The Parasite

by Arthur C. Clarke

“There is nothing you can do,” said Connolly, “nothing at all. Why did you have to follow me?” He was standing with his back to Pearson, staring out across the calm blue waters that led to Italy. On the left, behind the anchored fishing fleet, the sun was setting in Mediterranean splendor, incarnadining land and sky. But neither man was even remotely aware of the beauty all around us.

Pearson rose to his feet, and came forward out of the little cafe’s shadowed porch, into the slanting sunlight. He joined Connolly by the cliff wall, but was careful not to come too close to him. Even in normal times Connolly disliked being touched: his obsession, whatever it might be, would make him doubly sensitive now.

“Listen, Roy,” Pearson began urgently. “We’ve been friends for twenty years, and you ought to know I wouldn’t let you down this time. Besides . . .”

“I know. You promised Ruth.”

“And why not? After all, she is your wife. She has a right to know what’s happened.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “She’s worried, Roy. Much more worried than if it was only another woman.” He nearly added the word “again,” but decided against it.

Connolly stubbed out his cigarette on the flat-topped granite wall, then flicked the white cylinder out over the sea, so that it fell twisting and turning towards the waters a hundred feet below. He turned to face his friend.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” he said, and for a moment there was a glimpse of the familiar personality which, Pearson knew, must be trapped somewhere within the stranger standing at his side. “I know you’re trying to be helpful, and I appreciate it. But I wish you hadn’t followed me. You’ll only make matters worse.”

“Convince me of that, and I’ll go away.”

Connolly sighed.

“I could no more convince you than that psychiatrist you persuaded me to see. Poor Curtis! He was such a well-meaning fellow. Give him my apologies, will you?”

“I’m not a psychiatrist, and I’m not trying to cure you—whatever that means. If you like it the way you are, that’s your affair. But I think you ought to let us know what’s happened, so that we can make plans accordingly.”

“To get me certified?”

Pearson shrugged his shoulders. He wondered if Connolly could see through his feigned indifference to the real concern he was trying to hide. Now that all other approaches seemed to have failed, the “frankly, I don’t care” attitude was the only one left open to him.

“I wasn’t thinking of that. There are a few practical details to worry about. Do you want to stay here indefinitely? You can't live without money, even on Syrene.”

“I can stay at Clifford Rawnsley’s villa as long as I like. He was a friend of my father’s, you know. It’s empty at the moment except for the servants, and they don’t bother me.”

Connolly turned away from the parapet on which he was resting.

“I’m going up the hill before it’s dark,” he said. The words were abrupt, but Pearson knew that he was not being dismissed. He could follow if he pleased, and the knowledge brought him the first satisfaction he had felt since locating Connolly. It was a small triumph, but he needed it.

They did not speak during the climb; indeed, Pearson scarcely had the breath to do so. Connolly set off at a reckless pace, as if deliberately attempting to exhaust himself. The island fell away beneath them, the white villas gleamed like ghosts in the shadowed valleys, the little fishing boats, their day’s work done, lay at rest in the harbor. And all around was the darkling sea.

When Pearson caught up with his friend, Connolly was sitting in front of the shrine which the devout islanders had built on Syrene’s highest point. In the daytime, there would be tourists here, photographing one another or gaping at the much-advertised beauty spread beneath them: but the place was deserted now.

Connolly was breathing heavily from his exertions, yet his features were relaxed and for the moment he seemed almost at peace. The shadow that lay across his mind had lifted, and he turned to Pearson with a smile that echoed his old, infectious grin.

“He hates exercise, Jack. It always scares him away.”

“And who is he?” asked Pearson. “Remember, you haven’t introduced us yet.”

Connolly smiled at his friend’s attempted humor; then his face suddenly became grave.

“Tell me, Jack,” he began. “Would you say I have an overdeveloped imagination?”

“No; you’re about average. You’re certainly less imaginative than I am.”

Connolly nodded slowly.

“That’s true enough, Jack, and it should help you to believe me. Because I’m certain I could never have invented the creature who’s haunting me. He really exists. I’m not suffering from paranoic hallucinations, or whatever Dr. Curtis would call them.

