Voices - Vornholt John. Страница 37

“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 from 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 twentythird-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 pock-marked 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 trunkfuls 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 piиce de rйsistance 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?”