THE SUBJECT WILL BE--- "---will be what? What? WHAT?"

A hand was placed over his mouth. Reich opened his eyes. He was in a small tiled room, an emergency police station. He was lying on a white table. Around him were grouped the guards, three uniformed police, unidentified strangers. All were writing carefully in report books, murmuring, shifting confusedly.

The stranger removed his hand from Reich's mouth and bent over him. "lt's all right," he said gently.

"Easy. I'm a doctor..."

"A peeper?"

"What?"

"Are you a peeper? I need a peeper. I need somebody inside my head to prove I'm right. My G.o.d! I've got to know I'm right. I don't care about the price. I---"

"What's he want?" a policeman asked.

"I don't know. He said a peeper." The doctor turned back to Reich. "What d'you mean by that? Just tell us. What's a peeper?"

"An Esper! A mind reader. A ---"

The doctor smiled. "He's joking. Show of high spirits. Many patients do that. They simulate sang froid after accidents. We call it Gallows Humor..."

"Listen," Reich said desperately. "Let me up. I want to say something..."

They helped him up.

To the police, he said: "My name is Ben Reich. Ben Reich of Monarch. You know me. I want to confess. I want to confess to Lincoln Powell, the police prefect. Take me to Powell."

"Who's Powell?"

"And what y'want to confess?"

"The D'Courtney murder. I murdered Craye D'Courtney last month. In Maria Beaumont's house... Tell Powell. I killed D'Courtney."

The police looked at each other in surprise. One of them drifted to a corner and picked up an old-fashioned hand phone: "Captain? Got a character here. Calls himself Ben Reich of Monarch. Wants to confess to some prefect named Powell. Claims he killed a party named Craye D'Courtney last month." After a pause, the policeman called to Reich: "How do you spell that?"

"D'Courtney! Capital D apostrophe Capital C-O-U-R-T-N-E-Y."

The policeman spelled it out and waited. After another pause, he grunted and hung up. "A nut," be said and stowed his notebook in a pocket.

"Listen---" Reich began.

"Is he all right?" the policeman asked the doctor without looking at Reich.

"Just shaken a little. He's all right."

"Listen!" Reich shouted.

The policeman yanked him to his feet and propelled him toward the door of the station. "All right, buddy. Out!"

"You've got to listen to me! I---"

"You listen to me, buddy. There ain't no Lincoln Powell in the service. There ain't no D'Courtney killing in the books. And we ain't takin' no slok from your kind. Now... Out!" And he hurled Reich into the street.

The pavement was strangely broken. Reich stumbled, then regained his balance and stood still, numb, lost. It was darker... eternally darker. A few street lights were lit. The skyways were extinguished. The Jumpers had disappeared. There were great gaps shorn in the skyline.

"I'm sick," Reich moaned. "I'm sick. I need help..."

He began to lurch down the broken streets with arms clutching his belly.

"Jumper!" he yelled. "Jumper? Isn't there anything in this G.o.d-forsaken city? Where is everything? Jumper!"

There was nothing.

"I'm sick... sick. Got to get home. I'm sick..." Again he shouted: "Isn't there anybody who can hear me? I'm sick. I need help... Help!... Help!" There was nothing.

He moaned again. Then he t.i.ttered... weakly, inanely. He sang in a broken voice: "Eight, sir... Five, sir... One, sir... Tenser said Tensor... Tension... 'prehension... 'ssention have begun..."

He called plaintively: "Where is everybody? Maria! Lights! Ma-ri-aaa! Stop this crazy Sardine game!" He stumbled.

"Come back," Reich called. "For G.o.d's sake, come back! I'm all alone."

No answer.

He was searching for 9 Park South, looking for the Beaumont Mansion, the site of D'Courtney's death... and Maria Beaumont, shrill, decadent, rea.s.suring.

There was nothing.

A black tundra. Black sky. Unfamiliar desolation.

Nothing.

Reich shouted once... a hoa.r.s.e, inarticulate yell of rage and fright.

No answer. Not even an echo.

"For G.o.d's sake!" he cried. "Where is everything? Bring it all back! There's nothing but s.p.a.ce..."

