Reality has turned into might-have-been, and you have awakened at last... to
nothing."
"We'll go back! We'll try it again!"
"There is no going back. It is ended."
"We'll find a way. There must be a way..."
"There is none. It is ended."
It was ended.
Now... Demolition.
17
They found the two men next morning, far up the island in the gardens
overlooking the old Haarlem Canal. Each had wandered all the night, through
footway and skyway, unconscious of his surroundings, yet both were drawn
inevitably together like two magnetized needles floating on a weed choked pond.
Powell was seated cross-legged on the wet turf, his face shrivelled and
lifeless, his respiration almost gone, his pulse faded. He was clutching Reich
with an iron grip. Reich was curled into a tight foetal ball.
They rushed Powell to his home on Hudson Ramp where the entire Guild Lab team
alternately sweated over him and congratulated themselves on the first
successful Mass Cathexis Measure in the history of the Esper Guild. There was no
hurry for Reich. In due course and with proper procedure, his inert body was
transported to Kingston Hospital for Demolition. There the matter rested for
seven days.
On the eighth day, Powell arose, bathed, dressed, successfully defeated his
nurses in single combat, and left the house. He made one stop at Sucre et Cie,
emerged with a large mysterious parcel and then proceeded to headquarters to
make his personal report to Commissioner Crabbe. On the way up, he poked his
head into Beck's office.
"Hi, Jax."
"Bless (and curses) ings, Linc."
"Curses?"
"Bet fifty they'd keep you in bed till next Wed."
"You lose. Did Mose back us up on the D'Courtney motive?"
"Lock, stock & barrel. Trial took one hour. Reich's going into Demolition now."
"Good. Well, I'd better go up and s-p-e-l-l it out for Crabbe."
"What you got under your arm?"
"Present."
"For me?"
"Not today. Here's thinking at you."
Powell went up to Crabbe's ebony and silver office, knocked, heard the
imperious: "Come!" and entered. Crabbe was properly solicitous, but stiff. The
D'Courtney Case had not improved his relations with Powell. The denouement had
come as an additional blow.
"It was a remarkably complex case, sir," Powell began tactfully. "None of us
could understand it, and none of us are to blame. You see, Commissioner, even
Reich himself was not consciously aware of why he had murdered D'Courtney. The
only one who grasped the case was the Prosecution Computer, and we thought it
was acting kittenish."
"The machine? It understood?"
"Yes, sir. When we ran our final data through the first time, the Computer told
us that the `passion motive' was insufficiently documented. We'd all been
assuming profit motive. So had Reich. Naturally we assumed the Computer was
having kinks, and we insisted on computation based on the profit motive. We were
wrong..."
"And that infernal machine was right?"
"Yes, Commissioner. It was. Reich told himself that he was killing D'Courtney
for financial reasons. That was his psychological camouflage for the real
passion motive. And it couldn't hold up. He offered merger to D'Courtney.
D'Courtney accepted. But Reich was subconsciously compelled to misunderstand the
message. He had to. He had to go on believing he murdered for money."
"Why?"
"Because he couldn't face the real motive..."
"Which was... ?"
"D'Courtney was his father."
"What!" Crabbe stared. "His father? His flesh and blood?"
"Yes, sir. It was all there before us. We just couldn't see it... because Reich
couldn't see it. That estate on Callisto, for instance. The one that Reich used
to decoy Dr. Jordan off the planet. Reich inherited it from his mother who'd
received it from D'Courtney. We all assumed Reich's father had chiseled it out
of D'Courtney and placed it in his wife's name. We were wrong. D'Courtney had
given it to Reich's mother because they were lovers. It was his love-gift to the
mother of his child. Reich was born there. Jackson Beck uncovered all that, once
we had the lead."
Crabbe opened his mouth, then closed it.
"And there were so many other signposts. D'Courtney's suicide drive, produced by
intense guilt sensations of abandonment. He had abandoned his son. It was
tearing him apart. Then, Barbara D'Courtney's deep half-twin image of herself
and Ben Reich; somehow she knew they were half-brother and sister. And Reich's
inability to kill Barbara at Chooka Frood's. He knew it too, deep down in the
unconscious. He wanted to destroy the hateful father who had rejected him, but
he could not bring himself to harm his sister."
"But when did you unearth all this?"
"After the case was closed, sir. When Reich attacked me for setting those
booby-traps."
"He claimed you did. He--- But if you didn't, Powell, who did?"
"Reich himself, sir."
"Reich!"
"Yes, sir. He murdered his father. He discharged his hatred. But his
super-ego... his conscience, could not permit him to go unpunished for such a
horrible crime. Since the police apparently were unable to punish him, his
conscience took over. That was the meaning of Reich's nightmare image... The Man
With No Face."
"The Man With No Face?"
"Yes, Commissioner. It was the symbol of Reich's real relationship to
D'Courtney. The figure had no face because Reich could not accept the truth...
that he had recognized D'Courtney as his father. The figure appeared in his
dreams when he made the decision to kill his father. It never left him. It was
first the threat of punishment for what he contemplated. Then it became the
punishment itself for the murder."
"The booby-traps?"
"Exactly. His conscience had to punish him. But Reich had never admitted to
himself that he murdered because he hated D'Courtney as the father who had
rejected and abandoned him. Therefore, the punishment had to take place on the
unconscious level. Reich set those traps for himself without ever realizing
it... in his sleep, somnambulistically... during the day, in short fugues...
brief departures from conscious reality. The tricks of the mind-mechanism are
fantastic."
"But if Reich himself knew none of this... how did you get at it, Powell?"
