Mr. Adam (11 page)

The answer, of course, was very simple. Place Mr. Adam under the strictest military guardianship, and conduct a nice, short, preventive war against Russia before it was too late.

On the day following—a Thursday—all the newspapers bristled with letters-to-the-editor, mostly of female origin, protesting against Mrs. Adam, and the reporters on Capitol Hill said Congress was being swamped with mail.

Homer and Mary Ellen naturally were aware of what was going on, and they were both fretful and jumpy. On this Thursday I had
driven them to Mount Vernon in an N.R.P. sedan, ostensibly so they could soak up some colonial atmosphere, but actually to keep them away from the radio. I tried talking about everything else except what was on their minds, but I could see it wasn't working. When we returned, Jane called from the office: “I've been trying to get you all day,” she said. “Hell is popping. Everybody is taking turns stabbing you in the back, as if you were a human dart board. They all say you're responsible.”

“I am,” I said.

“They're after your job,” Jane warned.

“They can have my job, and they can take it, and—”

I noticed that Mary Ellen was at my shoulder. “Mr. Pumphrey just sent you a memo—a red memo—” Jane continued. “He says it is imperative that you attend the meeting of the Planning Board at ten tomorrow.”

“All right,” I said. “I'll be there.”

The Planning Board, on Friday morning, looked like the directors of a bank who have just been informed that the cashier has departed with all the liquid assets. When I entered, they regarded me as if I were the cashier. Gableman and Klutz shifted as far as possible from my chair, to avoid contamination. Pumphrey, his baggy face a mottled purple, stared at me as if I had just made an attack on his life. “I am very glad to see you here, Mr. Smith,” he said. “I hardly need to tell you that this is a crisis!”

Sitting as observers, their chairs against the wall, and looking pious and complacent as good little boys watching a fight from the other side of the street, sat the liaison officers for the War, State, Interior, and Navy Departments, the Public Health Service, and the National Research Council. In a corner, inconspicuous as possible, sat Danny Williams, the President's Secretary, who used to be on the Washington Bureau of A.P. He was unsmiling and grave, but when I glanced at him, one owlish eye closed in a wink. They were all watching me. I didn't say anything.

“We all have had the greatest confidence in you,” Pumphrey said. “But now we feel we have been betrayed. Do you hear that, Mr. Smith—betrayed!”

“I don't see what's so terrible in letting Homer Adam stay with his wife for a while,” I said. “You asked me to get him into shape so that we could start A.I. That's what I've been doing. If any of you think you can handle Homer better, I'll be perfectly happy to step out. I'll be more than happy. I'll be delirious with joy.”

Into the eyes of Percy Klutz came the wild gleam I had seen before. “It is exactly as I thought all along,” said Klutz. “It is too big a task for one man. What we need is an entire new organization, and I have drawn up an entire new organizational chart.”

Before anyone could stop him he sprang to his feet, and unrolled a six-foot chart from a map case on the wall. “Now,” he said, “you will see that everything is almost the same, except up at the top, here, where we had Mr. Smith, and down here in Operations. We restore the committee, as originally planned, to direct policy on Mr. Adam. It will be a somewhat larger committee than first suggested, so it will include the State Department. Is that all right with you, Colonel Phelps-Smythe?”

Phelps-Smythe, who had been sitting with folded arms, his chair tilted back, enjoying himself, came erect, and said, “That's all right with the War Department. My general has instructed me to say that the War Department's chief concern is in security. Now I don't have to point out that if the War Department had been left in charge of Adam's field security, nothing like this would have happened.”

“Oh, I've provided for that,” said Klutz. “Right down here.” He indicated a row of boxes at the bottom of the chart. “I'll get to that in a minute. First, we will take care of Mr. Smith. You don't mind, do you, Mr. Smith?”

“I don't mind.”

“Well, Mr. Smith continues as Special Assistant to the Director, but his functions change somewhat. He becomes more of a liaison
man between the policymaking committee and the operations end. You see, he will have a number of assistants who will take actual charge of Mr. Adam. There will be assistants in charge of security, housing, recreation, health, and so forth.”

“That doesn't sound bad, Percy,” said Abel Pumphrey.

“Just a matter of simple reorganization,” said Percy proudly. “Every agency has them.”

“Do you think it will quiet all this criticism?” Pumphrey asked. He looked at Gableman.

