Born in the fire and terror of the twenty-second century, the Psi Corps - a group of elite telepaths used to control their own kind - became a finely tuned instrument of oppression. Only the underground, under the determined leadership of Matthew and Fiona Dexter, held out any hope for freedom.

      But in 2190, the underground was shattered. The Dexters were killed, and their only son - the brightest hope for the future - was claimed by Psi Corps. To sever all connection with the past, the child was given a new name: Al Bester. From that moment forth, to Bester, "the Corps was mother, the Corps was father."

      Bester was a telepath of exceptional ability. Ambition drove him to be Psi Corps' most ruthless operative and to seek to become its master. To attain that goal, he would pay any price, betraying love, friendship, and humanity. And one day he would step into the void beyond death, to confront his own soul - or what remained of it...

      Born the son of Resistance leaders Matthew and Fiona Dexter and grandson of Psi Corps Director and secret telepath Kevin Vacit, Alfred Bester is brought up to believe literally the slogan, "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father." Told that his parents were Corps members murdered by the Resistance, he grows to become the Corps' leading rogue-hunter. Knowing from personal experience that normals hate and fear the power of telepaths, he grows to become a remorseless torturer and killer of mundanes in his monomaniacal quest to protect the Corps. And even the truth, when it is set before him, is unable to set him free from his private demons.

Part I: Thesis (p. 1).

Chapter 1 (p. 2) Al "Alfie" Bester, age six, is climbing a tree when seven other kids from his cadre call for him to come down and join them in a game of cops 'n' blips. Al is trying to reach a high branch that's just a bit out of his reach. The kids catch one of their number, Milla, worrying that Alfie will fall and hurt himself, and they tease her with a "mant". [Mants are interwoven thought streams, represented in the book as resembling crossword puzzles.] Al doesn't let his embarrassment show - it's a major disgrace to be caught "blooping" your feelings all over the place, something the teachers won't let you forget.

      Al would just as soon play on his own - he has no real friends - but they're supposed to play "constructively", and playtime is almost over. The kids have voted 7-0 that Alfie has to be the blip. When Al protests he didn't get to vote, they magnanimously re-vote. This time the result is 7-1 that Alfie has to be the blip. Brett, the consensus leader of the group, offers to be a second blip, to Al's irritation.

      Al hates being the blip, so in his mind he changes the game - emulating his vid hero, "John Trakker, Psi Cop", he is a Psi Cop being chased by a gang of blips, and he's suspicious of his "partner's" loyalties. When Brett clumsily leads him into a trap, he "sparks" his partner [apparently kid slang for "fuguing"], "glyphs" [projects a telepathic image] his own face onto Brett, and manages to escape. As he reaches the statue of William Karges - the game's goal - he meets a normal whose presence keeps his pursuers from taking revenge on him for cheating (attacking Brett like that was a no-no). He feels the anger of his playmates, but what surprises him is the flash of hatred he feels from the normal.

Chapter 2 (p. 12) Three Grins enter the classroom, and Al is sick with the certainty that they have come for him. The Grins wear grey hooded robes and plastic masks with no eye, nose, or mouth holes. The masks can display images - usually a yellow grin when they bring rewards, or a downturned mouth when they come to punish. Today, someone has been bad. When the teacher asks who it was, Al stands up. The Grins come to him and remove their black gloves - a terrifying sight to the children, Al not least. They lay hands on him and drag out all his secrets for all to see. Then they take him to the exact spot where he had betrayed Brett. They make him understand that in assaulting Brett, he denied the Corps, for in forgetting that Brett was his brother, he forgot that the Corps was the Father and Mother of them all.

      That evening, Al isn't interested in watching John Trakker, Psi Cop and is moping when Ms. Chastain, his house mother, invites him into her room for tea and cookies. She tells Al about her mother, who witnessed the mass murder of her mother and several priests at the hands of normals, and reminds him that when he is treated harshly, it is to make him strong so that he can grow up to protect telepaths.

      That night in his dreams, Al relives his betrayal. Waking from the dream, he gets out of bed and looks at the stars. In the corners of his eyes, he sees a glimpse of the faces he sometimes sees in his dreams, but when he tries to focus on them, they always disappear. But he knows the woman has red hair, the man black. They are the faces of the Corps, and they love him.

      When Birthday comes, the party begins with pinatas. The blindfolds are no problem, because everyone glyphs the location of the pinata to the player. Then a group of older kids presents a play. It's an old African tale about cooperation. All the costumes, sets and props are glyphed, and most of the dialog is in the form of mants.

      The Grins arrive, this time grinning, and distribute presents. Al's is a book about John Carter, the Mars colonist. Then after supper there is singing. Al is feeling better about himself and decides to try the tree again. A new girl, Julia, follows and Al tells her to watch as he climbs. This time he succeeds in reaching the high branch, and when turns in triumph to see Julia's reaction, she's gone. She's walking away with Brett. Al decides to give up on girls. Birthday stinks, he tells himself.

      Al wakes up with the hand of a Grin over his mouth. It hands him a robe and commands Follow. As they walk through a darkened Teeptown, into places he had never been before, Al wonders where he is going. He thinks maybe he'll get to see the mother and father of his dreams. Instead, he is ushered into an office where he meets the oldest man he's ever seen - Kevin Vacit, the Director of Psi Corps. Vacit asks Alfred what he wants to be. A Psi Cop, Al answers. When the director asks why, Al gives the expected reason - to serve - but also the real reason - to be the best. When Vacit sends Al back to bed, he warns him to tell no one about their meeting. He also warns of changes to come after he is gone. Watch for the Shadows, and beware, he says, as Al sees an image of something like a spider.

Chapter 3 (p. 25) The cadre are in the common room, Al trying to tune the others out as he reads his book. Brett starts a discussion by asking Al what he thinks the Grins really are. Julia thinks they're robots, but robots are illegal, and machines can't be telepathic. Al offers an opinion that they're brain-wiped rogues. The topic turns to the tests that start tomorrow. Al is certain he'll pass. Then he'll enter the Minor Academy and be free of Brett and the rest.

      Al is testing against a boy named Simon. Each has a picture to memorize, and at the beginning of the test, each boy is to get the other boy's picture without giving up his own. Al visualizes Simon's mind as a black sphere encased in a series of translucent spheres, as he remembers his teacher's lectures on why telepaths process telepathy visually and how important it is to remember the distinction between visual analogy and reality. Al wins the contest without much difficulty, and after Simon has left, the teacher launches his own attack to take Al's picture. After giving it a good try, Al loses - and comes to in the infirmary two hours later. His teacher explains that he noticed Al's sense of smug satisfaction at his victory over Simon, and didn't want him to become overconfident.

      The teacher abruptly challenges Al to a game of paper, scissors, rock. Al says he wins, rock breaks scissors, and the teacher reaches out and painfully squeezes and twists Al's little hand. I win, he says, because I don't agree that there was a scissors or a rock, only hands. And my hand is bigger and faster and stronger than yours. Do you understand?

      Al understands - the teacher cheated. The teacher tells him that if he has a problem with breaking rules, he should study for business, not the Psi Cops.

