Slow Sculpture (31 page)

Can you give me a brief description of the process you used to produce the serum you used on those mice? You know the one I mean. Never mind the technicalities.

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research.

P.S. by hand.
Seal your response
.

G. Q.-P.

Interoffice Memo.

Sure. You start with the spore of
Mucor Mucedo
. What you want is the endospore, but you don’t have to excavate for it. Just let it develop the germ tube and nip it off before it branches. Stick these in your bell jar or whatever you’re using for a quick hard vacuum and freeze-dry it. You’ll get an aqueous vapor that can be bubbled through distilled water until it saturates. Run it into your still. What comes out of the top pipe you can throw away. Same with the bottom. The one in the middle is what you call the serum, though I wouldn’t—it’s an aromatic extract. Does that answer your question?

A.V.

Interoffice Memo

To: The President

Here is Turner’s question which mightily impressed me; that man knows his trade—and Dr. Verity’s answer. For our Sales Manager’s information (not yours, of course)
Mucor Mucedo
is the common black mold, found in soil practically everywhere. The endospore is just what the word says—the inner white substance of the spore. The germ tubes grow out of the spore, which cracks open its black rind to let it out. Precisely what happens in that sort of distillation I can’t say without an analytical series.

It is, as Turner suggested, rather alarmingly simple and inexpensive. Shall I suggest to Dr. Verity that he try to synthesize it?

Geoffrey Quest-Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research

ETHICOLOSSUS, INC.

Office of the President

Interoffice Memo

Good thinking!

Samuel Rebate, M.D.

President

Interoffice Memo

To: Geoffrey Quest-Profitte

Director of Research

Good thinking!

Tip Turner

Director of Sales

Interoffice Memo

SEALED: PERSONAL

Geoff, what in God’s name is wrong with the people upstairs? Synthesize it? Sure I can synthesize it. It’ll take twenty-two steps and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and time and who knows if the final distillate will do the same thing? Okay, okay—I’ll get to it (though better not let Prexy’s boy find out about the requisitions it’s going to take) because after all I only work here. But why on earth synthesize something that’s so easy to come by already? Are we going to price life-saving right out of the market? Sometimes I fail to see the humor in the ethical drug business. Or the ethics either. Don’t mind me, Geoff. I’m just blowing off steam. You’ll get your goddam synthesis. Thanks for the private shoulder.

Disgustedly,

Al

Endorsement:
Hardly a loyal attitude, that.

Howlan Beagle, Colonel (Ret.)

Director of Security

From the desk of:

Uriah Legree

Assistant to the President

Picked up Mr. Flack at prearranged time, 8:00
A.M.
Tuesday, driving personal car. Arrived vicinity Orloff residence shortly after 9:00. After considerable excursions up and down unfashionable streets without success, queried local gas station, asking for Max Orloff. Attendant, Grand ol’ Opry type, overalls, old straw hat even, cigar stub interfering with diction, said Balzac, Baldaz, Boldass or Bolaz? —difficult to tell which and not understandable until later. Mr. Flack said again, Max Orloff and the native said, Yeah, that’s ol’ Baldaz (or Balzac or some such) and gave explicit directions.

House on top of hill behind screen of trees—three, four acres cultivated, garden vegetables, grapes, cow, duck pond, rabbit hutch. Sign on door W
E LIVE WITHOUT CLOTHES.
I
F THIS MAKES YOU
UNCOMFORTABLE PLEASE RING AND WE WILL DRESS.
I
F NOT, PLEASE KNOCK
. Reached for doorbell. Mr. Flack stopped me and knocked, said always take the sucker at his own measure.