“I should think so,” said Gableman, “provided Adam is separated from Mrs. Adam.”

“What do you say, Mr. Smith?”

“I say it stinks,” I said. “If you put Adam in a straitjacket again, he'll just get sick, or go nuts. Then where will you be?”

Danny Williams, who hadn't said anything thus far, spoke. “Instead of all this chart business,” he asked, “wouldn't it be better if Adam just started having babies?”

“Naturally,” said Abel Pumphrey, “that's ah, what we're all after. That's our motto—production, production, and more production.”

“Well, Steve,” Williams asked me, “do you think Adam is in good enough shape to start producing?”

“I think he's about ready,” I replied, “but I wouldn't like to say for certain until the medical advisers okayed it.”

“And if A.I. started, all this criticism would end, wouldn't it?” said Pumphrey.

“Oh, absolutely,” said Gableman, “providing, as I said, his wife was out of the picture.”

“That's what the President thought,” said Williams. “The President thought that if Adam's health had improved we should just put him into production. I suppose that both from a political and a medical standpoint we had better separate Mr. and Mrs. Adam for the time being. But I don't think there's any need for all this reorganization.”

That, of course, settled it. At least I thought it did. Klutz, dejected as an inventor who has been told his perpetual motion machine won't work, rolled up his chart. Phelps-Smythe looked sour and grumbled something I didn't quite catch, but which obviously concerned me. I said that if the doctors okayed it, production could begin Monday.

When I returned to Adam's suite Mary Ellen was packing. She was crying without any noise. Tears kept coming into her eyes, and she'd wipe them with the back of her hand, but she wasn't letting even a sniffle escape her. Finally she turned to me and said, “You don't have to tell me to get out. I knew when you got that call last night that I'd have to go.”

“Now take it easy, Mary Ellen,” I told her. “It could be a lot worse.”

“What did they decide?” she asked.

“Well, they decided that A.I. had to start right away. That was the first thing. And they thought it best that you and Homer separate for a while. Anyway, it would be pretty embarrassing for you to stay just at this time, now wouldn't it, Mary Ellen?”

“I don't think so,” she said in a small voice. “I don't think it would be so terribly embarrassing.”

“Oh, sure it would,” I told her, trying to sound convincing. “Anyway, this separation is just temporary. Just as soon as production levels off, and is placed on a sound basis, you and Homer will be able to be together again.”

“I wish I thought so.”

“What makes you think it won't happen?”

She stood up, very straight, unashamed of her tears and her anger. “It's that girl—The Frame. She's after him again!”

“After him?”

“She called him from California this morning. What does she want? Why does she keep after him?”

“What do any of them want? She wants to have a baby, I guess.”

“No, it's deeper than that. Steve, I'm afraid. I'm terribly afraid!”

I remembered the glimpse of the fanatic The Frame's face had unmasked just before she boarded her plane. In a vague sort of way, I was afraid, too, but all I said was, “Stop worrying. I'll take care of anything that comes up. Did you say anything to Homer?”

“No. I was with him in the living room when the call came in, and afterwards I asked who it was, and he told me, and all I could say, naturally, was how nice that she had called.”

“What did he tell her?”

“He just grunted, and said yes and no. Of course he knew I was listening.”

“Where's Homer now?”

“In the kitchen, brooding.”

I went into the kitchenette. Homer was staring into a tumbler of milk as if he expected something to poke its head out of it. I told him about the meeting of the Planning Board. It didn't seem to affect him any more than if I were describing a Friday afternoon session of the Hyannis, Nebraska, PTA. I said, “I understand Kathy called this morning.”

“Yes,” and then: “Steve, I can't forget her. I keep thinking about her all the time.”

“Mary Ellen,” I told him, “loves you. Mary Ellen is taking a terrific beating, without complaining. Mary Ellen is my nomination as a swell wife.”

“Oh, I know it, Steve. Mary Ellen is wonderful. But how can I help it if I keep thinking of Kathy? I can't control my thoughts, can I?”

“I suppose not,” I said. I told him he'd get his final physical the next day, and that A.I. would begin on Monday, if everything went according to schedule. He didn't seem to mind. He kept staring at things without seeing them, and I wondered what The Frame had told him that made him act like he was the central figure in a hashish dream.

