Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester (3 page)

“Not a single familiar constellation,” he murmured.

“It’s the way I like it. Like you, huh? I guess we’re two of a kind.”

“Actually,” Bester said

“I wouldn’t mind seeing the Big Dipper again. It’s been a while.”

Derrick didn’t seem to notice the remark. They continued up the dockside walk.

“Y’know,” Derrick said,

“I have to tell you, you seem awfully familiar to me. Like maybe we’ve met before. What’s that called? Dej’a you?”

He chuckled at his own joke.

“No, it just means you’ve seen my picture. I’m really Alfred Bester, the notorious war criminal.”

Derrick laughed at that, then became serious.

“That’s not funny, really. Bester is the worst of the worst, everything that was bad about the old Psi Corps…”

He stopped, suddenly, eyes widening as he turned to look at Bester.

“Oh, shit! You are him.”

Bester nodded sadly and struck hard and fast, blowing through the young man’s drink-deadened guards as if they weren’t there. Derrick collapsed, and Bester dragged his limp form to a nearby bench.

A man and woman, walking some thirty feet behind them, stopped.

“Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine. He’s had a touch too much to drink.”

“Can you manage him?” Bester smiled.

“It’s the story of my life. I’m always the baby-sitter. But thanks for your concern.”

The two walked on, seemingly satisfied.

When they were gone, Bester went to work, snipping out the parts of Derrick’s memory that included him. But he didn’t erase them. Instead, he walled them up, buried them. In time, the memories would return-first Bester’s face, then their conversation. And in that, as carefully as one might set down a bird’s egg in a pile of glass shards, he placed a destination. When he was certain everything was right, he called a cab and had Derrick taken to his hotel.

In a week or so, Derrick would remember he had been attacked, and like a good little soldier he would have himself scanned so his brave new Corps could learn all of the facts. One thing they would learn was that Bester was headed out of Human space altogether, things finally having got too hot for him. It amused him to think of the hunters, certain that in his old age Bester had finally slipped up.

He went back to Sophie’s house, pleased with himself. He could still find the opportunity in any situation. And now he was sure-he had what it took. Dangerous or not, he was going home.

Chapter 2

“Oh-Paris in spring,” Bester said to the cab driver.

He meant for it to sound cynical, and maybe it did, but to his own surprise, he didn’t feel that way. It was lovely, the green track along the Champs-Elysees, the blossoms and golden sunlight, and the sky of that peculiar blue that-impossibly- didn’t exist anywhere else on Earth, much less on any other planet.

But what made Earth home was its smell. Spaceships and stations, no matter how much they strove to duplicate planetary atmospheres, always smelled like the inside of a can. Planets each had their own peculiar complex of scents-different incidental gases that mixed in different proportions. Scent was the most primal and least intellectual of the senses, triggering instincts older than the Human race as inexorably as it did childhood memories.

A whiff could bring back a buried memory more vividly than could any other sense. That had been a useful thing for him to know, as a Psi Cop.

Yes, Paris smelled like Earth, and it smelled like Paris. Suddenly he was fifteen again, seeing, smelling, feeling the city through the astonishment and wonder of the boy he had been, so long ago.

It felt almost like happiness. The cabbie, however, was unimpeded by such sentiment. He had caught Bester’s original intent.

“Ah, yes, the spring. When great flocks of silly birds descend on the city with their cameras and their ‘which-way-is-this’ and their ‘je-ne-comprends-pas.’ My favorite time of year, to be sure.”

“I would think it a lucrative time of year.”

“Yes, yes. I make lots of money. But when should I spend it? When should I enjoy it? In the dreary months, when no one wants to come here? When I am old enough to retire?”

“Yes, I can see you’ve drawn a very sorry lot in life,” Bester said.

“But at least you have a ready audience to inflict your angst on, whenever you choose.”

“You are offended by my opinions? Monsieur, there is quick relief for that. I can put you out here, on this sidewalk…”

“Yes, why don’t you do that.”

The driver’s mouth dropped open for a second.

“Monsieur? We are still very far from your hotel.”

