Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

“Protect our property,” Fisher said, looking around ominously. “Never forget that for a minute. We’ve put in too much work on Strapp to let it be destroyed. We protect our property!”

  “I think he needs a friend,” the brunette said.

  “Why?”

  “We could find out what’s bothering him without destroying anything. People talk to their friends. Strapp might talk.”

  “We’re his friends.”

  “No, we’re not. We’re his associates.”

  “Has he talked with you?”

  “No.”

  “You?” Fisher shot at the redhead.

  She shook her head.

  “He’s looking for something he never finds.”

  “What?”

  “A woman, I think. A special kind of woman.”

  “A woman named Kruger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Damn it, it doesn’t make sense.” Fisher thought a moment. “All right. We’ll have to hire him a friend, and we’ll have to ease off the schedule to give the friend a chance to make Strapp talk. From now on we cut the program to one Decision a week.”

  “My God!” the brunette exclaimed. “That’s cutting five million a year.”

  “It’s got to be done,” Fisher said grimly. “It’s cut now or take a total loss later. We’re rich enough to stand it.”

  “What are you going to do for a friend?” the decoy asked.

  “I said we’d hire one. We’ll hire the best. Get Terra on the TT. Tell them to locate Frank Alceste and put him through urgent.”

  “Frankie!” the redhead squealed. “I swoon.”

  “Ooh! Frankie!” The brunette fanned herself.

  “You mean Fatal Frank Alceste? The heavyweight champ?” the burly man asked in awe. “I saw him fight Lonzo Jordan. Oh, man!”

  “He’s an actor now,” the decoy explained. “I worked with him once. He sings. He dances. He—”

  “And he’s twice as fatal,” Fisher interrupted. “We’ll hire him. Make out a contract. He’ll be Strapp’s friend. As soon as Strapp meets him, he’ll—”

  “Meets who?” Strapp appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, yawning, blinking in the light. He always slept deeply after his attacks. “Who am I going to meet?” He looked around, thin, graceful, but harassed and indubitably possessed.

  “A man named Frank Alceste,” Fisher said. “He badgered us for an introduction, and we can’t hold him off any longer.”

  “Frank Alceste?” Strapp murmured. “Never heard of him.”

  Strapp could make Decisions; Alceste could make friends. He was a powerful man in his middle thirties, sandy-haired, freckle-faced, with a broken nose and deep-set grey eyes. His voice was high and soft. He moved with the athlete’s lazy poise that is almost feminine. He charmed you without knowing how he did it, or even wanting to do it. He charmed Strapp, but Strapp also charmed him. They became friends.

  “No, it really is friends,” Alceste told Fisher when he returned the check that had been paid him. “I don’t need the money, and old Johnny needs me. Forget you hired me original-like. Tear up the contract. I’ll try to straighten Johnny out on my own.”

  Alceste turned to leave the suite in the Rigel Splendide and passed the great-eyed secretaries. “If I wasn’t so busy, ladies,” he murmured, “I’d sure like to chase you a little.”

  “Chase me, Frankie,” the brunette blurted.

  The redhead looked caught.

  And as Strapp Associates zigzagged in slow tempo from city to city and planet to planet, making the one Decision a week, Alceste and Strapp enjoyed themselves while the magnificent decoy gave interviews and posed for pictures. There were interruptions when Frankie had to return to Terra to make a picture, but in between they golfed, tennised, brubaged, bet on horses, dogs, and dowlens, and went to fights and routs. They hit the night spots and Alceste came back with a curious report.

  “Me, I don’t know how close you folks been watching Johnny,” he told Fisher, “but if you think he’s been sleeping every night, safe in his little trundle, you better switch notions.”

  “How’s that?” Fisher asked in surprise.

  “Old Johnny, he’s been sneaking out nights all along when you folks thought he was getting his brain rest.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By his reputation,” Alceste told him sadly. “They know him everywhere. They know old Johnny in every bistro from here to Orion. And they know him the worst way.”

  “By name?”

  “By nickname. Wasteland, they call him.”

  “Wasteland!”