"Well, sir. That was the problem. We couldn't get it by peeping him. He was
hostile and you have to have complete cooperation from a subject to get that
kind of material. It takes months anyway. Also, if Reich recovered from the
series of shocks he'd had, he would be able to readjust, reorient, and become
immune to us. That was dangerous, too, because he was in a position of power to
rock the solar system. He was one of those rare World-Shakers whose compulsions
might have torn down our society and irrevocably committed us to his own
psychotic pattern."
Crabbe nodded.
"He very nearly succeeded. These men appear every so often... links between the
past and the future. If they are permitted to mature... If the link is permitted
to weld... The world finds itself chained to a dreadful tomorrow."
"Then what did you do?"
"We used the Mass Cathexis Measure, sir. It's difficult to explain, but I'll do
my best. Every human being has a psyche composed of latent and capitalized
energy. Latent energy is our reserve... the untapped natural resources of our
mind. Capitalized energy is that latent energy which we call up and put to work.
Most of us use only a small portion of our latent energy."
"I understand."
"When the Esper Guild uses the Mass Cathexis Measure, every Esper opens his
psyche, so to speak, and contributes his latent energy to a pool. One Esper
alone taps this pool and becomes the canal for the latent energy. He captilizes
it and puts it to work. He can accomplish tremendous things... if he can control
it. It's a difficult and dangerous operation. About on a par with jetting to the
moon with a stick of dynamite stuck---er---riding on dynamite sticks..."
Suddenly Crabbe grinned. "I wish I were a peeper," he said. "I'd like to get the
real image in your mind."
"You've got it already, sir." Powell grinned back. A rapport had been
established between them for the first time.
"It was necessary," Powell continued, "to confront Reich with The Man With No
Face. We had to make him see the truth before we could get the truth. Using the
pool of latent energy, I built a common neurotic concept for Reich... the
illusion that he alone in the world was real."
"Why, I've---Is that common?"
"Oh yes, sir. It's one of the run-of-the-mill escape patterns. When life gets
tough, you tend to take refuge in the idea that it's all make-believe... a giant
hoax. Reich had the seeds of that weakness in him already. I simply forced them
and let Reich defeat himself. Life was getting tough for him. I persuaded him to
believe that the universe was a hoax... a puzzle-box. Then I tore it down, layer
by layer. I made him believe that the test was ended. The puzzle was being
dismantled. And I left Reich alone with The Man With No Face. He looked into the
face and saw himself and his father... and we had everything."
Powell picked up his parcel and arose. Crabbe jumped up and escorted him to the
door with a friendly hand on his shoulder.
"You've done a phenomenal job, Powell. Really phenomenal. I can't tell you... It
must be a wonderful thing to be an Esper."
"Wonderful and terrible, sir."
"You must all be very happy."
"Happy?" Powell paused at the door and looked at Crabbe. "Would you be happy to
live your life in a hospital, Commissioner?"
"A hospital?"
"That's where we live... All of us. In the psychiatric ward. Without escape...
without refuge. Be grateful you're not a peeper, sir. Be grateful that you only
see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds,
the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the
frightening truth in people. The world will be a wonderful place when everyone's
a peeper and everyone's adjusted... But until then, be greatful you're blind."
He left headquarters, hired a Jumper and was jetted North toward Kingston
Hospital. He satin the cabin with the parcel on his knees, gazing down at the
magnificent Hudson Valley, whistling a crooked tune. Once he grinned and
muttered: "Wow! That was some line I handed Crabbe. But I had to cement our
relations. Now he'll feel sorry for peepers... and friendly."
Kingston Hospital came into view... acre upon rolling acre of magnificent
landscaping. Solariums, pools, lawns, athletic fields, dormitories, clinics...
all in exquisite neo-classic design. As the Jumper descended, Powell could make
out the figures of patients and attendants... all bronzed, active, laughing,
playmg. He thought of the vigilant measures the Board of Governors was forced to
take to prevent Kingston Hospital from becoming another Spaceland. Too many
fashionable malingerers were already attempting to obtain admission.
Powell checked in at the Visitors Office, found Barbara D'Courtney's location
and started across the grounds. He was weak, but he wanted to leap hedges, vault
gates, run races. He had awakened after seven days' exhaustion with a
question---one question to ask Barbara. He felt exhilarated.
They saw one another at the same moment. Across a broad stretch of lawn flanked
by field-stone terraces and brilliant gardens. She flew toward him, waving, and
he ran toward her. Then as they approached, both were stricken with shyness.
They stopped a few feet apart, not daring to look at each other.
"Hello."
"Hello, Barbara."
"I... Let's get into the shade, shall we?"
They turned toward the terrace wall. Powell glanced at her from the corner of
his eye. She was alive again... alive as he had never seen her before. And her
urchin expression---the expression that he had imagined was a phase of her Deja
Eprouve development was still there. She looked inexpressively mischievous,
high-spirited, fascinating. But she was adult. He did not know her.
"I'm being discharged this evening," Barbara said.
"I know."
"I'm terribly grateful to you for all you've---"
"Please don't say that."
"For all you've done," Barbara continued firmly. They sat down on a stone bench.
She looked at him with grave eyes. "I want to tell you how grateful I am."
"Please, Barbara. You're terrifying me."
"Am I?"
"I knew you so intimately as... well, as a child. Now..."
"Now I'm grown up again."
"Yes."
"You must get to know me better." She smiled graciously. "Shall we say... Tea
tomorrow at five?"
"At five..."
"Informal. Don't dress."
"Listen," Powell said desperately. "I helped dress you more than once. And comb
your hair. And brush your teeth."
She waved her hand airily.
"Your table manners were a caution. You liked fish but you hated lamb. You hit
me in the eye with a chop."
"That was ages ago, Mr. Powell."