I scanned dozens of tapes which had been monitored from Zone Red; they fell into three time groups: the masquerade period, when the slugs had been continuing the “normal” broadcasts; a short period of counter-propaganda during which the slugs had tried to convince citizens in Zone Green that the government had gone crazy—it had not worked as we had not relayed their casts, just as they had not relayed the President’s proclamation—and, finally, the current period in which pretense had been dropped, the masquerade abandoned.
According to Dr. McIlvaine the titans have no true culture of their own; they are parasitic even in that and merely adapt the culture they find to their own needs. Maybe he assumes too much, but that is what they did in Zone Red. The slugs would have to maintain the basic economic activity of their victims since the slugs themselves would starve if the hosts starved. To be sure, they continued that economy with variations that we would not use—that business of processing damaged and excess people in fertilizer plants, for example—but in general farmers stayed farmers, mechanics went on being mechanics, and bankers were still bankers. That last seems silly, but the experts claim that any “division-of-labor” economy requires an accounting system, a “money” system.
I know myself that they use money behind the Curtain, so he may be right—but I never heard of “bankers” or “money” among ants or termites. However, there may be lots of things I’ve never heard of.
It is not so obvious why they continued human recreations. Is the desire to be amused a universal need? Or did they learn it from us? The “experts” on each side of the argument are equally emphatic—and I don’t know. What they picked from human ideas of fun to keep and “improve on” does not speak well for the human race although some of their variations may have merit—that stunt that they pulled in Mexico, for example, of giving the bull an even break with the matador.
But most of it just makes one sick at the stomach and I won’t elaborate. I am one of the few who saw even transcriptions on such things, except for foolhardy folk who still held out in Zone Amber; I saw them professionally. The government monitored all stereocasts from Zone Red but the transcriptions were suppressed under the old Comstock “Indecency” Law—another example of “Mother-Knows-Best”, though perhaps Mother did know best in this case. I hope that Mary, in her briefing, did not have to look at such things, but Mary would never say so if she had.
Or perhaps “Mother” did not “Know Best”; if anything more could have added to the determination of men still free to destroy this foul thing it would have been the “entertainment” stereocast from stations inside Zone Red. I recall a boxing match cast from the Will Rogers Memorial Auditorium at Fort Worth—or perhaps you would call it a wrestling match. In any case there was a ring and a referee and two contestants pitted against each other. There were even fouls, i.e., doing anything which might damage the opponent’s manager—I mean “master”, the opponent’s slug.
Nothing else was a foul—nothing! It was a man versus a woman, both of them big and husky. She gouged out one of his eyes in the first clinch, but he broke her left wrist which kept the match on even enough terms to continue. It ended only when one of them had been so weakened by loss of blood that the puppet master could no longer make the slave dance. The woman lost—and died, I am sure, for her left breast was almost torn away and she had bled so much that only immediate surgery and massive transfusions could have saved her. Which she did not get; the slugs were transferred to new hosts at the end of the match and the inert contenders were dragged out.
But the male slave had remained active a little longer than the female, slashed and damaged though he was, and he finished the match with a final act of triumph over her which I soon learned was customary. It seemed to be a signal to turn it into an “audience participation show”, an orgy which would make a witches’ Sabbat seem like a sewing circle.