Monroe-Alpha's smile was a little bit forced. "Perhaps we aren't talking about the same thing. After all, you came from a period when the natural life had already been sullied by over-emphasis on machines. Your evaluations were already distorted."
Smith himself was beginning to get a little heated. "I hate to tell you, but you don't know what you're talking about. Country life in my day, miserable as it was, was tolerable in direct proportion to the extent to which it was backed by industrialization. They may not have had electric light and running water, but they had Sears Roebuck, and everything that implies."
"Had what?" asked Hamilton.
Smith took time out to explain mail-order shopping. "But what you're talking about means giving up all that-just the noble primitive, simple and self-sufficient. He's going to chop down a tree-who sold him the ax? He wants to shoot a deer-who made his gun? No, mister, I know what I'm talking about-I've studied economics." (That to Monroe-Alpha, thought Hamilton, with a repressed grin.) "There never was and there never could be a noble simple creature such as you described. He'd be an ignorant savage, with dirt on his skin and lice in his hair. He would work sixteen hours a day to stay alive at all. He'd sleep in a filthy hut on a dirt floor. And his point of view and his mental processes would be just two jumps above an animal."
Hamilton was relieved when the discussion was broken into by another chime from the annunciator. It was just as well-Cliff was getting a little white around the lips. He couldn't take it. But, damn it, he had it coming to him. He wondered how a man could be as brilliant as Monroe-Alpha undoubtedly was-about figures-and be such a fool about human affairs.
The plate showed McFee Norbert. Hamilton would have liked not to have admitted him, but it was not politic. The worm had the annoying habit of dropping in on his underlings, which Hamilton resented, but was helpless to do anything about-as yet.
McFee behaved well enough, for McFee. He was visibly impressed by Monroe-Alpha, whose name and position he knew, but tried not to show it. Toward Smith he was patronizingly supercilious. "So you're the man from out of the past? Well, well-how amusing! You did not time it very well."
"What do you mean?"
"Ah, that would be telling! But ten years from now might have been a better time-eh, Hamilton?" He laughed.
"Perhaps," Hamilton answered shortly, and tried to turn attention away from Smith. "You might talk to Monroe-Alpha about it. He thinks we could improve things." He regretted the remark at once, for McFee turned to Monroe-Alpha with immediate interest.
"Interested in social matters, sir?"
"Yes-in a way."
"So am I. Perhaps we can get together and talk."
"It would be a pleasure, I'm sure, Felix, I must leave you now."
"So must I," McFee said promptly. "May I drop you off?"
"Don't trouble."
Hamilton broke in. "Did you wish to see me, McFee?"
"Nothing important. I hope to see you at the Club tonight."
Hamilton understood the circumlocution. It was a direct order to report-at McFee's convenience. McFee turned back to Monroe-Alpha, adding, "No trouble at all. Right on my way."
Hamilton watched them leave together with vague discomfort.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Burn him down at once-"
LONGCOURT PHYLLIS showed up for a moment in the waiting room of the development center and spoke to Hamilton. "Hello, Filthy."
"H'lo, Phil."
"Be with you in a moment. I've got to change." She was dressed in complete coveralls, with helmet. An inhaler dangled loose about her neck.
"Okay."
She returned promptly, dressed in more conventional and entirely feminine clothes. She was unarmed. He looked her over approvingly. "That's better," he said. "What was the masquerade?"
"Hmm? Oh, you mean the aseptic uniform. I'm on a new assignment-control naturals. You have to be terrifically careful in handling them. Poor little beggars!"
"Why?"
"You know why. They're subject to infections. We don't dare let them roll around in the dirt with the others. One little scratch, and anything can happen. We even have to sterilize their food."
"Why bother? Why not let the weak ones die out?"
She looked annoyed. "I could answer that conventionally by saying that the control naturals are an invaluable reference plane for genetics-but I won't. The real point is that they are human beings. They are just as precious to their parents as you were to yours, Filthy."
"Sorry. I didn't know my parents."
She looked suddenly regretful. "Oh-Felix, I forgot!"
"No matter. I never could see," he continued, "why you want to bury yourself in that cage of monkeys. It must be deadly."
"Huh uh. Babies are fun. And they're not much trouble. Feed 'em occasionally, help them when they need it, and love them a lot. That's all there is to it."
"I've always favored the bunghole theory myself."
"The what?"
"You take the child at an early age and place it in a barrel. You feed it through the bunghole. At the age of seventeen, you drive in the bung."
She grinned at him. "Filthy, for a nice man you have a nasty sense of humor. Seriously, your method leaves out the most essential part of a child's rearing-the petting he gets from his nurses."
"I don't seem to recall much of it. I thought the basic idea was to take care of its physical needs and otherwise leave it strictly alone."
"You're way out of date. They used to have a notion of that sort, but it was silly-contra-biological." It occurred to her that Hamilton's faulty orientation might have its origin in the injudicious application of that outmoded, unfounded theory. The natural urges of mothers had prevented it ever being applied thoroughly in most cases, but his case was different. He had been what was, to her, the most tragic thing on earth-a baby that never left the development center. When she found one of these exceptions among her own charges she lavished on it extra affection and a little over. But she said nothing of this to him.
"Why," she continued, "do you think animals lick their young?"
"To cleanse them, I suppose."
"Nonsense! You can't expect an animal to appreciate cleanliness. It's a caress, an expression of instinctive affection. So-called instincts are instructive, Felix. They point to survival values."
He shrugged. "We're here."
They entered the restaurant-a pay-restaurant-he had chosen, and went to a private room reserved for them. They started the meal in silence. His usual sardonic humor was dampened by the thing in the back of his mind. This business of the Survivors Club-he had entered into it light-heartedly, but now it was developing ominous overtones which worried him. He wished that Mordan-the government, rather -would act.
He had not gotten ahead as fast in the organization as he had hoped. They were anxious to use him, willing to accept, to demand, his money, but he still had not obtained a clear picture of the whole network. He still did not know who was senior to McFee Norbert, nor did he know the numbers of the whole organization.
Meantime, daily the tightrope became more difficult to walk.
He had been permitted to see one thing which tended to show that the organization was older and larger than he had guessed. McFee Norbert had escorted him personally, as one of the final lessons in his education in the New Order, to a place in the country, location carefully concealed from Hamilton, where he was permitted to see the results of clandestine experiments in genetics.
Beastly little horrors!
He had viewed, through one-way glass, "human" children whose embryonic gills had been retained and stimulated. They were at home in air or water, but required a humid atmosphere at all times. "Useful on Venus, don't you think?" McFee had commented.
"We assumed too readily," he continued, "that the other planets in this system were not useful. Naturally the leaders will live here, most of the time, but with special adaptation, quite useful supporting types could remain permanently on any of the planets. Remind me to show you the anti-radiation and low-gravity types."