Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester (20 page)

“When I was first assigned to Babylon 5, I was buddies with a Centauri named Londo…”

“Mollari? The Emperor Londo? You were friends with him?”

“Things were different then. He was different then. In a way, I think I’m still his friend. Anyway, that’s beside the point. At the time, the Centaurum was in bad shape. The Nam had just invaded one of their colonies, and some relative of Londo’s was there. The telepath on the station, Talia Winters, was probably one of the most scrupulous, law-abiding people I’ve ever known. Well, until…”

he looked down at the table

“…nope, that’s a different story. Anyway, she just chanced to bump into Londo as he came out of a lift. Damn good thing, as it turned out, because she accidentally picked up on the fact that Londo was on his way to assassinate the Narn ambassador. She told me, and I managed to stop him without any fuss or muss.”

“And this wasn’t a good thing?”

“Sure it was. But that’s not the point. It got me thinking about Talia.”

“You had a thing for her.”

“See? Now you’re doing it,” Garibaldi accused.

“Baloney. l saw it on your face.”

“How do you know? How can you tell? Maybe when you think you’re reading expressions you’re really subliminally picking up on my surface thoughts. Maybe you’ve been associating the two for so long you don’t know the difference.”

“I doubt that.”

“But you don’t know.”

He leaned back again.

“She slapped me one time, you know. Talia.”

“I bet you deserved it.”

“No. I was looking at her - well, never mind what I was looking at. And I was thinking-no, never mind that, too. But she knew, even though I was standing so she couldn’t see my face. That’s not right. It’s not what we think that’s important, it’s what we do. I’d go crazy if I thought my private thoughts weren’t private, and anyone else would too. As a telepath, you don’t have that worry. You can sense those things you can block them. I can’t. So no, I wouldn’t marry a telepath.”

“And ninety percent of normals would agree with you. So why this objection to us marrying each other?”

Garibaldi looked at him frankly.

“Because it’s making us different species. Competing species. And competing species fight. Look, the big fallacy behind racism is the belief that people with different skin colors have different innate abilities, that one is superior to the other. That’s not true, but people like to believe it because people generally like to think they’re superior. But when one group of people has something that really does make them superior, it only gets worse. Pretty soon they get bored with treating their inferiors as equals.”

“That’s funny,” Thompson cut in.

He was becoming angry.

“Of all of the violence and flat-out pogroms I can think of in the history of telepathy, not one has involved telepaths slaughtering normals. But I can think of a damned lot of mass killings of telepaths by normals.”

“You’re forgetting Bester; he and his thugs killed normals aplenty. And that was just the beginning for him, as the hearings proved. If the telepath war hadn’t come along…”

“Bester is one man. You can’t judge us all by him.”

“There’ll be more Besters. One day one of them will get the ball rolling.”

“Really? More Besters? So why do you care so much about this Bester, who happens to be the real, actual Bester?” Garibaldi grinned.

“The Three Amigos? I knew I liked you, Thompson. Why this Bester? Look, I’m not Sheridan. I’m not out to save the universe or anything. I just call things like I see ‘em and do the best I can for me and mine. Bester - you remember that telepath I was talking about? Talia?”

“The one with the nice ”whatever”?”

“Yeah. Nothing ever happened between us, but she was a friend. I thought she was. And yeah, if she had wanted something to happen… Well, like Londo, I was different then. But the Talia I knew wasn’t real.

Bester and his buddies had reamed her out, built a fake personality, hidden the real, nasty her way down deep. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the woman I liked was the real person, and the buried creation ate her alive. Whatever the case, Talia, as I knew her, died because of Bester. And that was just the start of it. That was before he got inside of me. I won’t try to pretty this up, because I don’t think it needs prettying up. Revenge is a long and honorable tradition, in its own way. Nobody is going to cry over Bester.”

“Are you saying…”

“I’m saying, Junior, that when the time comes, don’t you be in my line of fire.”

Thompson seemed to struggle with that for a moment, then nodded.

“I understand.”

“Good. I’m glad we’re clear on that.”

“So what about this war you see coming between telepaths and normals? You don’t think separation is the answer, but you can’t see your way clear to actually mingling your genes with ours either.”

