The demolished man (20 page)

a vortex of associations and began sorting. He struggled to maintain his frame

of reference that was crumbling in that chaos of energy.

Here were the somatic messages that fed the cauldron; cell reactions by the

incredible billion, organic cries, the muted drone of muscletone, sensory

sub-currents, blood-flow, the wavering superheterodyne of blood pH... all

whirling and churning in the balancing pattern that formed the girl's psyche.

The never-ending make-and-break of synapses contributed a crackling hail of

complex rhythms. Packed in the changing interstices were broken images,

half-symbols, partial references... The ionized nuclei of thought.

Powell caught part of Plosive image, followed it to the letter P... to the

sensory association of a loss, then by cross circuit to the infant's sucking

reflex at the breast... to an infantile memory of... her mother? No. A

wet-nurse. That was encrusted with parental associations... Negation. Minus

Mother... Powell dodged an associated flame of infantile rage and resentment,

the Orphan's Syndrome. He picked up P again, searched for a related Pa...

Papa... Father.

Abruptly he was face to face with himself.

He stared at the image, teetered on the verge of disintegration, then scrambled

back to sanity.

Who the hell are you?

The image smiled beautifully and was gone.

P... Pa... Papa... Father. Heat-of-love-and-devotion-associated-with... He was

face to face with his image again. This time it was nude, powerful; its outlines

haloed with an aura of love and desire. Its arms outstretched.

Get lost. You embarrass me.

The image disappeared. Damn it! Has she fallen in love with me?

"Hi, spook."

There was her picture of herself, pathetically caricatured, the blonde hair in

strings, the dark eyes like blotches, the lovely figure drawn into flat,

ungracious planes... It faded, and abruptly the image of

Powell-Powerful-Protective-Paternal rushed at him, torrentially destructive. He

stayed with it, grappling. The back of the head was D'Courtney's face. He

followed the Janus image down to a blazing channel of doubles, pairs, linkages

and duplicities to---Reich? Imposs--- Yes, Ben Reich and the caricature of

Barbara, linked side to side like Siamese twins, brother and sister from the

waist upward, their legs turning and twisting separately in a sea of complexity

below. B linked to B. B & B. Barbara & Ben. Half joined in blood. Half---

"Linc!"

A call far off. Directionless.

"Lincoln."

It could wait a second. That amazing image of Reich had to---

"Lincoln Powell! This way, you fool!"

"Mary?"

"I can't find you."

"Be out in a few minutes."

"Linc, this is the third time I've tried to locate you. If you don't come out

now, you're lost."

"The third time?"

"In three hours. Please, Linc... While I've got the strength."

He permitted himself to wander upward. He could not find upward. The timeless,

spaceless chaos roared around him. The image of Barbara D'Courtney appeared, now

a caricature of the sexual siren.

"Hi spook."

"Lincoln, for the love of God!"

In momentary panic, he plunged in any direction until his peeper training

reasserted itself. Then the Withdrawal Technique went into automatic operation.

The blocks banged down in steady sequence; each barrier a step backward toward

the light. Halfway up, be sensed Mary alongside him. She stayed with him until

he was once more in his living room, seated alongside the urchin, her hands in

his. He dropped the hands as though they were red hot.

"Mary, I located the weirdest association with Ben Reich. Some kind of linkage

that---"

Mary had an iced towel. She slapped his face with it smartly. He realized that

he was shaking.

"Only trouble is... Trying to make sense out of fragments in the Id is like

trying to run a qualitative analysis in the middle of a sun... "

The towel flicked again.

"You aren't working with unit elements. You're working with ionized particles...

" He dodged the towel and stared at Barbara. "My God, Mary, I think this poor

kid's in love with me."

Image of a cockeyed turtle dove.

"No bidding. I kept meeting myself down there. I---"

"And what about you?"

"Me?"

"Why do you think you refused to send her to Kingston Hospital?" she said. "Why

do you think you've been peeping her twice a day since you brought her here? Why

did you have to have a chaperone? I'll tell you, Mr. Powell..."

"Tell me what?"

