Voices

Chapter 4

“That’s it for me,” said Ivanova with a sigh. “The station is yours, Major Atambe.”

Her replacement nodded and assumed the command post in front of the main viewing port of C-and-C. The docking bays were quiet—only two ships were preparing to depart for the jump gate, and the station was secure. Ivanova paused at the doorway and looked back.

“When is the next transport from Earth due in?”

Major Atambe punched up the shipping register. “Oh seven hundred,” he replied.

She nodded. “I’ll be back then. Wouldn’t want to lose any of our VIPs, would we?”

Ivanova strode through the doorway and toward the lift that would take her to her humble quarters. She was thinking about her bed, her most prized possession in the universe. It wasn’t a remarkable bed—just a standard-issue single bed, extra firm—but it represented her sanctuary, her escape. No matter what madness was swirling all around her, she could always collapse into that bed and find peace in immediate slumber.

Ivanova began thinking about a remarkable vacation she had planned, if only she could get away with it. In this dream vacation, she would lie in bed as much as she wanted. The link, the alarm clock, the computer, anything that might wake her up would be banished deep into her sock drawer. Perhaps a waiter would come, at her bidding, to bring her bonbons and other snacks, but otherwise she would do nothing but sleep. If she woke up, she would look around to content herself that she was still safely in bed, then she would roll over and go back to sleep.

She chuckled to herself. What had her grandfather always said? “You can get a Jewish woman to do anything in bed but wake up.” Her grandmother, she recalled, had never learned to make matzo ball soup in sixty-three years of married life.

Well, thought Ivanova, she had never learned how to make matzo ball soup either. Unfortunately, there was no one around to make it for her.

“Susan,” said a voice.

She stopped dead in the deserted corridor, as a feeling of dread crept up her backbone. A figure stepped out of the shadows but made no movement to come closer.

“Hello, Susan,” said Mr. Gray, a smile tugging at his thin lips.

“Gray,” she snapped. She strode past him.

He ran after her. “Susan, please, I just want to talk to you!”

“I’m not allowed to talk to you. Captain’s orders.” She pushed the button and waited for the lift.

Gray waved his hands desperately. “Susan, I don’t want anything from you, really.”

“Then go away.” Where was that stupid lift?

The door opened, and she stepped in. To her disgust, Gray followed. Now they were alone in the narrow confines of an elevator car.

“Deck eight,” said Ivanova, then she lifted the link to her mouth. “If you persist in harassing me, I will call security.”

“Harassing you?” muttered Gray. “All I said was hello!” He stared straight ahead at the door, as if he didn’t care to speak to her again either.

“Hello,” she said disgruntledly.

“I just wanted to tell you about my new apartment,” said Gray. “In Berlin.”

Ivanova looked at him. “Berlin. I’m impressed. I didn’t pick you as being the avant-garde type.”

“You don’t know me very well, do you?” asked Gray. “Did you think all telepaths lived in some medieval dungeon somewhere?”

“Yes.”

Gray chuckled. “Oh, some of them do. Most of us live out of a suitcase, in army barracks, or metal boxes like this one.

The lift door opened, and Gray waited expectantly. Ivanova stepped out, stopped, and lifted her shoulders in a tremendous sigh.

“Please, Susan,” Gray pleaded, “stop thinking of me as the enemy. You know I didn’t choose this path—I wanted to be a soldier. I’ve got a career, and I’m trying to get somewhere in the channels that are open to me, just like you. I’m all alone, just like you.”

The young telepath lowered his head. “Maybe it was a mistake trying to see you. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

He turned to go, and Ivanova reached out her hand. But she couldn’t bring herself to touch him. “Your place in Berlin,” she asked, “is it anywhere near the Free University?”

He turned excitedly. “Yes, it is! It’s about ten blocks away, and I can take the U-Bahn, or walk. I love walking around Berlin. I know many people find it depressing, because the whole city is like a museum to the destructive power of war. But what can I say, I’m a war buff.”

Ivanova shrugged. “Whatever turns you on. I went there on a summer study program to research the dadaists.” She headed down the corridor, and Gray scurried along beside her.

