Voices

by John Vornholt

  Bester was distracted by his pilot, although she hadn’t moved or said a word. “What did you just receive?”

  “Finch is reporting that Malten broke off negotiations. He may be running. There was an echo on his last transmission, and we think we may have pinpointed his hideout. I have coordinates - we can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Go!”

  CHAPTER 21

  Garibaldi stared out the starboard window of the shuttlecraft and watched the barren terrain of Mars streak by. Mars never looked real from the air, he thought to himself, with all those lifeless and craggy hills, broken up by the occasional dusty habitat, monorail tube, or factory dome. Mars was a place that couldn’t possibly exist, yet here it was, a monument to humanity’s determination to bring life to a dead planet. No matter how many buildings they put up, the edifices of man always looked tenuous on Mars, like vines trying to cling to a smooth metal door.

  The terrain didn’t look real from ground level either, he recalled. From that perspective, the mountains, chasms, and sheer cliffs looked too large and too vivid to be real. They rose at odd angles out of the pockmarked, reddish soil, like crystals growing in a culture. The mountains looked like sand castles, as if they would crumble in a strong wind.

  “I hate this place,” muttered Gray beside him.

  “Yes, Mars is an acquired taste,” agreed Garibaldi. He looked at Bester. “Psi Corps has certainly acquired it.”

  Bester was ignoring them as he leaned forward intently. “Status?”

  “I’m running sonar,” reported the pilot. “The readings indicate that there is a structure where we picked up the echo. It’s the size and shape of a bunker.”

  “Underground?” asked Bester.

  “Yes, but not too deep. I can hover over it and turn on the thrusters. That might blow away some of the camouflaged covering.”

  “Do it,” ordered Bester.

  Garibaldi braced himself as the pilot - who was damned good, he had to admit - positioned the craft directly over a small mound between two jagged mountains. The mound looked like a mogul on a ski slope, and he had seen hundreds of similar protrusions on Mars, formed by the pressures of lava flow. The pilot came so close to the mound that she nearly landed, then she popped the thrusters. The shuttlecraft rose like a shot between the two mountains, shuddering and rattling until she could regain control of it. Then she banked the craft away from the peaks and swerved around for another view.

  True to her word, she had blasted a star-shaped hole in the artificial surface covering the mound. Under the singed material, sections of gray metal shone dully in the sun.

  “Can you raise anybody in there?” asked Bester.

  “I’ve been trying,” she answered. “So has Mr. Finch. Malten has either left, or is keeping quiet.”

  “Damn,” muttered Bester, “if we’ve lost him - if he ran for it - well, there will be no more negotiations!”

  “I can land on the mound,” the pilot offered. “We might be able to cut through, or find a hatch.”

  “If you’ve got a suit,” said Garibaldi, “I’ll go out and take a look.”

  “They’re in the storage bin in the back,” answered Bester. “Right beside the airlock chamber. You can exit there.”

  Garibaldi started off, then stopped. “You won’t leave me out here, will you?”

  Bester scowled. “Leave you alone with Malten, or maybe a batch of his secret files? Not bloody likely.”

  Garibaldi found four environmental suits in the closet, and he was glad to see they were all roomy and optimized for use on Mars. With the low gravity, nobody had to worry about carrying around too much weight, so a Martian environmental suit could carry the maximum amount of high-grade insulation, plus cooling and air-processing equipment. He stripped off his uniform, figuring the pilot had seen it all before, and squeezed into the suit.

  He lowered the helmet onto his head, locked it, and waved to the pilot. She set them down carefully on top of the camouflaged bunker, but they could still hear the grinding of metal against metal. There was a scary moment as something crunched and the ship shifted, but it settled down at an angle that wasn’t too terribly dangerous. Garibaldi guessed that a few more pieces of the camouflage material had broken away under the weight of the shuttlecraft.

