Peg moaned. Warfield said “And what did the evaporator say to that?”
“‘Thank you very much.’ You see,” said Robin solemnly, “It was a retort courteous.”
“Do you think,” gasped Peg, “that we’ll be able to put a stop to that kind of thing with these treatments?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Robin instantly. “The generation of puns is not a phenomenon of the immature mind. The repetition of them is.”
“There is probably a flaw in that,” said Peg. “I have my hopes, anyway.”
“Of course there’s a flaw in it. But didn’t it sound nice?”
“Here,” said Warfield, handing him a glass. “Bottoms up.”
Robin rose, accepted the glass, bowed from the waist, and said, “Well, here’s to champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. Exit wastrel.” And he drained the glass.
“Now if you’ll rope him and throw him,” said Warfield, approaching with a hypodermic.
Robin sat, quite relaxed, as the needle sank into his arm.
“Never felt a thing,” he said briskly, and then collapsed on the floor. Peg caught his head before it could strike, and lowered it gently. Kneeling beside him, she took his wrist. His pulse felt as if it had lost its flywheel.
“Post-pituitary syncope,” said Warfield. “I half expected that. He’ll be all right. It’s compensated for. There just isn’t any way of slowing down neopituitrin. Watch what happens when the pineal starts kicking up.”
Peg suddenly clutched at the limp wrist. “He’s… he’s—Oh Mel, it’s stopped.”
“Hang on, Peg. Just a few more seconds, and it should—”
Under Peg’s desperate fingers, the pulse beat came in full and strong, as suddenly as if it had been push button tuned. With it, Peg began to breathe again. She saw Warfield wipe his eyes. Sweat, probably.
Robin’s eyes opened slowly, and an utterly beatific expression crossed his face. He sighed luxuriously. “Beautiful,” he said clearly.
“What is it, Robin?”
“Did you see it? I never thought of that before. It’s the most perfectly functional, aesthetically balanced thing produced by the mind of man.” Sheer wonder suffused his face. “I sawone!”
“What was it?”
“A baseball bat!”
Warfield’s chin came up. “Well I’ll be… Peg, don’t laugh.” Peg was hardly likely to. “You know, he’s about right?”
“I’ll think about aesthetics later,” said Peg with some heat. “Is he going to be all right?”
“That’s all of the immediate reactions that I suspected. There’ll be some accelerated mental states—melancholia and exuberance alternating pretty rapidly and pretty drastically. He’ll have to have some outlet for stepped-up muscular energy. Then he’ll sleep.”
“I’m glad it’s over.”
“Over?” said Warfield, and went out. She called after him, but he went straight out the office door.
Robin sat up and shook his head violently. “How did—”
Peg took his upper arm. “Sit up, Robin. Up and go.” She raised him, but instead of regaining the chair he rose and pulled away from her. He paced rapidly down the laboratory, turned and came back. His face held that pitiable, puzzled look, with the deep crease between his brows. He walked past her, his eyes distant; then he whirled suddenly on her. His smile was brilliant. “Peg!” he shouted. “I didn’t expect to see you here!” His eyes drifted past her face, gazed over her shoulder, and he turned and looked around the walls. “Where, incidentally, is ‘here’?”
“Dr. Warfield’s. Mel’s laboratory.”
“Mel. Oh… Mel. Yes, of course. I must be getting old.”
“Perhaps you are.”
He put his hand on his chest, just below his throat. “What would my thymus be doing about now? Trying to think of something quotable to say as its last words?”
“It may be some time,” she smiled. “But I imagine it’s on its way out. Get your coat on. I’ll go home with you.”
“What on earth for?”
She considered, and then decided to tell him the truth. “You’re full of sterones and hormones and synthetic albuminoids, you know. It isn’t dangerous, but glandular balance is a strange thing, and from the treatment you just got you’re liable to do anything but levitate—and knowing you,” she added, “even that wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Gosh. I didn’t realize that I might be a nuisance to people.”
“You didn’t realize… why, there was a pretty fair list of possibilities of what might happen to you in that release you signed.”
“There was? I didn’t read it.”
“Robin English, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you.”
“Haven’t you already done it?” He shrugged. “What’s the odds? Mel said I’d have to sign it, and I took his word for it.”
“I wish,” said Peg fervently, “that I could guarantee the change in your sense of values the way I can the change in your hormone adjustment. You’re going to have to be educated! And let this be the first lesson—never sign anything without reading it first! What are you laughing at, you idiot?”
“I was just thinking how I would stall things if I go to work for some big outfit and have to sign a payroll,” he chuckled.
“Get your coat,” said Peg, smiling. “And stop your nonsense.”
They took a taxi, after all. In spite of Robin’s protests, Peg wouldn’t chance anything else after Robin:
Nearly fainted on the street from a sudden hunger, and when taken to a restaurant got petulant to the point of abusiveness when he found there was no tabasco in the place, advancing a brilliant argument with the management to the effect that they should supply same to those who desire it even if what the customer had ordered was four pieces of seven-layer cake.
Ran half a block to give a small boy with a runny nose his very expensive embroidered silk handkerchief.
Bumped into a lamp-post, lost his temper and swung at it, fracturing slightly his middle phalanx annularis.
Indulged in a slightly less than admirable remorseful jag in which he recounted a series of petty sins—and some not so petty at that—and cast wistful eyes at the huge wheels of an approaching tractor-trailer.
Went into gales of helpless laughter over Peg’s use of the phrase “Signs of the times” and gaspingly explained to her that he was suffering from sinus of the thymus.
And the payoff—the instantaneous composition of eleven verses of an original song concerning one “Stella with the Springy Spine” which was of a far too questionable nature for him to carol at the top of his voice the way he did. She employed a firmness just short of physical force and at last managed to bundle him into a cab, in which he could horrify no one but the driver, who gave Peg a knowing wink which infuriated her.
After getting in his rooms—a feat which required the assistance of Landlady Gridget’s passkey, since he had lost his, and the sufferance of a glance of wild surmise from the good lady—Robin, who had been unnaturally silent for all of eight minutes shucked off his coat and headed for the studio couch in one continuous movement. He rolled off his feet and onto the couch with his head buried in the cushions.
“Robin—are you all right?”
“Mm-m-m.”
She looked about her.
Robin’s two-and-kitchenette was a fantastic place. She had never dreamed that the laws of gravity would permit such a piling-up of miscellany. There were two guitars on an easy-chair, one cracked across the head. A clarinet case with little holes punched in it lay on the floor by the wall. Curious, she bent and lifted the lid. It was lined with newspaper, and in it were two desiccated bananas and a live tarantula. She squeaked and dropped the cover.