"But I didn't say anything." Nor had she.
It was a year before Mr. Gart realized that it was he who didn't need words. It became his joke, his little parlor trick, a quaint trait.
"So this is the famous Galen Gart. Mind reader? Imposs. Tricks. Can't fool me. Can't read my mind."
"But I can, dear lady. I can."
"You ca—But I didn't say it. I—"
"Hey! Everybody! Gart's done it again."
"Look at her blush."
"What's she thinking, Gart?"
"Why's she blushing?"
"The lady," Mr. Gart smiled, "is thinking that I'm laughing at her. She's blushing because I'm telling her I admire her. She has one of the loveliest minds I have ever met."
Laughter.
Oh yes; laughter at the quaint trait when gentle, tactful, courteous Mr. Gart performed his parlor trick. But the trait was an extracted recessive that appeared in his son.
There was no more laughter when the amoral animal that a child is discovered it had inherited Extra Sensory Perception and used it brutally. Galen Gart, Jr. turned laughter to tears, and many texts were written about his lurid criminal career that ended with his murder. And Galen Gart, Jr., Esper blackmailer, confidence trickster and thief, helped produce The Demolished Man.
The vacant lot across the way from Sheridan Place was finally sold, and Space Clubs, Inc., was forced to move its Raffle Office and prizes to Brooklyn. Their funds barometer, a miniature explosive rocket hanging, halfway up an illuminated column calibrated in thousands of dollars, was abandoned. The lot was turned into a block of experimental al fresco stores, without walls or roof, protected from the elements and casual theft by the new Donaldson Resistance Hedge, an invisible bubble of radiation that scintillated in wet weather with the prismatic glitter of oil on water.
The center shop, alongside the entrance to the Pneumatique Station, was taken in 99 year lease by Wilson Winter, an ambivalent artist turned bookseller, who purchased one lot of odds and ends for the benefit of literature, and conducted a thriving trade in pornography for the benefit of his purse. Among, the worthless items in the odds & ends was Let's Play Party by Nita Noyes. It collected dust on the shelf until it was bought by The Demolished Man.
REALISM IS 4TH DIMENSION
PLATON QUINN, brilliant young producer of Pantys, attributes his phenomenal success to close attention to detail. In an exclusive interview with yr recorder he said: "People forget that 'Panty' is slang for Emotional Pantograph. When you get five thousand people into a theatre to see a Panty performance, you can't make them feel love, hate, horror. . . You can't Gestalt them unless you put authentic detail on the Passion tape."
Quinn, lithe and enthusiastic, waved his hands creatively. "Too many producers think that Pantys are a three-dimensional medium . . . sight, sound & sensation. To me, Pantys are four dimensional and my fourth dimension is realism. Every prop, every costume, every bit of cloth, metal, china, plastic and so on in my productions is authentic. And the public feels it; Here, look at this. . ."
The brilliant young producer showed us a glittering bit of steel. "You won't recognize it," he smiled, "until you've seen Murder's Memory Bank. This is the only one of its kind in existence. A rare French folding pistol. Watch."
He pressed the gadget. There was a vicious click. The steel unfolded like a flower. A stiletto point appeared, an explosive muzzle, and four heavy steel rings which, Quinn explained, were knuckledusters.
"A fistful of murder," Platon said enthusiastically. "Wait until you're in your seat at the preview. You feel the knife. You feel the bullet tear into your heart. You feel all the pain and horror of peril and passion. It's sensational. It's all in my new Panty, Murder's Memory Bank."
Platon Quinn refolded the pistol, replaced it in the desk and forgot it. He forgot it when he left the hotel. It remained forgotten until it was used by The Demolished Man.
* * *
Anti-Gravity or Nulgee was explored, developed and exploited. It smashed one industrial world and created five others. Among a million entrepreneurs scrabbling Phoenixlike in the ruins, it was adopted by "The 7 Sacrament Brothers," a single-truck moving firm owned and operated by a lone brother named Reich. Reich was a thin young man, equipped with a fishy eye, cannibal ambitions and a minimum of social responsibility.