      Later, Al and Brett are studying when angry Grins burst into the room and order them to strip. They take the two boys into the common room, where they find the rest of their cadre in the same state. The Grins force the whole group outside.

Chapter 4 (p. 34) The Grins, smiling now, lead the naked children on a long walk past older kids and adults, until they finally take them into a darkened room. The Grins begin to torment the children telepathically, until Al breaks and begins screaming for the Grins to stop. All the children join in, and it gets louder and louder until the lights come on and everything stops in shock. The Grins have taken off their masks, and they are all the adults who have raised them - the nurses, house mothers, teachers.

      Teacher Hua, the oldest, explains that their role in frightening them was all for their good, and they will eventually understand that. Their cadre, made up of children who manifested at birth, is Cadre Prime, the best of the Corps. And the Grins were also once Cadre Prime and went through exactly the same humiliation. Now the children are no longer children.

      The Grins strip and kneel, and tell the children that their minds were violated to teach them why a telepath should never be invaded without his permission. And now they invite the children to go into their minds and do as they will. As the other children probe their teachers' minds, Al stands apart and does not join in, still trying to figure this all out. He takes a somewhat different lesson from this than the teachers intend. He decides that he cannot trust any individual person - only the Corps itself is worthy of loyalty.

      The children receive black robes to wear - and gloves! As he puts them on, Al knows that he is, finally, no longer a child.

Part II: Antithesis (p. 39).

Chapter 1 (p. 40) Fifteen-year-old Al meets Julia by chance between classes, and she invites him on a hike the old Cadre Prime group is putting together for next Saturday. After classes, he wanders down to the West End MetaPol station [MetaPol, or Metasensory Police, is evidently the official name of the Psi Cops], where he spends a lot of time, mostly following the records of blips and manhunts. Today Mr. Van Ark, the station chief, has interesting news - Stephen Walters, thought dead for twelve years, has resurfaced. Van Ark refers to Walters as a Psi Cop gone rogue. [Apparently the Corps alters history occasionally.]

      Later, as he takes his daily run, Al ponders why anyone would want to be a rogue. He is unable to think of a satisfactory reason.

      On Saturday morning he meets the Cadre Prime group for the hike. He's dressed for hiking, but in Corps issue clothing; the others are all in non-issue civvies "in case we run into normals". The plan is to go by rail to Chamonix, hike around the base of Mont Blanc to St. Gervais, and come back by train.

      The first leg of the hike was easy. In fact, Al had to hold back so the others could keep up. Although he hadn't kept in touch with them, he was used to them in a way that he was not with his current classmates, a mix of lower cadres and mostly laters, who hadn't gotten their psi until age twelve or so. They avoided him, and he did likewise - it gave him more time to train and study for the Major Academy.

      As they rest along the way, another group of boys comes along. One of them notices Al's clothes and begins to insult and taunt the teeps. Al returns the insults and raps the bully on the nose. He expects the boy to strike back, but is surprised when it comes - the boy's rage masks the thought behind the blow, and Al is caught unprepared. Brett pulls the bully off Al, and the normals walk off, trading jibes about the fight. Al wants to mess with the bully's brain, but he holds himself back in obedience to Corps rules.

Chapter 2 (p. 51) As they cook supper over a campfire, Al's friends talk over the fight. Al says he should have beaten the boy. Milla says she could have mindblasted him in a second - why have superior brains if you can't use them? Al defends the Corps' rules, but Milla says normals wrote the rules. Still feeling the humiliation, Al walks off by himself and watches in a meadow as the stars come out. Then he hears voices nearby - Brett and Julia - and realizing they are making love, he puts up his blocks and waits.

      When he finally walks back to the campsite, he sees them all around the campfire from a distance. He senses their togetherness and realizes there is no place for him in it. He will work to protect them, but he will always be the outsider looking in.

      Next morning, Al asks Julia why she had invited him on this trip, and she answers, because he is their friend. He doesn't buy it and asks for the truth. She admits it was because they, and his teachers, were worried about him. Al thanks Julia for telling him, and says no one has to worry about him.

      At the train station, Al waits to buy their return tickets while the others get lunch. Al recognizes one of the ticket buyers ahead of him as Lara Brazg, a rogue P5 he's been following at the MetaPol station. He thinks of calling the Psi Cops, but quickly comes to another decision. When he gets to the window, he grabs the blip's destination from the ticket agent - Paris - and buys tickets to Geneva for his friends and one for Paris. He brings the tickets to his friends, excuses himself to use the restroom, and slips out to board the Paris train.

Chapter 3 (p. 56) Al locates Brazg on the train, then debates with himself on what to do about it. He could probably overcome her mentally, but in a crowd of normals, how to explain himself? He decides to introduce himself to the train's security man and enlist his help. In the guard's office, he explains about the rogue he has seen. The guard asks if Al has called ahead to the Psi Cops in Paris. Al realizes he hadn't mentioned Paris, just in time to avoid the guard's attack with his shock stick, and Al sparks him hard, then handcuffs and gags him. A scan tells him that Hech, the guard, is a rogue sympathizer and that is why Brazg is riding this particular train. The experience of overcoming the normal's mind gives Al a feeling of euphoria, and he recognizes for the first time something that might tempt a telepath to reject the rules and go rogue. Al remains in the office all the way to Paris to make sure Hech is not discovered, then takes Hech's shock stick and gun as he returns to the car where he had found Brazg. She's not there.

Chapter 4 (p. 62) After a moment of panic, Al finds Brazg among a bunch of passengers waiting to get off the train. But as he steps off the train, he is overcome for a moment by the background noise of all the minds in the city of Paris. When he snaps out of it, Brazg has disappeared again. His choices are down to the subway or up to the street, and he decides he isn't ready to tackle the underground and runs to the surface. He is just in time to glimpse Brazg as she goes around a corner. He follows her trace to the Place de la Bastille, and sits down at a sidewalk café to blend in while he tries to localize her. He is "served" by a very rude waiter [Paris is still French!] and waits past sundown, when he sees Brazg leaving the square in disguise. As he follows, he his surprised and taken at gunpoint by Portis Nielsson, one of Brazg's associates and a known killer.

Chapter 5 (p. 68) Al tries to convince his captors that he has run away from the Corps and wants to join the underground. Unconvinced they lead him onto a small powerboat and take off on the river. They tell him he must drop his blocks and allow them to scan him. He agrees, and as they come in, he fuses all three minds into an amplified broadcast for help. While the others are momentarily distracted, he jumps into the water, but is shot as he jumps. He makes it to shore and staggers away through the crowd, but Brazg and Nielsson are following him. He collapses in an alley and the pursuers catch up. Nielsson is about to fire again when Psi Cops arrive and kill him. They tell Al he'll be all right.

      Al comes to in a hospital. A Psi Cop is there who introduces himself as Sandoval Bey. Al recognizes the name - he is Dr. Bey, a high level instructor at the academy. Bey tells him that Brazg is in custody, Nielsson dead. And Mr. Bester was very lucky. A Psi Cop was murdered at the train station and they were searching another part of the city when they got his call. Al is surprised they knew Brazg was in the city. They didn't, Bey admits. The blip they were chasing was someone else - Al Bester. And did I mention, asks Bey, that you are under arrest?

