Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant (3 page)

“I just wanted you to know,” Brett finished.

Then he brightened.

“Anyway, Birthday coming up. What do you think you’ll get this year?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really want anything.”

“I do. I hope I get a John Trakker PPG. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Yeah.”

He tried on a smile.

“We better get some sleep. “Sleepy boys are no good to the Corps“.”

“Yeah. Good night, Alfie.”

By the time it came, Al was excited about Birthday, though not for the same reason as Brett. It was Birthday, naturally, when new kids joined the cadre. AI had mixed feelings about it - things had been easier when the cadre was smaller - but there was always the hope that someone really neat would join. Maybe a girl who would like him. He knew he really wasn’t supposed to like girls, but he did, and he couldn’t help it.

The problem was getting them to like you back. And hiding the fact that you liked them from the others… He still liked Milla, but had sort of given up on her. Anyway, Birthday was always a lot of fun, and there wasn’t any schoolwork on Birthday. Birthday started at seven, but everyone was up well before that, eagerly awaiting the opening of the common-room doors.

When they finally swung wide, there was whooping and cheering at the decorations that festooned the room, especially the piáatas. Al got to break one of those - it was easy, even blindfolded, because everyone glyphed to you where it was. After that, some kids from another cadre - an older one, from the 11-13 house - came in and did a play for them. It was a story they all knew, from one of their world readers, but it was still fun to see it acted out. There were only four new kids, a girl and three boys. The girl was pretty, with dark hair and green eyes. Brett was already talking to her, though, as they watched the play.

“They aren’t saying anything,” she noted.

“They won’t,” Brett said.

“You have to p-hear.”

She shut her eyes.

“I can almost hear…”

“P-hear,” Brett corrected.

“I’ve never met another mind reader until a few days ago,” she said, softly-apologetically.

“It’s okay. We call ourselves “teeps“, though. Link hands with me and Alfie. We’ll help you. Alfie?”

She looked at him with her mossy eyes, and when he took her hand, his face felt funny. Warm. Al focused on the play.

The story was from the Central African Block, he remembered, from the Wayo tribe, or something like that. There were two main characters, Hornbill and the Elder, and besides them, three villagers - though the audience was supposed to play villagers, too.

Hornbill was lying down. The actors wore little in the way of costumes, instead glyphing their appearances. Hornbill was a bird with a very small beak.

Hornbill: I don’t feel like going to a funeral today. It’s such a long business, with the procession and all. I would much rather lie in my hammock and take a nap.

Village: LAZYHORNBIIL!HEDOESN’TCAREABOUT THE VILLAGE! HE don’t do nothing for us ONLY what HIS CARES he PEOPLE! ABOUT should HIMSELF is selfish!

Elder: Shame!

Hornbill: No, no, you go ahead.

Village: WE ARE YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS! DO RIGHT BY US! Mother father obey kith kin respect

(Glyph of the calendar flipping, days passing.)

Hornbill: Ah, no, my own son has died! Surely the people of the village will come to help me bury him! Village: C F H FAT CHANCE! T N C E I.

Elder: You have never helped in a funeral. Now no one will help you!

Hornbill: But I don’t even know where the graveyard is!

Village: BECAUSE YOUNEVER CARED BEFORE!

Elder: Find it yourself, lazy Hornbill!

(The actor mimed the hornbill, carrying his son’s coffin on his back, a heavy burden, searching for the graveyard. Glyphs of calendars flipping, days, months, years passing. Putrid ooze leaking out of the coffin as it gradually transformed into the hornbill’s cumbersome beak.)

Hornbill: Where is the graveyard? Where is the graveyard?

But the words were a cry, the sound of the hornbill’s call, repeated forever as he paid for his sin. The sin of standing apart from the village, the sin of selfishness.

The play ended, and they clapped. The older kids took a bow. At that moment, four Grins walked in through the open door. For a moment, Al felt a cold spot form in the pit of his belly, but then he saw that this time, the robed figures were grinning, huge happy smiles. And each carried a large sack. It was time for presents!

