But out here, he felt unraveled, a strand drifting on an ocean of time. A million years of normal history, a landscape that held no clear meaning for him, a huge book written in a foreign tongue.
He found he did not entirely dislike the feeling. It was frightening, but it was a challenge, as well.
He found Lara Brazg the old-fashioned way, by walking up the train until he spotted her. She sat pressed against the glass like a fish in an aquarium, seemingly oblivious to the interior of the train. Al was not deceived; even with his blocks as tight and subtle as they could be, he sensed that she was watching quite carefully through the eyes of those around her. He passed on through the car at a measured pace, trailing a fainthopefully normalfeeling that he was in search of an unoccupied toilet.
Two cars up, he relaxed a bit. Teeps could often sense each other over great distances, especially if they wanted to, but it required a mutual and cooperative effort to exchange any real information without line of sight.
Well, he knew where she was, what now? The safest thing would be to call the Corps station in Paris and have cops waiting to pick her up. But that would defeat his whole purpose in following her. He wanted to catch her himself. He wanted the Corps to know that they had done a good job in training and raising him. He wanted Cadre Prime to know what he gained when he lost themand thus what they had lost. He couldnt bear the thought of Brett and the rest feeling sorry for him, which at the moment they almost certainly did.
But how to collar her? Psi Cops carried weapons, which he didnt have. He might be able to subdue her physically, but his encounter with Antoine had left him a little dubious of his abilities. That left psi attacks, and he knew several that ought to workshe was, after all, only a P5. He could push her, or maybe spark out her cortex and while she was out of it, tie her hands behind her back with the cord in his backpack
While a bunch of normals screamed bloody murder. She would keel over and they would see him start tying her up. He didnt have a badge or anything other than his Psi Corps ID. Probably he would end up getting arrested himself, by railroad security.
Maybe he should just have a talk with security first, explain who he was, and all of that. That seemed like a good compromise. He would still be the representative of Psi Corps, making the collar, because the train cop would be a normal, and a normal couldnt risk going up against a Blip by himself. Even a P5 could make a mess out of a normal.
He continued toward the front of the train. The security man wasnt hard to spot, a middle-aged fellow whose balding head was nearly hidden by his long-billed cap. Al sucked up his confidence and approached him.
Sir?
Watery blue eyes met his gaze. Yes, son?
Al lowered his voice. Sir, my name is Alfred Bester. Is there someplace we can talk in private? I think there may be trouble on the train, and I dont want to panic anyone.
Al didnt need surface thoughts to catch the mixture of skepticism and concern on the mans face, but after a moment, the cop nodded. Up here, in my office.
A few moments later, they closed a narrow door behind them and stood in a cabin with a coffeemaker, a surveillance camera system, a table with an AI and a half-eaten sandwich on a plastic dish, and a narrow bunk. Whats this about, son?
You have a rogue telepath on the train.
A rogue? His eyes widened perceptibly.
Yessir. Im a student at the Psi Corps academy in Geneva, and I recognized her from her picture. Shes been on the hunt lists for some time, and shes considered dangerous.
Well. Have you called ahead to the Psi Cops in Paris?
No, sir. I think that the two of us could take herIm a P12, and I can run interference with pretty much anything she might try, while you take her into custody. Do you carry a side arm?
I have a shock stick. Here, you know her name? Can you pull her up on my database? We need to find a match with her ticket.
Yessir. Al turned to the keyboard and began shifting to the requisite screen, hoping the cop would go along with him, rather than calling the Corps station in Paris.
Paris? This train had half a hundred stops, some before Paris, some after. How had the security man known Brazg was getting off in Paris? Al hadnt mentioned that he even knew where Brazg was going.
Without that thought, what he sensed next might have come too late. As it was, everything clicked at once, and he hurled himself to the side, crashing into the bulkhead, as a shock stick crackled through the space he had just occupied.
This time, his first reaction wasnt fear but anger. Mauled by two normals in as many days? No .
