“Absolutely.”
“That hair?”
Sam looked uncomfortable. “Well, I didn’t say it grew pretty curls. It grows whatever kind of hair you had to start with. I imagine it’s a simple chemical that stimulates some hormonal activity or other.”
Ruth backed around to observe the top of her husband’s pate.
“Sam!” she cried. “It really isn’t bald any more. You’ve actually grown hair!”
“Yes, yes,” Sam said impatiently. “What’s so fascinating about that? The night I broke the Scythian alphabet, all you did was yawn in my face.”
“But you told me all there was written in Scythian were a few old laundry tickets.”
“I meant they were mostly lists of supplies and epitaphs and things like that. This recipe just happened to be among them. Probably chiseled into the rock by some shipping clerk.”
The young hair-oil man was by this time perspiring with eagerness. “Quick,” he said, “tell me. What was in this recipe?”
“It’s taken internally,” Sam said. “A drink. You use mare’s milk, a plant which was probably the same one the ancient Greeks called moly, and white wine. Probably any wine would do.”
The young man was clutching Sam’s arm and leading him off. Ruth was following, still dumfounded.
“The plant,” the young man panted. He licked his lips. He could hardly go on. “What is it? I mean, what do we call it?”
Sam frowned thoughtfully. “Afraid I don’t know. I’ve never had any botany.”
Ruth let out a long breath. “Thank God. Sam, you fool. Don’t you know what you’ve got hold of?”
“It’s that plant with the little white flower that opens just in the morning. You know, they use it on the Morning Joy ad. A very common herb.” Sam ignored his wife’s noises of admonition.
“I know,” the young man said, beaming like a day-old chick, though his hands were still shaking.
“Moly is a very interesting plant,” Sam said. “It was the ancient equivalent of Miltown, if you’re familiar with that drug.”
“Familiar with it! That’s practically all I can eat.”
But the conversation was interrupted by the thud of Ruth’s body on the floor.
Sam picked her up apologetically. “Afraid this sort of kills our evening,” he said. “My wife has a tendency to nervousness. Especially about epigraphy. But this is the first time she’s ever fainted when I started discussing it.”
The young man pocketed his hands, after popping a pill into his mouth. “Mind if I come along with you?”
“No, indeed,” Sam answered. “So few people show any interest in my work. Would you like to hear how I broke the Scythian alphabet?”
“It sounds absolutely fascinating,” the young man said. He hailed a taxi and held the door while Sam bundled in with his wife. “But first, a minor point. How many people know about this recipe for growing hair?”
“At the moment, no one but you and me. And Ruth, if she was listening. You don’t know how refreshing it is to find someone else who is interested in ancient Scythian.”
Ruth was sitting up, groaning. “You ten-karat jackass,” she told Sam disrespectfully. “He’s interested in your hair restorer. Don’t you know that’s worth a million dollars? And you’ve gone andgiven it away. Given it.”
“Is that true?” Sam asked the young man, suspicious for the first time.
“Well, I’m interested in the hair restorer and in epigraphy. Tell me, are there many people who can read ancient Scythian?”
“You see,” Sam told his wife triumphantly, “he is interested.” He turned back to his new friend. “I am the only person in the world who can read ancient Scythian. But let me tell you how I broke the Scythian . . .”
“Yes, yes,” the young man said. “I’m very anxious to hear all about it. But first—have you made up any samples of this hair restorer?”
“Oh, I have half a milk bottle full,” Sam replied impatiently. “Why do you care? You don’t need it. Let me tell you how I broke ...”
“Look!” the young man said desperately, as one who abandons the last vestige of his pride. He yanked off his toupee. It was apparent, in the dim light of the taxi, that he was not such a young man after all.
“Oh, all right,” Sam said. He extricated Ruth from the taxi. She was in an actual paralysis of rage. “Come on up and I’ll give you a sip of this moly mix. Now, the first inkling I got that I might actually be on the trail was when I got the microfilm of a fragment with what appeared to be a picture of a Persian king carved into it and half a word underneath. Now this might have been many names. Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes . . .”
“Sam,” Ruth said hoarsely, when he had arranged her in a chair, “don’t give it to him. There’s still a chance.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, my dear,” Sam said. “I’ve just had my article on the subject accepted. The king was Xerxes.”
“No, no,” Ruth went on. “I mean the hair restorer.”
“Oh, I’d forgotten that,” Sam said. He fetched a milk bottle. “Don’t know how clean this is,” he told the young man. “I don’t think Ruth really scrubs them. But I don’t have a cold.”
“Germs don’t bother me,” the hair oil man replied. “If you’d just help me get it to my mouth.” He had a handkerchief wrapped around his hand, but it was still too unsteady to hold anything. “How long does it take to start working?”
“Oh, I’d say about four hours. I mean, for the fuzz to just start showing. It takes much longer for the hair to grow to normal length.”
