Alfred Bester
The Demolished Man
1951
* * *
1
EXPLOSION! CONCUSSION! The vault doors burst open. And deep inside, the money is racked ready for pillage, rapine, loot. Who's that? Who's inside the vault? Oh God! The Man With No Face! Looking. Looming. Silent. Horrible. Run... Run...
Run, or I'll miss the Paris Pneumatique and that exquisite girl with her flower face and figure of passion. There's time if I run. But that isn't the Guard before the gate. Oh Christ! The Man With No Face. Looking. Looming. Silent. Don't scream. Stop screaming...
But I'm not screaming. I'm singing on a stage of sparkling marble while the music soars and the lights burn. But there's no one out there in the amphitheater. A great shadowed pit... empty except for one spectator. Silent. Staring. Looming. The Man With No Face.
And this time his scream had sound.
Ben Reich awoke.
He lay quietly in the hydropathic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on things in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-clock that radiated the time of three planets and six satellites, the bed itself, a crystal pool flowing with carbonated glycerine at ninety-nine point nine Fahrenheit.
The door opened softly and Jonas appeared in the gloom, a shadow in a puce sleeping suit, a shade with the face of a horse and the bearing of an undertaker.
"Again?" Reich asked.
"Yes, Mr. Reich."
"Loud?"
"Very loud, sir. And terrified."
"God damn your jackass cars," Reich growled. "I'm never afraid."
"No, sir."
"Get out."
"Yes, sir. Good night, sir." Jonas stepped back and closed the door.
Reich shouted: "Jonas!"
The valet reappeared.
"Sorry, Jonas."
"Quite all right, sir."
"It isn't all right," Reich charmed him with a smile. "I'm treating you like a relative. I don't pay enough for the privilege."
"Oh no, sir."
"Next time I yell at you, yell right back. Why should I have all the fun?"
"Oh, Mr. Reich..."
"Do that and you get a raise." The smile again.
"That's all, Jonas. Thank you."
"Thank you, sir." The valet withdrew.
Reich arose from the bed and toweled himself before the cheval mirror, practicing the smile. "Make your enemies by choice," he muttered, "not by accident." He stared at the reflection: the heavy shoulders, narrow flanks, long corded legs... the sleek head with wide eyes, chiseled nose, small sensitive mouth scarred by implacability.
"Why?" he asked. "I wouldn't change looks with the devil. I wouldn't change places with God. Why the screaming?"
He put on a gown and glanced at the clock, unaware that he was noting the time panorama of the solar system with an unconscious skill that would have baffled his ancestors. The dials read:
A.D. 2301
VENUS EARTH MARS
Mean Solar Day 22 February 15 Duodecember 35
Noon + 09 0205 Greenwich 2220 Central Syrtis
MOON IO GANYMEDE CALLISTO TITAN TRITON
2D3H 1D1H 6D8H 13D12H 15D3H 4D9H
(eclipsed) (transit)
Night, noon, summer, winter... without bothering to think, Reich could have rattled off the time and season for any meridian on any body in the solar system. Here in New York it was a bitter morning after a bitter night of dreaming. He would give himself a few minutes of analysis with the Esper psychiatrist he retained. The screaming had to stop.
"E for Esper," he muttered. "Esper for Extra Sensory Perception... For Telepaths, Mind Readers, Brain Peepers. You'd think a mind-reading doctor could stop the screaming. You'd think an Esper M.D. would earn his money and peep inside your head and stop the screaming. Those damned mindreaders are supposed to be the greatest advance since Homo sapiens evolved. E for Evolution. Bastards! E for Exploitation!"
He yanked open the door, shaking with fury.
"But I'm not afraid!" he shouted. "I'm never afraid."
He stepped down the corridor, clacking his sandals sharply on the silver floor, ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat, indifferent to the slumber of his house staff, unaware that this early morning skeletal clack awakened twelve hearts to hatred and dread. He thrust open the door of his analyst's suite, entered and at once lay down on the couch.