  He pressed the button to open the airlock chamber, then crammed himself into the tiny space. With a deep breath, he pressed the second airlock and opened the hatch to the outside.

  The brightness of the Martian landscape startled him at first, and he lifted his eyes to the dark sky until they could adjust. A few seconds later, he was scrambling like a mummified mountain goat over the top of the bunker, trying to find a way in. With his foot, he kicked off more chunks of the soil-colored camouflage material until he finally discovered a docking hatch.

  He activated the radio inside his helmet and waved at the shuttle pilot in the cockpit. “I found a docking hatch. Do you want me to go in, or do you want to fly ten meters over here and try to dock?”

  Garibaldi waited a few seconds, and the pilot replied, “Get clear. We’re going to dock.”

  He bent his legs and jumped about twenty meters to the ground, landing so lightly that he had to run a few steps to slow himself down. That was when he saw the fresh rover tracks in the red soil. The sight of the tracks gave Garibaldi a very bad feeling in his stomach. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t think Malten would flee overland by rover. He just wasn’t the survivalist type.

  But it was too late to suggest caution, because the shuttlecraft lifted up again and came down expertly atop the hatch he had uncovered. Whatever Bester’s bad qualities, thought Garibaldi, he had attracted a very good pilot for his shuttlecraft. When the thrusters went dead, Garibaldi jumped back on top of the bunker with one effortless leap. He peered under the shuttlecraft and saw the robotic mechanism of the airlock twisting around by itself to find the hatch. They finally paired up and locked with a solid clunk.

  He tapped his radio again. “Do you have atmosphere in the bunker?”

  “Positive on that,” answered the pilot. “Come back in. Mr. Bester is opening the hatch.”

  Garibaldi hurried as fast as the bulky suit would allow to the chamber at the rear of the craft. By the time he got through the airlock and was stripping off his suit, Mr. Bester was halfway down the hatch. The Psi Cop groaned with pain at every rung of the ladder, and he pounded the head of his thick metal cane on the ladder.

  Gray looked at Garibaldi and shrugged. “He insisted on going down.”

  The chief began putting on his uniform. “Be careful down there! I saw fresh rover tracks outside.”

  Bester’s head disappeared into the hatch, and he was gone. Gray scrambled down after him, and Garibaldi tried to be patient as he waited his turn. He glanced at the young pilot.

  “Keep the motor running,” he advised her.

  Then he heard a shout. “Oh, my God - stay back!”

  Garibaldi was so anxious to see what was happening that he dropped the last few meters of the ladder onto very plush blue carpeting. He was amazed when he saw the vast layout of viewers, computers, and editing equipment - it was truly a decked-out communications bunker. There were hardly any other furnishings in the room, except for a workbench and a few chairs. It was one of the chairs that Bester and Gray were staring at.

  Arthur Malten, wide awake but looking haggard, was tied to one of the chairs, with a bomb strapped to his head. He was trying to hold perfectly still, but the sweat was running a marathon race down his face. Pinned to his chest was a note that read: “Compliments of the real revolutionaries.”

  “They came in,” he gasped. “Martians! I didn’t see them!”

  Garibaldi edged forward. “Can we disable it.”

  “No, no!” screamed Arthur Malten. “It’s got a motion detector on it. You get too close - kaboom! If I move too much - kaboom! They explained it to me in loving detail. They also have a remote!”

  That last admission made B
ester start hobbling toward the ladder with his cane. “Listen, Malten, we’re not the bomb squad. I’ll send for some specialists.”

  “Bester!” called the desperate telepath. “I didn’t mean it personally! You understand, it was politics.”

  “Of course,” said the Psi Cop. “It was a damn good try, too. You took me by surprise and nearly succeeded. I’ll remember that.”

  “The Mix,” croaked Arthur Malten. “Try to save it.”

  “We will. Come on, gentlemen.”

  “But we just can’t leave him here,” Gray protested. “Garibaldi, do something!”

