Voices

by John Vornholt

  “As long as Ms. Winters is a fugitive, Ms. Crane is basically safe. If Ms. Winters gets killed, which is altogether probable, then Ms. Crane has nothing to worry about.”

  Garibaldi groaned. “We know who, but we don’t know why. Who was she really trying to kill? Bester? Malten? Too bad for her, because she missed on both counts.”

  “If it’s not personal,” said Gray, “is it actually tied into the Martian revolution?”

  “Listen, do you know anybody in the Senate?”

  “A senator?” Gray asked doubtfully.

  “It doesn’t have to be a senator, it could be a clerk or an aide, maybe even a lobbyist. Somebody in the know. I saw a confidential memo on her desk, and it was from the Senate. I think it was about some pending bill. Maybe there’s a connection with Mars.”

  The telepath pouted for a moment. “I would rather follow up my lead on the hotel bombing.”

  “Think about it, Gray. You would have to go to Mars to do that. You’d have to track down all the personnel data she gave when she was pretending to be a Martian domestic worker. If this thing takes us to Mars, I promise we’ll do it.”

  Garibaldi patted the telepath on the back. “We’re here in the East Coast metropolis. Let’s check on stuff we can check out here. Also, we have to keep an eye on her in case she flies. You know, Gray, you have surprised me. You are doing a helluva job. We arrived here from two different paths, but we both got to Emily Crane.”

  Mr. Gray nodded somberly and made a fist. “We work well together. I say, let’s nail whoever did this.”

  *

  It seemed like a mirage, shimmering in the desert heat, a pile of adobe cubes; they looked like loaves of bread baking in the sun. After the long haul over the rugged terrain in the Hovercraft, without seeing anything except endless tracts of desolation, even these humble abodes looked miraculous. Talia rubbed her eyes, both to get a better look and to get the sand out. No, it really was a village, a low-level form of civilization to be sure, but Talia didn’t think she had ever seen anything so beautiful.

  “Bilagaani Pueblo!” shouted the old man into the wind, which ate most of his words.

  Talia nodded and gripped the sides of the roll bar tighter. The sensation of metal against her bare hands felt strange. There really wasn’t a second seat in the small Hovercraft, and she was hanging on for all she was worth.

  As they drew closer, she decided the adobes looked like a pile of children’s blocks, a smaller block piled on top of a larger block to form rudimentary second stories. The extra space also allowed walkways between various structures on the second story, and wooden ladders stretched to every roof in the pueblo, utilizing all the space. There were rounded wooden beams sticking straight out of the adobes at irregular intervals, and smoke curled from a chimney on the topmost structure.

  Gathered around the pueblo were pens for animals - goats and chickens seemed to be the most popular - and there were several low-slung lodges, little more than a meter high. Some of these low lodges were skeletal structures, nothing but twigs with colorful bits of cloth tied to them. Near each lodge was an immense fire pit filled with gray rocks, and Talia wondered what so many fire pits were used for. Colorful feathers and handmade pennants decorated staffs and poles all over the village.

  The dogs were the first ones to come running to greet the Hovercraft, and they were yapping and wagging their tails happily. They were followed by children, who were also yapping but had no tails to wag. Undaunted, they twirled clacking noisemakers over their heads, causing the chickens to scurry. Adults began to emerge from the adobes, and they exhibited only a mild interest in the new arrivals.

  Talia now saw that the village was nestled against a small plateau barely taller than the tallest adobe and exactly the same color. This must make it difficult to spot from the ground, she thought. Atop the plateau was the incongruous sight of solar panels, microwave antennae, and satellite dishes; and in the distance were white windmills, churning in the breeze. She imagined that the solar panels and windmills generated all the power the pueblo could ever need. Maybe there would be a hot bath tonight, she thought hopefully.

  Then she saw the muddy stream, barely a meter wide, skirting both the plateau and the pueblo as if it were trying to avoid them. She saw no other signs of water, and her hopes sank.

  The strange caravan swerved to a halt near the other parked Hovercraft, and the pilots killed the engines. She gasped as the vehicle dropped to the ground. A moment later, Brother Sky was offering his hand to her.

