Mr. Adam

by Pat Frank

  “That man is a bad influence on you,” Marge interrupted. “Shoo him away. Anyway, it gives me the creeps to have strange men in the bedroom, staring at us.”

  “Here’s the results,” said Parkinson. “It’s Cliffdweller, by a whisker.”

  I flicked the switch and rolled off Smith Field, feeling better. Out in the living room, their faces flushed by the cold wind, Maria Ostenheimer and my friend of the Apennines and Polyclinic, Dr. Thompson, were standing close to the fire. “Hello,” I greeted them, “didn’t know you two knew each other.”

  “Our acquaintanceship,” said Thompson, “is strictly professional—at least thus far.” Maria, delicately made, looked almost childlike alongside his bulk. “We’re on the same committee,” she explained.

  Marge inspected me thoughtfully, tapping a cigarette on the mantel. “They’ve just come from Washington,” she said. “They appeared before both the Executive Inter-Departmental group and the Joint Congressional Committee on behalf of the National Re-fertilization Project. They testified for A.I.”

  “Well, Maria did,” amended Thompson. “I’m more interested in another aspect of the problem.”

  “All I’ve heard today,” I complained, “is A.I.” A startling, and horrible possibility gripped me. I pointed my finger at Marge. “If you think for one instant,” I told her, “that we are going to fill this apartment with lanky, redheaded children all subject to inferiority complexes, and none of them mine, then you had better start thinking again. You’re not going to be any female guinea pig to test the productive capacity of Mr. Adam!”

  Thompson threw back his head and laughed. “Relax, Steve,” he said. “Relax!”

  “Anyway,” said Marge, acidly, “I understand that Washington has been simply snowed under with applications. There are thousands ahead of me, even if I wanted an Adam child. There are plenty of husbands whose sense of responsibility to the human race is greater than their selfishness and stupid jealousy!”

  Maria cocked her head on the side and looked at me with her wise, dark eyes. “I have just finished telling our distinguished statesmen,” she said, “that A.I. may be the only salvation for mankind. I say may”—her words tripped out slowly and daintily, as if they were being carefully marched across a narrow plank—“I say may because right at present A.I. is the only solution which we know will work. Artificial insemination is bound to furnish at least a limited number of males in another generation.”

  “Can you imagine,” I exclaimed, “the whole world peopled with redheaded beanpoles, all looking exactly like Homer Adam!”

  “But that’s not why we came to see you,” Maria said, and for a small, quite pretty and young girl she was alarmingly grave. “We came to see you about Homer Adam himself.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Is he pining away without his Mary Ellen?”

  “Well, something like that,” Maria said, still grave and troubled. “You see, this business has naturally been a very great shock to him. And they mauled and manhandled him fearfully when he got to Washington.”

  “That Phelps-Smythe!” said Thompson. “The first thing the Eastern Defense Command did to Adam was fill him up with shots until he was a walking pharmaceutical encyclopedia. They shot him full of paratyphoid, typhus, yellow fever, influenza, cholera—as if he were going to catch cholera at Fort Myer—smallpox, and I don’t know what else besides.”

  “Phelps-Smythe,” I remarked, “is a revolving son-of-a-bitch.”

  “And all the brass exhibits poor Mr. Adam at dinners,” said Maria, “as if he were a freak.”

  “Phelps-Smythe,” I said, “is bucking for a star. If he pleases enough generals, maybe one day he’ll get to be a general himself. Ask any correspondent who was in the Southwest Pacific. They’ll tell you how it works. They had a beaut out there.”

  Thompson held out his huge hands, six inches apart. “Adam,” he said, “is now no wider than that. Furthermore, he has developed a twitch.”

  “It is really very serious,” said Maria. “As things are now, everything depends on the well-being of one man—a sensitive man who apparently was never very strong. If his health is ruined—either his physical health or his mental health—it imperils the chances of successful artificial insemination.

