Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant (26 page)

In one jarring instant he was a child again, on that mountain, eavesdropping on Julia and Brett, feeling their lips brushing as if against his own. But this time he already knew the feel of one of the pair, the peculiar way she knotted her hands together across a back. It was his-had been his… The flowers slipped to the floor.

He looked down at them dumbly for a time, then knelt to gather them up. He placed them in a vase and left, closing the door quietly behind him. He didn’t look down when he heard the approaching footsteps. He kept his eyes on the stars, on the thin films of clouds, on the vague secrets the patterns of light and darkness implied. Mysteries, cryptograms. Secrets.

“I’ m I’ m sorry, Al.”

He shrugged.

“I suppose I should have expected it. I had no right not to.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No,” he admitted.

Then he asked, “Why did you marry me?”

“You know why.”

“No. There was no need to many. We could have conceived a child for the Corps-through artificial insemination, even. It’s done every day. But you wanted to marry. Why?”

“Because they asked me to.”

He sat back against the pedestal that supported the statue of William Karges.

“I see. Another attempt to save poor Alfie Bester. To put him on the right track.”

“They said you were becoming-erratic. And II admire you, Al. I like you. I wanted to help.”

“What’s his name?”

“Do you really need to…”

“What is his name?”

Now he met her eyes. She had been crying, but he found he didn’t care.

“Jared. Jared Dawson.”

“Well. Another P12, at least.”

“I knew him long ago, Al. We were lovers before I ever met you, but our genetic profiles showed a lower compatibility. And…”

She broke off.

“Al, you don’t love me. We both know that.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to make a fool out of me. A laughingstock in front of the whole Corps.”

“Is that what worries you? I’ve been very careful about that, Al. No one knows. I swear it.” She knelt in front of him, reached her hand to touch his chin. “It won’t happen again, Al. I swear. I told him it was over.”

“Spare me your pity Alisha. You’re right - I don’t love you any more than you love me. I just thought - I just thought we could be friends. I thought we could trust each other.”

“I’m sorry. It’s all I can say. I won’t do it again.”

“Oh. Good. Now I trust you completely. That was easy.”

“Al…”

“Go home, Alisha. Go home. I’ll be there after a while.”

Their words served only to ease them from one silence to another over the next week. They lived in the spaces. Al tried to come home as seldom as he could, but it was a slow week. The underground was quiet, and all incidents were local enough not to require the intervention of an external investigator. Al kept his feelers out, waiting, hoping for a distraction.

Alisha tried-he could tell she was trying. For the moment, at least, she was sincere about making their “marriage” work. But he knew he couldn’t trust her, knew he never should have. The Grins had taught him that, long ago. Why did he keep forgetting? Was it some animal instinct, this blind desire to trust? Some chemical necessity?

It was ten days before he got the call he had been waiting for. Alisha was in the kitchenette.

“Who was that?” she asked.

He left without a word “His name is Karl Jovovich,” the young medic said. “Massive trauma; his heart took a bullet. We have him on a mechanical pump, but he’s rejecting. We’ve got a heart for him, but I don’t expect - well, the collateral damage is extensive. He took five hits in the upper chest.”

“So you want me to stand by during the operation.”

“Yes. A scan right now would kill him for certain, and would violate his rights…”

“I’m aware of the law,” Al said softly.

“I’m sure you are.”

The medic was a normal. He didn’t like Al, that much was clear. He didn’t like the whole situation.

“I’ll wait,” Al assured him. “I’ll wait until you give the word.”

“If I give the word.” Goddamn vulture.

Al smiled, very thinly.

“You have your job, and I have mine. I hope your man lives. But if he doesn’t, isn’t it better that we catch his killer?”

He was lying.

The man in the bed was a mundane. Al didn’t care if he recovered. If he had been shot by another mundane - well, what better justice than that they should all kill one another? But, in these situations, it was best to be diplomatic. Mundanes were better off believing that the Corps was, as advertised, their friend. He waited impatiently as the fellow was taken into surgery.

