One thing Talia knew would never be the same—she would never again be smug about her life. Right now, being the lone human telepath on an out-of-the-way depot for aliens sounded just fine, the dream job. She would never again knock it or quest after anything higher. And if she could get back to that life, she would be eternally grateful. Right now, she wondered if it was even possible to recapture any shred of that past.
While she was musing in the dim light given off by a holeful of stars, Deuce turned on his flashlight again and began searching for something else in his duffel bag. He drew out a small electronic device, checked to see that it hadn’t been damaged, then pulled out its antenna. He pressed a button on the device, and a red light began to blink on and off.
Talia was about to ask him what it was, but then she remembered: No more questions. Perhaps she should just stop talking altogether. Hobnobbing, being charming and gregarious, had only gotten her into trouble in the last few days. And when it had mattered, when she kept telling everybody the truth, nobody would listen to her. Maybe she should adopt Deuce’s motto: Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies. If she said nothing at all, she couldn’t say anything wrong.
She was startled by a thud as Deuce turned one of the crates on end. Then he proceeded to climb up and peer out the hole. He made a low whistle.
“We are really in the middle of nowhere. I hope my boys have some decent coordinates.”
Talia started to ask if this was really Earth, then she remembered not to talk. That device was some kind of homing beacon, it was clear, so somebody was out there, looking for them. She suddenly had a strong instinct to get out of the crate, and she pounded on Deuce’s calf.
“Hey!” he shouted down. “What’s the deal?”
She tried an experiment and told him telepathically to get off the crate.
He blinked at her and smiled. “All you had to do was ask.”
Deuce climbed down and Talia climbed up. By standing on her tiptoes, she could just get her head, the top of her shoulders, and one arm out through the hole, but she was glad she had made the effort. Their little vessel was parked at an angle at the bottom of a dry wash, buried halfway under the sand, and surrounded by scrubby desert. Trailing behind them like a tattered bridal veil was the parachute that had saved their lives. It was ripped and streaked with dirt from the tumble down the wash.
In the blue starlight she couldn’t see very far, but she could see gnarled trees at the rim of the wash and other ghostly shapes. Mesquite trees, Joshua trees, chollas, yuccas, prickly pears—she tried to remember all the spiny, weirdly shaped flora that grew in places like this. She was glad this desert wasn’t just sand dunes but had some vegetation to it, even if the plants did appear stunted and misshapen.
She suddenly had an overwhelming desire to stand on the ground. After the nightmarish events of the last three days, she just had to get out and stand on firm ground. She began to squirm out, and Deuce put a hand underneath her foot to give her all the leverage she needed to get her hips through.
Talia screamed as she slid down the tilted side of the crate and plummeted into the sand. It got into her mouth and hair, but its grittiness felt wonderfully real, and the air smelled like perfume after that stifling container. After her scream, the desert was silent, but as she sat without moving for a few minutes, the twitters and chirps came back. She heard a distant howl. Unaccountably, Talia felt relaxed and unafraid for the first time since that awful morning of the conference.
The telepath was startled a moment later when a black briefcase landed in the sand not far from her. She reached over to open it, but the clasps were locked; it was a solidly built case. She pushed the briefcase away and ducked when the dirty duffel bag came flying out of the hole a moment later. The bags were followed by Deuce himself, squirming through the small opening. Like Kosh, he was an unlikely savior, she thought, but if she would ever end this nightmare and get her previous life back, she needed him. She would leave him his blood money in the briefcase. He had probably earned it.
She scrambled out of the way as she saw Deuce getting ready to slide down the crate and hit the sand. He rolled athletically off the edge of the crate and landed on his feet never losing his grip on his PPG.
“Ah,” said Deuce, “that’s better. If we haven’t been found by midday, we’re going to regret getting out of there. But maybe we can crawl under it for shade.”
He plopped down in the sand and fished a hat out of his duffel bag. “So,” he drawled, “know any good jokes?”
She looked at him intently for several seconds, and he nodded. “You’re not going to talk anymore, huh? Are you, like, suffering from some kind of trauma?”
Talia nodded, and it was the truth.
“So, when my friends show up, you’re a mute, right? And you ain’t no telepath.”
She nodded again. “Not a bad cover,” agreed Deuce, “because you can still communicate if you want to, with certain people. This ain’t new to me, you know. I’ve had experience with telepaths before.”
Talia nodded. She was almost certain of that.
Despite his best intentions to ignore the telepath, Garibaldi found himself peering over Gray’s shoulder at his stack of files. As the transport Starfish made its way to Earth, Gray began to explain his documents in a conversational tone that the security chief found he could tolerate.
“These are the photos and dossiers of all the people who died in the hotel bombing. Twenty-seven of them, according to the reports, although not all the bodies were recovered.”
“That’s not uncommon on Mars,” said Garibaldi. “In that atmosphere, an unprotected body can get desiccated very quickly. And the winds are strong enough to blow a body clean away, or it could fall into a crevice and disappear. Not to mention the difficulties of mounting a real search outside.”
“At any rate,” said Gray, “the police didn’t investigate these people too thoroughly, because they think they’re victims. They also found tracks outside the hotel, so they assumed the bomber came overland. This plays into the stereotype of the usual Martian terrorist, a madman who lives in the wilds and would be spotted immediately in polite company. But what if it was an inside job, like the bombing on B5?”
“You mean, the bomber is one of the missing employees?” asked Garibaldi doubtfiully. “That’s pretty farfetched, without some evidence.”
“I’ve got some evidence. Remember, Mr. Bester and I were at the site when it happened. When a person is going through a psychic trauma, their mind sends out a sort of SOS—a telepath can hear it for miles. And these people were dying as they were being sucked out of the hole in the side of that hotel. We could hear their voices, screaming for help, just as well as I can hear your voice now.”
“Mr. Bester told me that he counted twenty-six voices, and I think he’s right. But the reports list twenty-seven deaths, or should we say, dead and missing. I trust Mr. Bester’s talents, and I think one of those people lived.”
Gray leaned forward in his seat and eagerly explained, “All they had to do was to carry a suit and a breathing mask with them when the blast went off, and they could just walk away! Maybe they would leave one or two footprints going in both directions to fool the police. It was night, and somebody could’ve had a rover waiting for them.”
Garibaldi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I can see the advantages,” he admitted. “You’re working inside, and you have your leisure to plan it all, get the bomb in, and detonate it. They don’t investigate you, because everyone thinks you’re one of the victims.”
“There is a modus operandi match, too,” said Gray. “Ms. Winters would have been a victim, too, if she hadn’t walked out when she did. Plus, that bombing on Mars made everyone take the Free Phobos group seriously, even though nobody knows anything about them. It was a setup for the B5 bombing.”
Garibaldi smiled and asked, “Can I take a look at the photos of those hotel employees?”
“Certainly,” said Gray, looking pleased with himself.
He handed over a stack of colored transparencies, and Garibaldi studied them intently. Most of them were what you would expect hotel waiters, cooks, and buspersons to look like—young, disadvantaged, with the pale pallor and surly expressions that typified people born on Mars. It was a hard place to live, and a lot of Martians resented having to bow and stoop to wealthy tourists to bring home a few credits. None of the employees’ photos showed smiling faces, eager to prove themselves.