She smiled in the dark. "Thanks anyways. But I knew him, too."
"They used him as a model," Stan said. "Like Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Malcolm. There actually were human beings like that. Somewhere along the line, the Thuscans captured them and studied them so they could imitate them. Ainsworth and Malcolm and your brother served as models." He shuddered. "Perhaps on some world there's an imitation Stanley Martin walking around."
They watched the stars for a while and then Avis said: "You're a strong man, Stan. How did they ever ... break you?"
"A simple technique—brain-washing you could call it. The Thuscans set up Mr. Malcolm and Mr. Ainsworth and I was the man between. Mr. Malcolm was the enemy, Mr. Ainsworth was the friend. Mr. Ainsworth would 'rescue' me from Mr. Malcolm. There's no quicker way to build up a friendship. I felt obligated, in a sense. And then there was torture ... and machines. When my memory came back, I thought I had it all figured. I only made one mistake. I never thought Tanner was a Thuscan."
"He fooled a lot of people, including myself. You shouldn't feel bad."
"But I do! If Tanner had been a real human being, then they would never have needed me.... Clever psychologists though they were, they had to work through a human agency as a safety factor. If Tanner had been real, they could have done it through him."
"You broke the conditioning," she pointed out. "How?"
He smiled. "That morning when they jumped me. They beat me up for half an hour and nobody came to my rescue. Nobody but Ainsworth. Even in Chicago, people don't stand by and let a 17 year old kid get killed by three men. Tanner had used the time pistol. What had seemed to take a half hour for me actually occurred in seconds. Nobody could have helped me if they had wanted to!"
He stared moodily at the sky. "You know, there isn't much here for me, Avis. I lost my whole family when Chicago was wiped off the map. Larry had died before then, of course." He lowered his voice to a brooding sadness. "And the indoctrination I had, it hasn't entirely worn off. Sometimes I think of people as ... apes again."