He had chosen a mundane, in a mundane hospital, volunteering through the court system. That likely meant that MetaPol didn’t yet know he was doing this. If they did, they might try to stop him, and he couldn’t have that. Every moment he had to wait increased the chances someone in his division would realize what he was up to. No matter what, this was the last time.

The Corps couldn’t possibly risk one of their best - and yes, he was one of their best, there was no need for false humility-on an eighth deathbed scan. That was okay. One more was all he needed.

They worked hard, deep into the night. He watched the earnest young surgeons, tasted their desperate faith, their passion for saving life, and wanted to laugh at them. Everyone died. Who did they think they were? But they sweated and cursed and finally wept when the heartbeat went flat, and they reluctantly called him over.

He worked fast. Once the pulse was gone, there was no time to spare. He pulled off the resuscitator, stripped the glove from his right hand, and touched the clammy brow. The man was young, a little weak-chinned. He had crow’s-feet, despite his youth-perhaps he had laughed a lot.

Al closed his eyes, and set foot on a dark highway. He was walking next to the young man, who turned to face him.

“You the angel of death?”

“Maybe. You know you’re dying?”

“I know. I can feel it. You see the end up ahead?” He laughed bitterly. “End of the road.”

“Anything you want to tell me first? Who killed you?”

“No. Why does it matter?”

“I would think you would want revenge.”

The young man shook his head.

“You know that poem? I forget exactly how it goes. Death is the enemy, not my fellow man. I won’t betray someone else to death.”

“Even the one who killed you?”

“Nope.”

“How noble. But you are scared.”

“I’m terrified. Who wouldn’t be?”

The road had begun to move beneath them, like a slide-walk. Landscape whipped by them-sights, sounds, events - Al ignored them. The young man didn’t care who had killed him, and neither did Al. That’s not what he was here for.

“You dying, too?” the fellow asked.

“No. But I’m going with you.”

“How ‘bout you just take my place, if you’re so damn eager?”

“I thought death was the enemy.”

“Yeah. But you seem so all-fired anxious.”

“I am.”

“Why?”

“I want to see what’s out there. Beyond that.”

The liminality was approaching; Al had come to recognize it, whatever its form. The road was curling up at the edges as it raced along, black walls going higher and higher, and finally closing, becoming a tunnel of nothing. Their pace was fantastic now, and the young man was starting to blur, to coruscate. Bits of his form were streaming behind him like the tail of a comet.

“This isn’t so bad,” the young man whispered. “I guess I can use the company. You want to take my hand?”

Al didn’t want to, but that seemed the surest way. He reached out and did so, just as direction seemed to change, as horizontal motion became vertical - down, like falling toward Mars, like falling in a nightmare.

For an instant he knew the sheerest terror he had ever known. Then the universe seemed to flatten, as all of him squeezed into a ribbon, a globe, a single, dimensionless point then, nothing, save a humming like wind, and lights like stars, and the most interesting sensation of turning inside out, like a sock.

The young man was gone. Everything was gone. But he wasn’t He remained, somehow. And he spoke to himself. He spoke to himself, but he spoke in voices. He spoke first in the voice of Sandoval Bey.

What did I hope to find here? And he answered in the voice of Elizabeth Montoya. The truth. The truth about my parents. But I know that truth, Bey’s voice replied. I didn’t have to come here for that. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter who or what my parents were. And now he spoke in the voice of Stephen Walters, the rogue he had killed. There is nothing here. The only thing here is what I bring with me. And in the most ancient voice he knew, the voice of a woman. Of his mother. I only bring what is in my heart. That is all that survives beyond the liminality, the contents of the heart. And finally, in his own voice. And there is nothing here. There is nothing left in my heart at all. There wasn’t. There wasn’t.

His skin was all that remained, inside out, empty.

He awoke with his back arched, the surgeon standing over him, sweating, mask down. A sparkling numbness was just working through his toes, presumably from the heart-lung stimulator on his chest.

“Got you,” the surgeon said. “Goddamn it, I got you.”

“Congratulations, Doctor,” Al said, weakly. “You seem to have saved my life.”

They still wouldn’t let him out of bed the next day, when Alisha came to see him.

