Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant (33 page)

Chapter 6

Bester killed most of his velocity. The Black Omega Starfury retained a bit of spin, but he left it so he could watch stars wheel glacially by. Even though his sub-Doppler was watching for unexpected ships, he disliked the idea of not being able to see all approaches, of blind space at his back. Besides, he liked the cold beauty of stars. He liked the irony, even, of that characterization, that the very furnaces of creation, in whose life and death all of the elements were born, consumed, reborn, should be, at a distance of poetry and literature, described as cold.

He studied his sub-Doppler radar. The other ship - the one expected-was still decelerating on a plume of newborn helium, but it was a bare exhalation now. Through the view port he could just make out the ship, moving into eclipse behind the asteroid. He saw no others. He gave it time to reach its destination, then nudged his thrusters to life.

His sleek mechanical steed responded, moving now along the curve of the potato-shaped chunk of planet-that-never-was, coasting up the kilometer or so of its length. At the end, a neat hole came into view, no more than thrice the diameter of his Starfury. He maneuvered into the hollow core of the stone.

Fifty years ago, just after the turn of the century, miners had claimed this rock, hollowed it out, refined its metals for Earth’s Malthusian hordes. In the twenties, the bottom had dropped out of the domestic metals markets. The miners had cut their losses, broken down their machinery, and pulled out, leaving an empty shell of stone. Another time, the old mine might have become the basis of a colony-many such hollowed-out asteroids had been sold to idealistic world-founders just a century earlier.

But with jump-gate technology and much more hospitable colony worlds awaiting, this rock languished. Until Bester had found it, on an old claims chart. Now it had uses once again.

He coasted along the axis until he reached the far end, where several narrow docks waited. The other ship - a battered, unmarked vessel - was already there. He hooked up to a cylinder that connected him to the air lock, making certain that there was pressure on the other side - and that that pressure consisted of an oxygen helium mix.

Then, still in his pressure suit, he moved from the ship into the inner lock. It was a small place, with ladders leading in three directions, each “down.” He stepped into one and let the gentle tug of an eighth of one Earth gravity drag him down the rail. He emerged like a slow-motion fireman into a cramped, unadomed room. The walls had been melted and smoothed.

There were already three people in the room, all in shirtsleeves. Two nodded greetings to Bester. The third - a man strapped into a chair with steel bands-merely looked at him with a sort of awful understanding. The only light in the room was a deliberately unpleasant actinic cone directed at the man in the chair. Bester removed his helmet and, in an unhurried fashion, the rest of his pressure suit. Then he walked over to the prisoner.

“Hello, Mr. Jackson.” He sat carefully on a small stool and rubbed his hands together. “I want to explain something to you. Come, look at me. Don’t be afraid.”

Jackson reluctantly dragged his gaze around to focus on Bester. He was a young man, only twenty-five. He had grey eyes and clean features. He looked a little like Brett had, when he had been that age, a Psi Corps poster boy.

“I don’t want to do this,” Bester said. “I truly don’t. We are both telepaths, you and I. We are both Corps, and the Corps, is our mother and our father. You’re like my own child, in a deeper sense of the word than any mundane could possibly comprehend.” “The Corps is mother, the Corps is father,” Jackson whispered.

“You see? We are the same. Frankly, if you were a mundane, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. I would have already started doing unpleasant things to you. But you are one of mine, Timothy - may I call you Timothy? You are one of mine, and I don’t want to hurt you. Even though you serve the other side, I still consider you one of mine.

I don’t want to hurt you, but if you make me, I will. There is something happening at Syria Planum. There is something happening in EarthGov. They are linked Do you understand, Timothy? Something is happening to my telepaths, my people, my brothers and sisters and - children, and I don’t believe it’s anything good.”

“Sir, I can’t betray the Corps…”

Bester clucked his tongue.

“Timothy, you’re so young. I know you think you see things clearly now, know where your loyalties lie. I was born in the Corps, raised by the Corps from birth. I’ve never flinched from serving the Corps, even when great sacrifices were called for.”