"You're in love with her. You've been in love with her since you found her at

Chooka Frood's."

"Mary!"

She stung him with a vivid picture of himself and Barbara D'Courtney and that

fragment she had peeped days ago... The fragment that had made her turn pale

with jealousy and anger. Powell knew it was true.

"Mary, dear..."

"Never mind me. To hell with me. You're in love with her, and the girl isn't a

peeper. She isn't even sane. How much of her are you in love with? One tenth?

What part of her are you in love with? Her face? Her subconscious? What about

the other ninety per cent? Will you love that when you find it? Damn you! I wish

I'd let you stay inside her mind until you rotted!" She turned away and began to

cry.

"Mary, for the love of---"

"Shut up," she sobbed. "Damn you, shut up! I... There's a message for you. From

headquarters. You're to jet for Spaceland as soon as possible. Ben Reich's

there, and they've lost him. They need you. Everybody needs you. So why should I

complain?"

12

It was years since Powell had last visited Spaceland. He sat in the police

launch that had picked him off the luxury ship "Holiday Queen," and as the

launch dropped, Powell stared through the port at Spaceland glittering below

like a patchwork quilt worked in silver and gold. He smiled as he always did at

the identical image that came to him each time he saw the playground in space.

It was a vision of a shipload of explorers from a far galaxy, strange creatures,

solemn and studious, who stumbled on Spaceland and researched it. He always

tried to imagine how they'd report it and always failed.

"It's a job for Dishonest Abe," he muttered.

Spaceland had started several generations back with a flat plate of asteroid

rock half a mile diameter. A mad health cultist had raised a transparent

hemisphere of Air-Gel on the plate, installed an atmosphere generator, and

started a colony. From that, Spaceland had grown into an irregular table in

space, extending hundreds of miles. Each new entrepreneur had simply tacked

another mile or so onto the shelf, raised his own transparent hemisphere, and

gone into business. By the time engineers got around to advising Spaceland that

the spherical form was more efficient and economical, it was too late to change.

That table just went on proliferating.

As the launch swung around, the sun caught Spaceland at an angle, and Powell

could see the hundreds of hemispheres shimmering against the blue-black of space

like a mass of soap bubbles on a checkered table. The original health colony was

now in the center and still in business. The others were hotels, amusement

parks, health resorts, nursing homes, and even a cemetery. On the Jupiter side

of the table was the giant fifty-mile hemisphere that covered the Spaceland

Nature Reservation which guaranteed more natural history and more weather per

square mile than any natural planet.

"Let's have the story," Powell said.

The police sergeant gulped. "We followed instructions," he said. "Rough Tail on

Hassop. Slickie following him. The Rough got taken out by Reich's girl..."

"It was a girl, eh?"

"Yeah. Cute little trick named Duffy Wyg&."

"Damnation!" Powell jerked bolt upright. The sergeant stared at him. "Why I

questioned that girl myself. I never---" He caught himself. "Seems like I did

some lousing myself. Shows you. When you meet a pretty girl..." He shook his

head.

"Well, like I say," the sergeant continued, "she takes out the Rough, and just

when the Slickie moves in, Reich jets into Spaceland with a commotion."

"Like?"

"Private yacht. Has a crash in space and limps in hollerin' emergency. One

killed. Three injured, including Reich. Front of the yacht stove in. Derelict or

meteor stray. They take Reich to the hospital where we figure he's planned for a

little. When we turn around, Reich's gone. Hassop too. I grab a peeper

interpreter and go looking in four languages. No dice."

"Hassop's luggage?"

"Gone likewise."

"Damnation! We've got to pinch Hassop and that luggage. They're our Motive.

Hassop is Monarch's Code Chief. We need him for that last message Reich sent to

D'Courtney and the reply..."

"Monday before the murder?"

"Yes. That exchange probably ignited the killing. And Hassop may have Reich's

financial records with him. They can probably tell a court why Reich had a hell

of a motive for murdering D'Courtney."

"Such as, for instance?"

"The talk around Monarch is that D'Courtney had Reich with his back to the

wall."