Chapter 6 (p. 76) Back at Teeptown, Al faces trial. The judges are the principal of the Minor Academy, the senior Psi Cop in Teeptown, and in the center a man Al doesn't recognize at first. When he speaks, though, Al remembers him as the man he'd met at the statue all those years ago, the one who had radiated such hatred. A normal. The other judges call him Director. So he's the one who'd taken over from Mr. Vacit. It becomes clear that the Director is of a mind to ruin Al, but he gets telepathic support from the rest of the board - they hate the Director as heartily as he hates all telepaths. Bey speaks up for Al, and the Director contemptuously puts Al in his charge for such punishment as Bey shall direct.

Chapter 7 (p. 81) Al's punishment is to be the "statue of the day" - not for a day, as is customary, but until Bey releases him, and Bey hasn't said when that will be. He must stand frozen in the pose of the real statue of William Karges. [Karges, also known as "the Grabber", is said to be a secret telepath who had saved President Elizabeth Robinson from an assassin at the cost of his life. He is depicted jumping into the path of the bullet. It appears that the more senior members of the Corps do not take the official story of Karges at face value.]

      Al has to stand unmoving and take abuse from whoever comes by, and the teachers bring whole classes to look at him. He only gets periodic five-minute breaks during the day. There is a set speech he must give whenever he is asked why he is there; otherwise, he must stand mute. The Academy students like to dress him up differently each day. At eight o'clock his day is over and he reports to a detention cell.

      But after one particularly hard day, Al goes to Bey's quarters to demand to know why he is being treated so harshly. Bey lets him in and tells him that he is trying to save his life. He says that in his long experience, when he comes across someone dead or dying of suicide, the last thought he finds hanging in the air is "This will show them". And this is precisely the way Al thinks. Bey criticizes Al's solitary lifestyle and tells him that he needs other people to love and support him. He can't love just the Corps - he must love the people in it just as much. Love of duty is insufficient and it can betray you, he says.

      Back in his cell, Al is thinking this over when Dr. Bey's thoughts touch him. Bey reminds Al that he had been thinking that day about seeing life from different perspectives - that he had been one of the children tormenting a statue of the day, now he was seeing the same scene from the statue's point of view. Was there a point to that speculation, he asks? Al isn't sure. Bey causes a video to play on one wall of Al's cell - the classic film Rashomon. In the film, a rape and murder is retold from the points of view of the woman who was raped, the husband who was murdered, the murderer, and a woodcutter. Al is left with the impression that he'll never know the truth of what happened. But he thinks of the students who had been tormenting him and from their actions and surface thoughts he begins to understand their motivations, and seeing them transforms the tormentors to pitiful cases, more victim than even he is.

      Each night thereafter, Bey presents Al with a vid, a poem, a painting, or the like for him to ponder and draw a lesson from.

      On the fourteenth day, Bey tells Al his punishment is up. Al thanks him, and then asks if they can meet face to face. Bey tells him to come to him at 0600 the next day. He also reminds Al that he has lost fourteen days of study and finals come up in a month.

Chapter 8 (p. 94) Al looks forward to his frequent meetings with Dr. Bey, because he always has something interesting for him. Bey gives him literature, philosophy, music and more to think about and to appreciate.

      One day Al arrives to find Bey in his Psi Cop uniform. Bey asks him about his schedule for the day. Although he has an important test to study for, Al says it's open. Bey is going on a hunt and invites Al along as an observer. He hands Al a picture of the blip - Fatima Cristoban, one of the students who had tormented him as the statue - and says he'll excuse himself while Al prepares. Al protests he doesn't know what he is supposed to do, but Bey assures him he does - after all, he himself has trained Al. After Bey walks out of the room, Al looks around, hoping for a clue. There is a small mirror on the wall of Bey's office, the only non-utilitarian item in the room, and Al knows Bey as the sort who doesn't primp in a mirror.

      Al goes to the mirror. He projects Fatima's image over his reflection, and she begins talking to him. She tells him why she hates the Corps and what she intends to get by leaving. [See the episode "The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father".]

      Al joins Bey outside, saying he's ready. Bey looks him over and nods approvingly. So you are, he says.

      They fly by helicopter from Geneva to Amsterdam. It's Al's first flight, and only his second trip of any distance from Teeptown, so he is fascinated by the sights. As they travel, Bey briefs him further on the mission, and warns him that he had to pull strings to get permission to take Al on this hunt. People in high places will be watching him closely.

      Joined by local Psi Cops and bloodhounds in Amsterdam, they find a wretched room where Fatima has recently been. Since he prepared himself, Al has felt Fatima as a ghost presence in his mind, and he asks Bey if he is actually in some kind of contact with her. Bey doesn't know - in fact, there is much that isn't known about how telepathy works. Bey uses the old Roadrunner cartoons as an example. Sometimes a character runs off a cliff and just hangs there until he realizes where he is. Telepathy is kind of like that - convince yourself something shouldn't work, and likely it won't. [Oddly, Bey and Bester seem to have the roles of the roadrunner and the coyote backwards - the roadrunner always gets caught, takes falls off cliffs. Is this their mistake, or the author's?]

      Bester volunteers that he "knows" that Fatima is in a wide open place somewhere - a field or a park. Bey says that's likely where she wants to be, but not necessarily where she is.

      The landlady tries to lie about Fatima, but is easily caught without resort to telepathy. Bey demands the truth, saying he can have a warrant for a scan in half an hour, and it will be less unpleasant if she cooperates. She gives him an address. Bey calls for a large raiding party at the address, to wait for his arrival, and for an ambulance at their present location to take care of the landlady, who has had some sort of attack. He then turns to the landlady and...

      As they rush to the next location, Al asks Bey why he did that to the landlady. Bey says it wasn't much; she'll just have six months of bad dreams, better than she deserves. Al asks if she works with the underground. No, worse.

      When they arrive, Bey is outraged that the raid is under way, and two Psi Cops are lying dead on the street. He rushes in without telling Al what to do. Al checks the two dead men and takes a PPG from one of them, then he enters the building where he hears shots being exchanged. Passing more dead bodies, he climbs up and down a hall, when suddenly a PPG is in his face. Bey calls out to the Psi cop at the other end of the gun to hold his fire, and brings Al into the room, where there are over a dozen dead civilians and another dead Psi Cop, as well as one live woman being held at gunpoint. The cops want to know where the girl is, and she doesn't want to cooperate, so Bey simply rips it from her mind.

      Bey forms a party of three hounds plus Al, and they go down the hall to another room and kick it in. Inside, a man is putting on his shirt, the rest of his clothes still on the floor, and Fatima is found naked, tied spread-eagle to a bed, beaten beyond recognition and blood everywhere. Bey orders the hounds to take the man alive for trial and unties Fatima, but as he calls for an ambulance, she dies.

      Later, Al and Bey are drinking coffee at a cafe, and Bey tells Al a joke about a farmer and a one-legged pig. He tells Al that he needs to develop a sense of humor if he is to survive. Besides, if he uses it properly, he might even convince some mundanes that he's almost human.

