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  I almost gagged. It was liquid fire. He smiled happily. I thought it was a smile; there was a crinkling.

  “Burgundian,” he said. “From the grape dregs. An acquired taste. Like revenge. Tell me what you think I should know.”

  I kept it brief. I did not mention Angela Berri by name. I said only that my target was an object in a high government position who was on the suck. I outlined my plan. He listened intently, not interrupting. But his eyes never left mine.

  I finished. I waited for his reaction.

  “An outlandish scheme,” he said finally. “Farfetched.”

  “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “It’s a great advantage. The object couldn’t possibly conceive of anyone going to all that trouble.”

  “And expense,” he said shrewdly. “It’s going to take a lot of money.”

  “A lot of love,” I said mischievously.

  “Money,” he repeated stubbornly.

  I laughed. “Money it is,” I said. “How much?”

  “How could I possibly know at this time? A lot. You want complete ownership? Or will a partnership suffice?”

  “Ownership, if possible. Or any arrangement that will give me access to the offices. The chief executive must be ruled by me.” “I see.” He pondered a moment. “Of course, you want your name kept out?”

  “Of course. I thought you might be able to set up a dummy corporation, or some kind of a holding—”

  “Don’t tell me my business,” he said crossly. “There are many new discoveries and products of which I am not aware, I’m sure. But now you’re talking about something as old as Cain and Abel. We used to call it a ‘fuzz job.’ ”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the expression.”

  “To fuzz the ownership of a particular property. Hide it behind layers of owners of record. Lots of papers. That’s the secret: lots and lots of legal documents. The true ownership can always be traced, of course. But only after a great deal of time and effort. By then, we will have accomplished our purpose.”

  “Our purpose?” I repeated. “You’re willing to take this on?” “Oh yes,” he said. “It’s human. Very human indeed. It almost convinces me that there’s hope for you yet.”

  “Hope for me?”

  “For you, your generation, your world. That it’s not all urine specimens and computer printouts. There’s some blood left.”

  I smiled politely and lifted my glass.

  “To blood,” I said.

  We made what arrangements we could: his payment, maximum love to be expended, transfer of funds, communication. He suggested the code. Thirty years previously he had written a thin book: Early Monasteries of Southern California. It had been privately published. He still had a dozen volumes left, and gave me one. If he sent me a letter of numbers, including 19-3-14, it would mean the fourteenth word of the third paragraph on page 19. Simple and unbreakable. Providing, of course, the key wasn’t known to the interceptor.

  I leaned across the desk to shake his frail hand just before I departed. I knew a palm stroke would offend him.

  “Mr. Hawkley,” I said. “A pleasure.” ,

  “Yes, young man. ” He nodded. “It will be a pleasure. You must tell me all about it. When it’s over.”

  “When it’s over,” I agreed. “Meanwhile, sir, our Gerontology Team has come up with—”

  “No pills, no pills,” he said sharply. Then, to soften his refusal, he patted the brandy decanter gently. “This is my medicine.”

  I left him then. No fear of failure. With my ideas and energy and his experience... . But the euphoria may have been due to the marc. Put that in a pill and my fortune was made!

  Y-5

  At that point in time, according to regulations, I should have turned over to Paul Bumford complete rule of the Division of Research & Development. I did not do so for the following reasons:

  1. Paul, although able and talented, was inexperienced in the administration of many objects, despite his previous service as my Executive Assistant.

  2. There were a number of ongoing projects in DIVRAD which I had originated or to which I contributed. I could not withdraw my personal service suddenly without loss of creative momentum.

  3. The transfer of the Division of Security & Intelligence to Angela Berri’s headquarters had left me with only three divisions. Two of these—Law & Enforcement and Data & Statistics— practically ran themselves; they required a minimum of administrative supervision. Hence, I could devote more time to DIVRAD.

  If my future actions were questioned, if I was called to account by a Board of Inquiry, those were the three explanations I would have given for my conduct—and all were operative.

  But the real reason I could not—had no desire to—relinquish the rule of the Division of Research & Development was considerably more complex.

  The popular belief was that laws (policies) of the US Government were made by the Legislative branch and administered by the Executive. It was cynically believed that the Public Service (formerly Civil Service) was a necessary boondoggle of bookkeepers, accountants, statisticians, computerniks, clerks, etc.—mindless and servile paper-shufflers interested only in obtaining the highest possible rank-rate for the least possible effort.

  A dangerous assumption.

  Actually, it was quite possible for a bureaucrat to make policy. In fact, it was frequently a required part of his service. Congress might legislate the broad outlines of policy. But inevitably, it was a lot of kaka until bureaucrats translated law into action. How they translated it was, in effect, how US society functioned and evolved.

  I had, long ago, realized that the Division of Research & Development, of the Satisfaction Section, of the Department of Bliss, wielded political clout far beyond its size and status on the government’s Table of Organization. No object, ever, surrenders power voluntarily. I was not about to yield the enormous power of DIVRAD to Paul Bumford, or to anyone else.

