Voices - Vornholt John - Страница 50

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His lady friend lifted a fist and chanted, “Power to Mars!”

“This is Moira,” said Uncle Ted. “She keeps me together.”

“What do you know about the Free Phobos movement?” asked Garibaldi.

“Nothing!” said Ted with a scowl. “I never heard of them before now. But those two stupid bombings sure brought us a bad crackdown and a lot of biased media coverage. I’d like to have a word with this Free Phobos bunch, before they do a third bombing.”

“A third bombing?” asked Garibaldi

“Yes, Free Phobos released a statement this morning that they’re planning a third bombing soon.” He chuckled. “I have to admit, the threat of a real bombing made my little smoke bomb at the dock all the more effective.”

“We know who’s behind Free Phobos,” said Garibaldi. “If we put the right guy in jail, Talia can go free.”

“Right,” muttered Ted sarcastically. He shined his flashlight on a grating that protected a line of pumping equipment recessed into the side of the aqueduct. They could hear a cascade of water somewhere in the darkness ahead of them, plus turbines churning. Uncle Ted steered his raft toward the pumps.

“Tie up on the grating,” he ordered. “There’s a narrow footpath—just try to follow me. Remember, we have to take out the rafts and deflate them, so don’t let them get away. We can’t leave anything that will give us away.”

“Talia,” said Garibaldi, “Arthur Malten is behind all of this. We’ve got to find him to clear you.”

She looked back at him, stunned and hurt. Maybe she didn’t want to hear that Arthur Malten had set her up to die, but he couldn’t spare her the truth. Talia lowered her head and appeared to be thinking about it. After what she must have been through, thought Garibaldi, could anything surprise her?

“It’s good to see you,” she said finally.

“You, too,” he admitted.

Uncle Ted grabbed the grating and hoisted himself onto a narrow ledge in front of it. He tied up his raft and helped Talia step out, then he caught the other two rafts and tied them at the grating. After everyone was safely on the ledge, hanging by their fingernails to the grating, Ted and Moira dragged the rafts out of the water and deflated them.

Very carefully, they skirted the narrow ledge. Through the soles of his shoes, Garibaldi could feel the heat rising up from the metal. They squeezed through a gap cut in the grating and walked carefully among the high-compression pumps, kerchunking away. Finally they reached a secured doorway, and Uncle Ted produced another keycard that opened the door.

They went through and found themselves in a storage room lined with shelves containing pipes, washers, fittings, and tools. There was a spiral stairway leading upward, and the air and temperature in the room were normal, or at least as normal as they got on Mars.

“I think this room is as far as I’m going to go with you boys,” said Uncle Ted. “You can talk to Talia here.”

For emphasis, he took his PPG out of his pocket. He studied the weapon for a moment before handing it to Moira. “I’m a pacifist, but I would fight to protect my Talia, after what they put her through.”

“Believe me,” said Garibaldi, “we came here to save her. In order to do that, we have to find Arthur Malten—he’s the key to this Free Phobos group and everything else. Does anybody have any ideas?”

Gray stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Do your people have the ability to send out press releases to the media?”

“Of course,” answered Ted, “that’s about the only way I can make myself heard these days.”

“Then let’s expose him. Tell the press that Arthur Malten of the Mix is the man behind Free Phobos and the bombings. Coming from you, they’re liable to believe it. Besides, it happens to be the truth.”

A smile crept across Garibaldi’s face. “That won’t make Mr. Bester very happy. He wanted to keep that a secret.”

“Well,” answered Gray, “let’s make them both unhappy, shall we? Once Malten is exposed, there’s no reason for Bester to keep blaming Ms. Winters and the separatists. And Malten won’t have to set off another bomb just to give his sham terrorist group some credence.”

“What is this all about?” asked Talia wearily.

Briefly, Garibaldi told her, Ted, and Moira about Malten’s attempt to privatize Psi Corps and have himself installed as head. They listened in rapt attention as he explained about the secret Senate bill, the fate of Emily Crane, and how closely the coup within Psi Corps had come to happening.

“In fact,” said Garibaldi, “it might still happen if we don’t move on it. I’d like to see Psi Corps disbanded, not fall under another tyrant.”

“I’ll be damned,” muttered Uncle Ted. “Hey, I’ve got to tell this story right away, the whole bloody mess. And I think it’s better Talia come with me, until she’s officially absolved.”

“Fine,” agreed Garibaldi, turning to the blond woman in the dirty beret. “I just wanted to make sure you were safe, and that you knew we were trying to help you.”

Talia stood up and gave him a grateful hug, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder for a moment. That made it all worthwhile for Garibaldi.