  “Let me put it this way. Our present methods of A.I. are still fairly crude. It is true that you will find millions of motile sperm cells in one male specimen, but we have not yet found a way to isolate these cells—keep each one of them alive, happy, and potent so that each one has a chance of causing pregnancy. Artificial insemination is still a matter of mass impregnation. You use millions of cells, but only one does the job.”

  “What a waste!” I said.

  “What a waste indeed, at this period in history,” said Marge.

  “Well, we’re working on the isolation problems, but meanwhile we want to start A.I. as quickly as possible,” Maria continued. “Suppose something happened to Homer Adam before we began? Anyway, we can not make maximum—perhaps not even normal—use of Homer Adam until he again becomes a tranquil, normal man. Even if we were able to use him in his present state—which is doubtful—we might create a race of physical and nervous wrecks.”

  I didn’t sense what was coming. “What,” I inquired, “has this got to do with me?”

  “I talked to Adam,” said Thompson. “He likes you, he trusts you, and he wonders what became of you. You made a very deep impression on him. What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” I replied, “except let him beat me at gin rummy occasionally.”

  Thompson grinned. “There is nothing so good for a man’s ego as to believe himself a shark at gin,” he said.

  “In any case,” Maria concluded, “if the government decides that N.R.P. be placed in charge of Homer Adam, rather than the N.R.C., we want you to handle him.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. “Nominated to be nursemaid to the potential father of his country!”

  The controversy between the National Re-fertilization Project and the National Research Council was essentially between the physicians and the physicists—between the scientific workers in the animate and the inanimate fields. The atom-poppers believed they needed Mr. Adam for research which they hoped would undo the damage caused by the obscure rays which enwrapped the world after the Mississippi explosion. They needed Mr. Adam, they explained, much as they needed cyclotrons and centrifuges.

  How could an antidote to the ray be developed until they knew exactly which ray had done the trick? And how could they isolate the ray which strangely wrecked male cells, and left females undisturbed, unless they had specimens for experimentation? And who was there, except Mr. Adam, to furnish these specimens?

  The N.R.P. physicians pointed out, even as Maria had, that A.I. was the only sure way of keeping the globe populated. They hoped that the physicists of N.R.C. would find a method of restoring the potency of all men, but scientific research takes times. Meanwhile, they had on hand one single, priceless human who was insurance against entire extinction.

  What finally decided the Joint Congressional Investigating Committee, and the Inter-Department Executive Committee, I am sure, was the unspoken fear that the scientists would make another mistake, mess up Mr. Adam, and then everybody would be finished. It was something that nobody spoke of, directly, for fear of injuring the sensibilities of men like Professor Pell, and damaging their professional reputation, but the fear was always there.

  So I was not surprised, a few days later, when I picked up a copy of the New York Post while walking to the subway after my noon breakfast in Smith Field, to read the black headlines that covered the whole front page:

  PRESIDENT OKAYS A.I.!

  N.R.P. WINS OVER N.R.C. BUT SCIENTISTS TO GET FUND TO CONTINUE RESEARCH

  WOULD-BE MOTHERS VOLUNTEER THROUGHOUT NATION

  ENGLAND ASKS AID

  When I reached the office, J.C. set me to putting together the foreign reactions in a single story. As usual there was no official comment
from Moscow, but Pravda printed an oblique little box on its front page pointing out that is was possible for the United States to make amends for the world catastrophe caused by Mississippi, but that thus far the United States had not approached the Soviet Union directly.

  The word “directly” was the important word. It was seized upon, that very day, in the Senate. Had anybody in the Administration, certain Senators wished to know, been dealing secretly on sharing Homer Adam with the Communists? If so, what arrangements had been discussed? It was hoped that Homer Adam would not be shipped outside the territorial limits of the United States.

  Senator Salt plausibly replied that A.I. being what is was, it was not necessary to ship Homer Adam anywhere, just the male germ.

