Voices

Chapter 14

From his duffel bag, Deuce took out a pair of banged-up but good binoculars and handed them to Talia. She nodded her thanks and put the lenses to her eyes to study the approaching party. The four Hovercraft were clipping along at a good rate of speed, spewing up dust clouds behind them, and she realized with a shock that the pilots were all women!

As she looked closer with the binoculars, Talia decided that they weren’t necessarily women but people with very long hair that whipped in the wind. Two of them were barechested, and she could see their bronze skin glistening in a halo effect created by the morning sun at their backs. It wasn’t until she saw the stylized eagles painted on the noses of the Hovercraft, and the feathers flapping from the roll bars, that she felt certain who they were. In this wilderness, it made sense.

Indians, she thought aloud.

Deuce chuckled. “Well, real Indians wouldn’t think so. Those are Bilagaani, as they call themselves. White Indians.”

Talia nodded. She had heard of the White Indians, people who had forsaken their own culture to emulate the culture of another race that had flourished five hundred years earlier. They were shunned as pariahs by actual Native Americans, at least those who were trying to maintain their culture. Many Native American tribes had gotten rich and conservative from gambling enterprises around the turn of the millennium, and they had given up any effort to maintain their culture. The White Indians had picked up where they left off, often moving into deserted Indian villages.

“Don’t be fooled,” said Deuce. “This ain’t a game to them. They take it real seriously, especially the religious parts. Some of them were born and raised this way, so they don’t know any different. Others have come along, bringing their big-city skills with them.” Deuce smiled. “Those are the ones I like.”

The grubby criminal motioned at the vast desert. “They live out here where nobody else will live, and nobody pays them much mind. So they do little favors for people like me.” He smiled at Talia. “People like us, I should say. You’re a much bigger criminal than I am.”

She glared at him, and the man laughed. “I won’t tell them who you are. But there should be a big reward for you by now. Better watch your step.”

Talia nodded somberly. After another twenty minutes, the four Hovercraft came shooting out of a gully, skimming over the crusty sand. She could hear the hiss of their powerful propellers. Unlike wheeled vehicles, thought Talia, these did little to disrupt the ecosystem, other than blowing the sand around. The Hovercraft looked like blunt-nosed racecars, with roll bars and a combination spoiler/solar panel in the rear of each vehicle. The fanciful eagles and coyotes painted on the craft did much to make them look authentic, but the people driving them only succeeded in looking strange.

The Bilagaani stopped their vehicles and turned off their engines, and the Hovercraft settled into the sand. One by one, the drivers got out, stretching their legs. There were no cries of greeting, no rush to shake hands with Deuce and Talia. In fact, there was a deliberate reserve in their actions, as if a rushed greeting would be unseemly. Their hair, driven into ratty knots by their journey, hung to their waists. They were wearing moccasins and thick flannel pants tied with drawstrings; two of them wore crudely sewn shirts made from the same material. From their necks hung leather pouches, and there were short knives strapped to their arms.

One of the bare-chested Bilagaani was a tall, muscular man with chestnut-brown hair. He was the kind of character, thought Talia, who existed mainly in fiction—romantic, handsome, although caked with dirt and sweat. The other bare-chested Bilagaani was a middle-aged woman with brown hair, and her breasts were as tanned as the rest of her. The third one was an older man with white hair, and the fourth one looked like a boy.

Finally, it was the man with white hair and a creased face who approached them and held up his hand in greeting. “Brother Deuce,” he said, “I hope all goes well.”

“Brother Sky,” said the gangster, “it is well to see you again.”

Talia felt the others staring at her, and she stared right back. After her adventures of late, she was certain she was just as grungy and disreputable-looking as the rest of them. She could feel the caked blood in her scalp and on her forehead. And she felt bare without her gloves.

“What is your name, child?” asked Brother Sky.

Deuce shrugged. “She don’t talk, and I don’t know what her name is. But I would like to make some arrangements for her.”

Sky smiled benignly, showing several missing teeth. “We will double your fee.”

“What?” squawked Deuce. “You had to come out here, anyway! How can you double it?”

“Very well,” said Sky, “we can leave her here, to feed Brother Coyote.”

“All right,” muttered the gangster. “But she needs everything I’m getting—new identicard, passage east.”

Sky held up his hands in a token of peace. “The Creator will provide.” He turned to the handsome one. “Make our peace with the land for this intrusion.”