“I know the city-well enough to know you’re taking a somewhat roundabout route. I prefer to walk.”

“Very well.”

They were only a block or so from the Place de la Concorde. Bester paid the cabbie with his forged chit and got out. The cabbie drove off, complaining loudly to himself about crazy tourists. Bester took a deep breath. He had only a small shoulder bag that contained his forged documents and a hand computer.

His only clothes were a black leather jacket, black gabardine slacks, and a yellowish brown shirt.

He felt-free.

He started walking, back up the Champs-Elysees, toward the Arc de Triomphe. He had made reservations at a hotel, but suddenly he didn’t particularly care if he went there or not. It was morning, and the whole day lay before him.

There was a sense he had not indulged in yet, the best of all. He found a bench lightly shaded by trees, then closed his eyes. And felt the mind of the city. It was in Paris, as a boy, that he had made an important discovery. Each city, he discovered, has its own psionic fingerprint, a combination of thoughts and conversations and interactions of all of its citizens, emerging into something as distinct and complex as a fine vintage of wine.

He recognized it. An odd thing, really-how many people living in the city today had been alive when he was fifteen? Not many. And yet it was the same, as if the city were a Human body, retaining continuity and integrity even though the individual cells that had made it up one year before were mostly dead and replaced.

Oh, it was a bit different, the mind of Paris. Somehow, inexplicably more vital, more alive than ever. Younger. He started walking again, and vaguely heard someone whistling. He had gone fifteen steps before he realized that the whistling was coming from him. Now, this is going too far, he thought. I can’t lose all my perspective, not if I want to survive. Nonetheless, a few minutes later he was whistling again. He stopped at a crepe shop and got one of the pancake like desserts filled with hazelnut paste. He felt very much like a tourist, but he didn’t really care. He topped the snack with espresso, and then continued on. Hemlines were up, he noted-way up.

He seemed to remember reading somewhere that that tended to happen after wars and crises, and humanity had certainly had plenty of those lately. Clothing in general was flashier, more colorful than he remembered. The stereotypical Parisian beret, rare when he had last been here, seemed ubiquitous, though he suspected those who were wearing them were mostly tourists, or those pandering to the tourist trade.

He had the same skepticism about the antique feel of the city-that it was tourist-driven. Oh, Earth in general, and Paris in particular, were conservative, in terms of technology. But Paris actually seemed to have stepped backward in time since he had visited it last. One had to concentrate to see what was being hidden-the phones and personal computers woven invisibly into shirt collars, the electronic-ink displays in shop windows that mimicked disposable paper signs, the police hovercraft that looked like ground cars until they almost apologetically took to the sky.

He wondered if the pretense was some gestalt decision on the part of Parisians or more specifically the result of legislation. If the latter, it wouldn’t be the first time that well-meaning laws had been passed to make sure Paris remained Paris. As if it could ever be anything else. He imagined the city snickering at such efforts.

He left the broad avenue and wandered deeper into the heart of the city, gradually working uphill toward the Sacre Coeur. By midday he found himself in the Pigalle, which had once been the red-light district and still had something of its old reputation. Here, where few tourists went, was found the real life of the city.

He passed a small, rundown cafe where two grizzled old men were playing checkers. Children, just out of school, playing soccer, reluctantly parted to let the occasional delivery truck through narrow streets-some still cobblestone-bordered by brick buildings pitted by centuries of rain. The residents of the Pigalle were a genetic cross section of Earth. For centuries, immigrants from every corner of the globe had settled in Paris, and Paris, in her own inexorable way, had made them Parisian.

They always seemed in a hurry. They walked with shoulders square, arms close to the body and usually in front of them, their faces masks of neutrality. But just when you were tempted to think of them as automatons, someone would explode in a burst of laughter, or hurl a stream of obscenities at a car that had come too close, or stop to scold a child. He was starting to think about supper when he turned a corner and was greeted by shouting.

A woman stood in front of a small hotel-the Hotel Marceau. She was petite, perhaps thirty-five, with pale skin and curly brown hair chopped just below her ears. Her stance was defiant, one hand on her hip and the other shaking in front of her as a fist.

