Part 23 (1/2)
”Well, why in the devil don't you announce yourselves?”
”No good, old man. Look, you yourself want to be a Mekstrom. Even with your grasp of the situation, you resent the fact that you cannot.”
”You're right.”
Phillip nodded slowly. ”Let's hypothesize for a moment, taking a subject that has nothing to do with Mekstrom's Disease. Let's take one of the old standby science-fiction plots. Some cataclysm is threatening the solar system. The future of the Earth is threatened, and we have only one s.p.a.cecraft capable of carrying a hundred people to safety--somewhere else. How would you select them?”
I shrugged. ”Since we're hypothecating, I suppose that I'd select the more healthy, the more intelligent, the more virile, the more--” I struggled for another category and then let it stand right there because I couldn't think of another at that instant.
Phillip agreed. ”Health and intelligence and all the rest being pretty much a matter of birth and upbringing, how can you explain to Wilbur Zilch that Oscar Hossenpfeiffer has shown himself smarter and healthier and therefore better stock for survival? Maybe you can, but the end-result is that Wilbur Zilch slaughters Oscar Hossenpfeiffer. This either provides an opening for Zilch, or if he is caught at it, it provides Zilch with the satisfaction of knowing that he's stopped the other guy from getting what he could not come by honestly.”
”So what has this to do with Mekstrom's Disease and supermen?”
”The day that we--and I mean either of us--announces that we can 'cure'
Mekstrom's Disease and make physical supermen of the former victims, there will be a large scream from everybody to give them the same treatment. No, we'll tell them, we can't cure anybody who hasn't caught it. Then some pedagogue will stand up and declare that we are suppressing information. This will be believed by enough people to do us more harm than good. Darn it, we're not absolutely indestructible, Steve. We can be killed. We could be wiped out by a mob of angry citizens who saw in us a threat to their security. Neither we of the Highways nor Phelps of The Medical Center have enough manpower to be safe.”
”So that I'll accept. The next awkward question comes up: What are we going to do with me?”
”You've agreed that we cannot move until we know how to inoculate healthy flesh. We need normal humans, to be our guinea pigs. Will you help bring to the Earth's People the blessing that is now denied them?”
”If you are successful, Steve,” said Marian, ”You'll go down in History along with Otto Mekstrom. You could be the turning point of the human race, you know.”
”And if I fail?”
Phillip Harrison's face took on a hard and determined look. ”Steve, there can be no failure. We shall go on and on until we have success.”
That was a fine prospect. Old guinea-pig Cornell, celebrating his seventieth birthday as the medical experimentation went on and on.
Catherine was leaning forward, her eyes bright. ”Steve,” she cried, ”You've just _got_ to!”
”Just call me the unwilling hero,” I said in a drab voice. ”And put it down that the condemned specimen drank a hearty dinner. I trust that there is a drink in the house.”
There was enough whiskey in the place to provide the new specimen with a near-total anesthesia. The evening was spent in forced badinage, shallow laughter, and a pointed avoidance of the main subject. The whiskey was good; I took it undiluted and succeeded in getting boiled to the eyebrows before they carted me off to bed.
I did not sleep well despite my anesthesia. There was too much on my mind and very little of it was the fault of the Harrisons. One of the things that I had to face was the cold fact that part of Catherine's lack of communication with me was caused by logic and good sense. Both History and Fiction are filled with cases where love was set aside because consummation was impossible for any number of good reasons.
So I slept fitfully, and my dreams were as unhappy as the thoughts I had during my waking moments. Somehow I realized that I'd have been far better off if I'd been able to forget Catherine after the accident, if I'd been able to resist the urge to follow the Highways in Hiding, if I'd never known that those ornamental road signs were something more than the desire of some road commissioner to beautify the countryside.
But no, I had to go and poke my big b.u.mp of curiosity into the problem.
So here I was, resentful as all h.e.l.l because I was denied the pleasure of living in the strong body of a Mekstrom.
It was not fair. Although Life itself is seldom fair, it seemed to me that Life was less fair to me than to others.
And then to compound my feelings of persecution, I woke up once about three in the morning with a strong urge to take a perceptive dig down below. I should have resisted it, but of course, no one has ever been able to resist the urge of his sense of perception.
Down in the living room, Catherine was crying on Phillip Harrison's shoulder. He held her gently with one arm around her slender waist and he was stroking her hair softly with his other hand. I couldn't begin to dig what was being said, but the tableau was unmistakable.
She leaned back and looked at him as he said something. Her head moved in a 'No' motion as she took a deep breath for another bawl. She buried her face in his neck and sobbed. Phillip held her close for a moment and then loosed one hand to find a handkerchief for her. He wiped her eyes gently and talked to her until she shook her head in a visible effort to shake away both the tears and the unhappy thoughts.