Agatha Christie - Passenger to Frankfurt

'Did he describe it at all more closely than that?'

'He said I'd put it into his head,' said Matilda Cleckheaton unexpectedly.

'What? Do you mean to say a scientist — a top-flight scientist like Robbie actually said to you that you had put things in his head? You don't know the first thing about science.'

'Of course not. But I used to try and put a little common sense into people's brains. The cleverer they are, the less common sense they have. I mean, really, the people who matter are the people who thought of simple things like perforations on postage stamps, or like somebody Adam, or whatever his name was — No — MacAdam in America who put black stuff on roads so that farmers could get all their crops from farms to the coast and make a better profit. I mean, they do much more good than all the high-powered scientists do. Scientists can only think of things for destroying you. Well, that's the sort of thing I said to Robbie. Quite nicely, of course, as a kind of joke. He'd been just telling me that some splendid things had been done in the scientific world about germ warfare and experiments with biology and what you can do to unborn babies if you get at them early enough. And also some peculiarly nasty and very unpleasant gases and saying how silly people were to protest against nuclear bombs because they were really a kindness compared to some of the other things that had been invented since then. And so I said it'd be much more to the point if Robbie, or someone clever like Robbie, could think of something really sensible. And he looked at me with that, you know, little twinkle he has in his eye sometimes and said, "Well what would you consider sensible?" And I said, "Well, instead of inventing all these germ warfares and these nasty gas and all the rest of it, why don't you just invent something that makes people feel happy?" I said it oughtn't to be a more difficult to do. I said, "You've talked about this operation where, I think you said, they took out a bit of the front of your brain or maybe the back of your brain. But anyway, it made a great difference in people's dispositions. They become quite different. They hadn't worried any more, they hadn't wanted to commit suicide. But," I said, "Well, if you can change people like that just by taking a little bit bone or muscle or nerve or tinkering up a gland or taking out a gland or putting in more or a gland," I said, "if you can make all that difference in people's dispositions, why can't you invent something that will make people pleasant or just content perhaps? Supposing you had something, not a sleeping draught, but just something that people sat down in a chair and had nice dream. Twenty-four hours or so and just woke up well fed now and again." I said it would be a much better idea.'

'And is that what Project B was?'

'Well, of course he never told me what it was exactly. But he was excited with an idea and he said I'd put it into his head, so it must have been something rather pleasant I'd put into his head, mustn't it? I mean, I hadn't suggested any ideas to him of any nastier ways for killing people and I didn't want people even — you know — to cry, like tear gas or anything like that. Perhaps laughing — yes, I believe I mentioned laughing gas. I said well if you have your teeth out, they give you three sniffs of it and you laugh, well, surely, surely you could invent something that's as useful as that but would last a little longer. Because I believe laughing gas only lasts about fifty seconds, doesn't it? I know my brother had some teeth out once. The dentist's chair was very near the window and my brother was laughing so much, when he was unconscious, I mean, that he stretched his leg right out and put it through the dentist's window and all the glass fell in the street, and the dentist was very cross about it.'

'Your stories always have such strange side-kicks,' said the Admiral. 'Anyway, this is what Robbie Shoreham had chosen to get on with, from your advice.' 'Well, I don't know what it was exactly. I mean, I don't think it was sleeping or laughing. At any rate, it was something. It wasn't really Project B. It had another name.'

'What sort of a name?'

'Well, he did mention it once I think, or twice. The name he'd given it. Rather like Benger's Food,' said Aunt Matilda, considering thoughtfully.

'Some soothing agent for the digestion?'

'I don't think it had anything to do with the digestion. I rather think it was something you sniffed or something, perhaps it was a gland. You know we talked of so many things that you never quite knew what he was talking about at the moment. Benger's Food. Ben — Ben — it did begin with Ben. And there was a pleasant word associated with it.'

'Is that all you can remember about it?'

'I think so. I mean, this was just a talk we had once and then, quite a long time afterwards, he told me I'd put something into his head for Project Ben something. And after that, occasionally, if I remembered, I'd ask him if he was still working on Project Ben and then sometimes he'd be very exasperated and say no, he'd come up against a snag and he was putting it all aside now because it was in — in — well, I mean the next eight words were pure jargon and I couldn't remember them and you wouldn't understand them if I said them to you. But in the end, I think — oh dear, oh dear, this is all about eight or nine years ago — in the end he came one day and he said, "Do you remember Project Ben?" I said, "Of course I remember it. Are you still working on it?" And he said no, he was determined to lay it all aside. I said I was sorry. Sorry if he'd given it up and he said, "Well, it's not only that I can't get what I was trying for. I know now that it could be got. I know where I went wrong. I know just what the snag was, I know just how to put that snag right again. I've got Lisa working on it with me. Yes, it could work. It'd require experimenting on certain things but it could work." "Well," I said to him, "what are you worrying about?" And he said, "Because I don't'know what it would really do to people." I said something about his being afraid it would kill people or maim them for life or something. "No," he said, "it's not like that." He said, it's a — oh, of course, now I remember. He called it Project Benvo. Yes. And that's because it had to do with benevolence.'

'Benevolence!' said the Admiral, highly surprised. 'Benevolence? Do you mean charity?'

'No, no, no. I think he meant simply that you could make people benevolent. Feel benevolent.'

'Peace and good will towards men?'

'Well, he didn't put it like that.'

'No, that's reserved for religious leaders. They preach that to you and if you did what they preach it'd be a very happy world. But Robbie, I gather, was not preaching. He proposed to do something in his laboratory to bring about this result by purely physical means.'

'That's the sort of thing. And he said you can never know when things are beneficial to people or when they're evil. They are in one way they're not in another. And he said things about — oh, penicillin and sulphonamides and heart transplants and things like pills for women, though we had got "The Pill" then. But you know, things that seem all right and they're wonder-drugs or wonder-gases or wonder-something or other, and then there's something about them that makes them go wrong as well as right, and then you wonder when they weren't there and had never been thought of. Well, the the sort of thing that he seemed to be trying to get over me. It was all rather difficult to understand. I said, "Do you mean you don't like to take the risk?" and he said; "You are quite right. I don't like to take the risk. That's the trouble, because, you see, I don't know in the least what the risk will be. That's what happens to us poor devils of scientists. We take the risks and the risks are not in what we've discovered, it's the risks of what the people we'll have to tell about it will do with what we've discovered." I said: "Now you're talking about nuclear weapons again and atom bombs," and he said, "Oh, to Hell with nuclear weapons and atomic bombs. We've gone far beyond that."