Mesner said river rats were worse rebs even than hillbillies. They drifted up and down the rivers. You staged a raid and they dissolved away into the river like rodents5. Many of them skipped quarterly brain-checks, but no one knew how many. Birth and death records weren't kept by river rats.
I walked ahead of Mesner down a winding6 gravel7 path into rotting reeds by the river, then we followed another muddy path toward the shanties. Frogs and insects hummed. A path of moonlight moved across the water. A ribby hound dog slunk away from me. A ragged8 kid looking wilder than the hound, ran across the path and slipped soundlessly into the muddy water.
Mesner pointed9 out the blind man's shack10. Then he looked at me and smiled with that absurd little cupid bow mouth. "This isn't the time either, Fred. If you think we're not covered, you're wrong. You couldn't run fifty feet before they burned you down."
"You take the back, Fred. Just remember, better later than now. And be careful. When these river rats get stirred up, they can cause a hell of a row. The entire goon squad12 would have to move in and there would be a mass bipping spree."
Mesner crept nearer, then whispered. "No light. You can't even tell if one of them's at home after dark. Why do they need a light? Go on, watch the back door, Fred. And don't let this one slip by."
I heard the front door crash inward. A man wearing only tattered13 pants ran out. He was thin and ribby like the dog, and I could see the moonlight shining on the opaque14 whiteness of his eyes.
He ran directly at me. And I knew I wasn't going to try to stop him. But I didn't know why. Then Mesner came out and fired a small gun, smaller than the one under his coat. It wasn't the same. This was a nerve-gun and it curled the synaptic connections between neurons.
The blind man collapsed15 and lay like a corpse16 at my feet. I knelt down and felt of him. Mesner whispered for me to drag the old man inside. I hooked my hands under his shoulders and pulled him into the shack. It didn't matter to me now, nor to the blind man, I thought.
He hardly weighed anything. His eyes were fixed17 in a white silence as Mesner shone a small flashlight into them. Then Mesner shut both doors and pulled a ragged cloth across the single window.
He opened his case. He put the stroboscope on the blind man's head. The bluish light began to flicker18 over the staring opaque eyes. I saw the nerve-gun lying on the floor beside Mesner's hand.
"You're too late," I said. "He's dead. I wouldn't have dragged him in here if I hadn't known he was dead."
Mesner was breathing thickly. His fat round face was pale and shiny with sweat. "I know he's dead. He must have gulped19 a fast-action poison soon as I came in the door. Maybe even the blind boys are deciding things are getting too hot."
Mesner worked the stroboscope.
"But he's dead," I said.
"Brain cells are the last to die," Mesner said. "Maybe I can pick up a little info yet."
It burst out of me then as from an abscess. The bottle cracked into a thousand fragments. I lunged at Mesner. He seemed to roll away from me, and then he squatted20 there in the flickering21 light. He leveled the gun at me.
"So you're beginning to wake up, Fred!"
Probing a dead man. Questioning the dead. Even a corpse was sacred no longer. The vile22 and horrible bastards23, all of them.
"I don't care what happens to me," I said.
"That's noble of you."
"I'm going to kill you."
"Why?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Maybe I wouldn't agree, but I'll understand, Fred. I know what you're thinking. What I'm doing now is just too much. Right? The final indignity24 one human being could inflict25 on another, right? A human mind should be sacred, even if it's dumb. Even if it's dead. Especially if it's dead. Right, Fred?"
I started around the rickety table toward him.
"Now it's set off, Fred. You're fired up now. That's what I've been waiting for. You were planted to sabotage26 Security itself, Fred, and I always knew that. Now we're going to find out all the rest of it. Now it's squeezing out of your unconscious, and we can drain it, empty it all out. They put a lid on your mind, Fred, and I've taken it off. Put on the ethical27 pressure, put it heavy on your idealistic Egghead morality, steam it up hot, blow the lid off. It's working, Fred."
