Garibaldi looked thoughtful. “We were going to do a hand-scan on anyone who entered Green-12. Plus, we were going to eyeball for Psi Corps insignias. Did you have something more elaborate in mind?”
“I don’t want a strip search,” said Sheridan, “but look inside handbags, briefcases, backpacks, handheld stuff. Pat them down, if need be.”
“That’s fine with me,” agreed Garibaldi. “I was going to suggest it, but I didn’t think they would let us get away with it.”
“As long as it’s by the book,” said Sheridan, “let’s use whatever means are at our disposal. This may discourage them from going in and out of Green-12 too much.”
“What are we looking for, sir?”
The captain smiled wistfully. “Some peace of mind. But I don’t think we’ll find it until they leave.”
He hated prowling the corridor waiting for her, but he didn’t know how else to approach Susan, without making it look something like a coincidence. Fortunately, Harriman Gray was one of those people who blended in. He didn’t blend in very well when he was playing the odious role of the hard-boiled telepath, ready to leaf through a person’s mind like a nosy visitor snoops through a person’s medicine cabinet; but he could blend in well enough when there were crowds and a swirl of people.
The longer he was around them, the more Gray liked the alien rhythms and voices of Babylon 5. It made him feel more normal to know that he couldn’t read the minds of most of the people here. To them, he was just another alien.
So he circled the corridors where she had to cross, hoping he wouldn’t miss her when his back was turned. Perhaps she would get a bite at her favorite restaurant between shifts. She was working a double shift, he was certain, until all the conference attendees were safely aboard the station, where they became somebody else’s problem. That was the way Susan worked, making sure there were no lapses on her watch. She hated all of them with a passion, but she would guide their ships to safety as if they were carrying her own mother.
The thought of Susan’s mother brought Gray up short. That was the root of her hatred for Psi Corps, and was there anything he could do about it? Would it do any good to apologize? Or to tell Susan how lousy it made him feel to be tarred with the same feather as the Psi Police? Was there anything at all he could say that would erase her years of pain and hatred? No. Not as long as he wore the Psi Corps insignia on his lapel.
What was he doing this for? Why couldn’t he come to his senses and forget about Susan? There were plenty of women who would welcome a man with his prestige and career potential, women who would consider him a catch. Well, maybe.
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?