Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

  “Maybe Joe was right,” Warbeck complained in Herod’s office. “Maybe the boy is a thief-genius. How did he think of everything? How did he get at every paper and destroy it? Did he break and enter? Bribe? Burgle? Threaten? How did he do it?”

  “We’ll ask him when we get to him,” Herod said grimly. “All right. The kid’s licked us straight down the line. He hasn’t forgotten a trick. But I’ve got one angle I’ve been saving. Let’s go up and see the janitor of their building.”

  “I questioned him months ago,” Warbeck objected. “He remembers the family in a vague way and that’s all. He doesn’t know where they went.”

  “He knows something else, something the kid wouldn’t think of covering. Let’s go get it.”

  They drove up to Washington Heights and descended upon Mr. Jacob Ruysdale at dinner in the basement apartment of the building. Mr. Ruysdale disliked being separated from his liver and onions, but was persuaded by five dollars.

  “About that Buchanan family,” Herod began.

  “I told him everything before,” Ruysdale broke in, pointing to Warbeck.

  “All right. He forgot to ask one question. Can I ask it now?” Ruysdale reexamined the five-dollar bill and nodded.

  “When anybody moves in or out of a building, the superintendent usually takes down the name of the movers in case they damage the building. I’m a lawyer. I know this. It’s to protect the building in case suit has to be brought. Right?”

  Ruysdale’s face lit up. “By Godfrey!” he said. “That’s right, I forgot all about it. He never asked me.”

  “He didn’t know. You’ve got the name of the company that moved the Buchanans out. Right?”

  Ruysdale ran across the room to a cluttered bookshelf. He withdrew a tattered journal and flipped it open. He wet his fingers and turned pages.

  “Here it is,” he said. “The Avon Moving Company. Truck No. G-4.”

  The Avon Moving Company had no record of the removal of a Buchanan family from an apartment in Washington Heights. “The kid was pretty careful at that,” Herod murmured. But it did have a record of the men working truck G-4 on that day. The men were interviewed when they checked in at closing time. Their memories were refreshed with whiskey and cash. They recalled the Washington Heights job vaguely. It was a full day’s work because they had to drive the hell and gone to Brooklyn. “Oh God! Brooklyn!” Warbeck muttered. What address in Brooklyn? Something on Maple Park Row. Number? The number could not be recalled.

  “Joe, buy a map.”

  They examined the street map of Brooklyn and located Maple Park Row. It was indeed the hell and gone out of civilization and was twelve blocks long. “That’s Brooklyn blocks,” Joe grunted. “Twice as long as anywhere. I know.”

  Herod shrugged. “We’re close,” he said. “The rest will have to be legwork. Four blocks apiece. Cover every house, every apartment. List every kid around ten. Then Warbeck can check them, if they’re under an alias.”

  “There’s a million kids a square inch in Brooklyn,” Joe protested.

  “There’s a million dollars a day in it for us if we find him. Now let’s go.”

  Maple Park Row was a long, crooked street lined with five-story apartment houses. Its sidewalks were lined with baby carriages and old ladies on camp chairs. Its curbs were lined with parked cars. Its gutter was lined with crude whitewash stickball courts shaped like elongated diamonds. Every manhole cover was a home plate.

  “It’s just like the Bronx,” Joe said nostalgically. “I ain’t been home to the Bronx in ten years.”

  He wandered sadly down the street toward his sector, automatically threading his way through stickball games with the unconscious skill of the city-born. Warbeck remembered that departure sympathetically because Joe Davenport never returned.

  The first day, he and Herod imagined Joe had found a hot lead. This encouraged them. The second day they realized no heat could keep Joe on the fire for forty-eight hours. This depressed them. On the third day they had to face the truth.

  “He’s dead,” Herod said flatly. “The kid got him.”

  “How?”

  “He killed him.”

  “A ten-year-old boy? A child?”

  “You want to know what kind of genius Stuart Buchanan has, don’t you? I’m telling you.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Then explain Joe.”

  “He quit.”

  “Not on a million dollars.”

  “But where’s the body?”

  “Ask the kid. He’s the genius. He’s probably figured out tricks that would baffle Dick Tracy.”

  “How did he kill him?”

  “Ask the kid. He’s the genius.”

  “Herod, I’m scared.”

  “So am I. Do you want to quit now?”