Chapter 9 (p. 106) After a fencing match - Al has charitably given his opponent a break and allowed him to win - they go to lunch together and join a group of the opponent's friends. Al tries out the pig joke on them. They all make the expected faces and chuckle over it. They are all younger by a couple of years, and ask Al about his misadventure in Paris and his punishment; then they talk about Fatima. Al is surprised to find he means it when he says he wishes there had been something he could have done to prevent the whole situation. They invite Al on a boating excursion next weekend.

      Al goes to Bey to cancel their weekend plans, and Bey uncharacteristically takes Al out for a walk. It turns out he needs to talk where he's sure they won't be overheard. He tells Al that Director Vacit had, for reasons no one knew, taken a particular interest in Al. The current director, Johnston, knew this, and also didn't know why, which bothered him. Johnston has done everything he can to remove Vacit's influence from the Corps. All of his close associates are gone, one way or another.

      To sum it up, Al has an enemy who is watching him. Continuing their association will put Al in further danger, so they must sever ties now. As a parting gesture, Bey presses something into Al's hand, a good luck token that he'd like to see Al wearing some day - his first MetaPol badge.

      Al's team wins a contest - he is blindfolded and must trust his teammates to guide him truly as he tracks the blindfolded member of the opposing team. When he scores the winning "shot" with his gun simulator, his teammates cheer for him. He modestly tells them that they did it together. They go to a bar to celebrate their victory.

      A Psi Cop finds Al at the bar and asks him to come with him. Director Johnston wants to see him. Al feels the presence of someone scanning him lightly while Johnston interrogates Al about Sandoval Bey's loyalties. Would Bey put the welfare of a rogue over that of a mundane who was loyal to the principles of the Corps? Al says he would not, but he has his doubts, and he knows that someone has seen his doubts. As he leaves, Al is torn over whether to try to warn Bey - and he finds himself back at the very place where he had betrayed Brett. He decides Johnston is trying to trick him into doing something disloyal and goes home.

      Three days later, Al is the only person standing at Sandoval's grave. There are rumors he hanged himself, or that he killed himself samurai-style, or that the Psi Cops killed him.

Chapter 10 (p. 117) The instructor explains to the class that the upcoming field exercise will comprise their entire grade, and that only students with a B average or better will be participating - the rest have failed. The remaining students are grouped into teams of four and will be given no information on the nature of the test. They are to be ready to go in the morning.

      Elizabeth Montoya, one of Al's group, christens him Captain Alfie. He says he prefers Alfred. They meet to discuss what to bring with them. They agree on hiking boots, survival gear, water, and lightweight parkas.

      Next morning they are blindfolded and their watches are taken away. They travel via jet, train, and helicopter, and are let off somewhere dark, cold and remote. The chopper leaves them and they are alone. They look around telepathically, then with their two sets of night goggles, and finally with flashlights, finding no clue as to what their assignment is.

      The lights of a ground car appear about a mile off. Concentrating, Al catches a thought - catch me if you can! They take off on foot to follow it. At dawn, they locate tire tracks and follow to a river, where the tracks vanish. Sending teams up and down stream, they find that this is the only place where the car could have forded the river. They settle in for their second night.

      Montoya wakes Al, triumphant and dripping wet. She found the car, sunk downstream where the channel got deep. The team heads for the car to examine it; all they get is a faint trace leading to a town in the distance.

Chapter 11 (p. 126) In town, the team checks the train and bus stations, the car sales and rental lots, without success. All they've learned is where they are, Tuulu, in the Altai Federation. Al puzzles it out, and decides the test is about doing it right, not about catching the blip. They go to the local Corps station to report that a blip has recently passed through. The station chief congratulates them on passing - he was the blip!

      That evening, the team goes drinking to celebrate, and Montoya takes Al to her room for the night.

Chapter 12 (p. 130) Al and Elizabeth Montoya have been together for a year, getting together when they could. Al meets her to tell her the good news - they are a genetic match. He has had their profiles run to see if they could have Corps-certified babies. He loves her and wants to marry her, and the Corps has no reason not to allow it. To Al's bewilderment, Elizabeth is unsettled by this news. As a later who came into the Corps in her teens, she is uncomfortable with the idea of the Corps regulating her sex life. She tries to continue on as before, but Al knows something is wrong with their relationship.

      Eventually, she tells him she has to get away, but she wants him to come with her. She tells him to meet her at a place in the park at midnight if he's going. At midnight they meet, and Psi Cops come from hiding to take her away. They tell Al he did the right thing, and that she'll even thank him after she gets out of the reeducation camps.

      Al's ready to go home. He has exams to study for.

Part III: Synthesis (p. 141).

Chapter 1 (p. 142) Bester walks along a tropical beach, but he's on business. The minds around him are hostile to his presence. He has come to chase a trail that had gone cold three months earlier, after a rogue named Jonathan Stone. Stone had disappeared by making an ocean voyage on a Polynesian double canoe, built in the traditional way with no metal, rendering it invisible to tracking devices, except for a satellite that was actually hunting for it.

      A hum of mental activity ahead actually leads Bester to the right house. Bester faces down the half dozen strong men who block his way to the door, saying that if the choppers have to come in, it will lead to gunfire, and that will give Earth Alliance the excuse they've been looking for to come in and take over. Stone steps forward amiably enough to surrender, although he's seen the reeducation camps and he knows what he's in for.

      Too late, Bester realizes he's been had - someone else was with Stone, someone big. Bester has to fight Stone's mind to get the information, but Stone is a P10 and eventually caves in to Bester's attack. Stephen Walters, the leader of the underground. But he gets Walters' signature and his destination. The hunt is on.

Chapter 2 (p. 146) Bester is trying to convince station chief Niles Ramanashah [just what station isn't mentioned] to assign him to the Walters case. Not just because he found the lead, not just because of pride or ambition, but because he's the only one who has Walters' scent. The chief is impressed with Bester's record - quite the list of accomplishments for a young man of thirty-three [that puts us in the year 2222]. And Bester's logic is correct - he should be assigned to the case. Ramanashah tells Bester that he has a piece of information about him that isn't in the record: Director Johnston doesn't like him. Ramanashah will transfer Bester to his station, though the director won't like it, and then he'll detach him to Mars.

      Bester and partner Erik Andersen are passengers on a lander coming in to Mars. In line for the security check after debarking, they encounter a boy who makes a comment to his mother about the "mindfrickers" behind them. The mother tries to make apologies, but of course she's perfectly transparent to the Psi Cops. Erik wonders if Bester ever gets used to all the bigotry; Bester just says the dinosaurs had their moment, too. As they leave the terminal, local Psi Cops named Durst and McCleod meet them and take them to their briefing.

      Judit Uhl, the station chief, is contemptuously amused at the idea that Bester knows that Walters is on Mars and thinks he'll be able to catch him. Gesturing out the window, she points out that Mars has more land than Earth does and a grand total of forty Psi Cops to cover it all. When Bester says that at least there are only a few spaceports to cover, she dismissed that with a laugh. Ships land all over Mars in defiance of government controls and they live where they please, with or without permits. Marsies don't like the government, they like their freedom. Somewhat deflated, Bester supposes he can at least have a list of populated sites and transportation; Uhl gives him that much, with a smirk.

