“It’s a full ship,” observed Mr. Gray.
“There are still two Psi Cops,” muttered Garibaldi. “Damn, they were beginning to get on my nerves back there. Who the hell do they think they are?”
“Psi Cops chasing a rogue telepath,” said Gray. “You think we’re only hard on you folks, the nontelepaths. We’re much harder on ourselves. By running, Ms. Winters brought this on herself, remember that.”
“We’ve got to find her first,” vowed Garibaldi, although he realized that if hundreds of Psi Cops and a whole planetful of police couldn’t find her, what chance did he have? Maybe her male companion was good; maybe he had gotten her out of it. After all, there was a lot of space out there, and maybe she could find a safe chunk of it. Garibaldi wished her well if she was running for daylight. But he would miss her.
“Please prepare for departure,” said a computer voice. “Fasten seat restraints; stow all documents and carry-on items.”
A few meters away, Talia relaxed in her chair. It was definite now—if she was going to be arrested, it would be on Mars. Of course, that would just feed the publicity mill that was grinding out stories about her connections to Mars. It couldn’t be helped. This nightmare wanted to create its own internal logic, and she had to go with it.
Garibaldi settled back, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. He told Gray, “Wake me up when we’re there.”
Halfway through the trip, Garibaldi got jostled awake by the man sitting across the aisle from him, who got up to stretch his legs. Gray was snoring softly to the right of him, and the lights in the cabin had been dimmed by half. Most people were asleep, but a handful were standing, milling about. He was just about to fall back to sleep when he saw the lithe figure of a woman moving about seven rows in front of him. She was just the type he liked, classy and cultured, and she was wearing a pantsuit that hugged her slim torso. She was wearing a scarf and dark glasses, and he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t older than he imagined. Ah, well, even if she was eighty, she still looked pretty good.
You pig, quit staring at her, he told himself. But the woman had almost struggled to the end of her row and was about to hit the aisle, so he thought he would hold on to catch her rear action. Garibaldi wasn’t disappointed—it was the finest can he had seen in a long time. In fact, it was reminiscent. He sat up in his seat and stared at the woman’s buttocks as she sauntered away from him. Then he gripped Gray’s arm.
“Wake up!” he whispered. “Wake up!”
“What is it? What is it?” mumbled Gray.
He bent so close to Gray that it probably looked as if he was kissing him. “She’s here on this transport with us,” he whispered, “Talia.”
“You saw her? You made positive identification?”
“Well,” admitted Garibaldi, “all I saw was her rear end, but that’s enough.”
Gray wrinkled his nose. “Really, Garibaldi, that is disgusting! You see a woman’s rear end, and you fantasize that you can identify Ms. Winters from her rear end? I hadn’t realized you were such close associates.”
“Trust me,” claimed Garibaldi, “I have been watching that can very closely for the past year, and I know it by heart. But I want you to verify the ID—we’ll be able to see her face when she comes back.”
“I don’t need to stare at her,” said Gray with distaste. “All I have to do is scan her.”
“No, don’t do that. There are two Psi Cops on board, and I don’t want to alert them. If she gets a mind-scan, she’ll think it’s them and she’ll freak. The best we can do is let those two guys get off and try to approach her where we have some privacy.
Gray shook his head. “What am I doing? I’m talking as if you could identify a woman from her bottom!”
“Just look at her when she comes back, all right?”
Gray shook his head with disbelief and began to shut his eyes. That didn’t last long, because Garibaldi elbowed him in the ribs.
“There she is!” he whispered.
With a look of contempt on his face, Mr. Gray peered around the seat in front of him. Garibaldi was holding the seat card with flight instructions in front of his face, in case she looked his way. The woman in the blue pantsuit stepped briskly back into her row, and she looked up only once. When she did, Garibaldi saw the chiseled features—a little more gaunt than before—and the determined eyes—darting and wary behind the sunglasses. She was a frightened woman, running on the edge, and he fought the temptation to leap out of his seat and wrap his arms around her. Hang in there, Talia, he told her with his thoughts.
She glanced up again, looking puzzled, as she made her way over people’s knees to her seat. Finally she collapsed into the seat and molded herself into the shadows along the bulkhead.
“All right,” admitted Gray, “that is either her or a very close proximity. And I’ll pay more attention to women’s rear ends in the future.”
“You do that,” whispered Garibaldi. “How should we handle this?”
“As you say, if we approach her in this crowded cabin, it might cause a scene. I suppose we have no choice but to wait until we get off the ship, then play it by ear. I suppose, if she’s gotten this far, she has a fake identicard.”
“Can you tell if there’s someone with her?” asked Garibaldi.
“Somebody is sitting next to her. But all the seats are full, so that doesn’t mean anything.”
The man who was sitting across the aisle from Garibaldi chose that moment to return to his seat. The security chief smiled pleasantly at the passenger, knowing this was the end of his candid conversation with Gray. Besides, there was nothing left to say. They just had to sit tight until they could get Talia alone.
But at least they had found her! She was still in trouble, but she had friends around her.
Talia glanced behind her, thinking what a weird sensation that had been. She had been concentrating so hard on blocking her thoughts as she walked by the two Psi Cops that she had been stunned by a thought coming from the other direction. She hadn’t been able to read it, because she had been blocking, but it troubled her to think that someone behind her was also watching her. Thinking about her.
She wanted to stare into the crowd of faces behind her, but she didn’t dare. What if they were still watching? Really, was there anybody back there? It was probably just some guy giving her a leer, like Garibaldi always gave her on the lift. She even missed that part of Babylon 5. What was she doing to herself, wondered Talia, letting her paranoia get to her? Hadn’t she come this far without a hitch? She would make it all the way. The worst part of running, she decided, was that the paranoia never let up. It only got worse.
Talia tried to sleep, knowing she wouldn’t be able to.
Garibaldi sat nervously through the reentry into Mars’ thin atmosphere. The transport was capable of docking on the Red Planet, with its fraction of Earth’s gravity, so they didn’t have to transfer from an orbital spacedock. As the long journey was about to come to an end, there was excited conversation in the cabin, and people moved about in their seats, anxious to be off the crowded vessel. But not him. The safe confines of the shuffle had been just fine; now they would have to chance the craziness of Mars. As far as he knew, Talia considered him the enemy, and she might freak when she saw him.
He could feel Gray tensing beside him, too. The timing of their actions would have to be perfect. There could be Psi Cops at the dock, eyeing everyone, rousting the attractive women. Maybe somebody would be meeting her—maybe the man she had traveled with. Or maybe that man was somewhere else on the craft, making it look as if they weren’t traveling together.
No, he decided, it would be best to let Talia get through the security check-in alone, then they would make contact. But they had to be ready to move immediately if things went wrong. They might have to fight for jurisdiction over her. Despite being so close to her, he felt far away from Talia. What was her mental state like after the bombing, the accusations, and then running for her life? Not good, he imagined.