The train cop lifted the shock stick for another try. Al noticed, with the odd clarity of adrenaline-heightened perceptions, the pucker of wrinkled skin on the cops elbows, the storm-tang ozone scent of the weapon.
He struck. The normal had no guards at all. His mind was watery and open anddelicious. It was as if Al had been shelling walnuts his entire life and was suddenly offered a plate of them, already shelled
What he did wasnt fancyhe just sparked him, sent a powerful jolt into the cops ancient, limbic, lizard backbrain, the first rock in an avalanche that roared forward toward consciousness, gathering fears, images, and pains in an unstoppable cascade of waking nightmares that obliterated his thinking mind in an instant. He groaned like a lost soul, his pupils suddenly became pinpricks, and he dropped the shock stick, lurched back against the door.
Al grasped and lifted the shock stick carefully, and touched it to the mans temple. The cop jerked, fell prone, and kept jerking. Al found a pair of handcuffs in the mans back pocket and snapped them onto the unresisting wrists.
Now what?
For a moment he didnt care. He felt like the unstoppable Juggernaut of Hindu legend, an elemental force that had been contained for too long. He just stood there, grinning, hands clenching and unclenching, wishing another normal would come at him, just try something. He felt
He sipped in a deep, calming breath. He felt too good. This was exactly why Psi Corps had the rules it did. He had always considered himself controlled, strongcompared to most he knew, he was. And yet this could be addictive, more addictive than a drug. Only his training had saved him, and the strong principles taught by the Corps.
It suddenly occurred to Al that he now understood some of what it might be that rogues desiredfreedom to exercise their abilities whenever and however, on whomever they wished. That could be a powerful incentive, as he had just learnedbut not an admirable one.
So indeed, what now?
He took off the cops shoes, then his socks, balling up the last and placing them in the fellows mouth. The cop was starting to come around, and once his eyes were somewhat clear, Al came to the painful decision that he was going to have to break a regulation. He probably had alreadypushing a normal, even in self-defense. Still, at this point it would probably be for the greater good if Al Bester survived.
Why did you do that? he asked, aloud, and then scanned for both the willing and unwilling response.
He got it, and nodded grimly. The cops name was Alistor Hech, and he was a rogue sympathizer. Thats why Brazg was on this train to begin with. Even so, if he turned Hech in, the cop likely would report him for unauthorized scanning.
Well, that was for later. He probed a little more, but the normal didnt know anything else, or if he did it would take a deep scan to find it. Even under the circumstances Al wasnt willing to go that far.
What Al knew was what he had started with: Brazg would get off in Paris, and from there on out only she knew her plans.
The door rattled, suddenly, and Hech started making frantic gagging noises. Gripping the shock stick, Al dithered for an instant. The door was locked, but if the person on the other side had a key
He placed his fingers against the door and concentrated.
Hech? he heard, muffled.
Hes not in here, No one is in here (glyph of the room, empty; glyph of Hech, walking though the aisles of the train). No one is in here. The room is empty.
Huh. Someone on the other side of the door grunted, finally, and Al heard footsteps receding.
Hech glared up at him from the floor.
Make noise again, and Ill be forced to make certain you are silent, Al said, quietly. He wasnt at all sure what that meant, but he let the normal think the worst, for now.
His legs had gone noodly, so he sat down at one of the small chairs. He was going to have to stay in here, with Hech, until they reached Paris, that much was clear. If he left the compartment, someone would find the cop and they would then find him. Despite some vids he had seen to the contrary, he didnt think anyone could hide effectively on a train.
Al began to regain some of his strength and all of his confidence. A little more searching of Hech turned up a pocket phone and a 9mm snub-nosed Dayak. He had a pistol and shock stick now, and he had proven that he could handle a trained security man without the aid of any weapon at all. He could handle a Blip, too.
