[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Wagner laughed mirthlessly. "I could not find one," he said. My anger was uncontrollable. "There are eight million of them out there!" I said. I grabbed his arm and dragged him to the door. I opened the screen and pointed. "Look, you fool! Any one. Any one of them!" He just laughed and I grew more furious. I raised my hand to strike him and he cowered, still laughing. I did not hit him, but instead merely threw the forceps that I was holding. They hit his massive chest and fell to the sawdust-covered floor. "Don't you understand, you monster?" I said. "For the good of humanity!" Wagner laughed again. "They're happy," he said. I turned away in frustration. "Get out," I said. "Get out of my clean lab. Go home to that `wife' of yours." Wagner laughed, and I shuddered to hear it. He did leave, slamming the screen door, and I never saw him again until that time before the warehouse. Perhaps a kind word... But no. It was hopeless. My heart was broken, but involved in my work as I was, I never noticed. Or else it is only now, now that I can no longer hope to regain the scientific objectivity that I prized for so many years, now that I am that which I vilified for most of my life--a poet--that I see things in their broader perspective. I certainly haven't gained anything by this new-found ability. 212 Dirty Tricks by George Alec Effinger I didn't know what to do. My friend Larry and my other associates were as puzzled in their labs as I, and could offer little help. I was on my own. Absently I took out one of my last frogs and set it on the drawing board. It was a female, and I really didn't feel like flushing the eggs when I got to that point. I sometimes think about what my life would have been like had that Rana been a male. Perhaps my life would have been different. I think about that sometimes, about the different roads I might have taken. Maybe I would have ended up an entirely different person. Who can say? I think about that sometimes. Suddenly I jumped from my seat, leaving the poor frog where she lay, pinned out against the board like some hapless target in a circus knife-thrower's act. I put on a long gray overcoat and a tan slouch hat, pulled down over my forehead to shroud my eyes in shadow. I looked like Der Wand'rer or one of those fellows who exposes himself to little girls in playgrounds. Then I went out in search of my subject. I was still locking the outside door to the lab when a lovely young lady danced by on the sidewalk. I grabbed her arm and she barely noticed, so happy was she. "Let me take care of that for you," I said, and she smiled without comprehension. I unlocked the door again with one hand, still holding her arm tightly in the other. Then I steered her into the lab. I removed my coat and hat. "Make yourself at home," I said, trying to appear cheerful. She ignored me, dancing to the buried music in her head. "Tell me, how did it all start?" She said nothing. "How does it actually feel? Do you ever get dizzy, nauseous, thirsty, cold?" Silence. 213 Dirty Tricks by George Alec Effinger Perhaps already I was beginning to lose that sense of devotion to method, that necessary coolness of intellect that is essential to valid appraisal. It had to begin somewhere. But why? Fifty years in the field, all to be brought to nothing within a week. To wake up in the morning and suddenly be a whole new person, one who is basically weaker and completely useless (by the old standards), is a terrifying thing. Even worse is this consuming and hopeless yearning for the old self. To be a scientist--and one of the best of the lot--and then to abandon, nay, misplace (as the procedure was totally involuntary and darkened with mystery) that carefully cultured turn of mind and find oneself fit only for the stringing together of pretty words, that is a nightmare from which I can never wake. My subject avoided me. It wasn't a conscious thing, I suppose. She was preoccupied with her happiness, and unaware of her environment. She looked as though she hadn't been eating regularly; she certainly had totally forsaken bathing. I decided that she would have to be treated and acclimated in much the same way as my mice and gerbils. But I didn't understand the danger. I found myself cutting up frogs or clams and humming to myself. Old half-remembered show tunes would pop up in my mind when I watched the girl (whom I named Mary and clothed in my overcoat so her lovely body wouldn't distract me) move around the lab, curiously picking up knives or mice or bottles of chemicals from the shelves. Sometimes when she was asleep I used to look at her or feel the fine hair along 214 Dirty Tricks by George Alec Effinger her arms, tickling her, I guess, because she'd smile in her dreams or even wake up and touch me. After a few days of this seductive madness, I was saved by a visit from my friend Larry. He was accompanied by a tall, slender young woman wearing Larry's overcoat. "This is Janice," said Larry. The young woman smiled. Her eyes were glazed with a kind of joyful fever that had become far too familiar to me. I was beginning to find that same quality attractive in my own specimen, Mary. My friend gave Janice a little shove, sending her off in the general direction of Mary. The two young women bumped about my laboratory for several minutes before their paths intersected. When at last this lucky event occurred, they smiled at each other and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl blacksoulman.xlx.pl