  The security chief rubbed his hands together and tried to think. “We need some small clippers, but if we can’t get close to him …”

  “Mr. Bester!” called the pilot from above. “An unidentified man is telling us we have thirty seconds to get off or else!”

  “I am sorry about Talia Winters, too!” wailed Malten from the chair. “And Emily!” He began to sob, and his head bounced around, which made Bester squirt up the ladder.

  “That’s a deathbed confession,” said Garibaldi, pushing Gray toward the ladder. “Let’s move it!”

  “There’s no hope for him?” asked the telepath.

  “Not unless we get help. Move it!”

  The light gravity allowed them to bound hand-over-hand up the ladder, as Malten’s sobs grew louder and more pitiful. When they reached the shuttlecraft cabin, Bester was already strapped in, and the pilot was going through her pre-ignition checklist. Bester stumbled to his seat, and Garibaldi struggled to get the hatch shut. He fell backward as the robotic link broke and the mechanism retracted into the shuttlecraft.

  “Five seconds!” called the pilot.

  They heard a low rumble beneath them, and Garibaldi shouted, “Now!”

  She jammed on the thrusters as a fireball and concussion rocked the little craft, sending it spinning around. Garibaldi was tossed into Bester’s legs, and the Psi Cop screamed in anguish. The pilot bore down and never gave up on the bucking craft, yet Garibaldi could see one of the jagged peaks looming ever closer in the window. He braced himself for impact, but the pilot hit the thrusters again and spun them away from the mountain.

  She picked up altitude as quickly as she could, and everyone craned their necks toward the ports to see what had happened. All that was left of Arthur Malten’s secret bunker was a huge, black crater with a few smoldering sparks at its edges. Debris and twisted bits of metal were scattered for half a kilometer around the site.

  “Oh, my,” murmured Gray, slumping back in his seat.

  Bester looked reflective. “Maybe it had to end this way. Well, I suppose we can tell the press that he died constructing a bomb.”

  Garibaldi scowled and shook his head. “You never want to give the right people credit for anything, do you? The revolutionaries found him before you did, and they weren’t in a negotiating mood. Face it, Bester, you have been one step behind everybody this whole chain of events.”

  The Psi Cop bristled. “I’m still going to take down Talia Winters and her uncle.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Garibaldi confidently. “I didn’t want to use this, because I’m ashamed of it, but you force my hand. Do you remember the reception on Babylon 5 the first night of the conference? It was our only successful event.”

  “Yes, what of it?” asked Bester, sounding wary.

  “That night I made a visual of several of your Psi Cops gambling in the private quarters of Ambassador Londo Mollari. I believe he was teaching them three-card monte.”

  Mr. Bester looked pale, but he still managed a smile. “That can’t be true. You’re bluffing.”

  “Am I?” Garibaldi countered. “You can ask Ambassador Mollari for confirmation. He was, shall we say, my accomplice.”

  Bester’s lips thinned, and he stared hard at Garibaldi. But Harriman Gray inserted himself between the men and warned, “Don’t scan him, Mr. Bester. I will help him block it. Suffice to say, Garibaldi told me about this incriminating visual, but I begged him not to use it.”

  Gray looked with disgust at Garibaldi. “He must feel you gave him no choice.”

  The security chief picked some Martian dirt out of his fingernails. “You will drop all charges against Talia Winters, especially the rogue telepath. And you’ll do it right this minute, or the next thing you’ll see on the news will be Psi Cops gambling. Won’t the press enjoy that right after this juicy scandal with the Mix? Maybe the Senate will have enough courage to throw you out on their own.”

  “I don’t believe you did it,” muttered Bester, “but it’s the kind of thing Ambassador Mollari would do.” He called out to the pilot, “Get me a channel to headquarters.”

  “Yes, sir. You’re on-line.”