  Any peace-loving nation, Salt said, could be helped out without Homer ever leaving Washington. Russia had as much right to hope for perpetuating herself as any other nation—more than some he could mention.

  FROGHAM (D. Louisiana): Will the Senator yield?

  SALT: I yield.

  FROGHAM: Is it not a fact that we could forever dispose of this damnable Communism, which is infecting the whole world and causing strikes and disturbances and menacing the very foundations of the Republic, say within two generations, by simply confining A.I. to those nations which are willing to give us definite statements as to their future foreign policies, and their territorial and ideological intentions?

  VIDMER (R. Massachusetts): If we only give A.I. to those nations which know their future foreign policy, then we will have to exclude the United States. (Laughter.)

  The story from London was matter-of-fact. England expected that the United States would share A.I., on a population basis, and in return England would give the United States the full benefit of any happy information reaching its own scientists. The British government felt it was speaking for the whole Empire. It didn’t say anything about Ireland.

  In Paris, all the newspapers published editorials pointing out France’s great past cultural contributions to the world, and insisting that it was a necessity that French culture continue.

  Various good Germans talked of the benefits of a revival of German industrial genius in succeeding generations.

  The Japanese press talked of traditional American sportsmanship, and pointed out that baseball was played in both countries.

  All the little nations extolled their own virtues. But the Bucharest press pointed out, coyly, that if A.I. was denied to Hungary, then that would be a final solution to the question of Transylvania—which everybody thought had already been solved.

  The cables kept rolling in, but before night J.C. Pogey came over to my desk, and motioned me into his office.

  “Steve,” he said, “I just got a call from the White House. Danny Williams—the President’s Secretary. Used to work for us. Well, they want you down there to handle Adam.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” I said.

  “It seems they think you did a good job in Tarrytown. Adam likes you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The N.R.P. asked for you. They’re going to put you on their payroll. We’ll give you leave of absence.”

  “Haven’t I got anything to say about this?” I demanded.

  “Not much,” said J.C. “Danny Williams put it this way—he said it was in the interests of civilization. I don’t like to lose you, but it is exactly the same as if you were drafted.”

  “You don’t care much, do you, J.C., whether civilization keeps on or not?”

  J.C. rubbed his thumbs behind his ears. “Dunno,” he said. “Haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  I went home and packed. “They certainly called for you in a hurry,” Marge said.

  “Yes,” I agreed, not wanting to leave her, and not wanting to leave Smith Field, and wondering how long it would be before Homer Adam could be cooled off and calmed to a point where he would become useful to civilization, and N.R.P. would let me go.

  “You behave down there,” Marge commanded. “That town is full of good-looking women, and they don’t seem to have any inhibitions any more.”

  “I’ll behave,” I promised.

  “You’d better. I’m liable to pop in on you any time—any time at all. And Stephen,” she added, “do a good job, will you. It’s awfully important to me.”

  I telephoned to Abel Pumphrey, the Director of the National Re-fertilization Project, that I was on the way down. Marge took me to the train and kissed me goodbye as if I were off to Shanghai. The last thing she said was, “You will do your best, won’t you?”

  Women are such queer people.

  CHAPTER 5

  I didn’t have any illusions about my chore. I knew that at the very best it would be thankless, and probably a perpetual headache, and something which called for a psychiatrist rather than a newspaperman. But I felt a sort of moral responsibility for Mr. Adam. I had been the first to launch him into his career as the last productive male, and it seemed only right that I should help guide his footsteps towards whatever strange destiny awaited him. In addition, I was just plain curious.

  I underestimated Washington. I didn’t foresee any of the really frightening events that presently engulfed me. When I look back at it now, I was a toddling child who picks a river in flood as a nice place for wading, and instantly is seized by the current and swept downstream.

  For instance, I thought the National Re-fertilization Project would be composed of a dozen or so people, with a committee of physicians like Maria Ostenheimer and Tommy Thompson acting as advisers. It wasn’t like that at all. The N.R.P. was an enormous chunk of government, expanding day by day. The creation of any new government agency is, in many respects, like bringing in a new oil field. With the N.R.P., to which the President had allotted unlimited emergency funds, it was as if gold had been discovered in California all over again.

