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CHAPTER TWO

"SIDE-PANEL TO VIEW MODE," Vrel told the veebee, which he had laid on the tray at the front of his seat's armrest along with screenpad he had been using during the flight. The veebee passed the order on to the control system of the Hyadean staff transport descending over the Terran city of Los Angeles, and the part of the wall alongside became transparent. Vrel rested his chin on a hand and stared out at the carpet of horizon-to-horizon lights. Of the dozen-odd other Hyadeans around him in the cabin, some were talking in murmurs, others wrapped in their own thoughts. Krossig, the anthropologist, was reading. Orzin had dozed through the flight, after a busy schedule in Washington as an official observer assessing Terran reactions to further moves in Hyadean-U.S. cooperation. Hyadean policy was to concentrate on the United States as the focus of Terran political and economic influence.

As with all the cities he had seen here, the conception and layout showed little regard for efficiency or logic, although Terrans were not incapable of such qualities when it suited them. The failure to strike a better balance between building out and building up multiplied travel distances enormously. Trusting to manually controlled vehicles in this kind of traffic density brought appalling problems that the Terrans didn't deny, yet they made no serious attempt to do anything about them. Vrel sometimes thought that the chaotic daily sorties along the Interstates might provide some kind of ritual combat that their adversity-conditioned psyches needed. And they had no concept of segregating north-south traffic flows from east-west on different levels with connecting ramps, with the result that everything was squeezed onto a two-dimensional grid where all movement one way had to be stopped for half the time at every intersection. He wondered what they'd have thought of a computer chip designed that way, with all the wires on one plane, and switches to allow current through a crossover one way or the other at any time only.

But things like electronics and optronics weren't really Vrel's line. A political economist and social commentator, he had first come to Earth almost six (Terran) years ago now, with several trips back and forth to Chryse in the interim. And even after that time, he still found himself more than occasionally bewildered by this intoxicating world with its wild extremes of ecology and climate: plunging chasms and slabs of crust thrown up into snow-topped mountains, and stupefying proliferation of every form of life imaginable to the Hyadean mind—and then some. And to crown all of it, this volatile, quarrelsome race of pinks and yellows and browns and black, short and slender in form, yet curiously appropriate as the culminating expression of the unruliness and vivacity that characterized the whole planet.

At first, Vrel had been bemused by the diversity of governing systems: money-based, land-based, hereditary, military, planned and chaotic, popular choice or authoritarian; by the clashes of ideologies and traditions, spawning creeds and sects of every description, and mixtures of all of them which not even the Terrans seemed to understand. That was the usual Hyadean reaction. It was as if the only discernible universal attribute was the determination not to let anything be universal, leaving such authorities as existed virtually powerless to channel collective energies into achieving the kind of planetary efficiency that could have yielded ten times the productivity with a tenth the effort and spared all the grief and chaos entirely. Weren't the events that had occurred today in Washington illustration enough?

A year ago, Vrel would have thought so unhesitatingly. Now, after spending the last six months at the Hyadean West Coast Trade and Cultural Mission in Los Angeles, he was no longer so sure. Earth was an exotic planet, its surface fresh and young, sculpted only recently by catastrophic forces that affect planetary systems from time to time, and which Terran scientists, for the most part—until the arrival of the Hyadeans—had ignored or failed to understand. This made Earth unlike any of the other worlds to which the Hyadeans had so far spread, including Chryse, whose surfaces were old, shaped over eons by processes of erosion and leveling that rendered them by comparison weary-looking and drab.

The Terrans too were products of those same upheavals which not long ago had reformed, revitalized, and enriched their planet. Vrel was finding that their capacity for seeking fulfillment and finding "meaning" to their existence in ways that went beyond the obvious aim of attaining tangible benefits—which in the early days had been so baffling—now intrigued him. Could their astonishing intuitiveness and creativity, which both enabled them to soar into realms of fancy that no Hyadean mind would conceive, and at the same time wrought havoc with their sciences, represent a state of being that was "closer" to the origins of the forces that drove life, just as they themselves were closer to the creative impetus that triggered the last epoch of their evolution? If so, then maybe there were things the Hyadeans might stand to learn from Earth before they got too zealous about importing their own ideas and social system. Things the Hyadeans themselves had once possessed and forgotten, perhaps? The veebee beeped to attract attention, then announced, "Incoming call. From Luke, who will be meeting the flight. He says to tell you Dee is with him."

