CONTENTS
Explosion! Concussion! The vault doors burst open. And deep inside, the money is racked ready for pillage, rapine, loot. Who's that? Who's inside the vault? Oh God! The Man With No Face! Looking. Looming. Silent. Horrible. Run... Run...
Run, or I'll miss the Paris Pneumatique and that exquisite girl with her flower face and figure of passion. There's time if I run. But that isn't the Guard before the gate. Oh Christ! The Man With No Face. Looking. Looming. Silent. Don't scream. Stop screaming...
But I'm not screaming. I'm singing on a stage of sparkling marble while the music soars and the lights burn. But there's no one out there in the amphitheater. A great shadowed pit... empty except for one spectator. Silent. Staring. Looming. The Man With No Face.
And this time his scream had sound.
Ben Reich awoke.
He lay quietly in the hydropatlhic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on in the room, simulating a calm he could not feel. The walls of green jade, the nightlight in the porcelain mandarin whose head nodded interminably if you touched him, the multi-clock that radiated the time of three planets and six satellites, the bed itself, a crystal pool flowing with carbonated glycerine at ninety-nine point nine Fahrenheit.
The door opened softly and Jonas appeared in the gloom, a shadow in puce sleeping suit, a shade with the face of a horse and the bearing of an undertaker.
“Again?” Reich asked.
“Yes, Mr. Reich.”
“Loud?”
“Very loud, sir. And terrified.”
“God damn your jackass cars,” Reich growled. “I'm never afraid.”
“No, sir.”
“Get out.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, sir.” Jonas stepped back and closed the door.
Reich shouted: “Jonas!”
The valet reappeared.
“Sorry, Jonas.”
“Quite all right, sir.”
“It isn't all right,” Reich charmed him with a smile. “I'm treating you like a relative. I don't pay enough for the privilege.”
“Oh no, sir.”
“Next time I yell at you, yell right back. Why should I have all the fun?”
“Oh, Mr. Reich...”
“Do that and you get a raise.” The smile again.
“That's all, Jonas. Thank you.”
“Thank you, sir.” The valet withdrew.
Reich arose from the bed and toweled himself before the cheval mirror, practicing the smile. “Make your enemies by choice,” he muttered, “not by accident.” He stared at the reflection: the heavy shoulders, narrow flanks, long corded legs... the sleek head with wide eyes, chiseled nose, small sensitive mouth scarred by implacability.
“Why?” he asked. “I wouldn't change looks with the devil. I wouldn't change places with God. Why the screaming?”
He put on a gown and glanced at the clock, unaware that he was noting the time panorama of the solar system with an unconscious skill that would have baffled his ancestors. The dials read:
A.D. 2301
VENUS ~ EARTH ~ MARS
Mean Solar Day 22 ~ February 15 ~ Duodecember 35
Noon+ 09 ~ 0205Greenwich ~ 2220Central Syrtis
MOON ~ IO ~ GANYMEDE ~ CALLISTO ~ TITAN ~ TRITON
2D3H ~ 1D1H ~ 6D8H ~ 13D12H ~ 15D3H ~ 4D9H
(eclipsed) ~ (transit)
Night,noon , summer, winter... without bothering to think, Reich could have rattled off the time and season for any meridian on any body in the solar system. Here inNew York it was a bitter morning after a bitter night of dreaming. He would give himself a few minutes of analysis with the Esper psychiatrist he retained. The screaming had to stop.
“E for Esper,” he muttered. “Esper for Extra Sensory Perception... For Telepaths, Mind Readers, Brain Peepers. You'd think a mind-reading doctor could stop the screaming. You'd think an Esper M.D. would earn his money and peep inside your head and stop the screaming. Those damned mindreaders are supposed to be the greatest advance since Homo sapiens evolved. E for Evolution. Bastards! E for Exploitation!”
He yanked open the door, shaking with fury.
“But I'm not afraid!” he shouted. “I'm never afraid.”
