The demolished man (26 page)

"I'm telling you that I was almost murdered three times today. This boy..."

Reich pointed to Chervil. "This boy just found me in the Inlet Esplanade more

dead than alive. Look at me, for Christ's sake. Look at me!"

"Murdered!" Crabbe thumped his desk emphatically. "Of course. That Powell is a

fool. I should never have listened to him. The man who killed D'Courtney is

trying to kill you."

Behind his back, Reich motioned savagely to Chervil.

"I told Powell you were innocent. He wouldn't listen to me," Crabbe said. "Even

when that infernal adding machine in the District Attorney's office told him you

were innocent, he wouldn't listen."

"The machine said I was innocent?"

"Of course it did. There's no case against you. There never was a case against

you. And by the sacred Bill of Rights, you'll have the protection from the

murderer that any honest law-abiding citizen deserves. I'll see to that at

once," Crabbe strode to the door. "And I think this is all I'll need to settle

Mr. Powell's hash for good! Don't go, Ben. I want to talk to you about your

support for the Solar Senatorship..."

The door opened and slammed. Reich reeled and fought his way back to the world.

He looked at three Chervils. "Well?" he muttered. "Well?"

"He's telling the truth, Mr. Reich."

"About me? About Powell?"

"Well..." Chervil paused judiciously, weighing the truth.

"Jet, you bastard," Reich groaned. "How long do you think I can keep my fuses

from blowing."

"He's telling the truth about you," Chervil said quickly. "The Prosecution

Computer has declined to authorize any action against you for the D'Courtney

murder. Mr. Powell has been forced to abandon the case and... well... his career

is very much in jeopardy."

"Is that true!" Reich staggered to the boy and seized his shoulders. "Is that

true, Chervil? I've been cleared? I can go about my business? No one's going to

bother me?"

"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---"

"I'm sorry, Barbara. What is it?"

She knelt alongside him and took his hand. "I'm all mixed up about you."

She looked into his eyes with the alarming directness of the young. "You know."

After a pause, he nodded. "Yes. I know."

"And you're all mixed up about me, too. I know."

"Yes, Barbara. That's true. I am."

"Is it wrong?"

Powell heaved up from the chair and began pacing unhappily. "No, Barbara, it

isn't wrong. It's... mistimed."

"I want you to tell me about it."

"Tell you...? Yes, I suppose I'd better. I... I'll put it this way, Barbara. The

two of us are four people. There's two of you, and two of me."

"Why?"

"You've been sick, dear. So we had to turn you into a baby and let you grow up

again. That's why you're two people. The grown-up Barbara inside, and the baby

outside."

"And you?"

"I'm two grown-up people. One of them is me... Powell... The other is a member

of the governing Council of the Esper Guild."

"What's that?"

"It doesn't need explaining. It's the part of me that's got me mixed up... God

knows, maybe it's the baby part. I don't know."

She considered earnestly, then said slowly. "When I don't feel like a daughter

to you... which me feels like that?"

"I don't know, Barbara."

"You do know. Why won't you say?" She came to him and put her arms around his

neck... a grown-up woman with the manner of a child. "If it isn't wrong, why

won't you say? If I love you---"

"Who said anything about love!"

"It's what we're talking about, isn't it? lsn't it? I love you and you love me.

Isn't that it?"

"All right," Powell thought desperately. "Here it is. What are you going to do?

Admit the truth?"

"Yes!" From the stairs. Mary was descending with a travelling case in her hand.

"Admit the truth."

"She isn't a peeper."

"Forget that. She's a woman and she's in love with you. You're in love with her.

Please, Linc, give yourselves a chance."

"A chance for what? An affair if I get out of this Reich mess alive? That's all

it could be. You know the Guild won't let us marry normals."

"She'll settle for that. She'll be grateful to settle for that. Ask me. I know."

"And if I don't come out alive? She'll have nothing... Nothing but half a memory

of half a love."

"No, Barbara," he said. "That isn't it at all."

"It is," she insisted. "It is!"

"No. It's the baby part of you talking. The baby thinks she's in love with me.

The woman is not."

"She'll grow up into the woman."

"And she'll forget all about me."

"You'll make her remember."

"Why should I, Barbara?"

"Because you feel that way about me, too. I know you do."

Powell laughed. "Baby! Baby! Baby! What makes you think I'm in love with you

that way? I'm not. I've never been."

"You are!"

"Open your eyes, Barbara. Look at me. Look at Mary. You're ages older, aren't

you? Can't you understand? Do I have to explain the obvious?"

"For God's sake, Linc!"