Voices

by John Vornholt

  The telepath fought back questions that tried to stampede out of her mouth. She shook her head vehemently, and the young Rain surprised her by nodding in sympathy.

  “Yes, I know, you have to be Rain like all the rest of us. It’s not fair, when Winters is better for you. I’m sorry.” She shrugged and scrambled to her feet. As she dashed out the doorway, she whispered, “I’ll see you later.”

  Talia tried to still her initial impulse to bolt from the pueblo and keep running. Where would she go? she asked herself. It’s not surprising for the Bilagaani to know her real identity, she reasoned. They weren’t as cut off out here as they seemed, not with that battery of antennae and dishes on the plateau. Lizard was out there now, stealing data off a secured link. It wasn’t panic time yet, Talia assured herself, although it wouldn’t take much to push her to it.

  Young Rain had been so innocent about knowing her real name, and threatening at the same time. Talia couldn’t believe they were scheming to do her harm. Would an adolescent be allowed to blurt something like that out, if the tribe was planning to turn her in? The Bilagaani simply knew who she was, and they didn’t care if she knew it.

  Hey, she reminded herself, these people were breaking serious laws themselves. They didn’t want Psi Cops around. By running, she had naturally fallen in with people like Deuce and this weird offshoot of the underground. These were the people who lived in the cracks in the sidewalk, who lived in places like B5’s Down Below. Like it or not, she was part of their world now, and she might visit more way stations in the underground before her journey was through.

  If she didn’t clear her name, she would have to live in the cracks forever.

  No! she told herself. She wasn’t going to let that happen. Talia wanted her real life back, and she resolved anew to keep her mouth shut, to keep to herself, and to keep moving. She wouldn’t admit to anything. But she desperately needed to dye her hair or get a wig to go along with her new identicard. Hell, she thought, these people had enough hair to make her a hundred wigs! She wondered if they could improvise a wig or a dye-job for Sister Winters.

  Talia glanced at the mat where Deuce had been sleeping and wondered where he was. She wanted to know how soon they would be getting out of the pueblo, and by what method. She might opt to make her own travel arrangements if what Deuce had in mind was too dangerous. Of course, she thought glumly, she didn’t have any money. She could get Emily Crane’s business address at any public terminal, and then she would at least know her destination. She figured she could play it by ear after she confronted Emily Crane, but first things first - where was Deuce?

  She got to her feet and shuffled out the doorway. Shielding her eyes from the intense sunlight, Talia peered into the courtyard formed by the crude semicircle of stacked adobes. The courtyard looked brown and dusty, like an old coin, and nobody was visible. Even the chickens and goats were sleeping under mat lean-tos. It was hot, but it was the kind of dry heat that didn’t leave her sweating so much as parched and enervated.

  Talia sidled around the corner of Sky’s adobe and saw a ladder leaning on the wall and leading up to the next level. She heard some muted voices coming from above, so she decided to climb the ladder and try her luck. It was either that or sit around and go crazy, waiting for something terrible to happen.

  The handmade wooden ladder creaked under her weight, but it was just the leather stretching; it never felt as if it was about to give way. She climbed up quickly to the next floor, which was the top of Sky’s roof, and saw several scattered wooden toys - crude wagons, blocks, and noisemakers. Through an open door, she saw three children asleep, as she had been until a few minutes ago. It was siesta time, she concluded, the hottest part of the day when anyone with any sense would be sleeping. It was amazing how cool the adobes stayed compared to the outside temperatures.

  “We build the adobe walls with bales of hay in the center,” said Lizard.

  She whirled around to see the handsome Bilagaani poking his head out of the low doorway of the neighboring adobe. His chestnut hair framed his face in sweaty ringlets.

  “You were wondering how they stay so cool,” he explained. “Everyone wonders that. Come inside before you roast.”

  Was Lizard a rogue telepath? wondered Talia. This would be the place for a rogue to hide out, she supposed, if there was such a place. She ducked into his cool adobe and was struck by a blast of air from a powerful fan; it blew her hair and clothes back and made her stagger. Lizard reached out a hand to pull her in.