Garibaldi sighed.

“I don’t know. There was a time…”

He remembered Edgars’ telepath virus and shuddered internally.

“I thought there was an answer. Now I’m just content to hope it happens after my time, and after my daughter’s time. Maybe a miracle will happen and we’ll all just learn how to get along.”

“I think the new laws are a good start to that.”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re just window dressing. Time will tell.”

He looked up.

“Where’s the damned waiter? I’m all for French atmosphere, but this is ridiculous. Hey, you! GarVona!”

A narrow face turned toward him, and he belatedly realized that the server was female. Oops. He was getting old.

The server came over.

“Yes, madame?” she asked, coldly.

“Sorry about that. We’d like some coffee.”

“As you wish,” she replied.

“And you?”

“Just coffee,” Thompson said.

“I will do my best to fill such a difficult and complex order,” she said, and walked off.

“Anyway,” Garibaldi said, rolling his eyes, “we got way off course. The question of the hour is, why has Bester broken his pattern? And why did he break it in Paris?”

“Why not? Who would notice him here? He grew up in Geneva, so he probably speaks French as well as he speaks English, if not better. Most of the landlords in this city won’t bother checking into you as long as you pay your rent on time - minding your own business is an art form here. Plenty of places to go, if he has to run. Borders are pretty easy to cross these days, with the exception of those around planets. If he leaves Paris tonight, he could be anywhere on Earth by tomorrow morning.”

“I want someone at every airport and train station and especially at the spaceports.”

“Fine. So he’ll rent a car and drive out. Or take a bicycle. You can’t button up Paris with anything short of an army backed by martial law. And seeing as how you’re trying not to let the EABI in on this - which I still think is a mistake - you

can’t muster a fraction of that kind of manpower, even if you have it.”

“So we’ll have to sniff him out. How close would you have to be to sense him?”

“You’re kidding, right? I only met the man once, and anyway, I don’t have any training as a tracker. What you need is a Metasensory tracking unit, and you know it.”

“He has a man inside. I know he does. The minute Metasensory knows he’s here will be sixty seconds before he’s gone.”

His coffee arrived. He thanked the girl and took a sip. It was good-damn good. Better than what he could usually get on Mars. His telephone trilled. He took it out and opened it up.

“Garibaldi,” he said.

It was Inspector Girard.

“Mr. Garibaldi, I have some good news for you, if you’d like to come hear it.”

Garibaldi was more imposing in person than on the videos. Not physically - he was actually smaller than Girard had imagined. But he had an effortless presence, an energy, that made one feel rather-ordinary.

“So what’s the big news?” he asked, draping himself onto the chair that Girard kept in his office to make his visitors uncomfortable.

Somehow Garibaldi defied the hard wood and sharp angles, made himself look perfectly at ease.

“The thug who was killed in the pharmacy break - in, Jemelah Perdue. One of his neighbors saw a man visit him a few weeks ago. A man fitting Bester’s description.”

That got his attention. His eyebrows arched, his eyes widened-Girard could almost swear his ears pricked up.

“Do tell. This just in?”

Girard bit back a sarcastic comment. He was starting to wonder if having Garibaldi and his goon squad around was any better than having Metasensory straddling him. He settled for an icy “Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“Perdue ran a smalltime organization in the Pigalle-drugs, protection rackets, and so forth. He was very, ah, local. Didn’t usually do things outside the boundaries of his territory.”

“Let me guess. Except for the drugstore heist.”

“Exactly.”

“So let’s assume this witness wasn’t high on monkey grass or something, and he really saw Bester. That means maybe the man who got away was Bester himself.”

“I wouldn’t think so. More likely another of Perdue’s people.”

“No, it was Bester. You don’t know him like 1 do. Bester isn’t a coward. He’s a real hands - on kind of guy. I’m betting he got what he came for - the inhibitor - and replaced the ampoules with water or something. I guess it’s too late to check that now. But I bet he arranged for this Perdue fellow to die there, to throw you off the track. Damn! I almost dug deeper into that back then. Why didn’t I?”

He looked back at Girard.

