But as he got older, the stories he read tasted more and more like the paper they were printed on. And one day he had stopped. Thinking about it, he couldn't even say when that was. Ten years ago? Twenty? What were people reading these days?
He looked over the bestsellers. Memoirs were hot, especially those of the Excalibur crew and other explorers. One caught his eye in particular: Freedom of Mind: Memoirs of a Telepath Mystic.
He picked it up. He bought it.
* * *
The next afternoon he sat in a dim cafe called Le Cheval Heureux, hunched over the last few pages. Little Corinthian columns of cigarette smoke seemed to hold up the low ceiling, and the light from the various table lamps didn't reach far. Despite all of that, it seemed a popular place to read. Seven or eight other people were doing so. "Insipid," he grunted, closing the book and making a face. "Indeed?" A gaunt fellow, perhaps thirty, peered at him over old-fashioned wire-framed glasses. These were surely an affectation, given that any defect in eyesight could be corrected by a few seconds of inexpensive outpatient surgery.
"I just read that and found it illuminating. How does it seem insipid to you? Or did you mean the coffee?"
"No, I meant the book," Bester replied.
"Well, then?"
"Rather presumptuous, don't you think, demanding an explanation? Perhaps I threaten your opinion, and thus threaten you?"
A hint of curve turned up the man's lips.
"Perhaps. Shall I ask more politely? Or are you afraid you can't defend your opinion?"
"It isn't in need of defense." Bester turned away, then turned back.
"But if you must know - I found the style gaudy, trite, and simplistic. The philosophy is rehashed twentieth- century quasi-Buddhist sentimentality, which was rehashed even then, with a healthy bit of theft from the Book of G'Quan. The first person, present t ense is pretentious, and the stream of consciousness sequences would have made Faulkner reverse his lunch."
"I thought it was poetic and insightful."
"Well," Bester said, "you were wrong. Don't blame me."
The young man stuttered a little, contemptuous laugh.
"Would you care to put that in writing?"
"What do you mean?"
"I edit a small literary journal. Paris is full of writers these days, and most think they are quite brilliant. Most aren't. I think some sorting needs to be done, and I need critics to do it."
"But we don't agree about this story."
"Agreement is beside the point. To read, to think, to express what you think...
...to sell your opinions to those who can't think for themselves?"
"Yes, exactly. Or, in a few cases, to those who will argue against you. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people, had I challenged them on their opinion, would have capitulated or turned away. Why bother, eh? It's only art, not worth arguing about-except that it is, because nothing is so pointless as undiscussed, uncriticized art, yes, and so..."
"What does this pay?"
"Oh. The inevitable crass question. It pays ten credits for every hundred words. You are interested yes?"
Bester, to his own great surprise, heard himself answer,
"Yes."
* * *
He returned to the hotel. It had rained, so his shoes broke pastel puddles, wet canvases left by the downpour and painted by the sunset. The silver-winged silhouettes of swallows spun in the lambent air, and for an instant he saw, not birds, but Black Omega Starfuries coursing across the universe- devouring face of Jupiter. His ships, his people, unstoppable. He trembled, with the thought of what he had been. He brought down governments, diverted rivers of destiny to fill new oceans. Without him, the Shadows would have won, destroyed all of humanity.
That never seemed to come up, at the hearing. He had never seen it once in any of the gory stories about him.
Sheridan knew. Sheridan the hero, the one honest man. He knew, but remained oddly silent. Garibaldi knew, too.
Of course Garibaldi wasn't a big-picture sort of man. Garibaldi only cared about Garibaldi-what Garibaldi liked or didn't like. What had given Garibaldi pleasure, what had hurt him. Especially what had hurt him. There was probably a wasp somewhere that had stung Garibaldi when he was five, that his operatives were still trying to track down...
His mind was wandering. Where was he? Ah, yes, the next street over.
He had commanded thousands, saved the world, saved his own people-whether they knew it or not, appreciated it or not.
Now he was going to write a column for a third-rate literary review? Well, that certainly wasn't something Alfred Bester would do. Garibaldi and his Psi Corps lapdogs would be a long time searching before they started to check the literary reviews. He turned the corner and found the street busy, confusingly so. There was a crowd, and police cycles, and a fire truck. The excitement, the lust of the crowd struck him. They wanted to watch something burn down, to see Human forms come writhing out in flames. Just like the crowd at the hearing, screaming silently for his blood...
Wait. That was the Hotel Marceau, Louise's hotel. The place where he was staying. He began pushing his way through. The crowd was going to be disappointed. The blaze had been a small one, and it was nearly out. The front window had been shattered, and the small dining room blackened, but otherwise the hotel seemed to have survived.
Louise stood, watching the firemen work, her face blank with shock. As Bester arrived, the cop, Lucien, was talking to her, though she didn't seem to be listening.
"Nobody saw anything," he was saying.
"Of course. Louise, you must..."
"Leave me alone," she said, distractedly.
"Just... leave me be."
A swift anger passed across the policeman's face, but then he gave a little Gallic shrug and did what she asked. Bester stood for a moment, wondering if he ought to say anything. She noticed him.