"Is it?" I said. "I don't remember anything that would do you any good. I just know that it's wrong, the final horrible fraud. It isn't intelligence you guys want to wipe out, Mesner. Not your own, not the big wheels in power. It's only certain kinds of thinking, undesirable28 thoughts, attitudes you don't like. Those are what you have to purge29."
"Right, Fred. Only the wrong kind of Eggheads. Me, hell I'm an Egghead too. Remember the prize pupil in your psych class at Drake University, Fred?" Mesner laughed. "That was me."
"You can kill people," I said. "You can't burn a sense of what's right or wrong out of people. That old dead blind man there has preserved something you can't touch."
"Too bad you won't be around to see how wrong you are, Fred. We can make people whatever we damn well want them to be. Your old ethical pals30 worked out the methods. We're using it for a different end."
The front door squeaked31. I felt a moist draft on my face, and a whisper in my brain. A few words. I don't remember what they were. But they were a key that opened floodgates of self-understanding and awareness32. I remembered a lot then, a lot of things and feelings that warmed me. I had a wonderful sense of wholeness and I was no longer afraid of being bipped, or afraid to die.
There was an expression of complete triumph on Mesner's face, and he knew what had happened to me and he wanted it, all of it, sucked away into his briefcase33. Just the same, the whisper from the doorway34 distracted his attention and I went for him.
In that second of time, I saw the little blind girl who had whispered that triggering phrase for my release, and behind her, the seeing-eye dog. She was utterly35 unafraid and smiling at me. Courage she was saying. And I could share it with her.
She had sealed her own death in order to make me whole again.
I smashed the flashlight off the table into the wall and my weight drove Mesner onto the floor. I managed to grab his arm and we lay there in the dark straining for the nerve-gun. I began to hear the whir of heliocars. I twisted Mesner's arm up and around and released the nerve-gun's full charge directly into his face. A stammering36 scream came out of him. It was the scream of something not human. A full charge of that into the brain, it must have curled up the intricate connections and short circuited his brain into an irreparable hash.
I took the blind girl's hand and we ran toward the river. The sky was crossed with search beams. And in the deep darkness by the river I was suddenly as blind as the girl who held my hand. We kept running and stumbling through the reeds. I felt her hand slip from mine. Then something hit me.
It wasn't a localized impact, but something seemed to have hit me all over and moved through me as though my blood suddenly turned to lead.
I tried to find the girl. I tried to crawl to the river, into the river. And near me I heard the girl say softly, "Goodbye now, Mr. Fredricks. Don't worry, because you'll be brave."
"Thanks," I said. "Little girl, what's your name?"
She didn't answer. I tried to call out to her again in the darkness, but I couldn't move my lips. Paralysis37 gripped me, and after that blackness, with the lights sometime later beginning to flicker against my tearing eyes, and then the horror.
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1
shanty
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| n.小屋，棚屋；船工号子 | |
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2
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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3
shanties
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| n.简陋的小木屋( shanty的名词复数 )；铁皮棚屋；船工号子；船歌 | |
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4
stilts
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| n.（支撑建筑物高出地面或水面的）桩子，支柱( stilt的名词复数 )；高跷 | |
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rodents
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| n.啮齿目动物( rodent的名词复数 ) | |
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6
winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 | |
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7
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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8
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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sagging
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| 下垂[沉，陷]，松垂，垂度 | |
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12
squad
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| n.班，小队，小团体；vt.把…编成班或小组 | |
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tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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opaque
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| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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18
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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19
gulped
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的过去式和过去分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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20
squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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flickering
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| adj.闪烁的，摇曳的，一闪一闪的 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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23
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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inflict
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| vt.(on)把…强加给，使遭受，使承担 | |
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26
sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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27
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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28
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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29
purge
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| n.整肃，清除，泻药，净化；vt.净化，清除，摆脱；vi.清除，通便，腹泻，变得清洁 | |
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30
pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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31
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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32
awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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33
briefcase
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| n.手提箱，公事皮包 | |
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34
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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36
stammering
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的现在分词 ) | |
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37
paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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