Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (27 page)

Chaos. Blackness. Cacophony. My vibes shriek. 25 Watt bulbs. Ballads of Protest. Against L. wall sit young men, with pubic beards, playing chess. Badly.
Exempli gratia:

If White takes the knight, Black forces mate with Q—R5ch. I didn’t wait to see what the road-company Capablancas would do next.

Against R. wall is bar, serving beer and cheap wine mostly. There are girls with brown paper bags containing toilet articles. They are looking for a pad for the night. All wear tight jeans and are naked under loose sweaters. I think of Herrick (1591-1674):
Next, when I lift mine eyes and see/That brave vibration each way free/Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

I pick out the one who glitters the most. I talk. She insult. I insult back and buy hard drinks. She drink my drinks and snarl and hate, but helpless. Her name is Bunny and she has no pad for tonight. I do not let myself sympathize. She is a dyke; she does not bathe, her thinking patterns are jangles. I hate her and she’s safe; no harm can come to her. So I maneuvered her out of Sink City and took her home to seduce by mutual contempt, and in the living room sat the slender little paleface secretary, recently fired for her own good.

She sat there in my penthouse, now minus one (1) bathroom, and with $1,997.00 change on top of the refrigerator. Oi! Throw $6.00 into kitchen Dispos-All (a Federal offense) and am soothed by the lovely 1991 remaining. She sat there, wearing a pastel thing, her skin gleaming rose-red from embarrassment, also red for danger. Her saucy face was very tight from the daring thing she thought she was doing.
Gott bewahre!
I like that.

Forced to go there by what happened in the U.N., you understand. It needed extreme compensation and adjustment. Almost, for a moment, I thought I would have to attack the conductor of the
Opéra Comique
, but fate was kind and let me off with nothing worse than indecent exposure, and I was able to square it by founding a scholarship at the Sorbonne. Didn’t someone suggest that fate was the square root of minus one?

Anyway, back in New York it is my turn to denounce the paleface but suddenly my AmerEng is replaced by a dialect out of a B-picture about a white remittance man and a blind native girl on a South Sea island who find redemption together while she plays the ukulele and sings gems from Lawrence Welk’s Greatest Hits.

“Oh-so,” I say. “Me-fella be ve’y happy ask why you-fella invade ‘long my apa’tment, ‘cept me’ now speak pidgin. Ve’y emba’ss ‘long me.”

“I bribed Mr. Lundgren,” she blurted. “I told him you needed important papers from the office.”

The dyke turned on her heel and bounced out, her brave vibration each way free. I caught up with her in front of the elevator, put $101 into her hand, and tried to apologize. She hated me more so I did a naughty thing to her vibration and returned to the living room.

“What’s she got?” the paleface asked.

My English returned. “What’s your name?”

“Good Lord! I’ve been working in your office for two months and you don’t know my name? You really don’t?”

“No.”

“I’m Jemmy Thomas.”

“Beat it, Jemmy Thomas.”

“So that’s why you always called me ‘Miss Uh.’ You’re Russian?”

“Half.”

“What’s the other half?”

“None of your business. What are you doing here? When I fire them they stay fired. What d’you want from me?”

“You,” she said, blushing fiery.

“Will you for God’s sake get the hell out of here.”

“What did she have that I don’t?” paleface demanded. Then her face crinkled. “Don’t? Doesn’t? I’m going to Bennington. They’re strong on aggression but weak on grammar.”

“What d’you mean, you’re going to Bennington?”

“Why, it’s a college. I thought everybody knew.”

“But
going?
”

“Oh. I’m in my junior year. They drive you out with whips to acquire practical experience in your field. You ought to know that. Your office manager—I suppose you don’t know her name, either.”

“Ethel M. Blatt.”

“Yes. Miss Blatt took it all down before you interviewed me.”

“What’s your field?”

“It used to be economics. Now it’s you. How old are you?”

“One hundred and one.”

“Oh, come on. Thirty? They say at Bennington that ten years is the right difference between men and women because we mature quicker. Are you married?”

“I have wives in London, Paris, and Rome. What is this catechism?”

“Well, I’m trying to get something going.”

“I can see that, but does it have to be me?”

“I know it sounds like a notion.” She lowered her eyes, and without the highlight of their blue, her pale face was almost invisible. “And I suppose women are always throwing themselves at you.”

“It’s my untold wealth.”

“What are you, blasé or something? I mean, I know I’m not staggering, but I’m not exactly repulsive.”

“You’re lovely.”

“They why don’t you come near me?”

“I’m trying to protect you.”

“I can protect me when the time comes. I’m a Black Belt.”

“The time is now, Jemmy Thompson.”

“Thomas.”

“Walk, not run, to the nearest exit, Jemmy Thomas.”

“The least you could do is offend me the way you did that hustler in front of the elevator.”

“You snooped?”

“Sure I snooped. You didn’t expect me to sit here on my hands, did you? I’ve got my man to protect.”

I had to laugh. This spunky little thing march in, roll up her sleeves and set to work on me. A wonder she didn’t have a pot roast waiting in the oven and herself waiting in the bed.

“Your man?” I ask.

“It happens,” she said in a low voice. “I never believed it, but it happens. You fall in and out of love and affairs, and each time you think it’s real and forever. And then you meet somebody and it isn’t a question of love anymore. You just know that he’s your man, and you’re stuck with him, whether you like it or not.” She burst out angrily. “I’m stuck, dammit! Stuck! D’you think I’m enjoying this?”