We took Mary Ellen to the station and put her on the New York train. They seemed to have a lot of things to say to each other, but they didn't mean anything. She would write every day, and tell him how Eleanor was getting along. He would write every day, too. She hoped he wouldn't have to be away from the baby so long—he should see how she was changing. He said he was sure Steve would fix it up for him to visit Tarrytown, but not just now of course. She said she didn't think this A.I. would be as bad as he expected. He said he supposed he would get used to it.

I told Mary Ellen that pretty soon she should buy some spring clothes, and send me the bill, because all that was included in the N.R.P. budget, and she should buy all she wanted.

She leaned down from the train steps and kissed him. She kissed him hard, and clung to him. I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking that probably she would not see him again.

Back in the hotel, I telephoned Tommy Thompson, and he promised to be in Washington in the morning. “I'll bring a surprise for you,” he said.

Homer and I played gin until midnight. The twelve o'clock news led off with an excited announcement that, doctors willing, A.I. would begin on Monday. As yet, the identity of the first A.I. mother, “destined to again carry forward the banners of humanity,” had not been revealed.

CHAPTER 9

D
r. Thompson arrived in the morning. He didn't come alone. He brought Marge, Maria Ostenheimer, and J.C. Pogey. “This is the visiting delegation,” he explained. “I hope you have room for us.”

I told him to look around, and pick their own bedrooms. We had them to spare. “All except you,” I told Marge. “You know where you sleep.”

“Yes, darling,” Marge said, docilely.

“Why are you being so nice to me? What are you up to?”

“Why, nothing, sweetheart. Aren't you glad to see me?”

“Certainly I'm glad to see you, but when you get sugary like this I know that you're up to something, or you've done something bad.”

Maria said that was nonsense, and that, as she always knew, I was a nasty and suspicious man. J.C. Pogey went prowling around, and said that the Adam suite was a classic example of government waste. He had counted eight bedrooms, and six baths, and there were only three people living in it, if you included Jane, who sometimes spent the night.

“I'll tell you how it is,” I explained. “If A.I. doesn't work, we're going to use it as a sort of high-class male brothel.” Marge said I ought to be ashamed, and that I had shocked Homer, and indeed this was true, for his face was the color of his hair.

I noticed that Tommy kept watching Homer, closely, not saying anything. But I wasn't worried, because Homer appeared to be in good spirits, his seizures of the shakes seemed to have deserted him, and he was even talkative.

At eleven o'clock Tommy and I took Homer to the U.S. Public Health Service for his examination. There were nine or ten doctors, representing all the departments and agencies that had their hand on the erratic pulse of this important human. They inspected him for an hour, and then went into conference for a few minutes, and then they came out and Tommy told me, “He's okay. We're getting out an official report—that is, the Surgeon General will get it out—but the main thing is that you can use Homer Adam on a limited scale.”

“What do you mean, ‘limited scale'?” I asked.

“Well, so long as everything goes along evenly, we can use Adam for the impregnation of, say, two or three women a week. After he gains more weight and his metabolism perks up he can be used more frequently, providing that there are no glandular disturbances. Of course, if he were subjected to great emotional shock, or his general physical condition started to get worse instead of better, then we'd have to call it off. But for now, you can go ahead.”

I almost shouted. I'm afraid I ran to the telephone like a cub reporter with his first flash. I called Abel Pumphrey, and gave him the news, and then I called Danny Williams at the White House. Danny was a little cagey, and made me repeat everything Tommy had said, and then he asked me: “I suppose you feel your job's over now?”

I said, “I have only one life to give for my country, and believe me, bud, I have given it!”

“Oh, no you haven't,” he told me. “We'll be satisfied when A.I. is S.O.P.
*
”

“That's not fair, Danny,” I pleaded. “I only agreed to get Adam in condition for production. I've got my own life to lead.”

“I could give you a lecture,” Danny said, “on national responsibility. But I do not think it is necessary. You know damn good and well that your job hasn't ended. What about your wife? Do you want her to be childless? For that matter, do you want to be childless? Do you want to pass out of this world without perpetuating the name of—” he hesitated—“Stephen Decatur Smith, the second.”

“Okay, Danny,” I surrendered. “But when things are S.O.P., I'm finished.”

“When it is all over,” Danny said, “the President will no doubt give you an award of the Legion of Merit.”

I remembered Colonel Phelps-Smythe. I started out to tell Danny what he could do with the Legion of Merit, pointed end first, but at that moment Tommy touched me on the shoulder, and said the car was there, and he and Homer were waiting.

