Herrera gestured angrily around them. “You call this control?”
“Yes! He had enough sense left to kill himself. He did kill himself?”
“We took the knife back to the lab,” admitted Herrera.
“What he was undergoing was to normal anger as a nova is to a normal sun. A less controlled individual would have stumbled from the room and gone to kill a hundred people in an orgy of release.”
“I don’t understand how any drug can boost an emotion like that,” murmured Herrera, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t ‘boost’ the emotion—or add to it or multiply it,” Sawbill said. “That’s the common mistake everyone makes. They don’t consider the other—those who don’t want to beh’eve it. The drug removes the natural safeguards a man’s mind has built up to protect and regulate his natural self. It breaks the seal holding air in the tank, doesn’t pump more air into it. It removes a million years of evolutionary barriers man has carefully erected to hold back the blackness that lives inside him. Taken properly it does so hi the small-
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WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . ..
est way. It isn’t dangerous, just effectively awesome. Few men can resist the tiny blot of animal self so set free.
“But when all the safeguards are removed, like this …”
“I think I see,” whispered Herrera.
“May I leave now?”
“What? Oh, yes, you can go. Get out of my sight.”
Sawbill paused at the door.
“What about the girl?”
“How do you mean? Oh, I understand. What you might expect. She was playing one off against the other. Jordan was a little more naive than Wu, I suspect. I hope she enjoyed it.” Herrera paused. Then: “I checked you with Central and Customs, hoping I could get you on illegal entry. No such luck. I see you got your doctorate in endocrinology from the University of Belem. That’s on Terra, isn’t it?”