Read Online Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester by J. Gregory Keyes - Free Book Online

don’t like bullies. I don’t like being told what to do.”
    “I suppose you don’t. You were in the war, weren’t you?”
    He froze, uncertain what to say. Which war did she mean?
    “Yes,” he finally settled on.
    “I thought so. You have a way about you. I think you have already seen the worst thing you could ever see, and it ate all of the fear in you. And maybe more than your fear.”
    She looked up at him, but he didn’t think she was expecting an answer.
    “Have you ever been in love, Mr. Kaufman?”
    “Yes.”
    “What happened to her?”
    “Nothing I want to talk about.”
    “I was in love, once. Crazy, stupid in love. Now all I have is a broken-down hotel.”
    She picked at the table.
    “He left me. See, that is none of your business, but I tell you anyway. I don’t know why-the wine, maybe. He left me with my debt, and my empty room, and he left me with no notions of love whatsoever. I no longer believe in it, I think. Is that what happened with you? Did you leave her? Are you hiding from your old life?”
    Bester nearly echoed that it wasn’t her business, but instead, he sighed.
    “No,” he said, remembering Carolyn the last time he had seen her alive and conscious, wired and meshed with Shadow technology.
    Worse than dead. But he hadn’t left her.
    “No, I tried everything I could to be with her. I… went to great lengths.”
    He smiled briefly.
    “It just didn’t work out.”
    He remembered what was left of Carolyn, after a rogue terrorist had bombed the facility. Remembered how angry he had been, because he had promised her that he would make things all right. But putting a shattered body back together was quite different from rebuilding a psyche. Some promises shouldn’t be made, because they couldn’t be kept.
    “No,” he repeated, softly, “it didn’t work out.”
    Because of Byron. Because of Lyta. And most of all, because of Garibaldi, whose engineers had doubtless built the weapon that had killed his love.
    “Yes, well, that’s life, isn’t it?” she said.
    “It doesn’t work out. We grow old, we die. The universe doesn’t care.”
    “You’ve had too much wine.”
    “I haven’t had enough. Did you know I wanted to be a painter? I studied at the Paris Academy d’Art. I was very serious about it, but I gave it up. For love. For this.”
    She swept her hands disgustedly around the room. He sat silent, gripped by the unaccustomed feeling of not knowing what to say.
    “You still paint?”
    “Hmm. Yes. Walls and doors, mostly. This room most recently. Do you think it needs a new coat of black?”
    She indicated the film of carbon that coated the once-white walls.
    “I think you should go to bed and think more clearly about it later. And I think I should do the same.”
    “I would prefer to sit here and feel sorry for myself for another day or so. Would you care to sit with me? You seem to feel at least as sorry for yourself as I do.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Your every word and expression. The way you study things.”
    She frowned.
    “Except the other day in the square, when that man drew you. You were different, then. What was different? What occurred to you”
    Again, he tried to think of something to say. Because he knew what the painter had seen in his eyes. He had seen Louise.
    “I don’t remember,” he answered.
    She shot him a skeptical glance, but didn’t dispute him.
    “I got a job,” he offered.
    “Really.”
    “Yes. As a literary critic.”
    “That’s a strange job for someone who was in your line of work. Your papers say you were a salesman.”
    “A boyhood dream. I’m retired, and now it’s time to live out my fantasies, I suppose. Live in Paris, write.”
    “Well, Mr. Kaufman. Welcome to your fantasy.” She hesitated.
    “This writing job. Is it full time?”
    “No.”
    “How would you like free rent for a while?”
    “That depends, of course.”
    “Help me clean up this mess. I’ll pay you a day an hour. It’s a good