“And a woman,” Pel added.
Raven ignored the interruption; his speech rolled on as if Pel hadn’t said a word. “We know naught of your world, however, and finding and freeing these Imperials could be a fearsome task. Our portal opens in your cellars and is not so very easily moved, nor can its point of arrival be precisely determined in advance; further, you seemed a good man and kindly disposed toward me. Thus, we came hither to seek your counsel.”
Nancy reappeared with the vase refilled.
“You want me to tell you how to get these people out of jail?” Pel said. He saw smiles and nods starting, and asked, “How would I know?”
The smiles vanished and the nods never came. Raven and Valadrakul exchanged an unhappy glance. “We had thought,” Raven said, “that you might perchance know something of this prison-its strengths and weaknesses, perhaps, whether a warder might be bribed, somewhat of that nature.”
“You want me to help you get these guys out of jail?” Pel asked again.
Nancy looked up from the tray. “Have you talked to their lawyer?” she asked.
Raven and Valadrakul stared at her, startled.
“What’s a lawyer?” Raven asked.
* * * *
“Maybe I should talk to them,” Amy said, uncertainly, as she toyed nervously with a ballpoint pen.
Susan looked up from the forms she was reading. “Why?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t want to be vindictive or anything,” Amy explained, “I just want everybody to get their stuff out of my yard and leave me alone.”
“And pay for your hedge and your tree and all the other damage,” Susan pointed out.
“Yeah,” Amy admitted. “That, too.”
The desk sergeant shook his head. “I don’t think those guys are gonna pay for anything, lady,” he said. “They didn’t have a cent between them, they haven’t called anyone about getting bailed out, nothing.”
Amy stared. “They still haven’t?” she asked.
“Nope. Not one of them. They’re all sticking to their story about this Galactic Empire, and most of ‘em won’t give us anything but name, rank, and serial number.”
Amy looked at Susan, who shrugged.
Amy frowned. “If they’re real,” she said, “then they can’t pay for anything, can they?”
Susan answered, “Who knows? If they’re for real, then it’s all beyond me. If they’re not real, though, and they’re carrying it this far…”
“If they’re not real, then screw ‘em,” Amy said, grabbing the pen. “They’re carrying it much too far, and as far as I’m concerned they can rot here. Where do I sign?”
The desk sergeant pointed.
* * * *
Prossie heard someone calling her name, or at any rate something intended for her; she sat up and listened.
To her ears the cell was silent, save for the distant hissing of the highway that passed near the jail. It was her mind that had been touched.
“Carrie?” she said, whispering to make sure her thoughts were in words. “Is that you?”
Her ears still heard nothing, but the words reached her. “Yes, it’s me, Prossie,” the telepathic voice replied. “How are you doing?”
“Better,” Prossie replied. “Much better. That woman filed formal charges against us this morning, so they sent an attorney for us, whether we wanted one or not, and he explained some things-oh, Carrie, I wish I’d asked for an attorney sooner!”
Carrie’s response was a wordless questioning.
“They aren’t going to keep us here,” Prossie said. “They can’t keep us. They have all these complicated rules they follow, and guarantees of rights-it’s really incredible, if it’s all true. We should be free in a few days, I think.”
After a moment of mental silence, Carrie asked, “Then what?”
“I don’t know,” Prossie admitted. “But I’m sure we’ll manage somehow. We can work, or live off the land, and find some way to get back to the warp eventually, I’m certain of it. It’s just a hundred yards above where the ship crashed-that can’t be all that inaccessible.”
Prossie paused, and listened.
She sensed uneasiness on the other side of the conversation, as if Carrie doubted her, or as if she knew something Prossie did not. She certainly wasn’t sharing Prossie’s relief.
That troubled Prossie, but she thrust it aside as a new idea struck her.
“Listen, Carrie,” she said, “once I’m free, what if I were to track down some of the people we contacted-Miletti, or Blaisdell, or Aldridge? Wouldn’t they help us?”
“I don’t know,” Carrie answered, startled. “I hadn’t thought of that. Are you sure they’ll free you?”
“Well,” Prossie admitted, “I have no way of being sure the attorney didn’t lie to me-I don’t have my telepathy here, so I couldn’t check. I hadn’t really thought about it-why would he lie? And if he told the truth, they definitely won’t keep me here more than, I think he said thirty days, at most. They might try to send me to a madhouse, though-I think that was what he meant, anyway, though he didn’t come right out and say so. But I’m not mad, and I ought to be able to avoid that.”
“I see,” Carrie said, and again Prossie sensed doubt. “There’s something else, though; I don’t know if any of the contactees are near where you came out. Some of them were thousands of miles apart. I’ll have to see if we have any maps.”
“Do it, Carrie, please-for me.”
“Sure, Prossie. Hey, whatever happens, it’s good to hear you sounding so much more cheerful!”
“It’s good to be more cheerful, Carrie. Do check those maps for me, please. And thanks.”
The contact broke.
Silent, Prossie sat on her bunk, puzzled.
She had been so pleased with her conversation with Jerry de Lillo, the attorney from the public defender’s office, that she had not really considered the possibility that it was all a fraud, or that things might not work out as well as Mr. de Lillo said. Carrie, however, seemed to be taking it for granted that there was something wrong somewhere.
Why?
What could Carrie know that she, Prossie, did not? Had they been reading other minds here in Montgomery County, or whatever this place was called?
No, that couldn’t be it; she knew perfectly well that contacting anyone in this universe was difficult, and only a handful of people had been sufficiently receptive to manage any sort of communication at all. Out of that handful, only three had been able to both send and receive.
Prossie hadn’t been in on all the initial contacts, but she had done her share, and had carefully studied the files on those she hadn’t personally attempted. None of them had been connected with law enforcement or government.
The chances of locating another new contact who just happened to know something about the fate of the crew of I.S.S. Ruthless had to be just about nil. Whatever Carrie had learned, she must have learned back at Base One, or through a contact somewhere else in the Empire.
Prossie tried to remember the conversation and spot just where it had begun to go sour.
When Prossie had first mentioned being freed, there had been a lack of certainty, but that was just an insufficiency of evidence-Carrie had been eager to be convinced, at that point. Then Prossie had gone on to describe her hopes for after her release…
That was it.
It was when she had mentioned going back through the warp that Carrie had started hiding something.
Any ordinary person would never have noticed it, but Prossie was a telepath; she knew how minds worked. Carrie would never have tried hiding anything from another telepath that way ordinarily, she would have known better, but where Prossie’s talent was stifled she must have misjudged.
It must be that Carrie knew something about the warp that Prossie did not, and Prossie did not have to think very hard about the situation to guess what it might be.