  “Uh-huh. Mr. Devastation. He runs through women like a prairie fire. You don’t know this?”

  Fisher shook his head.

  “Must pay off out of his personal pocket,” Alceste mused and departed.

  There was a terrifying quality to the possessed way that Strapp ran through women. He would enter a club with Alceste, take a table, sit down and drink. Then he would stand up and coolly survey the room, table by table, woman by woman. Upon occasion men would become angered and offer to fight. Strapp disposed of them coldly and viciously, in a manner that excited Alceste’s professional admiration. Frankie never fought himself. No professional ever touches an amateur. But he tried to keep the peace, and failing that, at least kept the ring.

  After the survey of the women guests, Strapp would sit down and wait for the show, relaxed, chatting, laughing. When the girls appeared, his grim possession would take over again and he would examine the line carefully and dispassionately. Very rarely he would discover a girl that interested him; always the identical type—a girl with jet hair, inky eyes, and clear, silken skin. Then the trouble began.

  If it was an entertainer, Strapp went backstage after the show. He bribed, fought, blustered, and forced his way into her dressing room. He would confront the astonished girl, examine her in silence, then ask her to speak. He would listen to her voice, then close in like a tiger and make a violent and unexpected pass. Sometimes there would be shrieks, sometimes a spirited defense, sometimes compliance. At no time was Strapp satisfied. He would abandon the girl abruptly, pay off all complaints and damages like a gentleman, and leave to repeat the performance in club after club until curfew.

  If it was one of the guests, Strapp immediately cut in, disposed of her escort, or if that was impossible, followed the girl home and there repeated the dressing-room attack. Again he would abandon the girl, pay like a gentleman and leave to continue his possessed search.

  “Me, I been around, but I’m scared by it,” Alceste told Fisher. “I never such saw a hasty man. He could have most any woman agreeable if he’d slow down a little. But he can’t. He’s driven.”

  “By what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like he’s working against time.”

  After Strapp and Alceste became intimate, Strapp permitted him to come along on a daytime quest that was even stranger. As Strapp Associates continued its round through the planets and industries, Strapp visited the Bureau of Vital Statistics in each city.

  There he bribed the chief clerk and presented a slip of paper. On it was written:

  “I want the name and address of every girl over twenty-one who fits this description,” Strapp would say. “I’ll pay ten credits a name.”

  Twenty-four hours later would come the list, and off Strapp would chase on a possessed search, examining, talking, listening, sometimes making the terrifying pass, always paying off like a gentleman. The procession of tall, jet-haired, inky-eyed, busty girls made Alceste dizzy.

  “He’s got an idee fix,” Alceste told Fisher in the Cygnus Splendide, “and I got it figured this much. He’s looking for a special particular girl and nobody comes up to specifications.”

  “A girl named Kruger?”

  “I don’t know if the Kruger business comes into it.”

  “Is he hard to please?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. Some of those girls—me, I’d call them sensational. But he don’t
pay any mind to them. Just looks and moves on. Others—dogs, practically—he jumps like old Wasteland.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s a kind of test. Something to make the girls react hard and natural. It ain’t that kind of passion with old Wasteland. It’s a cold-blooded trick so he can watch ’em in action.”

  “But what’s he looking for?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Alceste said, “but I’m going to find out. I got a little trick figured. It’s taking a chance, but Johnny’s worth it.”

  It happened in the arena where Strapp and Alceste went to watch a pair of gorillas tear each other to pieces inside a glass cage. It was a bloody affair, and both men agreed that gorilla-fighting was no more civilized than cockfighting and left in disgust. Outside, in the empty concrete corridor, a shriveled man loitered. When Alceste signaled to him, he ran up to them like an autograph hound.

  “Frankie!” the shriveled man shouted. “Good old Frankie! Don’t you remember me?”

  Alceste stared.

  “I’m Blooper Davis. We was raised together in the old precinct. Don’t you remember Blooper Davis?”

  “Blooper!” Alceste’s face lit up. “Sure enough. But it was Blooper Davidoff then.”

  “Sure.” The shriveled man laughed. “And it was Frankie Kruger then.”

