Al
No, Im sorry. That was inappropriate of me. Thank you for coming. He took her hand again, and sensedsomething more.
You have something to tell me? he asked.
I was going to wait
No time like the present. Im fine , Alisha.
She nodded. Very well. Alfred, Im pregnant.
He blinked. Wonderful. Was it his? Probably he would never know. Nor did he really care.
I hoped you would be happy.
A fine, strong P12 for the Corps? Of course Im happy.
She attempted a smile. Im glad. Im glad youre okay. I was worried that you might want
He shook his head, reached up, and pecked her on the cheek. Youre my wife. Thats how it should be. And now we have a child on the way. The timing isnt what it could have been, but well work it out.
What do you mean?
Didnt I tell you? I requested a transfer to Mars. Babineau was in here just before you, to tell me it was approved. Its a great opportunity, darling, for all of us. All of the big stuff is happening on Mars. I cant turn it down. I think you understand.
She drew back a little. Ithink I do.
I knew you would. But Ill write, of course, and send vids, and come home on leave every chance I get.
I can get a transfer, too. I can go with you
In your condition? And I know how upsetting space travel is to you. No, I cant ask you to do that. He said it firmly, finally, and she understood.
If thats what you want.
What we want doesnt matter. We do what we must. He smiled. Thank you for coming to see me. I think I would like to rest again.
Okay. Rest well.
He could feel her relief. If his heart werent empty, it might have bothered him.
He slept like a baby.
* * *
part iv
Ascendance
* * *
chapter 1
« » I hate the way they look at us, Ysidra Tapia said, lifting her chin incrementally at the crowd waiting on the train platform. Most looked like miners, though there were a few white-collar types. All stared at Al and Tapia with varying degrees of vehemence.
He shrugged. I take comfort in the little things, he told her. Things that give me a sense of security, of permanency. The sun rises and sets every day, objects in a gravity well fall down and not up, and normals hate telepaths. Its comforting, really, when you get to my age. It tells you that God is in heaven and all is right with the world.
Tapia smiled nervously. She was dreadfully young, a P12 at the start of her internship. She was slim and tall and dark. She reminded him uncomfortably of Elizabeth Montoya.
Stinking mindfrikkers.
He didnt need his psi to hear that. It had been meant for his ears and for everyone on the platform.
It was easy, too, to single out the individual who had spoken a tough-looking miner of about forty. Her muscular arms hung almost gorillalike at her sides. You heard me, she said, dangerously. Mindfrikker.
Good day to you, too, Al said, with exaggerated brightness.
Come on, Endra. Another minera younger womantugged on her arm.
Come on? she snapped. Have you forgotten starving? The food riots? These mindfrikkers, fat and lazy, watching us starve?
Maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to sit out the Earth-Minbari War, Tapia snapped, suddenly. Al was mildly surprised. Apparently the trainee had some of Montoyas fire, as well.
Wasnt our war. We didnt start it.
Wasnt your war? Tapia snapped. You cowards. My father died on the Line. And my brother. Earth boiled a million gallons of blood into a vacuum to save the Human race while you guys sat here like the Marsie cowards you are.
You better keep your little pup on the curb, Mr. P-sicko, Endra said. Her voice moved into what Al recognized as a red zone. A murmer rose among the rest of the crowdthey were getting angrier by the second. He knew he ought to do something.
But he wanted to see how Tapia would handle it. She, in turn, seemed to think she had overstepped her bounds and suddenly became quiet.
Then the tube car arrived.
Take the next one, mindfrikkers, the woman named Endra said, as the doors sighed open.
I dont think we will, Tapia said. In the lull, some of her confidence had flagged, but Al could tell she was going to bluff it on out, now that she was committed.
Yeah? Well, just come on. A silicon cutter appeared in the miners hand, a wicked tool with an edge only a few molecules wide. She brandished it, and with her other hand made a gesture of contempt at least as old as ancient Rome. Next time you freaksll know to travel in a real pack, rather than just one old scrag and his little puppy-bitch.
