Cuso shouted an order at his men.
Zen found himself tied hand and foot. A raging maniac paced the floor beside him. Every now and then Cuso kicked him. Screaming at the top of his voice, the Asian leader invited Zen to vanish too. It did Zen no good to try to protest that he was not one of the new people and that he knew nothing of the method they had used in disappearing.
In Cuso's mind, he was one of them.
He was to be treated as such.
[XIII]
At first, the lighted matches under his toe nails hurt like the very devil. He had never known such pain. Then he forgot about the matches under his toe nails. They started lighting them under his fingers.
"Where did they go?" Cuso screamed. "How did they do it?"
Zen had long since ceased trying to say that he didn't know. Instead of speaking, he shook his head. This was all he could do. Cuso interpreted the head shake as a stubborn refusal to answer. He kicked the colonel in the face.
At the kick, the race mind clicked in. This was the effect Zen had—as if a third person had suddenly come in on a party line. After that, the pain from the kick did not seem so important. The torture from the matches under his nails seemed to diminish also.