Her voice was defiant, too. She apparently didn’t go in for the short skirts of the day-she wore denim pants and a T-shirt.

“…not another cent from me, you hear? Five customers you’ve chased away from me this week. You say I must pay to protect my business. But when I pay, you ruin it anyway.”

For all of her defiance, Bester could feel fear beneath the surface. It was no mystery where that came from. She was shouting at five men, most teenagers, but one of them was an older brute who bore a massive scar on one cheek, a crooked nose, and putty-pale skin. He leveled a thick finger at her.

“You pay us because I say to. And I’ll tell you another thing-I’m used to better treatment than this from my friends. You are my friend, aren’t you, cherie? Because now that I think about it, you haven’t been all that friendly to me.”

Bester couldn’t help it he uttered a single, dark laugh. He had seen death and deceit on a cosmic scale, waged wars of empire, battled alien races that possessed godlike powers. Watching these stupid normals, fighting over their little scrap of turf, struck him as unutterably ridiculous.

His laugh got their attention.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” the big fellow grunted.

Bester shook his head and kept walking. The question wasn’t worth answering. If they didn’t understand how absurd they were, they wouldn’t notice it just because he pointed it out.

“Yeah, that’s right, old man,” the fellow called.

“You just keep on walking. Nothing to see here.”

Bester was planning on doing just that. For a few short hours he had forgotten how much he hated normals, but his mood had done an about-face. Now he remembered. The woman was stupid for standing up to men she had no power against, and if they beat her, or raped her, or killed her, it would make no difference to him. Or to the world at large. If she had been a teep, then he might have helped.

Though given what the rogues and the new-and-improved Psi Corps had done to him, he didn’t particularly care for his own kind either. All his life he had worked for his people, his telepaths. He had saved them more times than they knew, yet in the end they had turned against him, pitched in with normals.

He was a man without a people, now-orphaned, divorced, exiled. Maybe that was why he had felt so free. He no longer felt the slightest responsibility to anyone or anything except himself. And none at all to this stupid woman. Still, he paused, to see what would happen. It was like watching a train wreck. The bravos had turned their attention back to her, though one of the younger ones noticed he had stopped, and was glaring at him.

“Be a smart girl, Louise. Pay me my money.”

“Or what? Are all of you big brave men going to beat me up? Tear up a few of my rooms? Go ahead, then. I can’t stop you. You can take, but I won’t give you anything anymore.”

“That mouth you got ain’t doing you any favors,” the man warned.

“Best you put it to some better use. I got some ideas about that…”

“When Mars has oceans.”

“Ooh!” one of the younger boys said.

“She told you, I think.”

The big man turned on his smaller companion.

“Shut up,” he demanded, and then he noticed Bester, still watching.

“I thought I told you to keep walking, you old scab.”

“The zoo was closed today,” Bester replied.

“I didn’t get to see the ape house, so I’m making do.”

The big man blinked as if he didn’t understand, then strode menacingly toward Bester.

“You ain’t from around here, I don’t think. Cause if you were, you wouldn’t still be standing there. And you sure as hell wouldn’t be mouthing off to me.”

Bester smiled.

“Please know, I find you truly terrifying. The fact that it only takes five of you to threaten such a dangerous young woman-well, it puts me in awe. I wouldn’t dream of crossing you.”

The man grabbed him by the collar and lifted, his face reddening. Bester glanced down at the fist knotted in his shirt.

“That’s expensive material,” he said, calmly.

The man pulled back his other fist, and Bester watched it, unblinking. He could kill the fellow, of course, without lifting a finger, but not without arousing suspicion. Still…

“Put him down, Jem,” a new voice said.

“Put him down right now.” Bester couldn’t see who was talking.

Jem could, however, and his face set in a sort of sullen resignation. He hesitated for a moment, then lowered Bester back to the street.

“There ain’t nothin’ goin’ on here, Lucien,” he grunted.

“Not a damn thing.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Al turned slightly, so that he could see that the new voice belonged to a policeman, a stocky fellow in his early forties.