Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester (21 page)

“Let’s take a trip,” he told Louise, abruptly.

“What? To where?”

“Anywhere. The south of France. London.”

“Oh, Claude, that sounds wonderful. When shall we go?”

“Now. This minute.”

“You crazy man! I just got back from a trip.”

“So?”

“And I’m not packed.”

“I’ve got plenty of money, and I just got a raise from the paper. We’ll buy what we need as we go.”

She laughed and kissed him.

“You are crazy. What a wonderful, romantic notion. But impossible. I was gone for a week, and I’ve neglected things while Genny was here. I need a few days, at least, to get everything back on track.”

“We’ll have lost the impulse by then,” Bester argued.

“When one has a romantic impulse, one must act on it right then.”

She frowned prettily.

“You are serious about this.”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

She hesitated, and hesitated longer. All he had to do was push her, just a little, just nudge the part of her brain that loved him, loved this idea. And then, and then, he would find some way to explain, some way that would leave her still loving him, and… and the moment passed. Her mind settled and set like concrete, so that it would have taken a real push to change it.

“I’m sorry, love,” she said, fondling his hand.

“I just can’t, right now. I don’t want to. I want to sleep in my own bed, with you in it. I want to putter around the hotel. Can’t we find some way to make that romantic?”

He laughed it off.

“Of course,” he said. “

It was just an idea.”

“And a sweet one. A wonderful one. I never knew you could be so spontaneous.”

But he understood, suddenly, that one of the reasons she loved him was his normal lack of spontaneity. Her husband had been spontaneous, romantic, impulsive.

Those things could turn on you. The same childlike whimsy that could seem so charming when it suggested a sudden trip to Spain was much less charming when it turned into an impulse to go off alone, on foot, unburdened by marriage and commitments.

“I’m usually not,” he said, to reassure her.

“I think I was just going a little stir-crazy without you around, and then sharing you with your sister. But when we get back, it will be just the two of us, won’t it?”

She smiled.

“Why don’t we just go see how that works out, right now?”

Later that night, when she was asleep, he got up and checked the messages stored in his telephone. There was one he was expecting. He keyed it up. It was his government contact.

“Your new papers are on the way. They’ll arrive by special courier. Good luck, sir. Some of us are still rooting for you.”

He smiled thinly, and without humor, then erased the message. Then he went back to bed.

Garibaldi looked over the rooftops of Paris, restless.

“Somewhere down in there,” one of the local policemen told him.

“That’s the Pigalle.”

“Huh.”

The streets looked like worm trails. He could see this because they were both on a hill, standing in a room on the top floor of a four-story building.

When you lay in wait for a telepath, it was best to keep out of any possible line of sight, let mindless electronic machines do the watching for you. Garibaldi kept this in mind, even though it was unlikely Bester even knew he was in the city. Banks of screens were reporting, focusing on each person they observed, comparing the images with lightning speed against a fund of possible ways in which Bester might have altered his appearance.

Chemical sniffers were doing their job, as well - everyone in the world had a different chemical composition, so everyone left a signature trail of compounds behind them. Of course, it was a blurry signature, since diet caused it to vary, and air pollution muddied the picture even more. So the sniffers put up a lot of false red flags, most of which could be discounted within seconds by cross - referencing them with the visual images. Thompson came up, obviously excited. He had just been on the phone with Girard.

“What’s the latest?” Garibaldi asked.

“One of the local cops thinks he knows Bester. He’s staying at a local hotel.”

“Why haven’t we grabbed him yet?”

“He was out. The cop didn’t say anything to the landlady because apparently she and Bester have some sort of thing going.”

“Really. I guess there really is someone for everyone. Especially if you’re a telepath.”

“What?”

Thompson’s excitement was replaced with equally apparent irritation.

“Hey, don’t get touchy. I’m not talking about you, or any normal telepath. I’m talking about Bester This guy doesn’t hesitate in the slightest to screw with people’s minds to get what he wants. How else would a dried-up bastard like him get a girlfriend? He probably thought it would be good cover.”