  The governing factors were these:

  1. The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the US Government did not yet fully appreciate the significance and consequences of the Biological Revolution and the increasing contribution of all scientific disciplines to the political world and the manner in which life would be lived. The general public was almost totally unaware of what lay ahead—not in 100, 50, or 20 years, but tomorrow.

  2. After the death of President Harold K. Morse, there was no one object in the higher echelons of government who, by conditioning or inclination, was capable of recognizing what was happening. A few Congressmen had degrees in science. Most were woefully ignorant. Even the staffs of Congressional committees whose service was to oversee DIVRAD’s budget and operations did not have the necessary expertise.

  Power abhors a vacuum. I rushed in. I cannot list here, for want of space, the areas in which I-—I, personally—could make national policy through DIVRAD. And not policy of little importance, but policy that would affect the society we lived in, and society for generations to come. A single example will suffice. . . .

  Annually, an item of X-million new dollars for “gerontology research” was included in DIVRAD’s requested budget. Congressmen and staffs of the ruling committees assumed the love was for investigation and cure of biomedical disorders of the aged. During my tenure at DIVRAD, the requested sum was never reduced. Never. It would have been politically inexpedient. The rapidly growing number of obsos were voters. And increasingly vocal in their demands.

  So, annually, I was granted X-million new dollars for gerontology research, with no restrictions as to how the sum was to be spent.

  The legislators had no more knowledge of gerontology than they had of molecular genetics.

  I had several options, including:

  1. Prolong life itself. That is, attempt to extend the physical life span to, say, 100 or 125 years, by heavy research into the mechanism of stopping. But that might leave us with an enormous population of senile, dribbling oldsters, to be supported by the taxes of younger gener
ations. The care of obsos was already an onerous economic burden. How long before euthanasia of all those over Y years of age was legislated?

  2. Improve the middle life. That is, devote those X-million new dollars to research in arteriosclerosis, arthritis, senility, and other deteriorative disorders, to ensure a relatively healthy old age without appreciably increasing the longevity rates. But to what purpose? The obsos would still be retired nonproducers and nonconsumers.

  3. Extend immaturity. Spend those gerontology research funds to prolong youth, keeping the young young for a longer period, so that one-half of an object’s life might be spent in conditioning, the second half in producing, and all of it in consuming.

  These were but three of the options I faced in determining how gerontology research love was to be spent. I have simplified my choices, of course. There was an almost infinite number of additional factors to be considered.

  For instance, the human species is by nature conservative. That is, objects resent and are fearful of change, despite the fact that change is the only constant of biological and political history. This abhorrence of change becomes stronger as objects grow older. Obsos cannot cope with change. It bewilders them. So even naturally intelligent and well-conditioned oldsters frequently waste their energy providing obsolete answers to obsolete questions, like bad chess players. Did we really want a society of doddering conservatives?

  I go into such detail to illustrate my thesis that bureaucrats can make vital policy. And, more than any other department of Public Service, DIVRAD made policy that affected the life and future of every object in the US and, eventually, every object on earth.

  That was why I was unwilling to relinquish this awesome power. Sometimes it is necessary to cultivate madness.

  My activities during the several days following my visit to San

  Diego provide a more precise conception of my responsibilities and the decisions I was called upon to make.

  Leo Bernstein ruled the miniteam conducting research on the severed head of Fred III. At the age of eighteen, Leo was, in my opinion, one of the top three biochemists in the world. Certainly the fattest. When he was thirteen, Leo had published a brilliant theoretical paper on the virus causing plantar warts. It had led to chemotherapy for rodent ulcers of the face and scalp, and suggested an entirely new approach to the treatment of all epidermal carcinomas.

  Leo’s only defect was that he knew exactly how good he was. He waddled into my office, tossed a computer printout onto my desk, lowered himself sideways onto a chair, and with much grunting effort hoisted his bulging thighs over one of the arms.

  “Make yourself at home, Leo,” I .said.

  He couldn’t be bothered with irony, small talk, or common courtesy.

  “Take a look,” he commanded. He gestured toward the printout. “We checked the numbers three times. It’s operative.”

  I scanned the printout. It was stupefying. I had been away from the lab too long. Things were moving too fast.

  “Where the hell’s the bottom line?” I said.

  “On the bottom. What’s the matter, teacher?” he jeered. “Can’t keep up?”

  I forgave talent anything, including distended egos. I scanned the printout again. Again. Finally I computed the meaning.

  It was exciting, but I wouldn’t let him see my pleasure. In brief, what Leo’s team had done was to stabilize the deterioration rate of Fred’s brain. They hadn’t yet halted the natural stopping of brain cells and loss of electrical power. But they had firmed the rate of decline. A small step, but an important one.

  “Not bad,” I acknowledged. “But a breakthrough it ain’t.” “Don’t jerk me.” Leo grinned. “It’s great and you know it.” “What are you using?”

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “That’s why I’m asking.”

  “Ergotamine.”

  My astonishment drew a burst of laughter from him. But he didn’t know the cause of my reaction. Ergotamine is an alkaloid of

  ergot, with a chemical structure similar to that of lysergic acid, a hallucinogen. Marvelous. Everything was going my way. “Excellent,” I said. “Nervy thinking. Stick with it.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Increasing the dosage. I’ll have Fred’s deterioration ended in a month.”

