"What's your name?" Bester asked the driver.
"Paul... Paul Guillory."
"Paul, you live around here, don't you? Inside this perimeter they've set up?"
"No. I live across town."
"Don't lie to me. Why else would you come here?"
"I... okay, I'm sorry. Yes, I live just a few blocks away."
"Do you have a wife? Kids? A girlfriend?"
"I have a wife and a little boy. Please don't drag them into this."
"Sorry, Paul, but I'm afraid I have to. Take me there."
He prodded Paul with the gun.
"Yes, sir."
"No need to be so formal, Paul. After all, I'm going to be a houseguest. Call me Al."
* * *
Garibaldi noticed the funny look on Thompson's face.
"What is it'?"
"Just felt somebody walking on my grave."
"What?"
"Bester."
He turned his head, slowly. His gaze settled briefly on the taillights of a passing ground-car.
"He's in that car," he whispered.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah. You were right, about me being able to sense him. His tinkering with my brain left a kind of - wound. It just started hurting again. When I look at the car, it hurts even more."
"That would be like Bester," Garibaldi said.
"Driving by the scene of the crime, so he could watch us all shaking our heads in confusion. So he could gloat."
"Shall we go after him?"
"On foot?" Girard spoke up.
"I can have a car here in a few moments."
Garibaldi shook his head.
"No. No car chase. Look, we know where he is right now, and he thinks he's pulled one over on us. This is the best break we've had."
He looke d sidewise at Thompson.
"You're sure it isn't some sort of decoy?"
"Sure as I can be."
"Okay. Girard, can you have that car followed?"
Girard nodded briskly, pulled out his phone, and spat some French into it. Garibaldi recognized the make and model of the car, and the identification number.
"It ought to have a transponder," he explained.
"Most people have them put in, in case of theft."
He got some sort of answer a few moments later.
"Yes. They have a lock on its signal," he said.
"Good." Garibaldi rubbed his hands together.
"Now about that car you said you could get us..."
Chapter 12
"Nice place you have here, Paul. Good day, Ms. Guillory."
Guillory's wife was a stout, pleasant - looking woman with very dark hair and very pale skin. She nodded at Bester politely, though clearly she was puzzled.
"Paul should have told me he was bringing company. I just got off work, and picked up some dinner, but I'm afraid there isn't very much. I hope you like Chinese food."
"That sounds wonderful," Bester said.
"Papa!"
A boy, perhaps five years old, came scuttling out of an adjoining room and leapt into Paul's arms. Bester strolled over and glanced in the boy's room, as father and son hugged.
"Pierre, this is my friend Al. He's going to be visiting with us tonight, and I want you to be good, yes?"
"Ha!" the mother said.
"He's not only good, he's excellent - at getting into trouble. Pierre, tell papa what happened in school today."
"Oh, eh, well nothing really happened, Papa. Nothing, really."
Bester stepped into the boy's room. The floor was strewn with toys, books, coloring books, and random bits of paper. He found a single window, shuttered with Venetian blinds. He lifted the blind and peered out. The view was of the second floor of another, very similar apartment building across the street.
"Now, Pierre, either you tell him or I tell him-excuse me? Can I help you?"
The woman suddenly noticed what he was doing.
"Sorry," Bester said.
"It's just been so long since I've been in a child's room, and I didn't want to interrupt what you all were talking about." He smiled.
"It sounded important."
"Well, that's okay, but I would have made Pierre straighten up if I knew you were coming."
"So what did you do at school, Pierre?"
Bester asked, reentering the room and squatting next to the boy.
"I, eh, I put some glue in this girl's hair. Jesse."
"Oh, dear. Why did you do that?"
"Cause she's dumb."
He looked down at his feet.
"I dunno."
Bester smiled and mussed Pierre's hair.
"Kids," he murmured.
He looked up at the mother.
"I'm sorry, what was your name?"
"Marie," she answered.
"And you were AI?"
"Yes. Marie, I think Paul has something to tell you. Pierre, why don't you show me some of your toys while they talk?"
"Okay."
"What?" Marie asked.
"Do as he says, dear," Paul told her, his voice strained.
Bester followed the little boy back into his room as a hushed conversation followed in the kitchen.
"I think I'm in trouble," the boy confided, shuffling through his things.
He extracted a toy Starfury from an agglutinated mass of clothes and crumpled paper.
"Here's a toy."
"Yes, it is," Bester said.
"I used to fly one of those."
"Nu-uhl"
"Yes, I did."
"In the war?"
"Yes. In several wars, actually."
"No, you didn't."
"Sure I did," Bester replied.
"I want to fly one day. Do you think I can?"
"Well," Bester replied, "that depends upon your parents. And whether or not you stop putting glue in girls' hair. They frown on that kind of thing in EarthForce."
He noticed Paul and Marie were back in the living room.
"Oh, hello. Done talking?"
Marie's face was paler even than when he had first seen it.
"Pierre..." she said, her voice rattling.
"Why don't you get that Chinese food ready?"
Bester said, softly.
"I'll be fine with Pierre. Which reminds me, Paul, didn't you have some errands to run?"
