Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  She looked at me through the storm; violet eyes full of youth and determination and tenderness and fear. I could see she, too, was being forced and was angry and afraid. And I knew how lonely I was, never daring to make friends, to love, to share. I could fall into those violet eyes and never come up. I looked at the clock. 2:30

  A.M. Sometimes quiet at this hour. Perhaps my AmerEng would stay with me a while longer.

  “You’re being compelled, Jemmy,” I said. “I know all about that. Something inside you, something you don’t understand, made you take your dignity in both hands and come after me. You don’t like it, you don’t want to, you’ve never begged in your life, but you had to. Yes?”

  She nodded.

  “Then you can understand a little about me. I’m compelled, too.”

  “Who is she?”

  “No, no. Not forced to beg from a woman; compelled to hurt people.”

  “What people?”

  “Any people; sometimes strangers, and that’s bad, other times people I love, and that’s not to be endured. So now I no longer dare love. I must protect people from myself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you some kind of psychotic monster?”

  “Yes, played by Lon Chaney, Jr.”

  “If you can joke about it, you can’t be all that sick. Have you seen a shrink?”

  “No. I don’t have to. I know what’s compelling me.” I looked at the clock again. Still a quiet time. Please God the English would stay with me a while longer. I took off my jacket and shirt. “I’m going to shock you,” I said, and showed her my back, crosshatched with scars. She gasped.

  “Self-inflicted,” I told her. “Because I permitted myself to like a man and become friendly with him. This is the price I paid, and I was lucky that he didn’t have to. Now wait here.”

  I went into the master bedroom where my heart’s shame was embalmed in a silver case hidden in the right-hand drawer of my desk. I brought it to the living room. Jemmy watched me with great eyes.

  “Five years ago a girl fell in love with me,” I told her. “A girl like you. I was lonely then, as always, so instead of protecting her from me, I indulged myself and tried to love her back. Now I want to show you the price she paid. You’ll loathe me for this, but I must show you. Maybe it’ll save you from—”

  I broke off. A flash had caught my eye—the flash of lights going on in a building down the street; not just a few windows, a lot. I put on my jacket, went out on the terrace, and watched. All the illuminated windows in the building three down from me went out. Five-second eclipse. On again. It happened in the building two down and then the one next door. The girl came to my side and took my arm. She trembled slightly.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What’s the matter? You look so grim.”

  “It’s the Geneva caper,” I said. “Wait.”

  The lights in my apartment went out for five seconds and then came on again.

  “They’ve located me the way I was nailed in Geneva,” I told her.

  “They? Located?”

  “They’ve spotted my jamming by d/f.”

  “What jamming?”

  “The full electromagnetic spectrum.”

  “What’s dee eff?”

  “Radio direction-finder. They used it to get the bearing of my jamming. Then they turned off the current in each building in the area, building by building, until the broadcast stopped. Now they’ve pinpointed me. They know I’m in this house, but they don’t know which apartment yet. I’ve still got time. So. Good night, Jemmy.

  You’re hired again. Tell Ethel Blatt I won’t be in for a while. I wish I could kiss you good-bye, but safer not.”

  She clamped her arms around my neck and gave me an honest kiss. I tried to push her away.

  She clung like The Old Man of the Sea. “You’re a spy,” she said. “I’ll go to the chair with you.”

  “I wish to heaven I only was a spy. Good-bye, my love.

  Remember me.”

  A great mistake letting that slip. It happen, I think, because my speech slip, too. Suddenly forced to talk jumble again. As I run out, the little paleface kick off her sandals so she can run, too. She is alongside me going down the fire stairs to the garage in the basement. I hit her to stop, and swear Swahili at her. She hit back and swear gutter, all the time laughing and crying. I love her for it, so she is doomed. I will ruin her like all the rest.

  We get into car and drive fast. I am making for 59th Street bridge to get off Manhattan Island and head east. I own plane in Babylon, Long Island, which is kept ready for this sort of awkwardness.