  “I don’t see how we can. If the boy’s dangerous, we’ve got to find him.”

  “Civic virtue, heh?”

  “Call it that.”

  “Well, I’m still thinking about the money.”

  They returned to Maple Park Row and Joe Davenport’s four-block sector. They were cautious, almost furtive. They separated and began working from each end toward the middle; in one house, up the stairs, apartment by apartment, to the top, then down again to investigate the next building. It was slow, tedious work. Occasionally they glimpsed each other far down the street, crossing from one dismal building to another. And that was the last glimpse Warbeck ever had of Walter Herod.

  He sat in his car and waited. He sat in his car and trembled. “I’ll go to the police,” he muttered, knowing perfectly well he could not. “The boy has a weapon. Something he invented. Something silly like the others. A special light so he can play marbles at night, only it murders men. A machine to play checkers, only it hypnotizes men. He’s invented a robot mob of gangsters so he can play cops-and-robbers and they took care of Joe and Herod. He’s a child genius. Dangerous. Deadly. What am I going to do?”

  The doomed man got out of the car and stumbled down the street toward Herod’s half of the sector. “What’s going to happen when Stuart Buchanan grows up?” he wondered. “What’s going to happen when all the rest of them grow up? Tommy and George and Anne-Marie and lazy Ethel? Why don’t I start running away now? What am I doing here?”

  It was dusk on Maple Park Row. The old ladies had withdrawn, folding their camp chairs like Arabs. The parked cars remained. The stickball games were over, but small games were starting under the glowing lamp posts … games with bottle caps and cards and battered pennies. Overhead, the purple city haze was deepening, and through it the sharp sparkle of Venus following the sun below the horizon could be seen.

  “He must know his power,” Warbeck muttered angrily. “He must know how dangerous he is. That’s why he’s running away. Guilt. That’s why he destroys us, one by one, smiling to himself, a crafty child, a vicious, killing genius… .”

  Warbeck stopped in the middle of Maple Park Row.

  “Buchanan!” he shouted. “Stuart Buchanan!”

  The kids near him stopped their games and gaped.

  “Stuart Buchanan!” Warbeck’s voice cracked hysterically. “Can you hear me?”

  His wild voice carried farther down the street. More games stopped. Ringaleevio, Chinese tag, Red-Light, and Boxball.

  “Buchanan!” Warbeck screamed. “Stuart Buchanan! Come out come out, wherever you are!”

  The world hung motionless.

  In the alley between 217 and 219 Maple Park Row playing hide-and-seek behind piled ash barrels, Stuart Buchanan heard his name and crouched lower. He was aged ten, dressed in sweater, jeans, and sneakers. He was intent and determined that he was not going to be caught out “it” again. He was going to hide until he could make a dash for home-free in safety. As he settled comfortably among the ashcans, his eye caught the glimmer of Venus low in the western sky.

  “Star light, star bright,” he whispered in all innocence, “first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, grant me
the wish I wish tonight.” He paused and considered. Then he wished. “God bless Mom and Pop and me and all my friends and make me a good boy and please let me be always happy and I wish that anybody who tries to bother me would go away … a long way away … and leave me alone forever.”

  In the middle of Maple Park Row, Marion Perkin Warbeck stepped forward and drew breath for another hysterical yell. And then he was elsewhere, going away on a road that was a long way away. It was a straight white road cleaving infinitely through blackness, stretching onward and onward into forever; a dreary, lonely, endless road leading away and away and away.

  Down that road Warbeck plodded, an astonished automaton, unable to speak, unable to stop, unable to think in the timeless infinity. Onward and onward he walked into a long way away, unable to turn back. Ahead of him he saw the minute specks of figures trapped on that one-way road forever. There was a dot that had to be Herod. Ahead of Herod there was a mote that was Joe Davenport. And ahead of Joe he could make out a long dwindling chain of mites. He turned once with a convulsive effort. Behind him, dim and distant, a figure was plodding, and behind that another abruptly materialized, and another … and another… .

  While Stuart Buchanan crouched behind the ash barrels and watched alertly for the “it.” He was unaware that he had disposed of Warbeck. He was unaware that he had disposed of Herod, Joe Davenport and scores of others.

