"Don't be servilely civil to me. That is an accurate, clinical
description of the Riders--they are a cerebral infection."
"You mean their powers of emergency telepathy and precognition, their
seeming secondary personality--all that's a hallucination?"
Malloy was fevered as he asked it. It was at last some confirmation of
his own theory. The whole world was sick, except him.
"That is exactly what I _don't_ mean," the Commissioner said
contemptuously. "The Riders are real entities, capable of real miracles
so far as we are concerned. But they aren't mammals, or insects, or
pure energy forms--they are viruses."
"Viruses that can think?" Malloy asked, aghast.
"No. No one unit of the strain can think, but _chains_ of them can.
Together they form different combinations and responses, like analog
components or brain synapses. Objectively, they are an infection that
can enter the body anywhere but that always spread to the prefrontal
lobes--like rabies. Only they don't destroy tissue; the Riders are
benign parasites."
"That's one word for them," Malloy admitted. "But if they are a virus,
there must be antibodies--is that the word?--for them?"
The fat man snorted unpleasantly. "You can't fight an infection that is
smart enough to consciously change its shape and fight back. Natural
adaptation and mutation are tough enough. Besides, nobody would stand
for being cured of his Rider, any more than you would let me 'cure' you
of having eyes."
"Then what was your point in telling me the nature of the Riders? You
weren't merely conducting an adult education class."
"True." The Commissioner burped delicately and settled back in his
chair. "As a matter of fact, there is one thing I left out: the Riders
aren't suited for Earth. They have difficulty in adapting themselves to
live on this planet. Once they get into a human being, they are okay.
But before that they are weak and have to get hothouse care. Exactly
that--_hothouse care_."
Malloy's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He pulled it loose and
said, "And you can break the windows of hothouses!"
The Commissioner smiled. It was unpleasant to watch.
* * * * *
"Nothing personal, Malloy," the Commissioner whispered almost
subvocally as they lay together in the green ooze, "but we haven't
known you long enough to give you our trust. The first false step will
be a long one for you--exactly six feet."
Malloy tried to squint through the foggy darkness, and almost instantly
gave it up. "You can't blame me for everything, Commissioner. I told
you I wasn't convinced that some of the Riders in there won't precog
our plans to save themselves."
"All the ones we are going to destroy are the unhooked-up ones. They
can't send anything any more than one unattached telephone could.
They aren't really very good with their psi powers. It's strictly an
emergency talent, like our sudden spurts of adrenalin."
He gave an unsatisfied grunt and bellied forward.
Up ahead of Malloy, the Commissioner and an unstable stable of Jockeys
who had been coming into town for weeks lay the secret hatchery of
unhosted Rider viruses. They could only multiply beyond a certain
self-maintaining balance inside the human body, and had to be grown
in cultures on Earth, outside the healthy climate of a null-gravity,
radiated vacuum in space.
It was the Commissioner's plan to destroy all the virus cultures,
so that in eighteen years or so there would come along a Rider-free
generation to outnumber the minor supermen still infected by the Riders.
Malloy had a lot of doubts about the plan, but he was willing to go
along for his own reasons.
During the past few weeks of indoctrination and commando training,
Malloy had had time to think. It hadn't taken nearly that long to
figure out the Commissioner.
The Commissioner was simply a man who had to have power, and he
couldn't stand for a whole human race to be more powerful than he was,
just because of a lack within himself. He was out to pull everybody
down to his level, so he could stand out again and take over.
Still, Malloy thought, I may have something to say about that.
The men and a few women crawled through the semi-tropical Florida mud
toward the low buildings glimmering in the light from the thin crescent
of moon.
Malloy elbowed a foot closer to the hothouse breeding factory up to
here in stinking muck. Any second now, he thought, somebody is going to
roll over on a cottonmouth.
"Ready with your cloths," a man next to him relayed, first catching his
attention and mostly lip-synching it.
Malloy dug out his Asphixion pad, and readied the tab to pull off the
plastic coating. Clamped over the guards' faces, the catalytic agent
would rapidly absorb the men's oxygen. With a partial vacuum in the
mouth and larynx, no cries could carry and the victim would rapidly
black out.
The pad would be removed and the guards would be allowed to catch up on
their air intake. They wouldn't be harmed in any way final, so their
emergency psi warning system wasn't supposed to cut in.
Malloy shrugged.
The plan would never work.
It was based on equal parts of megalomania and wishful thinking.
Malloy's only problem was when and how to best expose the plot before
it was found out without his help.
He couldn't stand up and shout a warning. If he tried that, one of the
fanatic Jockeys was sure to clamp an Asphixion pad over his face, and,
with him, they might not be considerate enough to remove it.
Only a treacherous, self-seeking rat would even think of exposing
these poor misguided people and betraying his own race to some
extra-terrestrial viruses.
Malloy's elbows slipped out from under him and he went face first into
the mud.
He forced himself to keep from spluttering and lifted his head. _Where
had that idea come from?_
* * * * *
For one adrenalin-charged moment, he thought he had finally acquired a
Rider.
But no. A Rider would hardly urge him to carry out an attack against
the citadel of existence to its own kind. It had to be something
simpler, more elemental than that.
