the federal system. It was only a small part, she told him, but everything counted. A contrast to the good-time-girl that he'd known, Cade reflected. The new feeling of dedication to something that mattered was affecting everybody.

Vrel asked about Krossig. Cade said he was fine and described his situation. "And what about the mission?" he asked. "Orzin's running things, right? So what's the status of the place now? I couldn't quite figure it out."

"I'm not exactly sure either," Vrel confessed.

"Do you still have the link to Chryse?"

"Not after Luodine tried to get her agency to put out that documentary there. They ran straight to the authorities. Xuchimbo cut us off in retaliation—and to avoid any further risk." Cade remembered that the gravity-wave converters in Earth orbit and the outer-Solar-System relays were controlled from the Hyadean General Embassy in Xuchimbo. Vrel shrugged. "Orzin is with us, trying to find a way around the censorship. If the real story got out on Chryse, it would create havoc. That's what we should be doing."

"Hudro and I tried to tell them in Beijing, but the hawks are in control there," Cade said. "What's the line here? What will Jeye do?" He meant William Jeye, who had become the FWA's president.

"He's under pressure to go along with the Chinese," Clara Norburn said. "You can see the argument: Washington has the backing of technically superior aliens. We're going to need as much of the world with us as we can get." Cade listened gravely. Clara sounded as if she almost bought it herself. She went on: "And so far things are looking good. I can't see the people in Sacramento throwing away the initiative here and expecting Chryse to cave in. Tanks and bombs, they understand. But the psychology and social dynamics of Hyadeans they've never met, light-years away?" She shook her head. "You might as well ask them to put their trust in voodoo."

* * *

The flyer landed at the house first to drop off Cade, Marie, and Luke, and also to introduce Hudro to the rest of the household. Then Hudro departed with the remainder for the mission, where he would be staying. Cade would join them tomorrow after resting from the journey. He showered and changed while Henry put away the bags, clothes, and other things Cade had acquired in New Zealand, Australia, and China. Marie had been using one of the guest rooms, and without Julia's effects the master suite was strangely empty and bare. But the atmosphere was a lot lighter.

He joined Marie downstairs and took a stroll with her around the house and the outside to see if much had changed during his absence. Not a lot had. Henry had acted quickly before the rationing began to bite, so stocks of most things were good for the time being, apart from gas, which had been the first of the restrictions—although they wouldn't have to worry about running the Cadillac anymore. The neighborhood now had a siren to warn of incoming air attacks—in Newport Beach! External walls of sandbags had been put up around the garage and adjoining gym to make them into something of a blast shelter. Warren was worried about the vulnerability of the yacht, moored at the rear.

Despite the way they seemed to have found each other again, Cade was conscious of a vague uneasiness between himself and Marie when they sat down together for the evening meal. He had obtained this house since their splitting up, and he could tell that she was uncomfortable in the ostentatious surroundings. But there was more, also. It was as if there were something unseemly, almost, in the rapidity with which it had happened. Marie had been there at one time, and then gone; then there was Julia; and now Julia was gone and Marie back, it seemed virtually instantly. Thousands of miles away in South America, everything had been too different to matter. But here the change was too immediate. He would have felt more comfortable to have been alone for a while before Marie moved back into his life again. He sensed that Marie felt it too. But the mood didn't have time to take root. A string of old acquaintances began dropping by to say hi, having heard that Cade was back.

Anita Lloyd, from Norm Schnyder's law firm, had previously been an expert on reinvesting currency earned from cheap Hyadean imports in high-profit land deals. Now she was involved in rebuilding money, credit, and the trading system in conjunction with Asian markets, following the severance of ties to traditional East-Coast-based financial institutions and the issuing of its own currency by the Bank of California. Norman himself was away in Sacramento, working on emergency labor and housing allocation—to conserve fuel, thousands of people were being relocated closer to work. Anita joked that the firm was learning to do things that needed to be done, without worrying about billing. Her own personal million had been wiped out in the currency transition. To Cade's surprise, she didn't seem to care all that much. On reflection, she told him, she didn't really like that person that she used to be.

Damien Philps, the art dealer, had suspended business and volunteered his labor services. George Jansing, who used to sell rare Terran skills for high Hyadean profits, was involved in dispersing aircraft production. Homeowners were taking in refugees from the war zones. Whole new attitudes were being shaped. Despite the dangers and inconveniences, a lot of people said it gave life a purpose that had been lacking before. "Obsessive money grubbing and alienation," was how Jansing put it.

"Let's see how they sound when things start getting really tough," Luke commented to Cade dourly.

Later, the sirens wailed, and they all moved into the gym to be on the safe side; but nothing happened.

After the all-clear sounded and the visitors had gone, Cade helped Marie move her things out of the guest room. There was an interval of unspoken awkwardness, of fussing too long to arrange hangers in the closet, or dwelling pointlessly on snippets of the evening's talk and trivia dredged from the past. But closeness dissolved their misgivings. As Cade lay falling asleep, holding her, for the first time in all the turbulent years he could remember, he knew peace. Marie burrowed into the sheets and nuzzled her face against his chest.