Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester by Alfred Bester Page A

explosion of breath as though he had been punched in the stomach.
    “You understand, Signoid? I see you do. Gentlemen, we were imbeciles. We made the mistake of assuming that Oddy would have conscious control of his power. He does not. The control was and still is below the thinking, reasoning level. The control lies in Oddy’s Id … in that deep, unconscious reservoir of primordial selfishness that lies within every man.”
    “Then he wanted the war,” Bellanby said.
    “His Id wanted the war, Bellanby. It was the quickest route to what his Id desires … to be Lord of the Universe and loved by the Universe … and his Id controls the Power. All of us have that selfish, egocentric Id within us, perpetually searching for satisfaction, timeless, immortal, knowing no logic, no values, no good and evil, no mortality; and that is what controls the Power in Oddy. He will always win, not what he’s been educated to desire but what his Id desires. It’s the inescapable conflict that may be the doom of our system.”
    “But we’ll be there to advise him … counsel him … guide him,” Bellanby protested. “He asked us to come.”
    “And he’ll listen to our advice like the good child that he is,” Migg answered, “agreeing with us, trying to make a heaven for everybody while his Id will be making a hell for everybody. Oddy isn’t unique. We all suffer from the same conflict … but Oddy has the Power.”
    “What can we do?” Johansen groaned. “What can we do?”
    “I don’t know.” Migg bit his lip, then bobbed his head to Papa Johansen in what amounted to apology for him. “Johansen,” he said, “you were right. There must be a God, if only because there must be an opposite to Oddy Gaul, who was most assuredly invented by the Devil.”
    But that was Jesse Migg’s last sane statement. Now, of course, he adores Gaul the Glorious, Gaul the Gauleiter, Gaul the God Eternal who has achieved the savage, selfish satisfaction for which all of us unconsciously yearn from birth, but which only Oddy Gaul has won.

STAR LIGHT, STAR BRIGHT
     
    T he man in the car was thirty-eight years old. He was tall, slender, and not strong. His cropped hair was prematurely grey. He was afflicted with an education and a sense of humor. He was inspired by a purpose. He was armed with a phone book. He was doomed.
    He drove up Post Avenue, stopped at No. 17 and parked. He consulted the phone book, then got out of the car and entered the house. He examined the mailboxes and then ran up the stairs to apartment 2-F. He rang the bell. While he waited for an answer he got out a small black notebook and a superior silver pencil that wrote in four colors.
    The door opened. To a nondescript middle-aged lady, the man said, “Good evening. Mrs. Buchanan?”
    The lady nodded.
    “My name is Foster. I’m from the Science Institute. We’re trying to check some flying saucer reports. I won’t take a minute.” Mr. Foster insinuated himself into the apartment. He had been in so many that he knew the layout automatically. He marched briskly down the hall to the front parlor, turned, smiled at Mrs. Buchanan, opened the notebook to a blank page, and poised the pencil.
    “Have you ever seen a flying saucer, Mrs. Buchanan?”
    “No. And it’s a lot of bunk, I—”
    “Have your children ever seen them? You do have children?”
    “Yeah, but they—”
    “How many?”
    “Two. Them flying saucers never—”
    “Are either of school age?”
    “What?”
    “School,” Mr. Foster repeated impatiently. “Do they go to school?”
    “The boy’s twenty-eight,” Mrs. Buchanan said. “The girl’s twenty-four. They finished school a long—”
    “I see. Either of them married?”
    “No. About them flying saucers, you scientist doctors ought to—”
    “We are,” Mr. Foster interrupted. He made a tic-tac-toe in the notebook then closed it and slid it into an inside pocket with the pencil. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Buchanan,” he said, turned,