The problem was, Harriman Gray had always wanted the wrong thing, the thing he couldn’t have. He had wanted to be a soldier, before his psi abilities had manifested themselves. After that path had been taken away from him, he had wanted to serve the military in a liaison capacity, going home every night to his tidy apartment. Instead, he was shunted from one high-level assignment to another, each one more surreal than the one before it. Now he loved a woman who hated him. Sheesh, thought Gray, maybe he was more neurotic than Bester. While he considered giving up and joining his colleagues at the casino, he caught a glimpse of a gray uniform dashing into the sweets shop. His heart leaped as quickly as his feet, as he hurried into the shop after her.
“I’ll take one of those,” said Ivanova, pointing to a dark confection.
“Susan,” he said.
Her back stiffened, and she refused to turn around. “Are you following me?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I don’t suppose you’re going to the reception later on?”
“No.”
“That’s why I had to follow you.”
Susan sighed and finally turned around to look at him. He was reminded of the way his big sister used to look whenever she was annoyed with him.
“You know, Harriman, by the captain’s orders, I’m not supposed to be talking to you. Or any of your friends.”
“I know,” Gray admitted. “I’ve read all the travel advisories. ‘Do not visit Down Below or the Alien Sector. Do not travel alone. And do not speak to Commander Ivanova.’”
She smiled in spite of her herself. “I hope there’s a suitable punishment for doing so.”
“Speaking of punishment,” said Gray excitedly, “did you hear that Ambassador G’Kar beat the stuffing out of a reprehensible Psi Cop named Hoffman? In front of everybody!”
Ivanova smiled. “No, I didn’t hear that. We’re all doing our part to make this an enjoyable conference.”
She grabbed her pastry and waited for Gray to get out of her way. “Excuse me, I’ve only got about five minutes before the next transport is due.”
“Please eat,” insisted Gray. He rushed to pull out a chair at an empty table. “It’s all right, I’ll do all the talking.”
Ivanova shrugged resignedly and set her snack on the table. “I can push my own chair in.”
“Of course,” said Gray, sitting across from her. “I just wanted to tell you—I’m thinking of quitting my job as a military liaison and going into commercial practice.”
“That’s nice,” replied Ivanova with her mouth full of cake.
“Yes, maybe I can even get assigned to Babylon 5.”
The officer looked puzzledly at him and swallowed. “We already have a resident telepath.”
“Ah,” said Gray, “Ms. Winters may be leaving.”
Ivanova frowned. “Really? I was just getting to know her. Why would she leave?”
“Better offer.”
“How do you know this?” she asked suspiciously.
Gray smiled. “Let’s say, a gathering of telepaths is not the best place to keep a secret.”
Ivanova set her fork on her plate and just stared at him. “Harriman, if you’re trying to get an assignment on B5 just to be close to me, you’re wasting your time. Having a strained conversation like this, every now and then, is the best you could ever hope for.”
He looked down, deeply wounded. “That’s rather cold, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” she admitted, standing up. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to lead you on.”
Gray countered, “There’s something else. I like being here on Babylon 5! I feel comfortable in this place, like a regular person, not a freak or a snoop.”
Susan opened her mouth, as if she were about to say something, but she finally just shook her head and walked off. When she was gone, Gray slammed his fist on the table.
Despite the cruelty and finality of her words, a voice in his head told him that she was still the one for him. Who should he listen to, if not his own heart? If not his own voice?
“Susan,” he muttered to himself, “if a strained conversation is all I’ll ever get, then I’ll take it.”
Talia Winters slumped away from the viewer and rubbed her eyes. She had looked at everything on the data crystal ten times, and it still didn’t make much sense. It was a lot of bogus figures that didn’t add up correctly, a lot of statistics on job creation for telepaths that definitely favored the commercial sector, some pie charts that attacked military spending, and the request for a new research and development center. She didn’t know how any of this would coalesce into a convincing argument for the needs of commercial telepathy.
Of course, she told herself, this was just raw data. You had to have it, because sometimes logic alone wouldn’t work—there had to be numbers to plug in, charts to pull up. When it came down to it, she felt the strongest argument was that commercial telepaths were the only segment of Psi Corps who managed to pay for themselves. Bester and all his top-secret budgets were a total drain, and so was all the psychic-weapon research the military did. However, she doubted whether either one of them liked to be reminded of this.
And none of these charts or statistics addressed the real problem—that Mr. Bester and his ilk decided who got what in Psi Corps. What kind of argument could overcome that reality?
A knock sounded on her door, and Talia looked up with a start. As she pressed the button to open it, she called out, “Come in.”
Emily Crane stumbled into the room. She was wearing high-heeled shoes and a peach evening gown with a single strap. It didn’t look half-bad on her, thought Talia. If she could get accustomed to asserting herself, she had promise.
“What are you d-doing?” Emily asked accusingly. “You should be getting ready for the reception.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Talia, glancing at the clock over her screen. “I’ve been studying this data crystal you put together about the budget. Now I sort of wish you were going, because I don’t think I’ll be familiar with this by tomorrow morning.”
“Do you think I am?” asked Emily. “You know the things to say. We can back it up later in a memo.”
“All right,” sighed Talia. “I don’t think I can read any more of this crystal tonight, anyway.
“Then g-give it to me,” said Emily, stepping carefully toward the viewer. “I have some updates for a few of those charts. I don’t think you’ll need to show them anything, but I’ll give it back to you before the meeting, just in c-case.”
She drew the crystal out of its slot and tucked it down her bra. “What we want is the research center. The rest is all smoke and m-mirrors.”
“Thanks,” said Talia. “I guess I had better get dressed now.”
Emily nodded and hobbled out the door. After it shut, Talia thoughtfully pulled off her gloves. It felt good to have her fingers free, and she used them to unzip her skirt and let it fall to the floor. She stretched her fingers and pushed back her hair as she moved languidly toward the shower.
Garibaldi was having a wonderful dream. He was in the shower, with the water cascading all over him. This obviously was not on Babylon 5, he decided, because the water on B5 mostly dribbled. Anyway, he was in the shower, cleansing himself, and he knew that when he stepped out, the four hundred telepaths from Psi Corps would all be gone. It would be just the usual two hundred and fifty thousand dregs of humanity and aliens. He could hardly wait!
He turned off the shower and jumped out, already dry. He liked this shower. And he strode through a dreamworld of laughing, cheerful people, raising glasses and toasting him for ending the horror of the Psi Corps conference. There was Londo, grinning in his snaggletoothed way.
“I got the tape on them!” claimed the Centauri, lifting his glass.
“Excellent,” replied Garibaldi with a big grin.
“Well done, Mr. Garibaldi,” said Captain Sheridan, patting him on the back. “You’re an asset to this station.”
“Asset,” muttered Garibaldi, thinking he had been insulted.
Then he saw Talia, who was dressed exactly as he was, which was not at all. “I’m taking a shower,” she remarked, but her naked body floated past.
He wanted to follow her, but more people were pulling him along, raising their glasses to him. Without warning, the security chief bumped into someone he wanted to see in real life, but not someone he wanted to see in a dream. It was Deuce, the grubby kingpin of Down Below.
“Aw, Garibaldi,” drawled Deuce, “you didn’t have to get rid of them. I would’ve done it for you.” He laughed and stepped back into the shadows.