The demolished man (16 page)

his pocket. At that moment he heard the sound of distant laughter... a sour

laugh. Quizzard's laugh.

Reich stepped quickly to the twisted ramp and followed the sound of the laughter

to a plush door hung open on brass hinges and deep set in the wall. Gripping the

scrambler at the alert with the trigger set for Big D, Reich stepped through the

door. There was a hiss of compressed air and it closed behind him.

He was in a small round room, walled and ceilinged in midnight velvet. The floor

was transparent crystal, and gave a clear uninterrupted view of a boudoir on the

floor below. It was Chooka's Voyeur Chamber.

In the boudoir, Quizzard sat in a deep chair, his blind eyes glazing. The

D'Courtney girl was perched on his lap wearing an astonishing slit gown of

sequins. She sat quietly, her yellow hair smooth, her deep dark eyes staring

placidly into space, while Quizzard fondled her brutally.

"How does she look?" Quizzard's sour voice came distinctly. "How does she feel?"

He was speaking to a small faded woman who stood across the boudoir from him

with her back against the wall and an incredible expression of agony on her

face. It was Quizzard's wife.

"How does she look?" the blind man repeated.

"She doesn't know what's happening," the woman answered.

"She knows," Quizzard shouted. "She isn't that far gone. Don't tell me she don't

know what's happening. Christ! If I only had my eyes!"

The woman said: "I'm your eyes, Keno."

"Then look for me. Tell me!"

Reich cursed and aimed the scrambler, at Quizzard's head. It could kill through

the crystal floor. It could kill through anything. It was going to kill now.

Then Powell entered the boudoir.

The woman saw him at once. She emitted a bloodcurdling scream: "Run, Keno! Run!"

She thrust herself from the wall and darted toward Powell, her hands clawing at

his eyes. Then she tripped and fell prone. Apparently, the fall knocked her

unconscious for she never moved. As Quizzard surged up from the chair with the

girl in his arms, his blind eyes staring, Reich came to the appalled conclusion

that the woman's fall was no accident; for Quizzard suddenly dropped in his

tracks. The girl tumbled out of his arms and fell into the chair.

There was no doubt that Powell had accomplished this on a TP level, and for the

first time in their war, Reich was afraid of Powell... physically afraid. Again

he aimed the scrambler, this time at Powell's head as the peeper walked to the

chair.

Powell said: "Good evening. Miss D'Courtney."

Reich muttered: "Goodbye, Mr. Powell," and tried to hold his trembling hand

steady on Powell's skull.

Powell said: "Are you all right. Miss D'Courtney?" When the girl failed to

answer, be bent down and stared into her blank placid face. He touched her arm

and repeated: "Are you all right, Miss D'Courtney? Miss D'Courtney! Do you need

help?"

At the word "help" the girl whipped upright in the chair in a listening

attitude. Then she thrust out her legs and leaped from the chair. She ran past

Powell in a straight line, stopped abruptly and reached out as though grasping a

doorknob. She turned the knob, thrust an imaginary door open and burst forward,

yellow hair flying, dark eyes wide with alarm... A lightning flash of wild

beauty.

"Father!" she screamed. "For God's sake! Father!" She ran forward, then stopped

short and backed away as though eluding someone. She darted to the left and ran

in a half circle, screaming wildly, her eyes fixed.

"No!" she cried. "No! For the love of Christ! Father!"

She ran again, then stopped and struggled with imaginary arms that held her. She

fought and screamed, her eyes still fixed, then stiffened and clapped her hands

to her ears as though a violent sound had pierced them. She fell forward to her

knees and crawled across the floor, moaning in pain. Then she stopped, snatched

at something on the floor, and remained crouched on her knees, her face once

again placid, doll-like and dead.

With sickening certainty, Reich knew what the girl had just done. She had

relived the death of her father. She had relived it for Powell. And if he had

peeped her...