“You remember Maude White? It all began with her. I met her at one of David Trescott’s parties, about six weeks ago. I’d just quarreled with Ruth and was rather fed up. We were both pretty tight, and as I was staying in town she came back to the flat with me.”

Pearson smiled inwardly. Poor Roy! It was always the same pattern, though he never seemed to realize it. Each affair was different to him, but to no one else. The eternal Don Juan, always seeking—always disappointed, because what he sought could be found only in the cradle or the grave, but never between the two.

“I guess you’ll laugh at what knocked me out—it seems so trivial, though it frightened me more than anything that’s ever happened in my life. I simply went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured out the drinks, as I’ve a hundred times before. It wasn’t until I’d handed one to Maude that I realized I’d filled three glasses. The act was so perfectly natural that at first I didn’t recognize what it meant. Then I looked wildly round the room to see where the other man was—even then I knew, somehow, that it was a man. But, of course, he wasn’t there. He was nowhere at all in the outside world: he was hiding deep down inside my own brain. . . .

The night was very still, the only sound a thin ribbon of music winding up to the stars from some cafe in the village below. The light of the rising moon sparkled on the sea; overhead, the arms of the crucifix were silhouetted against the darkness. A brilliant beacon on the frontiers of twilight, Venus was following the sun into the west.

Pearson waited, letting Connolly take his time. He seemed lucid and rational enough, however strange the story he was telling. His face was quite calm in the moonlight, though it might be the calmness that comes after acceptance of defeat.

“The next thing I remember is lying in bed while Maude sponged my face. She was pretty frightened; I’d passed out and cut my forehead badly as I fell. There was a lot of blood around the place, but that didn’t matter. The thing that really scared me was the thought that I’d gone crazy. That seems funny now that I’m much more scared of being sane.

“He was still there when I woke up: he’s been there ever since. Somehow I got rid of Maude—it wasn’t easy—and tried to work out what had happened. Tell me, Jack, do you believe in telepathy?”

The abrupt challenge caught Pearson off his guard.

“I’ve never given it much thought, but the evidence seems rather convincing. Do you suggest that someone else is reading your mind?”

“It’s not as simple as that. What I’m telling you now I’ve discovered slowly—usually when I've been dreaming or slightly drunk. You may say that invalidates the evidence, but I don’t think so. At first it was the only way I could break through the barrier that separates me from Omega—I’ll tell you later why I’ve called him that. But now there aren’t any obstacles: I know he’s there all the time, waiting for me to let down my guard. Night and day, drunk or sober, I’m conscious of his presence. At times like this he’s quiescent, watching me out of the corner of his eve. My only hope is that he’ll grow tired of waiting, and go in search of some other victim.”

Connolly’s voice, calm until now, suddenly came near to breaking.

“Try and imagine the horror of that discovery—the effect of learning that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind—was being watched and shared by another being. It meant, of course, the end of all normal life for me. I had to leave Ruth and I couldn't tell her why. Then, to make matters worse, Maude came chasing after me. She wouldn’t leave me alone, and bombarded me with letters and phone calls. It was hell: I couldn’t fight both of them, so I ran away. And I thought that on Syrene, of all places, he would find enough to interest him without bothering me.”

“Now I understand,” said Pearson softly. “So that's what he’s after. A kind of telepathic Peeping Tom—no longer content with mere watching. . . .”

“I suppose you’re humoring me,” said Connolly, without resentment. “But I don’t mind, and you've summed it up pretty accurately, as you usually do. It was quite a while before I realized what his game was. Once the first shock had worn off, I tried to analyze the position logically. I thought backwards from that first moment of recognition, and in the end I knew that it wasn’t a sudden invasion of my mind. He’d been with me for years, so well hidden that I’d never guessed it. I expect you'll laugh at this, knowing me as you do. Rut I've never been altogether at ease with a woman, even when I’ve been making love to her—and now I know the reason. Omega has always been there, sharing my emotions, gloating over the passions he can no longer experience in his body.

“The only way I kept any control was by lighting back, trying to come to grips with him and to understand what he was. And in the end I succeeded. He’s a long distance away and there must be some limit to his powers. Perhaps that first contact was an accident, though I’m not sure.

