Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

Reich faltered, alarmed by the blank looks around him. He glanced around, then singled out the chief secretary. "What the hell's the matter?" he growled. "There been news I haven't heard yet? Bad news?"

"N-No, Mr. Reich."

"Then what's eating you? This is something we've all been waiting for.

What's wrong with it?"

The chief secretary stammered: "We... I... I'm s-sorry, sir. I d-don't know what y-you're talking about."

"I'm talking about the D'Courtney Cartel."

"I... I've n-never heard of the organization, Mr. Reich, sir. I... we..." The chief secretary turned around for support. Before Reich's unbelieving eyes the entire staff shook their heads in mystification.

"D'Courtney on Mars!" Reich shouted.

"On where, sir?"

"Mars! Mars! M-A-R-S. One of the ten planets. Fourth from the sun." Gripped by the returning terror, Reich bellowed incoherently. "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars! Mars! Mars! A hundred and forty-one million miles from the sun, Mars!"

Again the staff shook their heads. There was a rustle and they backed away slightly from Reich. He darted at the secretaries and tore the sheafs of business papers from their hands. "You've got a hundred memos about D'Courtney on Mars there. You've got to. My God, we've been battling it out with D'Courtney for the last ten years. We---"

He clawed through the papers, throwing them wildly in all directions, filling the office with fluttering snow. There was not one reference to D'Courtney or Mars. There was neither any reference to Venus, Jupiter, the Moon, nor the other satellites.

"I've got memos in my desk," Reich shouted. Hundreds of them. You lousy liars! Look in my desk..."

He darted to the desk and yanked out drawers. There was a stunning explosion. The desk burst asunder. Fragments of flying fruit-wood slashed the staff, and Reich was hurled back against the window by the desk top which smacked him like a giant's hand.

"The Man With No Face!" Reich cried. "Christ Almighty!" He shook his head feverishly, and clung to the paramount obsession. "Where are the files? I'll show you in the files... D'Courtney and Mars and all the rest. And I'll show him, too. The Man With No Face... Come on!"

He ran out of his office and burst into the file vaults. He tore out rack after rack; scattering papers, clusters of piezo crystals, ancient wire recordings, microfilm, molecular transcripts. There was no reference to D'Courtney or Mars. There was no reference to Venus, Jupiter, Mercury, the asteroids, the satellites.

And now indeed the office was alive with hustle and bustle, annunciator bells, strident commands. Now the office was stampeding, and three burly gentlemen from `Recreation' came trotting into the vaults directed by the bleeding secretary who urged: "You must! You must! I'll take the responsibility!"

"Easy now, easy now, easy now, Mr. Reich," they said with the hissing

noise with which hostlers soothe savage stallions. "Easy... easy...easy..." "Get away from me, you sons of bitches." "Easy, sir. Easy. It's all right, sir." They deployed strategically while the hustle and the bustle increased

and the bells sounded and voices far off called: "Who's his doctor? Get his doctor. Somebody call Kingston. Did you notify the police? No, don't. No scandal. Get the legal department, will you! Isn't the Infirmary open yet?"

Reich's breath came and went in snarls. He overturned files in the path of the burly gentlemen, put his head down and bulled straight through them. He raced through the office to the outside corridor and the Pneumatique. The door opened; he punched Science-city 57. He stepped into the air-shuttle and was shot over to Science where he stepped out.

He was on the laboratory floor. It was in darkness. Probably the staff imagined he had dropped to the street level. He would have time. Still breathing heavily, he trotted to the lab library, snapped on the lights and went to the reference alcove. A sheet of frosted crystal, cocked like a draft-board, was set before a desk chair. There was a complicated panel of control buttons alongside it.

Reich seated himself and punched READY. The sheet lit up and a canned

voice spoke from an overhead speaker. "Topic?" Reich punched SCIENCE. "Section?" Reich punched ASTRONOMY. "Question?"

"The universe."

Click-pause-click. "The term universe in its complete physical sense applies to all matter in existence."

"What matter is in existence?"

Click-pause-click. "Matter is gathered into aggregates ranging in size from the smallest atom to the largest collection of matter known to astronomers,"

"What is the largest collection of matter known to astronomers?" Reich punched DIAGRAM.

Click-pause-click. "The sun." The crystal plate displayed a dazzling picture of the sun in speed-up action.

"But what about the others? The stars?"

Click-pause-click. "There are no stars."

"The planets?"

Click-pause-click. "There is the earth." A picture or the revolving earth appeared.

"The other planets? Mars? Jupiter? Saturn..."

Click-pause-click. "There are no other planets."

"The moon?"

Click-pause-click. "There is no moon."

Reich took a deep trembling breath. "We'll try it again. Go back to the sun."

The sun appeared again in the crystal. "The sun is the largest collection of matter known to astronomers," the canned voice began. Suddenly it stopped. Click-pause-click. The picture of the sun began to fade slowly. The voice spoke. "There is no sun."

The model disappeared, leaving behind it an afterimage that looked up at Reich... looming, silent, horrible... The Man With No Face.

Reich howled. He leaped to his feet, knocking the desk chair backward. He picked it up and smashed it down on that frightful image. He turned and blundered out of the library into the lab, and thence to the corridor. At the Vertical Pneumatique, he punched STREET. The door opened, he staggered in and was dropped 57 stories to the Main Hall of Monarch's Science-city.

It was filled with early workers hurrying to their offices. As Reich pushed past them, he caught the astonished glances at his cut and bleeding face. Then he was aware of a dozen uniformed Monarch guards closing in on him. He ran down the hall and with a frantic burst of speed and dodged the guards. He slipped into the revolving doors and whirled through to the footway. There he jerked to a stop as though he had ran into white hot iron. There was no sun.

The street lights were lit; the skyways twinkled; Jumper eyes floated up and down; the shops were blazing... And overhead there was nothing... nothing but a deep, black, fathomless infinity.

"The sun!" Reich shouted. "The sun!"

He pointed upward. The office workers regarded him with suspicious eyes and hurried on. No one looked up.

"The sun! Where's the sun? Don't you understand, you fools? The sun!" Reich plucked at their arms, shaking his fist at the sky. Then the first of the guards came through the revolving door and he took to his heels.

He went down the footway, turned sharp to his right and sprinted through an arcade of brilliant, busy shops. Beyond the arcade was the entrance of a Vertical Pneumatique to the skyway. Reich leaped in. As the door closed behind him, he caught sight of the pursuing guards less than twenty yards off. Then he was lofted seventy stories and emerged on the skyway.

There was a small car-park alongside him, shelved onto the face of Monarch Tower, with a runway leading into the skyway. Reich ran in, flung credits to the attendant and got into a car. He pressed GO. The car went. At the foot of the runway he pressed LEFT. The car turned left and continued. That was all the control he had. Left, right; stop, go. The rest was automatic. Moreover, cars were strictly limited to the skyways. He might spend hours racing in circles high over the city, trapped like a dog in a revolving cage.