He had gotten three or four steps away before I called out, “Boss!”
He stopped and turned, his face expressionless. “Wait,” I added, “I’m coming.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. I’ll do it. It—It just takes . . . a while—to get your nerve back.”
He did not answer but, as I came alongside him, he grasped my upper arm, warmly and affectionately, and continued to hold it as we walked, as if I were a girl. We went on in, through another locked door and into a room that was conditioned warm and moist. The ape was there, caged.
He sat facing us, his torso supported and restrained by a strap-metal framework. His arms and legs hung limply, as if he had no control over them—which he did not have, as I learned.
As we came in he looked up and at us. For an instant his eyes were malevolent and intelligent; then the fire died out and they were merely the eyes of a dumb brute, a brute in pain.
“Around to the side,” the Old Man said softly. I would have hung back but he still had me by the arm. We moved around; the ape followed us with his eyes, but his body was held by the frame. From the new position I could see—it.
My master. The thing that had ridden my back for an endless time, spoken with my mouth—thought with my brain. My master.
“Steady,” the Old Man said softly. “Steady. You’ll get used to it.” He shook my arm. “Look away for a bit. It helps.”
I did so and it did help. Not much, but some. I took a couple of deep breaths, then held it and managed to slow my heart down a little. I made myself stare at it.
It is not the appearance of a parasite which arouses horror. True, they are disgustingly ugly, but not more so than slime in a pond—not as much so as maggots in garbage.
Nor was the horror entirely from knowing what they could do—for I felt the horror the first time I saw one, before I really knew what one was. I tried to tell the Old Man about it, letting the talk steady me. He nodded, his eyes still on the parasite. “It’s the same with everybody,” he said. “Unreasoned fear, like a bird with a snake. Probably its prime weapon.” He let his own eyes drift away, as if too long a sight of it were too much even for his rawhide nerves.
I stuck with him, trying to get used to it and gulping at my breakfast but not losing it. I kept telling myself that I was safe from it, that it couldn’t harm me.
I looked away again and found the Old Man’s eyes on me. “How about it?” he said. “Getting hardened to it?”
I looked back at it. “A little.” I went on savagely, “All I want to do is to kill it! I want to kill all of them—I could spend my whole life killing them and killing them.” I began to shake again.
The Old Man continued to study me. “Here,” he said, and handed me his gun.
It startled me. I was unarmed myself, having come straight from bed. I took it but looked back at him questioningly. “Huh? What for?”
“You want to kill it, don’t you? If you feel that you have to—go ahead. Kill it. Right now.”
“Huh? But—Look here, boss, you told me you needed this one for study.”
“I do. But if you need to kill it, if you feel that you have to kill it, do so. I figure this particular one is your baby; you’re entitled to it. If you need to kill it, to make you a whole man again, go ahead.”
” ‘To make me a whole man again—’ ” The thought rang through my head. The Old Man knew, better than I knew, what was wrong with me, what medicine it would take to cure me. I was no longer trembling; I stood there, the gun cradled in my hand, ready to spit and kill. My master . . .
If I killed this one I would be a free man again—but I would never be free as long as it lived. Surely, I wanted to kill them, every one of them, search them out, burn them, kill them—but this one above all.