Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

Duffy bent over him and kissed him hard on the mouth. "How about this? Real?"

"You don't understand. It's all been delusions... hallucinations... everything. I've got to readjust, reorientate, reorganize... Before it's too late, Duffy. Before it's too late, too late, too late..."

Duffy threw up her hands. "What the hell's happened to medicine!" she exclaimed. "First that damned doctor scares you into a faint. Then he swears you're patched up... and now look at you. Psychotic!" She knelt on the bed and shook a finger against Reich's nose. "One more word out of you and I call Kingston."

"What? Who?"

"Kingston, as in hospital. Where they send people like you."

"No. Who did you say scared me into a faint?"

"A doctor friend."

"In the square in front of police headquarters?"

"X marks the spot."

"Sure?"

"I was with him, looking for you. Your valet told me about the explosion and I was worried. We got to the rescue just in time."

"Did you see his face?"

"See it? I've kissed it."

"What's it look like?"

"It's a face. Two eyes. Two lips. Two ears. One nose. Three chins.

Listen, Ben, if this is some more of the awaken-asleep-reality-infinity

lyrics... it ain't commercial." "And you brought me here?" "Sure. How could I pass up the opportunity? It's the only way I can

get you into my bed." Reich grinned. He relaxed and said: "Duffy, you may now kiss me." "Mr. Reich, you have already been kissed. Or was that when you were

still awake?"

"Forget that. Nightmares. Plain nightmares." Reich burst into laughter. "Why the hell should I worry about having nightmares? I have the rest of the world in my hands. I'll take the dreams too. Didn't you once ask to be dragged through the gutter, Duffy?"

"That was a childish whim. I thought I could meet a better class of people."

"You name the gutter and you can have it, Duffy. Gold gutters... Jewelled gutters. You want a gutter from here to Mars? You'll have it. You want me to turn the System into a gutter? I'll do it. Christ! I can turn the Galaxy into a gutter if you want it." He jabbed his chest with his thumb. "Want to look at God? Here I am. Go ahead and look."

"Dear man. So modest and so hung-over."

"Drunk? Sure, I'm drunk." Reich thrust his legs out of the bed and stood up, reeling slightly. Duffy came to him at once and he put his arm around her waist for support. "Why shouldn't I be drunk? I've licked D'Courtney. I've licked Powell. I'm forty years old. I've got sixty years of owning the whole world ahead of me. Yes. Duffy... the whole damned world!" He began walking around the room with Duffy. It was like a stroll through her ebullient erotic mind. A peeper decorator had reproduced Duffy's psyche perfectly in the decor.

"How'd you like to start a dynasty with me, Duffy?"

"I wouldn't know about starting dynasties."

"You start with Ben Reich. First you marry him. Then---"

"That's enough. When do I start?"

"Then you have children. Boys. Dozens of boys..."

"Girls. And only three."

"And you watch Ben Reich take over D'Courtney and merge it with

Monarch. You watch the enemies go down... like this!" In full stride, Reich kicked the leg of a busty vanity table. It toppled and crashed a score of crystal bottles to the floor.

"After Monarch and D'Courtney become Reich, Incorporated, you watch me eat up the rest... the small ones... the fleas. Case and Umbrel on Venus. Eaten!" Reich brought his fist down on a torso-shaped side table and smashed it. "United Transaction on Mars. Mashed and eaten!" He crushed a delicate chair. "The GCI Combine on Ganymede, Callisto, and Io... Titan Chemical & Atomics... And then the smaller lice: the backbiters, the haters, the Guild of Peepers, the moralists, the patriots... Eaten! Eaten! Eaten!" He pounded his palm against a marble nude until it toppled from its pedestal and shattered.

"Clever-up, dog," Duffy hung on his neck. "Why waste all that dear violence? Punch me around a little."

He lifted her in his arms and shook her until she squealed. "And parts of the world will taste sweet... like you, Duffy; and parts will stink to high heaven ... but I'll gobble them all." He laughed and crushed her against him. "I don't know much about the God business, but I know what I like. We'll tear it all down, Duffy, and we'll build it all up to suit us... You and me and the dynasty."

He carried her to the window, tore away the drapes and kicked open the sashes with a mighty jangle of smashed glass. Outside, the city was in velvet darkness. Only the skyways and streets twinkled with lights, and the scarlet eyes of an occasional Jumper popped up over the jet skyline. The rain had stopped and a slender moon hung pale in the sky. The night wind came whispering in, cutting through the cloy of the spilled perfume.

"You out there!" Reich roared. "Can you hear me! All of you... sleeping and dreaming. You'll dream my dreams from now on! You'll---" Abruptly he was silent. He relaxed his hold on Duffy and permitted her to slide to the floor alongside him. He seized the sides of the window and

poked his head far out into the night, twisting his neck to stare up. When

he drew his head back into the room, his face wore a bewildered expression. "The stars," he mumbled. "Where are the stars?" "Where are the what?" Duffy wanted to know. "The stars," Reich repeated. He gestured timidly toward the sky. "The

stars. They're gone." Duffy looked at him curiously. "The what are gone?" "The stars!" Reich cried. "Look up at the sky. The stars are gone. The

constellations are gone! The Great Bear... The Little Bear... Cassiopeia...

Draco... Pegasus... They're all gone! There's nothing but the moon! Look!" "It's the way it always is," Duffy said. "It is not! Where are the stars?" "What stars?" "I don't know their names... Polaris and... Veg?... and... How the

hell should I know their names? I'm not an astronomer. What's happened to

us? What's happened to the stars?" "What are stars?" Duffy asked. Reich seized her savagely. "Suns... Boiling and blazing with light.

Thousands of them. Billions of them... shining through the night. What the hell's the matter with you? Don't you understand? There's been a catastrophe in space, the stars are gone!"

Duffy shook her head. Her face was terrified. "I don't know what you're talking about, Ben. I don't know what you're talking about."

He shoved her away, turned and ran to the bathroom, and locked himself in. While he was hurriedly bathing and dressing, Duffy pounded on the door and pleaded with him. Finally, she broke off, and seconds later he heard her calling Kingston Hospital, using a guarded voice.

"Let her start explaining about the stars," Reich muttered, halfway between anger and terror. He finished his toilette and came out into the bedroom.

Duffy cut the phone off hastily and turned to him.

"Ben," she began.

"Wait here for me," he growled. "I'm going to find out."

"Find out about what?"

"About the stars!" he yelled. "The Christ almighty missing stars!"

He flung out of the apartment and rushed down to the street. On the empty footway, he paused and stared up again. There was the moon. There was one brilliant red point of light... Mars. There was another... Jupiter. There was nothing else. Blackness. Blackness. Blackness. I hung over his head, enigmatic, unrelieved, terrifying. It pressed downward, by some trick of the eye, oppressive, stifling, deadly.

He began to run, still staring upward. He turned a corner of the footway and collided with a woman, knocking her flat. He pulled her to her feet.

"You clumsy bastard!" she screamed, adjusting her feathers. Then in an oily voice: "Lookin' for a good time, pilot?"

Reich held her arm. He pointed up. "Look. The stars are gone. Have you noticed? The stars are gone."