  The day on which I arrived in Washington—December 18—is eaten into my memory by the acid of shock, just as the men who were there will always remember the date of Anzio, or Omaha Beach.

  I hadn’t expected anyone to meet me at the station, but when I went through the gates into the concourse a neat young man with a pointed, thin, suspicious nose—the type of nose I always associate with credit managers—stopped me. “You’re Mr. Smith?” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  He held out his hand. “I’m Klutz—Percy Klutz, Deputy Director on the administrative side.” When he smiled his mouth looked like that of a fresh-caught skate. “The Chief sent me down to meet you.”

  “That was nice of him,” I said. The Chief would be Abel Pumphrey. I wondered how he had recognized me, and asked. He said the AP Bureau had produced a description, and a photograph. He wondered whether I’d had lunch, and when I told him no, he suggested Harvey’s. Outside the station was a sedan, with a government seal, and N.R.P., stenciled on its door.

  We ordered clams and steaks and then Klutz said: “I suppose this is as good a time as any to fill you in on the big picture. We’re really beginning to build an organization, now. Everybody thinks the Chief is the coming man in the Administration. Of course, it has been an uphill fight all the way. First the Interior Department tried to take over, and then the Public Health Service claimed it was their baby. Right now we’re operating under the Executive Office of the President, so we don’t have much budget trouble. The real test will come when we go to Congress for regular annual appropriations. I guess our big break was when we got Adam away from the National Research Council.”

  “How is Homer Adam?” I inquired. “I’d like to see him as soon as possible.”

  He looked at me, curiously, and then took a pencil from an inside pocket and began drawing a chart on the tablecloth. “Now up at the top, of course,” he went on, ignoring my question, “is the President, and right under the President—” his deft pencil drew a little box and began filling it with names—“is the Inter-Departmental Advisory Committee. They decide top policy.”

  “On what?” I asked. “I thought the idea
was simply to get Adam in shape, and then start producing babies.”

  “Oh, no!” Klutz said, startled. “The production end is only the smallest part of it! That comes way down here—” he indicated the bottom of the tablecloth—“in Operations.”

  “Now as you see,” he went on, “the top policy group is composed of the President himself, the Secretaries of State, War, Interior, and Navy—I don’t know why they put in Navy except that they put in War—the Surgeon General, Director of National Research Council—we couldn’t keep him off it—and finally the Chief.”

  A strange light came into Klutz’s eyes, and he began to sketch more boxes, connected by lines horizontally and vertically, with lightning precision. “Now right under the top policy group N.R.P. operates. I’m over here to the right of the Chief, and under me I’ve got Administration, Budget, Housing, Communications, and Transportation. I don’t fool around with policy, planning, or operations. I’m just the man who keeps things running.”

  Klutz’s pencil raced on. “Branching off this line that runs from the Chief up to top policy we have the liaison officers from the other departments or agencies—we’re having a tough time finding suitable quarters for all of them—and directly under the Chief we have the Planning Board.”

  “Planning Board?”

  “Certainly! You see, policy flows down to the Chief from the top group, and then down to the Planning Board, which is composed of our own heads of branches and divisions. The Planning Board issues the directives and passes them on down to be implemented. Right off the Planning Board, here, we have the Advisory Committee which is composed of leading physicians and biologists and such from all over the country. They aren’t in government, of course. They’re just to give us backing when we need it.”

  Klutz hadn’t touched his clams, and he didn’t seem to notice when the waiter whisked them off the table. “The Deputy Director falls right under the Planning Board, and out from him you have our own liaison officers, who operate on the Planning Level, including the one to Congress, and our own advisory group on international problems which communicates directly with the State Department and sends proposals to the Planning Board. You see how nicely the channels flow.”