Mr. Adam (4 page)

“Besides,” the colonel went on, ignoring me, “your wife and child will be taken care of until the present emergency is over. Funds have already been provided.”

“I'm not going to leave Mary Ellen and the baby!” said Homer with some determination. “That, I simply won't do!”

“You won't have to leave immediately. You don't have to go to Washington until the hearings.”

“What hearings?”

“The Congressional hearings on what to do with you. You see, the Joint Chiefs have simply declared you are vital and strategic. The War Department was entrusted with your safety, and my commanding general was given the job. But your final disposition will not be decided until after the Congressional hearings.”

Homer looked dazed and helpless. “I see,” he murmured.

“You're pretty lucky at that,” said the colonel. “At first, we were going to put you down with the gold in Fort Knox. But the Surgeon General decided it might be bad for your health. Now that I've seen you in person, I think he was probably right. You weren't in the Army, were you?”

“No,” said Homer. “I wasn't in the Army. The FEA sent me to Australia to locate quartz crystals. They were needed for radar.”

“Well,” said the colonel, “it's too bad you weren't in the Army, but I guess that radar tieup will show you're okay. I mean you weren't a conscientious objector, anyway.”

“No, I wasn't a conscientious objector. Please, can I go upstairs and see Mary Ellen?”

“Well, make it snappy,” the colonel ordered. “I've got a lot of papers for you to fill out. Incidentally, I'm taking you out to dinner tonight. My commanding general wants to meet you.”

I
caught the next train back to the city. I found J.C. in his office and told him that the Army had taken over, and my extra-curricular activities in Tarrytown had come to an end. I also told him I felt pretty sorry for Homer Adam.

“You'll feel sorrier,” observed J.C., “when you see what happens to him in Washington!”

“How's that?” I asked.

“You've been too close to things in Tarrytown,” J.C. surmised, “to keep up on what's been happening. First of all, there's a tug-of-
war going on between the National Research Council and the National Re-fertilization Project as to who will get Adam.”

“What do you mean, get him?”

“Well, both outfits think they can use Adam to start our birth rate going again. They've hinted at all sorts of schemes. Some of them don't sound completely unreasonable. At least they're no more unreasonable than what has already happened to us.”

“Poor Adam!”

“That isn't all. There's a battle going on between Congress and an Inter-Departmental Committee as to who will decide policy on Adam. And that isn't all, either, because there is a quite powerful group which feels that the question of Adam is international, rather than national, and should be turned over to the United Nations.”

“Quite a story, wasn't it,” I mentioned, hinting at a bonus.

J.C. got that faraway look in his eyes, staring out over the masonry filled with pride that rises from the rock of Manhattan. “Quite a little fuss,” he said. “We are indeed blind and naive if we believe that in this universe we will find living, feeling, happy, hurting, thinking creatures on this tiny sphere alone—this speck of an earth revolving around a dim star we call the sun, which is not even part of a constellation.

“It is as if an ant heap had been stamped down, and all the ants within cried that the world had come to an end.”

Sometimes J.C. gave me the shivers.

CHAPTER 4

O
n a day in early December when an ice storm swept out of the northeast, and stiffened and slowed the arteries of Manhattan, and I knew that J.C. Pogey would want staffers covering the damage on the Jersey coast, I developed a convenient chill and retired to Smith Field to wait out the weather.

There is no vacation so exciting, so satisfactory, relaxing, and inwardly pleasing as that of a small boy playing hookey from school. I made the most of it. I clad myself in the soft, blue, silken pajamas inherited from Lynn Heinzerling when we were roommates at the Hotel de la Ville, in Rome, and he was ordered to Czecho-Slovakia; the wonderful brocaded Arabian robe that Noel Monks had purchased on the Street Called Straight, in Damascus, and willed to me when he flew Indiaward; and the pliant red leather slippers, with upturned toes, that had cost me three dollars, American gold seal, in the medina in Casablanca.

I cast myself upon Smith Field, set coffee dripping, and opened a package of cigarettes and a bottle of rye. I touched a switch at the
side of the bed, and on the television screen there appeared an oval blur, and then the blur resolved itself into the face of a man—a full-jowled, hearty man who looked as if all he did was attend World Series, Bowl games, the tennis championships at Forest Hills, and the international shooting matches at Camp Perry. It turned out that this was expert deduction, because the man said:

“This is Malcolm Parkinson. I am speaking to you from sun-drenched Hialeah Park, Miami, Florida, and in a few moments I am going to focus your television camera on this magnificent race course, and you will see—yes, see—the first event on today's program . . .”

I picked up the telephone and called Sam's Cigar Store, at Sixth Avenue and Tenth. “Send me,” I requested, “a
Racing Form
and
Bob's Best Bets.
”

“In this weather?” Sam demanded.

“The horses,” I pointed out, “are not running up the Avenue of the Americas.”

“That I know,” said Sam. “That I can see from here.” He asked: “Tell me, Mr. Smith, why don't they do something about Mr. Adam?”

“Who do you mean by they?”

“Them bureaucrats.”