"You got Method and Opportunity?"

"Yes and no. I opened up Jerry Church and got everything, but it's ticklish. We

can show Reich had the opportunity. It'll stand if the other two stand. We can

show the murder method. It'll stand if the other two stand. Same goes for

Reich's Motive. They're like three wigwam poles. Each of them needs the other

two. No one can stand alone. That's Old Man Mose's opinion. And that's why we

need Hassop."

"I'll swear they ain't left Spaceland. That efficient I still am."

"Don't hang your head because Reich outsmarted you. He's outsmarted plenty. Me

included."

The sergeant shook his head gloomily.

"I'll... I'll start peeping Spaceland for Reich and Hassop at once," Powell said

as the launch drifted down for the passage through the air-lock, "but I want to

check a hunch first. Show me the corpse."

"What corpse?"

"From Reich's crash."

In the police mortuary, displayed on an air-cushion in the stasis-freeze, the

corpse was a mangled figure with dead white skin and a flaming red beard.

"Uh, huh," Powell muttered. "Keno Quizzard."

"You know him?"

"A gimpster. Was working for Reich and turned too hot to be useful. What'll you

bet that crash was a cover-up for a killing."

"Hell!" the cop exploded, "those two other guys are hurt bad. Reich might have

been faking. Admitted. But the yacht was ruined, and those two other guys---"

"So they were hurt. And the yacht was ruined. So what? Quizzard's mouth is shut

for keeps and Reich's that much safer. Reich took care of him. We'll never prove

it, but we won't have to if we locate Hassop. That'll be enough to walk friend

Reich into Demolition."

Wearing the fashionable spray-gun-tights (Spaceland sport clothes were being

painted on, this year), Powell began a lightning tour of the bubbles... Victoria

Hotel, Sportsman's Hotel, Magic, Home From Home, Ye New Neu Bablesberg, The

Martian (very chic), the Venusberg (very bawdy), and the other dozens... Powell

struck up conversations with strangers, described his dear old friends in half a

dozen languages, and peeped gently to make sure they had the precise picture of

Reich and Hassop before they answered. And then the answers. Negative. Always

negative.

The peepers were easy... and Spaceland was fined with them, at work and at

play... but always the reply was negative.

A Revival Meeting at Solar Rheims... hundreds of chanting, genuflecting devotees

participating in a kind of hopped-up Midsummer Morn festival. Reply Negative.

Sailing Races in Mars From Home... Cat boats and sloops skipping over the water

in long hops like scaled stones. Reply Negative. The Plastic Surgery Resort...

hundreds of bandaged faces and bodies. Reply Negative. Free-Flight Polo. Reply

Negative. Hot Sulphur Springs, White Sulphur Springs, Black Sulphur Springs, No

Sulphur Springs... Replies Negative.

Discouraged and depressed, Powell dropped into Solar Dawn Cemetery. The cemetery

looked like an English garden... all flagged paths and oak, ash and elm trees

with tiny little plots of green grass. Muted music from costumed robot string

quartets sawing away in strategic pavilions. Powell began to smile.

There was a faithful reproduction of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the center of

the cemetery. It was painstakingly labeled: Ye Wee Kirk O Th' Glen. From the

mouth of one of the gargoyles in the tower, a syrupy voice roared: "SEE THE

DRAMA OF THE GODS PORTRAYED IN VIBRANT ROBOT-ACTION IN YE WEE KIRK O TH' GLEN.

MOSES ON MT. SINAI, THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST, MOHAMMED AND THE MOUNTAIN, LAO

TSE AND THE MOON, THE REVELATION OF MARY BAKER EDDY, THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD

BUDDHA, THE UNVEILING OF THE TRUE AND ONLY GOD GALAXY..." Pause, and then a

little more matter-of-factly: "OWING TO THE SACRED NATURE OF THIS EXHIBIT,

ADMISSION IS BY TICKET ONLY. TICKETS MAY BE PURCHASED FROM THE BAILIFF." Pause.

Then another voice, injured and pleading: "ATTENTION ALL WORSHIPERS. ATTENTION