“That’s a fascinating period,” he admitted, “although the dadaists are a bit extreme for my tastes. There are some interesting comparisons between the dadaists and the performance artists of the late twentieth century. Wouldn’t you say?”

Ivanova frowned in thought. “I’m not sure. In both cases, their aim was to shock the bourgeoisie and the accepted art establishment. But the dada movement was more of a collective effort, and performance art was very individualistic. I read about one woman who would take a Zima bottle and put it …”

Gray suddenly grimaced and put his hands to his head.

“What is it?”

He slumped against the wall and motioned for her to look behind them. Ivanova turned to see a small man in a black uniform standing at the end of the corridor. He smiled and strode toward them.

“I knew I would find you here, Mr. Gray,” said Bester. “With the Lieutenant Commander.”

“Stop that scan on him!” commanded Ivanova.

But Gray was already regaining his composure. “It’s all right,” he said hoarsely.

“It’s not all right,” snapped Ivanova. The fiery officer glared at Mr. Bester. “None of what you do is all right. You act like telepathy is some giant leap in evolution, but the way you use it is just the same old crap. Control! That’s what it’s all about.

“Where I come from, we’ve seen the czars, the Bolsheviks, the secret police, and we know all about you. You just want to tell people what to do with their lives, and to hell with them if they have other ideas!”

Bester took a deep breath and squinted at her. Ivanova braced herself for perhaps a scan, but Harriman Gray stepped between them.

“That’s enough, Mr. Bester,” said Gray, trembling but jutting his jaw. “As of now, you can forget about me ever being your assistant. I don’t like the way you operate. Unannounced scans were not part of the job description.”

“My boy,” said Bester like a favorite uncle, “don’t take it personally. It’s just a way we have of shortcut communications. Instead of you briefing me about your whereabouts, I just take a quick peek. I hadn’t realized telepaths in the military were so sensitive to these shortcuts.”

The Psi Cop looked at Ivanova and smiled like a cobra. “Besides, I see you are attending to personal business. As for that other matter, there’s plenty of time to make a decision. I hope you both have a pleasant conference. Good night.”

Bester swiveled on his heel and walked briskly down the corridor.

“Some shortcut,” sneered Ivanova. “All one-way.”

Gray whirled around and stared at her. He was clearly shaken, but he managed to say, “You were quite magnificent.”

Ivanova was too drained to take in any more. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gray, but I’ve got to get some sleep. And I think the three minutes I promised you are up.”

“Please,” he begged, “a large favor. Would you call me Harriman and let me call you Susan?”

She stared at him with amazement, then softened and nodded. “All right, but only when we’re alone. Around other people, let’s be formal.”

Gray beamed with pleasure. “Does that mean we’re friends?”

“Don’t count your luck,” she said. Ivanova turned to go, but she halted after one step. “I’m glad to hear you won’t be that schmuck’s assistant. Good night.”

“Good night, Susan,” he said softly.

“For humans,” said Garibaldi, handing out the breathing masks, “the Alien Sector is always something of a disappointment. You can’t see a damn thing, and if you could see, you wouldn’t want to. We keep trying to improve it, and the one thing we want to avoid is making it look like a zoo. So, if a bunch of closed doors in murky, unbreathable air is your idea of a good time, let’s go.”

“Surely, it’s got to be more interesting than that,” said the tall one, Mr. Malten.

Garibaldi shook his head. “Not really. Most of the folks down here have special food, drink, and atmosphere requirements, so they don’t go out much. Ms. Winters can tell you. She’s got a regular client in here.”

“Yes,” said Talia rather proudly. “Ambassador Kosh of the Vorlons. We invited him to the reception tomorrow night, and I hope he’ll attend.”

Garibaldi added, “But all we ever see of him is his encounter suit. It’s up to you if you want to stroll through the sector, but you won’t see anything unless we bang on people’s doors.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Talia. “I only come down here when I have an appointment.”

The small telepath, Emily Crane, looked up at the storklike Mr. Malten. “I don’t want to d-disturb the residents.”

“Neither do I,” answered Malten, placing the breathing mask back on the shelf. “But I don’t expect to be shortchanged out of our tour of Down Below.”