He stepped down the corridor, clacking his sandals sharply on the silver floor, ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat-ke-tat, indifferent to the slumber of his house staff, unaware that this early morning skeletal clack awakened twelve hearts to hatred and dread. He thrust open the door of his analyst's suite, entered and at once lay down on the couch.
Carson Breen, Esper Medical Doctor 2, was already awake and ready for him. As Reich's staff analyst he slept the “nurse's sleep” in which he remained en rapport with his patient and could only be awakened by his needs. That one scream had been enough for Breen. Now he was seated alongside the couch, elegant in embroidered gown (his job paid twenty thousand credits a year) and sharply alert (his employer was generous but demanding).
“Go ahead, Mr. Reich.”
“The Man With No Face again,” Reich growled.
“Nightmares?”
“You lousy blood-sucker, peep me and find out. No. Sorry. Childish of me. Yes, nightmares again. I was trying to rob a bank. Then I was trying to catch a train. Then someone was singing. Me, I think. I'm trying to give you the pictures best I can. I don't think I'm leaving anything out...” There was a long pause. Finally Reich blurted: “Well? You peep anything?”
“You persist that you cannot identify The Man With No Face, Mr. Reich?”
“How can I? I never see it. All I know is...”
“I think you can. You simply will not.”
“Listen,” Reich burst out in guilty rage. “I pay you twenty thousand. If the best you can do is make idiotic statements...”
“Do you mean that, Mr. Reich, or is it simply a part of the general anxiety syndrome?”
“There is no anxiety,” Reich shouted. “I'm not afraid. I'm never...” He stopped himself, realizing the inutility of ranting while the deft mind of the peeper searched underneath his overturning words. “You're wrong anyway,” he said sulkily. “I don't know who it is. It's a Man With No Face. That's all.”
“You've been rejecting the essential points, Mr. Reich. You must be made to see them. We'll try a little free association. Without words, please. Just think. Robbery...
“Jewels - watches - diamonds - stocks - bonds - sovereigns - counterfeiting - cash - bullion - dort...”
“What was that last again?”
“Slip of the mind. Meant to think bort... uncut, gem stones.”
“It was not a slip. It was a significant correction or, rather, alteration. Let's continue. Pneumatique...”
“Long - car - compartments - air - conditioned... That doesn't make sense.”
“It does, Mr. Reich. A phallic pun. Read `Heir' for `air' and you'll see it. Continue, please.”
“You peepers are too damned smart. Let's see. Pneumatique... train - underground - compressed air - ultra sonic speed---`We transport You Into transports,' slogan of the---What the devil is the name of that company? Can't remember. Where'd the notion come from anyway?”
“From the pre-conscious, Mr. Reich. One more trial and you'll begin to understand. Amphitheater...
“Seats - pits - balcony - boxes - stalls - horse stalls - Martian horses - MartianPampas ...”
“And there you have it, Mr. Reich. Mars. In the past six months, you've had ninety-seven nightmares about The Man With No Face. He's been your constant enemy, frustrator, and inspirer of terror in dreams that contain three common denominators... Finance, Transportation, and Mars. Over and over again... The Man With No Face, and Finance, Transportation, and Mars.”
“That doesn't mean anything to me.”
“It must mean something, Mr. Reich. You must be able to identify this terrifying figure. Why else would you attempt to escape by rejecting his face?”
“I'm not rejecting anything.”
“I offer as further clues the altered word `Dort' and the forgotten name of the company that coined the slogan `We Transport You Into---' “
“I tell you I don't know who it is.” Reich arose abruptly from the couch. “Your clues don't help. I can't make any identification.”
“The Man With No Face does not fill you with fear because he's faceless. You know who he is. You hate him and fear him, but you know who he is.”
“You're the peeper. You tell me. “
“There's a limit to my ability, Mr. Reich. I can read your mind no deeper without help.”
