“Extrapolate,” he said.
“Yes. Extrapolate the general answer from the specific.”
“And therefore understand.”
“Yes.”
“And have you been successful? Do you understand?”
“I’m no longer sure it was a thing that could be looked for.”
“You are taking me away! The subject is not philosophy, the subject is money!”
I looked at him, saw the patrician face being angry, and said, “Money? What money?”
“You claim to know nothing,” he said, enraged by me. “You claim to have come here on a philosophical quest. You say the word money and you look at me with an open guileless face, as though the existence of money had never before been pointed out to you. No one is that remote from money.”
“I don’t know what money you mean,” I said.
He said, “Are you very stupid, or very clever? You present me with your mythic qualities, love and death, the slain brother, eternal questions, the unworldly view. You think if you show yourself to me as a saint you’ll impress me and I’ll stay away from you.”
I didn’t understand him, yet it did seem to be true that he was impressed by something. He was getting more and more nervous. I said, “I’m not stupid, but I’m not clever either. I came here, I came to this planet, I thought I was hard, I thought I was the strongest thing there was and it would all go my way, and nothing went my way. I lost every fight. I lost a hand. I learned nothing, and I’m sitting here a prisoner of a man I don’t know, caught up in some sort of problem I don’t understand. You’re the one making the myths, the money myth, the golden fleece. I don’t have what you want.”
He glowered at me in surly indecision, and finally said, “I cannot believe in you. No one is a money virgin. What did you do on Earth? Where were you when you decided to come here?”
“In jail.”
He sat up, looking hopeful. “For theft?”
“Manslaughter. I have… I used to have — a bad temper.” I looked inside myself but couldn’t tell, and said so: “I don’t know if it’s gone or not.”
“Bad temper,” he mimicked, in a sudden return to his angry contempt. He’d made up his mind about me, all at once. He pointed a finger at me and said, “You were at the site, I know you were. You’ll tell us where it is, you’ll lead us to it, you’ll give us the whole thing. You’ll either do it now, with no trouble, or you’ll do it later on, after a great deal of trouble.”
I said, “I don’t want any trouble. I won’t fight anybody, I won’t hide anything. I don’t want to be involved any more. I’ll answer anything you ask me, I swear I will.”
“You’ll take us to the site?”
There was nothing for me to say. I sat and looked at him, feeling helpless and very frightened.
He nodded cynically. “Ignorant again,” he said. “Such touching innocence, such a blank expression. There is a drug called antizone, have you ever heard of it?”
“No.”
“It is used with the hopelessly insane. One injection, and your brain empties itself through your mouth. You will speak your entire history, all your memories, every bit of your knowledge, the total of your conjectures, each of your hopes and expectations. You will state every item aloud, and in the act of stating it you will forget it. Sometimes this process takes days. When it is finished, your mind will be empty. You will then be retrained in those rudimentary skills necessary for survival, and you will be sent back to the mine. And this time, you won’t escape.”
Of course! A great light seemed to bloom in my mind, a beautiful illumination, and with it a lovely sensation of peace. I had found my golden fleece!
I closed my eyes. I caressed the prospect he offered me.
He said, “Well? Is that what you want?”
I said, “Yes.” I kept my eyes closed.
He slapped me stingingly across the face. My eyes popped open, and I saw him standing over me, glaring at me. “Don’t play with me!”
“I want the drug,” I said. “I am finished, but afraid to die. I didn’t know about that drug, I would like it very much.”
He backed away from me, stumbling against his chair but staying on his feet. “How clever are you? What game are you playing?”
There was no way to make him believe me, but surely he would do it anyway. I closed my eyes again. In the darkness inside I felt at peace.
I heard Phail moving around the room, prowling back and forth, muttering to himself. He asked himself what intricacies I might be plotting, if perhaps there were some drug he didn’t know about which could be taken at some earlier date and leave the taker immune to antizone, if perhaps I were under some hypnotic protection which would allow him to empty my mind without getting the information he wanted, if I were perhaps merely trying a desperate bluff.
Finally he said, with abrupt decisiveness, “Very well. We’ll fall back on proof. Malik, get all he can tell you about this alleged cabin where he spent so much of his time. Then see if you can find it, see if it exists.”
I opened my eyes, hoping to see his face, but he had already turned away and was going out the door.
XXVIII
They fed me three meals, and I slept. Then they fed me three meals, and I slept. I counted five such cycles, then I stopped counting; a while later I counted again for another three cycles, then gave it up again, and between the second and third meals on some subsequent cycle the door was unlocked and opened and Phail came in to see me.
We both stood. There was no furniture in this room other than the blanket-covered board on which I slept. The walls and ceiling and floor were all gray metal. There was no window. Each time the door was opened I caught a narrow glimpse of gray corridor. At all times there was the throb of the ship’s engines; we were in insistent motion somewhere.
Phail gave me a hard look and checked off the points briskly on his fingers. “There was a trapper named Torgmund. He has disappeared. His cabin has been found and searched, and it matches your description. His two hairhorses are gone. A half-built addition to his cabin was noted.” There were five points, adding up to the five Fingers of his right hand. He closed this hand into a fist, lowered the fist to his side, and said, “It would appear you were telling the truth.”
I said, “How long have I been here? In this room.”
“That doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “The point is, you can still help us.”
“All the time I’ve been here,” I said, “I thought of nothing but antizone.”
“I don’t care,” he said, with all of his arrogance and impatience.
“Nevertheless,” I said carefully, “it is a fact. Antizone has been my only thought. I never believed, in all that darkness out there beyond the rim, you would find Torgmund’s cabin, and so I thought eventually you would come back and give me the injection of antizone.”
“There’s no point in that now,” he snapped.
“Nevertheless,” I said again, “it is what I thought. And I want to tell you about it.”
He said, “Why should I listen to you?”
“Because it’s important,” I said. “Important to me. You think I can help you. I don’t know why you think that, I don’t know if you’re right or not, but you do think it. I will help you, if you’re right and it’s possible for me to. But first you must listen to what I have to say.”
He smiled thinly. “An odd bargain,” he said. “All right, I’ll listen.”
“At first,” I said, “I was impatient for the search to be given up. I couldn’t think of anything lovelier than an end of self. Oblivion without death, who could ask for anything more? I expressed this attitude when you first mentioned antizone.”