The young man looked at his watch, sat down and sighed deeply. “Now tell me about how you broke the Scythian alphabet.”
“Be glad to,” Sam said eagerly. “Now take a look at this fragment.” He handed the man a microfilm viewer. “Now, you would probably assume that the name incised under the picture is Persian transliterated into Scythian. Right?”
“The first thing I thought of,” the young man agreed. He was running a trembling hand over the smooth skin of his head. “Persian, of course.”
“Ha!” Sam cried. “Not at all. You can try it for yourself, if you like. It won’t work.”
“Then I don’t think I’ll try it. What did you do then?” He was concentrating on his watch.
“Isn’t it obvious? I transliterated the Persian into Aeolic Greek and then again transliterated it into Scythian script. And there it was! I was on the trail of the key to the Scythian script.”
“Marvelous.” The hair oil man got up and began pacing the floor. “Sorry, but I just can’t sit still. My nerves are bad.”
“I felt the same way,” Sam said enthusiastically, “the night I broke the Scythian alphabet. Couldn’t sleep all night. It is exciting, isn’t it?”
“I think I feel a prickling on my scalp!”
“It’s almost unearthly,” Sam agreed, “reading something that’s been buried all these centuries. I quite know how you feel.”
Ruth, who had disappeared into the bedroom, returned with a suitcase in each hand and tears streaming down her eyes.
“Sam, I’m leaving you. I can’t stand to stay around and watch this.”
“But Ruth,” Sam said. “You can’t do that. I love you. Honesty I do. If you like, I’ll give up epigraphy. Now that I’ve broken the Scythian alphabet I’ve finished the task I set myself fifteen years ago. No more epigraphy. Now, how’s that, dear?”
“Sam, this skin-headed swindler is going to take your hair restorer and make five million dollars out of it, and we’re not going to get a damn thing. You don’t even know his name!”
The hair-oil man faced her with an expression of bland honesty with an inescapable undercurrent of six ulcers. “Madam,” he said, “my name is Chuck Bradford. I have no intention of stealing your husband’s formula. I only want to help him. This sort of, thing calls for group thinking. Together we can work out—”
“Together, bah! I know exactly what you’re going to do.”
The d
oor bell rang and Ruth jerked the door open angrily. She backed off, blanching like an almond.
Into the room walked a lengthy, ferocious-looking African native, painted here and there and brandishing a wicked spear.
“Um!” the native said, pointing the spear at everyone in turn. “Who Sam?”
“I am,” Sam answered. “Surely you’re not from the Kenya International Epigraphical Review!”
“Where proof sheets?” the native asked laconically.
“Good Heavens, I had no idea the KIER had that sort of deadline. You can’t be the senior editor?”
“Where proof sheets?” the native repeated in a menacing tone, shaking his spear and puffing out his painted cheeks.
“Mau-mau infiltration into the KIER,” Sam concluded suddenly. “Spies must have sent you.”
“Sam!” Chuck Bradford gasped. “You were about to publish this thing?”
“On the whole,” Sam said complacently, “the article was rather well written. As a matter of fact, it was accepted the first place I sent it.”
“Thank God I found out in time!” Chuck said. He popped another pill into his mouth, started toward the native and retreated fast.
“Bwana can’t grow hair on shrunken head.” The African grinned and poised his spear. It was then that everyone noticed what rattled on the end of the spear. There were two of them, neither in need of hair restorer.
Ruth hit the floor with a thud.
“I’d better get him the proof sheets,” Sam said. “If he’ll promise to get them to the KIER when he’s finished. You promise?” he asked the native.
“Witch doctors use hair grower to be number one place of honor again. Then me give proof sheets to brother number three boy in office of KIER. If witch doctors no eat powerful printed page,” he added.
“Then it’s not Mau mau,” Sam said. “It’s witch doctors?”
“White missionary send son U. S. A. medical school, come back, work big magic. Now witch doctor send son U. S. A. witch doctor formula. Work bigger magic. White doctor lose practice. Witch doctor take over.”
“And all this over the hair restorer,” Sam muttered. “I might have known my article on epigraphy wouldn’t stir up this much excitement. Well, I don’t care if you have the proof sheets.”
“Don’t give them to him, Sam,” Chuck shouted. “Look at him. He’ll kill us anyway.”
The native had gone into a light soft-shoe war dance, and the look in his eye was not gentle. He had started singing a jerky sort of song to himself and he was thrusting the spear nearer and nearer to the three white people.
Ruth groaned, sat up, looked at the African and shuddered. “Why the hell don’t you do some group thinking?” she snapped at Chuck.
“I am,” Chuck answered. “If I could only stop shaking long enough.”
“And you, Sam,” Ruth sneered at her husband. “What are you going to do? Just stand around and look apologetic while he sticks a spear into me?”
