"De Camp, L Sprague - Best Of L Sprague De Camp Uc" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

the male population of the United States was doing likewise. In growing hair the human race hadn't lost any of its capacity to sweat, and you'd pass out with the heat if you tried to walk anywhere on a hot day with any amount of clothes on. I can still remember holding on to a hydrant at Third Avenue and 6oth Street and trying not to faint, with the sweat pouring out the ankles of my pants and the buildings going round and round. After that I was sensible and stripped down to shorts like everyone else.
"In July Natasha, the gorilla in the Bronx Zoo, escaped from her cage and wandered around the park for hours before anyone noticed her. The zoo visitors all thought she was merely an unusually ugly member of their own species.
"If the hair played hob with the textile and clothing businesses generally, the market for silk simply disappeared. Stockings were just quaint things that our ancestors had worn, like cocked hats and penwigs.
"Neither Oliveira nor I took any vacation that summer, as we were working like fury on the hair problem. Roman promised me a cut of the reward when and if he won it.
"But we didn't get anywhere at all during the summer. V/hen classes started we had to slow down a bit on the research, as I was in my last year, and Oliveira had to teach. But we kept at it as best we could.
"It was funny to read the editorials in the papers. The Chicago Tribune even suspected a Red plot. You can imagine the time that the cartoonists for the New Yorker and Esquire had.
"With the drop in the price of cotton, the South was really flat on its back this time. I remember when the Harwick bill was introduced in Congress, to require every citizen over the age of five to be clipped at least once a week. A bunch of Southerners were back of it, of course. When that was defeated, largely on the argument of unconstitutionality, the you-ails put forward one requiring every person to be clipped before he'd be allowed to cross a state line. The theory was that human hair is a commodity, which it is sometimes, and that crossing a state line with a coat of the stuff, whether your own or someone else's, constituted interstate commerce, and brought you under control of the Federal Government. It looked for a while as though it would pass, but the Southerners finally accepted a substitote bill requiring all Federal employees, and cadets at the military and naval academies to be clipped.
"About this time-in the autumn of 1971-the cotton and textile interest got out a big advertising campaign to promote clipping. They had slogans, such as 'Don't be a Hairy Ape!' and pictures of a couple of male swimmers, one with hair and the other without, and a pretty girl turning in disgust from the hirsute swimmer and fairly pouncing on the clipped one.
"I don't know how much good their campaign would have done, but they overplayed their hand. They, and all the clothing outfits, tried to insist on boiled shirts, not only for evening wear, but for daytime as well. I never thought a long-suffering people would really revolt against the tyrant Style, but we did. The thing that really tore it was the inauguration of President Passavant. There was an unusually warm January thaw that year, and the President, the V. P., and all the Justices of the Supreme Court appeared without a stitch on above the waist and damn little below.
"We became a nation of confirmed near-nudists, just as did everybody else sooner or later. The one drawback to real nudism was the fact that, unlike the marsupials, man hasn't any natural pockets. So we compromised between the hair, and the need for something to hold fountain pens, money, and so forth, and our traditional ideas of modesty by adopting an up-to-date version of the Scottish sporran.
"The winter was a bad one for flu, and everybody who hadn't caught it the preceding winter got it now, so soon a hairless person became such a rarity that one wondered if the poor fellow had the mange.
"In May of 1972 we finally began to get somewhere. Oliveira had the bright idea-which both of us ought to have thought of sooner- of examining ectogыnic babies. Up to now nobody had noticed that they began to develop hair a little later than babies born the normal way. You remember that human ectogenesis was just beginning to be worked about then; test-tube babies aren't yet practical for large-scale production by a long shot, but we'll get there some day.
"Well, Oliveira found that if the ectogens were subjected to a really rigid quarantine, they never developed hair at all, at least not in more than the normal quantities. By really rigid quarantine, I mean that the air they breathed was heated to 8oo degrees C, and then liquefied, and run through a battery of cyclones, and washed with a dozen disinfectants. Their food was treated in a comparable manner. I don't quite see how the poor little fellows survived such unholy sanitation, but they did, and didn't grow hair-until they were
brought in contact with other human beings, or were injected with sera from the blood of hairy babies.
