Voices - Vornholt John. Страница 49

Talia screamed, along with hundreds of others, as she staggered to the floor. She saw a flaming refreshment cart go rolling down the middle of the mall, spewing great clouds of choking, black smoke. The security guard was trying to hold back a panicked line of passengers while yelling into his link, and he wasn’t paying any attention to her. She jumped to her feet and dashed through the smoke.

She bumped hard into a strange man, who wrapped his arms around her. Talia shrieked at his bizarre appearance, but then she realized he was a regular man wearing goggles and a breathing mask. She looked closer and saw his long white hair, like the mane of an old lion, and the devil-may-care smile under the mask.

“Hiya, Talia!” said his muffled voice.

“Uncle Ted,” she gasped, and she dissolved into a coughing fit.

“This gas won’t last forever,” he warned, grabbing her arm and yanking her down the corridor. She staggered after him, her senses overcome by the smoke, shouts, and noise. Then a competing voice sounded in her head.

“Talia!” it called. It was a real voice, yelling above all the others. “Wait for me!”

She pulled away from Uncle Ted and whirled around. A telepathic voice popped into her head, saying, “Do not panic, Talia. It’s Garibaldi and a friend.”

Her uncle regained a grip on her arm and tried to pull her along. “What’s the matter with you!” he growled.

“Stop!” she demanded. “I’m not alone!”

Two men came charging out of the smoke, hands over their mouths, coughing. A Psi Cop rushed by in the other direction, waving his PPG. Uncle Ted drew his own PPG and looked as if he was about to blast Garibaldi and Gray.

“No,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Please wait.”

“I don’t want to shoot them!” He pulled on her arm, but Garibaldi reached her that same moment and started to pull on her free hand. The bare contact sent a shock of distracting intimacies through her mind.

There was no time for greetings or explanations, and Talia knew it. She pulled her hand away and saw the shock of the contact register in Garibaldi’s eyes. “We’ve got to go with my uncle now,” she told Garibaldi. “Don’t speak, just follow.”

“But …”

She let her uncle drag her away, and she barely had time to glance over her shoulder to make sure Garibaldi and Gray were following. They were! As she and Uncle Ted approached a clearing in the smoke, he whipped his mask off and stuck it into the pockets of his greatcoat. As always, she marveled, he was quite a dashing figure. Even in his sixties, he had that handsome boyishness that had always gotten him into trouble. She hoped that she would age that well, although she felt as if she were aging fast at the moment.

Uncle Ted whipped out a cardkey and got them into a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Talia stopped to hold the door open for Garibaldi and Gray. When the two men tried to talk, she put her fingers to her lips and glared at them. The telepathic message she sent them wasn’t subtle either—it said they could follow or not, but they were not to stop her and Uncle Ted.

Garibaldi followed without question, and Gray looked around like he needed some encouragement. But with the others rushing away from him, he sprinted to catch up. The strange caravan of a dashing figure, a frightened woman, and two confused men swept through a sweltering kitchen where workers were baking doughnuts. The bakers glanced up from their work with minor interest, as if they were prepared for such intrusions.

After they rushed out another door, the group found themselves in a gray, unfinished corridor full of conduits and ducts for ventilation and life support. Uncle Ted suddenly pulled his PPG and pointed it squarely at Garibaldi.

“Honey, I wasn’t expecting you to have friends from Earthforce.”

Garibaldi just tried to ignore him. “Listen, Talia, we caught the real bombers—we all know you’re innocent.”

Talia scowled. “Oh, now you know! And I see what happens when you ‘catch’ someone—shot to pieces all over the sidewalk.” Self-consciously, she pulled on her gloves. Garibaldi’s eyes followed the action with fascination. She turned to Gray. “Are the Psi Cops still after me?”

“Yes,” admitted the telepath.

“Then I’m still running.”

“Please, we’ve got to talk,” begged Garibaldi. “Let us come with you!”

“Out of the question,” declared Uncle Ted.

“If you come with us,” said Talia, “you’ve got to swear that you won’t turn us in.”

“I swear,” he answered. “Besides, I know your Uncle Ted.”

The flamboyant man squinted at him. “From where?”

“Here. It was almost two years ago, and I arrested you for creating a public nuisance, remember? You were railing against the new emigration rule—good speech. I was supposed to rough you up, if you’ll remember, but I let you go with a warning.”

“Yes, yes! Thank you!” beamed Uncle Ted. Then he frowned. “Those were the days when I could still speak in public. So, are you with the movement?”

“Not exactly,” admitted Garibaldi. “But I’m not gonna let your niece out of my sight again. We have to talk somewhere about what to do next, and it might as well be at your place. Right, Gray?”