  “Come, Sister Rain,” he said. “Do you need food?”

  She nodded and got out of the Hovercraft. The dogs sniffed her, and the children ran around her in circles, giggling. Talia looked over and saw Deuce getting out of the boy’s Hovercraft. The gangster managed to greet several people while keeping his black briefcase clutched to his chest. His duffel bag was slung over his shoulder.

  She turned to see the barechested young man with the chestnut-colored hair. By himself he pushed the Hovercraft close enough together to loop a length of steel cable through their rings and chain them together. He glanced up at her and smiled, and she was instantly embarrassed about watching him. When she turned away, she found the middle-aged woman staring at her. The woman gave her a toothless grin and walked away, and she could see skin lesions and ruined skin on the woman’s naked shoulders.

  The people of the pueblo looked healthy enough, but many of them had the kind of simple ailments that come from living primitively: bad skin, bad teeth, limps, injuries, and one case of cataracts. Had they been in a city or a space station, they could have been cured of most of these ailments over the weekend. Those who weren’t nude were dressed in similar dirty clothes and wore similar waist-length ratty hair. It was disconcerting to see all these Earthlings living in such primitive conditions, and Talia was glad when Sky escorted her inside a ground-floor adobe.

  She had to duck her head to fit through the doorway, and she was surprised to find a tasteful electric floor lamp giving off a subdued bit of light. She was even more surprised to see a table, upon which sat a sprawling machine; it had various spools and feeds and looked like it was intended for small manufacturing. The smells of the room were also a strange mixture of industrial solvents and chile, cilantro, and onions.

  “I will be right back,” said Sky. He disappeared into the adjoining room, which Talia assumed was the kitchen. She could see no cooking utensils in the outer room.

  A moment later, Deuce entered and slumped onto one of the mats on the floor. He kicked off his boots and groaned with relief. His feet added another odd smell to the room.

  “Ever see anything like this?” he asked.

  She shook her head in an honest answer.

  Deuce grinned. “They bend the laws, but they’re good people. They’re on the edge, like you and me.”

  Talia nodded. Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue with that generalization, given her present circumstances. The young man with the chestnut hair came in, and he was carrying a mangled pad of paper, a stubby pencil, and a measuring tape.

  “Stand up, Brother Deuce,” he said, motioning to the gangster.

  Deuce complied, and the young man measured his height, as if he were fitting him for a suit. When he was done, he wrote his findings on his pad of paper.

  “I’m going to guess on your weight,” he said. “Our scale broke. But I’m pretty accurate.” He tapped his pencil on his chin until he came up with a guess, which he also wrote on his pad. “Sister Rain,” he said, “it’s your turn.”

  She pointed to him and gave him a quizzical expression.

  “You want to know my name?” he asked. “It’s Lizard.”

  At her startled expression, the young man chuckled. “It is our custom to name a child after the first thing the father sees. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes not. But we praise our grandparents and the Creator for giving us life, and we accept our name with their blessings. Turn around.”

  She obeyed
, and Lizard ran the measuring tape from the crown of her head to the heels of her feet. In doing so, his fingers touched the bare skin at the nape of her neck, and it gave her a shock. For that split second, she glimpsed involuntarily into his mind and saw that his life out here was lonely. Painfully lonely, but he couldn’t leave.

  “Fine;” he said, jotting down her measurements. “You look about the same weight as my sister - I’ll use that. Thank you. I need to go back to my house and get on the microwave link. In maybe an hour, I’ll have some matches for identicards. It’s gotten too hard to do real forgeries, so I’ll have to match you with a living person and download their data. You’re just going to travel around with these cards, right? You’re not going to apply for a job or a security clearance, are you?”

  Deuce laughed hoarsely. “I don’t think so.”

  Talia shook her head.

  Lizard brushed his unruly hair back and gripped it in a ponytail. He waved to them and walked out, and Talia found herself watching his finely chiseled backbone and shoulders. Deuce grinned. “You heard the rule against messing around with the chiefs daughter? Well, that’s the chiefs son. Same rule.”