  “Keeps the dust out,” he explained, as he motioned around the cramped collection of electronic equipment, most of it in no order that she could discern. He went back to his desk and looked at one of his four viewers, this one filled with data.

  “Can you be thirty-two years old?” he asked. “I don’t think you look that old, but this is the closest match. Height, weight, family background …”

  She yanked at her blond hair, and he nodded.

  “So you want to change your hair color, make it darker? I thought you might. Then I’ve got one that will match even closer. I’ll format that data, and we’ll run you a card on the machine downstairs. Now, listen, these identicards are good for maybe four uses, about a week of traveling, and by then” - he looked at the screen - “Frieda Nelson should be retired. You’ll have to become someone else, because the system will eventually realize that Frieda Nelson can’t be in two places at once.”

  He crossed his brawny arms and stared at the screen. “She’s twenty-nine and hails from Eugene, Oregon. Remember, if you use it more than four times, you’re taking a chance.”

  Talia nodded and tried to give him an encouraging smile. It was too bad that she couldn’t stay and chat with this exotic young man, but she had to get organized. She had to get out of here - she could feel something already closing in, even if it was just her paranoia. Talia held up two fingers and shrugged.

  “Deuce?” asked Lizard.

  She nodded eagerly and shrugged again, as if to ask where he was.

  Lizard chuckled and turned back to his screens. “I don’t think you want to talk to Deuce at the moment. He is lying with one of the women of the tribe, Sister Morning. She’s the one who came with us to get you.”

  Talia blinked at him, wishing she hadn’t asked.

  “Morning is a widow, and she took an interest in Deuce the last time he was here. She thinks she has a chance to convince him to stay, but I don’t think so. Deuce likes a faster pace than Bilagaani Pueblo, I’m afraid.”

  Talia looked desperately around the little room with the huge fan, and her eyes lit upon Lizard’s pad of paper and stubby pencil. She grabbed them, flipped to a clean page, and began to write. Lizard watched her with interest, a quiet mirth in his blue eyes.

  After a few seconds, she handed him a sheet of paper bearing the scrawled words: “I need address for Emily Crane, works at the Mix.”

  Lizard rubbed his angular chin. “The Mix? Then she’s a telepath, right? Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Listen, you don’t have to be in a hurry to leave. This is not a bad place to hang out, and we could get to know each other.”

  Would she get the same recruiting inducements as Deuce was getting? wondered Talia. She supposed there had to be some incentive to get people to live way the hell out here in this wilderness, and that might work with some people. But Talia couldn’t imagine a life of nothing but sand, gruel, and Lizard. She had a life that she already enjoyed, and she longed to get back to it. The telepath pointed inflexibly at the sheet of paper bearing Emily’s name.

  “Okay,” said the Bilagaani, punching in a few commands. “To get her business address will only take a moment.”

  Talia paced the cramped office. She didn’t know why she was angry at Deuce for stopping to enjoy the local recreation. It was stupid to think that she had won that gangster’s allegiance or loyalty. He was a cutthroat, pure and simple, and he would help her only as long as it didn’t hurt him. Like the canteen he had hidden fro
m her, Deuce would always save the best for himself. He had gotten her this far, but she would have to get the rest of the way on her own.

  “Does Boston sound right for Emily Crane?” asked Lizard.

  She nodded, and the young man printed Emily Crane’s address onto a clear address card. When he went to hand it to her, his hand caught hers, as if to steady it, and their thoughts mingled disconcertingly. He told her, It doesn’t matter who you are. She gripped his hand in return and told him telepathically, It does matter! I am a hunted terrorist, and I will destroy you all if I stay. I have a life, and a purpose. Only death will stop me from clearing my name.

  Talia yanked the address card out of his hand and studied it. She memorized it all, including floor 38, and tucked the card into a zippered pocket of her jumpsuit.

  “All right,” said Lizard with resignation. “You’ll need clothes, a disguise. Come with me.”

