“As you know,” said Rodriguez, “decapitory incarceration is used in maximum-security prisons on several worlds.”
“Yes,” said Brenner.
“It is interesting, in its way,” said Rodriguez. “One continues to feel one’s body, at least for a time, though it no longer exists, whether it is warm or cold, how the limbs are positioned, and such. It requires an effort to accept this, that the body no longer exists.”
“I understand,” said Brenner, shuddering. Sensation was located predominantly in the brain, and then extradited, so to speak, to various parts of the body. Indeed, even a disembodied brain, properly stimulated, could have experiences, visual, tactual, and otherwise. Indeed, a common form of paranoia, developed in his species over the past thousands of years, was the suspicion, or conviction, that one might be such a brain, in some ensconcement, being stimulated by aliens, who would then study it, or, perhaps, participate vicariously in its experiences.
Brenner lay on the summit of the cliff. It was a favorite place of his. He had carried Rodriguez upward, Rodriguez clinging to his fur. From where they were, Brenner, even reclining, could see over the forest, to the village. Behind him, at the foot of the cliffs, was the valley, and, on the other side of it, the cliffs with the openings, which he and Rodriguez, one fateful afternoon, had explored.
“Why did they do this to you?” asked Brenner.
“I could thus be of use to them,” said Rodriguez. “It was I who knew you, who was your friend. Thus it would be I, the least likely to be torn to pieces, who would approach the new father. You do not think they would wish to risk one of themselves, do you? Some, in the past, I gather, had perished in such a fashion. There was only this body about, almost less than occupied. It would do.”
“How is the body?”
“It is painful and feeble. I do not think it will last long.”
“They should all be killed,” said Brenner.
“They are your future,” said Rodriguez.
“Forgive me,” said Brenner. “But it disgusts me to look upon you.”
“It is a gruesome prison,” admitted Rodriguez. “In it I am little to be feared. Too, perhaps it amuses them that I should be kept in this fashion.”
“In the village,” said the beast, “had you said to me, ‘Kill’, in that instant, they would have learned you were more to be feared than they had thought.”
“They read me well,” said Rodriguez.
Brenner did not respond to this. The Pons, he knew, to his fury, had read another well, too.
“Do you have the memories of the beast?” asked Rodriguez.
“Yes,” said Brenner.
“Then it is not dead,” said Rodriguez.
“It is gone,” said Brenner. “Its memories remain. I have appropriated them. In a way it survives, in me. In a way it still lives. In a way we are one. Yet my consciousness is my own.”
“But your instincts, your needs?”
“Those of a beast, which I am,” said Brenner.
“You are my friend, Allan, as well,” said Rodriguez.
“It is very strange,” said Brenner.
“Not really,” said Rodriguez. “Some sort of enmeshing of brains has taken place, of a quite sophisticated sort. Your brain, it seems clear, or portions of it, doubtless the upper brain in particular, with its consciousness and memories, has been enmeshed with that of the beast, presumably primarily with its lower brain, together with portions of its upper brain, memory tracks, and such.”
“The consciousness is that of a beast,” said Brenner, “but somehow it is also mine, mine as I remember it, I mean, but mine now in a new manner, as that of a beast.”
“Were it not for this mercilessness, this terribleness,” said Rodriguez, “you could not be so effective as a guardian.”
“The Pons have planned well,” said Brenner.
“They have had millenniums to perfect these techniques,” said Rodriguez.
“For a long time I could not recall Allan,” said the beast. “Sometimes, even now, I forget him.”
“You make me afraid,” said Rodriguez.
“I could never harm you,” said Brenner. “You are the only person who has ever cared for me.”
Rodriguez did not respond.
“What is your life?” asked Brenner.
“I am the pariah,” said Rodriguez, simply. “Such are not unoften found in totemistic villages. They serve a useful social function. They provide the community with something to look down upon, something to despise and ridicule. Too, they may be utilized to perform tasks which others might find unwelcome, distasteful or repulsive, even taboo. For example, they may make contact with, and care for, and wash, and feed, those who are