The young man leaped down into the wash and took only a few strides to reach the half-buried cargo container. He gathered up the parachute and stuffed it into the hole in the top of the container. Reverently, he took his pouch off his neck, opened it, and faced the east. As he spoke words in a language which Talia didn’t recognize, he took bits of dried vegetable matter from his bag and tossed them into the wind. Everyone watched silently as he repeated this procedure facing the south, the west, and the north. Then he returned the pouch to his neck and climbed out of the wash.

“Father,” he said, “we should return here and break down this container. There are things we can use.”

Sky nodded. “Yes, my son. That is well.” The old man motioned toward his Hovercraft. “Deuce, you will ride with the boy, as he is lighter. Your friend will ride with me.”

The old Bilagaani studied Talia for a moment. “You will need a name, at least for the period you stay with us. Since you come from the sky, I will call you Rain.”

Talia nodded and smiled. She liked the name Rain.

Boston was a strange city, thought Garibaldi, as he and Harriman Gray rode an autotaxi through the financial district. Mixed among the gleaming skyscrapers with mirrored surfaces were these old gray buildings with bay windows and skylights. The autotaxi shuddered up a steep hill, and they got a glimpse of the sparkling ocean and a sleek ocean liner at the dock. Then they plummeted down the other side of the hill and entered a grimy tunnel that looked as if it had been built at the dawn of time. The whole city seemed a dichotomy, thought Garibaldi, both modem and ancient, clean and dirty, with the usual big-city feature of way too many people.

They emerged from the tunnel, and the robotic car jerked sharply around a corner, following an invisible track in the street. Gray was thrown against Garibaldi by the centrifugal force.

“Sorry,” said the telepath, straightening his shoulders.

“Why are you sorry?” asked the security chief “You’re not driving. We did tell this thing to go double-time.”

Gray sighed and flicked on the viewer on the dashboard. He flipped stations until he found some news, and Garibaldi wasn’t surprised to see a photo of Talia Winters.

“… whose whereabouts are still unknown,” said the newscaster. “The commercial telepath has been implicated in the recent bombing on station Babylon 5. She made good her escape three days ago and has not been sighted since. In addition to being wanted by authorities for the bombing on Babylon 5, Talia Winters has been declared a rogue telepath by the governing body of telepaths, Psi Corps.”

“What?” growled Garibaldi. “I thought Bester was going to lay off for several days!”

Gray shrugged. “Maybe he woke up from his surgery in a bad mood.”

“If you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Talia Winters, please contact your local police or Psi Corps office.”

Garibaldi flicked off the viewer. “Sheesh,” he muttered. “If she lives through this, it’ll be a miracle.”

“I don’t believe our chances of finding her first are very good.”

“Yeah, but we’re the only ones who know that she might be coming after Emily Crane. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.”

The vehicle came to an abrupt stop in front of one of the behemoth skyscrapers, not one of the charming stone buildings. Gray and Garibaldi looked at one another to see who would be the first to draw his creditchit.

“Your expense account has got to be better than mine,” observed Garibaldi.

The telepath sighed and ran his card through the slot. “Thank you,” said a synthesized voice. The doors opened, and they stepped out.

“Floor thirty-eight,” said Garibaldi, looking at his electronic address keeper.

Garibaldi’s Earthforce uniform and Gray’s Psi Corps insignia got them past the security guards in the lobby without any problem, even though they didn’t have an appointment. Garibaldi and Gray had agreed not to alert Emily Crane that they were coming; they wanted to surprise her and judge her reactions for themselves. Even though the rest of the universe thought Talia Winters was guilty, Garibaldi was going to prove them wrong. He just hoped he could do it before Bester and his goons got ahold of her.

The receptionist of the Mix office on floor thirty-eight was a dour-looking older man. At least he looked dourly at the two uniformed men as they approached his desk. His nameplate read: “Ronald Trishman.”

“Hello, officers, what can I do for you?” he asked, while grabbing a keypad and trying to look busy.

Garibaldi tried to be charming but businesslike. “Does Emily Crane work here?”

“Who are you gentlemen?”

“I’m Michael Garibaldi, Security Chief of Babylon 5, and this is Mr. Gray, Psi Corps military liaison, currently under assignment to Mr. Bester. You’ve heard of him, right? We would like to see Emily Crane.”

“Do you have an appointment?” asked Ronald Trishman, showing his displeasure.

“No.”

“I’m afraid you’ll need an appointment.”

“That’s a nice try,” said Garibaldi. “Tell her she can talk to us or the Psi Cops. It’s her choice.”

The receptionist swallowed and touched a commlink panel on his desk. “Ms. Crane, there are two gentlemen here to see you. One is the security chief of Babylon 5, and the other is a telepath working for Mr. Bester. They say you can talk to them or to the Psi Cops.”