"Oliveira figured out that the cause of the hyperpilosity was what he'd suspected all along: another of these damned self-perpetuating protein molecules. As you know, you can't see a protein molecule, and you can't do much with it chemically because, if you do, it forthwith ceases to be a protein molecule. We have their structure worked out pretty well now, but it's been a slow process with lots of inferences from inadequate data; sometimes the inferences were right and sometimes they weren't.
"But to do much in the way of detailed analysis of the things you need a respectable quantity of them, and these that we were after didn't exist in even a disrespectable amount. Then Oliveira worked out his method of counting them. The reputation he made from that method is about the only permanent thing he got out of all this work.
"When we applied the method, we found something decidedly screwy-an ectogen's virus count after catching hyperpil was the same as it had been before. That didn't seem right: we knew that he had been injected with hyperpil molecules, and had come out with a fine mattress as a result.
"Then one morning I found Oliveira at his desk looking like a medieval monk who had just seen a vision after a forty-days' fast. (Incidentally, you try fasting that long and you'll see visions too, losts of 'em.) He said, 'Pat, don't buy a yacht with your share of that meelion. They cost too much to upkeep.'
"Huh?' was the brightest remark I could think of.
"'Look here,' he said, going up to the blackboard. It was covered with chalk diagrams of protein molecules. 'We have three proteins, alpha, beta, and gamma. No alphas have exeested for thousands of years. Now, you will note that the only deefference between the alpha and the beta is that these nitrogens-' he pointed '-are hooked onto thees chain instead of that one. You will also observe, from the energy relations wreeten down here, that, if one beta is eentroduced eento a set of aiphas, all the alphas will presently turn into betas.
"Now, we know now that all sorts of protein molecules are being assembled inside us all the time; most of them are unstable and break up again, or are inert and harmless, or lack the power of selfreproduction-anyway, nothing happens because of them. But, be-
cause they are so beeg and complicated, the possible forms they take are very many, and it is possible that once in a lopg time some new kind of protein appears with self-reproducing qualities; in other words, a virus. Probably that's how the various disease viruses got started, all because something choggled an ordinary protein molecule that was chust being feenished and got the nitrogens hooked on the wrong chains.
"'My idea is thees: The alpha protein, which I have reconstructed from what we know about its descendants beta and gamma, once exeested as a harmless and inert protein molecule in the human body. Then one day somebody heecupped as one of them was being formed, and presto! \Ve have a beta. But the beta is not harmless: It reproduces itself fast, and it inheebits the growth of hair on most of our bodies. So presently all our species, wheech at the time was pretty apish, catch this virus, and lose their hair. Moreover, it is one of the viruses that is transmeeted to the embryo, so the new babies don't have hair, either.
"'Well, our ancestors sheever a while, and then learn to cover themselves with animal skeens to keep warm, and also to keep fire. And so, the march of ceevilizations it is commence! Chust theenk- except for that one original beta protein molecule, we should probably today all be merely a kind of goreela or cheempanzee-anyway, an ordinary anthropoid ape.
"'Now, I feegure that what has happened is that another change in the form of the molecule has taken place, changing it from beta to gamma-and gamma is a harmless and inert leetle fellow, like alpha. So we are back where we started.
"Our problem, yours and mine, is to find how to turn the gammas with wheech we are all swarming back into betas. In other words, now that we have become all of a sudden cured of the disease that was endemic in the whole race for thousands of years, we want our disease back again. And I theenk I see how it can be done.'
"I couldn't get much more out of him; he went to work harder than ever. After several weeks he announced that he was ready to experiment on himself; his method consisted of a combination of a number of drugs-one of them was the standard cure for glanders in horses, as I recall-and a high-frequency electromagnetic fever.
"I wasn't very keen about it, because I'd gotten to like the fellow, and that awful dose he was going to give himself looked enough to kill a regiment. But he went right ahead.
"Well, it nearly did kill him. But after three days he was more or less back to normal, and was whooping at the discovery that the hair on his limbs and body was rapidly falling out. In a couple of weeks he had no more hair than you'd expect a Mexican professor of virology to have.
"But then our real surprise came, and it wasn't a pleasant one!
"We expected to be more or less swamped by publicity, and had made our preparations accordingly. I remember staring into Ohveira's face for a full minute and then reassuring him that he had trimmed his mustache to exact symmetry, and getting him to straighten my new necktie.