The voice had been his own conscience crying out against treason.
He followed the probable train of circumstances if he heeded his
conscience.
He would most probably be killed in this useless attack. He doubted
that this was the _only_ breeding chamber for Riders, or, that if it
were, the Riders safely in human bodies couldn't transplant part of
themselves and start new cultures.
If he wasn't killed, he would probably be returned to his cell, his
padded cell, by Rider-ridden people.
If he were somehow let off, he would be left to wander the streets, a
public ward.
The trouble with his conscience was that it wasn't logical--and it had
a poor memory.
It didn't recall those three and a half years mislaid in an asylum.
_Only an unprincipled_--
Malloy shut it off and felt a drop of sweat running down the deep
crevices between his eyebrows. My only problem, he reminded himself
again and again, is how and when to expose this raid before they
discover it without my help.
The solution bloomed in his mind.
It was remarkable how well the human mind could operate under stress.
He half-rose from the mud so he would be silhouetted to anybody
watching, and fell back.
The guards hadn't spotted him, but he heard the Jockeys scurrying
toward him through the mud.
The squishing halted near him.
He waited.
The commandos moved ahead, leaving him behind.
When he felt it was safe, Malloy took the Asphixion pad off his face--a
pad without the transparent plastic coat being pulled off.
He made out a buddy team of Jockeys almost on top of the first
Rider-ridden manned post. All the others had to be far ahead....
Malloy leaped to his feet--or tried to. He managed to slosh to his
knees.
"_Raid!_" he screamed. "_Jockeys are raiding the hothouse!_"
The lights flared up, a magnesium, Fourth-of-July night glare. Guards
with guns sprang from everywhere. The guns went into action. Clouds of
crystalline Asphixion snowed down on the raiders.
From far back, Malloy watched in satisfaction.
The sound came from behind him.
The Commissioner blobbed forward, a distorted ball of slimy mud.
"I will crush you under my foot like a bloated white grub!" the fat man
announced with sincerity.
Malloy's eyes narrowed in the darkness.
"Stay away from me Commissioner, or I'll push you down--way, way down!"
The blocky figure retreated a step, quivering impotently.
Malloy nodded to himself.
The Commissioner had spoken too knowingly of a terrible fear of falling.
* * * * *
The interrogator was the younger man who sat next to Dr. Heirson during
Malloy's release from the hospital.
"I feel you'd like to know my identity, Mr. Malloy. My name is Pearson;
I work for the federal government. Now would you tell me just what you
hoped to gain by betraying the assault force of Jockeys?"
It was the crux of the matter.
Malloy took a deep breath and said it.
"I want a Rider. I want to be like everybody else. If you people have
any sense of gratitude and justice--and you seem to--you'll set up some
kind of scientific project to find out why I haven't caught a case of
Riders and to see that I am properly infected."
Pearson leaned back in the other straight chair inside the
rough-boarded outbuilding.
"Mr. Malloy, we _know_ why none of the Riders who drifted in from outer
space infected you. You already _had_ a Rider--an entirely human,
not alien, one. You are schizoid--you have a split personality. You
adjusted to it to an incredible degree and submerged it, but it was
still there and no alien would touch a man who already had two minds."
Malloy felt no emotion, only an inescapable acceptance. "My
conscience," he said.
Pearson nodded. "Your second personality is becoming steadily less
recessive."
"But telepathy--all the tricks of the Riders--I can't do them."
"You will be able to. Two minds _are_ better than one. It would seem
that schizophrenia is the natural state of supermen, when properly
trained and integrated. In fact, you should be able to accomplish more
than a Rider-ridden man--you will have two human personalities, and the
Riders are little more than viruses conscious of their own existence."
"You mean I'm a _superman_?"
"Yes. But unfortunately you are a threat to the present order because
of your non-Rider attitude. You are being returned to your padded cell.
There are guards outside. I hope you will walk out quietly to meet
them."
Malloy walked out quietly to meet the guards who would take him away.
On his way out, he met Grayson Amery coming in.
Pearson shook hands warmly with the publisher.
"Mr. Amery, the government owes you a vote of thanks for recommending
Malloy for this job of infiltrating the Jocks. Turning against one of
your own kind is never easy...."
Amery laughed lightly. "Malloy was not 'one of my kind.' He was an
editor. Even worse than that, I think in his attitude he always
remained no more than a writer. I understand he is being returned to
confinement?"
Pearson looked troubled. "Yes, sir. Personally, I would feel more
comfortable if he were eliminated. I am not at all sure that we can
keep Malloy under lock and key once he develops his potential of
schizophrenia."
"I know. Unhappily, the primitive ethics of the Riders prevent our
taking care of Mike in the most efficient way. That's what I wanted to
talk to you about. May I sit down?"
"Please do, sir," said Pearson.
Amery took the vacant chair and leaned forward with boyish enthusiasm.
"Mr. Pearson, I have faith in humanity. I believe we can keep the
benefits of any situation, including the Riders, and eliminate the
disadvantages and limitations. My boy, all of us must start to work to
find a way to override the Riders!"