“Give us five minutes,” said Uncle Ted, heading for the staircase. “Then come up after us. You’ll find yourselves in a factory up there—just ignore everyone and keep climbing stairs until you find a monorail stop.”

“Okay,” said the security chief. “Give ‘em hell.”

Uncle Ted shepherded Moira and Talia up the stairs, and the weary telepath looked back one last time to give Garibaldi a smile. He waved until she was out of sight.

“What an experience she must’ve had,” observed Gray with sympathy. “It’s like she can barely talk.”

“She doesn’t need to talk,” answered Garibaldi. “Just the way she is, I would walk across Mars for her.”

“I know what you mean,” Gray sighed. “Well, shall we go somewhere and wait for Mr. Bester to call us? He won’t be very happy.”

The two men grinned at one another.

With nowhere else to go to wait, Garibaldi and Gray took refuge in a nearby canteen devoted to military personnel from Earthforce. They arrived just in time to catch the news.

The newscaster raised an eyebrow as he reported the story, but he got it essentially correct when he said, “There has been a dramatic development in the Psi Corps bombing story. Noted Martian revolutionary Theodore Hamiliton is claiming that the Free Phobos terrorist group is actually one man—Arthur Malten, founder of the Mix!”

“According to this report, Arthur Malten was poised to take over the leadership of Psi Corps with the passage of a privatization bill in the Senate. Details of this bill have now been verified by independent sources in the Senate. According to Hamilton, who is also Talia Winters’s uncle, the bombing on Babylon 5 was really an attempt by Arthur Malten to rid himself of political opponents within Psi Corps.”

In the canteen, there were gasps of surprise and an occasional “I told you so!” Everyone put down their Ping-Pong paddles and pool cues to listen to the gruesome details, which included two fatal bombings, dozens of deaths, and the murder of Emily Crane. Garibaldi frowned, because the report stuck it to the bad guys, but it didn’t clear Talia. With Ted being her uncle, the news reports made it seem as if the information was coming from her. Public opinion would still figure her to be in the thick of it.

He looked at Gray and asked, “Are you sure Bester knows where we are?”

“I was very clear about it,” answered the telepath.

The commlink on the wall buzzed, and the closest officer answered it. After a moment, he called out, “Is there somebody named Gray here?”

“That’s me!” called the telepath.

“There’s a shuttlecraft on its way for you,” reported the man, and he returned immediately to watching the news.

Gray and Garibaldi smiled at one another.

Because of Mars’ thin atmosphere, every shuttlecraft had to dock with an air-lock, and most small shuttlecraft had a hatch at the bottom for that purpose. So Gray and Garibaldi had to climb up a ladder through the air-lock in order to board the black shuttlecraft through its underbelly. If Mr. Bester was surprised to see Garibaldi, he didn’t say so, and Garibaldi certainly wasn’t surprised to see him.

“I hope you two are proud of yourselves,” he sneered. “I ought to arrest you for collaborating with the enemy.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Garibaldi. He and Gray looked innocently at one another.

“Thanks to you, there is no way we can handle this quietly now. The whole Alliance will know… .”

“That you made a mistake,” offered Gray. “That you’re fallible.”

“No,” muttered the Psi Cop, “that Psi Corps is vulnerable to attacks from within. That’s the one place we fear the most, attacks from within. And that’s why we Psi Cops are so important to the Corps.”

“Aren’t you forgetting one thing?” asked Garibaldi. “If it hadn’t been for me and Gray, by this time tomorrow you would’ve been out of a job! I’ll have second thoughts about that for a while, I can tell you.”

Bester narrowed his eyes angrily. “I know what you want from me, and I’m not going to give it to you. Ms. Winters will remain a suspect and a rogue telepath. I imagine she will soon go on the list of known Martian terrorists.”

Garibaldi nearly jumped out of his seat to strangle the pompous twit, but his inner voice warned him to keep calm. This was the only man who could remove the most damning of the charges against her—rogue telepath.

“I will testify in Ms. Winters’s behalf,” vowed Gray. “And when we capture Malten, he can testify.”

Bester chuckled humorlessly. “Do you think I would let Arthur Malten go on the stand to testify? His trial would become a trial about Psi Corps itself, and the Mix would get destroyed in the process. To save us all a lot of embarrassment, we’re negotiating with Arthur Malten.”

Garibaldi sat up in his seat. “You know where he is? Why don’t you bring him in?”

“Yes, bring him in!” echoed Gray.

“Well, we don’t exactly know where he is. Mars is a big planet, and he’s very clever. The Mix has a private underground transmitter, and we’ve been communicating over that. So we have a vague idea what area he’s in.”

Gray was sputtering with anger. “How … how can you negotiate with Malten? The man tried to kill you, remember, and he succeeded in killing two dozen innocent people!”

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