"Oh, yes. I clean forgot. I'll, ah, bring back some more food, too."
"Why don't I kick in for that?"
"No need. You're our guest."
"Well, thank you. I must say, you make me feel very welcome."
After Paul left-his reluctance and worry were actually almost painful in Bester's reviving senses - Bester turned back to the boy.
"Pierre, let me tell you about flying a Starfury, and you show me the rest of the house, okay?"
It was a small place. The master bedroom had a window with the same view as Pierre's bedroom. The combined kitchen-dining room was decorated in a cheerful eclecticism, with a vase of tulips, a cheap imitation Aztec wall calendar, a bowl of papier-mache fruit, and a laughing Buddha carved from Martian hematite. Marie was forking kung-pao chicken and lo-mein from cardboard containers onto yellow ceramic plates. She glanced up at Bester, often.
"Go wash your hands, Pierre," she said.
"Oh, yeah!" the boy responded, and ran off to do so.
Then he turned and bouncing on one foot, beckoned to Bester.
"I forgot to show you the best thing!" he said.
With a what-can-you-do? shrug to Marie, Bester followed Pierre into the cramped bathroom.
"See? See?"
What Bester saw at first was that the wallpaper had come off one of the walls and hadn't been replaced. But the boy was gesturing at something more specific-a sort of drawer set into the wall. He pulled it open, revealing a shaft that dropped straight down and then curved off after a few feet.
"What is it'?" Bester asked.
"Dad says these apartments are real old, and m the old days they used t'put their garbage
down this. He said this must have been part of the kitchen before they made smaller rooms."
"Huh..." Bester peered down the shaft.
"So that probably goes all the way to the basement somewhere."
"Yeah. I wanted to slide down..."
"Supper!"
Marie called from the next room.
"Are your hands washed?"
"Better wash them," Bester said.
"What about you?"
"I'm grown up. I don't have to if I don't want."
He went back to the kitchen.
"What do you want with us?"
Marie whispered.
"I just need a place to rest for a little while," he said.
"You'll hardly notice I'm here."
She started to say something, hesitated, started again.
"We aren't political here," she said.
"I mean, we don't... "
"Don't what? Vote? Why should I care about that?"
"All I mean is, I know they're after you, but it's something political, and we don't care about that. Just don't-don't hurt my son."
"Dear me. Why would I do a thing like that? And to someone showing me such hospitality?"
"I-guess you-wouldn't?"
"Let's say I'd rather not, and leave it at that, shall we?"
Bester replied.
"See? Clean!"
Pierre said, running back in from the bathroom.
"Well," Marie said, composing herself.
* * *
"Let's eat." "There he is," Garibaldi grunted.
"You guys cover me."
He got out of the car and crossed the street to where another man was just leaving his car, the same tan Cortez sedan they had followed to these apartments, then back out to a grocery store and a train station, then back here.
"Hey, buddy. You speak English? Can you help me out with something?"
The fellow looked up warily.
"I'm in a hurry," he said, shouldering a backpack.
"Sure, sure. I just need some directions."
"Where are you trying to go?"
"To wherever you've got Alfred Bester stashed. Shhh"
He made sure the man-Paul Guillory, his registration called him - noticed the PPG. The man froze.
"I don't know what you're talking about. He's that war criminal they're looking for, no?"
"He's that war criminal we 're looking for, yes, and he's up in your apartment."
"No, I don't think so. That's silly."
"Sorry, buddy."
The man heaved a deep sigh, and to Garibaldi's mortification, a tear slipped from one eye.
"Monsieur, he has my wife and my little boy up there. He has a gun. He will kill them if anything goes wrong, I am quite certain of it"
"What's this?" Girard asked.
"I'm Police Inspector Girard. He has your family as hostages?"
"Yes. He sent me out to get some things. He said if I wasn't back in an hour, he would start to hurt them. It's been almost an hour."
"What did he send you for?"
"Train tickets. Some food. Please, I have to take them to him."
"I'll help with that," Garibaldi offered.
"No!"
"Look, we've already got your place surrounded."
"Don't you hear me? He'll kill them."
Garibaldi looked at Girard.
"Gas? What? There's gotta be some way to get him out of there."
"Without endangering the family?" Girard replied.
"I much doubt that. Why not wait until he leaves, in the morning? We know what train he's taking, now."
"Just one problem with that. He'll scan Paul here when he gets upstairs and get an instant replay of this whole conversation. Who knows what he'll do then?"
"You did it on purpose," Paul said heatedly.
"Spoke to me on purpose. To trap me."
Garibaldi shrugged.
"It aren't pretty. But loo k, this guy just mindfragged his girlfriend for Chrissakes. You think he's gonna even blink with you guys? Man, every second he's with your family they're in danger. You think he's just gonna walk away from the three of you, especially after he sent you to get train tickets for him? No way. All three of you are dead or as good as dead without us. We're the only thing between you and Bester, and you'd better believe it."
"That's the problem," Paul said.
"You aren't between us. There is nothing between him and my little boy. Nothing."
