The Demolished Man

In a world policed by telepaths, Ben Reich plans to commit a crime that hasn’t been heard of in 70 years: murder. That’s the only option left for Reich, whose company is losing a 10-year death struggle with rival D’Courtney Enterprises. Terrorized in his dreams by The Man With No Face & driven to the edge after D’Courtney refuses a merger offer, Reich murders his rival & bribes a high-ranking telepath to help him cover his tracks. But while police prefect Lincoln Powell knows Reich is guilty, his telepath’s knowledge is a far cry from admissible evidence.

Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man is a science-fiction novel that won the first Hugo Award in 1953. It was serialized in three parts, beginning with the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, followed by book publication in 1953.

Alfred Bester

The Demolished Man

SF Masterworks - 14

ePub r1.0

Watcher 31-08-2019

Original title: The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester, 1953

Digital editor: Watcher

ePub base r2.1

The Demolished Man

Alfred Bester

1

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 hydropathic bed while his heart shuddered and his eyes focused at random on things 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 a 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.”