  “This is Mr. Bester with a final report on the Babylon 5 bombing. This information is cleared for immediate release to the media. Arthur Malten confessed to forming a terrorist organization called Free Phobos, and his only accomplices were three other telepaths from the Mix - Emily Crane, Michael Graham, and Barry Strump. Unbeknownst to anyone, they were Martian sympathizers. Mr. Malten died this afternoon, the victim of an accidental bomb explosion.”

  “In light of this new information, all charges against Talia Winters have been dropped. She is to be taken off the list of rogue telepaths. with all her duties and rights as a member of Psi Corps restored to her, effective immediately. Bester out.”

  Garibaldi nodded, leaned back in his seat, and closed his eyes.

  At the Clarke Spaceport orbiting Earth, two men stood among the crowds, shaking hands. One man wore gloves, and the other didn’t. One was catching a quick shuttle to Berlin, and the other was headed in the opposite direction to catch a two-day transport to Babylon 5.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come back with me?” asked Garibaldi. “If you’ve blown your expense account, I’ll put you up on my couch.”

  Gray chuckled. “I have blown my expense account, thanks to you. But that’s not the reason. I don’t want to go back to B5 just to see Susan - that would be making a nuisance of myself. I’ll have business on B5 again someday, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing all of you.”

  “Just don’t bring Bester with you.”

  The two men laughed, and Gray lowered his head. “I have one request. Will you tell Susan that I did something worthwhile. Something that would win her over.”

  “You bet I’ll tell her,” said Garibaldi. “I plan to get a lot of free meals out of this - by recounting our adventures over and over again. I’ll leave out the part where you fell in the water.”

  “That was your fault,” Gray reminded him.

  “That’s why I’ll leave it out.”

  “And how is Ms. Winters?”

  “Still a little shaken,” answered Garibaldi. “I understand she’s staying with her parents for a few days before she goes back. I bet she’ll have some pretty good stories to tell, too.” He sighed. “These are classy women we’re talking about, and we’re a couple of lugs. We may never stand a chance with them.”

  “I know,” said Gray.

  A synthesized voice announced, “Transport Starfish is now boarding for Babylon 5.”

  “That’s me,” said Garibaldi. He started off but stopped to wave back. “You’re okay, Gray.”

  “You too.”

  Two hundred kilometers below them, a young woman with sleek blond hair stood watching the stars from her parents’ porch. The nightmare was finally over, but she still didn’t feel like talking much, about her escape or anything else. So much of what had happened to her in the last few days Talia didn’t understand. She had to parse it slowly in the light of time, and pick out those pieces that were worth saving, and worth puzzling over.

  As she watched the stars glimmer, she marveled at the fact that she lived among them. She called them home. Talia had seen enough of both Earth and Mars to last her for a while, and she looked forward to going back to the cold blackness of space. She longed to see the alie
ns, who were less judgmental and prejudiced than her own species. Among aliens, you could be whoever you were, she realized, but among humans you had to be whoever they wanted you to be.

  And nobody was what they seemed.

  Out of all the weirdness, the duplicity, the good masquerading as bad, and the bad masquerading as good, there was one piece of her journey she wanted badly to understand. It was Invisible Isabel. She wanted to talk to Ambassador Kosh as soon as possible, but she knew the Vorlon would speak in riddles and tell her nothing outright. Kosh would want her to figure it out for herself.

  The part of Invisible Isabel she recognized was her nascent telekinetic abilities, a gift from an old friend; but it was Isabel’s voice that was new to her. That voice was confident and independent, and it could get her out of tough scrapes. She couldn’t hear it all the time, but she would like to hear it more often.

  “Talia, honey, we’re going to have some ice cream!” called her mom, sounding a lot like her Uncle Ted. His nightmare was still going on, but at least he had chosen it.

  And what about the dogged persistence of Garibaldi? That was something. She had to think about all of it, but not tonight. Tonight she would eat ice cream and listen to stories about her extended family and parents’ friends. Then she would return to her home, Babylon 5.