They would not believe Malloy was alone in there, in the padded cell. That made it worse. 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.
"Yes, sir."
"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."
"You don't?"
"Never."
"And there is no inner sense that tells you when somebody is plotting against you?"
"Absolutely not."
"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.
"1978?"
"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!"
Heirson oscillated his head. "Michael, Michael, your case isn't unique. There are others who claim that they have no Riders—usually maintaining that they are naturally superhuman and need no help from some funny kind of foreigner. They are tolerated the same way, that B.R., we tolerated people who claimed they possessed psychic auras, or who got up in cathedrals and yelled that they had no souls. But you, Michael, are a trouble-maker. You've been rude, vulgar, and reckless with your life and others in your pretense to be Riderless. Your pathological retreat from reality leaves us with no choice but to—"
The other man behind the desk shoved a paper in front of Heirson and tapped it forcefully with an index finger.
Heirson read the paper and his eyebrows went askew. "Yes, yes, we have discovered that there is a basic difference between you and the others who maintain they have no Riders. It would seem it has been established that you really do not have a Rider. Remarkable! Yes. Well, I have no alternative but to dismiss you from this institution, Michael Malloy, and to extend to you my personal apology for any inconvenience your three-and-a-half-years' detainment may have caused you."
A trick, Malloy thought.
Only what point would there be in tricking him?
The oppressive horror of it crushed down upon him with its full weight.
"Oh no," he said. "No, sir. Take me back to my padded cell. I've got my rights. I'm not going out there again. Maybe I could have learned to live with it once, but not now. I can't face up to living with a world of supermen, people who can do everything better than I can. Take me back. I think I'm going to get violent any minute now!"
He took a swing at the nearest guard, but naturally the guard's Rider told him what was coming and he dodged deftly, caught Malloy's arm and twisted it into half-nelson to hold him completely, infuriatingly helpless. Malloy had to hold back tears of frustration.
"Fortunately," Dr. Heirson croaked, "you can do no harm even if you do get violent, and I'm sure everyone will want to do everything possible for a poor unfortunate like yourself. We all will make allowances."
"No, no, no!" Malloy announced with the rhythm of his stomping feet. "I won't leave here! I won't!"
The man beside Heirson favored Malloy with a smile; Malloy wasn't sure whether it was friendly or mocking. The stranger nodded his head briefly to the guards.
Malloy was dragged, protesting, down the marble-floored hallway to the entrance of the mental hospital. His anguished cries echoed across the ornate ceiling of the old building.
He was shoved out the front door with a parcel in brown paper under his arms.
Malloy made one desperate attempt to get back inside but the massive door clanged in his face, and he could hear the reverberations dying away inside and the steady retreat of footsteps.
Malloy turned away in pain from the unaccustomed brilliance and warmth of the sun and banged on the door with his fists and demanded to be readmitted.
He grew hoarser and hoarser and he slid further and further down until he was squatting on the threshold, his cheek rested against the warm varnished surface of the door.
Malloy had never been an overly proud or vain man before the Riders had come. After all, he'd had one of the most menial jobs on Earth; he had been a magazine editor. But now he felt squashed under the thumb of humiliation.
The monstrous indignity of it all!
To be thrown out of an asylum!
After a time, Malloy felt a coolness, a wetness on his head.
He dreamed a little dream to himself that he knew was a dream: they were coming to wrap him in warm sheets again.
But it was only a dream. This wetness wasn't warm—it was chilly. He finally identified it from his memories. This was rain.
He stirred himself and gathered up the brown bundle that he knew must contain his suit, papers and a little money.
Malloy trudged down the road toward the town that lay below the sanitarium, his collar turned up.
He found he didn't mind the rain so much. It tended to settle the dust, and the walk would be a long one.
Grayson Amery, the iron-haired publisher, greeted Malloy with a firm, warm, dry handshake.
"Michael, it's certainly good to see you again. You are looking well."
"Yes, the bruises left by the strait jacket straps don't show," said Malloy.