“What I’ve told you already. Jack, must be hard enough for you to believe, but it’s nothing to what I’ve got to say now. Yet remember—you agreed that I’m not an imaginative man, and see if you can find a flaw anywhere in this story.

“I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time. I know that it is. Omega doesn’t belong to our age; he’s somewhere in the future, immensely far ahead of us. For a while I thought he must be one of the last men—that’s why I gave him his name. But now I’m not sure: perhaps he belongs to an age when there are a myriad different races of man, scattered all over the universe—some still ascending, others sinking into decay. His people, wherever and whenever they may be, have reached the heights and fallen from them into the depths the beasts can never know. There’s a sense of evil about him, Jack—the real evil that most of us never meet in all our lives. Yet sometimes I feel almost sorry for him, because I know what has made him the thing he is.

“Have you ever wondered. Jack, what the human race will do when science has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets? Omega is one of the answers: I hope he’s not the only one, for if so everything we’ve striven for is in vain. I hope that he and his race are an isolated cancer in a still healthy universe: but I can never be sure.

“They have pampered their bodies until they are useless, and too late they have discovered their mistake. Perhaps they have thought, as some men have thought, that they could live by intellect alone. And perhaps they are immortal, and that must be their real damnation. Through the ages their minds have been corroding in their feeble bodies, seeking some release from their intolerable boredom. They have found it at last in the only way they can, by sending back their minds to an earlier, more virile age, and becoming parasites on the emotions of others.

“I wonder how many of them there are? Perhaps they explain all cases of what used to he called possession. How they must have ransacked the past to assuage their hunger! Can't you picture them, flocking like carrion crows around the decaying Roman Empire, jostling one another for the minds of Nero and Caligula and Tiberius? Perhaps Omega failed to get those richer prizes. Or perhaps he hasn’t much choice and must take whatever mind he can contact in any age, transferring from that to the next whenever he has the chance.

“It was only slowly, of course, that I worked all this out. I think it adds to his enjoyment to know that I’m aware of his presence. I think he’s deliberately helping—breaking down his side of the barrier. For in the end, I was able to see him.”

Connolly broke off. Looking round, Pearson saw that they were no longer alone on the hilltop. A young couple, hand in hand, was coming up the road towards the crucifix. Each had the physical beauty so common and so cheap among the islanders; they were oblivious to the night around them and to any spectators, and went past without the least sign of recognition. There was a bitter smile on Connolly’s lips as he watched them go.

“I suppose I should be ashamed of this, but I was wishing then that he’d leave me and go after that boy. But he won’t: though I’ve refused to play his game any more, he’s staying to see what happens.”

“You were going to tell me what he’s like,” said Pearson, annoyed at the interruption. Connolly lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply before replying.

“Can you imagine a room without walls? He’s in a kind of hollow, egg-shaped space surrounded by blue mist that always seems to be twisting and turning, but never changes its position. There’s no entrance or exit— and no gravity, unless he’s learned to defy it. Because he floats in the center, and around him is a circle of short, fluted cylinders, turning slowly in the air. I think they must be machines of some kind, obeying his will. And once there was a large oval hanging beside him, with perfectly human, beautifully formed arms coming from it. It could only have been a robot, yet those hands and fingers seemed alive. They were feeding and massaging him, treating him like a baby. It was horrible. . . .

“Have you ever seen a lemur or a spectral tarsier? He’s rather like that—a nightmare travesty of mankind, with huge malevolent eyes. And this is strange—it’s not the way one had imagined evolution going—he’s covered with a fine layer of fur, as blue as the room in which he lives. Every time I’ve seen him he’s been in the same position, half curled up like a sleeping baby. I think his legs have completely atrophied—perhaps his arms as well. Only his brain is still active, hunting up and down the ages for its prey.

“And now you know why there was nothing you or anyone else could do. Your psychiatrists might cure me if I was insane, but the science that can deal with Omega hasn’t been invented yet.”

Connolly paused, then smiled wryly.

“Just because I’m sane, I realize that you can’t be expected to believe me. So there’s no common ground on which we can meet.”