“What do you mean, help? You're the best E.M.D. I could hire. If...”
“You're neither thinking nor meaning that, Mr. Reich. You deliberately hired a 2nd Class Esper in order to protect yourself in such an emergency. Now you're paying the price of your caution. If you want the screaming to stop, you'll have to consult one of the 1st Class men... Say, Augustus Tate or Gart or Samuel Akins...”
“I'll think about it,” Reich muttered and turned to go. As he opened the door, Breen called: “By the way... `We Transport You Into Transports' is the slogan of the D'Courtney Cartel. How does that tie in with the alteration of `bort' to `dort'? Think it over.”
“The Man With No Face!”
Without staggering, Reich slammed the door across the path from his mind to Breen and then lurched down the corridor toward his own suite. A wave of savage hatred burst over him. “He's right. It's D'Courtney who's giving me the screams. Not because I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of myself. Known all along. Known it deep down inside. Known that once I faced it I'd have to kill that D'Courtney bastard. It's no face because it's the face of murder.”
Fully dressed and in his wrong mind, Reich stormed out of his apartment and descended to the street where a Monarch Jumper picked him up and carried him in one graceful hop to the giant tower that housed the hundreds of floors and thousands of employees of Monarch's New York Office.MonarchTower was the central nervous system of an incredibly vast corporation, a pyramid of transportation, communication, heavy industry, manufacture, sales distribution, research, exploration, importation. Monarch Utilities & Resources, Inc. bought and sold, traded and gave, made and destroyed. Its pattern of subsidiaries and holding companies was so complex that it demanded the full-time services of a 2nd Class Esper Accountant to trace the labyrinthine flow of its finances.
Reich entered his office, followed by his chief (Esper 3) secretary and her staff, bearing the litter of the morning's work.
“Dump it and jet,” he growled.
They deposited the papers and recording crystals on his desk and departed hastily but without rancor. They were accustomed to his rages. Reich seated himself behind his desk, trembling with a fury that was already goring D'Courtney. Finally he muttered: “I'll give the bastard one more chance.”
He unlocked his desk, opened the drawer-safe and withdrew the Executive's Code Book, restricted to the executive heads of the firms listed quadruple A-1-* by Lloyds. He found most of the material he required in the middle pages of the book:
QQBA ........ PARTNERSHIP
RRCB ........ BOTH OUR
SSDC ........ BOTH YOUR
TTED ........ MERGER
UUFE ........ INTERESTS
VVGF ........ INFORMATION
WWHG ........ ACCEPT OFFER
XXJH ........ GENERALLY KNOWN
YYJI ........ SUGGEST
ZZXJ ........ CONFIDENTIAL
AALK ........ EQUAL
BBML ........ CONTRACT
Marking his place in the code book, Reich flipped the v-phone on and said to the image of the interoffice operator: “Get me Code.”
The screen dazzled and cut to a smokey room cluttered with books and coils of tape. A bleached man in a faded shirt glanced at the screen, then leaped to attention.
“Yes, Mr. Reich?”
“Morning, Hassop. You look like you need a vacation.” Make your enemies by choice. “Take a week at Spaceland. Monarch expense.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reich. Thank you very much.”
“This one's confidential. To Craye D'Courtney. Send...” Reich consulted the Code Book. “Send YYJI TTED RRCB UUFE AALK QQBA. Get the answer to me like rockets. Right?”
“Right, Mr. Reich. I'll jet.”
Reich cut off the phone. He jabbed his hand once into the pile of papers and crystals on his desk, picked up a crystal and dropped it into the play-back. His chief secretary's voice said: “Monarch Gross off two points one one three four per cent. D'Courtney Gross up two point one one three oh per cent...”
“God damn him!” Reich growled. “Out of my pocket into his.” He snapped off the play-back and arose in an agony of impatience. It would take hours for the reply to come. His whole life hung on D'Courtney's reply. He left his office and began to roam through the floors and departments ofMonarchTower , pretending the remorseless personal supervision he usually exercised. His Esper secretary unobtrusively accompanied him like a trained dog.
