“What elephant? They damn near didn’t tell me anything; they got interested in each other and ignored me.”
“Sure that’s not what’s biting you? About the elephant: an ape with a rider got out, somehow. Its body was found trampled to death in the elephant house. And one of the elephants was gone.”
“You mean there is an elephant loose with a slug on him?” I had a horrid vision of what that could mean—something like a tank with a cybernetic brain.
“Her,” the Old Man corrected me, “it was a cow elephant. I didn’t say so, anyhow. They found her over in Maryland, quietly pulling up cabbages. No parasite.”
“Where did the slug get to?” Involuntarily I glanced around. The Old Man chuckled.
“Don’t worry; I don’t have it in here. But a duo was stolen in the adjoining village. I’d say the slug is somewhere west of the Mississippi by now.”
“Anybody missing?”
He shrugged again. “How can you tell, in a free country? At least, the titan can’t hide on a human host anywhere short of Zone Red.”
That seemed true; Schedule Bare Back appeared to be operating one hundred percent. That made me think of something else, something I had seen at the zoo and had not reasoned through. Whatever it was, it eluded me. The Old Man went on, “It’s taken drastic action to make the bare-shoulders order stick, though. The President has had a flood of protests on moral grounds, not to mention the National Association of Men’s Haberdashers.”
“Huh?”
“You would think we were trying to sell their daughters down to Rio, the way some of them carry on. There was a delegation in, called themselves The Mothers of the Republic, or some such nonsense.”
“The President’s time is being wasted like that, at a time like this?”
“McDonough handled them. But he roped me in on it, damn his eyes.” The Old Man looked pained. “We told them that they could not see the President unless they stripped absolutely naked. That stopped ’em.”
The thought that had been bothering me came to the surface. “Say, boss, you might have to.”
“‘Have to what?”
“Make people strip naked.”
He chewed his lip and looked worried. “What are you driving at?”
“Do we know, as a certainty, that a slug can attach itself to its host only near the base of the brain?”
“You should know, better than I do.”
“I thought I did, but now I’m not sure. That’s the way we always did it, when I was, uh, with them.” I recounted again, in more detail, what I had seen when Vargas had had poor old Satan exposed to a slug. “That ape moved as soon as the thing reached the base of his spine, clear down at his tail bone. Maybe they prefer to ride up near the brain—I’m sure they do. But maybe they don’t have to. Maybe they could ride down inside a man’s pants and just put out an extension to the end of his spinal cord.”
“Hmm . . . you’ll remember, son, that the first time I had a crowd searched for one I made everybody peel clear down to the buff. That was not accidental; I wanted to be sure.”
“I think you were justified. See here; they might be able to conceal themselves anywhere on the body, if they have to. Inside a pair of shorts, for example. Of course you couldn’t hide anything under some shorts—” I was thinking of the skin-tight things that Mary wore. “—but take those droopy drawers you’ve got on. One could hide in them and it would just make you look a bit satchel fannied—a bit more, I should say.”
“Want me to take ’em off?”
“I can do better than that; I’ll give you the Kansas City Clutch.” My words were joking but I was not; I grabbed at the bunchiness of his pants and made sure he was clean. If he had not been, he would have contorted and gone unconscious had I clutched a parasite. He submitted to it with good grace, then gave me the same treatment.
“But we can’t,” he complained as he sat down, “go around slapping women on the rump. It won’t do.”