"Put it through." Vrel smiled as he picked up the screenpad. Luke's face appeared: elongated Terran features, black hair, and the tuft of "beard" that some Terrans cultivated—Hyadeans didn't have facial hair. "Hello, Luke," Vrel acknowledged in English. He had been working at it assiduously through his stay and was as proficient as any Hyadean. "And Dee's there?" The image shifted for a moment to show Dee waving, then returned to Luke. Vrel thought of Luke as Roland Cade's second-in-command as well as being a personal friend of Cade and Julia—usually around to make sure things got done, generally a part of the house and business. On Chryse, senior political and military figures relied on somebody like that, who was more than just an assigned administrator, to manage the detailed aspects of their lives and channel the right information to them.

"We're out on the field and will pick you up right off the plane," Luke said. "There's a car from the mission here too. I guess somebody there has decided to pass on the party and made their own arrangements."

The others in the cabin had been alerted by the cabin indicators to prepare for landing and were collecting their belongings together. Krossig would be going back to the house, naturally. So would Erya, the female involved with education, who was on her way back to Chryse and would be joining one of the orbiting Hyadean ships via the spaceport in Brazil. She was the type who could overcome Hyadean reserve sufficiently to enjoy a little unofficial entertainment Earth-style before returning to her familiar world, where everything had to be as stipulated and directed. Shayle, on the other hand, returning to her administrative post in the South American enclave, was always officious and disapproving of the irregular. She would shun any suggestion of letting standards slip and go back to the mission. Orzin, a figure of some authority, maintained an outwardly correct manner, but Vrel had seen hints that it concealed a different self that wasn't above a little off-limits relaxation when the occasion permitted. The rest of the group were either returning from Washington to their posts in South America or going on to Chryse. Vrel didn't know them well enough to guess who would be going where. Given Orzin's lead, most of them might opt for Cade's party, if for no greater reason than curiosity. Three sitting together, upright and proper, would no doubt be going back to the mission with Shayle. Somehow, Vrel couldn't imagine Terrans making such an issue out of an invitation to attend a party. Maybe he was starting to think a little bit like one.

The transport landed, and the Hyadeans disembarked via a covered escalator brought up to the door. Shayle and the three that Vrel had picked out departed at once in a Terran automobile, registering disapproval by declining to say a word. Luke and Dee were standing with Luke in front of a limousine-quality minibus. Vrel introduced the remaining Hyadeans except Krossig, whom they already knew because he worked with Vrel in LA. Dee had shoulder-length blond hair, fringed at the front, and was wearing a light wrap over a stretchy orange dress. She slipped an arm through Vrel's as they began walking around the bus. He had to suppress an impulse to flinch at the public display, reminding himself that he was back among Terrans now. A week of conforming to Hyadean protocols had reawakened his social reflexes. One of the arrivals nudged a companion and raised his eyebrows, not a little enviously. Terran women had a reputation among Hyadeans for being sensuous. Vrel pretended not to notice, resisting the conflicting urge to put on a little showiness. Opportunistic exhibitions of good fortune or superiority were considered bad manners here.

"Good flight?" Dee asked him.

"Just fine."

"I was a bit worried . . . with all that trouble on the news this afternoon."

"It was ugly. But we weren't really involved. How's Roland?"

"Oh, he never changes. Going with the flow."

That was a new one. Vrel checked with his veebee. It returned the best it could come up with. "He's on the river?" Vrel repeated, looking puzzled.

Dee laughed. "It means living life as it comes. Not fighting it. Making the best of whatever comes along."

"That sounds like Roland," Vrel agreed.

"One day you'll learn how not to rely on a computer all the time and develop your instincts instead," Dee told him. They climbed into the minibus. There were all-round leather seats, a screen, and a bar. Background music was playing of a kind that Vrel had learned to identify as strings. Classical Terran music had a big following among Hyadeans.

"Who was the composer of this piece?" Vrel asked the veebee in Hyadean.

"Antonio Vivaldi. 1678 to 1741. Born in Venice, Italy."

"And did you get the thing about the river. . . . What was it again?"

"Going with the flow."

"Oh, right. It means . . ." Vrel frowned and thought back. "Not fighting life. Taking things as they come. Is that right?"

"Close enough," the veebee replied.

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