"Monsieur Kaufman," she said, in a small voice,
"I withdraw what I said earlier. I won't charge you extra for leaving early."
Bester nodded. He was about to tell her he would have his things out as soon as the fire died down. After all, he was trying to avoid attention, not court it. And there were bound to be reporters. No. There was already one here, pushing forward, news- taper close behind. He felt, suddenly, like a trapped animal, his heart picking up several beats per minute. If his face appeared, even on a local newscast...
He stepped quickly away, ducking into the crowd. He touched the reporter and found no image of himself in the man's surface thoughts. He hadn't been noticed, and he wouldn't be remembered. The camera, though-had it seen him? If it had, it would probably be edited out.
"Get ahold of yourself," Bester he told himself.
"No one noticed you."
But his heart was still beating too fast. How he hated this feeling, this helpless, watched feeling. That's when he noticed Jem and his buddies, observing it all, wearing wide, bestial grins. Suddenly his helplessness turned to cold anger-an old, comfortable friend. Here was something he could deal with. Jem hadn't noticed him. Bester went up an alley, until he could just see the thug, and there he waited.
Soon night fell. Jem and his friends left, but they didn't leave alone. Bester followed them down the narrow streets, his step quiet and purposeful. This was what he was, a hunter. Bester had been meant to chase prey, not run from predators. In the old days, a rogue knew his days were numbered when Alfred Bester was on his trail. He smiled thinly at the familiar rush. He followed them to a set of apartments a few blocks away, which they entered, laughing and slapping one another on the back. Bester kept watching, waiting.
Hours passed, and an orange moon rose into the faintly hazy sky. Bester was patient - he knew more about waiting than perhaps anything else. He listened to Paris; he hummed old tunes to himself. Finally, well after midnight, the gang members began to slip of He counted them as they went, until he knew Jem was alone. Then he brushed his jacket with his hands, adjusted his collar, and walked up to the buil
ding.
It was an old building, but it had a fairly good security system. There were a series of contacts and a small widescreen. To enter, he would either have to bypass the system, which he hadn't brought the tools to do, or get Jem to buzz him up. He could go back to his room, get the matrix chip that had allowed him to pass Earth security-but no, where was the challenge in that? He could make Jem open the door.
Closing his eyes, he tuned out the mind of Paris, bit by bit, as though through a sieve, running everything through it until finally only a faint something remained. Very faint.
Without line of sight, making contact with a normal was almost impossible, even for a P12. But Bester had been at this for a long time and found that the limits of his abilities were extended by his belief in them. He couldn't scan Jem from here, couldn't burst the blood vessels in his apelike brain. But he could touch him, just a little. He could suggest that one of Jem's friends had just buzzed...
Jem's mind was already confused. It was a rough sea, queasy to the touch, thickened and slowed by alcohol, salted with drugs of some sort. He was already hearing things that weren't there. If Bester had asked him to make himself more vulnerable, he could not have.
Still, it took fifteen minutes of terrific concentration before he heard the lock click. The outer door opened, revealing two more doors on either side and a stairway going up.
He felt Jem above, and so took the stairs. When he stood in front of what felt like the right door, he knocked softly. An instant later it opened, and Bester found himself staring down the ugly hole of an automatic pistol.
Chapter 5
"Well," Jem grunted. He wore a black tank top and sweat - pants.
"If it ain't my old friend grandpa. Come in. Now."
He extended the gun meaningfully, and Bester noticed it was an old Naga l2mm, probably with mercury-filled slugs that would leave an exit wound the size of a softball.
"Don't mind if I do," Bester said, calmly.
Jem watched him with bloodshot, small-pupiled eyes. The apartment was large, and furnished in moderately expensive but poor taste. Gaudy. A poor boy's idea of what having wealth was all about. Bester noticed a bottle of red wine and picked it up.
"Ah, the '67 Chateau le Ridoux," he said.
"Not a bad year-a poor choice with pizza, however."
He'd noticed the delivery boy coming in earlier, and the remains of the meal were scattered about on a large wooden table.
"It costs a hundred credits a bottle."
"Oh, well, then it must go with anything," Bester replied.
He went to the wine rack, selected a glass, and poured himself a bit.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"You know," Bester observed, "you were cheated. This is a cheap Cote Du Ron, rebottled. I would say you paid ninety- five credits too much."
"You've got about six seconds to live, old man."
"Oh, I don't think so."
He took another sip of wine.
With a sort of animal growl, Jem jumped forward, swinging the gun at Bester's face like a club. Bester seized his voluntary nervous system and watched him go down, felt the bright tinkle of pain, like the sound of glass breaking. Only it was Jem's nose that had broken, on the parquet floor. And several of his teeth.
"Yes, please, make yourself comfortable," Bester said.
"We have a long night ahead of us. At the end of it you will be dead, but I intend to take my time about it. It's so rare I get to do this, these days."
He took another sip of the wine, rubbed his good hand on his permanently clenched one.
"Shall we begin?"
He had frozen Jem's vocal cords, so all the thug could make was a sort of clucking noise. But his brain-ah, that was filled with panic, with a beautiful sort of terror.