Pearson rose from the boulder on which he had been sitting, and shivered slightly. The night was becoming cold, but that was nothing to the feeling of inner helplessness that had overwhelmed him as Connolly spoke.

“I’ll be frank, Roy,” he began slowly. “Of course I don’t believe you. But insofar as you believe in Omega yourself, he’s real to you, and I’ll accept him on that basis and fight him with you.”

“It may be a dangerous game. How do we know what he can do when he’s cornered?”

“I'll take that chance,” Pearson replied, beginning to walk down the hill. Connolly followed him without argument. “Meanwhile, just what do you propose to do yourself?”

“Relax. Avoid emotion. Above all, keep away from women—Ruth, Maude, and the rest of them. That’s been the hardest job. It isn’t easy to break the habits of a lifetime.”

“I can well believe that,” replied Pearson, a little dryly. “How successful have you been so far?"

“Completely. You see, his own eagerness defeats his purpose, by filling me with a kind of nausea and self-loathing whenever I think of sex. Lord—to think that I’ve laughed at the prudes all my life, yet now I’ve become one myself!”

There, thought Pearson in a sudden flash of insight, was the answer. He would never have believed it, but Connolly’s past had finally caught up with him. Omega was nothing more than a symbol of conscience, a personification of guilt. When Connolly realized this, he would cease to be haunted. As for the remarkably detailed nature of the hallucination, that was yet another example of the tricks the human mind can play in its efforts to deceive itself. There must be some reason why the obsession had taken this form, but that was of minor importance.

Pearson explained this to Connolly at some length as they approached the village. The other listened so patiently that Pearson had an uncomfortable feeling that he was the one who was being humored, but he continued grimly to the end. When he had finished, Connolly gave a short, mirthless laugh.

“Your story’s as logical as mine—but neither of us can convince the other. If you’re right, then in time I may return to ‘normal.’ I can’t disprove the possibility; I simply don’t believe it. You can’t imagine how real Omega is to me. He’s more real than you are: if I close my eyes you're gone, but he’s still there, I wish I knew what he was waiting for! I’ve left my old life behind: he knows I won’t go back to it while he's there. So what’s he got to gain by hanging on?” He turned to Pearson with a feverish eagerness. “That’s what really frightens me, Jack. He must know what my future is—all my life must be like a book he can dip into where he pleases. So there must still be some experience ahead of me that he’s waiting to savor. Sometimes—sometimes I wonder if it’s my death.”

They were now among the houses at the outskirts of the village, and ahead of them the night-life of Syrene was getting into its stride. Now that they were no longer alone, there came a subtle change in Connolly’s attitude. On the hilltop he had been, if not his normal self, at least friendly and prepared to talk. But now the sight of the happy, carefree crowds ahead seemed to make him withdraw into himself; he lagged behind as Pearson advanced and presently refused to come any further.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pearson. “Surely you’ll come down to the hotel and have dinner with me?”

Connolly shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’d meet too many people.”

It was an astonishing remark from a man who had always delighted in crowds and parties: it showed, as nothing else had done, how much Connolly had changed. Before Pearson could think of a suitable reply, the other had turned on his heels and made off up a side street. Hurt and annoyed, Pearson started to pursue him, then decided that it was useless.

That night he sent a long telegram to Ruth, giving what reassurance he could. Then, tired out, he went to bed.

Yet for an hour he was unable to sleep. His body was exhausted, but his brain was still active. He lay watching the patch of moonlight move across the pattern on the wall, marking the passage of time as inexorably as it must still do in the distant age that Connolly had glimpsed. Of course, that was pure fantasy—yet against his will Pearson was growing to accept Omega as a real and living threat. And in a sense Omega was real—as real as those other mental abstractions, the Ego and the Subconscious Mind.

Pearson wondered if Connolly had been wise to come back to Syrene. In times of emotional crisis—there had been others, though none so important as this—Connolly’s reaction was always the same. He would return again to the lovely island where his charming, feckless parents had borne him and where he had spent his youth. He was seeking now, Pearson knew well enough, the contentment he had known only for one period of his life, and which he had sought so vainly in the arms of Ruth and all those others who had been unable to resist him.

