The demolished man
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 hydropatlhic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes
focused at random on 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 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
Mean Solar Day 22
Noon + 09 EARTH
February 15
0205 Greenwich MARS
Duodecember 35
2220 Central Syrtis
MOON
2D3H IO
1D1H GANYMEDE
6D8H
(eclipsed) CALLISTO
13D12H TITAN
15D3H
(transit) TRITON
4D9H
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 face?"
"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