  Talia flashed him an angry look, but he ignored it. Nevertheless, she told herself, it was very good advice. The last thing she needed was to settle down out here in the wilderness, with a bunch of misfits who had stolen somebody else’s culture. What did she really know about these people? She could wake up one morning and find Psi Cops staring down at her, while Lizard and Sky pocketed a nice reward. No, she was a shark now - she had to keep moving. She had to search out her prey, the same ones who had preyed on her.

  That thought brought her back to Emily Crane. Ever since Garibaldi had elicited that name from her, Talia had wondered whether Emily actually had something to do with the bombing. If the bomb had been hidden in the data crystal - and she didn’t know how likely or unlikely that was - then Emily had indeed not only tried to kill her, Bester, and Malten, but she had succeeded in killing five telepaths and casting the suspicions onto an innocent person! In other words, Emily Crane was an extremely dangerous and ruthless person. She had to be stopped.

  Talia sat on the packed-dirt floor and wrapped her arms around herself. Having an identicard would make traveling possible, but it didn’t mean she could travel with impunity. It didn’t mean anything, except that she could risk her neck a dozen other places.

  Sky came back into the room holding a handmade ceramic bowl. Its contents smelled good, and Talia sat up eagerly. The old man put the bowl in her lap, with no spoon, and she tried to ignore the strange things she found in it. There was a base of some sort of gruel, some vegetables which might’ve been bits of cactus, and some meat and black things.

  Talia looked at Sky, and he smiled encouragingly. “Go ahead. It’s all yours.”

  She apparently wasn’t going to get a spoon, so she dipped her fingers into the potpourri and grabbed a glob of it. After her first hesitant taste, the weary fugitive was soon scraping the sides of the bowl with her fingertips.

  “I’m glad you like it,” said Sky, grinning. “You want some, Brother Deuce?”

  “No, thanks,” said the grubby criminal, stretching out on the mat. “But I could use a nap.” He put his briefcase under his head as a pillow.

  “Make yourselves at home,” said Sky. “I have some crops to attend to.”

  He strode out through the low opening in the adobe hut, leaving her alone with Deuce, who was quickly snoring. Taking a hint, Talia lay back on the hard-packed earth, thinking she could never get comfortable on bare dirt.

  She was asleep in a matter of seconds.

  CHAPTER 15

  Garibaldi stood on the concourse of Boston’s Travel Center, staring at a blank viewer and waiting to link up with Babylon 5, as hundreds of commuters rushed behind him, headed toward bullet trains that would take them up and down the eastern seaboard. Gray stood to his left, fidgeting.

  Finally, there was a chime and Captain John Sheridan’s handsome face appeared on the viewer. Garibaldi sighed with relief “Captain, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get through, but I thought I’d better report in.”

  “That’s fine,” answered the captain. “Have you turned up anything?”

  Garibaldi glanced around to make sure nobody but Gray was eavesdropping. “Yeah, I think we found the bomber. But I don’t know bow we’re going to prove it without having Talia Winters to testify. Her name is Emily Crane, and she works for the Mix in Boston. She handed Talia a data crystal just before they all went into that conference room.”

  “Interesting,” mused Sheridan. “She’s a commercial telepath, and that corresponds with some information that Mr. Lennier gave me. At the reception, he was talking to a military liaison named Barker.”

  Gray interjected, “He’s high up.”

  “I gather that,” said Sheridan. “He told Lennier that Bester would soon be history, and that the commercial sector was going to make a grab to control Psi Corps. I can’t imagine how they would go about doing that, but it ties together.”

  Garibaldi frowned. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t clear Talia, because she’s also in the commercial sector. But it does let us concentrate our search.”

  The captain’s link buzzed, and he lifted his hand to answer it. “Excuse me,” he said. Over the long-distance connection, Garibaldi couldn’t make out every word of the captain’s conversation, but he clearly heard “Mr. Bester” mentioned several times.