Out of the enveloping desolation, a figure gathered and grew, familiar, ominous, gigantic... A figure of black shadows, looking, looming, silent... The Man With No Face. Reich watched it, paralyzed, transfixed.

Then the figure spoke: "There is no s.p.a.ce. There is nothing."

And there was a screaming in Reich's ears that was his voice, and a hammering pulse that was his heart. He was running down a yawning alien path, devoid of life, devoid of s.p.a.ce, running before it was too late, too late, too late... running while there was still time, time, time--- He ran headlong into a figure of black shadows. A figure without a face. A figure that said: "There is no time. There is nothing."

Reich backed away. He turned. He fell. He crawled feebly through eternal emptiness shrieking: "Powell! Duffy! Quizzard! Tate! Oh Christ! Where is everybody? Where is everything? For the love of G.o.d..."

And he was face to face with the Man With No Face who said: "There is no G.o.d. There is nothing."

And now there was no longer escape. There was only a negative infinity and Reich and the Man With No Face. And fixed, frozen, helpless in that matrix, Reich at last raised his eyes and stared deep into the face of his deadly enemy... the man he could not escape... the terror of his nightmares... the destroyer of his existence...

It was...

Himself.

D'Courtney.

Both.

Two faces, blending into one. Ben D'Courtney. Craye Reich. D'Courtney-Reich. D'R.

He could make no sound. He could make no move. There was neither time nor s.p.a.ce nor matter. There was nothing left but dying thought.

"Father?"

"Son."

"You are me?"

"We are us."

"Father and son?"

"Yes."

"I can't understand... What's happened?"

"You lost the game, Ben."

"The Sardine Game?"

"The Cosmic Game."

"I won, I won. I owned every bit of the world. I---"

"And therefore you lose. We lose."

"Lose what?"

"Survival."

"I don't understand. I can't understand."

"My part of us understands, Ben. You would understand too if you hadn't driven me from you."

"How did I drive you from me?"

"With every rotten, distorted corruption in you."

"You say that? You... betrayer, who tried to kill me?"

"That was without pa.s.sion, Ben. That was to destroy you before you could destroy us. That was for survival. It was to help you lose the world and win the game, Ben."

"What game? What Cosmic Game?"

"The maze... the labyrinth... all the universe, created as a puzzle for us to solve. The galaxies, the stars, the sun, the planets... the world as we knew it. We were the only reality. All the rest was make-believe... dolls, puppets, stage-settings... pretended pa.s.sions. It was a make-believe reality for us to solve."

"I conquered it. I owned if."

"And you failed to solve it. We'll never know what the solution is, but it's not theft, terror, hatred, l.u.s.t, murder, rapine. You failed, and it's all been abolished, disbanded..."

"But what's to become of us?"

"We are abolished too. I tried to warn you. I tried to stop you. But we failed the test."

"But why? Why? Who are we? What are we?"

"Who knows? Did the seed know who or what it was when it failed to find fertile soil? Does it matter who or what we are? We have failed. Our test is ended. We are ended."

"No!"

"Perhaps if we had solved it, Ben, it might have remained real. But it is ended. Reality has turned into might-have-been, and you have awakened at last... to nothing."

"We'll go back! We'll try it again!"

"There is no going back. It is ended."

"We'll find a way. There must be a way..."

"There is none. It is ended."

It was ended.

Now... Demolition.

CHAPTER 17

They found the two men next morning, far up the island in the gardens overlooking the old HaarlemCa.n.a.l. Each had wandered all the night, through footway and skyway, unconscious of his surroundings, yet both were drawn inevitably together like two magnetized needles floating on a weed choked pond.

Powell was seated cross-legged on the wet turf, his face shrivelled and lifeless, his respiration almost gone, his pulse faded. He was clutching Reich with an iron grip. Reich was curled into a tight foetal ball.

They rushed Powell to his home on Hudson Ramp where the entire Guild Lab team alternately sweated over him and congratulated themselves on the first successful Ma.s.s Cathexis Measure in the history of the Esper Guild. There was no hurry for Reich. In due course and with proper procedure, his inert body was transported to KingstonHospital for Demolition. There the matter rested for seven days.