Nulgee was also adopted by Space Clubs, Inc., who were having difficulty raising funds. Industry shrugged, preferring to leave the wild pioneering to fools. Who wants to speculate on probabilities? What commercial advantage can there be in reaching the arid Moon or the icy methanated planets? Who sponsored Cayley, Henson, Stringfellow, Chanute, Santos-Dumont, the Wrights? Also, there were several wars pending, and the armies were fighting to stifle Nulgee for insecure reasons of security.
Meanwhile, there was Alan Courtney. After divorcing his twelfth wife, Courtney started looking around for a new kind of hyper-thyroid release. He had enough money to bore him, and that was enough to start building a starship. His statement to the press announced that he was off to search the stars for an ideal wife. The press was indifferent to Mr. Courtney and he was piqued. Out of spite he finished the ship, and out of drunkenness he took off.
He never returned. No one believed he'd left. Five years later, most people were asking: "What ever happened to marrying Alan Courtney?" And people were answering: "He's living in Santa Fe, isn't he? Married again, probably."
There was also Glen Tuttle, a renegade psychotic who fleeced his wife and in-laws, bilked his creditors, defrauded his friends, and, in a final attempt to jump out of the frying pan, constructed a flimsy starship on credit and lofted to space unknown. Tuttle also never returned. His escape was never believed. Space Clubs was still talking about funds for the first ship to carry men to the Moon.
There were, in addition, Atmedo Zigerra, Joan Turnbul, Fritz Wonchalk, Speeman Van Tuerk and a few others. . . maladjusted, incapable of social compromise, escapists all . . . which is to say, pioneers all. They left Earth one by one with varying publicity, little recognition, and never returned. Space Clubs Inc. cheered the donation of $100,000 by a transportation magnate named Reich, and predicted that man would soon leave Earth for his first journey into space. It had already taken place. It had already produced The Demolished Man.
She came through the door into the quiet consultation room and looked around. She was a drab woman, forty, faded, frightened. She saw the man behind the desk, a young man with black hair, black eyes, and Duffy's white satin skin.
"Come in, madam. Be seated."
His voice was low, slightly harsh, as though it contained conflicts under compression.
"Thank you." She lowered herself painfully. "Looks too slick. Thief-type. Hannerly said the guy might be legitimate. Not a chance. My recorder on? Right."
"Your name, madam?"
"My name? Rhoda Rennsaeler; buster, when you read it in the byline. I'm Mrs. Thomas Nolles. Elvira is my given name."
"And your problem, Mrs. Nolles?"
"Well, I keep hearing those voices in my ear all the time talking to me. So I thought a doctor could—"
"I'm not a doctor, madam. Understand that. I do not practice medicine. I merely advise my friends. You may call me mister. Mr. Lorry Gart."
"Cautious, aren't you? But I'll get you, buster, don't ever imagine I won't."
"Your problem, Mrs. Nolles?" Gart repeated.
"It's these voices. I hear them telling me I'm God. And if you can resist that come-on, you're a smarter crook than I think. I can pay for the treatment. I've got a roll of bills you'll drool for, you cheap quack."
"Provided by Mr. Hannerly?"
"Oh, no. It's my savings. I—" She stopped short.
Gart nodded and smiled. "Beginning to understand, Mrs. Rennsaeler?"
"I never said it. Never!"
"No, of course you didn't. Nor your name. You do understand, don't you? Now let's be practical, Mrs. Rennsaeler. I'm not a quack. You won't expose me. You'll forget all about this episode."<
br />
"But what in God's name are you?"
"A mind-reader . . . telepath . . . esper. I have Extra Sensory Perception, Mrs. Rennsaeler—ESP. I still haven't decided what to call myself." He looked at her quizzically. "I'd welcome a suggestion from an experienced reporter."
"The louse! Reading everything in my mind. Stop thinking! Why can't I stop thinking? He's listening. Like a Peeping Tom. Peeping. He-"
"Mrs. Rennsaeler, stop that!" Gart spoke sharply. He arose from his chair and stepped around the desk to her. "Listen to me. Don't be afraid. You feel the privacy of your shame is being invaded. That makes you hostile. But you have nothing to be ashamed of, Mrs. Rennsaeler. We're all alike inside our minds. All of us. I know. I've found that out."
She stared up at him in terror.