“So how did Bester know this man?”

“What do you think I am, the answer wizard from Science Kingdom?”

Girard asked, irritably. He had had a hard night. Marie had called-called his house. He had tried to get rid of her as quickly as possible, but his wife had known, of course. Not that it was a secret anymore, and not that his wife would forgive him any time soon, but he had sworn to her that he wouldn’t talk to Marie again. His wife had said nothing after the call, hadn’t cried or raged. She just poured herself a glass of vodka and sat there, staring into space.

“He must have been involved with Perdue before,” Girard heard himself saying.

“They must have had some relationship before the pharmacy job.”

“Would that mean Bester was a local? That he lived in the area?”

Flash. Two men confront each other, men from very different worlds. One is at the pinnacle of his short career, the leader of a pack of losers and thugs. The other was once something much, much more. They’ve met the name as Jemelah no, everyone called him “Jem”, Yes? Jem always meets new people. When he threatens to break their arms. He’s made a mistake, though, a bad one, and doesn’t know it.

The other man is Bester and he knows Jem has made a mistake. Jem has come to hurt him, or extort from him. Bester can break his mind. But Bester thinks, “This fellow might be of some use, down the road.” Then, one day, Garibaldi cuts off Bester’s supply of a needed drug, and Bester knows that the day has arrived, that it’s time Jem paid in full…

“Yes,” Girard said.

“He might even be a shop owner, or something. Someone Jem tried to extort protection from.”

“Jem? You guys on a first-name basis all of a sudden?”

“Perdue. Jem was what the locals called him.”

“So this Pigalle, can we seal that off? Quietly?”

“With all of the men and equipment you brought? Maybe so.”

He made sure his disapproval registered, however. Garibaldi was more perceptive than he seemed. In fact, Girard was beginning to think that when the man seemed to miss some insinuation, it was deliberate.

“You’re the one who knows the city. How do you think we ought to proceed?”

“With the local gendarmes, the ones who know the place back and forth. But we can set up a plainclothes perimeter, using some of that spying equipment you brought, establish an HQ in the area.”

“My friend Thompson here is a telepath. He might be able to get a readjust walking around, or something.”

“Better we wait until we have something to read, yes?”

Garibaldi nodded reluctantly.

“Yeah.”

“Something wrong, Mr. Garibaldi?”

“It just seems like we’re so close,” he said.

“Too close, too easy. Makes me nervous. And Bester as a shop owner? That’s ridiculous. I wonder if this is another one of his elaborate false trails?”

“Well, we won’t know until we find out, will we?”

“Nope. You can’t break eggs without breaking a few eggs. Or something like that.”

“Something like that, I should hope, since that made no sense at all.”

Garibaldi shrugged.

“Wait till you meet Bester. His sense of humor will slay you.”

Girard grinned ruefully.

“You Marsies. Sometimes I think everything you say is explained on a need-to-know basis - and I have no need to know.”

Garibaldi’s face went flat.

“Is that a French expression? Where did you hear that?” Girard was taken aback by the violence of Garibaldi’s reaction.

“I suppose it’s French. It’s just a thing some people are saying these days. I think it comes from a popular literary or movie critic or something.”

“A movie critic.”

“Yes, I think so. Kaufman? Something like that. Why?” Garibaldi’s face relaxed again.

“Nothing, I guess. Just nerves. Well. Shall we go catch ourselves a telepath?”

Chapter 8

They took Louise’s sister to the train station the next morning, where the two women hugged and wept a little. The major spared a hug for him, too.

“Take care of my little sister,” she whispered into his ear.

“She’s more fragile than she seems. But I think she’s in good hands.”

“I would never do anything to hurt her,” Bester replied.

She released him from the embrace and stepped back.

“You two will come visit me next, of course. Louise, this was too long. Let’s not let it happen again, no?”

“No,” Louise said.

The depth of what the two women felt for each other was almost more than Bester could take. It made him feel small, and it made the things he felt feel small. Fraudulent. That’s not fair, he thought as they walked her up to the platform. I’m risking my very life for Louise. What could be more real than that? When the train left, he felt a sudden terrific urge to be on it.