"I wish I could help, Franklin my boy. Your work is okay. But I can't overrule the Ego unless I'm ready to fire him, and you know what would happen if I told him to keep somebody in his department he didn't like."
"Are you his boss or aren't you?" said Hahn with heat.
"Sometimes I wonder. I know the Ego is a bastard of the first water, but he is a genius and he does bring in the money." Ben Jaffe heaved himself out of his chair and came around his desk to pat Hahn's shoulder. "Don't take it too hard, Frank. You'll always have a good job somewhere."
Franklin Hahn was cleaning out his desk just before five when Cassia MacDermott and Remington Dallas came in. Cassia said:
"Oh, Frank, we wanted to say how sorry we are to hear you've been fired and to thank you for what you did this afternoon."
Hahn shrugged. "That was nothing."
"We also wanted to ask if you wouldn't congratulate us on our engagement."
"What?"
"Yes. I guess we really are Cornzan and Lululu spiritually."
"Uh-huh," said Hahn as Dallas stood beaming silently. "Have a good time, kids."
In leaving, they passed Sorokin coming in. Cassia said: "I'm sorry about your snake, Ilya. Were you devoted to him?"
Sorokin shrugged. "Is nothing. Snakes not responsive pets, and Sasha cost too much to feed."
"I always wanted to appear with him in a snake-charming act — 'Cassia and Sasha.' Good-night."
Sorokin said: "I, too, have heard, my dear Hahn. Perhaps you can explain this?"
"What's that?"
"Is the missing capsule of anesthol. When I tried to shoot Dallas, the gun would not discharge, so I threw it. Afterwards, while supervising removal of Sasha's remains, I picked this up from the floor where Knight had stood."
"You think he slipped you the gun empty on purpose, so we'd get our heads cut off by Remington?"
"That is what I think."
"But whv? I know the Ego's an egregious kind of character
"Because I, in a moment of foolish rage, told him about my new somnone-beta. His quick mind seized the implications of my stupid boast. Perhaps, he thought, my process is not yet perfected or recorded, so if he can arrange my death it will go to the grave with me. Thus the ruin of the radio-television business will be averted."
"What are you going to do? Call the gendarmes?"
"We have nothing like proof. Better leave it alone and content ourselves with milking a few million from WCNQ."
"You mean that 'we' editorially, don't you?"
"No. I mean you and me. Would you not like a million dollars?"
"Sure, but why me?" said Hahn. "You saved my life this afternoon."
"No-o, I can't say I did. I chased Remington, but you were getting away from him when I caught him."
"The will was there. Besides, you have now been fired on partly my account. You have talked as if you had good business sense, so you are my partner. I need someone to handle business details, and my last partner I had to put in jail. Gather your stuff, please."
A month later, on a Saturday morning, Franklin Hahn sat at his desk at the Sorokin Laboratories looking at a big beautiful check representing his cut of the first instalment paid by WCNQ to suppress Sorokin's patent on the somnone-beta process. Hahn telephoned Cassia to tell her of his luck.
"That's wonderful!" she said. "I wish I could have seen the Ego's face. How much money did you say? ... Can I call you back in a few minutes? ... G'bye."
Ten minutes later Cassia called Hahn back. "I just wanted to call up Remington to break our engagement."
"Huh?"
"Yes. He's a beautiful hunk of man, but as you said he has no more brains than Sasha had. Now I wondered if you'd like to take me out tonight?"
"Would I!" howled Hahn. "And I don't even have to buy a toupee?"
Five minutes later Franklin Hahn hung up with an expression of imbed lie bliss. This expression flickered out for a second as he caught Sorokin's eye from across the room. It seemed to Hahn that the biochemist was looking at him as if he were one of the smaller experimental animals in the laboratories.
Sorokin did not tell Hahn that he was making an ass of himself; he merely conveyed that opinion in one piercing glance and turned back to his papers.
But then, thought Hahn, Ilya's old and sour and cynical and has probably never been in love.
Throwback
"Thousand-pound men!" said the small-sharp-dapper type.
The tweedy-professor type spoke loudly over the whine of the turbojets: "You've never been to the gigantanth reservation?"
"No," said small-and-sharp. "I seen pictures of 'em in a Sunday paper, but I never been on the ground in these Ozarks. Flown over 'em lots of times, but never had occasion to stop off until now."
"My dear chap! After you've signed up your football players in Springfield, drop over to Mushogee and I'll take you out to the reservation."
"How do I get there?" said small-and-sharp, dubiously.
"There's an airline; but, if I were you, I'd take the train. You can't really see the country whizzing over it ten miles up." The speaker took a card and scribbled on it. "Here you are. I'm Frybush; teach anthropology at Toronto University. I'm down here to look at the gigantanths myself."
"My name's Grogan; Oliver Grogan," said the other. "Manager of the Chicago Wolves." They shook hands. "Wouldn't there be any ... uh ... danger? Those thousand-pound ape-men don't sound like the kind of guys you'd ask in for a friendly game of stud."
Professor Frybush snorted. "Not at all. The government agent watches them, and any that turn mean are shuffled off to where they can't bother people."
"You mean they bump them?"
"No! I told you the courts have held Gigatttanthropus to be legally a human being, with the rights and privileges of such. They just move them to another part of the reservation, where they can't pull arms and legs off normal-sized visitors when they lose their tempers."
Grogan winced visibly. Frybush continued: "What's the matter, don't you want to go? You don't have to; I just thought I'd do you a favor. Speaking of which —"
"Oh, sure, I'll go. Glad to. But say, where did these things come from? I thought things like that got extinct a million years ago."
Frybush clucked. "They did, but they were re-created."
"How can you do that, huh? I don't want nobody re-creating a dinosaur or something in my backyard."
Frybush smiled. "Ever hear of the brothers Heck?"
"Nope."
"They were a pair of Germans who re-created the extinct aurochs a couple of centuries ago."
"Come again? The extinct what?"
Frybush looked down through the port at the fiat brown earth far below, in which the river systems made little sets of lines like the veins in a dead leaf.
"The aurochs was a big wild cow that lived in Europe down to about 1600; something like a Texas longhorn. Although the aurochs was killed off in a wild state, it had interbred with domestic cattle, especially in Spain and Hungary. The Hecks collected modern cattle that showed traces of aurochs blood and bred back to the ancestral form. It proved easier than they expected; in a few generations they had a herd of real aurochs. You can see the brutes in parks in Europe today."
"You scientific guys," said Grogan, "sure think of crazy things. Is that what they did with these gigan ... these ape-men?"
"Roughly speaking, yes. When extra-uterine gestation — test-tube babies to you — was perfected after the World Wars, an American named Huebner saw a chance to re-create fossil men in the same way, so he started collecting volunteers who showed traces of Neanderthal et cetera blood. Here's Goldilocks again."