Page:Fantastic Volume 08 Number 01.djvu/36

 ly. "Don't try to get up. In fact, I wouldn't advise you to attempt to move at all."

"Steve—"

"I know it's a surprise. You were expecting Bucky Dugan, weren't you?"

"I—"

"Let me do the talking. There are a few things I'd like to get straight before I call the police." He started to say something, but I waved him into silence. The gun was much better than a magic wand; I could perform some really amazing transformations with that gun. And he knew it, because he slumped back in his chair and listened.

"I've never cared for the usual denouement," I said, softly. "You know the bit—where the murderer holds a gun on the detective and blurts out a complete explanation of his crimes, just before the cops break in and rescue his intended victims. Fortunately, the situation is reversed now. So let me tell it my way. All I want from you is confirmation or correction."

"Steve, you're not well, you need help—"

"I've had your kind of help," I told him, "All I ever want of it. And at the time, I was grateful. Grateful that you came along, opportunely, to rescue me and save my life. Now I wonder if I wouldn't have been better off if I'd died out there on the desert. At least I wouldn't have served as your guinea-pig.

"Because that's what I was, wasn't I? You experimented on me, using my genuine amnesia as a base on which to superimpose an artificial personality-pattern. I was the first, wasn't I?"

I waited, waving the gun, until he nodded reluctantly.

"That's what I thought. Once you saw how easily it was possible to control an amnesic, you applied similar techniques with your so-called screaming people. The hopeless cases, whom only wealth saved from permanent public institutionalization; people whose families wanted to avoid publicity and who were willing to consent to anything which might seemingly restore the sanity of their loved ones.

"You had sent me back into the world, and you were able to send them back, when and if you so desired. My memory was lost in the accident; their memories you erased with shock-treatments. Is that the story?"

"Yes." Wagram sighed the word. 36