      Bester and Andersen are daunted by the list they're studying. A hundred fifty sites scattered all over the planet. Bester says they need to pick the right one on their first try, because once the word gets out, they'll simply be picked off and disappear into the desert.

      Bester thinks it over and points out that all those sites aren't separate from one another. People from small sites have to go to bigger ones to purchase some of their needs, and everyone sooner or later needs to come to the biggest place around - right here, Syria Planum. Then too, when they come to buy, what do people have to trade? In particular, what would a group of rogues have to trade that sets them apart from everyone else? Andersen gets it - illegal scans! So Bester has been putting together a list of people who might need just those services, starting with a poker player who seems to win a lot.

      When Bester and Andersen get to the casino, they find that Durst and McCleod are there ahead of them and are questioning Cheo, the poker player. Bester and Andersen don't approach; instead Bester catches Cheo's surface thoughts to hear his half of the conversation. One of the local cops hits Cheo with a brutal scan, and the pain cascades into Bester, but he shakes it off the catch the result of the scan - a name an address, a face. Bester and Andersen beat a retreat before the other cops notice them.

      They jump the next tube train to the town in question, hoping to be ahead of the locals. They discuss their situation vis-à-vis the locals. It seems that they don't want the team from Earth to succeed, for whatever reason. And obviously they work under different rules, since a publicly perpetrated illegal scan like the one they just witnessed would certainly have them up on charges at home.

      At their destination, they find the town built into a cliff face, with "streets" running vertically as elevators or stairways and "avenues" running horizontally as sidewalks. They find the address and are preparing to enter when a PPG blast zings past Bester's head.

Chapter 3 (p. 157) The shot was from Erik Andersen's gun, aimed at a man who had just appeared down the street - Erik was good at sensing danger. Bester goes down, gun out and ready to fire. There are actually five assailants, two to one side, three to the other, and Erik has put one down already. In short order the other four are down, Bester having found that they are all mundanes and easy to fool - he made himself and Erik invisible to their minds.

      Entering the apartment the first assailant had come out of, Bester finds McCleod wounded and trying to raise his PPG. He suggests that McCleod not do that, when Durst orders him to lower his gun. She's been in the corner behind the door. Bester hits her with a mindflash, which gives him just enough time to duck out of her line of fire while Erik disarms her. Bester has had enough of this and demands to know what is going on.

      Durst explains. Despite what Bester may have heard, most Mars residents are for independence and many are members of Barsoom Autonomous; the assailants were from its militant wing. Uhl and many of the senior Psi Cops on Mars are tacitly in favor of the independence movement, and the rest cooperate. With a force of only forty, it's a matter of survival. Uhl probably tipped the terrorists of Barsoom Anonymous to ambush them here. Durst and McCleod are in Uhl's command undercover, sent by Department Sigma. Their real mission is to locate the underground and call in the troops.

      Now Bester realizes that the rumors of a secret base on Mars, working under the personal control of the Director, are true.

      Chandler, the man they'd come looking for, is lying shocked out on a couch. Durst has tried getting the location of the underground from his mind without success. Bester succeeds, but the man may never be anything but a vegetable afterwards. Bester proposes that Durst join forces with him, since he has the location and she has the access to the troops. They'll leave McCleod in an infirmary.

      Out under a Martian night, the three cops step out of their ATV as four dragonfly-like fliers approach, land, and disgorge troops. Three of them walk to the ATV; the leader introduces herself as Natasha Alexander, commander of Department Sigma. Recognizing Bester's claim to lead the mission and not wanting her department to be officially implicated in the raid, she concedes command of the raid to him.

      There's nothing subtle about the raid. The Sigma troops blow every entrance they can find and swarm in, fighting through what resembles an anthill. The rogues' last stand is in a control room of sorts, and they blow themselves up rather than surrender. But one rogue is still alive, although badly injured. Bester finds the man, minus one arm and crushed up against a wall. The man sees him and says, I know you. Bester replies that he'd been on New Zealand, and tracked him here. No, the man says, before that.

      Stephen Walters groans and asks forgiveness of Matthew and Fiona - and he tells Bester that his real name is Stephen Kevin Dexter, son of Matthew and Fiona Dexter, and that he, Walters, is his godfather. Bester argues that he is Alfred Bester and his parents were murdered by the Dexters. Lies, they fed you nothing but lies, Walters says.

      Then Bester sees memories from Walters' mind - a red-haired woman and a dark-haired man looking down in love at a baby in a crib. And then his own memory mirrors the scene, and he is looking up from the bed at them and at Walters, feeling their love.

      The Corps murdered your parents, Walters tells him. Bester suddenly has a PPG in his left hand, and mindscreaming "Shut up!" over and over, he empties the PPG into the face in front of him. When it's empty, he doesn't notice. He keeps screaming and pulling the trigger.

      The next thing he knows, Erik is telling him it's over, and trying to pry the PPG from his fingers. But his hand won't open.

Chapter 4 (p. 168) Bester, in a hospital bed, is talking with Natasha Alexander about his condition. His physical injuries from the raid will heal soon, but the doctors are concerned about his inability to remember what happened with Walters, and about his hand, because they can find no physical cause for his disability. The hand doesn't hurt, but it's useless. Natasha says he really ought to allow them to do some deep scans to discover what happened.

      After she's gone, Bester admits to himself that he knows what happened. Walters reached into his mind and used his memory of his parents and twisted it to make him doubt himself. Successfully enough that if he allowed those deep scans, someone might even think it was true - and if that happened, it would end his career. He thinks there must be genetic records that would prove he was not related to the Dexters. But someone might notice if he checked, and Walters might even have tampered with the records. Bester decides to leave it alone.

      Bester's injuries heal in a week, but they keep him in the hospital for observation. Learning that one of the three rogues that had been taken alive to the hospital is dying, he volunteers for the deathbed scan. In the man's dying dream, he is riding across a plain of black clouds on a black horse, dressed as a Napoleonic hussar. Bester joins him on another black horse, and introduces himself as Stephen Dexter. The man assumes that Walters has finally found him and tells him he looks just like his mother's pictures, which shakes Bester. But he holds his pose and asks about locations and ID codes of underground cells, saying Walters needs them. The man knows only one, but gives it up freely. Then the death portal opens and the man charges into it, waving his saber.

Chapter 5 (p. 173) Back on Earth, Bester is still enduring the ministrations of doctors. They tell him there's nothing wrong with his hand, but he begs to disagree. He is also arguing with a doctor over his volunteering for deathbed scans. He has already done four, three more than most people will voluntarily submit to. He plans to continue.

      Later, he tells Erik he's worn out, having done his fifth deathbed scan that morning. Erik is worried, but asks for details of what it's like. He says each one is different in detail, but he describes the similarities.

      Bester is called to Assistant Director Babineau's office. He wants Bester to get acquainted with Alisha Ross, a P12 who is genetically compatible with him. Bester, as ever, is happy to do what's good for the Corps. They meet and decide they like each other. That's good enough, and they are married.