“Of course not,” said Garibaldi. “What do you want to see? There’s smuggling, stolen gear getting stripped down, a bunch of derelicts nodding out. You name it, we’ve got it.”

“All of it.” Arthur Malten smiled.

Talia winced and Emily screwed her eyes shut as a hairless behemoth belted some scaled creature and sent him flying over shipping crates and crashing into broken shelves, long since looted. As the grubby crowd of derelicts screamed their approval, the hairless thing went slobbering after its prey and commenced the beating anew. The babble of the bettors was insane, sounding like quadraphonic bedlam inside Talia’s mind, and she would have left if the men hadn’t been enjoying it so much.

“What do they bet?” asked Malten.

“Just about anything,” shouted Garibaldi over the din, “credits, goats, dust, passage out of here! Passage out of here will settle almost any debt.”

“I c-can’t stand this,” muttered Emily into Talia’s shoulder. “It’s barbaric.”

“I agree!” Talia replied. “We must leave this terrible place at once.”

Suddenly, there was a disgusting cracking sound, followed by howls of rage and joy, in equal measures. Talia averted her eyes from the sights on the other side of the room and found herself looking at Garibaldi. Even he was preferable. To her, Garibaldi looked more like a criminal than most of the criminals—crude, shifty, wolfish, a man who prowled instead of walked. On occasion he said something funny, but those occasions were not as numerous as he believed. She would have to be out of her mind to get too friendly with him, yet he obviously liked her. It was hard to hate a guy who drooled whenever he saw you.

The bedlam had died down to a roar, and she was able to hear him say, “This is not a terrible place for Down Below. This is a nice place. You see a fight, and they serve you some flavored antifreeze and take your money. What more do you want?”

Then he smiled and rubbed his chin. “Oh, I forgot, you folks can’t gamble.”

“Isn’t that a silly regulation?” asked Malten. “I don’t see any way we could determine the outcome of this primitive sport, so what would be the harm in betting on it?”

“It would be wrong,” said Emily simply.

Malten smiled. “Yes, I suppose so. But we don’t know anything about some of these species, do we? They could be far more telepathic than us, yet no one tells them they can’t gamble. I think it’s a ridiculous rule. Everybody knows who we are, and they can let us play at their own risk.”

Garibaldi frowned. “Can’t you be horsewhipped by Mr. Bester for saying stuff like that?”

The private telepath snorted a laugh. “I’ve been saying stuff like that for a long time, only nobody listens. I’ve worked for thirty years to have telepaths accepted as just another professional class, no different than doctors or pilots. Do you think I like to see Bester and his crowd ruining all my work?”

Talia shifted uncomfortably on the crate where she was sitting. She tried to change the subject. “These fistfights—they can’t possibly be legal.”

“No,” admitted Garibaldi. “We could shut this place down, but the fights would just spring up ten minutes later in a manufacturing bay, or a cargo bay. We haven’t got the manpower to patrol all of the station. Down Below was used a lot during the construction of the station. Then funds ran out, and it was left unfinished. People get stranded on B5, or kicked off the crew of their ship, or just dumped here, and there’s nowhere else for them to go.”

He shook his head in amazement. “I don’t understand this place either, but we’ve had social engineers through the station who say that Down Below is normal. If it hadn’t grown organically from poor planning, we would’ve had to invent it. If you have order, they say, you also have to have chaos.”

The chief looked meaningfully at Talia. “Does that make sense to you?”

“I think chaos can be avoided,” she replied.

“It makes sense to me,” said Malten. “I want to see more.”

Garibaldi led them into a grungy corridor and sniffed the air. “If I’m not mistaken, down this way we have people sifting through garbage. I don’t know how they reroute it down here, but they do.”

Emily crinkled her nose. “P-people steal garbage?”

“Yes,” said Garibaldi with a reassuring smile. “But they don’t keep all of it, just the good stuff.”

“I think we can pass on that,” said Mr. Malten. “What’s down this corridor?”

“A shanty camp. Do you want to see it?”

“Yes,” answered Malten forcefully.