  “J’y suis, J’y reste is not my motto,” I tell Jemmy Thomas, whose French is as uncertain as her grammar, an endearing weakness. “Once Scotland Yard trapped me with a letter. I was receiving special mail care of General Delivery. They mailed me a red envelope, spotted me when I picked it up, and followed me to No. 13 Mayfair Mews, London W.1., Telephone, Mayfair 7711. Red for danger. Is the rest of you as invisible as your face?”

  “I’m not invisible,” she said, indignant, running hands through her streaky fair hair. “I tan in the summer. What is all this chase and escape? Why do you talk so funny and act so peculiar? In the office I thought it was because you’re a crazy Russian. Half crazy Russian. Are you sure you’re not a spy?”

  “Only positive.”

  “It’s too bad. A Commie 007 would be utter blissikins.”

  “Yes, I know. You see yourself being seduced with vodka and caviar.”

  “Are you a being from another world who came here on a UFO?”

  “Would that scare you?”

  “Only if it meant we couldn’t make the scene.”

  “We couldn’t anyway. All the serious side of me is concentrated on my career. I want to conquer the earth for my robot masters.”

  “I’m only interested in conquering you.”

  “I am not and have never been a creature from another world.

  I can show you my passport to prove it.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “A compensator.”

  “A what?”

  “A compensator. Like a clock pendulum. Do you know dictionary of Messrs Funk & Wagnalls? Edited by Frank H. Vizetelly, Litt.D, LL.D.? I quote: One who or that which compensates, as a device for neutralizing the influence of local attraction upon a compass needle, or an automatic apparatus for equalizing— Damn!”

  Litt.D. Frank H. Vizetelly does not use that word. It is my own because roadblock now faces me on 59th Street bridge. I should have anticipated. Should have sensed patterns, but too swept up with this inviting girl. Probably there are roadblocks on all exits leading out of this $24 island. Could drive off bridge, but maybe Bennington College has also neglected to teach Jemmy Thomas how to swim. So. Stop car. Surrender.

  “Kamerad,” I pronounce. “Who you? John Birch?”

  Gentlemans say no.

  “White Supremes of the World, Inc.?”

  No again. I feel better. Always nasty when captured by lunatic fringers.

  “U.S.S.R.?”

  He stare, then speak. “Special Agent Hildebrand. FBI,” and flash his identification which no one can read in this light. I take his word and embrace him in gratitude. FBI is safe. He recoil and wonder if I am fag. I don’t care. I kiss Jemmy Thomas, and she open mouth under mine to mutter, “Admit nothing. Deny everything. I’ve got a lawyer.”

  I own thirteen lawyers, and two of them can make any court tremble, but no need to call them. This will be standard cross-examination; I know from past experience. So let them haul me off to Foley Square with Jemmy. They separate us. I am taken to Inquisition Room.

  Brilliant lights; the shadows arranged just so; the chairs placed just so; mirror on wall probably one-way window with observers outside; I’ve been through this so often before. The anonymous man from the subway this morning is questioning me. We exchange glances of recognition. His name is R. Sawyer. The questions come.

  “Name?”


  “Peter Marko.”

  “Born?”

  “Lee’s Hill, Virginia.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a very small town, about thirty miles north of Roanoke.

  Most maps ignore it.”

  “You’re Russian?”

  “Half, by descent.”

  “Father Russian?”

  “Yes. Eugene Alexis Markolevsky.”

  “Changed his name legally?”

  “Shortened it when he became a citizen.”

  “Mother?”

  “Vera Broadhurst. English.”

  “You were raised in Lee’s Hill?”

  “Until ten. Then Chicago.”

  “Father’s occupation?”

  “Teacher.”

  “Yours, financier?”

  “Arbitrageur. Buying and selling money on the open market.”

  “Known assets from identified bank deposits, three million dollars.”

  “Only in the States. Counting overseas deposits and investments, closer to seventeen million.”

