CHAPTER III

They stripped him and put him in a room that felt like the inside of a packing-house refrigerator. His breath came in little wisps of fog and if he stood in one place too long, his feet started to freeze to the floor. He had to keep moving to keep warm and he realized he couldn't keep moving forever. It was cold and damp and at periodic intervals, it rained from pipes overhead. Water that quickly froze on the floor and made his hair a mass of frosted crystals and then started to freeze on him.

He only lasted four hours in the cold room. When they took him out, his nails were broken from clawing at the door frame and he had started to bleed at the fingertips.

Mr. Malcolm questioned him again.

Why wouldn't he admit that he hated his family? His mother was responsible for his father deserting the family. And his brother used to squeal on him when he was small and had even taken money that Stan used to leave on the dresser.

Stan made the mistake of laughing and ended up in a cell where he couldn't stand, where he had to remain stooped all the time. A small tray of slops appeared after each time he slept and once every sleeping period, somebody cleaned it out.

Mr. Ainsworth questioned him next and it meant a bath and food and cigarettes and rest. He took them and enjoyed them.

Then he told Mr. Ainsworth what he thought of him. They threw him in a small, pitch-black cell and left him there. For weeks. Months.

He spent his time huddled in a corner, thinking of the city and his mother and Larry and what Spring looked like and how leaves that ended up in the Fall as large as your hand, started out as nothing more than a strip of green no bigger than his fingernail. A dozen times a period, he went over the last scene his eyes had glimpsed from Mr. Ainsworth's car. The drab houses and the green trees and the tiny stretch of blue beyond....

And then there were the days when he didn't think of anything—though he was to wonder later if it had been days or weeks or even only hours. There was nothing by which to judge time, though he tried to keep track of his own pulse and counted the beats into minutes and the minutes into hours and the hours into days.

It was Mr. Ainsworth who rescued him.

"It's been a long time since I've seen you, son."

"You know where I've been."

"Don't hate me, Stan. I'm only trying to help you."

"I appreciate it," Stan said dryly.

And the odd thing was, he honestly
did
appreciate it. Ainsworth represented sleep and a bath and food and clean clothes. And he was grateful. Like any dog that had been kicked and starved and then wagged its tail when it was patted on the head.

And knowing all of this didn't change his reactions in the least.

"Stan," Mr. Ainsworth said quietly, "they want you to say that you hate your family. You say you don't. Perhaps you believe that. But would it hurt to merely
say
that you do? You don't have to actually believe it." He paused. "And to be perfectly truthful, I'm afraid that you might not live very much longer if you're not willing to go that far."

Stan jerked, as if somebody had jabbed him with a pin. To come so near to dying so many times had made life seem infinitely precious.

And what did it matter, actually? Some of the things they had been telling him—they weren't exactly lies.

"All right," he said dully. "So I hate the city. And I hate my folks."

Somewhere in his mind, a keystone crumbled.

"That's the way, son. Play it smart!" Mr. Ainsworth looked very proud of himself, as if Stan had just passed a difficult test.

"It's not supposed to stop there, is it?" Stan asked. "What am I supposed to believe in next, so you people won't kill me?"

"I don't think you're looking at it in the right light," Mr. Ainsworth said coldly, and Stan was panic-stricken for fear he would call in Fred and have him taken back to the cold room or the small cell. "We're just telling you things about yourself that you didn't know before."

"Sure," Stan said quickly, trying to sound sincere. "You're just telling me things I never would have suspected."

He got better treatment after that. They assigned him to a cell where he could lie down and sleep and when they talked to him, they offered him cigarettes and joked with him. Even Mr. Malcolm went out of his way to be pleasant. They were uncannily accurate when they told him about his past life and he got to thinking more and more that there was something in what they said.

His mother had been no prize and his brother was a lying, little sneak.

Almost a year went by before they led him up to the big one.

When they told him, point blank, that he hated humanity.

Stan felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of him.

"You can't be serious!"

Mr. Ainsworth sighed and shook his head. "Stan, do you remember when I first picked you up? Three of your fellow human beings had dragged you into an alley and were beating you up—you would have been killed if I hadn't come along." He shrugged. "That's the human race for you, son!"

"But they were only three individuals!" Stan objected.

"And the others are so much different?" Mr. Ainsworth sneered. "Nobody cared about you, Stan—not even your own family. No human being cares for anybody else but himself! There's a war every generation where they slaughter each other by the millions. And sickness. Have they ever made any really concerted drive against it? Have they ever really tried to stamp out poverty?"

His lip curled. "They're apes! Nothing but apes!"

"You talk like you're not human!" Stan said, and then realized that he had made a mistake.

Mr. Ainsworth started to flicker again, like film in a projector that's run down. Stan gripped the sides of his chair and froze, trying desperately not to show his fear.

Mr. Ainsworth was watching him closely. "I think we should tell you what this is all about, Stan. Watch."

He pressed a button on his desk and the wall behind him started to glow, then drifted away like cigarette smoke. Stan closed his eyes, feeling dizzy and sick and horribly afraid that he was going to fall. He opened them again, slowly.

The end of the room opened out on a harsh, black sky dusted with the tiny pin points of stars. Stars that didn't twinkle but shone with a bright, steady blaze. To his left and below he could see a huge segment of a mottled green and blue globe, laced over with shifting shreds of white.

He was almost sick again and then the grandeur of the scene struck him and he caught his breath, sharply.

He was somewhere in space, suspended thousands of miles above his home planet and seeing the universe as man had never seen it before. The blazing infinity of stars and the slowly rolling, green globe that was the Earth....

"The home of the apes," Mr. Ainsworth mused. He paused. "We can use that planet to far better advantage than the human race. We intend to take it. And you're going to help us."

Stan looked at Mr. Ainsworth coldly.

"What's in it for me?"