The Last Trespasser — Reading Notes

Malloy was in his month for lying on his stomach to avoid bed sores. He was walking from Peoria, Illinois, to Detroit, Michigan, currently and he had just reached Chicago. It was fine to see State Street again, and the jewelry stores stuck in the alcoves of churches with the handsomely barred windows.

A man in Army-surplus green with an old library book was asking for carfare to a hiring hall when they began opening the door.

Malloy rolled over on one elbow. It was peculiar. They hadn't done that for three years.

Two of them came inside, thick men with disinterested faces.

"Try no sudden moves," one of them advised him.

"We will anticipate you," the other one added.

Malloy went through the unfamiliar process of standing up. He looked at two men. "I wouldn't try anything against the four of you. I'm not _that_ crazy."

"Time for an interrogation, Malloy," the orderly said. "Come with us."

Malloy fell in between them and left the padded cell, frowning.

"What kind of an interrogation?" he asked them.

"What other kind?" one countered. "A sanity hearing."

He felt his eyebrows jerk. _His sanity?_ He thought that had been established long ago. Or his lack of it.

Malloy remembered the doctor. He hadn't had much else to do for several years.

He was Dr. Heirson, a graying man with starched face and collar. But the younger man sitting with Heirson behind the broad, translucent desk was a stranger to Malloy. He seemed to be a comic strip drawing, all in straight lines.

"Step forward, Michael," Heirson said.

Malloy stepped forward. It had been a long time since he had been allowed to travel so far.

"Now relax, Michael," the doctor continued, leaning forward and grinning hideously. "All you have to do is tell me the truth."

"No, I don't, Doctor. I'm under no compulsion to tell you the truth. I'm perfectly capable of lying if it would do me any good."

"Hush that, Michael. You must not try to make believe you can lie. I know you tell me only the truth."

"All right," Malloy said, exhaling deeply. "Believe that I speak only the truth if you like. But remember, I just told you that I'm a liar and that must be true."

Heirson blinked in watery confusion. He was obviously senile; only the old man's Rider kept him from coming apart at his mental seams.

The angle-faced man spoke into Heirson's ear. The old doctor continued to blink for a moment, then faced Malloy, the lines of his face drawn into an asterisk.

"What? You mean to tell me that you don't have an inner voice that urges you to tell the truth at all times?"

"No," Malloy explained, "I do not hear voices."

"And there is no inner sense that tells you when somebody is plotting against you?"

"And when you are in trouble or danger, there is nothing that allows you to somehow look into the future or read minds or see through walls?"

"I can't do any of those things," Malloy stated.

Heirson threw up his hands. "Complete withdrawal from reality! Pathological! Why is he here anyway?"

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.

"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!"