"Oh, he's not cruel about it," the colonel said. "He kills quickly and neatly. The thing is that he never, under any circumstances, uses any weapons except the weapons that nature gave him—hands or feet or claws or teeth. He never uses a gun or a knife or even a club. Dr. Yoritomo has some theories about that which I won't go into now. He'll tell you about them pretty soon."
Stanton thought about the Japanese scientist and smiled. "I know. Dr. Yoritomo has threatened to tell me all kinds of theories."
"And believe me he will," said Mannheim with a soft chuckle. He took another sip of his coffee and then looked up at Stanton. "You've been through five years of hell, Mr. Stanton. In addition, you've been pretty much isolated here. Dr. Farnsworth, here, has tried to keep you informed, but, as I understand it, it has only been during the last few months that you've actually been able to absorb and retain information reliably. At least, that's the report I get. How do you feel about it?"
Bart Stanton thought for a moment. It was true that he'd been out of touch with what had been going on outside the walls of the Neurophysical Institute for the past five years. In spite of the reading he'd done and the newscasts he'd watched and the TV tapes he'd seen, he still had no real feeling for the situation.
There had been long hazy periods during that five years. He had undergone extensive glandular and neural operations of great delicacy, many of which had resulted in what could have been agonizing pain without the use of suppressors. As a result of those operations, he possessed a biological engine that, for sheer driving power and nicety of control, surpassed any other known to exist or to have ever existed on Earth—with the possible exception of the Nipe. But those five years of rebuilding and retraining had left a gap in his life.
Several of the steps required to make the conversion from man to superman had resulted in temporary insanity; the wild, swinging imbalances of glandular secretions seeking a new balance, the erratic misfirings of neurons as they attempted to adjust to higher nerve-impulse velocities, and the sheer fatigue engendered by cells that were acting too rapidly for a lagging excretory system, all had contributed to periods of greater or lesser abnormality.
That he was sane now, there was no question. But there were holes in his memory that still had to be filled.
He admitted as much to Colonel Mannheim.
"I see." The colonel rubbed one hand along the angle of his jaw, considering his next words. "Can you give me, in your own words, a general summary of the type of thing the Nipe has been doing?"
"I think so," Stanton said.