She looked at me through the storm; violet eyes full of youth and determination and tenderness and fear. I could see she, too, was being forced and was angry and afraid. And I knew how lonely I was, never daring to make friends, to love, to share. I could fall into those violet eyes and never come up. I looked at the clock. 2:30
A
.
M
. Sometimes quiet at this hour. Perhaps my AmerEng would stay with me a while longer.

“You’re being compelled, Jemmy,” I said. “I know all about that. Something inside you, something you don’t understand, made you take your dignity in both hands and come after me. You don’t like it, you don’t want to, you’ve never begged in your life, but you had to. Yes?”

She nodded.

“Then you can understand a little about me. I’m compelled, too.”

“Who is she?”

“No, no. Not forced to beg from a woman; compelled to hurt people.”

“What people?”

“Any people; sometimes strangers, and that’s bad, other times people I love, and that’s not to be endured. So now I no longer dare love. I must protect people from myself.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you some kind of psychotic monster?”

“Yes, played by Lon Chaney, Jr.”

“If you can joke about it, you can’t be all that sick. Have you seen a shrink?”

“No. I don’t have to. I know what’s compelling me.” I looked at the clock again. Still a quiet time. Please God the English would stay with me a while longer. I took off my jacket and shirt. “I’m going to shock you,” I said, and showed her my back, crosshatched with scars. She gasped.

“Self-inflicted,” I told her. “Because I permitted myself to like a man and become friendly with him. This is the price I paid, and I was lucky that he didn’t have to. Now wait here.”

I went into the master bedroom where my heart’s shame was embalmed in a silver case hidden in the right-hand drawer of my desk. I brought it to the living room. Jemmy watched me with great eyes.

“Five years ago a girl fell in love with me,” I told her. “A girl like you. I was lonely then, as always, so instead of protecting her from me, I indulged myself and tried to love her back. Now I want to show you the price
she
paid. You’ll loathe me for this, but I must show you. Maybe it’ll save you from—”

I broke off. A flash had caught my eye—the flash of lights going on in a building down the street; not just a few windows, a lot. I put on my jacket, went out on the terrace, and watched. All the illuminated windows in the building three down from me went out. Five-second eclipse. On again. It happened in the building two down and then the one next door. The girl came to my side and took my arm. She trembled slightly.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter? You look so grim.”

“It’s the Geneva caper,” I said. “Wait.”

The lights in my apartment went out for five seconds and then came on again.

“They’ve located me the way I was nailed in Geneva,” I told her.

“They? Located?”

“They’ve spotted my jamming by d/f.”

“What jamming?”

“The full electromagnetic spectrum.”

“What’s dee eff?”

“Radio direction-finder. They used it to get the bearing of my jamming. Then they turned off the current in each building in the area, building by building, until the broadcast stopped. Now they’ve pinpointed me. They know I’m in this house, but they don’t know which apartment yet. I’ve still got time. So. Good night, Jemmy. You’re hired again. Tell Ethel Blatt I won’t be in for a while. I wish I could kiss you good-bye, but safer not.”

She clamped her arms around my neck and gave mean honest kiss. I tried to push her away.

She clung like The Old Man of the Sea. “You’re a spy,” she said. “I’ll go to the chair with you.”

“I wish to heaven I only was a spy. Good-bye, my love. Remember me.”

A great mistake letting that slip. It happen, I think, because my speech slip, too. Suddenly forced to talk jumble again. As I run out, the little paleface kick off her sandals so she can run, too. She is alongside me going down the fire stairs to the garage in the basement. I hit her to stop, and swear Swahili at her. She hit back and swear gutter, all the time laughing and crying. I love her for it, so she is doomed. I will ruin her like all the rest.

We get into car and drive fast. I am making for 59th Street bridge to get off Manhattan Island and head east. I own plane in Babylon, Long Island, which is kept ready for this sort of awkwardness.

“
J’y suis, J’y reste
is not my motto,” I tell Jemmy Thomas, whose French is as uncertain as her grammar, an endearing weakness. “Once Scotland Yard trapped me with a letter. I was receiving special mail care of General Delivery. They mailed me a red envelope, spotted me when I picked it up, and followed me to No. 13 Mayfair Mews, London W. 1., Telephone, Mayfair 7711. Red for danger. Is the rest of you as invisible as your face?”

“I’m not invisible,” she said, indignant, running hands through her streaky fair hair. “I tan in the summer. What is all this chase and escape? Why do you talk so funny and act so peculiar? In the office I thought it was because you’re a crazy Russian. Half crazy Russian. Are you sure you’re not a spy?”

“Only positive.”

“It’s too bad. A Commie 007 would be utter blissikins.”

“Yes, I know. You see yourself being seduced with vodka and caviar.”

“Are you a being from another world who came here on a UFO?”

“Would that scare you?”

“Only if it meant we couldn’t make the scene.”

“We couldn’t anyway. All the serious side of me is concentrated on my career. I want to conquer the earth for my robot masters.”

“I’m only interested in conquering you.”

“I am not and have never been a creature from another world. I can show you my passport to prove it.”

“Then what are you?”

“A compensator.”

“A what?”

“A compensator. Like a clock pendulum. Do you know dictionary of Messrs Funk & Wagnalls? Edited by Frank H. Vizetelly, Litt.D, LL.D.? I quote: One who or that which compensates, as a device for neutralizing the influence of local attraction upon a compass needle, or an automatic apparatus for equalizing— Damn!”