“What do you think the cages were used for?” Rawlins asked.
“To hold dangerous beasts. Or captured enemies. What else would you use a cage for?”
“And when they open now—”
“The city’s still trying to serve its people. There are enemies in the outer zones. The cages are ready in case any of the enemies are captured.”
“You mean us?”
“Yes. Enemies.” Muller’s eyes glittered with sudden paranoid fury; it was alarming how easily he slipped from rational discourse to that cold blaze. “Homo sapiens. The most dangerous, the most ruthless, the most despicable beast in the universe!”
“You say it as if you believe it.”
“I do.”
“Come on,” Rawlins said. “You devoted your life to serving mankind. You can’t possibly believe—”
“I devoted my life,” said Muller slowly, “to serving Richard Muller.” He swung around so that he faced Rawlins squarely. They were only six or seven meters apart. The emanation seemed almost as strong as though they were nose to nose. Muller said, “I gave less of a damn for humanity than you might think, boy. I saw the stars, and I wanted them. I aspired after the condition of a deity. One world wasn’t enough for me. I was hungry to have them all. So I built a career that would take me to the stars. I risked my life a thousand times. I endured fantastic extremes of temperature. I rotted my lungs with crazy gases, and had to be rebuilt from the inside out. I ate foods that would sicken you to hear about. Kids like you worshipped me and wrote essays about my selfless dedication to man, my tireless quest for knowledge. Let me get you straight on that. I’m about as selfless as Columbus and Magellan and Marco Polo. They were great explorers, yes, but they also looked for a fat profit. The profit I wanted was in here. I wanted to stand a hundred kilometers high. I wanted golden statues of me on a thousand worlds. You know poetry? Fame is the spur. That last infirmity of noble mind. Milton. Do you know your Greeks, too? When a man overreaches himself, the gods cast him down. It’s called hybris. I had a bad case of it. When I dropped through the clouds to visit the Hydrans, I felt like a god. Christ, I was a god. And when I left, up through the clouds again. To the Hydrans I’m a god, all right. I thought it then: I’m in their myths, they’ll always tell my story. The mutilated god. The martyred god. The being who came down among them and made them so uncomfortable that they had to fix him. But—”
“The cage—”
“Let me finish!” Muller rapped. “You see, the truth is, I wasn’t a god, only a rotten mortal human being who had delusions of godhood, and the real gods saw to it that I learned my lesson. They decided to remind me of the hairy beast inside the plastic clothing. To call my attention to the animal brain under the lofty cranium. So they arranged it for the Hydrans to perform a clever little surgical trick on my brain, one of their specialities, I guess. I don’t know if the Hydrans were being malicious for the hell of it or whether they were genuinely trying to cure me of a defect, my inability to let my emotions get out to them. Aliens. You figure them out. But they did their little job. And then I came back to Earth. Hero and leper all at once. Stand near me and you get sick. Why? It reminds you that you’re an animal too, because you get a full dose of me. So we go round and round in our endless feedback. You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth. My message is that it’s a lucky thing for humanity that we’re shut up each in his own skull. Because if we had even a little drop of telepathy, even the blurry nonverbal thing I’ve got, we’d be unable to stand each other. Human society would be impossible. The Hydrans can reach right into each other’s mind, and they seem to like it. But we can’t. And that’s why I say that man must be the most despicable beast in the whole universe. He can’t even take the reek of his own kind, soul to soul!”
Rawlins said, “The cage seems to be opening.”
“What? Let me look!” Muller came jostling forward. Unable to step aside rapidly enough, Rawlins received the brunt of the emanation. It was not as painful this time. Images of autumn came to him: withered leaves, dying flowers, a dusty wind, early twilight. More regret than anguish over the shortness of life, the necessity of the condition. Meanwhile Muller, oblivious, was peering intently at the alabaster bars of the cage.
“It’s withdrawn by several centimeters already. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried to. But you weren’t listening.”
“No. No. My damned soliloquizing.” Muller chuckled. “Ned, I’ve been waiting years to see this. The cage actually in motion! Look how smoothly it moves, gliding into the ground. This is strange, Ned. It’s never opened twice the same year before, and here it’s opening for the second time this week.”
“Maybe you’ve just failed to notice a lot of the other openings,” Rawlins suggested. “While you slept, maybe—”
“I doubt it. Look at that!”
“Why do you think it’s doing it right now?”
“Enemies all around,” said Muller. “The city accepts me as a native by now. I’ve been here so long. But it must be trying to get you into a cage. The enemy. Man.”
The cage was fully open now. There was no sign of the bars except the row of small openings in the pavement.
Rawlins said, “Have you ever tried to put anything in the cages? Animals?”
“Yes. I dragged a big dead beast inside one. Nothing happened. Then I caught some live little ones. Nothing happened.” He frowned. “I once thought of stepping into the cage myself to see if it would close automatically when it sensed a live human being. But I didn’t. When you’re alone, you don’t try experiments like that.” He paused a moment, “How would you like to help me in a little experiment right now, eh, Ned?”
Rawlins caught his breath. The thin air abruptly seemed like fire in his lungs.
Muller said quietly, “Just step across into the alcove and wait a minute or so. See if the cage closes on you. That would be important to know.”
“And if it does,” Rawlins said, not taking him seriously, “do you have a key to let me out?”
“I have a few weapons. We can always blast you out by lasing the bars.”
“That’s destructive. You warned me not to destroy anything here.”
“Sometimes you destroy in order to learn. Go on, Ned. Step into the alcove.”
Muller’s voice grew flat and strange. He was standing in an odd expectant half-crouch, hands at his sides, fingertips bent inward toward his thighs. As though he’s going to throw me into the cage himself, Rawlins thought.
Boardman said quietly in Rawlins’ ear, “Do as he says, Ned. Get into the cage. Show him that you trust him.”
I trust him, Rawlins told himself, but I don’t trust that cage.
He had uncomfortable visions of the floor of the cage dropping out as soon as the bars were in place: of himself dumped into some underground vat of acid or lake of fire. The disposal pit for trapped enemies. What assurance do I have that it isn’t like that?
“Do it, Ned,” Boardman murmured.
It was a grand, crazy gesture. Rawlins stepped over the row of small openings and stood with his back to the wall. Almost at once the curving bars rose from the ground and locked themselves seamlessly into place above his head. The floor seemed stable. No death-rays lashed out at him. His worst fears were not realized; but he was a prisoner.
“Fascinating,” Muller said. “It must scan for intelligence. When I tried with animals, nothing happened. Dead or alive. What do you make of that, Ned?”