  He took her back out into the sunlight. Despite the heat, they climbed down the ladder and walked completely around the pueblo and toward the plateau that protected it. Talia wanted to ask where they were going, but she didn’t dare. She saw the crops that Sky had talked about - neat rows of squash, corn, and various herbs she didn’t recognize, all irrigated from the muddy stream. Tied to wooden stakes in the garden were colorful bits of cloth and miniature windmills; she supposed the purpose of the adornments was to frighten away the birds.

  She also saw modern equipment connected to a concrete building. That had to be the collection center for their power transformer, Talia deduced, because of all the wires stretching from the building to the solar panels on the plateau and the windmills beyond. This was quite an operation they had here. Although the Bilagaani lived primitively by twenty-third-century standards, they weren’t exactly nomads or monks who had taken a vow of poverty. They couldn’t just get up and leave this pueblo. She wondered how it happened that they never got raided. Did they pay people off? Maybe they paid them off with information.

  Before she could fully worry about such a prospect, Talia’s attention was drawn to the extraordinary erosion on the plateau. Close up, it looked pockmarked and pitted, not the smooth rose-colored monument it had seemed from afar. Even Lizard appeared subdued by this sight, as if he could remember the plateau a million years ago, when it had been young and tall, a budding mountain. Now it seemed to mirror the tribe - a ghost of a grandeur long past, something more depressing than beautiful.

  True to his name, the young man darted among the pockmarked cavities in the rock face and promptly disappeared. Talia hurried after him, and she almost cracked her resolve by calling his name. When she finally saw the low entrance to the cave, barely a meter high, she stopped. Ever since she was a little girl, she had been afraid of caves. Fortunately, she had never had much cause to come into contact with caves, growing up in a succession of urban areas. But here was one now. It had swallowed Lizard, and now it beckoned her.

  Was he waiting inside to jump her? Talia thought fretfully. If he was the type to do so, she decided, she might as well confront him here and now. There was certainly something inside the cave he wanted her to see, and there was no time like the present to see it. Talia got down on her hands and knees in the caked sand and crawled into the hole.

  The telepath was surprised to see a glimmer of light just ahead of her, but she didn’t dare get to her feet until she saw how low the ceiling was. Then she rounded a corner and saw Lizard, standing upright and lighting an old lantern with some liquid floating in a glass bulb. She didn’t know how it burned, but it gave off an amazing amount of light. She assumed that if the tall Bilagaani could stand upright in the cave, then so could she.

  As she walked toward him, she saw the remarkable treasure hidden in the cavern. There were dozens of trunks, suitcases, and boxes filled to overflowing with clothes, hats, coats, belts, umbrellas, and other accessories. She moved from one box of treasure to another, surveying ancient things like fox stoles and brocaded bob jackets. She remembered when those had been popular about a dozen years ago. This cave was like the world’s largest emporium of antique clothing!

  “The desert keeps these things very well,” observed Lizard. “When people come to join us, they bring goods they cannot use anymore, and we store them here. We keep thinking we will burn them, but every now and then something turns out to be useful. You are welcome to anything you find here.”

  Talia nodded her thanks, although she felt a bit overwhelmed. She wanted a clean suit of nondescript civilian clothes, not trunkfulls of dirty, exotic, antique clothing.

  “There is a mirror over there,” said Lizard, pointing to what looked like a narrow doorway containing more people and another lantern. Talia jumped before she realized it was just their reflection.

  “I will go finish your identicard,” said the muscular young man. “Take your time.”

  Talia nodded her thanks and looked around with dismay at aged trunks full of dusty clothes.

  Mr. Gray leaned forward in the autotaxi. “That’s him,” he said, pointing to a slim man walking down the sidewalk.

  “He’s late,” muttered Garibaldi.

  “Marlon has a very responsible job,” countered Gray. He ran his chit through the slot on the dashboard, settling their debt with the robotic vehicle, and the doors opened to let them out.

  Once they reached the sidewalk, Marlon glanced back at them, but he exhibited no inclination to greet them. It was cloak-and-dagger stuff all the way, thought Garibaldi, as they followed the man through the wrought-iron gate and into the courtyard of his apartment complex. This was one of those pseudo-Roman places, thought Garibaldi, with lots of chintzy columns and porticos. The piece de résistance was a lighted swimming pool with a fake mosaic portrait of Neptune on its bottom.

