Slow Sculpture (32 page)

The answer to your question re using the Orloff distillate as a diagnostic is, of course, answered by the above.

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research

Dear Geoff:

I’m taking advantage of you, I know—and also of a certain symbolism. This is a letter on plain paper and in a plain envelope—for plain talk, for once not under the engraved umbrella of the Ethicolossus name and image. This is me—Al—the guy downstairs who shovels mouse turds and tries his damnedest to do what he wants in the way you say you want it.

Let me sidle into the subject. Years ago there was a wonderful English humorist, almost forgotten today, whose name was Jerome K. Jerome. He was a very funny man. He was also gentle, quizzical, questioning and bright as hell—one of those rare human beings who was capable of exploring the everyday world as if it were a foreign country, full of strange practices and heathen idols—which of course it was and is.

Remember one of his simplest, gentlest little essays. It was about baby dresses. In his day—around the turn of the century—it was customary to make dresses about four feet long for infants. He began to wonder about this, as he wondered about everything his eye lit on, so he went to an expert to find an answer. The expert was one of those legendary English nannies pushing a pram in a London park. “Why do babies wear such long dresses?” he asked her, and she replied, just this side of shock: “My goodness, sir! You wouldn’t have them in
short
dresses, would you?”

Now the point of the essay isn’t that she didn’t know and was admitting it. The point is that she did know and that was her answer. Further, it was an answer that absolutely satisfied her, the kind of answer you find at the end of a theorem, or carved on a tablet of stone for Moses.

We’ve run head on into one just like that. You want me to take the “upper” effect out of what I’ll be so incautious as to call a cancer cure. I understand what you’re doing. You’re protecting Ethicolossus against charges which might be brought against it once the
news was out: I’ll concede that they
will
be made when it gets out. But it seems not to have occurred to you that the charges can be refuted—and should be.

First of all there’s a safety factor. I think it will be proved beyond doubt that that euphoric effect will not occur except in the presence of malignancy. But absolutely aside from that—did it ever occur to you to ask, “What’s the matter with sick people feeling good?”

Why is it that morphine is the mainstay in terminal analgesis? You know as well as I do that there are a dozen or a score other drugs which will kill pain as well or better, which are not used simply and solely because they are euphorics. It isn’t a medical issue, it’s a moral one—and it’s the kind of morality that has no place in medicine—not the kind Hippocrates was talking about, nor my kind either. It’s the kind of morality that forced the Chinese doctor to examine his female patients by means of an ivory doll passed through the curtains, marked where it hurt. It’s the kind that made anatomical dissection virtually impossible for over a thousand years.

We don’t give euphorics to dying patients because somehow it’s wrong for them to go out feeling good. We do a little something to keep them from feeling too bad or from feeling at all—but somehow it’s immoral to let them go out happy.

In the case of Orloff’s distillate we have to think one step further. Suddenly I see the whole R&D of this amazing substance aborted because patients might feel good—not while they’re dying, but while they’re getting well!

I’d hate to have to explain that to a man from Mars.

Hey, Geoff—I’m really grateful that I have your shoulder to cry on in private like this. I get frustrated from time to time and this helps.

Al

ETHICOLOSSUS, INC.

Interoffice Memo

SEALED: PERSONAL

There is very little I can say in response to your good letter, except that I share in your pleasure in this means of making yourself feel better. It seems to me that the proper place and time for investigations into the philosophy and morality of the healing arts is at two in the morning after too much weak beer in one’s second year of medical school. These things can hardly be the concern of men of our degree of age and experience, especially not on company time. I will go so far as to point out to you that our function in pharmaceuticals is to serve medical practice, not to alter it. Let physicians make these alterations. When and if they do, we shall accommodate them. We can do no more. We must do no more, Dr. Verity.

I do not think your letter was what, in law, is called a responsive answer to my query as to the possibility of recompounding the Orloff distillate in such wise as to reduce or eliminate the deleterious side effects. Please advise me.

And, of course, continue to feel free to express yourself to me in any way you see fit. It pleases me to have this function.

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research

Interoffice Memo

Please refer to the ring diagrams and chromatograph charts on which you recently commented and from which you so expertly deduced the parallelism of the distillate with certain psychomimetics. These diagrams and charts present a far less subtle statement of the impossibility of making the alteration you suggest. It is analogous to asking a metallurgist to substitute lead for tungsten as a hardening alloy. No matter what the derivation—natural or synthetic—Orloff’s distillate will not work without that structure. It is not I who makes this statement, Doctor, but biochemistry.

Albert Verity, M.D.

Assistant to the Director

Endorsement:
You smacked him too hard, Geoff. Once he begins to doubt the source of your information about the euphoric effect, he will begin to doubt a great many other things. Better call him off the project before he does.

Samuel Rebate, M.D.

President

Endorsement:
Some people just don’t know how to handle people.

Q.-P-Doll should have cleared it with me.

Genteel Flack

Director, Public Relations

Endorsement:
If anyone bothered to ask my advice, I’d have said a long time back, kick him out altogether. Not a good teammate at all. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Howlan Beagle, Col. (Ret.)

Director of Security

Endorsement:
The man gives me the creeps. I have this nightmare about our marketing the Orloff thing and it doesn’t work. I have this other nightmare about our marketing it and it does work. And I don’t know which is worse. I don’t want to say any more than that and don’t need to.

Tip Turner

Director of Sales

Endorsement:
Don’t care what happens. All I know is I got to eat his Aunt Mollie’s fruitcake. Great.