Carson Breen, Esper Medical Doctor 2, was already awake and ready for him. As Reich's staff analyst he slept the "nurse's sleep" in which he remained en rapport with his patient and could only be awakened by his needs. That one scream had been enough for Breen. Now he was seated alongside the couch, elegant in embroidered gown (his job paid twenty thousand credits a year) and sharply alert (his employer was generous but demanding).
"Go ahead, Mr. Reich."
"The Man With No Face again," Reich growled.
"Nightmares?"
"You lousy blood-sucker, peep me and find out. No. Sorry. Childish of me. Yes, nightmares again. I was trying to rob a bank. Then I was trying to catch a train. Then someone was singing. Me, I think. I'm trying to give you the pictures best I can. I don't think I'm leaving anything out..." There was a long pause. Finally Reich blurted: "Well? You peep anything?"
"You persist that you cannot identify The Man With No Face, Mr. Reich?"
"How can I? I never see it. All I know is..."
"I think you can. You simply will not."
"Listen," Reich burst out in guilty rage. "I pay you twenty thousand. If the best you can do is make idiotic statements..."
"Do you mean that, Mr. Reich, or is it simply a part of the general anxiety syndrome?"
"There is no anxiety," Reich shouted. "I'm not afraid. I'm never..." He stopped himself, realizing the inutility of ranting while the deft mind of the peeper searched underneath his overturning words. "You're wrong anyway," he said sulkily. "I don't know who it is. It's a Man With No Face. That's all."
"You've been rejecting the essential points, Mr. Reich. You must be made to see them. We'll try a little free association. Without words, please. Just think. Robbery...
"Jewels - watches - diamonds - stocks - bonds - sovereigns - counterfeiting - cash - bullion - dort..."
"What was that last again?"
"Slip of the mind. Meant to think bort... uncut, gem stones."
"It was not a slip. It was a significant correction or, rather, alteration. Let's continue. Pneumatique..."
"Long - car - compartments - air - conditioned... That doesn't make sense."
"It does, Mr. Reich. A phallic pun. Read 'Heir' for 'air' and you'll see it. Continue, please."
"You peepers are too damned smart. Let's see. Pneumatique... train - underground - compressed air - ultra sonic speed — 'We transport You Into transports,' slogan of the — What the devil is the name of that company? Can't remember. Where'd the notion come from anyway?"
"From the pre-conscious, Mr. Reich. One more trial and you'll begin to understand. Amphitheater...
"Seats - pits - balcony - boxes - stalls - horse stalls - Martian horses - Martian Pampas..."
"And there you have it, Mr. Reich. Mars. In the past six months, you've had ninety-seven nightmares about The Man With No Face. He's been your constant enemy, frustrator, and inspirer of terror in dreams that contain three common denominators... Finance, Transportation, and Mars. Over and over again... The Man With No Face, and Finance, Transportation, and Mars."
"That doesn't mean anything to me."
"It must mean something, Mr. Reich. You must be able to identify this terrifying figure. Why else would you attempt to escape by rejecting his f
ace?"
"I'm not rejecting anything."
"I offer as further clues the altered word 'Dort' and the forgotten name of the company that coined the slogan 'We Transport You Into — ' "
"I tell you I don't know who it is." Reich arose abruptly from the couch. "Your clues don't help. I can't make any identification."
"The Man With No Face does not fill you with fear because he's faceless. You know who he is. You hate him and fear him, but you know who he is."
"You're the peeper. You tell me."
"There's a limit to my ability, Mr. Reich. I can read your mind no deeper without help."
"What do you mean, help? You're the best E.M.D. I could hire. If..."
"You're neither thinking nor meaning that, Mr. Reich. You deliberately hired a 2nd Class Esper in order to protect yourself in such an emergency. Now you're paying the price of your caution. If you want the screaming to stop, you'll have to consult one of the 1st Class men... Say, Augustus Tate or Gart or Samuel @kins..."
"I'll think about it," Reich muttered and turned to go. As he opened the door, Breen called: "By the way... 'We Transport You Into Transports' is the slogan of the D'Courtney Cartel. How does that tie in with the alteration of 'bort' to 'dort'? Think it over."
"The Man With No Face!"