Powell went to the girl and raised her from the floor. She arose as gracefully

as a dancer, as serenely as a somnambulist. The peeper put his arm around her

and took her to the door. Reich followed him all the way with the muzzle of the

scrambler, waiting for the best shooting angle. He was invisible. His

unsuspecting enemies were below him, easy targets for the death-notch. He could

win safety with a shot. Powell opened the door, then suddenly swung the girl

around, held her close to him and looked up. Reich caught his breath.

"Go ahead," Powell called. "Here we are. An easy shot. One for the both of us.

Go ahead!" His lean face was suffused with anger. The heavy jet brows scowled

over the dark eyes. For half a minute he stared up at the invisible Reich,

waiting, hating, daring. At last Reich lowered his eyes and turned his face away

from the man who could not see him.

Then Powell took the docile girl through the door and closed it quietly behind

him, and Reich knew he had permitted safety to slip through his fingers. He was

halfway to Demolition.

10

Conceive of a camera with a lens distorted into wild astigmatism so that it can

only photograph the same picture over and over---the scene that twisted it into

shock. Conceive of a bit of recording crystal, traumatically warped so that it

can only reproduce the same fragment of music over and over, the one terrifying

phrase it cannot forget.

"She's in a state of Hysterical Recall," Dr. Jeems of Kingston Hospital

explained to Powell and Mary Noyes in the living room of Powell's house. "She

responds to the key word `help' and relives one terrifying experience..."

"The death of her father," Powell said.

"Oh? I see. Outside of that... Catatonia."

"Permanent?" Mary Noyes asked.

Young Doctor Jeems looked surprised and indignant. He was one of the brighter

young men of Kingston Hospital despite the fact that he was not a peeper, and

was fanatically devoted to his work. "In this day and age? Nothing is permanent

except physical death, Miss Noyes, and up at Kingston we've started working on

that. Investigating death from the symptomatic point of view, we've actually---"

"Later, Doctor," Powell interrupted. "No lectures tonight. We've got work. Can I

use the girl?"

"Use her how?"

"Peep her."

Jeems considered. "No reason why not. I gave her the Deja Eprouve Series for

catatonia. That shouldn't get in the way."

"The Deja Eprouve Series?" Mary asked.

"A great new treatment," Jeems said excitedly. "Developed by Gart... one of your

peepers. Patient goes into catatonia. It's an escape. Flight from reality. The

conscious mind cannot face the conflict between the external world and its own

unconscious. It wishes it had never been born. It attempts to revert back to the

foetal stage. You understand?"

Mary nodded. "So far."

"All right. Deja Eprouve is an old XIXth Century psychiatric term. Literally, it

means: `something already experienced, already tried.' Many patients wish for

something so strongly that finally the wish makes them imagine that the act or

the experience in which they never engaged has already happened. Get it?"

"Wait a minute," Mary began slowly. "You mean I---"

"Put it this way," Jeems interrupted briskly. "Pretend you had a burning wish

to... oh, say, to be married to Powell and have a family. Right?"

Mary flushed. In a rigid voice she said: "Right." For a moment Powell yearned to

blast this well-meaning clumsy young normal.

"Well," Jeems continued in blithe ignorance. "If you lost your balance you might

come to believe that you'd married Powell and had three children. That would be

Deja Eprouve. Now what we do is synthesize an artificial Deja Eprouve for the

patient. We make the catatonic wish to escape come true. We make the experience

they desire actually happen. We dissociate the mind from the lower levels, send

it back to the womb, and let it pretend it's being born to a new life all over

again. Got that?"

"Got it." Mary tried to smile as her control returned.

"On the surface of the mind... in the conscious level... the patient goes

through development all over again at an accelerated rate. Infancy, childhood,

adolescence, and finally maturity."

"You mean Barbara D'Courtney is going to be a baby... learn to speak... walk...

?"

"Right. Right. Right. Takes about three weeks. By the time she catches up with

herself, she'll be ready to accept the reality she's trying to escape. She'll

have grown up to it, so to speak. Like I said, this is only on the conscious

level. Below that, she won't be touched. You can peep her all you like. Only

trouble is... she must be pretty scared down there. Mixed up. You'll have

trouble getting what you want. Of course, that's your specialty. You'll know

what to do."