“Trained bitch!” Reich thought. Then aloud: “I'm sorry. Did you peep that?”
“Quite all right, Mr. Reich. I understand.”
“Do you? I don't. Damn D'Courtney!”
In Personnel they were testing, checking, and screening the usual mass of job applicants... clerks, craftsmen, specialists, middle bracket executives, top echelon experts. All of the preliminary elimination was done with standardized tests and interviews, and never to the satisfaction of Monarch's Esper Personnel Chief who was stalking through the floor in an icy rage when Reich entered. The fact that Reich's secretary had sent an advance telepathic announcement of the visit made no difference to him.
“I have allotted ten minutes per applicant for my final screening interview,” the Chief was snapping to an assistant. “Six per hour, forty-eight per day. Unless my percentage of final rejections drops below thirty-five, I am wasting my time; which means you are wasting Monarch's time. I am not employed by Monarch to screen out the obviously unsuitable. That is your work. See to it.” He turned to Reich and nodded pedantically. “Good morning, Mr. Reich.”
“Morning. Trouble?”
“Nothing that cannot be handled once this staff understands that Extra Sensory Perception is not a miracle but a skill subject to wage-hour limitations. And what is your decision on Blonn, Mr. Reich?”
Secretary: “He hasn't read your memo yet.”
“May I point out, young woman, that unless I am used with maximum efficiency I am wasted. The Blonn memo has been on Mr. Reich's desk for three days.”
“Who the hell is Blonn?” Reich asked.
“First, the background, Mr. Reich: There are approximately one hundred thousand (100,000) 3rd Class Espers in the Esper Guild. An Esper 3 can peep the conscious level of a mind---can discover what a subject is thinking at the moment of thought. A 3rd is the lowest class of telepath. Most of Monarch's security positions are held by 3rds. We employ over five hundred...”
“He knows all this. Everybody does. Get to the point, long-wind!”
“Permit me, if I may, to arrive at the point in my own way. Next, there are approximately ten thousand 2nd Class Espers in the Guild,” the Personnel Chief continued frostily. “They are experts like myself who can penetrate beneath the conscious level of the mind to the preconscious. Most 2nds are in the professional class... physicians, lawyers, engineers, educators, economists, architects and so on.”
“And you all cost a fortune,” Reich growled.
“Why not? We have unique service to sell. Monarch appreciates the fact. Monarch employs over one hundred 2nds at present.”
“Will you get to the point?”
“Finally there are less than a thousand 1st Class Espers in the Guild. The 1sts are capable of deep peeping, through the conscious and preconscious layers down to the unconscious... the lowest levels of the mind. Primordial basic desires and so forth. These, of course, hold premium positions. Education, specialized medical service... analysts like Tate, Gart, @kins,Moselle ... criminologists like Lincoln Powell of the Psychotic Division... Political Analysts, State Negotiators, Special Cabinet Advisors, and so on. Thus far Monarch Utilities has never had occasion to hire a 1st.”
“And?” Reich muttered.
“The occasion has arisen, Mr. Reich, and I believe Blonn may be available. Briefly...”
“It says here.”
“Briefly, Mr. Reich, Monarch is hiring so many Espers that I have suggested we set up a special Esper Personnel Department, headed by a 1st like Blonn, to devote itself exclusively to interviewing telepaths.”
“He's wondering why you can't handle it.”
“I have given you the background to explain why I cannot handle the job, Mr. Reich. I am a 2nd Class Esper. I can telepath normal applicants rapidly and efficiently, but I cannot handle other Espers with the same speed and economy. All Espers are accustomed to using mind-blocks of varying effectiveness depending on their rating. It would take me one hour per 3rd for an efficient screening interview. It would take me three hours per 2nd. I could not possibly peep through the mind-block of a 1st. We must hire a 1st like Blonn for this work. The cost will be enormous, of course, but the necessity is urgent.”