Mr. Gray looked stricken with fear at the thought of continuing with this dangerous group, but he didn’t say no. Uncle Ted motioned for them to follow, and he took off at a jog down the dimly lit corridor. Talia could hear nothing but a rush of air coming from the ducts overhead, plus their pounding footsteps, echoing between the narrow walls.

Uncle Ted stopped at a large hatch in the center of the floor and motioned to Garibaldi. “Help me with this.”

The security chief put his back into it, and the two men managed to twist the wheel enough to open the hatch. They threw back the cover, and Uncle Ted took a small flashlight out of his pocket. He turned it on and blinked the light three times into the hole. There was an answering beam of light that flashed three times across what looked like a river of coffee at the bottom of the conduit.

Talia leaned farther over the edge and peered down. She saw the flashlight beam sweeping eerily over the black water, and it was followed by the noses of three inflatable rafts gliding into view. The first raft had a young woman in it, and she was steering the other two rafts with her hands.

“With two people in each raft,” grumbled Uncle Ted, “we’ll probably all get wet. Don’t worry, it’s clean water. Or as clean as recycled water gets on Mars.”

A metal ladder descended from one side of the cavity, and Uncle Ted started down. The woman floating below carefully positioned an empty raft underneath him, and he dropped into it with hardly a splash. He motioned for Talia to come down, and she did so without question. What was her fear of caves and tunnels anymore, when hundreds of Psi Cops were chasing after her?

She wasn’t as adept at getting into the raft as Uncle Ted, and water came sloshing over the sides, coating the seat of her pants. Thankfully, it was warm water, almost the temperature of bathwater, although it did smell strongly of chemicals. Garibaldi came down next, and the young woman expertly guided the last empty raft underneath him. He alit in fine shape, only swamping it a bit. He grabbed a paddle and began to position the raft for Gray.

“You!” called Uncle Ted to Gray. “Shut the hatch before you come down. Don’t worry about getting it tight.”

Gray did as he was told, getting the hatch closed with no problem. He descended the ladder cautiously, doing everything right, but Garibaldi overshot him as he tried to position he raft. Gray landed half-on and half-off the inflated rubber, and he finally gave up and slid into the water when he realized how warm it was. He treaded water until Garibaldi extended the paddle to him and pulled him aboard, swamping the raft and getting both of them soaking wet.

“Earthlings,” muttered Uncle Ted.

The young woman laughed heartily and said, “You’re lucky. A lot of Martians don’t know how to swim.”

“Keep your voices down,” ordered Uncle Ted as he put his paddle in the water and angled the raft into the current.

With powerful strokes he took off, and the others followed, trembling flashlight beams leading the way. Soon the only noise in the darkness was the sound of paddles slipping through liquid and the steady drip of condensation over their heads.

After about an hour of steady paddling, it began to get extremely warm in the conduit, and the air was thin and dry. “Don’t worry,” Uncle Ted told the strangers. “We’ll get out of the aqueduct before all the air is gone.”

“That’s good to know,” said Garibaldi. “Does this aqueduct go outdoors?”

“Yes,” answered Ted. “It’s just a short stretch, and it’s well insulated. Or we’d be cooked. We’re getting out just before the turbines.”

“Was that a real bomb you set off?” asked Gray with disapproval in his voice.

“Not really,” answered Uncle Ted. “It was mainly sound and smoke, although I think we used one concussion cap. I’m not into violence anymore.”

“Uncle Ted,” said Talia, “I want you to know I’m innocent of that bombing on Babylon 5.”

“Of course you are, honey,” answered the charismatic figure with a toss of his leonine hair. “I’m innocent of sedition, or perdition, or whatever they’ve accused me of this week. But that doesn’t matter—they have to have their villains.”

He slapped his paddle on the water and said, “I plead guilty to wanting a Mars that is free from Earth’s government and their greed. What are they to us? Do they know us? Do they care about us? Or do they want only what they can take out of our soil and our sweat?”

Uncle Ted chuckled. “Stop me before I start making a speech. I’m a Jainist now, a follower of Gandhi, and I truly have disavowed violence Gandhi is sort of ancient history, and you young people probably don’t know who he was.”

“I do,” said Gray. “If you are really following the precepts of Mahatma Gandhi, I salute you. Many Martian revolutionaries do not.”

“Yes, I know,” muttered Ted. “But we can’t win by fighting Earthforce. We can only lose people and lose the moral high ground. What I do is organize nonviolent protests and tell my followers to resist passively. But it’s hard being passive, when people are trying to kill you.”

He turned and smiled at his niece. “Sweetheart, I know what it’s like to be in hiding, to run from every shadow. You and I can never be free, but then none of Mars is free. Maybe one day, you and I—and every Martian!—will be able to walk in the sun, free citizens.”