An almost imperceptible decelerationand the info-strip on the wallalerted him when the next stop was Paris. He tucked the pistol in the waistband of his pants, folded a day-old copy of Universe Today around the shock stick, took a deep breath, and started for the door.
He paused before opening it, staring down at Hech. He knelt by him, wondering if he could plant a compunction to keep the fellow from talking about him. Maybe, but probably not. Anyway, that would be going way, way too far. He was in trouble enough as it was. But perception could be as powerful as the real thing, couldnt it?
Im planting a compunction in your mind, he told Hech. You wont feel it, or know its thereunless you try to talk about me or this incident. If you do that, you will find yourself having a nasty recurring nightmare each and every time you close your eyes. It wont be pleasant
Then he just probed a bit, ran his mental fingers over the contours of Hechs mindenough so the cop could feel him. Almost as an afterthought, he touched him with the shock stick again. That should keep him quiet for the next few minutes, anyway.
He opened the door, saw and felt no one in the corridor. He went out and locked the door behind him. Then, straightening, he walked back the way they had come, trying to exude confidence. Act like you belong somewhere, and people will think you do. Teacher Diebold had told him that, years ago.
Outside, city rushed by, the jumble of the industrial district, with buildings like giant pipes and vast, rusted machinesand glimpses of the skyline now and then. He made his way to where he had spotted Brazg, and his heart fell.
She was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
chapter 4
« » For a moment he stood rigid. Had she been warned somehow? She might have detected him the instant he walked past her on the train, gotten off five stops back while he was hiding in Hechs cabin.
Suddenly things were a lot less promising than they had been. He had assaulted a train cop and had nothing to show for it Once Hech figured out that Brazg was goneand his connection to her as improvable as his assault on Alhe could bring charges with impunity. Scans werent admissible in the courtroom, so it was just Als word against his. Any jury would favor a mundaneafter all, teeps werent allowed to serve on juries.
The relief was almost dizzying when he realized that Brazg had left her seat only to join the impatient crowd waiting to deboard.
Got you , he thought, breathing for the first time in a significant number of moments. And he followed her off of the train into a chaos he could never, in his wildest dreams, have imagined.
Al had read about Paris, of course, the City of Light. He had imagined it as a place of ancient, eldritch beauty, a sort of fairyland of beret-capped artists and thinkers basking leisurely and thoughtfully in the gentle glory of the past. At night it would be a city made of stars, a constellation brought to Earth. That was what he had imagined. It wasnt what he saw.
The Gare de Lyon was a severe and spacious building, rebuilt sometime after the last World War, when itlike much of the cityhad been blasted by terrorists. Als first impression was of a large oven full of rats, just beginning to warm up. The rodents instinctively beginning to understand their fatewere squirming, writhing, clamoring to get out. Except their dim little rat brains didnt know where out was, so they just formed a struggling mass.
He had never encountered struggling masses beforenot in Teeptown, not in Geneva. He lost sight of Brazg within seconds, caught a glimpse of her moving quickly, lost her again. She was in a hurry. Al picked up his pace, trying to weave through the crowd. He cracked his blocks so he could get a telepathic whiff of Brazg.
It was as if a thousand people all tried to shriek something very important at once. He gasped, involuntarily slapping his hands to his head, his head which was expanding like a balloon, stretching thinner, thinner. The crowd became a series of vid stills, each different, the thousand motions between each unseen. The mindroar went in and out, as if he were a radio with poor reception.
Then he managed to shut it all down and realized he had slumped to his knees. People glanced at him with expressions ranging from neutral to irritated as they made their way around him.
He shook his head and stood again. That had been stupid. And he had no idea how long he had fugued. Probably only seconds, buthe glanced at his watch, then remembered he had not glanced at it before, so he still didnt how much time had passed.
He looked wildly around, wondering what to do. He had two optionshe could descend the escalators into the underground, or exit up to the street. If he chose the wrong direction, he would certainly lose any chance that remained of finding Lara Brazg.
He glanced at the torrent of people passing into the depths below the city and shuddered. He could not go that way, not right now.