So we went back to the party. Perhaps I had better explain. It wasn't a party when we left, but it was a party when we got back. You cannot put a lot of people in a large number of rooms with an unlimited assortment of free liquor, and an excuse, and not have a party. The excuse was the beginning of A.I., and they had anticipated the verdict before we returned. As a matter of fact, when I look back on it, any other verdict seemed impossible. On that day, even if Homer Adam were drawing his last breath, gasping like a fish long out of water, still he would have been approved for A.I. I guess we were all pretty desperate.

Everybody treated Homer as if he had just made a winning touchdown, and he seemed to like it. You cannot exactly say that he stuck out his chest, but at least his habitual slump straightened,
in the manner of all men who have been thumped and probed by the doctors, and told they will live. But he stayed around the telephone. Whenever our phone rang, Homer answered. Long before I'd arranged to have all our calls screened. That is, I'd left a selected list of people who could call and get straight through. Other calls were referred to N.R.P. Finally Homer answered the telephone and didn't call me, or Jane, or J.C. Pogey, or anyone else to it. He simply seemed to curl around it. I edged toward him, but I didn't hear much. Just yes, and no, and grunts.

When he had finished, I went downstairs to the switchboard. “There was just a call for Mr. Adam,” I said. “Where did it come from?”

“Oh, that one. From L.A.”

“Who authorized calls from L.A. up into 5-F?”

“Why, Mr. Smith,” the girl said, surprised. “Mr. Adam himself did! We don't screen any calls from Miss Kathy Riddell.”

“How long has that been going on?”

“Why, ever since Miss Riddell was in Washington.”

I said “thank you,” and went back upstairs. There wasn't much, or anything, that I could do about it. I didn't want to start anything that would send Homer off on some unpredictable tangent. I simply wanted to maintain the status quo. Anyway, in a few days it wouldn't matter, I thought. Homer would be so busy re-populating the earth that not even The Frame would interest him.

I don't think J.C. Pogey was a good influence on Homer. That afternoon we were all sitting around, and Marge was acting as bartender, and Tommy Thompson was telling us about his experiments which he hoped would revive the male germ through medicine. It seems his first batch of seaweed lotion, or whatever it was, hadn't been successful. Some fellows got sick, but no wives got pregnant. So he had revised the formula.

“Wouldn't it be grand if it worked,” Homer said. “Imagine, I could—why I could do whatever I wanted. I'd be just like everybody else!”

“I don't see anything good about it,” said J.C., “any more than I see any real sense in torturing Homer Adam, here, simply because he was the victim of an oversight. You—” he pointed a lean finger at Tommy—“exhaust yourself trying to combat destiny. Why don't you take that girl—” he shifted his finger towards Maria—“out into the woods somewhere and forget all about the so-called human race. This little globe we live on has grown old, as I have, and God has simply decided to eliminate it. When Mississippi blew up God could just as easily have allowed the world to blossom as a nova. Instead, he is going to let it die like the last coal in the grate. Why fight it?”

Maria had been sitting on the arm of Tommy's chair, one small hand on his massive shoulder. She waited for Tommy to speak, and when he did not, she said, quietly, “I think I can tell you why Tommy works, and why I work, Mr. Pogey. We are fighting for more than our lives. We are fighting to keep intact the thread that ties us to the hereafter. Man's only link with immortality is through his children. That's why we want the world to keep on having babies.”

J.C. Pogey shook his head in unhappy denial. “You're taking the short view,” he said. “I take the long view. This particular sphere is only one of unnumbered millions stretching out across uncountable light years. Some of these spheres probably carry creatures which also fancy they have souls, and that they are linked with the Almighty. We would be very self-centered to think otherwise.”

“I'll agree,” Maria argued, “that there must be some kind of life on other planets, perhaps in other constellations, but you can't call it human.”

“Depends on what you term human,” said J.C. Pogey. “Now I can imagine a human being on some other globe. He might have four heads and eight arms. If we saw him we'd consider him a monstrosity, simply because he would be a bit unusual. But think how much better off he would be than we humans who have only one head and two arms. One brain might be a whiz at mathematics and a
second at literature and another at philosophy and the fourth might just like to raise hell. Think of the fun he'd have.”

