Voices - Vornholt John. Страница 34

“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.