  He was unaware that he had induced his parents to flee Washington Heights, that he had destroyed papers and documents, memories and people, in his simple desire to be left alone. He was unaware that he was a genius.

  His genius was for wishing.

  5,271,009

  Take two parts of Beelzebub, two of Israfel, one of Monte Cristo, one of Cyrano, mix violently, season with mystery and you have Mr. Solon Aquila. He is tall, gaunt, sprightly in manner, bitter in expression, and when he laughs his dark eyes turn into wounds. His occupation is unknown. He is wealthy without visible means of support. He is seen everywhere and understood nowhere. There is something odd about his life.

  This is what’s odd about Mr. Aquila, and you can make what you will of it. When he walks he is never forced to wait on a traffic signal. When he desires to ride there is always a vacant taxi on hand. When he bustles into his hotel an elevator always happens to be waiting. When he enters a store, a salesclerk is always free to serve him. There always happens to be a table available for Mr. Aquila in restaurants. There are always last-minute ticket returns when he craves entertainment at sold-out shows.

  You can question waiters, hack drivers, elevator girls, salesmen, box-office men. There is no conspiracy. Mr. Aquila does not bribe or blackmail for these petty conveniences. In any case, it would not be possible for him to bribe or blackmail the automatic clock that governs the city traffic signal system. These things, which make life so convenient for him, simply happen. Mr. Solon Aquila is never disappointed. Presently we shall hear about his first disappointment and see what it led to.

  Mr. Aquila has been seen fraternizing in low saloons, in middle saloons, in high saloons. He has been met in bagnios, at coronations, executions, circuses, magistrates’ courts, and handbook offices. He has been known to buy antique cars, historic jewels, incunabula, pornography, chemicals, porro prisms, polo ponies, and full-choke shotguns.

  “HimmelHerrGottSeiDank! I’m crazy, man, crazy. Eclectic, by God,” he told a flabbergasted department-store president. “The Weltmann type, nicht wahr? My ideal: Goethe. Tout le monde. God damn.”

  He spoke a spectacular tongue of mixed metaphors and meanings. Dozens of languages and dialects came out in machine-gun bursts. Apparently he also lied ad libitum.

  “Sacré bleu, Jeez!” he was heard to say once. “Aquila from the Latin. Means aquiline. O tempora, o mores. Speech by Cicero. My ancestor.”

  And another time: “My idol: Kipling. Took my name from him. Aquila, one of his heroes. God damn. Greatest Negro writer since Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

  On the morning that Mr. Solon Aquila was stunned by his first disappointment, he bustled into the atelier of Lagan & Derelict, dealers in paintings, sculpture, and rare objects of art. It was his intention to buy a painting. Mr. James Derelict knew Aquila as a client. Aquila had already purchased a Frederick Remington and a Winslow Homer some time ago when, by another odd coincidence, he had bounced into the Madison Avenue shop one minute after the coveted paintings went up for sale. Mr. Derelict had also seen Mr. Aquila boat a prize striper at Montauk.

  “Bon soir, bel esprit, God damn, Jimmy,” Mr. Aquila said. He was on first-name terms with everyone. “Here’s a cool day for color, oui! Cool. Slang. I have in me to buy a picture.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Aquila” Derelict answered. He had the seamed face of a cardsharp, but his blue eyes were honest and his smile was disarming. However, at this moment his smile seemed strained, as though the volatile appearance of Aquila had unnerved him.

  “I’m in the mood for your man, by Jeez,” Aquila said, rapidly opening cases, fingering ivories, and tasting the porcelains. “What’s his name, my old? Artist like Bosch. Like Heinrich Kley. You handle him, parbleu, exclusive. O si sic omnia, by Zeus!”

  “Jeffrey Halsyon?” Derelict asked timidly.

  “Oeil de boeuf!” Aquila cried. “What a memory. Chryselephantine. Exactly the artist I want. He is my favorite. A monochrome, preferably. A small Jeffrey Halsyon for Aquila, bitte. Wrap her up.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it,” Derelict muttered.

  “Ah! Ah-ha? This is not 100 proof guaranteed Ming,” Mr. Aquila exclaimed, brandishing an exquisite vase. “Caveat emptor, by damn. Well, Jimmy? I snap my fingers. No Halsyons in stock, old faithful?”

  “It’s extremely odd, Mr. Aquila.” Derelict seemed to struggle with himself. “Your coming in like this. A Halsyon monochrome arrived not five minutes ago.”