Just a bad trip, Jem was telling himself. Not real...
Bester inserted his thoughts like a scalpel into butter.
No, I'm afraid not. This is more real than you can imagine.
And with the scalpel he began to cut, to whittle Jem away, piece by piece.
He made sure that the thug felt himself die, watched what he had lost slip away. His wide eyes faded and misted, his throat pulsed with the urge to scream, but Bester wouldn't give him that.
And then he was dead, though his body was still working. Everything that had actually been Jem was cut away from him.
Bester took a break, sipping a little more wine while the breathing corpse stared at the ceiling. He moved away, since Jem's bowels and bladder had emptied themselves, opened a window for a bit of fresh air. He stretched, tried to work the crick out of his neck, flipped on the TV to see what, if anything, had been reported about the fire. It got a ten-second spot on the local update. The footage showed the hotel, Louise, the fire trucks, but he didn't see himself.
He went to the kitchen and made some coffee, then returned to where the body lay, specter-eyed. Then, with due consideration, he started putting Jem back together.
* * *
It was almost morning when he returned to the hotel. The broken window had been boarded up. He used his key to open the door and was greeted with a pungent, wet, burned smell.
A single lamp was on, on one of the unburnt tables. Louise sat in its light, an empty bottle of wine in front of her. She looked up wearily.
"You've made other arrangements, I take it, and come to get your things?"
"No. I thought I would get some sleep, instead."
She shook her head.
"The hotel is closed."
"Why? The damage is only cosmetic."
"There's nothing cosmetic about a firebomb tossed through the window."
"You don't want to close the hotel."
"Who are you to tell me what I want? You know nothing of me."
"I know the woman I first saw, defending what was hers. I know she would not give in so easily."
"There's nothing easy about it. About any of it. For five years I've tried to keep this place going. Five years, watching my savings dwindle. It's enough. I'm finished."
"You don't have the money to clean up a little fire damage?"
"What would be the point? They'll only do it again, or worse-unless I start paying them again, which I also can't afford."
"You might be surprised."
"What do you mean?"
"Just that you might be surprised, that's all. Things happen. Things change."
"Some things don't."
She patted her hand slowly on the table.
"You know, at first I thought you were hoping for something from me. To share my bed. Is that it? Is that why you persist?"
"No."
"What, then?"
"I need a place to stay, that's all. And I don't like bullies. I don't like being told what to do."
"I suppose you don't. You were in the war, weren't you?"
He froze, uncertain what to say. Which war did she mean?
"Yes," he finally settled on.
"I thought so. You have a way about you. I think you have already seen the worst thing you could ever see, and it ate all of the fear in you. And maybe more than your fear."
She looked up at him, but he didn't think she was expecting an answer.
"Have you ever been in love, Mr. Kaufman?"
"Yes."
"What happened to her?"
"Nothing I want to talk about."
"I was in love, once. Crazy, stupid in love. Now all I have is a broken-down hotel."
She picked at the table.
"He left me. See, that is none of your business, but I tell you anyway. I don't know why-the wine, maybe. He left me with my debt, and my empty room, and he left me with no notions of love whatsoever. I no longer believe in it, I think. Is that what happened with you? Did you leave her? Are you hiding from your old life?"
Bester nearly echoed that it wasn't her business, but instead, he sighed.
"No," he said, remembering Carolyn the last time he had seen her alive and conscious, wire
d and meshed with Shadow technology.
Worse than dead. But he hadn't left her.
"No, I tried everything I could to be with her. I... went to great lengths."
He smiled briefly.
"It just didn't work out."
He remembered what was left of Carolyn, after a rogue terrorist had bombed the facility. Remembered how angry he had been, because he had promised her that he would make things all right. But putting a shattered body back together was quite different from rebuilding a psyche. Some promises shouldn't be made, because they couldn't be kept.
"No," he repeated, softly, "it didn't work out."
Because of Byron. Because of Lyta. And most of all, because of Garibaldi, whose engineers had doubtless built the weapon that had killed his love.
"Yes, well, that's life, isn't it?" she said.
"It doesn't work out. We grow old, we die. The universe doesn't care."
"You've had too much wine."
"I haven't had enough. Did you know I wanted to be a painter? I studied at the Paris Academy d'Art. I was very serious about it, but I gave it up. For love. For this."
She swept her hands disgustedly around the room. He sat silent, gripped by the unaccustomed feeling of not knowing what to say.
"You still paint?"
"Hmm. Yes. Walls and doors, mostly. This room most recently. Do you think it needs a new coat of black?"
She indicated the film of carbon that coated the once-white walls.
"I think you should go to bed and think more clearly about it later. And I think I should do the same."
"I would prefer to sit here and feel sorry for myself for another day or so. Would you care to sit with me? You seem to feel at least as sorry for yourself as I do."
"What makes you say that?"
"Your every word and expression. The way you study things."
She frowned.
"Except the other day in the square, when that man drew you. You were different, then. What was different? What occurred to you"
Babylon 5 12 - Psi Corps 03 - Final Reckoning - The Fate Of Bester (Keyes, Gregory) Page 5