"A unique miscarriage of justice," Amery said.
"I certainly hope it's unique. I hope there aren't any more poor devils like me locked away."
Amery offered Malloy a chair with a broad, well-manicured hand. "I'm confident that there aren't. And you are out now, fortunately."
"You can call it fortune if you like," Malloy said uneasily.
"But you are glad to be out?"
Malloy hesitated. "I'm resigned to it. The flow of time washed some of the salt out of the wound. Being born is definitely a traumatic experience."
"How well I remember!" Amery said.
Malloy glanced at him sharply, then eased back in his chair. Of course, like everybody else, thanks to his Rider, Amery had total recall. Malloy couldn't even remember his first birthday party.
"Is there any way I can be of help to you, Michael?" Amery went on.
"Sure. I want my job back."
Amery's forehead squeezed into lines of distress. "Yes, I was made aware of that. But, Michael, there have been a lot of changes in the publishing business since you were with us. For instance, it would be difficult for you to proofread a manuscript today."
"I'm hardly the type who can't spell. I haven't forgotten that."
"I know, Michael, but here—have a look at this."
Amery handed over a sheet of paper.
Malloy glanced at it. It seemed a typical sheet of a writer's manuscript, though a horrible yellowish gray that made the typescript from the tatters of a ribbon almost illegible. It was also smudged with jelly-doughnut fingerprints and there were several holes burned in it by droppings of cigarette ash. Pretty sloppy, but things didn't seem to have changed much. Not until he read the paper.
—/Cynthia/—/ (walked) toward —/#((him))#/— jauntily (/).
"'Hi,'" —/she/—# called (out) to ((him)).
"'/Hello/'", 'Sweetstuff', he / said /, ((trying)) to # sound # (gay) /....
Malloy looked up blankly. "What are all the cockeyed punctuation marks doing in there?" he asked.
Amery exhaled Havana smoke expansively. "That's the way things are now, Michael. Those punctuation marks indicate whether the protagonist's thoughts are self-directed or Rider-directed, or a combination of both, and which is dominant at the time, human or Rider. They became absolutely essential with the coming of the Riders."
Malloy covered his lips with his fingers. "Of course, I don't understand this punctuation now. But I could learn it quickly enough."
The publisher shook his massive head. "No, you couldn't learn it. You don't have a Rider. You could never understand all the little subtleties."
"I could fake it."
"Never. It might get past the average reader, but the author and critics would know right away. All an editor can do is watch for typographical errors and change them the way the author wanted them if his fingers hadn't tripped over the wrong keys. As it was, we used to get a good many complaints from writers about you making changes in their work."
"Grammar," Malloy explained. "I got kind of a bug about grammar. I used to fix up manuscripts some."
Rubbing out his fat cigar, Amery leaned across his desk. "This isn't like the good old days when I started out, Mike. If I had my way today, I'd get the National Guard ordered out and have those miserable slobs grind out stories with a bayonet at their backs!" The red gleam dimmed in Amery's eyes. "Those were the days, by God! Back then you didn't edit manuscripts with any dinky little blue pencil—you used a razor blade and a grease stick!"
Amery slumped down in his swivel, his eyes now only embers. "But that day is over, Mike. Writers have their rights, damn them. You get the wrong punctuation in one of their private-eye epics, Mike, and one of them will slap a suit against the company for defacing a Work of Art, and both of us could land in jail."
"Westerns," Malloy suggested in desperation. "Historical fiction. They can't employ the new punctuation. I could edit them."
The veteran publisher shook his head again. "No. Cowboys in westerns today turn your stomach more than ever with their damned nobility and purity. Heroines in historical novels act just as if deodorants and Living Bras had been in use back then. And these stories are written as if the characters did have Riders, with only a few minor concessions."
"Okay." Malloy stood up. "I'll go quietly."