"Believe me." He nodded and grinned painfully. "Shall I tell you my shames, my secret fears and vices, my terrors? Shall we be brothers below the conscious threshold? My father was a criminal. . . Galen Gart Jr., a telepathic blackmailer, a cheat, a man who read minds to destroy people. He was murdered. I have in me the same extra sense, the ability to read minds . . . not deeply, but deeply enough. It's an ability tempted by greed, vicious hatred of society, compulsions to shock and destroy people . . . compulsions to destroy myself."
"I don't understand." She shook her head. "I don't understand at all."
"I'm stripping myself psychologically naked for you, Mrs. Rennsaeler. It's my defense against your hostility. I'm hoping that you can help me become something more than a back-street conjurer. You're experienced in public relations."
"No," she said. "No. I came here to expose a quack. I—"
"Listen to me. I use my ability to help confused people. They come to me . . . the poor sick ones . . . so sick they can't discover their problems. I do only one thing for them. I help them recognize their problems. While they talk, I listen to their broken thoughts. While they wander and flounder in confusion, I pick out the pieces, the artifacts . . . I tell them what their crisis is. I make them see it. I wrap up their problem in a neat parcel and place it in their hands. They can carry it to the nearest analyst for solution though that's generally not necessary."
"Then you're no quack."
"No. Mrs. Rennsaeler. I'm not. And you believe me. That much I can read in your mind. You believe me and you want to help me. Isn't that true?"
After a long pause she said: "Yes, you damned peeper. I believe you and I want to help you."
Gart took her hand. "You've started helping me already. You've given me my name."
The Geoffrey Reich, first manned ship to reach the Moon, discovered Glen Tuttle's ship and body in the center of a seventy-mile bed of Haines' Stellite valued at $6.83 a pound. The airlock of Tuttle's ship was open and the body sprawled at the entrance. Poor Tuttle was so ignorant that he never knew the Moon was airless. He had had time for one quick glance at Mare Imbrium before he suffocated. His body was riddled with machine-gun perforations from the meteoric pellets that bombard the unprotected Moon at 30 miles per second.
* * *
MR. ASJ: Counsel may cross-examine the witness.
MR. LECKY: If it please the court, at this time I would like to introduce Dr. Walter Clark, E.M.D., as Esper Medical Expert to conduct the crossexamination of this hostile witness.
MR. ASJ: Objection.
THE COURT: What is your argument, Mr. Lecky?
MR. LECKY: I submit, your honor, that in this Matter of the Estate of Alan Courtney, a sum exceeding twenty-five million dollars is at stake. Although I do not impugn the conscious honesty of my opponent's witnesses, I suggest that their recollection has been colored by dollar signs.
MR. ASJ: Is counsel making an argument or writing a Panty scenario?
MR. LECKY: It is an established fact that men remember what they want to remember, and forget what they want to forget. They do this in all sincerity. Objective truth does not exist in the psychoanalytic sense and our courts have affirmed and reaffirmed the psychoanalytic principle in a long line of cases.
THE COURT: This court is acquainted with the precedents, Mr. Lecky, but the present course of action does not lie with them.
MR. ASJ: There never yet has been a case where a peeper was admitted to give evidence, and if counsel imagines he's going to ring in a—
MR. LECKY: What are you afraid of? If your witnesses are telling the truth, my man will peep them and confirm it, But if they're lying as I suggest—
THE COURT: Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Such exchanges cannot be countenanced. The court is cognizant of the fact that Extra Sensory Experts perform valuable services for society in many walks of life . . . the Esper Medical Doctor, the Esper Attorney, the Esper Educator, the Esper Criminologist. . . to mention only a few; yet the Esper Expert cannot properly be admitted to any court to give Esper evidence for the record.
MR. LECKY: It cannot be ruled an invasion of privacy your honor, any more than a snapshot of a nude sunbather can be ruled an invasion of modesty. Three hundred years ago the human body was imagined to be a thing of shame. Concealment was the strange custom of the day. Two hundred years ago the human mind was imagined to be a thing of shame. Concealment was the strange custom of that time. But we have progressed far beyond such medieval concepts.
THE COURT: Very true, Mr. Lecky, but human justice has not yet abandoned the established principle that a man cannot be used as a hostile witness against himself. A man cannot be forced to convict himself of subconscious mendacity. Justice must always remain on the objective level. If it does not, what would become of the deluded innocents who falsely believe in their own guilt? How would the courts reconcile their subjective confessions with their objective innocence? The objection is sustained.
