It was the crux of the matter.
Malloy took a deep breath and said it.
"I want a Rider. I want to be like everybody else. If you people have any sense of gratitude and justice—and you seem to—you'll set up some kind of scientific project to find out why I haven't caught a case of Riders and to see that I am properly infected."
Pearson leaned back in the other straight chair inside the rough-boarded outbuilding.
"Mr. Malloy, we know why none of the Riders who drifted in from outer space infected you. You already had a Rider—an entirely human, not alien, one. You are schizoid—you have a split personality. You adjusted to it to an incredible degree and submerged it, but it was still there and no alien would touch a man who already had two minds."
Malloy felt no emotion, only an inescapable acceptance. "My conscience," he said.
Pearson nodded. "Your second personality is becoming steadily less recessive."
"But telepathy—all the tricks of the Riders—I can't do them."
"You will be able to. Two minds are better than one. It would seem that schizophrenia is the natural state of supermen, when properly trained and integrated. In fact, you should be able to accomplish more than a Rider-ridden man—you will have two human personalities, and the Riders are little more than viruses conscious of their own existence."
"You mean I'm a superman?"