  R. Sawyer shook his head, bewildered. “Marko, what the hell are you up to? I’ll level with you. At first we thought espionage, but with your kind of money— What are you broadcasting from your apartment? We can’t break the code.”

  “There is no code, only randomness so I can get a little peace and some sleep.”

  “Only what?”

  “Random jamming. I do it in all my homes. Listen, I’ve been through this so often before, and it’s difficult for people to understand unless I explain it my own way. Will you let me try?”

  “Go ahead.” Sawyer was grim. “You better make it good. We can check everything you give us.”

  I take a breath. Always the same problem. The reality is so strange that I have to use simile and metaphor. But it was 4:00 A.M. and maybe the jumble wouldn’t interrupt my speech for a while. “Do you like to dance?”

  “What the hell…”

  “Be patient. I’m trying to explain. You like to dance?”

  “I used to.”

  “What’s the pleasure of dancing? It’s people making rhythms together; patterns, designs, balances. Yes?”

  “So?”

  “And parades. Masses of men and music making patterns.

  Team sports, also. Action patterns. Yes?”

  “Marko, if you think I’m going to—”

  “Just listen, Sawyer. Here’s the point. I’m sensitive to patterns on a big scale; bigger than dancing or parades, more than the rhythms of day and night, the seasons, the glacial epochs.”

  Sawyer stared. I nodded. “Oh yes, people respond to the 2/2 of the diurnal-nocturnal rhythms, the 4/4 of the seasons, the great terra-epochs. They don’t know it, but they do. That’s why they have sleep-problems, moon-madness, sun-hunger, weather-sensitivity. I respond to these local things, too, but also to gigantic patterns, influences from infinity.”

  “Are you some kind of nut?”

  “Certainly. Of course. I respond to the patterns of the entire galaxy, maybe universe; sight and sound; and the unseen and unheard. I’m moved by the patterns of people, individually and demographically: hostility, generosity, selfishness, charity, cruelties and kindnesses, groupings and whole cultures. And I’m compelled to respond and compensate.”

  “How a nut like you ever made seventeen mill— How do you compensate?”

  “If a child hurts itself, the mother responds with a kiss. That’s compensation. Agreed? If a man beats a horse you beat him. You boo a bad fight. You cheer a good game. You’re a cop. Sawyer. Don’t the victim and murderer seek each other to fulfill their pattern?”

  “Maybe in the past; not today. What’s this got to do with your broadcasts?”

  “Multiply that compensation by infinity and you have me. I must kiss and kick. I’m driven. I must compensate in a pattern I can’t see or understand. Sometimes I’m compelled to do extravagant things, other times I’m forced to do insane things: talk gibberish, go to strange places, perform abominable acts, behave like a lunatic.”

  “What abominable acts?”

  “Fifth amendment.”

  “But what about those broadcasts?”

  “We’re flooded with wave emissions and particles, sometimes in patterns, sometimes garbled. I feel them all and respond to them the way a marionette jerks on strings. I try to neutralize them by jamming, so I broadcast at random to get a little peace.”

  “Marko, I swear you’re crazy.”

  “Yes, I am, but you won’t be able to get me committed. It’s been tried before. I’ve even tried myself. It never works. The big design won’t permit it. I don’t know why, but the big design wants me to go on as a Pi Man.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? What kind of pie?”

  “Not pee-eye-ee-man. Pee-eye-man. Pi. Sixteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. It’s the relation of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. 3.14159+. The series goes on into infinity. It’s transcendental and can never be resolved into a finite pattern. They call extrasensory perception Psi. I call extrapattern perception Pi. All right?”

  He glared at me, threw my dossier down, sighed, and slumped into a chair. That made the grouping wrong, so I had to shift. He cocked an eye at me.

  “Pi Man,” I apologized.

  “All right,” he said at last. “We can’t hold you.”

  “They all try but they never can.”

  “Who try?”