Talia hung back, but she couldn’t hang back too far as Garibaldi led them briskly through a scene of both despair and amazement. Aliens of every description—with jutting jaws, fins, segmented limbs, hairy pelts, or compound eyes—commingled with humans. Adults, children, old people, the dying—they all had a haunted look on their faces as they stared at the visitors. The shanties had been cobbled together from old crates, stolen panels, sheet metal, shelves, and whatever else might stand up.

“We give them fresh oxygen,” said Garibaldi. “That’s about all they get from us, although the Minbari run a soup kitchen. We can go there next.”

Talia couldn’t decide which was worse, the sense of despair or the smell of the place. To her surprise, the voices she heard in her head were not demanding, begging, or insistent. Some were resigned and helpless, others were angry at their plight and their well-dressed visitors, and a few were clearly insane. It was a mixture, like any bunch of people, and she knew that some of these unfortunates would scrape their way out of here. Others would sink even deeper until there wasn’t a trace of them left.

A thuglike woman stepped in front of Mr. Malten and glared at the telepath. “Hey, buddy, got some chewing gum?”

“No,” said Malten, taken aback.

She sneered, “You want to buy some?”

“Beat it, Martha,” growled Garibaldi. “You know that chewing gum is illegal on the station.”

He hurried his party along.

“Top quality!” the woman called after them. “Real sugar!”

“I doubt that,” said Talia.

Emily Crane shuffled along beside her, holding a handkerchief over her nose. “I’d like to leave now,” she sniffed.

“So would I,” agreed Talia. “We’re not going to let the attendees run loose down here, that’s for sure.

“All the more reason to see as much as we can,” said Malten. “One or two more stops, please.”

“It’s your play,” said Garibaldi. He halted in front of a long tunnel that was rather badly lit. “This way is a shortcut to that Minbari soup kitchen.”

Talia looked doubtfully at him. “A dark, deserted tunnel?”

“It’s not deserted,” said Garibaldi. “I see someone moving around down there. And I can’t help it if people keep stealing the light fixtures.”

Talia peered into the gloom. There did seem to be vague shapes moving through the passageway. She wished she hadn’t asked Garibaldi for this VIP tour, but now she had to trust his instincts.

“Come on,” said Malten, stepping into the entrance. “There are four of us, Mr. Garibaldi is armed, and we can always protect ourselves telepathically.”

“Only against humans,” Talia added.

The foursome started moving down the tunnel, and Garibaldi and Malten had to stoop where smaller ducts crossed overhead. The ducts were seeping a foul-smelling liquid, and Talia dashed under each one. She stumbled, and her hands brushed against the sticky walls. For once she was glad to be wearing gloves for a reason other than to avoid skin contact. When Talia found herself shoving Emily Crane in the back to hurry her along, she told herself to calm down. They were still on Babylon 5, her home base, just in an unfamiliar part of it.

However, Garibaldi’s talk about chaos had made her nervous. She didn’t like the idea of chaos, and she suspected Mr. Malten wouldn’t like it either, if he were actually confronted by it. This was precisely why the control offered by Psi Corps was so important. It could make order out of chaos. She hoped.

Talia noticed that the vague figures at the other end of the tunnel were not at the other end anymore. And they weren’t vague anymore. They were three large, hooded figures, and they were rapidly walking toward the party of genteel telepaths and one security officer. There would be a confrontation, Talia could feel it. For one thing, they barely had room to squeeze past each other in the confines of the tunnel.

She didn’t want to pry into their minds, but she had to know what the three strangers were thinking as they strode briskly toward them. She could see them clearly now, even in the dim light, and she tried to hear their voices.

Talia gasped. Their minds were cold and alien! They were not human!

“I know,” said Malten, hearing the alarm that was sounding in Talia’s head.

“Just pay them no mind,” Garibaldi suggested, although he didn’t sound like his usual, cocky self. Talia noticed that his hand was resting on his PPG weapon.

The security chief quickened his step to get out in front of the others. He waved jauntily as the first hooded figure drew abreast of him. “Top of the mornin’!” he called.

The alien never stopped moving as he slammed his shoulder into Garibaldi and crushed him into the bulkhead. A huge knife flashed under the dark robes, and Emily screamed.

The other hooded thugs rushed toward the telepaths, knives gleaming in their gloved hands!