The African evidently had an itchy spear hand and was having trouble restraining himself. “Bwana no get proof sheets? Me find. Bwanas go to happy Methodist heaven. No need hair restorers.”
“Wait!” Sam cried. “I’m not a Methodist. Look. I’ve just remembered I left those proof sheets at the office. You’ll have to wait while I go get them.”
“Me no wait!” the native said.
“Don’t get the police,” Chuck yelled hysterically. “They’ll have your recipe in all the papers. My God!” he groaned. “I’d rather get hung on his spear than lose this thing now.”
“Me go with you,” the African boomed.
“I’ll be back,” Sam said cheerfully. “You two just wait here.”
“Don’t get the police!” Chuck shouted again.
“Oh, get the damn police,” Ruth said, sobbing. “Sam, this is the bravest thing you’ve ever done, getting him out of the apartment like this. Do you want me to c-a-l-l the p-o-l-i-c-e,” she spelled, glancing furtively at the dancing African, “after you leave?”
“By no means,” Sam said calmly. “Don’t forget, dear, that I’m a shipping clerk. I handle invoices from everywhere in town. I know exactly what to do with our elemental friend.”
Ruth and Chuck alternately glared at each other, had hysterics, and chewed on Miltown until Sam returned, some hours later.
“Your hair,” Sam remarked to Chuck when he walked in the door, “is growing out absolutely gray.”
Chuck ran to the living room mirror. “My God, there it is! Real hair! I don’t care if it’s purple.”
“Darling,” Ruth cried, throwing herself into her husband’s bony arms, “what did you do with Jumbo? And why were you gone so long? I was afraid!” She began to sob, unable to go on.
“I palmed him off on Abercrombie and Fitch,” Sam said. “First I went by the shipping office and I faked an invoice on him. Then I called Abercrombie and Fitch and convinced them they had ordered an African bearer with a spear. They had to come out, of course, suitably prepared to deal with him. I showed them the invoice and what could they do? He’s their problem now.”
“Oh, Sam, you’re just wonderful!” Ruth cried, clinging to her husband in abject admiration.
“Damn it,” Chuck said. “Now why don’t I have ideas like that? An idea like that could make a million dollars.”
“Oh, you go away,” Ruth told Chuck. “You’re not going to make a million dollars off our idea.”
“I’ve already got the formula,” Chuck said.
“Well, you might as well take the proof sheets,” Sam said. They were flapping in his hand. “But I want them back. I really had left them at the office.”
“I just want to look at the directions,” Chuck said. He seized the proof sheets and began to copy vigorously into his little black Idea book. After that he abandoned the last vestiges of decency. He grabbed the bottle of hair restorer Sam had mixed up and lit out.
“Sam,” Ruth said, “I’m sorry for all the things I’ve said about you. It was ingenious the way you got rid of that cannibal, or whatever he was.”
“It was not ingenious. It was merely a matter of attention to detail. If I had not made an exact copy of an Abercrombie and Fitch invoice, I would never have gotten away with it. You admit, then, that if a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well?”
“Oh, yes, darling.”
“And I am capable of deciding what’s worth doing?”
“Yes, yes.”
“But still,” Sam went on, like Socrates chasing down some point of logic, “you are sorry about the hair formula. Now tell the truth, Ruth. You still think money is important?”
“Yes,” Ruth admitted with the monosyllabic regularity of most of Socrates’ pupils.
“And you don’t think I’m capable of making money because all I can do is mess around with the meanings of words, in one language or another?”
“Now, Sam, I didn’t say that. I meant that you don’t even try to make money. Nobody can do it if they don’t try.”
“Well,” Sam said, “you just wait and see.”
“But Chuck’s gone off with your formula. And I know that kind of man. They’ll have the thing in full production in a week. Sam, maybe if we rush down to the patent office—”
“Dear,” Sam said, “I’m not even going to try.”
Ruth didn’t turn on the radio, go out of the house or watch television for the next week. The advertising was everywhere. “Full Head positively guaranteed to grow hair! Not more hair! Not less scalp! Just the same hair you had before. The hair of your blazing youth!”
A check for a thousand dollars came from Full Head a week after the meeting with Chuck Bradford. Ruth would have torn it up, except that she now had very good evidence that a Little One was, indeed, on the way.
“This” Ruth said, waving the check in Sam’s face, “is our share of the hair-restorer money.”
“Rather a handsome sum,” Sam said, quite pleased.
“Oh, Sam, you’re impossibl
e. Do you know what they’re making out of it?”
“I don’t care what they make.”
“If I ever get my hands on that Chuck Bradford again,” Ruth said gritting her teeth, “I’ll—”
The doorbell rang.
It was Chuck.
“Don’t do it, Ruth,” Sam said. “He doesn’t look like he could stand it. He looks like a—” Sam groped for words because Chuck, indeed, looked awful. His new hair hung despairingly over a face now gaunt and haunted.
Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology] Page 17