Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant (16 page)

Trust. It came hard.

He flexed his knees and leapt The floor found his feet a little sooner than he expected, and he almost stumbled. Emory must not have noticed that, the extra height beyond the trench. Sloppy, but he probably hadn’t imagined Al would jump, thinking he would edge around instead.

Shooter, Al, two o’clock.

That was Indira, and Indira was always precise. He dropped and rolled sideways, came up with his own simulator held level. Indira, on one side of the course, and Abraham, on the other, glyphed simultaneously. The two images were confusing, but necessary. With them he was able to triangulate where his opponent also blindfolded, also coached by his team-stood. Al squeezed the contact, and was rewarded with a small ringing sound a cheer went up from his side.

You did it, Al! Emory p-cast.

No, Al replied. We did it together.

There was a celebration, of course. The victory had advanced them to the semifinals, and they all thought their chances looked good. For Al, it was a sort of revelation, this shared victory. It was mixed - when he failed he let everyone down, and when he succeeded he had to share the glory. But being part of a team had its rewards, as well.

For the first time, he felt he was at the center of something, rather than clinging to a rapidly rotating edge. Something was still missing, though, and that something was Sandoval Bey. Al had struggled to understand the feeling of loss that had only seemed to mount as the months marched by.

Three months, and not a word from the station chief. Part of him felt ashamed for missing Bey, because he was bright enough to understand the implications of what he felt. Most of his new companions were laters - most had been raised for years by biological parents. They were all loyal to the Corps, all thought of the Corps as mother and father-but as surrogate mother and father, as replacements for their birth parents.

For Al, the Corps had been his first mother, first father, yet despite that, his feelings toward Bey were - if he was honest with himself-filial. The primitive instincts that even the best telepaths inherited from their mundane ancestors still lived in him, urged him to focus on human individuals as parents. The faces he had once seen in his dreams were gone, left behind with childhood and the Grins-but Bey’s face had taken their place. It was wrong. We are all mothers and fathers to one another.

That had been the lesson imported by the Grins. That was the lesson of the Corps. It didn’t comfort him much. He missed Bey.

He shook his head. The excited conversation around him had shifted, and he tried to focus, to catch up. He didn’t want them to think he wasn’t paying attention to them, that he didn’t value them. It was one of Bey’s lessons - if you show someone they have value to you, it automatically makes you valuable to them. So he joined in the conversation, pushing Sandoval Bey to the back of his mind.

Half an hour later, a Psi Cop walked into the bar. He glanced around, and when his gaze met Al’s, recognition kindled. He came over.

“Alfred Bester?”

“Sir? Yes, sir, that’s me, sir.”

“Would you come with me?”

“Of course.”

He turned to the others.

“See you guys for practice in the morning?”

“Sure thing, Al. You were great today.”

“You guys, too. See you.”

The Psi Cop set a brisk pace.

“Sir? May I ask where we’re headed?”

“The director’s office,” the cop told him.

“Director Johnston wants to see you.”

“Mr. Bester.”

Al had never heard his own name sound so threatening. The director maintained his familiar, thin smile as he appeared to review something on the desktop display.

“Sir.”

“I’ve heard good things about you, of late. You may know that many of your teachers had concerns about you. I did myself, after that little incident in Paris. I’m very pleased to say, no one has had the slightest complaint about you since that time.”

“Thank you, sir. I believe I learned a valuable lesson.”

The director nodded.

“You will graduate the Minor Academy this year?”

“Yes, sir, if I meet the requirements set by the Corps.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will have no problems there, Mr. Bester. All of your instructors seem quite certain of you.”

“That’s gratifying to hear, sir, but of course I take nothing for granted.”

“No, I’m sure you don’t.”

He paused, took a small tumbler half full of what appeared to be water, and relaxed back into the arms of his padded chair.

“Have you seen Dr. Sandoval Bey, recently?”

Al felt it then, a faint touch, a prickling of the skin. Someone, somewhere, was scanning him, a very light scan, like a business teep.

“No, sir. Not in months.”

“You two spent quite some time together. You even went on a raid with him, I seem to remember. No. No… don’t fear to admit it, he cleared it through this office.”