  “Out,” said Sheridan. He turned back to the viewer and shook his head. “I’ve got to go. Our prize patient is making life difficult for everyone again. Now he’s demanding to have his own doctor flown in! Dr. Franklin is about ready to walk. Keep me posted.”

  “Right, sir.” Garibaldi pushed the button to sign off, then he nodded to Mr. Gray. “Time to call your friend.”

  “But he’s only a clerk in the Senate,” Gray protested.

  “That’s good enough. Those guys do all the work, and they know everything. Call him up, and ask him about Senate bill 22991.”

  Reluctantly, Gray pushed his creditchit into the slot and dialed some numbers on the commlink. After a few moments, a clean-cut, bookish-looking man about Gray’s age came on the viewer.

  “This is Senator Donaldson’s office.”

  “Marlon, it’s me - Harriman! How are you?”

  “Harriman, what a surprise! My gosh, how long has it been? Was it the frat reunion in Montreal? Was that the last time I saw you?”

  “I believe so,” answered Gray. “You’re an old hand now - five years working for the senator.”

  “And you look great,” Marlon replied. “Where are you living these days?”

  Garibaldi sighed and gave Gray a hand signal to hurry up. “Berlin,” answered Gray. “Listen, Marlon, I need some information about a Senate bill. I believe it’s still in committee and hasn’t gone to the floor yet.”

  Marlon smiled helpfully. “Whatever you need.”

  “I think the bill has something to do with telepaths. It’s number 22991.”

  A pall fell over Marlon’s face, and he looked as if he had been struck by a severe case of gastrointestinitis. He glanced around nervously and lowered his voice. “How do you know about that? I can’t talk about it.”

  Garibaldi stepped into the picture. “Oh, I think you can, Marlon, or we’re going to come down to the senator’s office and ask everyone who goes in and out until somebody tells us.”

  “Who are you?”

  Gray rolled his eyes with embarrassment. “This is Michael Garibaldi, Chief of Security for Babylon 5. We’re working on a case together.”

  “Is he serious about what he just said?”

  “Yes,” answered Gray with a sidelong glance at Garibaldi. “He’s impatient, rude, and has very little tact.”

  “None,” agreed Garibaldi.

  The Senate clerk was still shaken. “I can’t talk about this on a public comm. Do you still have my address? It hasn’t changed since I’ve bee
n in Washington.”

  “Yes,” said Gray, consulting a small electronic device.

  “I’ll be home by six tonight. Why don’t you meet me there? And don’t go asking anybody else. I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Great,” said Garibaldi, “we’ll buy you dinner.”

  Looking very glum, Marlon signed off.

  “Well done,” said the security chief, slapping Gray on the back. “You just have time to buy me lunch before we hop the rails to Washington. Let’s go.”

  Talia Winters felt somebody toying with her hair, and she woke up with a start to find a teenage girl leaning over her. The girl jumped away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “you have such beautiful hair. We’re not allowed to cut our hair short like that. I wish we could.”

  Talia sat up, disoriented, and looked around the humble adobe hut, with the strange machine in one corner and the smells of cooking wafting from the other room. Once again she thought about how her life had taken on such a surreal quality that her dreams seemed normal by comparison. In her dream, she had been back on Babylon 5, conversing with tentacled aliens. Awake, she was a fugitive from the law, a rogue telepath, reduced to hiding out in the desert with a group of neo-primitives.

  “My name is Rain,” said the girl, stroking her honey-blond hair over her naked shoulder.

  Talia almost answered the girl in spoken words, saying she was Rain, too. But she didn’t have to say it. The girl laughed in a lilting voice.

  “Yes, I know, you are Rain. When Brother Sky names the girls, they are almost always Rain. Some of the people place great significance in this, others say he is misogynistic, but I say he just doesn’t like to remember names.”

  The teenager stroked her hair again, and her green eyes drilled into Talia’s. “I think we should call you by your real name. It suits you so much better.”

  Talia almost cried out, but she forced her tongue back into her mouth as she stared into those vibrant green eyes.

  “Winters,” said the girl. “Sister Winters is so perfect.”