Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night by Algis Budrys (Galaxy, December 1961) opens with Sollenar, a media mogul, receiving an unexpected victor from the Special Relations Office of the International Associations of Broadcasters. The visitor, a man called Ermine, tells Sollenar that a competitor called Cortwright Burr may be about to threaten his broadcast monopoly by introducing a device (created by Martian scientists) that will render Sollenar’s technology—which creates “complete emotional rapport between the viewer and subject matter”—obsolescent.
After this rather technical and business-heavy (or data-dump) beginning, the second chapter changes pace completely, and sees Sollenar enter into a bizarre life and death struggle with Burr. This begins with Sollenar in a helium-filled plastic drifter (invisible to radar) gliding down towards the roof of Burr’s tower block. Sollenar breaks in and finds Burr, who has a sphere of orange-gold metal in his hands. Sollenar shoots Burr, but when he goes over to his body he sees Burr is still alive and holding onto the ball. Sollenar fires again and again, but he can’t seem to kill Burr and—even when Sollenar flees and returns to the balcony of his own tower block—he is just in time to see Burr climbing over the edge of the parapet. Sollenar beats at Burr’s hands, and he finally falls into the water far below. Even after this Burr isn’t finished though, and Sollenar meets him at a TV ball where Burr reveals a cadaverous body beneath his costume.
Also at the ball is Erimine, who demonstrates his incorruptibility to Sollenar when the latter tries to bribe him:
Ermine bared his left arm and sank his teeth into it. He displayed the arm.
There was no quiver of pain in voice or stance. “It’s not a legend, Mr. Sollenar.
It’s quite true. We of our office must spend a year, after the nerve surgery, learning to walk without the feel of our feet, to handle objects without crushing them or letting them slip or damaging ourselves. Our mundane pleasures are auditory, olfactory and visual. Easily gratified at little expense. Our dreams are totally interior, Mr. Sollenar. The operation is irreversible. What would you buy for me with your money?”
Sollenar quickly leaves the Ball and gets on a flight to Mars, but Ermine appears and points to Burr a few seats away. Then, when they land, Sollenar stuns Ermine and flees. At this point (spoiler) Ermine phones Earth and confirms what will already be obvious to most readers about the fantastic events that have occurred so far:
“Sollenar is en route to the Martian city. He wants a duplicate of Burr’s device, of course, since he smashed the original when he killed Burr. I’ll follow and make final disposition. The disorientation I reported previously is progressing rapidly. Almost all his responses now are inappropriate. On the flight out, he seemed to be staring at something in an empty seat. Quite often when spoken to he obviously hears something else entirely. I expect to catch one of the next few flights back.”
Then, when Sollenar finds the Martian engineers’ quarters, he too realises that he has been living a storyline generated by Burr’s device. However, when he sees Ermine outside with a rifle, he gets the Martian engineers to build another of the devices.
The story concludes with Sollenar going out to confront Ermine, and is apparently shot. The last scene has Ermine pick up the device that Sollenar has had manufactured—at which point he realises that he can feel again. Ermine is delighted but, when he later gashes his foot, he doesn’t seem to be aware of it. At this point the reader realises that Ermine is also experiencing his own reality.
This is a bizarre and tricksy piece that is interesting more than it is successful. Some of the setup is contrived (Ermin’s lack of senses to make him incorruptible), and I was unsure whether Sollenar is actually killed at the end of the piece. It is also one of those reality-shifting stories that, after you have finished, you want to go back and read again to find out exactly what was going on. A story I found impressive or notable more than I liked, perhaps.
On reflection, this struck me as the kind of thing you would expect from Philip K. Dick (and I’d be interested to know if this predates Dick’s use of multiple reality states). Also, in some respects, it feels like a proto-New Wave story, with its unrealiable narrators and/or protagonists, and its focus on the “inner space” of its characters (that said, it has the form of a pulp adventure). I also note in passing that the very powerful man setup at the beginning recalls his 1976 novel, Michaelmas (if I remember correctly from my reading of it over 40 years ago).
*** (Good). 7,650 words. Story link.