Pearson was not attempting to criticize his unhappy friend. He never passed judgments; he merely observed with a bright-eyed, sympathetic interest that was hardly tolerance, since tolerance implied the relaxation of standards which he had never possessed. . . .

After a restless night, Pearson finally dropped into a sleep so sound that he awoke an hour later than usual. He had breakfast in his room, then went down to the reception desk to see if there was any reply from Ruth. Someone else had arrived in the night: two traveling cases, obviously English, were stacked in a corner of the hall, waiting for the porter to move them. Idly curious, Pearson glanced at the labels to see who his compatriot might be. Then he stiffened, looked hastily around, and hurried across to the receptionist.

“This Englishwoman,” he said anxiously. “When did she arrive?”

“An hour ago, Signor, on the morning boat.”

“Is she in now?”

The receptionist looked a little undecided, then capitulated gracefully.

“No, Signor. She was in a great hurry, and asked me where she could find Mr. Connolly. So I told her—I hope it was all right.”

Pearson cursed under his breath. It was an incredible stroke of bad luck, something he would never have dreamed of guarding against. Maude White was a woman of even greater determination than Connolly had hinted. Somehow she had discovered where he had fled, and pride or desire or both had driven her to follow. That she had come to this hotel was not surprising: it was an almost inevitable choice for English visitors to Syrene.

As he climbed the road to the villa, Pearson fought against an increasing sense of futility and uselessness. He had no idea what he should do when he met Connolly and Maude: he merely felt a vague yet urgent impulse to be helpful. If he could catch Maude before she reached the villa, he might be able to convince her that Connolly was a sick man and that her intervention could only do harm. Yet was this true? It was perfectly possible that a touching reconciliation had already taken place, and that neither party had the least desire to see him.

They were talking together on the beautifully laid-out lawn in front of the villa when Pearson turned through the gates and paused for breath. Connolly was resting on a wrought-iron seat beneath a palm-tree, while Maude was pacing up and down a few yards away. She was speaking swiftly; Pearson could not hear her words, but from the intonation of her voice she was obviously pleading with Connolly. It was an embarrassing situation: while Pearson was still wondering whether to go forward, Connolly looked up and caught sight of him. His face was a completely expressionless mask: it showed neither welcome nor resentment.

At the interruption, Maude spun round to see who the intruder was, and for the first time Pearson glimpsed her face. She was a beautiful woman, but despair and anger had so twisted her features that she looked like a figure from some Greek tragedy. She was suffering not only the bitterness of being scorned, but the agony of not knowing why.

Pearson’s arrival must have acted as a trigger to her pent-up emotions. She suddenly whirled away from him and turned towards Connolly, who continued to watch her with lacklustre eyes. For a moment Pearson could not see what she was doing: then he cried in horror: “Look out, Roy!”

Connolly moved with surprising speed, as if he had suddenly emerged from a trance. He caught Maude’s wrist, there was a brief struggle, and then he was backing away from her, looking with fascination at something in the palm of his hand. The woman stood motionless, paralyzed with fear and shame, knuckles pressed against her mouth.

Connolly gripped the pistol with his right hand and stroked it lovingly with his left, there was a low moan from Maude.

“I only meant to frighten you, Roy! I swear it!”

“That’s all right, my dear,” said Connolly softly. “I believe you. There’s nothing to worry about.” His voice was perfectly natural. He turned towards Pearson, and gave him his old, boyish smile.

“So this is what he was waiting for, Jack,” he said. “I’m not going to disappoint him.”

“No!” gasped Pearson, white with terror. “Don’t. Roy, for God’s sake!”

But Connolly was beyond reach of his friend’s entreaties as he turned the pistol to his head. In that same moment Pearson knew at last, with an awful clarity, that Omega was real and that Omega would now be seeking for a new abode.

He never saw the flash of the gun or heard the feeble but adequate explosion. The world he knew had faded from his sight, and around him now were the fixed yet crawling mists of the blue room. Staring from its center—as they had stared down the ages at how many others?—were two vast and lidless eyes. They were satiated for the moment, but for the moment only.

THE END

Content

The Parasite
by Arthur C. Clarke