Door open, man in his forties wearing hair to shoulders, beard period. Waved us in asking nothing. Big room, beams, fireplace, loom. Weaving at loom young woman wearing long yellow hair period. Smiled. Second young woman comes in door at back, suppose kitchen, wearing full skirt long black hair period, says, Oh, hello, I’ll get tea. Started to say no. Mr. Flack said, Thanks yes. Man said, That’s Joyce, woman at loom, that’s Jocelyn. Jocelyn ties off thread, comes to us, kisses Mr. Flack, kisses me just after I caught Mr. Flack’s Hold Still signal. Mr. Flack introduces himself and me and says we’re from Ethicolossus. The man acts very glad, says he’s Max Orloff. Sit down. Nothing to sit on but great big half-filled bright-colored velvet bags. Mr. Flack sits on one, his weight makes it shape itself like a kind of chair without legs. I try one carefully, lose balance, fall into it, it catches me, sure enough a chair, much too low but comfortable. Orloff says, Jocelyn made them. Jocelyn sits on the floor in front of, between us. Smiles a lot.

Mr. Flack tells Orloff how impressed everyone at Ethicolossus is with him and his work and a lot more about saving the world from misery and pain. Orloff takes it all in as if he believes every word and after a while I think he really does. Mr. Flack doing all talking, slow and easy, Jocelyn says to me Like to see the place? Mr. Flack flashes me a quick nod and Jocelyn gets up and holds out hand. Don’t want hand, don’t want to go, but Mr. Flack gives signal again and I get up. Jocelyn keeps hand. Very unsettling. Go out through kitchen, brick and iron stove, burning wood I guess. Beams, cast-iron and copper, tile floor. Big. See larder, root cellar, spring house, bedrooms with mattress covering whole floor, twenty cats with names, stories, four dogs, doves. Jocelyn tells how they live off the land, buy only salt, flour, matches and the like, not even sugar, they keep bees. Orloff’s lab. Like an alchemist’s workshop—lot of stuff usually glass is ceramic. Jocelyn says Joyce makes it.

On the way back in she stops and takes both my hands and says, Oh, please, will Ethicolossus buy Max’s discovery? Said I don’t know,
but maybe. She says, Oh, and tears come into her eyes. Says it’s been very hard for a long time. Max could lose the place. It would take such a little bit to let him keep it. Went back in. Joyce has tray with mugs. All go into big room. Mr. Flack and Orloff heads together over papers, Max has Mr. Flack’s pen. Joyce says, Tea? I don’t want it but Mr. Flack takes his and gives me the look. I take the big mug, guess Joyce made that, too, took a drink. Herbs. Awful. Mr. Flack drank his all up, so me too. Everybody happy enough to make a man puke. We leave, both girls kiss us, afraid Max Orloff might, too.

In car, Mr. Flack laughs all the way down the hill, says, You’d never believe what we got the process for—fifty dollars, a lousy fifty dollars. Only Orloff does not know that and will not until he shows those papers to a lawyer. Told him Orloff about to lose the place. Mr. Flack said, Good, glad we got there before he moved. Said this world is sharks and minnows and the minnows live to get eaten, that’s what they are for.

Dropped off Mr. Flack at Ethicolossus, proceeded to county airport for second part of investigation. Lunched at airport, caught Flight 803 as planned, landed at Breed City 3:18
P.M.
Hired car, proceeded to Mollie Verity neighborhood, checked out house. Trees on street made it like tunnel, houses far apart, old-fashioned, gingerbread, porches, porticos, porte cocheres. Old but neat, paint bright. Shutters on most, wide lawns, picket fences, flowers. Verity house light gray with green shutters. Drive to corner, candy store. Call. Say I work with Dr. Verity, just passing through. Miss Verity sounds very hospitable. Drive back and park. Little lady bounces off porch glider, meets me halfway up front walk, takes both hands. Different thing from that Jocelyn altogether. Eyes bright as headlights, hair graying but not much and pulled back so tight it hurt into little bun. Apple cheeks really. Looked like all her own teeth. Gingham dress, blue with white polka dots and white collar and white tea apron, looked like that what’s-his-name that used to paint
Post
covers. Rockwell. Harder to believe than naked Orloff.

Inside, not a word until lemonade in tall glass with ice and homemade ginger and lemon cookies. Then all about Albert, how is Albert,
is he working too hard, does he look peak-ed? Never had to say I don’t see Dr. Verity one month to the next. She carried it all.