“Please send them b-back,” came the answer.

“Room two twelve,” said the man. He buzzed open the door to the inner chamber, and Garibaldi was there in two strides, with Gray rushing to keep up.

When they found room 212, Emily Crane stood waiting for them in the doorway, a look of concern on her plain face. She was wearing a brown suit that was too long for her diminutive height, and it didn’t do much to enliven her personality either.

“Hello,” she said simply. “Come in.”

She ushered them into an office that was a considerable contrast to her appearance. It had striking furnishings of a Frank Lloyd Wright influence, with ornate fractals carved into her Mayan-styled desk, conference table, and bureau. Emily Crane seated them in comfortable chairs decorated with a Mayan pattern in blood red.

Gray managed a smile and was the first to speak. “We’re sorry we have to bother you, Ms. Crane, but there’s a matter we have to clear up.”

Garibaldi crossed his legs and smiled benignly. They had decided in advance that Gray would do the questioning, because he was a fellow telepath. She might open up more for him. If he faltered, Garibaldi would step in and play good cop/bad cop. He was looking forward to being the bad cop.

Ms. Crane said nothing and waited for Gray to go on. Garibaldi realized that talking was not her strong suit, and she was going to do as little of it as possible.

“I’m assigned to Mr. Bester,” said Gray, “and he is convinced that Talia Winters is guilty of the bombing on Babylon 5. She claimed to have certain items in her handbag, but her recollection does not match the recollection of the security officer who searched her on the way in.”

Gray smiled rather charmingly. “This may seem like a trivial matter, but we need this information for the sake of completeness—to know exactly what was in her bag. Did you give Ms. Winters a data crystal sometime that morning?”

“Which morning?” asked Emily Crane. “We were passing a data crystal back and forth—m-myself to Mr. Malten and Ms. Winters. It was a very hectic t-two days.”

Good dodge, thought Garibaldi. It wouldn’t be easy to tie Emily Crane to this, especially with Talia on the loose, unable to testify and looking more guilty every minute. He had to remind himself that he was the only one in the entire universe Talia had told about Emily Crane.

“We’re talking about the morning of the bombing,” answered Gray. “After you had passed through security.”

Garibaldi sat up with a start. He knew that he had seen Emily Crane before, but he hadn’t remembered exactly when. Now he knew! He had checked her through himself that morning—in fact, he had held the bomb in his hand! That was twice he had held the bomb, if you counted his dream.

When he turned back, he found Emily looking at him in a strange way. She was scanning him!

“Stop it!” he barked. “You just answer the question, all right. Did you hand her that data crystal, the one I let you take through security?”

“No,” she answered haughtily. “If you want to try to prove I did, good luck.”

Garibaldi lost it and jumped to his feet. Leaning over her desk, he shouted at her, “You killed five of your own kind! And now you’re going to let an innocent woman hang for it! I thought I had seen every kind of monster in Psi Corps, but, sister, you take the cake!”

Gray was holding his shoulders, restraining him more in symbol than reality. “We’ll get her for it,” he said with a sidelong glance at Emily Crane. “Remember, we can place her at the hotel bombing, too. We’ll get her for that one, if not this one.”

Now Emily jumped to her feet and pointed toward the door. “Get out!” she demanded.

While he was leaning over her desk, Garibaldi made a point of studying everything on it. Amid the billing statements, electronic gadgets, and printouts was one thing that caught his eye—a disposable transparency, the kind that self-destroyed after a brief period. It bore the logo of the Senate and several warnings of a classified nature. It seemed to be from the chairperson of the armed forces committee, a strange thing for a commercial telepath to be concerned about. He couldn’t read more than that, but he did catch the number of a bill that was apparently under consideration.

“Out,” she said, “or I will call security and my lawyer!”

Garibaldi pointed a finger in her face. “You get that lawyer, because you’re going to need him.”

“Come on,” said Gray, pushing Garibaldi toward the door.

Once outside on the street, the agitated chief took a few deep breaths and looked at a morbid Mr. Gray. He felt pretty bad about it, as if they had blown the interrogation, but he couldn’t think of another way they could’ve handled it.

Garibaldi shrugged. “Hey, at least we know who the bomber is.”

“But we’re the only ones who know,” complained Gray, “and everybody else is looking for the wrong person. I suppose we could tell Mr. Bester, who would make Ms. Crane’s life miserable, but somehow that’s not the same as bringing her to justice.”

“That’s the last resort,” said Garibaldi. “What do you think Crane will do? Will she fly?”

“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 bare-chested 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 thse 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.