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

hated this feeling, this helpless, watched feeling. That’s when he noticed Jem and his buddies, observing it all, wearing wide, bestial grins. Suddenly his helplessness turned to cold anger-an old, comfortable friend. Here was something he could deal with. Jem hadn’t noticed him. Bester went up an alley, until he could just see the thug, and there he waited.
    Soon night fell. Jem and his friends left, but they didn’t leave alone. Bester followed them down the narrow streets, his step quiet and purposeful. This was what he was, a hunter. Bester had been meant to chase prey, not run from predators. In the old days, a rogue knew his days were numbered when Alfred Bester was on his trail. He smiled thinly at the familiar rush. He followed them to a set of apartments a few blocks away, which they entered, laughing and slapping one another on the back. Bester kept watching, waiting.
    Hours passed, and an orange moon rose into the faintly hazy sky. Bester was patient - he knew more about waiting than perhaps anything else. He listened to Paris; he hummed old tunes to himself. Finally, well after midnight, the gang members began to slip of He counted them as they went, until he knew Jem was alone. Then he brushed his jacket with his hands, adjusted his collar, and walked up to the building.
    It was an old building, but it had a fairly good security system. There were a series of contacts and a small widescreen. To enter, he would either have to bypass the system, which he hadn’t brought the tools to do, or get Jem to buzz him up. He could go back to his room, get the matrix chip that had allowed him to pass Earth security-but no, where was the challenge in that? He could make Jem open the door.
    Closing his eyes, he tuned out the mind of Paris, bit by bit, as though through a sieve, running everything through it until finally only a faint something remained. Very faint.
    Without line of sight, making contact with a normal was almost impossible, even for a P12. But Bester had been at this for a long time and found that the limits of his abilities were extended by his belief in them. He couldn’t scan Jem from here, couldn’t burst the blood vessels in his apelike brain. But he could touch him, just a little. He could suggest that one of Jem’s friends had just buzzed…
    Jem’s mind was already confused. It was a rough sea, queasy to the touch, thickened and slowed by alcohol, salted with drugs of some sort. He was already hearing things that weren’t there. If Bester had asked him to make himself more vulnerable, he could not have.
    Still, it took fifteen minutes of terrific concentration before he heard the lock click. The outer door opened, revealing two more doors on either side and a stairway going up.
    He felt Jem above, and so took the stairs. When he stood in front of what felt like the right door, he knocked softly. An instant later it opened, and Bester found himself staring down the ugly hole of an automatic pistol.

Chapter 5
    “Well,” Jem grunted. He wore a black tank top and sweat - pants.
    “If it ain’t my old friend grandpa. Come in. Now.”
    He extended the gun meaningfully, and Bester noticed it was an old Naga l2mm, probably with mercury-filled slugs that would leave an exit wound the size of a softball.
    “Don’t mind if I do,” Bester said, calmly.
    Jem watched him with bloodshot, small-pupiled eyes. The apartment was large, and furnished in moderately expensive but poor taste. Gaudy. A poor boy’s idea of what having wealth was all about. Bester noticed a bottle of red wine and picked it up.
    “Ah, the ‘67 Chateau le Ridoux,” he said.
    “Not a bad year-a poor choice with pizza, however.”
    He’d noticed the delivery boy coming in earlier, and the remains of the meal were scattered about on a large wooden table.
    “It costs a hundred credits a bottle.”
    “Oh, well, then it must go with anything,” Bester replied.
    He went to the wine rack, selected a glass, and poured himself a