You’re wrong, he said.
‘You pushed me. I felt it. You were lying all along when you said that you couldn’t influence my body without my consent.’
That’s not what I said. I said that I couldn’t assume control over any part of your body that was under your control. I did not interfere in any way with any part of you which you already control.
I finally saw the catch. ‘You mean that you can control things that I can’t?’
Naturally. It stands to reason that if I can assume control of your voluntary faculties when you allow me to, then I can also control such faculties as you have which are not under voluntary control.
‘You can modify my reflexes. You can exercise control over my autonomic nervous system.’
Only insofar as you could yourself if you knew how and were prepared to learn. You are remarkably wasteful of the potentialities of your body.
‘I don’t want you exercising the potentialities of my body! I don’t care how wasteful I am. It’s my body and I’ll use it as I please. Just because I don’t concern myself with such party tricks as everting my gut doesn’t mean to say that I want you to learn it for me.’
Why would I want to evert your gut? I’m not playing tricks, Grainger; I’m helping you to become a more efficient human being. How do you think you managed to keep going for so long when you were lost in the caves, without even feeling tired? You accused me of knocking you out, but I didn’t. All I did was stop supporting your metabolism to relieve your need for sleep. Is that harming you or robbing you of your beloved independence? And when you say I pushed you—I didn’t do that either. All that I did was adjust your nerves and your muscles so that you could move faster and farther than you could otherwise have done. I didn’t do anything to you, I just put more of your own abilities at your disposal.
‘And you intend to go on doing that?’
Of course. What’s the point of letting you get tired when you want to stay awake? What’s the point of letting you take ineffective evasive action when you could be effective? What’s the point in my sitting back and letting you fail when I can help you succeed? I know you don’t take a blind bit of notice of any advice I give you, but I can at least let you do things your own way efficiently. There’d be no sense in my just sitting here like a vegetable.
‘Can’t you get it into your head—your mind, I mean—that I don’t want any help? I’d rather be inefficient my own way. I don’t want to be a superman.’
I’m not making you into a superman. I’m just making you into an efficient man.
‘I want to be my own man.’
But you are!
‘Leave my metabolism alone.’
Grow up, Grainger. You’re behaving like an idiot. What I can do to help you is no different at all from what your clothing does, or what physical fitness does. You have a body and it works. Why do you want it to work badly? Would you be better off if your reflexes were too slow to enable you to fly a ship? If your legs were too weak to let you walk?
‘I only want to live by my own efforts.’
And you can. I can’t stop you. Anything you can do, I can’t. I can only let you do it a little bit better. You’ve got to live with it. If you continue in your present vein, you’ll go completely insane. At least accept the realities.
I couldn’t argue with him. I had no argument to use. That was the moment when the inevitability and totality of our association finally came home to me. It was late, I know, but I always had a lot of resistance to ideas I didn’t want to accept. I don’t think it was a turning point in my career as a host. I didn’t change direction. He was still an unwelcome tenant. But while he was there he was what he was, and there was no use in fighting it. If rape is inevitable, as Confucius is reputed to have advised, lie back and enjoy it.
That argument took place in the caves, in Rhapsody’s insistent darkness. At the end of three days, we were back in the sky, in company with the stars, and light had been let back into our lives.
I wasn’t in great shape after the physical hardship I’d endured in the warren, but the wind’s help as regards my involuntary faculties extended to fast healing. My hands recovered from their skinning sufficiently for me to lift the Swan and I was thus saved from the humiliation of taking the passenger seat while Eve flew the bird.
I was very careful, and we made transfer at the first attempt. I found a good, fast groove with no difficulty, and slid us into it as soon as humanly possible. Then I settled back and left the Swan to take care of herself.
‘You should have let me lift her,’ said Eve.
‘Not on your life,’ I said. It didn’t need explaining.
We were alone in the control room. Charlot and Nick were down below nursing our ever-so-precious-cargo. Charlot was worried sick despite all his precautions. The worms were sealed in lightless containers, and had never been touched by human hand. Even so, the project looked unsafe. But Charlot was no fool, and if the worms could be saved, he would save them.
‘You must have had a very bad time down there in the caves,’ she said. We hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to talk while Charlot was clearing things up on Rhapsody, and this was the first real chance she’d had to voice her concern.
‘It’s a hell of a place to get lost,’ I told her. ‘But once back into the daylight, all that darkness just fades away like so much nightmare. It hardly seems real, now that I’m back where I belong.’
‘You haven’t seen any real daylight yet,’ she reminded me.
‘The stars are all I need to reassure me,’ I said. ‘Maybe we ought to bring the passengers up for a look at the universe.’
‘You want fifteen cave-men in your control room?’
‘Hardly. I didn’t mean it literally. It wouldn’t do Bayon any good, in any case. He won’t ever see the universe. He’ll be in the black caves of Rhapsody for the rest of his fife.’
‘I was surprised that you brought him along,’ she said. ‘He tried to kill you.’
‘Charlot’s decision,’ I pointed out. ‘I only work here. But we couldn’t leave him on Rhapsody. They couldn’t do anything with him. He has to stay with Tob and the rest, because no one else can know that he exists.’
I’d offered Angelina a free ride to wherever she wanted to go, as well as the outcasts. But she’d elected to stay behind, and support Mavra for Hierarch. I didn’t fancy their chances much. Akim Krist might be old but he was tough. He’d last for years.
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘they were all different down in the caves. With darkness in the way that they lived their lives, in their voices and in their eyes. They’ll be different men altogether once they’re on a different world. Perhaps they can change Bayon, too.’
‘You sound almost sympathetic,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t really become you.’
I shrugged. ‘I was down there a long time. You don’t understand what it was like.’
‘I was down there too. In jail.’
‘A prison is a prison,’ I told her. ‘It isn’t life.’
‘I thought you’d forgotten all about it,’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘It’s splitting up and dissolving. I can look back and wonder how I ever got to be involved in it. Its logic is becoming illusory. Reason aren’t reasons any more. Give me a day or two and it will be all cancelled out. Dead.’
But I was wrong. I was only trying to forget. I never really did.
But all this is retrospective. The story really ended where I made it begin: down in the caves, in darkness....