  “You see? Tempo ist Richtung. Well?”

  “I’d rather not show it to you. For personal reasons, Mr. Aquila.”

  “HimmelHerrGott! Pourquoi? She’s bespoke?”

  “N-no, sir. Not for my personal reasons. For your personal reasons.”

  “Oh? God damn. Explain myself to me.”

  “Anyway, it isn’t for sale, Mr. Aquila. It can’t be sold.”

  “For why not? Speak, old fish and chips.”

  “I can’t say, Mr. Aquila.”

  “Zut alors! Must I judo your arm, Jimmy? You can’t show. You can’t sell. Me, internally, I have pressurized myself for a Jeffrey Halsyon. My favorite. God damn. Show me the Halsyon or sic transit gloria mundi. You hear me, Jimmy?”

  Derelict hesitated, then shrugged. “Very well, Mr. Aquila. I’ll show you.”

  Derelict led Aquila past cases of china and silver, past lacquer and bronzes and suits of shimmering armor to the gallery in the rear of the shop where dozens of paintings hung on the gray velour walls, glowing under warm spotlights. He opened a drawer in a Goddard breakfront and took out an envelope. On the envelope was printed BABYLON INSTITUTE. From the envelope Derelict withdrew a dollar bill and handed it to Mr. Aquila.

  “Jeffrey Halsyon’s latest,” he said.

  With a fine pen and carbon ink, a cunning hand had drawn another portrait over the face of George Washington on the dollar bill. It was a hateful, diabolic face set in a hellish background. It was a face to strike terror, in a scene to inspire loathing. The face was a portrait of Mr. Aquila.

  “God damn,” Mr. Aquila said.

  “You see, sir? I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  “Now I must own him, big boy.” Mr. Aquila appeared to be fascinated by the portrait. “Is she accident or for purpose? Does Halsyon know myself? Ergo sum.”

  “Not to my knowledge, Mr. Aquila. But in any event I can’t sell the drawing. It’s evidence of a felony … mutilating United States currency. It must be destroyed.”

  “Never!” Mr. Aquila returned the drawing as though he feared the dealer would instantly set fire to it. “Never, Jimmy. Nevermore quo
th the raven. God damn. Why does he draw on money, Halsyon? My picture, pfui. Criminal libels but n’importe. But pictures on money? Wasteful. Joci causa.”

  “He’s insane, Mr. Aquila.”

  “No! Yes? Insane?” Aquila was shocked.

  “Quite insane, sir. It’s very sad. They’ve had to put him away. He spends his time drawing these pictures on money.”

  “God damn, mon ami. Who gives him money?”

  “I do, Mr. Aquila; and his friends. Whenever we visit him he begs for money for his drawings.”

  “Le jour viendra, by Jeez! Why you don’t give him paper for drawings, eh, my ancient of days?”

  Derelict smiled sadly. “We tried that, sir. When we gave Jeff paper, he drew pictures of money.”

  “HimmelHerrGott! My favorite artist. In the looney bin. Eh bien. How in the holy hell am I to buy paintings from same if such be the case?”

  “You won’t, Mr. Aquila. I’m afraid no one will ever buy a Halsyon again. He’s quite hopeless.”

  “Why does he jump his tracks, Jimmy?”

  “They say it’s a withdrawal, Mr. Aquila. His success did it to him.”

  “Ah? Q.E.D. me, big boy. Translate.”

  “Well, sir, he’s still a young man; in his thirties and very immature. When he became so very successful, he wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t prepared for the responsibilities of his life and his career. That’s what the doctors told me. So he turned his back on everything and withdrew into childhood.”

  “Ah? And the drawing on money?”

  “They say that’s his symbol of his return to childhood, Mr. Aquila. It proves he’s too young to know what money is for.”

  “Ah? Oui. Ja. Astute, by crackey. And my portrait?”

  “I can’t explain that, Mr. Aquila, unless you have met him in the past and he remembers you somehow.”

  “Hmmm. Perhaps. So. You know something, my attic of Greece? I am disappointed. Je n’oublierai jamais. I am most severely disappointed. God damn. No more Halsyons ever? Merde. My slogan. We must do something about Jeffrey Halsyon. I will not be disappointed. We must do something.”