Without staggering, Reich slammed the door across the path from his mind to Breen and then lurched down the corridor toward his own suite. A wave of savage hatred burst over him. "He's right. It's D'Courtney who's giving me the screams. Not because I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of myself. Known all along. Known it deep down inside. Known that once I faced it I'd have to kill that D'Courtney bastard. It's no face because it's the face of murder."
* * *
Fully dressed and in his wrong mind, Reich stormed out of his apartment and descended to the street where a Monarch Jumper picked him up and carried him in one graceful hop to the giant tower that housed the hundreds of floors and thousands of employees of Monarch's New York Office. Monarch Tower was the central nervous system of an incredibly vast corporation, a pyramid of transportation, communication, heavy industry, manufacture, sales distribution, research, exploration, importation. Monarch Utilities & Resources, Inc. bought and sold, traded and gave, made and destroyed. Its pattern of subsidiaries and holding companies was so complex that it demanded the full-time services of a 2nd Class Esper Accountant to trace the labyrinthine flow of its finances.
Reich entered his office, followed by his chief (Esper 3) secretary and her staff, bearing the litter of the morning's work.
"Dump it and jet," he growled.
They deposited the papers and recording crystals on his desk and departed hastily but without rancor. They were accustomed to his rages. Reich seated himself behind his desk, trembling with a fury that was already goring D'Courtney. Finally he muttered: "I'll give the bastard one more chance."
He unlocked his desk, opened the drawer-safe and withdrew the Executive's Code Book, restricted to the executive heads of the firms listed quadruple A-1-* by Lloyds. He found most of the material he required in the middle pages of the book:
QQBA ........ PARTNERSHIP
RRCB ........ BOTH OUR
SSDC ........ BOTH YOUR
TTED ........ MERGER
UUFE ........ INTERESTS
VVGF ........ INFORMATION
WWHG ........ ACCEPT OFFER
XXJH ........ GENERALLY KNOWN
YYJI ........ SUGGEST
ZZXJ ........ CONFIDENTIAL
AALK ........ EQUAL
BBML ........ CONTRACT
Marking his place in the code book, Reich flipped the v-phone on and said to the image of the interoffice operator: "Get me Code."
The screen dazzled and cut to a smoky room cluttered with books and coils of tape. A bleached man in a faded shirt glanced at the screen, then leaped to attention.
"Yes, Mr. Reich?"
"Morning, Hassop. You look like you need a vacation." Make your enemies by choice. "Take a week at Spaceland. Monarch expense."
"Thank you, Mr. Reich. Thank you very much."
"This one's confidential. To Craye D'Courtney. Send..." Reich consulted the Code Book. "Send YYJI TTED RRCB UUFE AALK QQBA. Get the answer to me like rockets. Right?"
"Right, Mr. Reich. I'll jet."
Reich cut off the phone. He jabbed his hand once into the pile of papers and crystals on his desk, picked up a crystal and dropped it into the play-back. His chief secretary's voice said: "Monarch Gross off two points one one three four per cent. D'Courtney Gross up two point one one three oh per cent..."
"God damn him!" Reich growled. "Out of my pocket into his." He snapped off the play-back and arose in an agony of impatience. It would take hours for the reply to come. His whole life hung on D'Courtney's reply. He left his office and began to roam through the floors and departments of Monarch Tower, pretending the remorseless personal supervision he usually exercised. His Esper secretary unobtrusively accompanied him like a trained dog.
"Trained bitch!" Reich thought. Then aloud: "I'm sorry. Did you peep that?"
"Quite all right, Mr. Reich. I understand."
"Do you? I don't. Damn D'Courtney!"
In Personnel they were testing, checking, and screening the usual mass of job applicants... clerks, craftsmen, specialists, middle bracket executives, top echelon experts. All of the preliminary elimination was done with standardized tests and interviews, and never to the satisfaction of Monarch's Esper Personnel Chief who was stalking through the floor in an icy rage when Reich entered. The fact that Reich's secretary had sent an advance telepathic announcement of the visit made no difference to him.