Brett got his PPG - not a real one, of course, but it looked real and whined like one warming up. Al got a book on John Carter, the founder of the Mars colony, and they all got plastic Psi Corps badges. After that there was cake and cookies, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with half the cadre trying to help the blindfolded player and the other half trying to hinder him. For supper they had a picnic on the lawn and watched the stars come out in the evening sky, while Ms. Chastain played the autoharp and sang from the cadre songbook.

Al was enjoying himself. Everything seemed right. The Grins had brought him a present, so his own sin must have been forgiven. He wasn’t going to be like Hornbill, cursed forever. Maybe it was time to try the tree again. He walked toward it, humming Happy Birthday to Us. At the base of the oak, he noticed he was being followed. It was the new girl.

“Hi,” he said.

“So what’s your name?”

“Hi,” she answered. “My name is Julia.”

She pronounced it hoo-lee-yah.

“My name is Al.”

“I thought it was Al - fee.”

“That’s what they call me. I like Al better.”

“Okay. I just wanted to thank you for helping me with the play.”

He nodded, unable to meet her green eyes.

“It’s okay.”

And then she just stood there, smiling, and he was supposed to think of something to say. But he couldn’t. And in a minute she would get bored and leave.

“Watch this!” he said, and without waiting for a response, he ran over to the tree and started to climb it.

He got to the swing-around branch and kept going. He felt strong, like he could do anything. Higher, and he found himself under the branch again. He didn’t look down this time, but he imagined Julia, watching him as he climbed higher and higher. He steadied himself, bent his knees, and jumped as high as he could. His hands came together-And caught around the branch. Grunting, grinning, he pulled himself up and over the branch, tempted to shout to the others, to let them see that he had done it. He looked down to see how Julia was taking it.

She wasn’t there. She was walking off, hand in hand with Brett.

His feeling of triumph evaporated like rubbing alcohol. What’s the use, he thought. That was it. He was giving up on girls. What did they know? Here he had climbed the tree for her, risked his life…

And he was just realizing how much farther down it was from here. Birthday stank.

He awoke with a hand over his mouth and a Grin staring down at him. He tried to scream, but the hand and a fierce psi command stopped him. He breathed hard, the chemical scent of the glove in his nose. The Grin was blank, expressionless-no smile, no frown. When his breathing slowed, it motioned him to silence, removed the hand from his mouth, and handed him a robe.

Follow, it commanded.

They moved through the empty streets of Teeptown like will-o’- the-wisps, passing familiar places made strange by the hour. Teeptown was just that, a small town. It had a Common-a center with shops and such-and lots of quads, each with their own, smaller commons. Al really only knew Alpha Quad. When he was a baby, of course, he had lived in the cr¨che, in the hospital quad, but he didn’t remember that. He got his psi early-again, before he could remember-and so he had never lived in the Basement, but had gone straight to the first cadre house.

Though he had twice changed houses as he got older, they were all in Alpha quad. Now he and the Grin moved out of that familiar quarter and into the quad with the Minor Academy. Off that-farther right was the Major Academy; Al had never had the nerve to go that far a field, but he had wandered the grounds of the Minor, watching the older kids, trying to figure it out. He still wasn’t clear exactly how it was put together, though he heard cadres got broken up there, and people were reassigned to “schools.”

That didn’t sound like much fun, but nobody went to the Minor Academy until they were twelve or so, so he had a while before he had to wont’ about it. Once they had passed through the academy grounds, he found himself in territory he really didn’t know. There was a sort of invisible line, past the stanchion field that kids knew they weren’t supposed to cross, and for the most part, they didn’t.

There were apartments for the married couples, and for the grownups who ran Teeptown-some of them Normals. And government buildings, he guessed. The Grin led him on through the no-kids land. Al worried that it might be a trick - that the Grin’s mask would change to a frown, and he would be chastised, suddenly, for crossing the unseen demarcation. But through his fear, he began to feel a new sort of excitement.

Maybe I’m going to see the mother and father, he thought. The faces from my dreams.

The Grin took him into a large building, through winding corridors of dull pearl, to a large office of nearly the same shade - or which probably would be, if the lights were turned up. Tonight, they were very dim. The Grin ushered him through the door and left, closing the portal behind him. Al was left standing uncertainly in the near darkness.