  “Kruger!” Strapp cried in a thin, screeching voice.

  “That’s right,” Frankie said. “Kruger. I changed my name when I went into the fight game.” He motioned sharply to the shriveled man, who backed against the corridor wall and slid away.

  “You sonofabitch!” Strapp cried. His face was white and twitched hideously. “You goddamned lousy murdering bastard! I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve waited ten years.”

  He whipped a flat gun from his inside pocket and fired. Alceste sidestepped barely in time and the slug ricocheted down the corridor with a high whine. Strapp fired again, and the flame seared Alceste’s cheek. He closed in, caught Strapp’s wrist and paralyzed it with his powerful grip. He pointed the gun away and clinched. Strapp’s breath was hissing. His eyes rolled. Overhead sounded the wild roars of the crowd.

  “All right, I’m Kruger,” Alceste grunted. “Kruger’s the name, Mr. Strapp. So what? What are you going to do about it?”

  “Sonofabitch!” Strapp screamed, struggling like one of the gorillas. “Killer! Murderer! I’ll rip your guts out!”

  “Why me? Why Kruger?” Exerting all his strength, Alceste dragged Strapp to a niche and slammed him into it. He caged him with his huge frame. “What did I ever do to you ten years ago?”

  He got the story in hysterical animal outbursts before Strapp fainted.

  After he put Strapp to bed, Alceste went out into the lush living room of the suite in the Indi Splendide and explained to the staff.

  “Old Johnny was in love with a girl named Sima Morgan,” he began. “She was in love with him. It was big romantic stuff. They were going to be married. Then Sima Morgan got killed by a guy named Kruger.”

  “Kruger! So that’s the connection. How?”

  “This Kruger was a drunken no-good. Society. He had a bad driving record. They took his license away from him, but that didn’t make any difference to Kruger’s kind of money. He bribed a dealer and bought a hot-rod jet without a license. One day he buzzed a school for the hell of it. He smashed the roof in and killed thirteen children and their teacher… . This was on Terra in Berlin.

  “They never got Kruger. He started planet-hopping and he’s still on the lam. The family sends him money. The police can’t find him. Strapp’s looking for him because the schoolteacher was his girl, Sima Morgan.”

  There was a pause, then Fisher asked, “How long ago was this?”

  “Near as I can figure, ten years eight months.”

  Fisher calculated intently. “And ten years three months ago, Strapp first showed he could make decisions. The Big Decisions. Up to then he was nobody. Then came the tragedy, and with it the hysteria and the ability. Don’t tell me one didn’t produce the other.”

  “Nobody’s telling you anything.”

  “So he kills Kruger over and over again,” Fisher said coldly. “Right. Revenge fixation. But what about the girls and the Wasteland business?”

  Alceste smiled sadly. “You ever hear the expression ‘One girl in a million’?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “If your girl was one in a million, that means there ought to be nine more like her in a city of ten million, yes?”

  The Strapp staff nodded, wondering.

  “Old Johnny’s working on that idea. He thinks he can find Sima Morgan’s duplicate.”

  “How?”

  “He’s worked it out arithmetic-wise. He’s thinking like so: There’s one chance in sixty-four billion of fingerprints matching. But today there’s seventeen hundred billion people. That means there can be twenty-six with one matching print, and maybe more.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Sure, not necessarily, but there’s the chance and that’s all old Johnny wants. He figures if there’s twenty-six chances of one print matching, there’s an outside chance of one person matching. He thinks he can find Sima Morgan’s duplicate if he just keeps on looking hard enough.”

  “That’s outlandish!”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t, but it’s the only thing that keeps him going. It’s a kind of life preserver made out of numbers. It keeps his head above water—the crazy notion that sooner or later he can pick up where death left him off ten years ago.”

  “Ridiculous!” Fisher snapped.

  “Not to Johnny. He’s still in love.”

  “Impossible.”