“Hello, my dear,” he said, pushing himself upright against the pillows.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

“Oh… nothing much. I lost control of the scan. I guess I shouldn’t have tried to do it so soon after the last one.”

“You shouldn’t have tried another one at all.”

He patted her hand.

“Your concern is touching. It really is. But there’s nothing to fear - I won’t be doing it again.”

“I hope not.”

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“The hospital called the Corps, and they informed me. I took the first flight.”

“Yes. They informed my loving wife, of course.”

“AI…”

“No, I’m song. That was inappropriate of me. Thank you for coming.”

He took her hand again, and sensed - something more.

“You have something to tell me?” he asked.

“I was going to wait…”

“No time like the present. I’m fine, Alisha.”

She nodded.

“Very well. Alfred, I’m pregnant.”

He blinked.

“Wonderful.”

Was it his? Probably he would never know. Nor did he really care.

“I hoped you would be happy.”

“A fine, strong P12 for the Corps? Of course I’m happy.”

She attempted a smile.

“I’m glad. I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried that you might want…”

He shook his head, reached up, and pecked her on the cheek.

“You’re my wife. That’s how it should be. And now we have a child on the way. The timing isn’t what it could have been, but we’ll work it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I requested a transfer to Mars. Babineau was in here just before you, to tell me it was approved. It’s a great opportunity, darling, for all of us. All of the big stuff is happening on Mars. I can’t turn it down. I think you understand.”

She drew back a little.

“I… think I do.”

“I knew you would. But I’ll write, of course, and send vids, and come home on leave every chance I get.”

“I can get a transfer, too. I can go with you…”

“In your condition? And I know how upsetting space travel is to you. No, I can’t ask you to do that.”

He said it firmly, finally, and she understood.

“If that’s what you want.”

“What we want doesn’t matter. We do what we must.”

He smiled.

“Thank you for coming to see me. I think I would like to rest again.”

“Okay. Rest well.”

He could feel her relief. If his heart weren’t empty, it might have bothered him.

He slept like a baby.

PART 4. Ascendant

Chapter I

“I hate the way they look at us,” Ysidra Tapia said, lifting her chin incrementally at the crowd waiting on the train platform.

Most looked like miners, though there were a few white-collar types. All stared at Al and Tapia with varying degrees of vehemence. He shrugged.

“I take comfort in the little things,” he told her.

“Things that give me a sense of security, of permanency. The sun rises and sets every day, objects in a gravity well fall down and not up, and Normals hate telepaths. It’s comforting, really, when you get to my age. It tells you that God is in heaven and all is right with the world.”

Tapia smiled nervously. She was dreadfully young, a P12 at the start of her internship. She was slim and tall and dark. She reminded him uncomfortably of Elizabeth Montoya.

“Stinking mindfrikkers.”

He didn’t need his psi to hear that. It had been meant for his ears and for everyone on the platform. It was easy, too, to single out the individual who had spoken-a tough-looking miner of about forty. Her muscular arms hung almost gorilla-like at her sides.

“You heard me,” she said, dangerously.

“Mindfrikker.”

“Good day to you, too,” AI said, with exaggerated brightness.

“Come on, Endra.”

Another miner-a younger woman - tugged on her arm.

“Come on?” she snapped.

“Have you forgotten starving? The food riots? These mindfrikkers, fat and lazy, watching us starve?”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to sit out the Earth-Minbari War,” Tapia snapped, suddenly.

Al was mildly surprised. Apparently the trainee had some of Montoya’s fire, as well.

“Wasn’t our war. We didn’t start it.”

“Wasn’t your war?” Tapia snapped.

“You cowards. My father died on the Line. And my brother. Earth boiled a million gallons of blood into a vacuum to save the Human race while you guys sat here like the Marsie cowards you are.”

“You better keep your little pup on the curb, Mr. Psycho,” Endra said.

Her voice moved into what Al recognized as a red zone. A murmer rose among the rest of the crowd - they were getting angrier by the second. He knew he ought to do something. But he wanted to see how Tapia would handle it. She, in turn, seemed to think she had overstepped her bounds and suddenly became quiet. Then the tube car arrived.