The Demolished Man

Set in New York City in 2301, the story unfolds in a society transformed by Espers, people with extrasensory perception who can read minds. Espers are organized into a Guild and classified by ability: Third Class reads surface thoughts, Second Class penetrates deeper preconscious levels, and the rare First Class probes the deepest unconscious layers. Because telepaths can detect violent intent before a crime occurs, premeditated murder has not been committed in 79 years.

Ben Reich, the ruthless head of Monarch Utilities & Resources, is tormented by recurring nightmares about a figure he calls "The Man With No Face." His staff analyst, a Second Class Esper, identifies recurring dream elements pointing to the D'Courtney Cartel, Monarch's chief business rival. Reich recognizes the buried truth: His enemy is Craye D'Courtney, and the nightmares stem from a compulsion to kill him. He sends D'Courtney a coded merger proposal. When the reply WWHG arrives, Reich interprets it as "Offer refused" and resolves to commit murder.

Reich recruits Augustus Tate, a First Class Esper psychiatrist, promising to make Tate president of a restructured Esper Guild for life in exchange for running telepathic interference during and after the killing. Tate agrees to locate D'Courtney, block surveillance, and monitor police suspicion.

At a party hosted by Lincoln Powell, the Police Prefect of the Psychotic Division and a First Class Esper, Tate covertly extracts information from Sam @kins, D'Courtney's physician, learning that D'Courtney will stay one secret night at the mansion of socialite Maria Beaumont. Powell senses Tate's anxiety and warns him about associating with Reich, citing Jerry Church, a former Second Class Esper who was expelled from the Guild after dealings with Reich.

Over two days, Reich assembles his plan. He sends Beaumont an ancient party-game book containing only "Sardine," a game played in total darkness, prompting her to host a party. He steals a Rhodopsin Ionizer, a visual knockout device, from Monarch's laboratories. He tricks Duffy Wyg&, a songwriter who has done commercial work for Monarch, into playing him a persistent jingle called "Tenser, Said the Tensor" that lodges in his brain as a shield against telepathic probing. He obtains a collapsible knife-pistol from Church's pawnshop.

At Beaumont's party, Reich navigates the Sardine game's darkness, blinds D'Courtney's guards with the Ionizer, and enters the Orchid Suite. D'Courtney, frail and barely able to whisper due to throat cancer, smiles and opens his arms, calling Reich "Dear Ben" and insisting he accepted the merger. Reich refuses to believe it and forces D'Courtney's mouth open with the stiletto blade. Barbara D'Courtney, the daughter Reich never knew existed, bursts in screaming "Father!" Reich drives her back and fires through D'Courtney's mouth. Barbara snatches the gun from the corpse and flees into the night with the murder weapon.

Powell quickly deduces Reich is the killer when Reich lets slip that Barbara was "naked" as she fled, a detail only the killer could know. But proving the case is far harder: Reich's attorney blocks telepathic examination, the guests refuse to cooperate, and the water-filled gel capsule used as a bullet evaporated on impact, leaving no projectile.

Both sides race to find Barbara. Powell launches a layered investigation using visible decoy officers to mask skilled hidden operatives. Reich, warned by Tate, counters every covert move and mobilizes Keno Quizzard, a blind underworld croupier, to find Barbara first. After a week, both learn simultaneously that Barbara is at the Fortune Act, a fortune-telling den run by Chooka Frood. Powell arrives first and finds Barbara catatonic. When he speaks the trigger word "help," she reenacts the entire murder. From a hidden room above, Reich aims a weapon at Powell but cannot fire. Powell senses him and dares him to shoot, but Reich turns away.

Powell brings Barbara home, where Dr. Jeems of Kingston Hospital initiates the Déjà Éprouvé Series, a treatment that regresses her mind to infancy and allows it to develop again over three weeks while her deeper memories remain accessible to telepathic probing. Powell's sessions reliving her trauma confirm Reich as the killer but reveal that D'Courtney appeared to welcome death. On Venus, @kins confirms D'Courtney was suicidal but would never have shot himself, proving murder.

Powell confronts Tate and Church at the pawnshop. Tate tries to confess, but Powell refuses testimony that would violate the Esper Pledge against betraying patients' confidences. One of Quizzard's killers attacks with a Harmonic gun, a weapon that creates lethal vibrations through any contacted surface. Powell and Church survive; Tate falls and dies. Convinced Reich ordered the attack, Church tells Powell everything. Powell tracks Reich to Spaceland, an off-world resort, where Reich plans to kill Code Chief Hassop to suppress Monarch's financial records. Using telepathic fear-broadcasting, Powell stampedes animals across the Nature Reservation, destroys Reich's portable energy shield, and rescues Hassop.

Powell presents his evidence to Old Man Mose, the Prosecution Computer, which returns a 97 percent probability of success. Then the code department reveals that WWHG means "Accept Offer." D'Courtney agreed to the merger. Without a profit motive, the case collapses.

Reich endures assassination attempts: explosives planted in his ship, his safe, and his personal aircraft. He lures Powell away by having Chooka Frood show Powell the retrieved murder weapon, then infiltrates Powell's home and paralyzes Mary Noyes, Powell's close friend and a Second Class Esper. Barbara, now a child through the treatment, comes downstairs and innocently takes Reich's hand. Powell returns, overpowers Reich, and reveals the case is closed. The assassination attempts were Reich's own doing: His conscience has been punishing him through sabotage committed in sleepwalking fugue states. The Man With No Face, Powell explains, is Reich's own guilt.

The Esper Guild Council authorizes the Mass Cathexis Measure, a dangerous procedure that concentrates every Esper's psychic energy through a single human channel. Powell volunteers despite the measure's history of killing its channel. He constructs an artificial delusion for Reich, the belief that he alone is real in a fabricated universe, then dismantles it layer by layer: Stars vanish, planets disappear, and the city crumbles. In absolute emptiness, Reich faces the Man With No Face and sees his own face merged with D'Courtney's.

D'Courtney was Reich's biological father, who abandoned his son after an affair with Reich's mother. Barbara and Reich are half-siblings, which explains Reich's unconscious inability to harm her. The Prosecution Computer had been right to demand a "passion motive": Reich murdered his father out of unconscious rage at abandonment and disguised the truth even from himself.

Powell and Reich are found in a garden, Powell near death and Reich curled in a fetal ball. After recovering, Powell visits Barbara at Kingston Hospital and asks what cry woke her the night of the murder. She answers "Help, Barbara," but her father's throat cancer prevented speech. D'Courtney cried out telepathically, meaning Barbara is a latent Esper whose ability was untrained and unconscious. The Guild will not forbid their marriage, and they acknowledge their love.

Reich undergoes Demolition: not execution but total psychic erasure through osmotic injections that shut down every memory while consciousness is maintained, followed by eventual rebirth. Dr. Jeems expects Reich to be ready in a year. Powell gives the demolished man a candy box and receives a fragment of telepathic gratitude. Moved to tears, Powell walks toward Barbara and the future, declaring that one day all people will be "mind to mind and heart to heart."