  “I wish you could feel it like I feel it,” Alceste answered. “He’s looking … looking. He meets girl after girl. He hopes. He talks. He makes the pass. If it’s Sima’s duplicate, he knows she’ll respond just the way he remembers Sima responding ten years ago. ‘Are you Sima?’ he asks himself. ‘No,’ he says and moves on. It hurts, thinking about a lost guy like that. We ought to do something for him.”

  “No,” Fisher said.

  “We ought to help him find his duplicate. We ought to coax him into believing some girl’s the duplicate. We ought to make him fall in love again.”

  “No,” Fisher repeated emphatically.

  “Why no?”

  “Because the moment Strapp finds his girl, he heals himself. He stops being the great John Strapp, the Decider. He turns back into a nobody—a man in love.”

  “What’s he care about being great? He wants to be happy.”

  “Everybody wants to be happy,” Fisher snarled. “Nobody is. Strapp’s no worse off than any other man, but he’s a lot richer. We maintain the status quo.”

  “Don’t you mean you’re a lot richer?”

  “We maintain the status quo,” Fisher repeated. He eyed Alceste coldly. “I think we’d better terminate the contract. We have no further use for your services.”

  “Mister, we terminated when I handed back the check. You’re talking to Johnny’s friend now.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Alceste, but Strapp won’t have much time for his friends from now on. I’ll let you know when he’ll be free next year.”

  “You’ll never pull it off. I’ll see Johnny when and where I please.”

  “Do you want him for a friend?” Fisher smiled unpleasantly. “Then you’ll see him when and where I please. Either you see him on those terms or Strapp sees the contract we gave you. I still have it in the files, Mr. Alceste. I did not tear it up. I never part with anything. How long do you imagine Strapp will believe in your friendship after he sees the contract you signed?”

  Alceste clenched his fists. Fisher held his ground. For a moment they glared at each other, then Frankie turned away.

  “Poor Johnny,” he muttered. “It’s like a man being run by his tapeworm. I’ll say so long to him. Let me know when you’re ready for me to see him again.”

  He went into the bedroom, where
Strapp was just awakening from his attack without the faintest memory, as usual. Alceste sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Hey, old Johnny.” He grinned.

  “Hey, Frankie.” Strapp smiled.

  They punched each other solemnly, which is the only way that men friends can embrace and kiss.

  “What happened after that gorilla fight?” Strapp asked. “I got fuzzy.”

  “Man, you got plastered. I never saw a guy take on such a load.” Alceste punched Strapp again. “Listen, old Johnny. I got to get back to work. I got a three-picture-a-year contract, and they’re howling.”

  “Why, you took a month off six planets back,” Strapp said in disappointment. “I thought you caught up.”

  “Nope. I’ll be pulling out today, Johnny. Be seeing you real soon.”

  “Listen,” Strapp said. “To hell with the pictures. Be my partner. I’ll tell Fisher to draw up an agreement.” He blew his nose. “This is the first time I’ve had laughs in—in a long time.”

  “Maybe later, Johnny. Right now I’m stuck with a contract. Soon as I can get back, I’ll come a-running. Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” Strapp said wistfully.

  Outside the bedroom, Fisher was waiting like a watchdog. Alceste looked at him with disgust.

  “One thing you learn in the fight game,” he said slowly. “It’s never won till the last round. I give you this one, but it isn’t the last.”

  As he left, Alceste said, half to himself, half aloud, “I want him to be happy. I want every man to be happy. Seems like every man could be happy if we’d all just lend a hand.”

  Which is why Frankie Alceste couldn’t help making friends.

  So the Strapp staff settled back into the same old watchful vigilance of the murdering years, and stepped up Strapp’s Decision appointments to two a week. They knew why Strapp had to be watched. They knew why the Krugers had to be protected. But that was the only difference. Their man was miserable, hysteric, almost psychotic; it made no difference. That was a fair price to pay for 1 percent of the world.

  But Frankie Alceste kept his own counsel, and visited the Deneb laboratories of Bruxton Biotics. There he consulted with one E. T. A. Goland, the research genius who had discovered that novel technique for molding life which first brought Strapp to Bruxton, and was indirectly responsible for his friendship with Alceste. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Goland was short, fat, asthmatic and enthusiastic.