  “Governments, police, counterintelligence, politicals, lunatic fringe, religious sects… They track me down, hoping they can nail me or use me. They can’t. I’m part of something much bigger. I think we all are, only I’m the first to be aware of it.”

  “Are you claiming you’re a superman?”

  “Good God! No! I’m a damned man… a tortured man, because some of the patterns I must adjust to are outworld rhythms like nothing we ever experience on earth… 29/51… 108/303… tempi like that, alien, terrifying, agony to live with.”

  He took another deep breath. “Off the record, what’s this about abominable acts?”

  “That’s why I can’t have friends or let myself fall in love. Sometimes the patterns turn so ugly that I have to make frightful sacrifices to restore the design. I must destroy something I love.”

  “This is sacrifice?”

  “Isn’t it the only meaning of sacrifice, Sawyer? You give up what’s dearest to you.”

  “Who to?”

  “The Gods, The Fates, The Big Pattern that’s controlling me.

  From where? I don’t know. It’s too big a universe to comprehend, but I have to beat its tempo with my actions and reactions, emotions and senses, to make the patterns come out even, balanced in some way that I don’t understand. The pressures that

  whipsaw

  me

  backand

  and turn

  forth me

  and into

  back the

  and transcendental

  forth 3.141591

  and maybe I talk too much to R. Sawyer and the patterns pronounce: PI MAN, IT IS NOT PERMITTED.

  So. There is darkness and silence.

  “The other arm now,” Jemmy said firmly. “Lift.”

  I am on my bed, me. Thinking upheaved again. Half (H) into pyjamas; other half (H) being wrestled by paleface girl. I lift. She yank. Pyjamas now on, and it’s my turn to blush. They raise me prudish in Lee’s Hill.

  “Pot roast done?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “What happened?”

  “You pooped out. Keeled over. You’re not so cool.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Everything. I was on the other side of that mirror thing. Mr.

  Sawyer had to let you go. Mr. Lundgren helped lug you up to the apartment. He thinks you’re stoned. How much should I give him?”

  “Cinque lire. No. Parla Italiano, gentile signorina?”

  “Are you asking me do I speak Italian? No.”

&nb
sp; “Entschuldigen. Sie, bitte. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? ”

  “Is this your patterns again?”

  I nod.

  “Can’t you stop?”

  After stopovers in Greece and Portugal, Ye Englische finally returns to me. “Can you stop breathing, Jemmy?”

  “Is it like that, Peter? Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you do something… something bad… do you know why? Do you know exactly what it is somewhere that makes you do it?”

  “Sometimes yes. Other times no. All I know is that I’m compelled to respond.”

  “Then you’re just the tool of the universe.”

  “I think we all are. Continuum creatures. The only difference is, I’m more sensitive to the galactic patterns and respond violently. So why don’t you get the hell out of here, Jemmy Thomas?”

  “I’m still stuck,” she said.

  “You can’t be. Not after what you heard.”

  “Yes, I am. You don’t have to marry me.”

  Now the biggest hurt of all. I have to be honest. I have to ask,

  “Where’s the silver case?”

  A long pause. “Down the incinerator.”

  “Do you… Do you know what was in it?”

  “I know what was in it.”

  “And you’re still here?”

  “It was monstrous what you did. Monstrous!” Her face suddenly streaked with mascara. She was crying. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. The checks go out every quarter to a numbered account in Switzerland. I don’t want to know. How much can the heart endure?”

  “I think I’m going to find out, Peter.”

  “Please don’t find out.” I make one last effort to save her. “I love you, paleface, and you know what that can mean. When the patterns turn cruel, you may be the sacrifice.”

  “Love creates patterns, too.” She kissed me. Her lips were parched, her skin was icy, she was afraid and hurting, but her heart beat strong with love and hope. “Nothing can crunch us now. Believe me.”

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore. We’re part of a world that’s beyond knowing. What if it turns out to be too big for love?”