Thats illegal possession of a weapon, under Earth Provisional Government regulation Tapia was still reciting the regs and reaching for her PPG when Endra threw the knife.
The years had taken away some of Besters speed, but the same years of training had helped wear neural grooves deeper than reflexes. Al managed to knock Tapia far enough aside to save her life, but the spinning blade nevertheless slipped almost frictionlessly through her biceps. For an instant, it almost seemed as if it had missed, and then Tapias arm sagged halfway off, blood fountaining out.
Cursing himself for not stepping in sooner, Al jammed Endras mind and watched her drop. Then he pulled his PPG and shot four other miners in the legs as the rest, howling with fear, crushed onto the train.
Ignoring the groans of the injured mundanes, Al knelt quickly, used Endras knife to cut a tourniquet from his shirt, then called for medics on his link. He laid Tapias head back gently.
She had gone into shock, eyes glassy, but he had seen a lot of wounds in his time and suspected she would live.
So would those he had shot. He turned to them.
I want you to remember something, he said, very softly, but very distinctly. I want you to watch this, and remember it, and I want you to tell your friends. He stood up and walked toward where Endra lay puddled. Her eyes were starting to clear. First of all, this isnt Earth. You people turned your backs on Earth, remember? The officers who run the provisional government here men and woman who fought in the war for youwell, they dont really care so much if you Marsies dont receive the full protection of Earth law.
So, for instance, if something like this were to happen He pushed, and Endra screamed, trying, it seemed, to touch the back of her head to the heels of her feet. Well, on Earth someone might wonder why I did it. They might even bring it up in a court of law. Not here. Or maybe Just for forms sake, he hit the woman with a deep, hard scan. Unearthed her hatred of the Corps, saw how she had lost a child in the food riots, foundsomething else. Something buried, encrypted, hidden.
It was entombed in her hatred, but she hadnt repressed the memory by herself. He recognized the signsa P12 had cauterized a memory. A sloppy job, though, and it was still half there.
He yanked it out, like a rotten tooth, set it aside, and got back to the business at hand. He sparked her mind and then diced it. It was so easy to do to normals. When he was done, she just lay there, drooling, staring at the ceiling and making gagging noises.
Then he pushed each of the other four, just a little, so they would worry about what he might have done to them. Touch one of my telepaths again, and what Ive done to her will seem a kindness, he promised. Are you all quite clear on that?
The four nodded vigorously, and about that time the medical team arrived.
Satisfied that Tapia would live, he went back to his apartment and carefully unwrapped the thing he had torn from Endras mind. Not surprisingly, it had Psi Corps in it, everywhere, all around her. Department Sigma.
Interested, he sifted the broken strands, weaving here, extrapolating there. He had worked with Department Sigma on a number of occasions, and was aware of some of their projects, but to a large extent they were still a black box to him. He didnt like that.
He saw Endra working for them, running a backhoe, cutting blocks of
rust-red permafrost with a silicon knifethats where she had come by it. Digging for something in the Martian dirt.
The digging was just the frame of the picture. Endra Nadja had been digging most of her adult life. No, it was where she was diggingand whythat they had cut out.
He carefully worked his way to the core of the burned memories, and in the ashes, in the powdery place between what is forgotten and what was never known, he found spiders. Spiders boiling out of her flesh, spiders crowded on her eyeballs, spiders invading her mouth.
Strange. The records showed that Endra Nadja had been bon on Mars and had never been off planet.
Where would she have seen spiders?
He supposed someone in the Corps might have planted the images there, as some sort of punishment, but that seemed unlikely this was the part of the memory that was most damaged, that had been most viciously suppressed.
Anyway, it explained Endras bolder-than-normal hatred. She didnt remember being hurt by a Psi Cop, but one had hurt her a great deal, doing this. The buried memory had fed her natural antipathy. Whoever had done this deserved a reprimand for such a half-assedjob.
