But he must have, couldn't have, but he must have misread Ed's intent because his partner's next words were, "Not exactly, perhaps, but 1 do believe that many legends, even the more fantastic, may well have a basis in fact."
Mrs. Bullitt took Ed's words for ammunition. "You see." she snapped at Colin. "Your partner admits that it can be done."
But Colin was staring at Ed. Unbelieving.
"What are you talking about?" he half shouted at Ed.
"What legends and what facts?"
And Ed was looking him right in the eye and saying, "Almost any legend… or folk saying. Like 'dumb blonde' for example. You know that every once in a great while someone comes up missing one of the pigment-forming enzymes.
Naturally, they can't help but be blonde. But they are also mentally retarded, and seriously. Somebody noticed the two conditions, jumped to a vastly broader conclusion than the observation warranted, and there you are. But there was.some basis in fact."
Colin could only stare at Ed. The enzyme was phenylalanmase and the mental condition phenylpyruvic oligophrenia.
But Ed couldn't be serious about a Pegasus.
Or could he? Ed was going on. "And you remember the zoo on the continent that was back-breeding legendary animals?"
"Backbreeding legendary animals? They took modem cattle and backbred them until they had a cow that looked like an extinct ancestor. Where," he demanded, "where are you going to get me the germ plasm of a demigod to repeat the feat for a flying horse?"
Taking firm hold of his voice because he didn't know whether to laugh or hit somebody or just bang his head on the paneled and trophy-hung walls, Colin said to the room in general, "Thank you very much for your confidence in our ability. It is very flattering, but very much misplaced. We cannot build a flying horse. Thank you again and goodbye."
And he put a hand under Ed's elbow and almost shoved him out of the room, and into the passageway, the angry voice of Mrs. Bullitt following them out.
"You'll be back, I promise you. You'll be back, and remember, I won't be as easy to get along with next time."
Controlling himself, Colin slid the door shut gently.
He turned to Ed. "What got into you? You know as well as I do that we can't give her what she wants. Nobody can.*' "Of course I know it," Ed said. "But that woman isn't rational. I was hoping to at least gain us a little time to figure out something, anything. The way it is now. Lord knows what she'll do."
"I… I'm sorry, Ed," Colin started to say, but he was interrupted by the opening of the door they'd just come through. The Commodore emerged and slid it shut again. He stood rubbing the back of his white hair with the flat of one hand. "A flying horse," he said and shook his head. "A flying horse."
He looked at Colin. "I suppose it's impossible."
Colin didn't feel like going through that one again. He nodded.
"Are you sure?" the Commodore persisted. "I don't want to quote an old saw, but the one about doing the difficult right now and the impossible taking a little longer has a good deal to it, I think. We are doing things today as a matter of course that we used to know were impossible."
He smiled. "It used to be an obvious fact that what went up had to come down." He paused and looked from Colin to Ed and back to Colin again. "Have you checked any of our satellites lately?"
It struck Colin that the Commodore was beginning to sound like Harrison Bullitt. "I think I get your point, sir," he said, not because he did, but because the quicksand feeling was back and he wanted to get away from it and Abby Bullitt's office.
"No you don't," the Commodore said, suddenly blunt. "I thought of buying Ato's Pride, looked him over very carefully. Then I realized mat if you can do for food animals what you did for him, then you've got something I can use. I could give you an initial contract and I could defend it, I'm sure.
But with Abby throwing her weight around there's more to it than being willing to justify your actions to an investigating committee. She's thorough and she's fast. You'd probably get hung up because one of your hogs dribbled on the sidewalk."
He shook CoHn's hand and then Ed's. "You think about it," he said. "And you look me up when you get Abby Bullitt off your back. Hear?"
And after the older man had left them to go back up the ramp, it was Ed who broke the gloomy silence that he'd left behind him. "You know," he said, "he might just be right."
"About getting Mrs. Bullitt off our backs? I'm convinced."
"No, about what we know is impossible. We know that a horse can't fly and we know why not. Maybe if we turn the 256 F.A. Javawhole thing upside down and start by assuming that a horse can fly. Now what can we come up with?"
But Colin's mind was numb. A horse can fly. Now the Bullitt virus was getting to Ed. A horse can fly. "Forget it," he said aloud. "Let's go secure Ato and then check out."
Their stallion was already in his stall when they got to the animal-quarters level just below the arena proper.
Slatted concrete floors, cushioned, with lagoons below to catch the droppings. Lagoons constantly running with their odor-controlling washes. Show feeds, specially formulated to inhibit the action of gas-forming bacteria. Everything doing its job of holding down, of elminating, the characteristic offal odor. Doing it well too, but when all was said and done, a stable still smelled like a stable.
More than once Colin had wondered why the whole problem couldn't be eliminated at the source, so to speak, by just not feeding the animals at shows in the usual way. Penetradermal units were standard items, available at any lab supply house. The concentrates were not expensive, and they need be used only during indoor shows and perhaps a short time before.
A unit to feed an animal the size and weight of a horse need use an area no larger than a man's palm. There was no pain reaction that he'd been able to detect; in fact, some of their lab animals even seemed to enjoy the warmed-air caress of a penetra-dermal feeding unit.
But. Coiin supposed, a practice taken more or less for granted in one field was too startling a break with the traditions of another to be even talked about, much less adopted.
Besides, from what he'd seen of horse fanciers in recent months, he was beginning to think they rather liked the smell of horses. He knew that for himself, he was beginning to find it not altogether unpleasant.
They rubbed their animal thoroughly behind his ears, accepted the condolences of the attendants for their hard tuck at his not being able to compete, showed their pass-out badges at the Manager's window.
He was a balding man behind the grilled opening. He ran a finger down the tally-board at his elbow, ticking off their badge numbers.
"Mr. Hall? Mr. West?" he said. And when Colin nodded, went on.
"Message for you to call this number." He passed a small folded slip through the bars of his grille.
"Thank you," Colin said and unfolded the paper. "It's the Dean," he said to Ed. "I wonder what he wants?"
"I can guess," Ed said, "and i don't think I'm going to like it."
Colin dialed the University and flipped the phone switch to muitispeak so that Ed could hear.
The Dean sounded embarrassed and he talked a great deal of the fine work Colin and Ed were doing. He made a passing mention of a board of trustees. He assured Colin and Ed of the warm personal regard in which he held both of them. But when he was through talking and the phone was back on its cradle his message was clear.
The University no longer needed their unique talents in the making of its tutor-tapes. Not now, nor in the foreseeable future.
"She moves fast," Ed said. "Fast."
"She said we'd be back. I guess we could have more or less expected her to do something, but 1 never thought that this was the kind of pressure she had in mind. It… it doesn't seem civilized somehow."
"Breaking a man's rice bowl seldom is," Ed said. "But cheer up, we still have an office with our name on the door."