“So he told me at the time,” Al replied.

“Do you know why he took such an interest in you? He advocated for you at the hearing, took you under his wing. You two met regularly for months.”

“I can’t say, sir. He saved my life in Paris, I suppose that had something to do with it. He thought my education was incomplete.”

“Really? He said that? In what way does he feel the Corps is not doing its job as educator?” Al felt, suddenly. As if he had walked into a trap.

“That’s not what I meant, sir. It wasn’t the Corps that failed, but myself. The lessons Dr. Bey thought I should learn were there for me all along - I just didn’t learn them.”

“And what lessons might those be?”

“I…”

Al realized that it was hard to articulate what Bey had given him.

“He taught me to appreciate other people. To work with them, to try to understand their point of view.”

“I see. And this Blip you chased together, this Fatima Cristoban… did he teach you to understand her point of view? Did he teach you compassion for rogue telepaths?”

Al’s mouth suddenly felt very dry. There was something-some subtext to this conversation - that was leaking from the director. He tried desperately to shut it out.

“I… she was confused, sir. Very confused. I suppose I did feel sorry for her.”

“Tell me, Mr. Bester,” the director said, very softly.

“If you had to choose between a rogue telepath and a-mundane-who was loyal to EarthGov and to the principles of the Corps, which would you choose?”

“I am loyal to the Corps, sir. A rogue is a rogue.”

“I see. A commendable attitude. Do you think Dr. Sandoval Bey shares that attitude?”

“Of course, sir.”

But he felta flickerof doubt at that. Bey might just might-under the right circumstances put the telepath first. And he knew, with sinking heart, that his doubt had been heard and noted by someone he could not see.

“Very well. That will be all, Mr. Bester.”

And as he left, he felt the same flash of hatred he had felt all those years ago, when he had first seen this ice - eyed man. And there was something else - a danger, a threat. Not to himself, but to Bey. And it was mixed with a feeling of terrible triumph. He fought to control his breathing all the way back to the dorms. Bey was in danger-grave danger, of that he was sure.

He should warn him, go to his office… No, that was crazy; send him an anonymous message. But what if Bey really had betrayed the Corps? Wouldn’t warning him be an act of treason, too? Yet it was plainly impossible. Bey was the Corps, represented everything good about it. Even if he had sympathy for some rogues, that didn’t mean-The director was a mundane, a jealous, power-mad mundane, who…

He crushed those thoughts, but they kept coming back. Bey was in danger. How could he do nothing? Then he turned a certain corner and for just an instant didn’t understand where he was, how his feet had led him there, why the world had suddenly become so vivid. Why he was six years old again and all life since a dream.

It was the place. The place that the Grins had branded into his mind. It all came back - the fear, the shame-mostly the shame. He felt a sob jerk in his chest, but he grabbed it with his heart, kept it there, tight and cold and awful. Grinding his teeth, eyelids twitching, he closed his hand in a fist, hurried on, until the feeling faded, became a memory again. They were trying to trick him. That’s what they were trying to do.

The director had intentionally made him think Bey was in danger, to test his loyalty, his commitment to the Corps. If he went to Bey now, it was all over, everything. No Major Academy, no future with MetaPol, nothing. Bey was fine. Maybe-he shied away from the thought, but couldn’t entirely dismiss it maybe Bey was even in on it. Since his foolhardy pursuit of Brazg and Nielsson, everything had been leading to this-a test to make sure Alfred Bester really was Psi Cop material. Now his breath smoothed out, and his heart found a reasonable pace. He went back to his dorm, he took out his books, and he studied.

Three days later he stood on closely trimmed grass, his legs like wood. It should be raining, he thought. The sky should be black. It wasn’t. The sun dazzled, a jewel on a vast pillow of blue velvet and white lace. The leaves of the trees glistened with dew. Birds were singing, though the music-the music in his head-nearly drowned their song. He was the only one there, at the grave. No one else had come. They said he was lucky to even be buried here, considering.

“They say.”

He couldn’t speak, he found-not with his throat.