It wasnt a signature he recognized. He shrugged and started to file it away again, but paused for a long moment.
There was something familiar about this. But what?
He stood with his eternally clenched hand pressed against the macromolecular glass, staring out over the battered surface of Mars. His mind traced back through the years, in search of the feeling of spiders, of an alien touch
The rogue in Brasilia. What was it, more than twenty years ago? She had had some sort of thing going with spiders. And hadnt she come from Mars?
Yes, this certainly went into the to be considered file.
Tapia dimpled at the flowers. Thank you, Mr. Bester.
Dont mention it. Next time, though, you should try to catch the knife by the hilt.
Ill try to remember that. If it werent for you, Id be dead now. I guessI guess I lost control.
We all do that now and then, Al said. Its perfectly natural to get frustrated, especially with mundanes. They cant understand us, any more than a blind man can understand a roomful of painters discussing a landscape.
I know. She looked at him very seriously. May I ask you a personal question? How have you been able to stand it all of these years?
He looked her dead level in the eye. Its very simple, he said. I always have the Corps behind me. My family. And then, of course, I have my loving wife, and my son
They live here, on Mars?
My wife is still on Earththough shes thinking about moving up here, next year, now that the kids out of the house. She doesnt deal with space travel very well. My son is grown and in the Corps back on Earth, Im happy to say.
You must be lonely. Havent you ever considered requesting assignment on Earth?
Its hard, but I feel Im needed here, on Mars, and with my Black Omega Squadron. As much as it hurts, we do what we must.
Its romantic, in a way, Tapia said.
Yes. In a way. And now I want you to get some rest, because when you get out of here, youll have some hard training ahead of you. No slackers in the Black Omegas, I promise you.
Yes,Mr.Bester.
He made his way to his office, put off combing through a years worth of backed-up paperwork in favor of glancing at the Universe Today headlines. He took notes on two items of mild interest.
The first concerned telepaths on Io who had cooperated in a union work shutdown. This wasnt news to Al, and the idiots had been dealt with already. After all, telepaths had a union, Psi Corpsthey had no business entangling their allegiances, officially or unofficially. For Al, the article was noteworthy because of its very existencethe whole affair was supposed to have been stifled.
Again, someone had been sloppy.
A little more interesting was a profile of William Edgars, an up-and-coming billionaire in the pharmaceutical industry. Edgars was one of the contractors who produced sleepers, so anything concerning him was of interest. The article was typical Fortune 500 stuff, thoughhobbies, carefully chosen political views, photos with the dog. When asked about business teeps, he seemed to avoid the question, an interesting thing in and of itself.
He moved from the paper to the revised hunt list but had only read a page when his vidcom belled.
Answer, he told it. Bester here.
A face appeared, a receding blond hairline, strong jaw, very white teeth. He had the momentary disorientation that came from recognizing someone once well-known, but transformed.
Brett? he asked, a little incredulously.
Hello, Al. I was wondering if youd remember me.
Of course I do. Cadre Prime. What can I do for you?
Brett hesitated for an instant. Al; Im on Mars. I wondered if I might look you up?
That wasodd. He and Brett hadnt seen each other except in passing, in the halls back in Geneva, for more than thirty years. Thirty.
Yes, of course. Where would you like to meet?
Well, Ive never been on Mars before, and I dont have long here. I was thinking about hiking a little around the slopes of Olympus Mons.
Youre kidding.
No, not at all.
I can tell youre a tourist. Not all the way up, I trust.
Probably not Are you game?
I Something was wrong here. Sure.
Great. When are you free?
Al didnt much like being outside on Mars. He didnt like trusting his life to canned air. And he didnt like the distant horizons, with no walls to put his back to. How many ways could you kill a man outside? It was easy enough on Earth: a hidden marksman, a well-timed avalanche, a falling accident. On Mars, it was so much simpler. A cracked air valve and a faulty gauge. A few molecules of any of a number of nerve toxins placed in the breathing mix.
