“I’m not likely to be.”
“Why don’t you take leave, rest up, and think about it?”
“I’ll take leave—terminal leave.”
“Very well.” He started to leave; I said, “Wait—”
“Yes?”
“You made me one promise and I’m holding you to it. About that parasite—you said I could kill it, personally. Are you through with it?”
“Yes, I’m through with it, but—”
I started to get out of bed. “No ‘buts’. Give me your gun; I’m going to kill it now.”
“But you can’t. It’s already dead.”
“What! You promised me.”
“I know I did. But it died while we were trying to force you—to force it—to talk.”
I sat down and started to shake with laughter. I got started and could not stop. I was not enjoying it; I could not help it.
The Old Man grasped my shoulders and shook me. “Snap out of it! You’ll get yourself sick. I’m sorry about it, but there’s nothing to laugh at. It could not be helped.”
“Ah, but there is,” I answered, still sobbing and chuckling. “It’s the funniest thing that ever happened to me. All that—and all for nothing. You dirtied yourself and you loused up me and Mary—and all for no use.”
“Huh? Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Eh? I know—I know everything that went on. And you didn’t even get small change out of it—out of us, I should say. You didn’t learn anything you didn’t know before.”
“The hell we didn’t!”
“And the hell you did.”
“It was a bigger success than you’d ever guess, son. True, we didn’t squeeze anything out of it directly, before it died—but we got something out of you.”
“Me?”
“Last night. We put you through it last night. You were doped, psyched, brain-waved, analyzed, wrung out, and hung out to dry. The parasite spilled things to you and they were still there for the hypno-analysts to pick up after you were free of it.”
“What?”
“Where they live. We know where they come from and can fight back—Titan, sixth satellite of Saturn.”
When he said it, I felt a sudden gagging constriction of my throat—and I knew that he was right.
“You certainly fought before we could get it out of you,” he went on reminiscently. “We had to hold you down to keep you from hurting yourself—more.”
Instead of leaving he threw his game leg over the edge of the bed and struck a cigarette. He seemed anxious to be friendly. As for me, I did not want to fight with him further; my head was spinning and I had things to get straight. Titan—that was a long way out. Mars was the farthest men had ever been, unless the Seagraves Expedition, the one that never came back, got out to the Jovian moons.
Still, we could get there, if there were a reason for it. We would burn out their nest!
Finally he got up to go. He had limped almost to the door when I stopped him again. “Dad—”
I had not called him that in years. He turned and his face held a surprised and defenseless expression. “Yes, son?”
“Why did you and mother name me ‘Elihu’?”
“Eh? Why, it seemed the thing to do at the time. It was your maternal grandfather’s name.”
“Oh. Not enough reason. I’d say.”
“Perhaps not.” He turned again and again I stopped him.
“Dad—what sort of a person was my mother?”
“Your mother? I don’t exactly know how to tell you. Well—she was a great deal like Mary. Yes, sir, a great deal like her.” He turned and stumped out without giving me any further chance to talk.
I turned my face to the wall. After a while I steadied down.
XII
This is a personal account of my angle of view on events known to everybody. I’m not writing history. For one thing, I don’t have the broad viewpoint.
Maybe I should have been sweating about the fate of the world when I was actually stewing about my own affairs. Maybe. But I never heard of a man with a blighty wound caring too much about how the battle turned out.
Anyhow, there did not seem much to worry about. I knew that the President had been saved under circumstances which would open up anybody’s eyes, even a politician’s, and that was, as I saw it, the last real hurdle. The slugs—the titans, that is—were dependent on secrecy; once out in the open they could not possibly hold out against the massed strength of the United States. They had no powers except those they borrowed from their slaves, as I knew better than anybody.