Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester by J. Gregory Keyes Page B

from praise.”
    “Ah. So you have read my column.”
    “Yes. If you don’t mind me saying so, Mr. Kaufman, I don’t really approve of it.”
    “Criticism of criticism? Now you try to improve me?”
    “It’s easy to take a house apart. It’s harder to build one.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning you have a way with language, and you ought to use it in a positive way. Write something of your own.”
    “So that it, in turn, might be criticized?”
    “That’s what stops you, then? Fear?”
    Bester considered that.
    “No. To be honest, it actually never occurred to me to write anything.”
    “You seem like a man with a lot to say. Isn’t there anything you want people to understand, something you think the Human race has missed, somehow?”
    From the place in his mind where he kept Byron, he heard a sardonic chuckle.
    Yes, Mr. Bester Wouldn’t you like to make them understand? Understand why you made me slaughter defenseless normals? Why you murdered your own kind? Why the gutters of the reeducation camps ran with tears and blood? Tears and Blood - now there’s a title for you.
    “Maybe you’re right,” Bester said, trying to ignore Byron.
    “I’ll have to think about it.”
    For whatever reason, his medication hadn’t shown up in his secure postbox. The one thing he really needed from what remained of his network, and it hadn’t come. It was three days late now. What could have happened? The people involved simply couldn’t betray him-he had too much on them, and in some cases, in them.
    In another week, things would start to get bad. He would start leaking, telepathically. Louise, if no one else, would find out what he was. She might even be able to handle it, but would she be able to handle it when he lost his mind and began the agonizing process of dying? Would she be able to handle having to spoon-feed him like a baby, change his pants’? He wouldn’t put her through that, no matter what, not that she would do it anyway. No, he would end up in the hospital, where eventually a routine DNA check would slip past his insiders in the Metasensory Division of the EABI. Then the hunters would come. But of course they wouldn’t find much, would they?
    It was just a delay, nothing more. The ampoules would arrive tomorrow, and everything would be fine.
     

     
    When two more days passed with no sign of his medication, he did something he did not want to do. He went to a pay phone and dialed a certain number. That connected him to an AI in Sweden, which in turn up-linked him to Mars, and finally to the off-world colony of Crenshaw’s World. Supposedly, at each node there was only a two-percent chance of being traced either way, and through three transfers he should be safe no matter what.
    The call took a long time to connect. Finally, someone answered the phone.
    “Hello.”
    He stood stock-still. He didn’t answer. He knew the voice well enough, but it wasn’t the one he had expected.
    “Bester? Is that you? You know who this is, don’t you?”
    It was Garibaldi.
    “Fin coming for you, Bester. I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch.”
    Bester hung up.
     

     
    Jem made a stuttering sound when he opened the door to find Bester standing there. It took him several seconds to compose himself enough to invite Bester in.
    “I haven’t been giving Louise a hard time,” he rushed to say.
    “In fact, I’ve been keeping trouble away from her and givin’ the other hotels in the neighborhood more trouble so she’d get more customers. Just like you said.”
    “I know, Jem, and I’m very pleased. That’s not what I came here for.”
    “No?”
    “No. I need some help with something, something right up your alley.”
    “Oh. Uh - sit down, if you mind?”
    “I don’t mind if I do,” Bester replied, taking a seat in an overstuffed armchair.
    “Mind if I get a drink?”
    “Not at all.”
    “You want one?”
    “It’s a little early in the day for me.”
    Jem poured himself a tumbler of scotch, then