  “Leo,” I said, “if you’re ever wrong, may I be the first to know?”

  He laughed again, made a rude gesture, grabbed up his computer printout, waddled out of the office. He was an obese young em. But no fat around his brain.

  Maya Leighton came into my apartment wearing a floor-length plastilap cloak in kelly green and an enormous tooty nosering of braided elephant hair. As usual, there was about her an aura of febrile expectancy. From my conditioning at the Science Academy I suddenly remembered an obso medical term: thyrotoxicosis. But perhaps I was playing doctor.

  I took the cloak from her shoulders. She was wearing an em’s shirt, the tails rolled up and knotted beneath her gourdish breasts. There was a wide span of naked torso. Smooth, tanned. A large umbilicus with a protruding yolk stalk, a little tongue. Beneath were rough pants, belted low on the pelvis. Wisps of pubic hair sprouted like sprigs of parsley. Between heavy bosom and wide hips, that incredibly slender waist.

  “We’re going to Alexandria on Friday,” I said. “You and I. To the Hospice. I want to take a look at Lewisohn.”

  “All right,” she said equably. “That will be nice. Can we drive?”

  “Good idea. We’ll start early. Take our time. Do you drive?” “Oh, yes! May I? Part of the way, at least?”

  “Of course. We’ll stop for lunch along the way.”

  “A picnic lunch.”

  “Or at some amusing roadside restaurant.”

  “Maybe near a lake or river.”

  “We’ll eat outside. With wine.”

  “We’ll throw crusts to the swans.”

  We both laughed. I leaned to tongue her breasts.

  As usual, Maya was eagerly complaisant, almost perversely so. Mastery excited me. I felt no sadistic tendencies, but still. . . .

  We showered together, tissues raw and swollen. I mentioned, as casually as I could, that after the Alexandria visit, we would go into

  Washington where I had a dinner engagement.

  “But you won’t be left alone,” I told her. “We’ll stay at DIROB’s apartment.”

  “All right.”

  ‘ ‘Her Chief of Security will take care of you, ” I said. “ His name is Art Roach.”

  “All right.”

  “He has a bad reputation.”

  “Bad?”

  “He’s a rough em. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be careful?”

  She laughed and presented her great soaped ass to me.

  I had a two-hour conference with Frank and Frances von Liszt and their top attorneys of the Division of Law & Enforcement. It was a relaxed, unstructured meeting. I had convened it to discuss progress in an ongoing project to write an addendum to the Fertility Control Act. When completed, the proposed law would be submitted to Congress for debate and, I hoped, legislation.

  The new law would require compulsory sterilization of habitual criminals, the feebleminded, insane, drug addicts, chronic alcoholics, and those suffering from incurable genetic disorders and/or abnormal sexuality.

  I felt very strongly on the need for such a law. You must realize that the service of DIVRAD fell into two time-frames. We were seeking to prevent mental retardation and physical disorders by genetic engineering; i.e., we were trying to improve the quality of the gene pool of the future.

  Simultaneously, we were seeking to cure living victims of those same disorders, and thus improve the quality of life in the present. Sometimes, happily, a discovery in one time frame also proved efficacious in the other. More frequently, our successes in genetic engineering far surpassed our victories in the treatment of existing victims. Hence the need for compulsory sterilization.

  I wanted to pr
esent a proposed law as logical and complete as possible. As usual when dealing with subjects as sensitive as this—a law that limited personal liberty for the public good—the main difficulty was precise definition of terms. What was insanity? Feeblemindedness? Abnormal sexuality?

  Source material covered the long conference table. With as many

  opinions as sources. No consensus. I could see the von Liszts and their staff were bewildered and disheartened by this mass of conflicting views.

  “Look,” I told them. “You’re getting bogged down in a quicksand. Don’t consult any more authorities. Don’t scan any more learned papers or listen to distinguished scientists and scholars. You have quite enough here to assimilate.”

  “But it’s so contradictory,” Frances burst out. “Nick, we just can’t reconcile all these viewpoints.”

  “Impossible.” Her brother nodded. “And not only disagreement on definitions of the physical and mental disorders warranting sterilization, but also a zillion objections to such a program on religious, ethical, and political grounds.”

  “Now you’re getting into value judgments,” I warned him. “In an area where there are no universal values. We cannot let ourselves become involved in a moral debate. It would go on forever, never be settled, and nothing would be accomplished. Somehow we have to create a situation in which we are above such a debate—or beyond it. A situation in which opposition is, if not hopeless, at least ineffectual.”

  “And how do we do that?” one of the attorneys demanded. “You’re asking for guaranteed success.”

  “No,” I said. “Just better odds than we have now. All right— give me a minute and then I’ll throw you some raw meat.”

  They quieted, lighted up their Bolds, whispered softly to each other. I sat where I was, at the head of the table, looking with some distaste at the mounds of research. A lot of thoughts there. Ideas. Theories. Kaka. If I let it, science would be pushed back to the four elements, demonology, dowsing, and belief in the soul.

  “All right,” I said loudly. “Here’s what we do.”