"I have allotted ten minutes per applicant for my final screening interview," the Chief was snapping to an assistant. "Six per hour, forty-eight per day. Unless my percentage of final rejections drops below thirty-five, I am wasting my time; which means you are wasting Monarch's time. I am not employed by Monarch to screen out the obviously unsuitable. That is your work. See to it." He turned to Reich and nodded pedantically. "Good morning, Mr. Reich."
"Morning. Trouble?"
"Nothing that cannot be handled once this staff understands that Extra Sensory Perception is not a miracle but a skill subject to wage-hour limitations. And what is your decision on Blonn, Mr. Reich?"
Secretary: "He hasn't read your memo yet."
"May I point out, young woman, that unless I am used with maximum efficiency I am wasted. The Blonn memo has been on Mr. Reich's desk for three days."
"Who the hell is Blonn?" Reich asked.
"First, the background, Mr. Reich: There are approximately one hundred thousand (100,000) 3rd Class Espers in the Esper Guild. An Esper 3 can peep the conscious level of a mind — can discover what a subject is thinking at the moment of thought. A 3rd is the lowest class of telepath. Most of Monarch's security positions are held by 3rds. We employ over five hundred..."
"He knows all this. Everybody does. Get to the point, long-wind!"
"Permit me, if I may, to arrive at the point in my own way. Next, there are approximately ten thousand 2nd Class Espers in the Guild," the Personnel Chief continued frostily. "They are experts like myself who can penetrate beneath the conscious level of the mind to the preconscious. Most 2nds are in the professional class... physicians, lawyers, engineers, educators, economists, architects and so on."
"And you all cost a fortune," Reich growled.
"Why not? We have unique service to sell. Monarch appreciates the fact. Monarch employs over one hundred 2nds at present."
"Will you get to the point?"
"Finally there are less than a thousand 1st Class Espers in the Guild. The 1sts are capable of deep peeping, through the conscious and preconscious layers down to the unconscious... the lowest levels of the mind. Primordial basic desires and so forth. These, of course, hold premium positions. Education, specialized medical service... analysts like Tate, Gart, @kins, Moselle... criminologists like Lincoln Powell of the Psychotic Division...
Political Analysts, State Negotiators, Special Cabinet Advisors, and so on. Thus far Monarch Utilities has never had occasion to hire a 1st."
"And?" Reich muttered.
"The occasion has arisen, Mr. Reich, and I believe Blonn may be available. Briefly..."
"It says here."
"Briefly, Mr. Reich, Monarch is hiring so many Espers that I have suggested we set up a special Esper Personnel Department, headed by a 1st like Blonn, to devote itself exclusively to interviewing telepaths."
"He's wondering why you can't handle it."
"I have given you the background to explain why I cannot handle the job, Mr. Reich. I am a 2nd Class Esper. I can telepath normal applicants rapidly and efficiently, but I cannot handle other Espers with the same speed and economy. All Espers are accustomed to using mind-blocks of varying effectiveness depending on their rating. It would take me one hour per 3rd for an efficient screening interview. It would take me three hours per 2nd. I could not possibly peep through the mind-block of a 1st. We must hire a 1st like Blonn for this work. The cost will be enormous, of course, but the necessity is urgent."
"What's so urgent?" Reich said.
"For heaven's sake! Don't give him that picture! That isn't diversion. It's waving a red flag. He's sore enough now."
"I have my job to do, Madam." To Reich, the Chief said: "The fact is, sir, we are not hiring the best Espers. The D'Courtney Cartel has been taking the cream of the Espers away from us. Over and over again, through lack of proper facilities, we have been mouse-trapped by D'Courtney into bidding for inferior people while D'Courtney has quietly appropriated the best."
"Damn you!" Reich shouted. "Damn D'Courtney. All right. Set it up. And tell this Blonn to start mouse-trapping D'Courtney. You'd better start, too."
Reich tore out of Personnel and over to Sales-city. The same unpleasant information was waiting for him. Monarch Utilities & Resources was losing the gut-fight with the D'Courtney Cartel. It was losing the fight in every sector-city — Advertising, Engineering, Research, Public Relations. There was no escaping the certainty of defeat. Reich knew his back was to the wall.