He lifted his clenched hand

“Don’t presume to tell me what betrays the Corps. Someone is delivering our people into the hands of someone-maybe something else. There are traitors in Psi Corps, and you have worked for them.”

“Sir, the director…”

“Is a mundane, Timothy. He is a creature of the Senate, of wealthy mundanes.”

He inclined his head.

“I don’t have a lot of time. I am closely watched, and I will be missed. Timothy, I’m prepared to make another sacrifice today. It will hurt me terribly to harm you. I will carry it as a wound on my heart. But it will be one wound of many, and for the sake of my people, I will do it. That’s why I risked coming to question you myself-because I cannot, will not ask anyone else to take this burden for me. I’m asking you-one last time - to help me.”

“Sir…” His voice trembled. “Sir, I’m scared of them.”

“Of course.”

“They… they found something on Mars. A ship.”

“I know about the ship, Timothy. I know one man touched it and died - I know a telepath touched it and went insane. I know that when it was excavated, another ship just like it came and took it away. But whose ship was it, Timothy? What race? And what do they have to do with my people?” “Sir, I don’t know. You have to believe that.”

“I can’t afford to believe it. You know that.”

“They’re all tied up with IPY, and EarthGov, like you said. I’ve seen EarthForce officers, and an aide to Vice President Clark…”

“The aliens,” Bester softly reminded him. “Interplanetary Expeditions tracked their ship out to the rim, a planet called Alpha Omega 3. They plan to send an archaeological team to investigate. That’s all I know.”

Bester nodded, sadly.

“I believe you, son.”

Then he hit him with a hard scan. Jackson hadn’t lied, but the scan gave him more details. Faces of the IPX men, some of whom he recognized. The aide connected to Clark. More detail to help him flesh out the cabal, but not much more. No, everything really useful had come from the boy’s mouth, sad to say. He studied the other two people in the room.

To one, a tall man built of right angles, he said, “I want him reconstructed. Carefully. He still has two weeks of leave left implant a nice memory of backpacking in the Tetons or somewhere. Rebuild his personality as much like the original as possible, but leave me a key to get in, okay? We may need him one day.”

“I understand, Mr. Bester.”

“I know you do, Mr. Ts’ai. I’ll check on him in a few weeks.” He put his hand on Ts’ai’s shoulder. “Some of what we have to do is hard, but it’s better than the alternative. Remember that.”

“Of course.”

Ts’ai looked surprised that Bester had even bothered to say it. Stout fellow, Ts’ai.

“As for you, Ms. Donne - good work.”

Donne shifted her competent, muscular physique and nodded briskly.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Is my - appointment - dated?”

Something that was almost - but not quite - a smile ghosted Donne’s tight lips.

“Mr. Bester, I think you will be pleased.”

“Good. I’m sure I will. Ms. Donne, another thing. I’d like some improvements in our intelligence inside IPX. And I need to know everything about this mission to the rim. We need someone on that ship.”

“I’ I see to it,” Donne promised. “I’m headed back to Geneva as soon as we’re done here.”

“I know you will-and we are done here. Well. A pleasure seeing the both of you again. Hopefully next time we meet we can do something more pleasant have dinner, perhaps.”

Bester returned to his ship. Once free of the asteroid, he fired the thrusters in a single, brief burst, then waited until he had drifted for almost an hour before cutting in the main engines and pointing the Starfury’s nose toward a certain transport that awaited his return.”

“Did you have a nice flight?”

Bester looked up from the task of shucking off his pressure suit. He saw an earnest young man with close-cropped, blondish hair.

“Hello, Byron. Yes, very nice actually.”

“Any sign of the transport?”

“None at all. It might be that we got a bad steer this time out. I wonder if we shouldn’t backtrack to Ceres and start over. I’m not convinced that the captain there was entirely truthful with us.”

“Mundanes never are, are they?”

“They can’t help it,” Bester said. “It’s in their nature to fear us. What were you up to while I was out?”

“Reading one of the books you suggested. The one by that Rand person.”

“Ah, yes. Did she convert you to objectivism?”

“Not exactly, but I can see what you mean. It is hard to deny that some people count more than others, in the grand scheme of things.”

Bester shrugged the rest of the way out of his suit.