Have to say if I didn’t see this woman myself, couldn’t believe both her and the medical report Col. Beagle gave me to read. Report said total terminal, metastasis, gone everywhere, weight less than 80 pounds, delirium to coma. Then spontaneous remission. But all that only months ago, now healthiest little lady around, full of bounce, laughing, always on the move. Said it herself—cancer did her good. Never had so much energy before, nor so much fun.

No trouble at all getting her to talk about it. About Al Verity either. Sun rises and sets on him. Golden boy. Not just family pride, real miracle-worker, all that. Couldn’t get her to say what if anything he’d done. She was too far gone to know.

But she said this, she said she came out of the haze and the pain laughing. She says she never felt so good in all her life, better even than now. She said she saw colors she had never seen before, had no names for them. Shifting, balanced patterns, moving mosaics. Everything part of the colors—sound—click of a spoon, footsteps, airplane—translated into the colors, joined them. Then, dreams—impossible flying and living and feeling dreams, realer than most real things. And all the while feeling great.

Then hungry. Couldn’t get enough. Her folks and friends laughed, then got worried. Gained eighteen pounds in three weeks, all of it in the right places, kept on feeling good, so not to worry.

Gave me a piece of fruitcake, says it’s Albert’s favorite, says that I should give it to him.

Somebody else better do that. At least till he finds out from someone else.

Like my job. Lot of different things to do all the time. Never had a worse morning, though, or a better afternoon. Maybe some day see that lady again.

Expense account attached.

Uriah Legree

Assistant to the President.

Endorsement:
I attest to the accuracy of Legree’s photographic eye
and telegraphic prose. I cannot completely identify with his sketches of me, but then, why cavil? That is not the issue. What is most seriously the issue is that the treatment she had, however she got it or from whom, seems to be psychedelic or at least euphoric. That won’t do.

Genteel Flack

Director, Public Relations

Endorsement:
What is overridingly important—and I am astonished at the reluctance of both these gentlemen to point it out—is that this Orloff is a nudist with long hair who has an open and irregular arrangement with not one, but two females. I would advise strongly against any association with a person of this sort. One can readily assume what his politics is. There are more kinds of security, apparently, than these gentlemen realize.

Howlan Beagle, Col. (Ret.)

Director of Security

Endorsement:
As the long-haired man would doubtless say, the Colonel can cool it. With those signed papers in hand there is no danger of any such association. Dr. Quest-Profitte: when you have read through this, see what you can do about getting the euphoric effect out of the distillate.

Samuel Rebate, M.D.

President

Interoffice Memo

Al, I’ve been studying your diagrams of the aromatic rings in the Orloff distillate, as well as your chromatography charts, and it seems to me that there may possibly be a parallel or analogical similarity between some of these fractions and such compounds as psilocybin. If so, there may be unexpected and certainly unwanted side effects. Will you please check this out for me?

Geoffrey Quest- Profitte, M.D.

Director of Research

Interoffice Memo

SEALED: PERSONAL

I’m impressed. I really wouldn’t have thought you or anyone could have discovered that analogue by the rough reports I sent up, though it is there if you know what to look for. The answer is yes—the stuff gives a tremendous high and I have the happiest mice in the world. If you’re worried that people might buy it for that, like glue-sniffers, forget it—it seems to have no effect on anyone but cancer patients. It’ll take a lot of testing to prove that out, but it seems to be the case—so much so that I was about to broach the subject of a line of research to investigate the distillate as a diagnostic.

Would you favor such an approach? I believe it would bear fruit—and, rather quickly, at that.

Work progresses on the synthesis, which I still think is a vast waste of time, but indications are that the synthetic product will work as well as the natural derivative.

By the way, I dropped over to see Orloff the other night and he was in seventh heaven. He showed me the agreements with Ethicolossus and I find them extremely generous. It’s going to make a great deal of difference to a very good man.

Right?

Al

Interoffice Memo

To: Albert Verity M.D.

Al, you’ll have to get the euphoric effect right out of the distillate. Dr. Rebate, Mr. Flack, Mr. Turner and I have conferred on the matter and it’s unanimous. The thing to shoot for is an effect no more marked than that of the common tranquilizers or so-called psychic energizers. That much would be fine. Can you do it?