Chapter 16

Two hours passed, somehow. Bourbon and soda helped them pass, Malone discovered; he drank two highballs slowly, trying not to think about anything, and kept staring around at the walls of his apartment without really seeing anything. He felt terrible.

He made himself a third bourbon and soda and started in on it. Maybe this one would make him feel better. Maybe, he thought, he ought to break out the cigars and celebrate.

But there didn’t seem to be very much to celebrate, somehow.

He felt like a guinea pig being congratulated on having successfully resisted a germ during an experiment.

He drank some more of the bourbon and soda. Guinea pigs didn’t drink bourbon and soda, he told himself. He was better off than a guinea pig. He was happier than a guinea pig. But he couldn’t imagine any guinea pig in the world, no matter how heartbroken, feeling any worse than Kenneth J. Malone.

He looked up. There was another guinea pig in the room.

Then he frowned. She wasn’t a guinea pig. She was one off the experimenters. She was the one the guinea pig was supposed to fall in love with, so the guinea pig could be nice and telepathic and all the other experimenters could congratulate themselves. But whoever heard of a scientist falling in love with a guinea pig? It was fate. And fate was awful. Malone had often suspected it, but now he was sure. Now he saw things from the guinea pig’s side, and fate was terrible.

“But Ken,” the experimenter said. “It isn’t like that at all.”

“It is, too,” Malone said. “It’s even worse, but that’ll have to wait. When I have some more to drink it will get worse. Watch and see.”

“But Ken--” Lou hesitated, and then went on. “Don’t feel sad about being an experiment. We’re all experiments.”

“I’m the guinea pig,” Malone said. “I’m the only guinea pig. You said so.”

“No, Ken,” she said. “Remember, all of us in the PRS got early training when it was new and untried. Some of those methods weren’t as good as we now have them; that’s why a man like your boss sometimes tends to have a little trouble.”

“Sure,” Malone said. “But I’m your guinea pig. You made me dance through hoops and do tricks and everything just for an experiment. That’s what.” He took another swallow of his drink. “See?” he said. “It’s getting worse already.”

“No, it’s not,” Lou said. “It’s getting better, if you’ll only listen. I wasn’t given this job, Ken. I volunteered for it.”

“That isn’t any better,” Malone said morosely.

“I volunteered because I--because I liked you,” Lou said. “Because I wanted to work with you, wanted to be with you.”

“It’s more experimenting,” Malone said flatly. “More guinea-pigging around.”

“It isn’t, Ken,” Lou said. “Believe me. Look into my mind. Believe me.”

Malone tried. A second passed...

And then a long time passed, without any words at all.

“Well, well,” Malone said at last. “If this is the life of a guinea pig, I’m all for it.”

“I’m all for guinea pigs’ rights,” Lou said. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Me.”

“Agreed,” Malone said. “How about that crisis, by the way? Are you going to have to leave suddenly again?”

Lou stretched lazily on the couch. “That’s all over with, thank God,” she said. “We had to get our agent out of Miami Beach, and cover his tracks at the same time.”

“Tricky,” Malone said.

“Very,” Lou said.

“But--” Malone blinked. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Your agent? You mean you had Governor Flarion killed?”

Lou nodded soberly. “We had to,” she said. “That paranoid mind of his had built up a shield we simply couldn’t get through. He had plans for making himself president, you know--and all the terrifying potentialities of an embryonic Hitler.” She grimaced. “We don’t like being forced to kill,” she said, “but sometimes we’ve got to.”

Malone thought of his own .44 Magnum, and the times he had used it, and nodded very slowly.

“There are still a couple of questions, though,” he said. “For instance, there’s that trip to Russia. Why did you make it? Was it your father?”