The telepath pouted for a moment. “I would rather follow up my lead on the hotel bombing.”
“Think about it, Gray. You would have to go to Mars to do that. You’d have to track down all the personnel data she gave when she was pretending to be a Martian domestic worker. If this thing takes us to Mars, I promise we’ll do it.”
Garibaldi patted the telepath on the back. “We’re here in the East Coast metropolis. Let’s check on stuff we can check out here. Also, we have to keep an eye on her in case she flies. You know, Gray, you have surprised me. You are doing a helluva job. We arrived here from two different paths, but we both got to Emily Crane.”
Mr. Gray nodded somberly and made a fist. “We work well together. I say, let’s nail whoever did this.”
It seemed like a mirage, shimmering in the desert heat, a pile of adobe cubes; they looked like loaves of bread baking in the sun. After the long haul over the rugged terrain in the Hovercraft, without seeing anything except endless tracts of desolation, even these humble abodes looked miraculous. Talia rubbed her eyes, both to get a better look and to get the sand out. No, it really was a village, a low-level form of civilization to be sure, but Talia didn’t think she had ever seen anything so beautiful.
“Bilagaani Pueblo!” shouted the old man into the wind, which ate most of his words.
Talia nodded and gripped the sides of the roll bar tighter. The sensation of metal against her bare hands felt strange. There really wasn’t a second seat in the small Hovercraft, and she was hanging on for all she was worth.
As they drew closer, she decided the adobes looked like a pile of children’s blocks, a smaller block piled on top of a larger block to form rudimentary second stories. The extra space also allowed walkways between various structures on the second story, and wooden ladders stretched to every roof in the pueblo, utilizing all the space. There were rounded wooden beams sticking straight out of the adobes at irregular intervals, and smoke curled from a chimney on the topmost structure.
Gathered around the pueblo were pens for animals—goats and chickens seemed to be the most popular—and there were several low-slung lodges, little more than a meter high. Some of these low lodges were skeletal structures, nothing but twigs with colorful bits of cloth tied to them. Near each lodge was an immense fire pit filled with gray rocks, and Talia wondered what so many fire pits were used for. Colorful feathers and handmade pennants decorated staffs and poles all over the village.
The dogs were the first ones to come running to greet the Hovercraft, and they were yapping and wagging their tails happily. They were followed by children, who were also yapping but had no tails to wag. Undaunted, they twirled clacking noisemakers over their heads, causing the chickens to scurry. Adults began to emerge from the adobes, and they exhibited only a mild interest in the new arrivals.
Talia now saw that the village was nestled against a small plateau barely taller than the tallest adobe and exactly the same color. This must make it difficult to spot from the ground, she thought. Atop the plateau was the incongruous sight of solar panels, microwave antennae, and satellite dishes; and in the distance were white windmills, churning in the breeze. She imagined that the solar panels and windmills generated all the power the pueblo could ever need. Maybe there would be a hot bath tonight, she thought hopefully.
Then she saw the muddy stream, barely a meter wide, skirting both the plateau and the pueblo as if it were trying to avoid them. She saw no other signs of water, and her hopes sank.
The strange caravan swerved to a halt near the other parked Hovercraft, and the pilots killed the engines. She gasped as the vehicle dropped to the ground. A moment later, Brother Sky was offering his hand to her.
“Come, Sister Rain,” he said. “Do you need food?”
She nodded and got out of the Hovercraft. The dogs sniffed her, and the children ran around her in circles, giggling. Talia looked over and saw Deuce getting out of the boy’s Hovercraft. The gangster managed to greet several people while keeping his black briefcase clutched to his chest. His duffel bag was slung over his shoulder.
She turned to see the bare-chested young man with the chestnut-colored hair. By himself he pushed the Hovercraft close enough together to loop a length of steel cable through their rings and chain them together. He glanced up at her and smiled, and she was instantly embarrassed about watching him. When she turned away, she found the middle-aged woman staring at her. The woman gave her a toothless grin and walked away, and she could see skin lesions and ruined skin on the woman’s naked shoulders.
The people of the pueblo looked healthy enough, but many of them had the kind of simple ailments that come from living primitively: bad skin, bad teeth, limps, injuries, and one case of cataracts. Had they been in a city or a space station, they could have been cured of most of thse ailments over the weekend. Those who weren’t nude were dressed in similar dirty clothes and wore similar waist-length ratty hair. It was disconcerting to see all these Earthlings living in such primitive conditions, and Talia was glad when Sky escorted her inside a ground-floor adobe.
She had to duck her head to fit through the doorway, and she was surprised to find a tasteful electric floor lamp giving off a subdued bit of light. She was even more surprised to see a table, upon which sat a sprawling machine; it had various spools and feeds and looked like it was intended for small manufacturing. The smells of the room were also a strange mixture of industrial solvents and chile, cilantro, and onions.
“I will be right back,” said Sky. He disappeared into the adjoining room, which Talia assumed was the kitchen. She could see no cooking utensils in the outer room.
A moment later, Deuce entered and slumped onto one of the mats on the floor. He kicked off his boots and groaned with relief. His feet added another odd smell to the room.
“Ever see anything like this?” he asked.
She shook her head in an honest answer.
Deuce grinned. “They bend the laws, but they’re good people. They’re on the edge, like you and me.”
Talia nodded. Unfortunately, she couldn’t argue with that generalization, given her present circumstances. The young man with the chestnut hair came in, and he was carrying a mangled pad of paper, a stubby pencil, and a measuring tape.
“Stand up, Brother Deuce,” he said, motioning to the gangster.
Deuce complied, and the young man measured his height, as if he were fitting him for a suit. When he was done, he wrote his findings on his pad of paper.
“I’m going to guess on your weight,” he said. “Our scale broke. But I’m pretty accurate.” He tapped his pencil on his chin until he came up with a guess, which he also wrote on his pad. “Sister Rain,” he said, “it’s your turn.”
She pointed to him and gave him a quizzical expression.
“You want to know my name?” he asked. “It’s Lizard.”
At her startled expression, the young man chuckled. “It is our custom to name a child after the first thing the father sees. Sometimes this works out well, sometimes not. But we praise our grandparents and the Creator for giving us life, and we accept our name with their blessings. Turn around.”
She obeyed, and Lizard ran the measuring tape from the crown of her head to the heels of her feet. In doing so, his fingers touched the bare skin at the nape of her neck, and it gave her a shock. For that split second, she glimpsed involuntarily into his mind and saw that his life out here was lonely. Painfully lonely, but he couldn’t leave.
“Fine;” he said, jotting down her measurements. “You look about the same weight as my sister—I’ll use that. Thank you. I need to go back to my house and get on the microwave link. In maybe an hour, I’ll have some matches for identicards. It’s gotten too hard to do real forgeries, so I’ll have to match you with a living person and download their data. You’re just going to travel around with these cards, right? You’re not going to apply for a job or a security clearance, are you?”
Deuce laughed hoarsely. “I don’t think so.”
Talia shook her head.
Lizard brushed his unruly hair back and gripped it in a ponytail. He waved to them and walked out, and Talia found herself watching his finely chiseled backbone and shoulders. Deuce grinned. “You heard the rule against messing around with the chiefs daughter? Well, that’s the chiefs son. Same rule.”