"Maybe you're lucky, Mike," Amery said up at him. "I remember old-fashioned ideals like privacy and free will and free enterprise. They don't exist any more. You can't tell me that my free will hasn't been affected. Why, every business deal I've had since the Coming has been strictly ethical. You know that isn't like me!"
"No," Malloy admitted thoughtfully.
"I'm even so ethical now that I recognize I owe you something. I know money can't repay—"
"Hell it can't," Malloy said quickly.
The publisher stripped off a sheaf of bills with deliberation.
Malloy pocketed them. Enough to keep him eating for a couple of months. After that, there was always the Salvation Army. He didn't have anything to worry about, really.
"Amery, what would you do if you were in my place?" he heard himself ask suddenly.
Amery steepled his fingers. "I hesitate to suggest a deception to anyone, but since you ask me what I would do if I didn't have a Rider, I will tell you the truth: I would pretend that I did not have a Rider."
"What are you talking about? I don't have a Rider. So far as I myself personally know, I'm the only person in the whole damned world that doesn't have one. I'd like to find out why, but I'm no scientist. So I just have to live with it. Or without it."
"There's a very, very fine difference," Amery pointed out with one finger. "Semantics is no longer a living science since the Coming, but I'll try to make myself clear. You must pretend to have to pretend that you don't have a Rider. Join the Jockey Set."
"Jockey Set," Malloy mumbled, massaging the back of his neck. "I've been put away for three and a half years. What's the Jockey Set?"
"Jockeys are characters who pretend that they don't have Riders, that they are self-sufficient human beings. Sometimes they use their Riders' powers and claim to be natural supermen. Sometimes they leave Rider power untapped and pretend to be natural, old-type human beings. But they are all fakes. The Rider in them comes out sooner or later."
"But if they have Riders, will I be able to fool them into thinking I'm only pretending to be without one?"
Amery lifted his shoulders and drew down the corners of his mouth. "Who knows? I will tell you this, though—you must be pretty much of a blank to a Rider. If they won't touch you, it must mean they can't."
Malloy started to ask him how he knew what Riders felt about him, then thought better of it.
"How would I fake trying to hide the fact that I didn't have a Rider? I suppose, maybe, by slipping up and letting myself predict the future or something...."
"That's it!" Amery beamed. "You see? It will be easy!"
"Of course," Malloy said dully.
"I mean, that is to say, any time you don't do something and don't do it particularly well, the Jockeys will only admire your splendid act."
Malloy nodded thoughtfully. He turned and shook hands with the publisher. "Well, Amery, thanks for the money—and the advice. You always were the most devious master of deceit I ever knew."
"Thank you," Amery said with great sincerity.
"There's one more thing. This may sound silly, but they found me out pretty quick after it happened. What does a Rider look like? Where do they come from? Where do they fasten onto the brain or body of human beings?"
Amery leaned across the desk and backhanded Malloy in the mouth.
"Get out!" Amery said.
Malloy left the office, holding a handkerchief to his cut lip.
It was a dump. The name had changed a half dozen times over the last half century, but the spots in the tablecloths remained the same. The dump had seen the Lost Generation, the Beat Generation, and now the Ridden Generation.
Only, Malloy supposed, they called themselves the Riderless Generation. Well, maybe they were. Maybe they were like him.
He walked in, hanging onto that thought, his stride long. He cut down his stride. At that rate he would be out in the alley soon.
Self-consciously, Malloy slid into a chair at a vacant table so he wouldn't draw undue attention.
As he began idly tracing the grease spots on the tablecloths that looked like the wrappers from a line of cereal boxes, all red and white checks, he discovered every shaved head in the room was triangulating him.
He shifted uncomfortably. He was playing it middle-of-the-road. He had a close crew-cut and wore a plaid flannel shirt and purple velvet ballet leotards. Maybe he was too far on the conservative side for here.
"Spell it, saddle," the counterman called to him without coming front.
"Cola," he ordered. "With chickory, pecans and honey."
"One sou'easter on the path," the counterman called out tiredly.
"With you're going to sit there, ............