"Fear," The Grandfather said, repeating the word again, "is my bulwark. Cowardice my armor. I am the most frightened man in our world. That is the reason I am The Grandfather. Until the day comes that a more frightened man, a more cowardly human being arises, I shall rule. No brave man can ever breach my defenses, because no brave man can ever know the things I fear. Since I am always fearful my mind is filled with ideas as to where and how I may be attacked. Since this is so, I spend all my waking hours building up my guard against any such attacks.
"The nights," he said thoughtfully, "I spend in nightmares in which all my defenses crumble."
Comstock sat across the room from The Grandfather, his arms enclosed in the cage like affair that immobilized him. Through apertures in the walls at shoulder height he could see the stock-still muzzles of the stun-guns that were trained on him. He brought his attention back to The Grandfather. The man's long, thin face was raddled with what seemed like fear. Tics jerked monstrously at the corners of his mouth and at his hag-ridden eyes.
"How," Comstock asked, "can you sit under the menace of the guns that surround us? Aren't you afraid that one of the gunners may shoot you?"
"You see," the lean, bearded face was full of envy, "You see, you think like a brave man and that is why you will never be able to overcome me. Only a brave man could sit under the guns ... unless, he had the foresight to have done what I have. Behind the gunners of which you are aware, there is another set of gunners, each of whom has a gun pointed at the head of the gunner who has been honored by being my guard."
Comstock thought of this for a while and then he said, "And do the secondary gunners have tertiary gunners menacing them?"
The Grandfather smiled delightedly, "There! You see, you are beginning to think like a coward. Fear like mine is infectious. Of course there are tertiary and quaternary and quinternary gunners!"
In the lengthening pause that followed this statement of The Grandfather's, Comstock wondered if this was right, was fear the thing that held him on the pinnacle he had made his own?
The Grandfather said, "I am not sure that I have convinced you. Observe my face, the way fear tears at it. Consider that I am so cowardly that my stomach digests itself rather than the food I force into it. Realize that the only pleasure my fear allows me to enjoy is that of power and then try to realize how helpless a brave man like you who spreads his pleasure between the table and the bed must be in the face of my one, all-consuming pleasure.
"You can eat for perhaps three hours a day," The Grandfather went on, "depending on your sexual appetite and your years, you can spend an hour, perhaps two in play at sex. But I can spend every waking minute of every day on my pleasure."