“What's so urgent?” Reich said.
“For heaven's sake! Don't give him that picture! That isn't diversion. It's waving a red flag. He's sore enough now.”
“I have my job to do, Madam.” To Reich, the Chief said: “The fact is, sir, we are not hiring the best Espers. The D'Courtney Cartel has been taking the cream of the Espers away from us. Over and over again, through lack of proper facilities, we have been mouse-trapped by D'Courtney into bidding for inferior people while D'Courtney has quietly appropriated the best.”
“Damn you!” Reich shouted. “Damn D'Courtney. All right. Set it up. And tell this Blonn to start mouse-trapping D'Courtney. You'd better start, too.”
Reich tore out of Personnel and over to Sales-city. The same unpleasant information was waiting for him. Monarch Utilities & Resources was losing the gut-fight with the D'Courtney Cartel. It was losing the fight in every sector-city---Advertising, Engineering, Research, Public Relations. There was no escaping the certainty of defeat. Reich knew his back was to the wall.
He returned to his own office and paced in a fury for five minutes. “It's no use,” he muttered. “I know I'll have to kill him. He won't accept merger. Why should he? He's licked me and he knows it. I'll have to kill him and I'll need help. Peeper help.”
He flipped on the v-phone and told the operator; “Recreation.”
A sparkling lounge appeared on the screen, decorated in chrome and enamel, equipped with game tables and a bar dispenser. It appeared to be and was used as a recreation center. It was, in fact, headquarters of Monarch's powerful espionage division. The Recreation Director, a bearded scholar named West, looked up from a chess problem, then rose to attention.
“Good morning, Mr. Reich.”
Warned by the formal `Mister,' Reich said: “Good morning, Mr. West. Just a routine check. Paternalism, you know. How's amusement these days?”
“Modulated, Mr. Reich. However, I must complain, sir. I think there's entirely too much gambling going on.” West stalled in a fussy voice until two bona fide Monarch clerks innocently finished their drinks and departed. Then he relaxed and slumped into his chair. “All clear, Ben. Shoot.”
“Has Hassop broken the confidential code yet, Ellery?”
The peeper shook his head.
“Trying?”
West smiled and nodded.
“Where's D'Courtney?”
“En route to Terra, aboard the `Astra'.”
“Know his plans? Where he'll be staying?”
“No. Want a check?”
“I don't know. It depends...”
“Depends on what?” West glanced at him curiously. “I wish the Telepathic Pattern could be transmitted by phone, Ben. I'd like to know what you're thinking at.”
Reich smiled grimly. “Thank God for the phone. At least we've got that protection from mind readers. What's your attitude on crime, Ellery?”
“Typical.”
“Of anybody?”
“Of the Guild. The Guild doesn't like it, Ben.”
“So what's so hot about the Esper Guild? You know the value of money, success... Why don't you clever-up? Why do you let the Guild do your thinking?”
“You don't understand. We're born in the Guild. We live with the Guild. We die in the Guild. We have the right to elect Guild officers, and that's all. The Guild runs our professional lives. It trains us, grades us, sets ethical standards, and sees that we stick to them. It protects us by protecting the layman, the same as medical associations. We have the equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath. It's called the Esper Pledge. God help any of us if we break it... as I judge you're suggesting I should.”
“Maybe I am,” Reich said intently. “Maybe I'm hinting it could be worth your while to break the peeper pledge. Maybe I'm thinking in terms of money ... more than you or any 2nd Class peeper ever sees in a lifetime.”
“Forget it, Ben. Not interested.”
“So you bust your pledge. What happens?”
“We're ostracized.”
“That's all? Is that so awful? With a fortune in your pocket? Smart peepers have broken with the Guild before. They've been ostracized. So what? Clever-up, Ellery.”
West smiled wryly: “You wouldn't understand, Ben.”
