Pat Frank - Mr. Adam

“But I don’t understand,” said Pflaum, “how in the world you ever guessed—”

“You don’t have to understand,” Root said. “But there are a lot of things that I’ll have to understand.”

“Now just a moment,” said Pell, his massive head jerking on his scrawny neck. “Nobody here has committed any crime, and I think it’s an outrage for you to come in here like this and threaten us with that weapon as if we were gangsters. After all, we’re all associates of the National Research Council.”

“Isn’t kidnaping a crime any more?” said Root.

“There has been no kidnaping,” Pell protested. “Mr. Adam came here voluntarily, and we were just having a little discussion concerning some most important matters.”

Homer tried to rise, but whenever Homer tried to get out of a deep chair it was a nerve-racking struggle, particularly when the situation was critical, for at those times his legs refused to co-ordinate. “Sit down, Homer,” I told him. “Sure, he came here voluntarily, but I’ll bet this is the last place he expected to be. Isn’t that right, Homer?”

“Steve,” he began. “Steve, I’m terribly sorry. I’m not quite sure what’s happening.”

“Naturally he’s not sure what’s happening,” I said. “He thinks he is escaping from the N.R.P.—for which I can’t blame him much—and eloping with The Frame here, for which I don’t blame him much either, and what happens? He finds himself locked up with a bunch of crazy professors. Say, what’s your name?” I asked the young man whose name I didn’t know.

“I’m John Canby, from the University of California,” he said, starting to rise. Root’s gun waved him back into his chair.

I said, “It’s certainly a nice, cozy little rendezvous, isn’t it? What were they up to, Homer? What were they going to do to you?”

“I don’t know,” Homer replied. “I really don’t understand it at all. I didn’t know it was supposed to be this way. The way I understood it, Kathy and I were to stay here for a few days, and then we were to drive to Mexico.”

“You are so damn innocent, Homer,” I said. “You’re just like a steer being led into the stockyards. Well, if you don’t know what was going to happen to you, I’ll enlighten you. This pack of respectable, scientific ghouls was going to eliminate you. And I’ll tell you why, Homer. They don’t like the human race. They want to give the world back to the lizards.”

The Frame came to her feet, blazing mad, one strand of hair falling across her face, and Root’s gun shifted accurately towards her middle. “That’s a lie,” she screamed. “That’s a horrible lie!”

“It’s outrageous,” said Pell. He was white and trembling. “I’ll sue you!”

I went over to the desk and put my knuckles on it and looked them over. “Root ought to knock you off right now, you murderous bunch of bastards! But maybe it’ll be better to let the people handle you. I’ve got a lot of faith in the people, when they get mad. They’re violent. They’ll tear you to shreds. Particularly you—” I looked at The Frame. “The women will handle you!”

“You don’t really believe—” The Frame began. There was astonishment and fear in her voice. It made me feel good.

“Believe! I know. Wait until they find out! Wait until they find out that the same bunch of fiends who blew up Mississippi, and sterilized all the men, also kidnapped Mr. Adam. In twenty-four hours there won’t be enough of you left to be worth burying!”

Homer managed to struggle to his feet. His face was so white that I could see freckles where I had never seen freckles before. “Kathy,” he said. “Kathy, that wasn’t the plan, was it? It wasn’t that. Tell me it wasn’t anything like that. Is that why you have that apparatus upstairs?”

She looked at him, across the heads of her father and Pell, and said, gravely and with all anger gone from her, “No, Homer, it wasn’t anything like that. Those machines are for elementary experimentation to test the effect of radio-active rays on the male germ. We were going to take the utmost precautions not to harm you.”

Professor Ruppe spoke for the first time. He was, except for Root, the calmest of us all. “Kitty,” he said, “I can see that what we have done, and what we hoped to do, would be hopelessly misunderstood. Hadn’t you better tell it all?”

“I think that’s best,” said Pflaum. “I don’t want any mobs tearing my arms out by the roots, or hanging me to a flagpole in front of the Capitol.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “It would be nice to know what’s really going on.”

“Do you agree, Dr. Pell?” The Frame asked.

“What is this, a round table discussion?” Root asked. “If you’ve got anything to say you’d better say it quick.”

“I agree,” Pell said. His head lolled forward on his chest, as if his neck could no longer support it.

The Frame brushed the hair from her face. “In the first place,” she began, “I feel we ought to apologize to Homer. It is true that I persuaded him to leave N.R.P., well, under false pretenses. But it was the only thing we could think of, if we were to act in time. We were just getting around to explaining to Homer when you came in.” She regarded Homer directly, even brazenly, I thought, and said, “When I’m finished, I’m not sure that Homer won’t agree with our point of view.”

“Just forget the propaganda,” I said, “and start putting one plain word after another.”

“Very well, Steve, don’t be so damn overbearing! Here’s the way it is, as we see it. The aftereffects of the Mississippi explosion were terrible, certainly, and yet civilization was presented with its one great opportunity to really begin over again—to really create a splendid and decent world, peopled entirely by splendid and decent humans.”

“All of them with their master’s degree in science,” I suggested.

“If you don’t shut up,” she said, “I shan’t continue.”

“Go ahead. So what happened?”

“You ought to know. You were in the middle of it, and partly responsible. It was bad enough that the government gave Homer to the N.R.P., and approved A.I., instead of turning him over to the National Research Council. But to make matters worse, no provision whatsoever was made for the scientific selection of future mothers. Here we were presented with this magnificent opportunity, and what do we do? A blindfolded man reaches into a goldfish bowl, and the future of the race is decided literally by blind chance. Not only that, but consider some of the creatures the Congress picked to possess a number in that bowl. When mated to Homer, what else could they produce but red-headed monsters?”

“Oh, I see,” I said with what I hoped was sarcasm. “So you people decided to snatch Homer, and present him with a restricted and exclusive clientele. Perhaps you were going to farm him out among your brain-heavy friends, and populate the world with a lot of fine specimens like Dr. Pell here.”

The Frame actually looked shocked. “Oh, no!” she protested. “We weren’t going to use Homer at all! Not for direct conception. Why, I think Homer himself would be the first to agree that it is a mistake for him to father children—any children at all—if we are to produce a superior race for posterity.”

“Gosh, Kathy,” Homer said, “I never thought you felt that way about me. I know I’m not very pretty, and I wasn’t a Quiz Kid, but I don’t think you’ve got any right to say I’m unfit to have children.”

“Don’t you?” The Frame asked, the corners of her mouth touched with humor. She paused, and added: “Homer, I think you’re sweet, and I’m really very fond of you. Intellectually, I think you’d do, but physically—”