"Well, then. Let's put our heads together and see what we can come up with, then. And, considering your deadline is almost here, I think it ought to be pretty fast, don't you?"
* * *
Bester felt a sudden flash of heat that had nothing to do with the kung pao sitting uneasily in his stomach. It felt more like a hot wind in his skull, followed by a contrasting cold that lingered. He'd felt it before, just before walking into Lyta's trap. He'd felt it on Mars, seconds before a terrorist bomb had de- pressurized his office.
There was an old exercise for picturing how gravity worked. You imagine space as a sheet of rubber, extending in all directions. You put a ball bearing on the sheet, and it creates a small dimple. You place a cannonball on the sheet, and it makes a large one. Place the ball bearing near enough to the cannonball, and it rolls down the large dimple to join the cannonball. The lesson is that mass warps space, and that the "attraction" of gravity is merely a by-product of that warping.
Bester had long ago used that same visualization to think about telepathy, with the ball bearings and cannonballs and what-have-you representing minds. A normal made a tiny dimple, a P12 a deep one. But it was more complicated than that. The older a telepath got, the more experience he acquired, and the more he learned from his instincts, the stronger his telepathic gravity became and the more the plane of thought curved around him. The deeper his imprint became, so to speak.
At the same time, he became more and more sensitive to other perturbations on the imaginary rubber sheet. Yes, real telepathy, the transfer of coherent ideas from one mind to another, depended upon proximity and, ideally, line of sight. But there were older senses that telepathy could engage, senses that worked below the level of rational thought. He had felt Lyta, that day. Her Vorlon-enhanced abilities had made a huge dent in the fabric of psi-space, and his back- brain had fairly shrieked Get out! What he felt now was no less compelling-a bunch of little ball bearings were rolling toward his cannonball, and the deep-warning-system of his brain was yammering for attention. This was an instinct he had learned to trust.
Yes, something was wrong.
* * *
"You can keep us covered all the way up?"
"Yes," Bjarnesson said, matter-of-factly.
"Telepathy works on line of sight, and he won't have that until we open the door. It's easy to disguise the faint impressions he might feel until then."
"So I've heard," Garibaldi answered.
Girard had begun to wonder just what the hell he was supposed to be doing here. His investigation had spiraled completely out of his control. Just like his life. First Garibaldi had horned in, then the EABI, now Garibaldi again.
Looking back on it, it had almost been a relief. When he, Girard, was in charge of things they tended to go wrong, especially lately. When he learned that one of the century's worst war criminals was the object of his pursuit, he had talked himself out of the case. He had been a coward, in that way, ready to let outsiders take the risks, even if it meant they would also get the prize.
Now things had gotten damn muddy, though. Who was in charge? Garibaldi, clearly, mostly by the force of his bullying, but also because he had been right. And because Sheehan's betrayal had mired the EABI forces in uncertainty.
Parisian citizens were paying for all of this, though. His citizens. The people Girard was sworn to protect-the people Garibaldi and the rest didn't give a damn about. He took Garibaldi aside.
"I'm going through the door," he said, mildly.
"It's okay, Girard, I've got that covered. "
"No, it's not okay," Girard said.
"There's a woman and a little boy up there in danger. I will not let you burst in, guns blazing."
"Look..."
"No, you look. You aren't an officer of the law, Monsieur Garibaldi. You are just a man with an unhealthy obsession and far too much money, who thinks he's a cowboy from the American West. We'll do this my way. Period."
"What's your way?"
"I go in with Paul, alone and unarmed. I explain to Bester that he's surrounded..."
"Oh, give me a break," Garibaldi said, rolling his eyes.
"He'll just take one of them hostage. Or maybe you."
"He already has them hostage. He won't get far if he tries to leave with them."
"But with the element of surprise..."
"Now you give me a break. We haven't surprised this man yet, and despite assurances all around, I'm not confident he can be surprised. My way. If he isn't amenable to reason, then you can do what you wish."
"This is a bad idea."
"Right now, my men outnumber yours ten to one, even if we include the telepaths, who don't seem to know who they're working for anymore. I can have you arrested again, and I won't make the same mistake they did. I'll have you hauled down to the station and held until this is all over. Understand?"
Garibaldi was a man who was used to getting his way, but that had been a relatively recent development. Deeper than that, beneath the veneer of the rich tycoon, there was a man who had spent most of his life following orders. He nodded reluctantly.
"I still think it's a mistake."
"So noted. But that's how we're doing it."
"Your funeral, buddy. And it probably will be."
Girard smiled ruefully.
"I just have this image of you and Bester-one man made of matter, the other of antimatter. If I let you rush into that room..."
He shook his head.
"I won't let that happen."
Girard checked to make sure everyone was in place. Snipers in the apartments across the streets, men below the windows, several on the roof. All were told to stay out of line of sight and let their surveillance equipment do the watching for them. Once he felt secure, he waved Paul over.
"I'm going in unarmed, to talk to him. I'll do my best for your family, I swear."
Babylon 5 12 - Psi Corps 03 - Final Reckoning - The Fate Of Bester (Keyes, Gregory) Page 20