“Make me understand.”
“Those ousted peepers you mention... like Jerry Church. They weren't so smart. It's like this...” West considered. “Before surgery really got started, there used to be a handicapped group called deaf-mutes.”
“No-hear no-talk?”
“That's it. They communicated by a manual sign language. That meant they couldn't communicate with anybody but deaf-mutes. Understand? They had to live in their own community or they couldn't live at all. A man goes crazy if he can't talk to friends.”
“So?”
“Some of them started a racket. They'd tax the more successful deaf-mutes for weekly hand-outs. If the victim refused to pay, they'd ostracize him. The victim always paid. It was a choice of paying or living in solitary until he went mad.”
“You mean you peepers are like deaf-mutes?”
“No, Ben. You normals are the deaf-mutes. If we had to live with you alone, we'd go mad. So leave me alone. If you're nursing something dirty, I don't want to know.”
West cut off the phone in Reich's face. With a roar of rage, Reich snatched up a gold paper-weight and hurled it into the crystal screen. Before the shattered fragments finished flying, he was in the corridor and on his way out of the building.
His peeper secretary knew where he was going. His peeper chauffeur knew where he wanted to go. Reich arrived in his apartment and was met by his peeper house-supervisor who at once announced early luncheon and dialed the meal to Reich's unspoken demands. Feeling slightly less violent, Reich stalked into bis study and turned to bis safe, a shimmer of light in the corner.
It was simply a honey-comb paper rack turned out of temporal phrase with a single-cycle beat. Each second when the safe phase and the temporal phase coincided, the rack pulsed with a brilliant glow. The safe could only be opened by the pore-pattern of Reich's left index finger which was irreproducible.
Reich placed the tip of his finger in the center of the glow. It faded and the honey-comb rack appeared. Holding his finger in place, he reached up and took down a small black notebook and a large red envelope. He removed his index finger and the safe pulsed out of phase again.
Reich flipped through the pages of the notebook... ABDUCTION... ANARCHISTS... ARSONISTS... BRIBERY (PROVEN)... BRIBERY (POTENTIAL)... Under (POTENTIAL) he found the names of fifty-seven prominent people. One of them was Augustus Tate, Esper Medical Doctor 1. He nodded with satisfaction.
He tore open the red envelope and examined its contents. It contained five sheets of closely written pages in a handwriting that was centuries old. It was a message from the founder of Monarch Utilities and the Reich clan. Four of the pages were lettered: PLAN A, PLAN B, PLAN C, PLAN D. The fifth was headed INTRODUCTION. Reich read the ancient spidery cursive slowly:
To those who come after me: The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious. If you have opened this letter we understand one another. I have prepared four general murder plans which may help you. I bequeath them to you as part of your Reich inheritance. They are outlines. The details must be filled in by yourself as your time, your environment, and necessity require. Caution: The essence of murder never changes. In every era it remains the conflict of the killer against society with the victim as the prize. And the ABC of conflict with society remains constant. Be audacious, be brave, be confident and you will not fail. Against these assets society can have no defense.
Geoffry Reich
Reich leafed through the plans slowly, filled with admiration for the first of his line who had had the fore-thought to prepare for every possible emergency. The plans were out-dated but they kindled imagination; and ideas began forming and crystallizing to be considered, discarded, and instantly replaced. One phrase caught his attention:
If you believe yourself a natural killer, avoid planning too carefully. Leave most to your instinct. Intellect may fail you, but the killer instinct is invincible.
“The killer instinct,” Reich breathed. “By God, I've got that.”
The phone chimed once and then the automatic switched on. There was a quick chatter and tape began to stutter out of the recorder. Reich strode to the desk and examined it. The message was short and deadly:
CODE TO REICH: REPLY WWHG.
“WWHG. `Offer refused.' Refused! REFUSED! I knew it!” Reich shouted. “All right, D'Courtney. If you won't let it be merger, then I'll make it murder.”