In 2300, the Sacrament III carefully quartering the East Quadrant of Mars for FO (fissionable ore) discovered the remains of marrying Alan Courtney. He had survived his landing some two years, eking out his dwindling supplies with lichens and the dew that formed on the surface of his starship. There were scars and rust particles on his tongue.
Evidently he had gone insane, for they found his dessicated body genuflected before a rock on which the symbol of the Order of Python had been cut.
The symbol, a serpent coiled in an infinity sign was ignored in the reports, but they named a city after him.
In honor of Alan Courtney, his great-grandnephew, Samuel Dus, took his name, took his twenty-five million dollars and took up residence in Courtney City on Mars.
There were other reasons. Samuel Dus-Courtney had been mauled in a financial scrimmage with old Geoffrey Reich III, and was retiring to lick his wounded bank account.
Joan Turnbul's ship, a converted Empire submarine, fell into the Three Body Problem, and follows Jupiter in his eternal course as one of the Trojans. Passing Sacrament Liners sometimes waste enough fuel to give their passengers a glimpse of her staring skeletal face framed in a crystal port. Sentimental virgins often weep pretty tears at the sad fate of the lovely (she was ugly as sin) daughter of the discoverer of Nulgee.
Van Tuerk smashed on Titan. A D'Courtney tanker found him inside his little spacecan, lying broken on the deck on which he'd chalked: Die Kunst ist lang das Leben kurz, die Gelegenheit flüchtig. The D'Courtney ship also found a forty billion dollar crater of radiant magma.
"Magma Cum Laude," snorted Ben Reich when he received the news from Relations in Sacrament Tower, but he was not amused.
For Ben Reich is The Demolished Man.
Galaxy, January 1952
Writing And The Demolished Man
Many years ago, when my wife and I returned from a trip to Europe, a friend of ours was quite indignant with our account of our travels and said with great anger that he felt that I felt that the entire world was created for my amusement and my entertainment. And he was pretty sore about it. He was only half right. Later on, a lady, a very perceptive lady, said to me after we had been discussing things, "I understand you. You are in love with the world." And I said, "Yes, that is perfec
tly true!"
And it is also true that when I write science fiction, I write out of love. I must fall in love with a story or a novel and once having fallen in love with it consummate the affair right through to the end. My wife is rather amused by this. I've heard her say more than once, "He doesn't love me anymore, he has fallen in love with a book . . . ." And this does happen. But, of course, the interesting problem is: how does one fall in love with a story, or with a book?
It is easy to fall in love with a short story because this is a quick thing. It is more or less like the situation when you are driving your car and stop for a traffic light; you glance to the right or the left and you see a lady in the car next to you. You fall instantly in love with her and, in your mind of course, you leave your car and leap into her car and for a half-hour you have this wild thing going for you. This is, in a sense, what one does with a short story. An idea comes along, some sort of a bit of dialogue which you've heard at a bar, or some sort of research that you have done—because, indeed, the writer does not sit at home in an ivory tower waiting for inspiration to come. He gets out and digs, he shuffles around, he listens to people, he talks to people, he is like a giant dragnet; he is dragging up for future use anything that he can hear, that he can see, that he can possibly use.
Some of the stuff is stored away in one's notebook, but occasionally there is one of these lucky moments when something comes out of the blue and hits you between the eyes and you say: Ah, I'm in love, here is the idea, here is the story. And off you go to work up the steam for your half hour affair with this short story.
But with a novel it is a different proposition. The novel is not jumping from one car to another. The novel is a long-term love affair. Now, don't hold me too closely to this analogy because it does not work all the way down the line. But it is in a sense a kind of affair, a long-enjoying affair with the novel, or the lady, however you will. And it usually starts of course with that first meeting with an idea, which very often you think is a short story idea; and then you start it and suddenly discover there is this long perspective reaching into space, and you realize that you will not have enough room within 3,000 or 6,000 words to handle this and you suddenly realize that you are stuck with a novel. As in an affair with a lady, you are afraid in the beginning. And steps which lead into the genuine love affair are, at least for me, rather interesting.
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