“Come forward, Alfred Bester.”

There was someone behind the big desk. He noticed, as his eyes adjusted, that the room had many shelves, filled with paper books and not a whole lot else. No pictures, like the painting Ms. Chastain had in her office, nothing like that. Books, and walls, and a desk. And behind the desk was the oldest man Al had ever seen.

His hair was cut so close to his head, the only way Al knew he wasn’t bald was because it was whiter than milk, whereas the rest of his head was like a brown paper bag that had been crumpled, smoothed, crumpled again, smoothed again, then stretched tight over a skull. Al found himself wishing that he could touch that face, to see what it would feel like. Would it be hard, like leather-or delicate, like tissue paper?

“Do you know who I am, Mr. Bester?”

“No, sir.”

“My name is Kevin Vacit. I am the director of Psi Corps.”

The director.

“Pleased to meet you, sir. The Corps is mother. The Corps is father.”

“Indeed. And it seems that mother and father had to discipline you, a few days ago.”

“Yessir.”

The vague fear in his chest tightened.

“Come closer.”

Al stepped even closer, and suddenly he saw the director’s eyes, cold gems, colorless. Like - like he didn’t know what. And he felt a shadow go through his mind. It wasn’t like a scan, not even a light one. He wasn’t even sure it was real. But the director smiled.

“You felt something?”

“Yessir.”

“Interesting. Most don’t.”

Al waited for the director to explain what it was that most people didn’t notice, but instead the old man leaned forward and clasped his hands together.

“Listen to me, Alfred,” he said, his voice rather low and scratchy, but still perfectly intelligible.

“What do you want to be?”

That was easy.

“I want to be a Psi Cop, sir.”

“Why?”

That was harder, and Al thought about it for an instant. He had heard that the director of Psi Corps was always supposed to be a normal, appointed by the EA senate. So he might be able to get away with lying… No. He had already shamed the Corps once, he would not do it again.

“I know I’m supposed to want to be a Psi Cop so I can serve and defend, and all of that. And I want to do all that, I really do, but…”

“It’s not the real reason.”

“No, sir. It’s because to be a Psi Cop you have to be the best. The very best.”

“And you want people to know you are the best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know that’s the wrong answer, don’t you, Alfred?”

“Yessir.”

The old man nodded thoughtfully.

“Everyone has different strengths, you know. No one is better than anyone else. A good business telepath, a good military telepath-as long as you perform to the best of your abilities, it’s all the same.”

Al could think of no reply, so he said nothing.

“You don’t believe that, do you?” the director asked.

“I… no, sir.”

“Well.”

The silence stretched so long and thin, Al was afraid something would break. Then the old man sighed.

“Don’t tell anyone you came to see me, Alfred. You can return to your bed now.”

He made a sign, and the door opened again. The Grin was waiting for him.

“Sir?”

Al asked, as the masked person moved to lead him away.

“Yes?”

“Will I get to be a Psi Cop?”

“That remains to be seen, Mr. Bester. But…” He paused. “Do not think that being the best will make you happy. The very qualities that allow the one, preclude the other.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“I know. You’re too young. When you do understand, it will be too late, won’t it?”

His face wrinkled up, oddly.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Alfred. I think - yes, in a way I think you would have made your parents proud.”

“My parents, sir? You mean the Corps?”

The ancient face smoothed out again.

“I mean your parents, your mother and your father.”

“My mother and father are the Corps, sir.”

“Quite right.” He sighed.

“And I knew them all.”

“Sir?”

“Never mind me, Mr. Bester. I am an old man, and my mind wanders. In fact, I don’t expect we’ll meet again - I’m going away soon, and someone else will become director in my place. The Corps is your mother and father, as you said. And the Corps is proud of you. That’s all I meant.”

But it wasn’t, and Al knew it. For just an instant, he thought he had seen a woman’s face-the woman’s face… But he retreated from that thought. If anyone suspected he had read the director’s mind, even accidentally, there was no telling what would happen to him.