“What,” I inquired, “would you have them do?”

“The missus keeps pestering me,” said Sam. “She believes in A.I.” A.I. had become the popular abbreviation for artificial insemination.

“Well, there's bound to be a decision soon,” I assured him.

“There better be, or there'll be hell to pay in this country. My wife says she's not getting any younger. I tell you, Mr. Smith, she wants kids.”

When the
Racing Form
arrived I began to dope the horses at Hialeah. Like every frustrated sports writer, I believe I am a better handicapper than any now operating at the tracks. I picked Fair Vision in the second, and then called “Two Tone Jones,” a gentleman
of doubtful color who operates a bookmaking establishment near Sheridan Square. I bet two across the board on Fair Vision, poured myself a rye, and settled back on the pillows to watch the race.

I found that watching the races, from a bed in New York, was more satisfactory than watching them at the track, in Florida. Maniacs do not jump up and down in front of you, deafening you with their shrill cries, and interfering with your vision. Nobody picks your pocket. Nobody tramps on your feet. You don't have to butt your way to the parimutuel windows, tramping on other people, between each race. You don't have to foam at the mouth while crawling through traffic jams, park your car, pay $2.20 admission, avoid touts, buy programs, pencils, and peanuts, or steer your wife away from the hundred-to-one shots. You don't have to shiver in a white linen suit, and try to warm yourself by talking about the cold wave up north.

You just lie there in bed and lose your money.

When I telephoned to place my bet on the fifth, Two Tone Jones said: “You got a minute, Mr. Smith? I want to ask you a question.”

“Certainly,” I said graciously, for by then Two Tone Jones was one of my considerable creditors.

“We're having a little argument up here,” said Two Tone Jones. “You're a pretty smart man, Mr. Smith, and maybe you can help us out.”

“I'm not very smart about picking horses.”

“Oh,” said Two Tone, “we all have our bad days. Now what we want to know, Mr. Smith, is what about this here artificial insemination?”

I drank some black coffee. “Well, what can I tell you about it?” I said. I was pretty sick of this A.I. It reminded me of toddle tops, ouija boards, every day in every way I feel better and better, two cars in every garage, life begins at forty, and every other fad that ever existed.

“Well, we just want to know about it,” Two Tone complained.

“It is very simple,” I said. “When normal intercourse isn't practical, you just take a specimen of the male sperm, and plant it within the female.”

“Hasn't it been done with horses?” Two Tone asked.

“Oh, yes. Nowadays, when a horse is standing at stud, he doesn't have to service a mare in person. His sperm is shipped, injected, and that is all there is to it. Why, some of our best thoroughbred stock has been planted in Argentine and Australia that way. It's much easier to ship an ounce of sperm than a one-ton horse.”

“Can it be done with men?” Two Tone demanded.

“Of course. I think there are eight thousand cases of artificial insemination recorded in this country.”

“That's what we wanted to know.”

“Don't you read the papers?” I asked. “The papers have been talking about nothing but A.I. ever since it was recommended by N.R.P.”

“Well, we don't read that part of the papers,” said Two Tone Jones. That was that. I bet twenty to win on Eastbound, in the fifth, and he finished absolutely last.

Marge returned home during the running of the sixth. Cliffdweller, which I had backed to win and place, was on the rail and leading by two lengths when Marge swung open the door of our bedroom. I hushed her with a wave of my hand. “And now as they come into the stretch,” Malcolm Parkinson was saying, “it is still Cliffdweller, and he's running easy. He's followed by Ragtime, June Bug, Third Fleet, and Firefly . . . now at an eighth from the wire Cliffdweller still leads but—”

“Stephen Decatur Smith,” Marge interrupted, “we have company!”

“Quiet!” I shouted, leaning forward, pounding my knees with my fists as Cliffdweller labored towards the finish. At this point, it seemed that the television screen had shifted to slow motion.

“Stephen!” Marge shouted.

The horses crossed the finish line. “It's a photo!” shouted Parkinson. I fell back against the pillow.

“So this is why I haven't been able to get you on the telephone all afternoon!” Marge said. “Sneaked off to the races!”

I looked up at her. She was remarkably businesslike and trim and tidy in a blue suit and a white blouse that concealed, and yet promised, the smooth curves underneath. She was a very admirable-looking woman, but she was very angry. In a case like this, I believe that the best defense is an offense. “Here I am, down in bed with a chill, and I get abused!” I reproached her.

Marge smiled, and touched my forehead lightly with her fingers. She knew that I wasn't ill, and she knew that I knew that she knew. “Come on! Get off the Field and into the living room. I brought home some people.”

Parkinson's cheerful, weathered face appeared on the screen. “Who?” I asked absent-mindedly.

“In just a second,” said Parkinson, “the judges will have inspected the picture, and we will have the result of the sixth. Meanwhile, let me tell you that I've never seen Hialeah more colorful than it is today, here in the bright sunshine, with the brilliant plumage of the famous flamingoes out by the lake. And remember that for relaxation like a trip to the Southland, always smoke—”

“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 profession
al—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 iso
late 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!”