Chapter 6 (p. 181) Bester and his team are celebrating a successful hunt in a bar somewhere in Brazil when he receives a call from the hospital. Their blip is dying, and the doctor asks if he will do a deathbed scan. He excuses himself from the group, giving them one last thing to cheer - and extra three hours before reporting for duty in the morning. He faces the scan with some misgivings, for he has noticed that it seems that part of himself has disappeared beyond the liminality each time, and this will be his seventh.

      The blip had been mindblasted with all the force at the command of one of Bester's hunters, and blood vessels have burst throughout her brain. She had been a Psi Cop, a good one. From the remnant of her mind, a shriek tears into Bester and he finds himself on Mars. She and he are touching a black fragment of something; suddenly it is huge, spider-like. She runs screaming into the liminality and he tries to follow, but too late. He weeps as he removes his fingers from her face.

      Flying back to Geneva, he determines not to undertake any more deathbed scans. He looks forward to getting back to Alisha. He buys flowers in Teeptown and lets himself in to their apartment, and walks in to find an eaten meal for two on the table; he senses what's going on in the bedroom, leaves the flowers, and lets himself back out. He finds himself again at the Grabber's statue, looking at the stars.

      Alisha finds him there and apologizes, but for Bester the trust between them is broken. Ten days later he gets a call and leaves without a word. He has volunteered for a deathbed scan in a mundane hospital. A young man has been shot five times and is dying despite the doctors' efforts. They hope to at least identify the murderer. When he is pronounced dead, Bester goes in and follows all the way into the liminality. Voices of Bey, Elizabeth Montoya, Walters and his mother speak to him, telling him that nothing is there on the other side except what he brings in his heart; he realizes that his heart is empty - he has brought nothing with him. He awakes to find the doctors working to bring him back from his own death.

      Alisha comes to see him in the hospital. She has news - she's pregnant. Al has news, too. He's asked for and gotten a transfer to Mars, and he says firmly that she should not ask for a transfer there - in her present condition, and knowing how she doesn't handle space travel well.

Part IV: Ascendance (p. 191).

Chapter 1 (p. 192) 2253: Bester and his partner, a young woman named Ysidra Tapia, are waiting for a train. Most of the crowd look like miners, and they are looking at the Psi Cops with undisguised hatred. One, a woman named Endra, starts baiting them and then throws a knife at Tapia. Bester knocks her away soon enough to save her life, but her arm is nearly severed. At the same time, Bester takes Endra down with a mindblast and shoots four other miners in the legs to stave off a mass attack. He then hits Endra with a hard scan and unexpectedly finds something that some other P12 has locked up inside her. He calls for medical assistance and then lectures the crowd on how the authorities, who fought in the Earth-Minbari War while the Marsies sat it out, won't be inclined to help them if the Psi Cops take certain liberties with their minds, and that anyone who tries any other moves on his people will think he treated Endra lightly. He leaves her a drooling vegetable.

      After Tapia has been attended, Bester studies what he found in Endra's mind. She had worked for Department Sigma as a backhoe operator and had uncovered something. In the most hidden place, covered by the telepathic suppression, are spiders. This surprises Bester, for Endra has never been to Earth. Where would she have run into spiders? He remembers the blip from Brazil, twenty years ago. She had been on Mars and she had something going on about spiders. Bester sets this mystery aside for future consideration.

      After looking in again on Tapia, he goes home, where he receives an unexpected call. Brett, his childhood roommate, is on Mars and asks if he'd join him hiking at Olympus Mons. Sensing something wrong, Bester nevertheless agrees to meet him.

      Bester considers the possibility that Brett has been sent by one of the many people who want him dead, but thinks that most likely Brett wants some kind of favor, possibly a promotion recommendation. Once they are out on the mountain alone, they open up and talk candidly. Brett has come to Mars to speak to Bester as a fellow Cadre Prime, because they share, if little else, a special vision of what the Corps is and means. He has come because Director Johnston isn't a telepath, he says. Then he drops the bomb by telling Bester that Director Vacit was a telepath. He goes on to tell Bester what has been going on behind the scenes at Teeptown in the years he's been away - in short, that telepaths are no longer running the Corps, that mundanes are running it, and not for the benefit of the telepaths. They are experimenting to develop telepaths as weapons. Cadre Primers, natural key players, are kept away from the black projects, and in fact most of their own cadre are dead; Natasha Alexander, a Cadre Primer and the first head of Department Sigma, was assassinated. Bester himself should have been promoted to the top long ago, but he has been given his Black Omega squadron to keep him busy and out of the way. The enemy is Johnston and his inner circle of mundanes and pet telepaths, laters all of them. Brett tells Bester to look around at what Sigma is doing. He's at least well placed to do that. As for Brett, he's left a trail in his investigations, and it's too late for him.

      Brett hits Bester, jarring his breather loose, and then hits him in the gut to take him off his feet. Taking Bester's gun, he shoots himself in the face. Bester gets his breather back on, and then after thinking what to do, he takes Brett's gun and shoots it once into the mountain and again a grazing shot to his own arm. Then he takes his gun from Brett's hand and replaces it with Brett's own. Bester comes down the mountain resolved to eliminate the danger that threatens his telepaths.

Chapter 2 (p. 204) Bester and his troops are hunting a telepath named McDwyer in an abandoned luxury hotel at Tharsis. McDwyer is a good man who would not have gone rogue, but he has gone insane and has killed many of the squatters who hide in the hotel, and his condition has something to do with Sigma. In fact, a team from Sigma has just arrived outside. Bester tells one of his people, Donne, to delay them any way they can without giving the game away.

      Bester finds McDwyer, who shows him his madness - images of spiders and black sea urchins, painful feelings, and utterly alien desires cascade into his brain before he puts his guard up less than a second later. McDwyer presses his attack through Bester's defenses, and when Bester retaliates, McDwyer's brain doesn't react like a human's. Bester fights his way out, further damaging McDwyer's brain. McDwyer sends a thank you as he slips away.

      At that moment, the Sigma troops arrive, and their commander tries to wrest control of the situation from Bester. He claims the man was carrying secret information, and he suspects Bester's people were laying down false trails to delay him. In any case, he wants Bester to be debriefed. Bester says he's prepared for that.

      At Syria Planum, Department Sigma headquarters, Bester is running a bluff on Aubrey Pierre-Louis, the department chief, a man whose acquaintance he has been cultivating carefully for two months, ever since Brett's death. Aubrey is telling him he doesn't need to know, and he has a right to be upset about it. Bester says he has a right to know what is going on and an obligation to be upset, and he's going over Aubrey's head if he has to. Bester knows if Aubrey doesn't cave, he's finished, but his luck holds.

      Bester looks down on the half-excavated thing that had put visions of spiders in Endra and McDwyer and others. They think it's a ship; they think it's alive. And McDwyer went mad by simply touching it. Just seeing it sends Bester's mind back to his meeting with Vacit: Watch for the Shadows, he had said. Aubrey says the thing was buried on purpose, maybe two thousand years ago. They plan to study it, see what makes it tick.

      Bester gives Aubrey a parting pitch on the benefits of cooperating more closely in the future. Then he plans to lay low for a while and watch.