Sure, it was the same inside the domes, but written on a larger page, and scale did make a difference. Few people would blow up a whole dome, or poison the entire colonial air system just to kill Alfred Bester. He could think of many who wouldnt mind waiting in a fissure on Olympus Mons, even for hours, peering through a telescopic sight.
A lot of people stood between him and death. That made him very uncomfortable.
Brett could well be one of those people. They had always been rivals. He had left Brett in the dust, rankwise, many years ago. Was he here to beg a recommendationor earn one from Als enemies?
Ever climbed this whole thing? Brett gestured at Olympus Mons, which dominated not just the sky, but the world. The tallest volcano in the solar system, its fifteen miles of height were difficult for the mind to comprehend. They were only about a mile up from the base, and already the puny horizon of Mars made the planet seem smaller, while the endless slope rose above them.
Cmon, Brett. Al paused on a ledge. We havent spoken in more years than I can remember. Lets be honest. We were never friends, not really. You didnt bring me out here to renew an old acquaintance or to chat about our childhoods.
Brett stared up the vast slope. Okay, Al. Its true. You were always the strange one in the cadre. I always did sort of like you, whether you knew it or not. We all did. You were justyou wanted more than we did, maybe. But you were Cadre Prime, Al, and I was Cadre Prime. We are alike in a way that others cant be.
Here it came. Brett wanted something, all right, and he was hoping to key in on the only thing he could, the only thing the two of them had in common.
Even after all of these years? You really think we share that much? Twelve years out of sixty-four?
Yes, I do. If I didnt, I wouldnt be here. We were never friends, Al, but we were brothers.
So we were taught. But isnt everyone in the Corps brother and sister?
Brett shook his head and started forward on the slope. He moved with greater ease than Bester. After years in the Martian gravity, Als muscles had weakened somewhat. Brett was still used to the heavier pull of their home planet. You remember what they told us? The Grins? That we, Cadre Prime,
had a special duty?
Al laughed harshly. How could I forget?
Al, we were born in the Corps. Everyone else in our cadre joined before they were seven, and all of them were born manifested. Between us, we celebrated only one birthday. Remember? I still celebrate it. Ill bet you still do, tooand Ill bet you never tried to find out what day you were actually born.
Al shrugged.
You dont think that makes us different? We see things, Al, in a way that those who joined the Corps when they were twelve, or fifteen, or twenty simply cant. They grew up as mundanes, then learned to be Corps. We grew up as the real thing.
Ill grant you that. Whats your point?
My point is that the director is a mundane.
Very good, Brett. Perhaps thats because the Corps charter states that the director will be assigned by the EA senate and shall always be a normal?
Yes. But Director Vacit was a telepath, you know.
What ?
You heard me. He was a telepath. He put the Corps together, him and Senator Crawford. Its not what they taught us as kids, but
Yes, yes, of course I knew the William Karges story was a fairy talebut Vacit?
You met him once.
Yes. He could picture him, too, that fine, wrinkled skin and white, close-cropped hair. The faint feeling, like a wind. You felt something ? Vacit had asked. Interesting. Most dont .
And then Director Johnstons interest in him, because Vacit had been interested
How do you know?
Al, youve been in the field. Ive mostly been in administration. You hear things there. A few people knew all along. Johnston suspects it, if he cant prove it.
I fail to see what any of this has to do with me, Al said.
Have you been to Teeptown lately, Al? Have you been in the classrooms, seen what theyre teaching the kids? Its not the same as what we learned. He considered, for a moment. On the surface it is. But underneath, the message has changed.
Changed how?
We always learned that we were specialbetter than mundanes. That all telepaths were brothers, even the Blips we have to track down. Now itsits just the Corps, Al. Blips are enemies. They do things to them
Babylon 5 11 - Psi Corps 02 - Deadly Relations - Bester Ascendant (Keyes, Gregory) Page 21