Alfred Bester - The Demolished Man

"Not even my money?" Reich withdrew ten gleaming sovereigns from his pocket and placed them on the counter. It was a subtle touch. Unlike the credit, the sovereign was the coin of the underworld. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun...

"Least of all your money. I want your heart cut open. I want your blood spilling on the ground. I want the maggots eating the eyes out of your living head... But I don't want your money."

"Then what do you want, Jerry?"

"I told you!" the peeper screamed. "I told you! You God damned lousy---"

"What do you want, Jerry?" Reich repeated coldly, keeping his eyes on the wizened man. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun. He could still control Church. It didn't matter that Church had been a 2nd. Control wasn't a question of peeping. It was a question of personality. Eight, sir; seven, sir; six, sir; five, sir... He always had... He always would control Church.

"What do you want?" Church asked sullenly.

Reich snorted. "You're the peeper. You tell me."

"I don't know," Church muttered after a pause. "I can't read it. There's crazy music mixing everything up..."

"Then I'll have to tell you. I want a gun."

"A what?"

"G-U-N. Gun. Ancient weapon. It propels projectiles by explosion."

"I haven't anything like that."

"Yes, you do, Jerry. Keno Quizzard mentioned it to me some time ago. He saw it. Steel and collapsible. Very interesting."

"What do you want it for?"

"Read me, Jerry, and find out. I haven't anything to hide. It's all quite innocent."

Church screwed up his face, then quit in disgust.

"Isn't worth the trouble," he mumbled and shuffled off into the shadows. There was a distant slamming of metal drawers. Church returned with a compact nodule of tarnished steel and placed it on the counter alongside the money. He pressed a stud and the lump of metal sprang open into steel knuckle-rings, revolver and stiletto. It was a XXth Century knife-pistol... the quintessence of murder.

"What do you want it for?" Church asked again.

"You're hoping it's something that can lead to black-mail, eh?" Reich smiled. "Sorry. It's a gift."

"A dangerous gift." The ostracized peeper gave him that sidelong glance of snarl and laugh. "Ruination for someone else, eh?"

"Not at all, Jerry. It's a gift for a friend of mine. Dr. Augustus Tate."

"Tate!" Church stared at him.

"Do you know him? He collects old things."

"I know him. I know him." Church began to chuckle asthmatically. "But I'm beginning to know him better. I'm beginning to feel sorry for him." He stopped laughing and shot a penetrating glance at Reich. "Of course. This will make a lovely gift for Gus. A perfect gift for Gus. Because it's loaded."

"Oh? Is it loaded?"

"Oh yes indeed. It's loaded. Five lovely cartridges." Church cackled again. "A gift for Gus." He touched a cam. A cylinder snapped out of the side of the gun displaying five chambers filled with brass cartridges. He looked from the cartridges to Reich. "Five serpent's teeth to give to Gus."

"I told you this was innocent," Reich said in a hard voice. "We'll have to pull those teeth."

Church stared at him in astonishment, then he trotted down the aisle and returned with two small tools. Quickly he wrenched each of the bullets from the cartridges. He slid the harmless cartridge cases back into the chambers, snapped the cylinder home and then placed the gun alongside the money.

"All safe," he said brightly. "Safe for dear little Gus." He looked at Reich expectantly. Reich extended both hands. With one he pushed the money toward Church. With the other he drew the gun toward himself. At that instant, Church changed again. The air of chirpy madness left him. He grasped Reich's wrists with iron claws and bent across the counter with blazing intensity.

"No, Ben," he said, using the name for the first time. "That isn't the price. You know it. Despite that crazy song in your head, I know you know it."

"All right, Jerry," Reich said steadily, never relaxing his hold on the gun. "What is the price? How much?"

"I want to be reinstated," the peeper said. "I want to get back into the Guild. I want to be alive again. That's the price."

"What can I do? I'm not a peeper. I don't belong to the Guild."

"You're not helpless, Ben. You've got ways and means. You could get to the Guild. You could have me reinstated."

"Impossible."

"You can bribe, blackmail, intimidate... bless, dazzle, fascinate. You can do it, Ben. You can do it for me. Help me, Ben. I helped you, once."

"I paid through the nose for that help."

"And I? What did I pay?" the peeper screamed. "I paid with my life!"

"You paid with your stupidity."

"For God's sake, Ben. Help me. Help me or kill me. I'm dead already. I just haven't the guts to commit suicide."

After a pause, Reich said brutally: "I think the best thing for you, Jerry, would be suicide."

The peeper flung himself back as though he had been branded. In his bruised face his eyes stared glassily at Reich.

"Now tell me the price," Reich said.

Quite deliberately, Church spat on the money, then levelled a glance of hurtling hatred at Reich. "There will be no charge," he said, and turned and disappeared into the shadows of the cellar.

Until it was destroyed for reasons lost in the misty confusion of the late XXth Century, the Pennsylvania Station in New York City was, unknown to millions of travellers, a link in time. The interior of the giant terminal was a replica of the mighty Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome. So also was the sprawling mansion of Madame Maria Beaumont, known to her thousand most intimate enemies as The Gilt Corpse.

As Ben Reich glided down the east ramp with Dr. Tate at his side and murder in his pocket, he communicated with his senses in staccatto spurts. The sight of the guests on the floor below... The glitter of uniforms, of dress, of phosphorescent flesh, of beams of pastel light swaying on stilt legs... Tenser, said the Tensor...

The sound of voices, of music, of annunciators, of echoes... Tension, apprehension, and dissension... The wonderful potpourri of flesh and perfume, of food, of wine, of gilt ostentation... Tension, apprehension...

The gilt trappings of death... Of something, by God, which has failed for seventy years... A lost art... As lost as phlebotomy, chirurgery, alchemy... I'll bring death back. Not the hasty, crazy killing of the psychotic, the brawler... but the normal, deliberate, planned, cold-blooded---

"For God's sake!" Tate murmured. "Be careful, man. Your murder's showing."

Eight, sir; seven, sir...

"That's better. Here comes one of the peeper secretaries. He screens the guests for crashers. Keep singing."

A slender, willowy young man, all gush, all cropped golden hair, all violet blouse and silver culottes: "Dr. Tate! Mr. Reich! I'm speechless. Actually. I can't utter word one. Come in! Come in!"

Six, sir; five, sir...

Maria Beaumont clove through the crowd, arms outstretched, eyes outstretched, naked bosom outstretched... her body transformed by pneumatic surgery into an exagerated East Indian figure with puffed hips, puffed calves and puffed gilt breasts. To Reich she was the painted figurehead of a pornographic ship... the famous Gilt Corpse.

"Ben, darling creature!" She embraced him with pneumatic intensity, contriving to press his hand into her cleavage. "It's too too wonderful."

"It's too too plastic, Maria," he murmured in her ear.

"Have you found that lost million yet?"

"Just laid hands on it now, dear."

"Be careful, audacious lover. I'm having every morsel of this divine party recorded."

Over her shoulder, Reich shot a glance at Tate. Tate shook his head reassuringly.

"Come and meet everybody who's everybody," Maria said. She took his arm. "We'll have ages for ourselves later."