“Quite right! Now, if you’re anything like all the other gentlemen of the Press I’ve met you’re not averse to a drop of malt. Is that right?”
“It is a rather thirsty sort of a day.” Herley followed the older man into a cool brown room at the rear of the house and was installed in a leather armchair. He examined the room, while Corcoran was pouring drinks at a sideboard, and saw that the shelves which lined the walls were occupied by a jumble of books, official-looking reports and odd items of electronic equipment whose function was not apparent. Corcoran handed him a generous measure of whisky in a heavy crystal tumbler and sat down at the other side of a carved desk.
“And how are things in Aldersley?” Corcoran said, sipping his drink.
“Oh, much the same as ever.”
“In other words, not worth talking about—especially after you’ve come such a long way to interview me.” Corcoran took another sip of whisky and it dawned on Herley that the little man was quite drunk.
“I’ve got lots of time, Mr Corcoran. Perhaps you could give me a general rundown, in layman’s terms, on this whole business of slow muscles and fast muscles. I must confess I’ve never really understood what it was all about.”
Corcoran looked gratified and immediately plunged into a moderately technical discourse on his work on nerve chemistry, speaking with the eager fluency of one who has for a long time been deprived of an audience. Herley pretended to be interested, even making written notes from time to time, waiting for the opportunity to discuss the real reason for his visit. He already knew that the research unit at Aldersley General had been involved in discoveries concerning the basic structure of muscle tissue. Experiments had shown that “fast” muscles such as those of the leg could be changed into “slow” muscles—like those of the abdomen—simply by severing the main nerves and reconnecting them to the wrong set, in a process analagous to reversing the leads from a battery.
The implication had been that the type of muscle was determined, not by a genetic blueprint, but by some factor in the incoming nerve impulses. Hamish Corcoran had come up with a theory that the phenomenon was caused by a trophic chemical which trickled from nerve to muscle. He had already begun work on identifying and isolating the chemical involved when the tragedy of his wife’s death had interrupted his researches. Soon afterwards he had been persuaded to retire. The rumour which had circulated in Aldersley was that he had gone mad, but no details had ever become public, thanks to a vigorous covering-up job by a hospital which had no wish to see its reputation endangered.
“I was quite wrong about the chemical nature of the nerve influence,” Corcoran was saying. “It has since been established that electrical stimulus is the big factor—slow muscles receive a fairly continuous low-frequency signal, fast muscles receive brief bursts at a much higher frequency—but the fascinating thing about the science game is the way in which one’s mistakes can be so valuable. You can set off for China, so to speak, and discover America. In my case, America was a drug which offered complete and effortless control of obesity.”
The final statement alerted Herley like a plunge into cold water.
“That’s rather interesting,” he said. “Control of obesity, eh? I would have thought there was a huge commercial potential there.”
“You would have thought wrong, my boy.”
“Oh? Do you mean it wasn’t possible to manufacture the drug?”
“Nothing of the sort! I was able to produce a pilot batch with very little difficulty.” Corcoran glanced towards a bookshelf on his right, then noticed that his glass was empty. He stood up and went to the sideboard, for the third time during the interview, to pour himself a fresh drink. Herley took the opportunity to scan the shelf which had drawn the older man’s gaze and his attention was caught by a small red box. It was heavily ornamented and cheap-looking, the sort of thing that was turned out in quantity for the foreign souvenir market, and seemed more than a little out of place in its surroundings.
That’s where the pills are, Herley thought, savagely triumphant. Until that moment he had suffered from lingering doubts about the information he had received from a drunken laboratory technician a few nights earlier. He had been talking to the technician in a bar, half-heartedly following up a lead about administrative malpractice in the hospital, when the tip of the story about Corcoran’s secret wonder-drug had surfaced through a sea of irrelevancies. It had cost Herley quite a bit of money to obtain what little information he had, and he also had been forced to acknowledge the possibility that—as sometimes happens to newsmen—he had been skilfully conned. Until the moment when Corcoran had glanced at the red box…
“Why aren’t you drinking, young man?” Corcoran said with mock peevishness, returning to his desk. His voice was still crisp and clear, but triangles of crimson had appeared on his cheeks and his gait was noticeably unsteady.
Herley took a miniature sip of his original drink, barely wetting his lips. “One is enough for me on an empty stomach.”
“Ah, yes.” Corcoran ran his gaze over Herley’s lean frame. “You don’t eat much, do you?”
“Not a lot. I like to control my weight.”
Corcoran nodded. “Very wise. Much better than letting your weight control you.”
“There’s no chance of that.” Herley laughed comfortably.
“It’s no laughing matter, my boy,” Corcoran said. “I’m speaking quite literally—when the adipose tissue in a person’s body achieves a certain threshold mass it can, quite literally, begin to govern that person’s actions. It can take over that person’s entire life.”
For the first time in the interview Herley detected a trace of irrationality in his host’s words, the first confirmation of the old rumours of eccentricity. Corcoran seemed to be talking fancifully, at the very least, and yet something in what he was saying was generating a strange disturbance in Herley’s mind. How many times had he asked himself why it was that June, once so meticulous about her appearance, now allowed herself to be dominated by her appetite?
“Some people are a bit short on will-power,” he said. “They get into the habit of over-eating.”
“Do you really believe that’s all there is to it? Doesn’t that strike you as being very strange?”
“Well, I …”
“Consider the case of a young woman who has become grossly overweight,” Corcoran cut in, speaking very quickly and with an azure intensity in his eyes. “I chose the example of a woman because women traditionally place greater value on physical acceptability. Consider the case of a young woman who is say fifty percent or more above her proper weight. She is ugly, pathetic, Ill. She is either socially ostracised or elects to cut herself off from social contact. Her chances of sexual fulfilment are almost zero, her life expectancy is greatly reduced, and the years she can anticipate promise nothing but sickness and self-disgust and unhappiness. Do you get the picture?”
“Yes.” Herley moved uneasily in his chair.
“Now we come to the truly significant aspect of the case, and it is this. That woman knows that her suffering is unnecessary, that she can escape from her torment, that she can transform her physical appearance. She can become slim, healthy, attractive, energetic. She can avail herself of all that life has to offer. There’s very little to it—all she has to do is eat a normal diet. It’s a ridiculously trivial price to pay, the greatest bargain of all time—like being offered a million pounds for your cast-off socks—but what happens?” Corcoran paused to take a drink and the glass chittered momentarily against his teeth.