Chapter 3 (p. 211) He doesn't have to wait long. Three days later Bester gets a call from someone he's never dealt with before, Assistant Director Menendez. Menendez is detaching him from Black Omega to undertake an investigation on Beta Colony. He's to travel there by commercial passenger transport, alone, two hours from now. Bester figures he's not just being put out of the way, but being set up for a permanent vacation. He must have gone too far.

      Lyta Alexander, interning as a MetaPol profiler, meets Bester at the Beta City spaceport. She tells him she has the assignment to pick him up because the department is short-handed. Two of their men have been killed in the past two weeks by a serial killer known as the Blinder, someone who kills only telepaths. In fact, another body has been found only a few hours ago, and the station chief is out of town. They've been trying to keep the local cops from going in while they were waiting for Bester's arrival. Bester tells Lyta to take him there immediately.

      The mundane cops have already gone in when they arrive. A Captain Stesco is in charge of the scene, and he offers the excuse that they couldn't know it was a Blinder killing until after they'd investigated. He also lets it be known that he shares a dislike for telepaths with most of the population. Telepaths had been prohibited from coming to Beta until a business coalition, all recent immigrants, had rammed through a change in the law a few years earlier.

      The murder victim, a young woman, was found naked, tied up hanging from the ceiling. The cops had cut her down, against procedure. Bester has Stesco usher his people out so they can talk privately. While Stesco's doing that, Bester gets more details from Lyta. The victim's eyes were gouged out, her mouth was sewn shut and her ears plugged with a fast-hardening epoxy. The cause of death was suffocation - the killer had pinched her nose shut, probably repeatedly. The same M.O. was followed in all the killings, except for the two Psi Cops, which were only slightly different.

      When Stesco returns, Bester unceremoniously fugues him and gives him a midlevel scan, followed by an adjustment to prevent him from remembering any of it. Bringing him back to his senses, Bester sends Stesco away. Lyta is horrified. Bester tells her he believed in following the book when he was young too, but sometimes now he puts justice over procedure. And he learned that Stesco isn't the killer, doesn't know who he is, and doesn't want to know, because whoever he is, he's doing the colony a favor. But he does know something he hasn't told the Corps - he suspects there was a related killing a week ago, of a mundane named Jack Finn.

      Lyta tells Bester that the killer was almost caught the first time - the victim's security system had sent out a call, but it was answered too late. Since then, he seems to have found a way to bypass security.

      Lyta receives a call from the station chief, Anne Mallory, who would like to meet with Bester at his earliest convenience. Bester is delighted - she's a former colleague - and he and Lyta go directly to the station.

      Mallory is apologetic that she can't spare anyone other than Lyta to escort him around, and she's surprised that Bester brought none of his people along. They discuss the killings of the two cops. They were a quickie version of the others, with tape and glue substituted for the sewing. And Bester has seen another detail in the reports - all the victims' other bodily orifices were also sewn shut, or epoxied in the case of the cops. He figures it has something to do with the killer's religious beliefs. He asks Anne to arrange interviews with the last victim's houseboy, maid, and cook.

      After the meeting, Lyta takes Bester to her hotel. He'll take a room there because there's no Corps dormitory. Everyone except Lyta lives in private homes.

      In his room, Bester downloads a record of the investigation so far and gets into the hot tub to relax from the effects of Beta's high gravity. He reads that all the victims, except the cops, were business teeps - logical, because of their accessibility to normals - and they had all been killed in their homes. Checks of acquaintances and business dealings had developed no real common threads.

      To clear his mind, Bester decides to just "listen" to the city - and finds there's nothing. Then he realizes his physical reactions are dulled, and tries to climb out of the tub. And then a man in a black hood steps into the bathroom.

Chapter 4 (p. 225) The man raises what Bester guesses is a Narn hunting pistol. He's in no hurry, giving Bester a chance to raise his PPG out of the tub and fire. The first shot blasts the dripping water away from the PPG and misses the man, but the second shot is true and blasts his shoulder, while a dart from the pistol splats against the tile of the wall. Bester hurries out of the tub, lest the poison in the dart enter through his skin.

      Bester is unable to read the man. He guesses that something like sleepers had been put into the bath. He intends to interrogate the man as soon as his head clears, but the man needs medical attention. As he starts to call for help, the man moves - and manages to jump over the balcony to his death. Bester calls Lyta for help.

      Next morning Bester and Lyta have breakfast as they discuss the case. The killer, going under the name of Koste, wasn't the Blinder. From the partial trail they had established, it was clear that he was a professional assassin, but his assignment had been to make Bester's death look like the Blinder's work.

      Lyta reports what they've found about Jack Finn. He was simply stabbed to death, but he was in charge of monitoring information and power flows in the city, and he was an Adamist, as are half the population of Beta - which makes him another teep-hater. Bester deduces that Finn would have been a prime suspect if not for his death, since he had access to all the city's security systems.

      Looking at the investigation reports, Bester asks about the two cops. They were killed in their homes the same night, and the quickie versions of the ritual might be explained if the killer needed to be done by an arbitrary deadline. He assigns Lyta the task of trying to come up with some kind of pattern in the times of death.

      Bester conducts the "questioning" of the last victim's servants while Lyta sits with her notepad, undoubtedly working on the time-of-death problem and pretending she doesn't know what Bester is doing. Anne helps with Bester's task. Bester gets what they know and erases their memory of the scan. Unfortunately, they don't know anything useful about the murder.

      That afternoon Lyta comes up with a result. Beta's day is 2.5 hours shorter than Earth's. By Earth Standard Time, all the murders took place between midnight and 1:00 AM - the witching hour.

      Bester figures out that Finn was helping the killer, but he wasn't an accomplice as such. He just noticed the pattern much sooner and arranged for the security systems citywide to drop out for a minute at midnight EST - long enough for the killer to get into a victim's house. This wouldn't be reported by business security systems, which compensate for being offline. Home systems aren't smart enough to know they're offline. The killer found out about Finn because - Finn must have bragged to someone.

      Bester decides it's time to see Captain Stesco again.

Chapter 5 (p. 232) "He'll need to be cleaned up this time," Bester says to Lyta, who feels ill looking at Stesco's trembling body. Bester phones Anne and invites her for a drink.

      The three telepaths enter the Adamite bar. Bester tells the thirty or so glowering patrons that they are surrounded and will be interviewed in the back room, one at a time. Bester and Anne take turns scanning the interviewees, until the sixth, when Bester asks Lyta firmly to do one. He wants her to be fully invested in this business. She complies, and Bester even helps her with it. Number eight pulls a PPG as soon as he enters the room. He's the man, and Bester freezes him while Lyta removes his gun and Anne handcuffs him. Lyta assumes they'll turn him over to the regular Earth authorities, but Bester points out that every scrap of evidence they have was obtained through illegal scans. He has other plans for this person.

      Later, Lyta is still outraged with what's been done to the killer [see the episode "The Face of the Enemy"]. She's applied for a transfer to business work. He tells her that she'll eventually understand, but she disagrees. Bester wonders briefly whether Lyta, not Koste, might be Johnston's real agent against him - she could ruin him by talking about what they've done - but he decides she's probably not.