He came out of the station on the Rue de Lyon, a narrow, bustling cobblestone street surrounded by dirty grey buildings that looked as if they should have crumbled long ago. It had just rained, and a peculiar stench mingled with the tang of wet stones, a stink made of a thousand stinks, as if somehow, impossibly, the city remembered open sewers, burning diesel and petrol, the sulfur of ancient gunfireevery chemical that had ever oozed or diffused on it since the beginning of time.
It was another alien scene, more threatening by far than the countrysideand yet somehow thrilling, as well.
More exciting still was his glimpse of Lara Brazg, vanishing around a curve. This time, better prepared, he telescoped a tight, tunnel-like probe in her direction and got it, an impression of her mind as individual as a fingerprint, or perhaps more appropriately, as a scent to a bloodhound. He wished he could risk a light scan, to maybe catch where she was headed if he lost her again, but he couldnt A teep of Brazgs abilities would never notice him tracking her, but anything more blatant might set off some alarms in her head.
Al hurried up the street, on the hunt again. He followed her sign, crossed a deeply recessed canal on a small iron footbridge. To his faint surprise, the canal vanished into a vaulted tunnel not far to his right, running underneath a broad plaza. An emerald pleasure boat arabesqued with gilded lilies was just passing beneath the arch. He stared into it for a moment, but had no sense that she had gone there, either on the boat or the narrow footpaths flanking the waterway.
He looked around for street signs, and realized, with the surprise of a tourist who happens upon a place hes heard of, that it was the Place de la Bastille, where once had stood the citys most famous prison. It was gone now, the square now dominated by the looming Opéra Bastille, itself nearly three hundred years old. The plaza seemed to have been built over the canal.
Where once the prisoners of the French kings had languished, vendors hawked trinkets and souvenirs, and tacky shops and cafés looked inward to the July Column with its gilded statue of Liberty. A small cluster of Centauri touristsdressed in immaculate and ornate garb, and accompanied by what looked like an armored guard with a sword picked their way through the shops. It was hard not to be distra
cted by themhe had never seen a live extraterrestrial beforebut he tried to keep his mind on the task at hand. Nonetheless, once again the Blip had vanished from sight
But not from mind She was here, somewherehe could feel her.
He stood for a while trying to sort her out of the colorful crowd of tourists and entrepreneurs. He managed the roar better this timepeople were farther apart, but more, he was quickly adapting to the new conditions. He caught the catlike thoughts of a pickpocket moving up on unsuspecting marks; the passion of two young lovers; the hatred an old woman harbored for holiday season and the locustlike swarms of gawkers it brought. The slightly odd feel of the Centauri minds, their amused disdain at almost everything they saw. Still he couldnt pinpoint Brazg. She was still, cocooned, probably in one of the buildings.
And he must look a little suspicious, he realized, standing in the open, staring like this.
He walked around the edge of the square, and when he thought he felt her strongest he took a seat at a small sidewalk café. He tried to cultivate a relaxed appearance, to separate his expression and body language from his purpose.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when a fluid male voice said, What do you want? nearly in his ear. It was French, harsher than the gentle dialect of Switzerland, but still perfectly intelligible.
A cup of coffee, please, Al said, in the same language. And what else do you have?
Eh? the waiter said.
A cup of coffee, Al repeated, and I would like to see a menu.
I am sorry, sir, the waiter said, I do not speak German, or whatever that is. I speak only French.
Al frowned up at the man. He had Brazgs scent as firm as a beacon in his mind, now, and it still wasnt going anywhere. He could spare a moment to touch the surface thoughts of the waiter. And the waiter was lying.
You understand me perfectly well, Al said. If you dont want to serve me, fine, but Im going to sit here, nevertheless. Play your games with some touristnot with me.
Babylon 5 11 - Psi Corps 02 - Deadly Relations - Bester Ascendant (Keyes, Gregory) Page 7