Free A Feast Unknown by Philip José Farmer Page B

his illegal tamperings with your brain. Didn’t you ask him what he did?”
    “Man, I asked till I was blue in the face, if you can imagine that!” Wilfred said. “Old Doc said it was a trade secret, and he wasn’t about to let it out. Unscrupulous men might get hold of it and do great evil! Especially the Communists! Doc’s really uptight on the Reds the last couple of years. He thinks they’re out to take over and just about got it sewed up!”
    That did not sound like a man who served the Nine. Loyalty to the Nine comes first, and the servant will get along no matter what the government. However, they do not care what a man’s political beliefs are, as long as he obeys the Nine.
    Wilfred laughed and said, “I thought maybe the bronze cat performed a prefrontal lobotomy, but I’m no zombie. And those old honkies, Rivers and Simmons, they say no. They think the Big Bwana Honky maybe installed a micro-miniature circuit board—one running off the electricity of my nerves—inside my head. Man, that’s spooky! But …”
    “Caliban threw me weaponless against that hungry lion,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like a man of irreproachable virtue to me.”
    “If the doc says you’re evil, you’re no fucking good! A-l rotten. Essence of putridity. Evil as Lucifer after the Fall. Evil as the soul of an Alabaman Ku Kluxer!”
    “Do you know who I am?”
    Wilfred grinned, though the grin was nervous.
    “Yeah. Doc told me. And I said, ‘I hear you, Doc, but you just hung up my sense of credibility.’ Doc didn’t answer. He seldom does. And he could care less if I believe or not. Doc don’t lie. Only honky I ever saw who don’t. But I still didn’t believe. He had to be putting me on. Then we came to Africa and caught that lion and let him loose at you, and there you were, big as life, and bigger. I saw you break that big cat’s neck! But I still couldn’t believe that, and I couldn’t believe that you were really you. But I guess you really are. Man, you’re something else!”
    “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I wonder why he hired you? For your muscle?”
    He rubbed his wrist and winced.
    “Yeah, partly for my muscle. But I’m an electronic technician and a damn good one, honky.”
    “But Doc is still, as you put it, a honky?”
    “He’s the only honky I wouldn’t dare call honky to his face. That bronze cat was what Nietzsche was dreaming of before he flipped. A genuine Sooperdooperman! Sure a shame he isn’t black!”
    He was leaning with his back against the rear of the truck. I said, “I can see you’re thinking about rushing me again. Here.”
    I held out my right hand.
    He said, “What do you want?”
    “Take it,” I said. “Do whatever you want with it.”
    Instead, he advanced swiftly and tried to thrust his knuckles into my solar plexus. I seized the hand and squeezed on it. He screamed and fell to his knees.
    “Do I make myself clear?” I said.
    He moaned while he held the injured fist with the other hand. He said, “You’re still a big donkey-pricked dirty stinking honky.”
    I admired his spirit but deplored his lack of intelligence in this situation. Obviously, he could gain nothing by antagonizing me.
    And there was no use trying to tell him that I was outside his conflict of white and black any more than there had been in telling Zabu. I was probably the only white in the world entirely free of prejudice towards men because of their color. Even if I could have convinced him of my attitude, I would not have bothered. What did I care what he thought?
    “You will show me everything I want to see,” I said. “Otherwise, I kill you.”
    We went inside the camper. It was crammed with equipment and instruments, most of it electronic. At the touch of a button, these sank away, and the top of the camper rose and split and folded to two sides. A pedestal with a bazooka-like tube rose up from the floor, and then the tube telescoped outwards. At the same time, a section of the