I turned back to looking at my former master. It still revolted me, but there was a gusty feeling of danger, too, that was not totally unpleasant—like standing on a very high place. “Boss,” I asked, “what are you going to do with this thing?”
He looked at me, rather than at the slug. “I plan to interview it.”
“To what? But how can you— What I want to say is: the ape, I mean—”
“No, the ape can’t talk. That’s the hitch. We’ll have to have a volunteer—a human volunteer.”
When his words sank in and I began to visualize what he meant by them the horror struck me again almost full force. “You can’t mean that. You wouldn’t do that—not to anybody.”
“I could and I’m going to. What needs to be done will be done.”
“You won’t get any volunteers!”
“I’ve already got one.”
“You have? Who?”
“But I don’t want to use the volunteer I’ve got. I’m still looking for the right man.”
I was disgusted and showed it. “You ought not to be looking for anyone, volunteer or not. And if you’ve got one, I’ll bet you won’t find another; there can’t be two people that far out of their minds.”
“Possibly,” he agreed. “But I still don’t want the one I’ve got. The interview is a necessity, son; we are fighting a war with a total lack of military intelligence. We don’t know anything, really, about our enemy. We can’t negotiate with him, we don’t know where he comes from, nor what makes him tick. We’ve got to find out; our racial existence depends on it. The only—the only way to talk to these critters is through a human volunteer. So it will be done. But I’m still looking for a volunteer.”
“Well, don’t look at me!”
“I am looking at you.”
My answer had been half wisecrack; his answer turned it dead serious and startled me speechless. I finally managed to splutter, “You’re crazy! I should have killed it when I had your gun—and I would have if I had known what you wanted it for. But as for me volunteering to let you put that thing—No! I’ve had it.”
He ploughed on through as if he had not heard me. “It can’t be just any volunteer; it has to be a man who can take it. Jarvis wasn’t stable enough, nor tough enough in some fashion to stand up under it. We know you are.”
“Me? You don’t know anything of the sort. All you know is that I lived through it once. I . . . I couldn’t stand it again.”
“Well, maybe it will kill you,” he answered calmly, “but it is less likely to kill you than someone else. You are proved and salted; you ought to be able to do it standing on your head. With anyone else I run more risk of losing an agent.”
“Since when did you worry about risking an agent?” I said bitterly.
“Since always, believe me. I am giving you one more chance, son: are you going to do this, knowing that it has to be done and that you stand the best chance of anybody—and can be of most use to us, because you are used to it—or are you going to let some other agent risk his reason and probably his life in your place?”
I started to try to explain how I felt, that I was not afraid to die, no more than is normal, but that I could not stand the thought of dying while possessed by a parasite. Somehow I felt that to die so would be to die already consigned to an endless and unbearable hell. Even worse was the prospect of not dying once the slug touched me. But I could not say it; there were still no words to describe what the race had not experienced.
I shrugged. “You can have my appointment back. There is a limit to what one man can be expected to go through and I’ve reached it. I won’t do it.”
He turned to the intercom phone on the wall. “Laboratory,” he called out, “we’ll start the experiment right now. Hurry it up!”