“You have to put her in context. The discovery of the fact of evolution by Darwin created a new paradigm for thinking about old issues. It was fashionable and convenient to believe that those who were wealthy and successful were so because they were inherently superior.”

He changed the subject.

“I’m starving. Shall we get a bite to eat?”

“Delighted,” Byron replied.

A few moments later, over barely identifiable, micro-waved lasagna-Bester hoped it was lasagna, in any case-Byron cleared his throat.

“Do you think there was anything to it? Social Darwinism?”

“Survival of the fittest? It was a misunderstanding about how evolution worked, really. Looking back on it, it’s all pretty silly - mundanes squabbling about who was more evolved. From our point of view, it’s sort of like a couple of chimps arguing about which walks most upright. Social Darwinism was a pseudoscientific rationale for laissez-faire capitalism, class domination, and racism. It was an ideology, not a scientific understanding. “But there is such a thing as evolution, of course. For almost a million years, Homo sapiens remained virtually unchanged biologically-culture essentially arrested natural selection. Society protects its weak and stupid, helps them breed. Whatever the social Darwinists of the twentieth century thought of themselves, they were, in fact, the end product of a million years of unnatural and unplanned selection-every bit as much as the factory workers and welfare cheats they lorded themselves over.

In a million years, the only biological improvement in the Human race has been us, Byron.” He smiled. “You see, I’m not a social Darwinist just a Darwinist, plain and simple.”

“It seems obvious,” Byron said. “That’s why Normals fear us.”

“Imagine what the apes who stayed in trees must have thought of those new creatures who went walking upright across the savannah. There has to be an impulse in a species that understands it’s about to be replaced, a last desperate effort to rescue itself, to save its genes from oblivion.”

“So why did you suggest I read Rand, if you think so little of the premises of her reasoning?”

“Why, to make you think, Byron. A Psi Cop has to know how to think, how to evaluate, how to judge. I picked you to train because I think you have more potential than I’ve seen in a long time - you can be a first - rate Psi Cop, if you want. Not a bloodhound - of course, we need good bloodhounds, don’t get me wrong-but you could be a leader. You could go far.”

“I… I appreciate the opportunity, sir. I hope I don’t let you down.”

“It’s a pleasure, Byron. I’m sure you’ll make me proud. I could wish for a son like you…”

He broke off, unsure why he had said that-he said things like that all the time, because making people feel special made them like you, and that made them useful. Except - he saw what bothered him - he genuinely meant what he had just told the boy.

He liked Byron. He enjoyed teaching him, shaping him. It was odd. It was the first such feeling he had experienced in a long time. He really wasn’t sure whether he liked it, whether it was appropriate. Perhaps he should pass Byron along to someone else to tutor. Yes, that might be best, all in all. He would have to give it some more thought.

Meanwhile, they did have a rogue to catch, an important date to keep. The diversion to the asteroid had been just that, a diversion so he could conduct business secretly. While most of the transport crew were from his inner circle, others-Byron, for instance - still didn’t need to know everything he did.

The man they were tracking was almost certainly headed for Io, in hopes of using the jump-gate there. He had to be stopped, but there was really no hurry. What he didn’t know was that there was a tracking beacon on board his stolen vessel. There always had been. Telemetry placed his ship on a trajectory to Jupiter, and their transport could easily catch up.

And now, there was another matter that required his immediate attention. He needed to know everything, and more than everything, about the expedition that was headed toward the rim. A few minutes in front of his Al terminal got him a screenful of data - Donne, efficient as ever, had already filtered a lot of the information.

The Icarus. Ostensibly an IPX ship. He scrolled through the assignments, saw a few familiar names. Chang. Hidalgo - Bester smiled. Hidalgo owed him a few favors. Another name caught his eye - Sheridan. Anna Sheridan. A relative, perhaps, of the famous war hero? He would have to check on that, too.

They hadn’t assigned a telepath yet - indeed, it would be some weeks before they started actually assembling the crew. Good. That gave him time. He could concentrate on the business at hand, on his coming appointment. All he had to do was plausibly draw this telepath hunt out for another two days, and everything would be in place.