The younger man grasped the withered thin upper arm and whispered audibly but not understandably. Heirson's face eventually quivered back in line with Malloy's.

"Michael, do you know what year this is?" the doctor asked.

Malloy thought about that one. He wasn't absolutely certain, but he made some rapid calculations.

"1978?"

"1979! And what has been the single most important development in human history in recent times?"

Malloy sighed. He knew what he was expected to say.

"The coming of the Riders."

"And what are Riders?"

"Riders," Malloy recited patiently, "are elements of a symbiotic life-form. They have united with human beings to make one symbiotic creature. They have given much more than they have taken. All prominent religions recognize that they do not interfere with human free will. They have made us healthier, virtually immortal, and near supermen. The human race now is so much zoa, and every man is a zoon. Every man but me. Damn it, I don't have any Rider! I'm not a superman and I cannot get away with pretending to be one!"

Heirson oscillated his head. "Michael, Michael, your case isn't unique. There are others who claim that they have no Riders—usually maintaining that they are naturally superhuman and need no help from some funny kind of foreigner. They are tolerated the same way, that B.R., we tolerated people who claimed they possessed psychic auras, or who got up in cathedrals and yelled that they had no souls. But you, Michael, are a trouble-maker. You've been rude, vulgar, and reckless with your life and others in your pretense to be Riderless. Your pathological retreat from reality leaves us with no choice but to—"

The other man behind the desk shoved a paper in front of Heirson and tapped it forcefully with an index finger.

Heirson read the paper and his eyebrows went askew. "Yes, yes, we have discovered that there is a basic difference between you and the others who maintain they have no Riders. It would seem it has been established that you really do not have a Rider. Remarkable! Yes. Well, I have no alternative but to dismiss you from this institution, Michael Malloy, and to extend to you my personal apology for any inconvenience your three-and-a-half-years' detainment may have 

 Prev. P 3/19 next