John Vornholt - Voices

“I’d like that,” answered Gray, beaming.

The young man was feeling more relaxed already. Certainly all those terrible stories about Mr. Bester were simply not true. He could see the hotel very clearly now, an art-deco monstrosity that looked nothing like a lodge, as he thought of a lodge. Only the jutting ridge of Tharsis gave the complex any perspective whatsoever.

An explosion suddenly lit up the jagged rock face, and a flaming section of the hotel spewed outward, along with tables, chairs, and other objects that were sucked into the thin atmosphere.

The flames went out immediately, but debris continued to fly out. The shock wave jarred the monorail and would have knocked them out of their seats, if not for their restraints. Lights flickered in the car, and the monorail screeched to a bumpy halt.

The oxygen wasn’t gone yet, but Gray was already panting for breath.

“Stay calm,” ordered Bester. “Whatever you do, don’t take your restraints off. What’s the matter with this thing?”

He pounded on the panel over his head, and a dozen oxygen masks fell out, hanging from the ceiling like the tentacles of some bloated jellyfish. Swift changes in air pressure made papers and cups fly around the room.

“Put a mask on,” ordered Bester, although Gray already had four of them in his hands.

They secured their oxygen masks and waited in the flickering lights. Gray felt a tug at his clothing, and the hair on his arms and neck seemed to rise with the drying of the air. They were going to be in oxygenless, 200-degree heat in a few minutes, he thought in a panic! He glanced at the gaping hole in the Royal Tharsis Lodge, and he saw things still flying out of it—things that might be human bodies! Or Centauri bodies. The voices started to bombard his head, and Gray closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing.

Bester ripped his mask off and sniffed the air. “Stay in your seat,” he barked. “That is an order. I am going to loosen my restraints and try to get this thing into reverse.”

Gray lifted the lip of his mask. “No, Mr. Bester! If the air gets sucked out, you might, too!”

“Do you think I want to sit here and bake to death?” asked Bester, unsnapping his restraints. He sprang to his feet and ripped out an entire bank of panels over his head. “Although,” he remarked, “dying of dehydration is supposed to be one of the more pleasant forms of death.”

“I wouldn’t know!” shrieked Gray. He gulped and drew the oxygen mask back over his face.

Bester was like a man possessed, ripping out panels in the ceiling, on the floor, in the storage bins, and the

bathroom. He occasionally had to grab a mask for a hit of oxygen, but he never faltered from his task. Finally, in the panel above the water dispenser, he found what looked like a pair of old-fashioned levers.

“Manual override,” he panted. “Undocumented feature. It’s amazing what you learn when you read people’s minds all day.”

Bester took one more breath of oxygen from a nearby mask and reached over the water cooler to grab the levers. His normally coiffed hair was plastered across his forehead in dripping ringlets, and the sweat drooled off his chin. The Psi Cop braced himself to give the levers a forceful jerk.

He needn’t have tried so hard, because the levers moved easily in his grasp. There was a comforting clunk, and the car shuddered on its overhead track. One second later, the car flew into reverse so quickly that Bester was dumped on his backside. Gray considered himself fortunate that he was still strapped in.

Bester sat up groggily and staggered like a drunk into a seat, any seat. He strapped himself down, reached for a gas mask, and gratefully sucked oxygen.

Gray suddenly realized that he was a quivering rag of sweat, too. He tried to remain composed, but it was difficult with the dark hotel and its gaping wound in his direct line of vision. That was when the voices, the screams, and the agony grew louder! Gray put his hands over his ears and shrunk down into his seat.

“Don’t give in to them!” growled Bester. “Block it. You can’t help them now.”

The assured words helped to calm Gray and give him some control, which he used to push the voices into the background while he tried to concentrate on his home in Berlin. His home was a grim little apartment, on the second floor, with stark furnishings and one window with a flower box that looked down upon a koi pond. He loved it. Gray had just gotten the apartment a few months ago, and he was very proud of it, even though he had only spent a handful of nights there between assignments.

He wanted to bring somebody to his apartment for dinner. Somebody like Susan. He tried to concentrate on Susan Ivanova until the terrified voices faded from his mind.

Bester coughed and cleared his throat. “Well, the Royal Tharsis Lodge is off the list. Where do you think we can hold this conference on short notice? No, do not suggest Earth or the training center at Syria Planum.”

“If not Earth,” said Harriman Gray, “I was going to suggest Babylon 5.”

Bester took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “Hmmm. You want to go to B5, eh?”

“Yes,” said Gray, straightening up in his seat. “We’d both like to see how Sheridan is getting along there. The station is self-contained and relatively secure. I know Mr. Garibaldi has an attitude problem, but he gets the job done and has a good staff. We have a resident telepath there, Talia Winters, who can act as our coordinator.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Bester. “You’d like to invade B5, on a few days’ notice, with the four hundred

highest-ranking telepaths in Psi Corps?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bester tapped his finger to his lips and smiled. “Even though we can’t play Martian basketball there, that does sound like fun. You approach Ms. Winters, and I’ll work through my channels. We want her to ask Captain Sheridan for permission, but we want to make sure he won’t say no.”

Gray swallowed and started to say, “Commander Ivanova …”

“Will be difficult as always.” Bester clicked his tongue with disapproval. “A spotless record, except for her strange aversion to Psi Corps. You would think her mother was the only telepath who had ever been put to sleep.”

Gray shook his head and decided not to mention Susan again. Bester didn’t have to know about his personal life, although he might have already found out about his crush on Susan during that unexpected mind-scan. Well, thought Gray, he was on a new assignment and headed back to B5, and that was all that was important.

The young man chanced another look out the window. Half of the hotel on the great ridge was illuminated again, which was encouraging. The emergency systems and airlocks must have kicked in. Best of all, thought Gray, the voices had died to a whimper.

“Do you think the Mars separatists did that?” he asked softly.

“Who else?”

“I wonder how many people died in that explosion?” Gray mused.

Bester closed his eyes. “I counted twenty-six.”

“27 Perish in Mars Hotel Bombing!” exclaimed the banner headline in the Universe Today newspaper.

Talia Winters paused in her stroll down the mall to stare at the newspaper displayed on the newsstand of a small gift shop. The statuesque blonde only had to glance at the first few paragraphs to know that her all-expenses-paid trip to Mars was in serious jeopardy.

The report began:

“The Royal Tharsis Lodge in Central Mars was the target of a terrorist bombing early this morning, in which 27 people, mostly hotel employees, died. Authorities have yet to make an arrest, but a previously unknown terrorist organization has claimed responsibility.