Chapter 6 (p. 237) Bester, in his Black Omega Starfury, waits for another ship to arrive at an asteroid, one honeycombed with abandoned mining tunnels that he has been using occasionally for his own purposes. The ship arrives and disappears inside the asteroid, and Bester follows it in. Inside, he finds a young man tied up attended by two of his own men.

      Bester questions the young man, first trying to convince him that the Director's people for whom he's been working are the betrayers of the Psi Corps. He asks about the ship found on Mars, the one that had been taken away by a sister ship. He finds out that the ship was tracked to a rim world called Alpha Omega 3, and that they plan to send an archaeological team out there to follow up. Scanning the boy, Bester finds he wasn't lying, and he's able to fill in a few more details - faces of the cabal.

      The young man is on leave with two weeks to go, so Bester orders him "rebuilt" with appropriate memories of a pleasant vacation, and then released. But they are to leave Bester a key to get back in if they need him later.

      Bester congratulates his team, giving Ms. Donne praise for her good work. He asks if his "appointment" is arranged, and she assures him that he'll be pleased. He tells her they need more intel on what's happening inside IPX and they need to get someone on the expedition ship. She says she'll arrange it [see The Shadow Within].

      Bester leaves to rendezvous with his transport. After coming aboard, he has a conversation with a protégé named Byron, discussing the works of Ayn Rand, which Bester has assigned him to read. Then he settles down to the hunt for a blip that served as cover for his rendezvous at the asteroid, and then reads a report from Donne on the Icarus expedition that is being planned. He notes the name of Captain Hidalgo with satisfaction - the man owes him some favors. Some weeks to go before the crew are actually assigned, giving him time to concentrate on the hunt and on his coming "appointment".

Chapter 7 (p. 244) Eight hours from intercept with the blip, Bester tells Byron he's ready to go out on this one. Byron's not so sure. Bester shows him the movie Rashomon as an object lesson.

      Tapia Ysidra, Bester, and Byron are alone on the bridge, watching Jupiter as they approach. Ysidra is tracking the blip's ship optically - the planet's EM radiation serves as a screen against sensors. Bester has Byron try to touch their quarry at long range through the telescope, but he can't detect anything. Bester says long distance line of sight is tricky; Byron shouldn't worry about it.

      They close in on the ship, a fifty-year-old tug. It fires its two missiles at them, but they knock them out without difficulty. Then it fires a mining laser at them. They shoot a beam at the laser, knocking it out. Then they take to their 'Furies and grapple the ship. Neither Byron nor Bester can feel the blip inside. Bester decides to be cautious and order Tapia to contact the agent who planted the tracer on the ship. They need the ID number and configuration of the ship he wired. It turns out he's been missing for two days.

      Bester suddenly orders Byron and Tapia to move away from the ship, and he hits his own engines. The explosion of the tug leaves his 'Fury a wreck, and Byron loses two engines, but Tapia, in the transport, is okay with minor damage. Bester jettisons and waits for Tapia to send someone after him.

      While he waits, he explains that the blip was never in the ship. It was a deathtrap set for them. Byron is indignantly furious at the viciousness of the rogues. Bester is privately amused; after all, there's a small chance that it was rogues who had set the trap.

      Their transport approaches the ice moon Ganymede. They contact the secret Psi Corps base for clearance to land, using their battle damage as justification. When they debark, the base commander, a Mr. Drew, bids them "Welcome to the Ice House," although he's clearly not thrilled to have these visitors. Drew is preparing tea when a civilian enters the room from the opposite end. His name is Morden, an archaeolinguist, who is with Earthforce, not Psi Corps, and in response to Bester's question says he doesn't yet know why he's there. But they are expecting visitors, though not Bester and crew. When Bester asks who, Drew simply says it's classified.

      Bester is almost asleep when four guards burst in armed with PPG rifles and take him out.

Chapter 8 (p. 254) In Bester's mind, for a moment he's a six-year-old being brought by the Grins to Director Vacit again. In the present, he's brought before Director Johnston, flanked by his two personal teeps. Johnston asks, "What are you doing here?" Bester replies that the answer depends on what Johnston means by the question. In one sense, why are any of us here, or are we really here at all? Or, he's here because Johnston's men just hauled him here. Or, he's here in this part of space because of a hunt that is well documented. But he thinks the real question is, why are you here alive when you're supposed to be dead?

      Johnston says Bester is a fool if he believes the last and still came here. Johnston intends to kill Bester and break his crew. Bester intends to talk. Johnston orders his two personal guards to kill Bester, but Bester simply says two words, Hugin and Munin, as he 'casts key glyphs into the guards' minds. Far from obeying Johnston, they step back. Hugin and Munin, explains Bester, are Odin's two ravens. Johnston is unpleasantly surprised, but says the guards outside will get Bester. Bester is apologetic that they won't. He's just killed them. "Hugin" then shoots carefully into Bester's thigh and "Munin" steps to the wall behind Johnston and explodes, blowing out the wall and melting a large amount of the ice beyond, which then cascades into the room while Bester falls through the door. It seals behind him, and Bester is on the floor in several inches of icy water. Drew helps him up as Bester begs for help for the Director - too late, unfortunately.

      Later, Byron can't understand how those rogues got in and managed to murder the Director, but he's glad that Bester survived.

      Donne calls in and asks if the appointment went well. Very well, Bester replies. She has a report. An Anna Sheridan was experimenting with some alien artifacts and called in a business teep named Terrence Hilliard to scan it. His brains turned to jelly, she says, and so did those of every low-level teep within three miles. Bester orders the artifacts confiscated and orders Donne onto the expedition. She's proud and excited to take the assignment. Bester cautions her to keep her "personal satisfactions" in check. [See The Shadow Within]. A half-hour later he receives a message that cheers him up.

      He says this time he wants a real show of force. He has a full complement of seven Starfuries, and he'll take them all on this one. They'll keep the transport at a safe distance and force them to send out the blips in a life pod.

      Proudly he watches his 'Furies take their positions around the fugitive ship. He invites Byron to do the honors, and Byron orders the ship to send out the telepaths. Unarmed, they comply promptly. Then Bester orders Byron to destroy the ship, and backs up his demand with the rest of his men, who target Byron's 'Fury. To save his own life, Byron finally fires on the ship. Bester is proud of his protégé. [See the episode Phoenix Rising].

Epilogue (p. 264) Kelsey has bad news for Bester. Byron was lost in a fight with rogues over Venus. It's known from telemetry that one of his fuel nacelles was hit, then he spun out of control and disappeared from the view of the other Starfuries over the planetary horizon. His last known trajectory suggests he went down onto the planet - sure death.

      From the transmissions from the Icarus they'd hijacked from IPX, they conclude the ship is lost with all hands. That means Donne is gone too.

      Bester is holding new orders - a hunt for one Jason Ironheart, last known headed for Babylon 5 [see the episode Mind War]. Well, he's never been there before. Maybe a hunt is just what he needs to get his mind off his losses. Outside his window, he sees a dust storm brewing and he hears the shriek of the Martian wind.

"Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant" synopsis © 2001 Richard Heider. Do not reproduce without author's express permission.