They say you were helping the rogues, that you sympathized with them. They issued a warrant for your arrest, and when they came, they found you…

He couldn’t picture it, Bey standing on a chair, a rope around his neck, coolly kicking the chair from beneath him. It didn’t fit. Bey hated suicides. I’ve heard-whispers-that they killed you. That they gave you a choice, and rather than disgrace the Corps you… you did it while they watched. Like a samurai.

Is it true, Dr. Bey? I trusted you.

(Anger, sudden, somehow like hiccups.)

The director was right, or half right, wasn’t he? You may never have helped the rogues, but you did sympathize with them. If you were given the same choice they gave me good mundane or bad telepath you would always choose the telepath, wouldn’t you? What have your philosophies gotten you? Your jokes? How could you betray me by dying?

The grave did not answer, of course.

Al stood there, staring at the fresh earth-smelling it, like the flower beds after the ground crews broke them for planting-and he wondered if he would live. He wondered if a Human heart could just tear itself in half, if his life could simply vomit out of him, as anything he ate did, each time he pictured Bey hanging there, face purple, his beard still neatly trimmed.

I could have warned you. I didn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, even if you really were a traitor.

It should be raining. The sky should be black. He closed his hand on the badge in his pocket, and it felt like a smooth piece of bone, long dead. His head was full of music, discordant, mocking. Stravinsky.

Chapter 10

Al admired Freja Magnussunsdottir’s face. It was like carved ivory, fixed, expressionless. She seemed to speak and blink without using muscles; despite her advanced years, the only wrinkles were precise, incised lines that never bunched and neither lengthened nor shortened.

“The field test,” she was saying, “will not comprise any fraction of your grade - it will comprise all of it. Those of you who do not have a B average or above will not be average or above will not be allowed to participate. As of now, you have effectively failed the course.”

“But that’s-we weren’t told that at the beginning of the class. It wasn’t in the syllabus!”

The protester was Roger Fieldstone, a burly, weak - chinned senior.

“Mr. Fieldstone, sit down. I did not give you permission to speak.”

“I’m sorry, Instructor, but this is simply not fair. If we were required lo maintain a B average, we should have been told so.”

“Mr. Fieldstone, you feel you could have done better if you had known it was required of you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I see.”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“Then the Corps has no use for you. Excellence should not be conditional, it should not arise from necessity-but from desire. You have admitted that you took my class less than seriously, Mr. Fieldstone. If we were to give you a badge and a PPG and make you a Psi Cop, why should we expect any more of you? I’m recommending you be dropped from the program entirely.”

“But I’m a senior,” Fieldstone said, his voice panicky.

“I can’t… you can’t.”

He stood there, mouth open, and then collapsed back into his seat, burying his face in his hands. Serves you right, Fieldstone, AI thought, but did not p-cast.

“Now. As I was saying before Mr. Fieldstone’s unfortunate interruption…”

On the very word, the door suddenly creaked open. Magnussunsdottir chopped off in mind-sentence and turned her uninflected face to see who it was.

“Ah. Ms. Montoya. How nice of you to join us.”

“Sorry, ma’am, I was arrested.”

“Arrested.”

“Yes. By the sight of the interns jogging by. The men wear these tight little…”

“Sit down, Ms. Montoya.”

Montoya smiled, shrugged, and did so. On the way she caught Al staring at her and arched her eyebrows. He looked quickly away. He remembered Elizabeth Montoya, had recognized her the first day of class. She was the dark beauty who had kissed him four years ago, when he had been the statue of the day. He had considered reminding her of the incident, but didn’t really see the point.

Montoya was a capricious creature, always flirting, usually outrageous, rarely more than a single word away from being thrown out of class-and yet somehow, she never quite seemed to say that word. It irritated him that she got away with such behavior. Her attitude was not, in his opinion, fitting for a Psi Corps cadet.

“If I am finally free of interruption,” the instructor began again, “I will finish what I was saying. For those of you to whom the field test is still a concern - you will be assigned to four-person teams. You should be ready to go at 05:00 tomorrow. The location, duration, and nature of your exam will not be disclosed. You will be provided with no tools, equipment, or clothing. You are free to confer among yourselves between now and then. Group assignments will be posted after class. Now, if you will all refer to diagram one of your text, we can begin a discussion of today’s assignment.”