Worlds in Chaos (86 page)

With their official credentials and new identity documents, Cade and Marie cleared the airport check-in routine without incident. They departed an hour and fifteen minutes later on an early afternoon flight to St. Louis, changing at Atlanta.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

On arrival at the St. Louis Hilton, Cade and Marie found themselves booked into a twentieth-floor suite consisting of a comfortably furnished and stocked lounge area in addition to two bedrooms—a typically prim Hyadean consideration, although it suited the circumstances. The desk clerk produced a package for collection by Professor Wintner that contained a phone—presumably with “clean” programmed-in identification and serial numbers—a number at which Vrel could be reached, and two thousand dollars in cash. Cade called Vrel as soon as they got to the suite. Vrel was relieved that they had made it, but was tied up in the city on business right now. He would join them at the hotel later.

“I see your lifestyle hasn’t changed much, Roland,” Marie commented. She had been wandering around, inspecting the contents of the mini-bar and refrigerator while he talked to Vrel. “Always the man with the right friends. It’s a change from that camper on the farm.” She didn’t sound entirely approving.

“Well, suit yourself if you want to stake out a claim on the moral high ground,” Cade replied. He picked up the wads of hundreds and fifties and ruffled it at her. “Wearing the same clothes for three days makes me feel kind of grubby. I don’t know about you, but I’m going out to do a little shopping, and then freshen up for dinner. Are you coming along, or going to start preaching?” Marie thought about it, sighed, and decided preaching was out for the rest of the day. “So now you’re sullying your image by dipping a finger in Hyadean wealth too,” Cade said. “What’s happening? Are you converting me, or am I corrupting you?”

“I don’t know. But you’re right. I just want to feel clean clothes again,” she said.

By the time they sat down in the hotel restaurant, they were chattering and swapping banalities almost like old times. Despite the public exposure—or maybe as a consequence of surviving it without incident—Cade felt more secure than he had for days. Inwardly, a part of him was waiting for Marie to get around to politics or principles, because she always had—it was usual. Less usual was his realization that the anticipation wasn’t bothering him. In fact, he found he wanted to talk more about such things. The irony was that Marie, for her part, seemed to be heeding his preferences for once by avoiding them. It was Cade, finally, who brought the subject up.

“What’s happened to the fanatic I remember of old? If this goes on, you’ll have me thinking we might actually get through dinner without stepping into quicksands.”

“This has been such a change. I didn’t want to spoil it.” Marie pushed some salad into a wad with her fork and looked up. “Was I always a fanatic?”

“I used to think so,” Cade affirmed candidly. “Now, I don’t know. Julia asked about it a lot lately—but I guess we know why now.” He chewed thoughtfully for a while. “What makes people do a job like that? . . . Live a life of deception. Could you?”

“Some people would say our whole lives are nothing else,” Marie said, seemingly not to make any particular point.

“Greed, hatred, and deception,” Cade intoned.

“What about them?”

“Those are what the Buddhists say are the root of all of life’s evils.”

“What’s this, a new Roland? How long have you been into stuff like that?”

“I’m not, really.”

“Yes, I
had
noticed.”

“It was something that Mike Blair was on about once. Do you remember him—Mike Blair, the scientist?”

“I only met him a couple of times, I think. Hair with bits of gray in? Wears glasses?”

Cade nodded. “That’s him—except the hair’s probably a bit grayer now. He’s been getting into Eastern philosophy as well as science. It seems our religions are making a big impression with some of the Hyadeans. They don’t have deep philosophical views about things. They just look at what the basic facts are saying and leave it right there. Mike says it has something to do with why they’re flying starships and we’re not. I didn’t really follow it.”

Marie stopped eating for a moment to frown dubiously. “In that case, why should they care about deeper philosophies? What do they need one for?”

“Because they live their lives stressed out on treadmills tied to getting better ratings on this ‘entitlement’ system of theirs, which I don’t understand either.”

“Right. Like taking a day out fishing in a boat off California.”

“I told you, a few like Vrel are different. . . . Well, they’re changing. To them, a view of life that values other things beyond just status and material success is a revelation—literally. They’ve never heard of anything like it. Krossig—he’s another Hyadean, who works with Vrel in LA, being moved to Australia—says it’s catching on among the kids back home. They talk about Earth as the home of a deeper spirituality: ways of getting in touch with reality that the Hyadeans had once, but lost.”