“Didn’t you tell me he had a lover before? One that the Shadows did something to?”

“Yep. She was a Blip, one of his prisoners. You figure it out.”

“Sir?”

That was one of his team.

“Yeah?”

“Possible positive from both chemical and visual sensors.”

“Hot damn. Which location?”

“This one, sir.”

“You mean right below us?”

“Yes, sir.”

Garibaldi was in motion before the affirmative was even out of the man’s mouth.

He took the stairs, bounding down four and five at a time. His knees might complain about it later, but for now they were just fine. He felt twenty years younger.

On the street he did a quick right-left-right.

“Which one?” he asked to his link.

“The one in the checked shirt, about a hundred meters to your left, now.”

Thompson burst from the stairwell behind him, puffing.

“Cover me,” Garibaldi commanded.

He palmed his PPG and ran up the street. The possible looked right from the back-the right build, right hair color. A couple stepped from a side street, and he bumped the woman. She shouted in outrage, and the man yelled after him. He didn’t even slow. Surely Bester had heard that, and would bolt. But he hadn’t. He was just walking along like nothing happened, and then Garibaldi was on him, swinging him around…

The frightened face confronting him wasn’t Bester. Plastic surgery? No. Bester would be there, in the eyes. It wasn’t him. Unless, unless he was playing some sort of fraggin’ mind trick.

“Mr. Garibaldi. Stop. Stop it. That’s not him.”

That was Thompson, tugging at his elbow. Garibaldi suddenly realized he had the PPG pointed in the man’s face, and that the man was gibbering in French.

“You sure, Thompson? Could he be screwing with me?”

“No. I’d know. I promise you. Put your gun away.”

“Yeah,” Garibaldi said.

“Yeah. I guess I oughta do that.”

He released the man, who backed quickly away, shouting. They had drawn a small crowd, now - a disapproving one. Man. I’m really letting this get to me, he thought. He put the gun back in his pocket.

“Sorry, folks, show’s over,” he said, as jovially as he could manage.

“Just a little mistake.”

He drew a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” Thompson asked.

“Yeah. Damn. Poor guy.”

From long habit, he scanned the street carefully. Getting shot in the back once in his life was plenty, thank you, and Bester was still out there, wasn’t he? It would be just like him to send out someone matching his physical description, to create a distraction. He wished, now, he had questioned the fellow. He laughed, suddenly.

“Now that’s paranoid,” he said.

“What?”

“Hmm? I was just imagining Bester, when he was three, secretly manipulating the genes of some other kids, making Bester-look-alikes and smell - alike. Planting them all over the world.”

He broke off again.

“It’s the waiting. It’s getting to me.”

A man in a magazine stand shouted something at him, probably for him to get moving. Garibaldi realized that people were still keeping their distance-who wouldn’t, after all? He was a crazy man who’d been waving a gun. Crazy men with guns probably weren’t good for this guy’s business.

“Hey, sorry” he said, producing a few credits.

“I’ll buy something.”

Then he remembered Girard’s comment from the day before.

“Ah, which paper does that movie critic write for?”

The man looked as if he was going to pretend he didn’t speak English, but apparently decided an answer might get Garibaldi to go away all the more quickly.

“All of them have movie critics.”

“You know the one. The ”need-to-know-basis” guy.”

“Oh. Book critique,” he said.

You idiot Marsie-American-non-Frenchman was only implied, but Garibaldi heard it, nonetheless.

“Here.”

He handed Garibaldi a paper. He found the column as he was walking back toward the building. No picture. That was suspicious.

“It’s in French.”

“Of course,” Thompson said.

“You want me to read it to you?”

“You know French?”

“No. But I thought I would offer anyway. Yes, of course I can read French. I’ll translate it for you.”

Garibaldi handed him the paper. Thompson studied it for a few moments, then cleared his throat and began reading.