"Our epoch-making announcement dug up two personal calls from bored reporters, a couple of phone interviews from science editors, and not one photographer! We did make the science section of the New York Times, but with only about twelve lines of type-the paper merely stated that Professor Oliveira and his assistant-not named-had found the cause and cure of hyperpilosity; not a word about the possible effects of the discovery.
"Our contracts with the Medical Center prohibited us from exploiting our discovery commercially, but we expected that plenty of other people would be quick to do so as soon as the method was made public. But it didn't happen. In fact, we might have discovered a correlation between temperature and the pitch of the bullfrog's croak for all the splash we made.
"A week later Oliveira and I talked to the department head, Wheelock, about the discovery. Ohiveira wanted him to use his influence to get a dehairing clinic set up. But \Vheelock couldn't see it.
"We've had a couple of inquiries,' he admitted, 'but nothing to get excited about. Remember the rush there was when Zimmerman's cancer treatment came out? Well, there's been nothing like that. In fact, I-ah-doubt whether I personally should care to undergo your treatment, surefire though it may be, Doctor Ohiveira. I'm not in the least disparaging the remarkable piece of work you've done. But-ah"
-here he ran his fingers through the hair on his chest, which was over six inches long, thick, and a beautiful silky white-"you know, I've gotten rather fond of the old pelt, and I'd feel slightly indecent back in my bare skin. Also, it's a lot more economical than a suit of clothes. And-ah-if I may say so with due modesty-I don't think it's bad-looking. My family has always ridden me about my sloppy
clothes, but now the laugh's on them; not one of them can show a coat of fur like mine 1'
"Oliveira and I left sagging in the breeches a Mt. We inquired of people we knew, and wrote letters to a number of them, asking what they thought of the idea of undergoing the Oliveira treatment. A few said they might if enough others did, but most of them respanded in much the same vein that Doc WTheelock had; they'd gotten used to their hair, and saw no good reason for going back to their former glabrous state.
"So, Pat,' said Oliviera to me, 'it lukes as though we don't get much fame out of our discovery. But we may steel salvage a leetle fortune. You remember that meehion-dollar reward? I sent in my application as soon as I recovered from my treatment and we should hear from the government any day.'
"We did. I was up at his apartment, and we were talking about nothing in particular, when Mrs. 0. rushed in with the letter, squeaking, 'Abre la! Open eet, Roman!'
"He opened it without hurry, spread the sheet of paper out, and read it. Then he frowned and read it again. Then he laid it down, very carefully took out and lit the wrong end of a cork-tipped cigarette, and said in his levellest voice, 'I have been stupid again, Pat. I never thought that there might be a time-leemit on that reward offer. Now it seems that some crafty sanamabiche in Congress poot one een, so that the offer expired on May first. You remember, I mailed the claim on the nineteenth, and they got it on the twenty-first, three weeks too late!'
"I looked at Oliveira, and he looked at me and then at his wife, and she looked at him and then went without a word to the cabinet and got out two large bottles of tequila and three tumblers.
"Ohiveira pulled up three chairs around a little table, and settled with a sigh in one of them. 'Pat,' he said, 'I may not have a meelion dollars, but I have something more valuable by far-a woman who knows what is needed at a time like thees!'
"And that's the inside story of the Great Change, or at least of one aspect thereof. That's how it happens that, when we today speak of a platinum-blonde movie star, we aren't referring to her scalp hair alone, but the beautiful silvery pelt that covers her from crown to ankle.
"There was just one more incident. Bert Kafket had me up to his place to dinner a few nights later. After I had told him and his wife
about Ohiveira's and my troubles, he asked how I had made out on that depilatory-manufacturer stock I'd bought. 'I notice those stocks are back about where they started from before the Change,' he added.
"Didn't make anything to speak of,' I told him. 'About the time they started to slide down from their peak, I was too busy working for Roman to pay much attention to them. When I finally did look them up I was just able to unload with a few cents' profit per share. How did you do on those stocks you were so mysterious about last year?'
"Maybe you noticed my new car as you came in?' asked Bert with a grin. 'That's them. Or rather, it; there was only one, Jones and Galloway Company.'
"What do Jones and Galloway make? I never heard of them.'
"They make'-here Bert's grin looked as if it were going to run around his head and meet behind-'currycombs!'