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

so pointless as undiscussed, uncriticized art, yes, and so…”
    “What does this pay?”
    “Oh. The inevitable crass question. It pays ten credits for every hundred words. You are interested yes?”
    Bester, to his own great surprise, heard himself answer,
    “Yes.”
     

     
    He returned to the hotel. It had rained, so his shoes broke pastel puddles, wet canvases left by the downpour and painted by the sunset. The silver-winged silhouettes of swallows spun in the lambent air, and for an instant he saw, not birds, but Black Omega Starfuries coursing across the universe-devouring face of Jupiter. His ships, his people, unstoppable. He trembled, with the thought of what he had been. He brought down governments, diverted rivers of destiny to fill new oceans. Without him, the Shadows would have won, destroyed all of humanity.
    That never seemed to come up, at the hearing. He had never seen it once in any of the gory stories about him.
    Sheridan knew. Sheridan the hero, the one honest man. He knew, but remained oddly silent. Garibaldi knew, too.
    Of course Garibaldi wasn’t a big-picture sort of man. Garibaldi only cared about Garibaldi-what Garibaldi liked or didn’t like. What had given Garibaldi pleasure, what had hurt him. Especially what had hurt him. There was probably a wasp somewhere that had stung Garibaldi when he was five, that his operatives were still trying to track down…
    His mind was wandering. Where was he? Ah, yes, the next street over.
    He had commanded thousands, saved the world, saved his own people-whether they knew it or not, appreciated it or not.
    Now he was going to write a column for a third-rate literary review? Well, that certainly wasn’t something Alfred Bester would do. Garibaldi and his Psi Corps lapdogs would be a long time searching before they started to check the literary reviews. He turned the corner and found the street busy, confusingly so. There was a crowd, and police cycles, and a fire truck. The excitement, the lust of the crowd struck him. They wanted to watch something burn down, to see Human forms come writhing out in flames. Just like the crowd at the hearing, screaming silently for his blood…
    Wait. That was the Hotel Marceau, Louise’s hotel. The place where he was staying. He began pushing his way through. The crowd was going to be disappointed. The blaze had been a small one, and it was nearly out. The front window had been shattered, and the small dining room blackened, but otherwise the hotel seemed to have survived.
    Louise stood, watching the firemen work, her face blank with shock. As Bester arrived, the cop, Lucien, was talking to her, though she didn’t seem to be listening.
    “Nobody saw anything,” he was saying.
    “Of course. Louise, you must…”
    “Leave me alone,” she said, distractedly.
    “Just… leave me be.”
    A swift anger passed across the policeman’s face, but then he gave a little Gallic shrug and did what she asked. Bester stood for a moment, wondering if he ought to say anything. She noticed him.
    “Monsieur Kaufman,” she said, in a small voice,
    “I withdraw what I said earlier. I won’t charge you extra for leaving early.”
    Bester nodded. He was about to tell her he would have his things out as soon as the fire died down. After all, he was trying to avoid attention, not court it. And there were bound to be reporters. No. There was already one here, pushing forward, news-taper close behind. He felt, suddenly, like a trapped animal, his heart picking up several beats per minute. If his face appeared, even on a local newscast…
    He stepped quickly away, ducking into the crowd. He touched the reporter and found no image of himself in the man’s surface thoughts. He hadn’t been noticed, and he wouldn’t be remembered. The camera, though-had it seen him? If it had, it would probably be edited out.
    “Get ahold of yourself,” Bester he told himself.
    “No one noticed you.”
    But his heart was still beating too fast. How he