“There are moments in literature, rare and wonderful, that stretch us as human beings, push us beyond our ordinary boundaries of thought and experience. A Gift of Gratitude is a novel filled with such moments. Unfortunately, the boundaries pushed and the epiphanies experienced by the reader are in no way intended by the author. Anyone who reads often has experienced the banal, the saccharine, the self-indulgently lachrymose, but never to the extent we experience it here. Through these pages we step beyond the ordinary to a sort of fiber-banality we never could have imagined, in our most sedentary dreams, ever existed.”

Thompson stopped to chuckle.

“Jeez, this guy’s a riot.”

“That’s Bester,” Garibaldi said.

“Jesus K. Copernicus. That’s Bester.”

At that moment he noticed someone coming up from the right, fast. He turned, reaching for the PPG.

“Michael Garibaldi? It is you.”

It was a pretty young woman in a mini-suit. He had never seen her before in his life.

“What?” he said.

“Mr. Garibaldi, could you tell us what the altercation a few moments ago was about? What’s a hero of the Interstellar Alliance doing accosting citizens on a Paris street?”

That’s when he noticed the news-taper floating over her left shoulder and it all snapped into place.

“Hey, hey, hey! Turn that thing off!”

“If you could just answer a few questions…”

“How do you people do this? What, do have some kind of pneumatic tubes under the sidewalk, that just shoot you up wherever there’s trouble?”

She motioned, and the red transmission light went out on the taper.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Garibaldi, I’ve been following you, hoping for an interview. You were spotted at the airport, and I got the assignment. This is better than I hoped for. What’s going on here? I thought you had retired from military service, but you’re still carrying a PPG.”

“Look, you don’t know what you’re messing with here. You could screw everything up. Just please - hold off, and I’ll make sure you’re there for the big story. And when I say big, I mean Jupiter-sized.”

“Ah, well, we were live, Mr. Garibaldi. I already got you chasing that man, too. It’s been on the air.”

The red light came back on.

“So if you could just answer questions…”

“Oh, jeez,” Garibaldi muttered.

“I’m on vacation. Lemme alone.”

She followed him to the building, where he at least had the satisfaction of slamming the door in her face.

A second later, though, he changed his mind. After all, his cover was already blown, wasn’t it? If Bester didn’t already know he was in town, he’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind.

It was time for plan B, then. He went back down the stairs and found her-as he knew he would-still waiting.

Chapter 9

Bester glanced at the clock and put down his pen. In an hour, the courier would be at the hotel. He should head that way-it wasn’t as if he was getting anything done, anyway. All he was really doing, in staring at his notebook and gripping his pen, was avoiding the decision he was going to have to make soon.

Or thought he was. Things had been remarkably quiet since his talk with Lucien. That could be a good sign or a bad sign. He switched his notebook to news mode, another thing he had taken to doing every few minutes. So far, it had been an exercise in paranoia, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a sensible precaution.

Which point proved itself instantly, because there was Michael Garibaldi’s face, not nearly as big as life, but as ugly as always. Bester had set the device to search certain news items first, using keywords like Bester, Psi Corps, Jemelah, Telepath(s)-and of course, Garibaldi.

He keyed the story on, saw a brief video of Garibaldi attacking some fellow on the street, a fellow he couldn’t help noticing resembled Alfred Bester more than a little bit.

“Oh, no,” he said.

He recognized the place, too. Not far away. And Garibaldi not only had a PPG but some kind of link on. People didn’t just wear links-telephones, yes, or collar phones. That was a police link.

I’m coming for you.

Well, so he was. And he was close. Bester closed his eyes, trying to sort it all out, squeeze down the rising panic and the flood of attendant emotions. It was survival time, now. They must have linked him to Jem, somehow, maybe even to Ackerman’s murder. It had just taken longer than he thought it would.

Fine. By now they would be showing his picture to people like Lucien. No-he checked the time on the story he had just seen. Only ten minutes ago. What else was queued up?

Just as he was wondering, his own face appeared in the priority column. An old picture, from back during the hearing. Probably the most famous picture of him, in full Psi Corps uniform, gloves and all. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

He keyed the story, kept it on mute mode, and watched the words scroll out.