Marie pulled a face. “I guess I’m a little more cynical with regard to human spirituality. I’ve been too much in touch with conventional reality these last few years.” She eyed him for a moment before spearing more of her salad. “Isn’t this a bit out of your line, Roland? Are you changing or something, or did I just never see it?”

Cade shrugged in a way that said surprises happen all the time. “I see a lot of aliens.”

Marie studied him curiously. “I don’t think you realize what an unusual insight it’s giving you into alien psychology,” she said. “I’ll admit, I’ve tended to see them as all alike—and not all that nice.”

“I do an unusual job,” Cade replied.

Vrel arrived later in the evening and joined Cade and Marie in their suite. To show off his expanding repertoire of acquired Terran tastes, he started off by refreshing himself after the day with a cool beer, and then settled down to follow it with black, unsweetened coffee. Marie’s manner was guarded to begin with, in the presence of possibly the first alien she had spent any time with at close quarters, but she loosened up as time went on.

Vrel was anxious to make it clear that Dee hadn’t known Rebecca was a setup. Even with his exposure to Terrans, he didn’t seem to grasp that the possibility that she might have had never crossed Cade’s mind. His concern seemed to imply that a Hyadean in Dee’s position might have sold Cade out knowingly if it gained points somehow in the game-plan calculus that they lived by, and hence by their norms some defense of Dee should be necessary. Cade didn’t really follow but accepted it as well meant. It was beyond Marie’s experience or comprehension.

Then they got down to the reason why Cade had needed to contact Vrel so urgently. They related the true story of the assassinations of Senator Farden, Lieutenant General Meakes, and the two Hyadeans who had died with them. Vrel listened with growing incredulity, then outrage as Marie explained how the U.S. security services themselves had been responsible, with the implication of possible high-level Hyadean knowledge and collusion. The Hyadeans’ nature was not to question what they were told, Cade concluded. It seemed that an unprincipled faction among them were taking advantage of the fact to enrich and empower themselves. Vrel knew the Hyadean system better than they did. There had to be ways of making the truth known in the right places for things to change.

“And you can substantiate it all with evidence?” Vrel said when they were done.

“Not by producing Reyvek anymore,” Marie replied. “Although the way he was taken out should be evidence enough. But we have the names and the details, and we know where the documents in Baltimore are.”

“Sovereignty will put the story out here,” Cade said. “But how much will find its way back to Chryse? That’s where any change in policy will have to come from. How can we get a channel back to there?”

Vrel left, promising to contact other Hyadeans that he knew. In the meantime, Cade and Marie could remain in the Hilton at Chryse’s expense. Vrel even gave special instructions to the on-site Hyadean security personnel who watched over their official guests to make a particular effort to keep “Professor Wintner” and “Dr. Armley” out of sight and incommunicado. He explained that CounterAction had them listed as Hyadean collaborators, and they were possible targets for retaliation. The hotel’s regular security staff were notified and agreed to keep the presence of the two academics highly confidential.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Casper Toddrel had once fired an assistant who referred to Laura as his “hooker.” She could discuss Dostoevsky or Freud, Hegel or Brahms, Dow Jones or the Bolshoi Ballet in four languages, knew how to get a floorside table or instant theater ticket anywhere in New York, and had preferred accounts at Tiffany’s, Bendel’s, and Saks. The Upper East Side apartment suite that he provided for her had come in at half a million and cost two thousand a month to maintain. He didn’t object to how she used it when he wasn’t in town, so long as she was discreet. The place had more than paid for itself in the information it yielded from loose-tongued business rivals, whom Laura was an expert at playing. She seemed to get a kick out of it—as if it put her in a role of intimate collusion with Toddrel. Since he never detected any similar ploy being made toward himself, he felt reasonably safe in concluding that she wasn’t overextending by trying any double-agent games.

A coalition of churches had staged a demonstration in Dallas to protest the passing of new laws aimed at curbing the dissemination of politically subversive material from pulpits and in parish magazines, and the local police had responded too zealously for prudence. Toddrel sat at the desk in the suite’s den, brooding at a picture that had come in over the net, showing a priest holding his arms up protectively against a riot trooper brandishing a baton. This couldn’t be allowed to get out. He finished composing a message putting a hold on media release and ordering the removal of the official responsible for security arrangements in Dallas. As he sent it off, Laura’s hands began massaging his shoulders through the robe that he was wearing.

“Hey, Big Guy, haven’t you had enough of that for one day?” her voice murmured. The scent of perfume touched his nostrils. A lace-covered breast rubbed the side of his head. “Tammy’s in the Jacuzzi already. We’ve got a surprise.”