Marge said she thought J.C. was crazy, and that furthermore he made her feel frightened, but Homer was listening, fascinated. “If that's true,” he said, “it wouldn't be so bad if I—failed, would it?”

“Not at all,” J.C. said.

“Don't listen to him, Homer,” Marge said. “He's just a nasty sacrilegious old man.”

“On the contrary,” said J.C., “the only thing that makes me retain my sanity, and my belief in the Deity, is that this is a third-class world which God doesn't take very seriously. It is like a rotten fruit that has hung too long upon the tree. God has simply become bored with running this world, and is closing it down.”

“Then you don't think A.I. will work?” Homer asked, with the utter faith of a woman asking a question of a swami.

“Frankly, no,” J.C. replied. “I think you are just an accident, Homer, an oversight that will be remedied. You shouldn't have been down in that shaft when Mississippi blew up.”

I could see that Homer was impressed. “Now look, J.C.,” I said. “Stop putting those silly ideas into Homer's head. Just because you're too old to have children yourself, you shouldn't discourage everybody else in the world.”

J.C. snorted. “I don't believe it,” he said. “Fate's against it.”

“A.I. starts Monday,” I said. “On Monday everything begins again.”

A few hours later I began to think J.C. Pogey was right. Gableman and Klutz came to see us. I thought they were coming in to join the celebration, but they seemed distraught and worried. “Bring Mr. Gableman and Mr. Klutz a drink,” I told Marge. “And honey, change the brand. Every drink I've had this afternoon tastes funny.”

“Has it, dear?” Marge asked. “I'm sorry. Perhaps I'm mixing them wrong. I'll do better.”

Gableman signaled me with a nod, and we went into a huddle in a corner. “Hell to pay,” he said. “The office is a madhouse.”

“What's wrong?”

Klutz said, “Well, this thing took us rather suddenly—I mean putting Adam into production right away—and quite truthfully, we don't seem to be prepared for it.”

“I don't see why not,” I told him. “Everything is simple enough now. Homer is okay. I'll just take him down to the lab Monday morning, and by Monday night some worthy female will be pregnant.”

“That's just it,” Klutz said. “How do we pick the worthy female?”

“You don't mean to tell me,” I said, “that with practically every woman in the United States wanting to become a mother—even women who never wanted to be mothers before—that you have trouble picking one!”

Klutz drew a pencil from his pocket, and paper. He seemed incapable of thought or speech unless they were accompanied by doodles. “It is far more complicated than that!” he said. “It is complicated beyond anything anyone imagined! It is a major matter of policy that should have been decided, long ago, by the Inter-Departmental Committee, on the highest level, mind you. For whomever we pick as the first A.I. mother, all the other women will raise a howl, and it is bound to have political repercussions!”

“That sounds insane,” I commented. I looked up, and saw Homer's gaunt form behind me, swaying slightly. He was listening, and he did not seem amused.

“Oh, no,” said Gableman. “It is not insane at all. Consider the factors involved. In the first place—and this is really minor—there is the matter of geography. Every state wants priority on production, and the honor of furnishing the first A.I. mother.”

“That shouldn't be hard,” I pointed out. “After all, while Homer's capacity is to be limited for the time being, each section of the country can be represented in the first group of mothers selected.”

Gableman ran his long, unwashed hands through his long, oily hair. “As I said,” he persisted, “that is the simplest part. Then you
get into race, religion, and social and economic position. The Negro question is particularly vexing. Do you know what the Southern Democrats in the Senate are doing? They're planning to legislate N.R.P. out of existence unless we follow an All White policy. And the Negro press is screaming that we will be murdering the race unless we follow at least a policy of fifty-fifty.

“And take religion. There are some people who think that this is a fine opportunity to eliminate the Catholics, or the Jews, and naturally the Catholics and Jews are afraid of just this and they are demanding guarantees against extinction.”

I noticed that J.C. Pogey and Marge had joined our little group. Pogey's face showed no emotion, but I knew he was laughing inside himself. “I think it is ridiculous,” I said. “The thing to do is get it started. Why, look at Marge here. She's an average woman, and most of all she wants things to begin again, don't you dear?”

“I wouldn't mind having an Adam child, if that's what you mean,” Marge said, smiling at Homer. “As a matter of fact, I'd like one very much.”

“Now that wouldn't do at all, if I may say so,” Gableman said seriously. “Then people would charge the Administration with a sort of new-fangled nepotism.”