Uriah Legree

Assistant to the President

Endorsement:
Just leave him to me and don’t tell me I can’t handle my people.

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte

Director of Research

ETHICOLOSSUS, INC.

Interoffice Memo

I concur in your conclusion that nothing can be done about the unfortunate side effects inherent in the Orloff distillate. We have therefore concluded that the project had best be shelved. Please collect all files and notes and have them delivered to me, complete and indexed, not later than noon tomorrow. I am making arrangements to have all unnecessary materials, specimens, test animals and equipment removed from your laboratory immediately. You may proceed with the previously authorized projects assigned to you.

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research

Interoffice Memo

Why don’t you square with yourself if not with me’? The Orloff distillate will disappear into the archives (and now I understand why your terms with Max were so generous: they were all contingent on production; now for fifty lousy dollars you’ve gained all right and title to his discovery) and it is being buried

—because Max Orloff has no medical degree

—because he is a known eccentric

—because the distillate can be easily produced from readily available materials, duplication is likely and profit is small, or

—because a big markup couldn’t be concealed.

But mostly because the existence of such a treatment would send shudders through the Big Machine and all its many parts—Ethicolossus, the pharmacists, the doctors, the hospitals, the hospital-supply firms, the “chronic” rest-homes and all their heirs and assigns, cohorts and confederates.

And I quit.

I resign with great joy—not because I am defeated in this project, but because Orloff and his work and his way of life are bigger than anyone’s business or career or prestige and I want no part of any of that. You will call me a dropout, but I will go ahead with the healing I was trained for—and with no more dirt on my hands than I get from weeding the eggplant patch. You’ll never pin a malpractice on me because I am on to you. The papers Orloff signed are no good to you because Orloff exists and the distillate exists and I exist—and because of that people are just going to get better and they’ll pay for it by harvesting tomatoes and chopping wood. And here’s one more thing to think about. With Orloff—especially with me and Orloff—there’s more where that came from; more products, processes, ideas.

But you don’t want to hear any of this. You can’t, can you? Albert Verity, M.D.

Joe Trilling had a funny way of making a living. It was a good living, but of course he didn’t make anything like the bundle he could have in the city. On the other hand he lived in the mountains a half mile away from a picturesque village in clean air and piney-birchy woods along with lots of mountain laurel and he was his own boss. There wasn’t much competition for what he did; he had his wife and kids around all the time and more orders than he could fill. He was one of the night people and after the family had gone to bed he could work quietly and uninterruptedly. He was happy as a clam.

One night—very early morning, really—he was interrupted. Buppup, bup, bup. Knock at the window, two shorts, two longs. He froze, he whirled, for he knew that knock. He hadn’t heard it for years but it had been a part of his life since he was born. He saw the face outside and filled his lungs for a whoop that would have roused them at the fire station on the village green, but then he saw the finger on the lips and let the air out. The finger beckoned and Joe Trilling whirled again, turned down a flame, read a gauge, made a note, threw a switch and joyfully but silently dove for the outside door. He slid out, closed it carefully, peered into the dark.

“Karl?”

“Shh.”

There he was, edge of the woods. Joe Trilling went there and, whispering because Karl had asked for it, they hit each other, cursed, called each other the filthiest possible names. It would not be easy to explain this to an extra-terrestrial; it isn’t necessarily a human thing to do. It’s a cultural thing. It means, I want to touch you, it means I love you; but they were men and brothers, so they hit each other’s arms and shoulders and swore despicable oaths and insults,
until at last even those words wouldn’t do and they stood in the shadows, holding each other’s biceps and grinning and drilling into each other with their eyes. Then Karl Trilling moved his head side-wards toward the road and they walked away from the house.

“I don’t want Hazel to hear us talking,” Karl said “I don’t want her or anyone to know I was here. How is she?”

“Beautiful. Aren’t you going to see her at all—or the kids?”

“Yes but not this trip. There’s the car. We can talk there. I really am afraid of that bastard.”

“Ah,” said Joe. “How is the great man?”

“Po’ly,” said Karl. “But we’re talking about two different bastards. The great man is only the richest man in the world, but I’m not afraid of him, especially now. I’m talking about Cleveland Wheeler.”

“Who’s Cleveland Wheeler?”

They got into the car. “It’s a rental,” said Karl. “Matter of fact, it’s the second rental. I got out of the executive jet and took a company car and rented another—and then this. Reasonably sure it’s not bugged. That’s one kind of answer to your question, who’s Cleve Wheeler. Other answers would be the man behind the throne. Next in line. Multifaceted genius. Killer shark.”

“Next in line,” said Joe, responding to the only clause that made any sense. “The old man is sinking?”

“Officially—and an official secret—his hemoglobin reading is four. That mean anything to you, Doctor?”

“Sure does, Doctor. Malnutritive anemia, if other rumors I hear are true. Richest man in the world—dying of starvation.”

“And old age—and stubbornness—and obsession. You want to hear about Wheeler?”

“Tell me.”

“Mister lucky. Born with everything. Greek coin profile. Michaelangelo muscles. Discovered early by a bright-eyed elementary school, principal, sent to a private school, used to go straight to the teachers’ lounge in the morning and say what he’d been reading or thinking about. Then they’d tell off a teacher to work with him or go out with him, or whatever. High school at twelve, varsity track, basketball,
football and high-diving—three letters for each—yes, he graduated in three years, summa cum. Read all the textbooks at the beginning of each term, never cracked them again. More than anything else he had the habit of success.

“College, the same thing: turned sixteen in his first semester, just ate everything up. Very popular. Graduated at the top again, of course.”