Jeems stood up abruptly. "Got to get back to the shop." He made for the front

door. "Delighted to be of service. Always delighted to be called in by peepers.

I can't understand the recent hostility toward you people..." He was gone.

"Ummm. That was a significant parting note."

"What'd he mean, Linc?"

"Our great & good friend, Ben Reich. Reich's been backing an Anti-Esper

campaign. You know... peepers are clannish, can't be trusted, never become

patriots. Interplanetary conspirators, eat little Normal babies, &c."

"Ugh! And he's supporting the League of Patriots too. He's a disgusting,

dangerous man."

"Dangerous but not disgusting, Mary. He's got charm. That's what makes him

doubly dangerous. People always expect villains to look villainous. Well, maybe

we can take care of Reich before it's too late. Bring Barbara down, Mary."

Mary brought the girl downstairs and seated her on the low dais. Barbara sat

like a calm statue. Mary had dressed her in blue leotards and combed her blonde

hair back, tying it into a fox-tail with blue ribbon. Barbara was polished and

shining; a lovely waxwork loll.

"Lovely outside; mangled inside. Damn Reich!"

"What about him?"

"I told you, Mary. I was so mad at Chooka Frood's coop, I handed it to that red

slug Quizzard and his wife... And when I peeped Reich upstairs, I threw it in

his teeth. I---"

"What did you do to Quizzard?"

"Basic Neuro-Shock. Come up to the Lab sometime and we'll show you. It's new. If

you make 1st we'll teach you. It's like the scrambler but psychogenic."

"Fatal?"

"Forgotten the Pledge? Of course not."

"And you peeped Reich through the floor? How?"

"TP reflection. The Voyeur Chamber wasn't wired for sound. It had open

acoustical ducts. Reich's mistake. He was transmitting down the channel and I

swear I was hoping he had the guts to shoot. I was going to blast him with a

Basic that would have made Case History."

"Why didn't he shoot?"

"I don't know, Mary. I don't know. He thought he had every reason to kill us. He

thought he was safe... Didn't know about the Basic, even though Quizzard's

Decline & Fall jolted him... But he couldn't."

"Afraid?"

"Reich's no coward. He wasn't afraid. He just couldn't. I don't know why. Maybe

next time it'll be different. That's why I'm keeping Barbara D'Courtney in my

house. She'll be safe here."..

"She'll be safe in Kingston Hospital."

"But not quiet enough for the work I've go to do."

"?"

"She's got the detailed picture of the murder locked up in her hysteria. I've

got to get at it... piece by piece. When I've got it, I've got Reich."

Mary arose. "Exit Mary Noyes."

"Sit down, peeper! Why d'you think I called you? You're staying here with the

girl. She can't be left alone. You two can have my bedroom. I'll convert the

study for myself."

"Choke it, Linc. Don't jet off like that. You're embarrassed. Let's see if I

can't maybe thread-needle through that mind block."

"Listen---"

"No you don't, Mr. Powell." Mary burst into laughter. "So that's it. You want me

for a chaperone. Victorian word, isn't? So are you, Linc. Positively atavistic."

"I brand that as a lie. In toffy circles I'm known as the most progressive---"

"And what's that image? Oh. Knights of the Round Table. Sir Galahad Powell. And

there's something underneath that. I---" Suddenly she stopped laughing and

turned pale.

"What'd you dig?"

"Forget it."

"Oh, come on, Mary."

"Forget it, Linc. And don't peep me for it. If you can't reach it yourself,

you'd better not get it secondhand. Especially from me."

He looked at her curiously for a moment, then shrugged. "All right, Mary. Then

we'd better go to work."

To Barbara D'Courtney he said: "Help, Barbara."

Instantly she whipped upright on the dais in a listening attitude, and he probed

delicately... Sensation of bedclothes... Voice calling dimly... Whose voice,

Barbara? Deep in the preconscious she answered: "Who is that?" A friend,