Memoirs Of An Invisible Man by H.F. Saint Read Free Book Online

it that way. As a matter of fact, we
are
going to have a little explosion today.”
    Anne, whose head was still half turned in my direction, seemed excited but not at all dismayed by this news. She had her pen and her little journalist’s notebook poised for the details.
    “That’s great,” I said. “That’s the way to do it. Show them you mean business. Poof. No more MicroMagnetics. That’ll make those jokers think twice about what line of work they get into next. Opens up my day too. No point in my checking out MicroMagnetics now. In fact you might just drop me off—”
    “We’ll just be blowing up a guinea pig today.”
    “That’s the idea. These MicroMagnetics clowns are just guinea pigs. If the thing works here, you can blow up anyone who gets out of line.”
    “A guinea pig,” he insisted coldly. “The little animal in the cage back there with you. We’re blowing it up in a small simulation of a nuclear explosion, to make vivid the unacceptable horror of nuclear war.”
    I couldn’t see a cage anywhere, but I felt a great sense of relief upon discovering that no major destruction was being undertaken and that, moreover, there was probably nothing more dangerous than fireworks bouncing along with us in the van. I felt, in fact, a bit foolish about having been so easily frightened. However, Anne, who, as far as I could tell, had just been contemplating the bombing of the entire physical plant of MicroMagnetics with something approaching enthusiasm, had the opposite reaction. She was suddenly aghast.
    “You’re murdering an animal?”
    “Exactly!” said the terrorist, with restrained but unmistakable triumph in his voice. “That’s exactly the way everyone reacts. It’s one of the contradictions of bourgeois sensibility that people are more upset about one small laboratory animal dying painlessly before their eyes than by all humanity being steadily poisoned with radioactivity. It’s by exacerbating that contradiction that we can force people to a higher dialectical level of political consciousness.”
    “You mean by killing an animal?” Anne asked again, more calmly this time. I could not tell if she was getting the thing into a proper revolutionary perspective or if she was just doing what she thought of as her job.
    “That’s right. Do you sec? Right now all of us are already being made the guinea pigs of a capitalist nuclear industry that values profits above human beings. If by destroying this one animal we can make even one more person understand that, its suffering will have been worthwhile.”
    Carillon seemed to enjoy speaking this way; he was becoming quite cheerful and animated, and his voice was beginning to resonate as if he were addressing a crowd. In my experience, when one of these people uses the word “dialectic,” you are in for it. I was sure that if anyone offered another objection to detonating the animal, he would be off again and there would be no stopping the dialectical process, so I hastened to agree with him.
    “That’s a very telling point, you know.” I tried to sound sincere and deliberative. “Yes, I think that’s right on the money.” The phrase was ill chosen, and he looked back at me suspiciously. I wished he would keep his eyes on the road. There was a pause in the conversation, and Anne, after a sharp glance in my direction, turned back and uneasily resumed her interview of Carillon, keeping her voice as low as she could in the hope that I would be unable to participate.
    I located the cage on the other side of the van. It was not much larger than the animal inside. I opened the hinged door and dumped the guinea pig out onto the floor of the van. It lay where it landed, a fat, passive creature. I crawled back to my cushions, feeling suddenly a bit queasy from the motion of the van. I found that I was now concentrating entirely on the way I was being wrenched back and forth. The turns seemed to be increasing in violence and frequency, and I decided we