Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

"You've been dropped, Mr. Reich. You can go about your business. No one's going to bother you." Reich burst into a roar of triumphant laughter. The pain of his bruised and broken body made him groan as he laughed, and his eyes smarted

with tears. He pulled himself up, brushed past Chervil and left the Commissioner's office. He was more a Neanderthal vestige as he paraded down headquarters' corridors streaked with blood and mud, laughing and groaning, bearing himself with limping arrogance. He needed a stag's carcass on his shoulders or a cave bear borne in triumph behind him to complete the picture.

"I'll complete the picture with Powell's head," he told himself. "Stuffed and mounted on my wall. I'll complete the picture with the D'Courtney Cartel stuffed into my pockets. By God give me time I'll complete a picture with the Galaxy inside the frame!"

He passed through the steel portals of headquarters and stood for a moment on the steps gazing at the rain-swept streets... at the amusement center across the square, block after block blazing under a single mutual transparent dome... at the open shops lining the upper footways, all bustle and brilliance as the city's night shopping began... the towering office buildings in the background great two-hundred story cubes... the lace tracery of skyways linking them together... the twinkling running lights of Jumpers bobbing up and down like a plague of crimson-eyed grasshoppers in a field...

"And I'll own you!" he shouted, raising his arms to engulf the universe. "I'll own you all! Bodies, passions, and souls!"

Then his eye caught the tall, ominous, familiar figure crossing the square, watching him covertly over its shoulder. A figure of black shadows sparkling with raindrop jewels... looking looming, silent, horrible... A Man With No Face.

There was a strangled cry. The fuses blew. Like a blighted tree, Reich fell to the ground.

At one minute to nine, ten of the fifteen members of the Esper Guild Council assembled in President T'sung's office. Emergency business required their attention. At one minute after nine, the meeting was adjoumed with the business completed. Within those one hundred and twenty Esper seconds, the following took place:

A gavel pounding

A clock face

Hour hand at 9

Minute hand at 59

Second hand at 60

EMERGENCY MEETING

To examine a request for Mass Cathexis with Lincoln Powell as the

human canal for the Capitalized energy. (Consternation) T'sung: You can't be serious, Powell. How can you make such a request?

What can possibly require such an extraordinary and dangerous measure? Powell: An astonishing development in the D'Courtney Case which I

would like you all to examine. (Examination) Powell: You all know that Reich is our most dangerous enemy. He is

supporting the Anti-Esper smear campaign. Unless that is blocked we may

suffer the usual history of minority groups. @kins: True enough. Powell: He is also supporting the League of Esper Patriots. Unless

that organization is blocked we may be plunged into a civil war and be lost

forever in a morass of internal chaos. Franion: That's true too. Powell: But there is an additional development which you have all

examined. Reich is about to become a Galactic focal point... A crucial link between the positive past and the probable future. He is on the verge of a powerful reorganization at this moment. Time is of the essence. If Reich can readjust and reorient before I can reach him, he will become immune to our reality, invulnerable to our attack, and the deadly enemy of Galactic reason and reality.

(Alarm)

@kins: Surely, you're exaggerating, Powell.

Powell: Am I? Inspect the picture with me. Look at Reich's position in

time and space. Will not his beliefs become the world's belief? Will not his reality become the world's reality? Is he not, in his critical position

of power, energy, and intellect, a sure road to utter destruction? (Conviction) T'sung: That's true. Nevertheless I'm reluctant to authorize the Mass

Cathexis Measure. You will recall that the MCM has invariably destroyed the human energy canal in past attempts. You're too valuable to be destroyed, Powell.

Powell: I must be permitted to run the risk, Reich is one of the rare Universe-shakers... a child as yet, but about to mature. And all reality... Espers, Normals, Life, the earth, the solar system, the universe itself... all reality hangs precarlously on his awakening. He cannot be permitted to awake to the wrong reality. I call the question.

Franion: You're asking us to vote your death. Powell: It's my death against the eventual death of everything we know. I call the question. @kins: Let Reich awaken as he will. We have the time and the warning

to attack him at another crossroad. Powell: Question! I call the question! (Request granted) Meeting adjourned Clock face Hour hand at 9 Minute hand at 01 Second hand at Demolition

Powell arrived home an hour later. He had made his will, paid his bills, signed his papers, arranged everything. There had been dismay at the Guild. There was dismay when he came home. Mary Noyes read what he had done the instant he entered.

"Linc---"

"No fuss. It's got to be done."

"But---"

"There's a chance it won't kill me. Oh... One reminder. Lab wants a

brain autopsy as soon as I'm dead... if I die. I've signed all the papers, but I wish you'd help in case there's trouble. They'd like to have the body before rigor. If they can't get the corpse they'll settle for the head. See to it, will you?"

"Linc!"

"Sorry. Now you'd better pack and take the baby up to Kingston Hospital. She won't be safe here."

"She isn't a baby any more. She---"

Mary turned and ran upstairs, trailing the familiar sensory impact: Snow / mint / tulips / taffeta... and now mixed with terror and tears. Powell sighed, then smiled as a highly poised teen-ager appeared at the head of the stairs and came down with grand insouciance. She was wearing a dress and an expression of rehearsed surprise. She paused halfway down to let him take in the dress and the manner.

"Why! It's Mr. Powell, is it not?"

"It is. Good morning, Barbara."

"And what brings you to our little domain this morning?" She came down the rest of the stairs with her fingertips brushing the bannister and tripped on the bottom step. "Oh Pip!" she squawked.

Powell caught her. "Pop," he said.

"Bim."

"Bam."

She looked up at him. "You stand right here. I'm going to come down those stairs again and I bet I do it perfect."

"I'll bet you don't."

She turned, trotted up and posed again at the top step. "Dear Mr. Powell, what a scatter-brain you must think me..." She began the grand descent. "You must re-evaluate your opinion of me. I am no longer the mere child I was yesterday. I am ages and ages older. You must regard me as an adult from now on." She negotiated the bottom step and regarded him intently. "Re-evaluate? Is that right?"

"Revaluate is sometimes preferred, dear."

"I thought it had an extra sound" Suddenly she laughed, pushed him into a chair, and plumped down on his lap. Powell groaned.

"Gently, Barbara. You're ages older and pounds heavier."

"Listen," she said. "What ever made me think you was... Were? Were my father?"

"What's the matter with me as a father?"

"Let's be frank. Real frank."

"Sure."

"Do you feel like a father toward me? Because I don't feel like a daughter toward you."

"Oh? How do you feel?"

"I asked first, so you go first."

"My feelings toward you are those of a loving and dutiful son."

"No. Be serious."

"I have resolved to be a trustworthy son to all women until Vulcan assumes its rightful place is the Community of Planets."

She flushed angrily and got up from his lap. "I wanted you to be serious, because I need advice. But if you---"