  Without saying anything, they followed Marlon to his apartment on the first floor, poolside. Garibaldi looked around as Marlon unlocked his door, figuring that if anybody was watching them they would assume that the guy was about to be mugged. But this strange procession had taken only a few seconds, and they were all safely ensconced in his apartment a moment later.

  Marlon and Harriman Gray hugged each other like the old friends they were.

  “Thank you for seeing us,” said Gray.

  Marlon gave Garibaldi an annoyed glance. “You didn’t give me much of a choice, did you? How did you find out about bill 22991?”

  “It’s connected to the bombing on Babylon 5,” explained Garibaldi. “So tell us about it.” The chief sat down on the silk sofa, crossed his long legs, and waited.

  The clerk sighed and went to his well-stocked bar. “I need some sustenance first. You want one?”

  “Sure,” said Gray.

  “I gave up sustenance,” answered Garibaldi.

  Marlon collected his thoughts while he mixed the two drinks. He looked very serious as he delivered Gray’s drink and took a seat beside Garibaldi on the sofa.

  “It’s like this,” he began, “a lot of people hate Psi Corps.”

  “That’s not exactly a news flash,” said Garibaldi.

  “Yes, but they really hate them, especially the Psi Cops and the intelligence groups. Only they’re too afraid to say anything. I’m talking about senators here! You should see some of the things Psi Corps does to them - blackmail, intimidation, threats - it’s terrible!”

  Marlon took a gulp of his drink. It smelled like a martini to Garibaldi, a strong one, too. The clerk continued, “It’s a secret proposal so far, but there’s a bill under consideration that would privatize Psi Corps. Under the guise of saving money, this bill would take Psi Corps out of the military - which doesn’t control it, anyway - and make the governing body of telepaths a completely civilian office.”

  He took another drink and went on, “Even though a lot of the same telepaths would still be around, the Senate hopes this will cut their ties to their allies, kill all their secret intelligence gathering, and basically neutralize them. All the good stuff they’re doing, they can keep doing as a
civilian entity that answers directly to the Senate. As far as the public is concerned, nothing changes - Psi Corps just becomes private instead of military. In reality, a lot changes.”

  Gray interjected a question. “This sounds like quite a windfall for somebody. Who would take over Psi Corps once it’s privatized?”

  Marlon shrugged. “Who else? There’s only one firm of private telepaths that’s big enough - the Mix.”

  Garibaldi and Gray looked at one another. They didn’t need to be reminded who Emily Crane’s employer was - the Mix.

  “Does Arthur Malten know about this?” asked Garibaldi.

  “Are you kidding?” scoffed Marlon. “He’s been lining this up for years, going to all the senators who have been harassed by Psi Corps and making secret deals. When he has enough votes, and that may be soon, this bill will miraculously jump out of committee and go to the floor in the dead of night. It will be passed immediately, before Psi Corps has a chance to stop it. The president will sign it in his pajamas. When Psi Corps wakes up the next morning, Malten will be in charge.”

  “Does this mean that Malten’s a good guy?” asked Garibaldi.

  Marlon laughed cynically. “Hell no, he’s doing it for the money. With the Psi Corps budget to play with, he stands to make a fortune! It’s risky for Malten, but the Mix is already as big as it’s going to get under Psi Corps. This is Malten’s chance to grab everything.” The young clerk drained his martini.

  Gray cleared his throat and asked, “If you wanted to get away with this, would it be a good idea to kill Mr. Bester?”

  “Well,” answered Marlon, “they say the only way to kill a rattlesnake is to cut off its head. As long as Bester and his cops have carte blanche to deal with the telepaths as they want, he’s in charge.”

  The clerk stood and went to the bar. “Harriman, would you like another one?”

  “No, thank you,” said the somber telepath. Garibaldi felt sorry for him. No one ever liked to hear about internecine warfare in their own ranks. This was telepath killing telepath for personal gain and power. Garibaldi might be content to let them kill each other off, but they were killing innocent people in the crossfire - twenty-six of them at the Royal Tharsis Lodge - and they were casting the blame on Mars separatists, who didn’t need more grief.