‘I would have said we were considering a book Dr. Serafin had submitted for publication. As your English publisher visiting the States, I thought it opportune to visit you and at the same time get some background on your predecessor.’
She weighed it. ‘Yes, I’ll buy that. Did you have a title for this mythical work?’
‘Would The Influence of Heredity on Human Growth get by?’
‘His Vienna project. It figures.’ She was assessing him carefully before volunteering anything. Her eyes were worth watching. There was pale-green shadow on the lids, a brown liner above the lashes. ‘You seem to have the essential facts already. How do you suppose I can help?’
‘You worked with him, I understand,’ said Dryden. ‘I find it difficult to credit that four years ago you were a deputy professor, but that’s what Who’s Who in Science states.’
‘I had three years as deputy to Bill,’ she said, ignoring the compliment. ‘I guess that was enough for him. He retired prematurely early in 1978. The chair was offered to me.’
‘Three years,’ Dryden mused. ‘You must have worked closely with him.’
‘That’s debatable. Bill Serafin ran his department on a unilateral basis. He was one of the old school of academics. Anyone who questioned his interpretations could go look for a job elsewhere. Plenty did, before I ever arrived at the Institute. Frankly, Mr. Dryden, I wouldn’t have tolerated him any longer myself, but it happened that he resigned before I got my letter in. There was nobody else at senior grade with the right experience, so that’s how I got to be professor at thirty. If you’re asking me whether Bill would be reliable with other people’s money, I believe he would. I never had reason to doubt his integrity.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ said Dryden. ‘The disagreements were mostly academic?’
She looked at her cigarette, thinking. Then she said, ‘If you want more information, Mr. Dryden, you must give some. You’ve told me Bill Serafin wants you and your client to join him in a business venture. I’ve given you my opinion that he would make a trustworthy partner. I don’t see any reason yet to expand on what I’ve told you.’
It was Dryden’s turn to take a moment out to think. She was telling him, in effect, that there was more to Serafin than she had said, but it had to be coaxed from her. ‘I understand your discretion, Professor. I really am honour-bound not to say anything about the project. I think what interests me is what motivates Dr. Serafin. I’ve reason to think this is more than a straight investment to him. That’s slightly baffling, a little unnerving to a businessman. Would it be too much to ask whether you’d consider him an idealist?’
‘I knew him professionally,’ answered Professor Walsh. ‘Ideals don’t come into anthropometry, that I’ve noticed.’
There was only one way he was going to achieve anything here, and that was by coming to the point. ‘He was a young man in Austria at the time of the German occupation. Things he has said make me suspect he has retained some of the Nazi ideology, in particular the theories about race.’
She frowned and shook her head. ‘That doesn’t sound like Bill Serafin. The work we do in this department draws certain physical distinctions between races, apart from the obvious one of skin pigmentation. I’ve never heard him make any kind of subjective comment about one ethnic group in relation to another. No, Mr. Dryden, I think you may have that a little wrong.’
‘He wouldn’t have an interest in demonstrating the physical superiority of one race over all others?’
‘My God, Mr. Dryden, where did you dredge these ideas from? Bill held certain theories about the human physique, but don’t make him into a racist. Anyone pushing that line wouldn’t last ten minutes in this place, let alone get to be professor. It’s an insult to the man’s intelligence. Physical superiority — what does it mean? The average American is several centimetres taller than the average Chinese. So what? He’s physically superior at reaching books off the top shelves of libraries, but he won’t lick the Chinese at reaching the ones below.’
Dryden nodded bleakly. The theory had seemed quite plausible on California 99. ‘I’m not doing too well, am I?’
She returned a quick smile. ‘At least you’re not trying to sell me encyclopedias.’
He tried again. ‘You said he held certain theories about physique. Would it be unprofessional to ask what they were?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘He made no secret of them. He devoted the greater part of his career to investigating the characteristics of human growth. His comparative study on two generations of German women was quite a seminal piece of research. It confirmed a trend noted in a number of other studies this century: that average stature appears to be increasing at the rate of about one centimetre per decade. It was important because Bill’s results were taken from subjects measured at maturity. Previous research relied heavily on military statistics, and since young men tend to be conscripted at eighteen, and growth is incomplete in many males of that age, some physiologists argued that the figures were more indicative of the earlier onset of puberty than a significant increase in stature. The tendency for puberty to begin earlier is not disputed; the average age now is below thirteen in America, whereas eighty years back it was around fifteen. The controversy arises when you consider the implications of the human race growing indefinitely larger.’
‘And ending like the dinosaurs?’ said Dryden.
Professor Walsh smiled. ‘You’ve got it. If we extrapolate from Bill’s figures, and mankind survives the next two hundred years, everyone should be twenty centimetres, or eight inches, taller. It’s an open question whether the human skeleton is structured to cope with such an increase.’
‘Perhaps we’ll level out before then.’
She paused to consider the point. ‘Quite probably. I think Bill Serafin might admit that. But he’s still convinced that average height will increase for several decades yet.’
‘Is there any reason why it shouldn’t?’ asked Dryden.
‘A whole lot of people think it won’t. They argue that the apparent increases this century are exceptional. They say the present average, that’s one hundred and seventy-three centimetres, or five feet eight, is just about the optimum, and they have evidence to show that the size of the human frame hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age. Measurements of skeletons show Old Stone Age man as averaging five feet nine, Neolithic five-six, Bronze Age five-eight, Iron Age five-six, Anglo-Saxon five-seven.’
‘When did the shrinking set in?’
‘Almost certainly in the industrial revolution. Urbanization brought about a deterioration in living standards. People were literally stunted by the conditions. The theory is that it’s taken over a century to recover from that, but now we’re back to what the good Lord intended us to be.’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Dryden. ‘What does Serafin say about that?’
‘He won’t admit the validity of the measurements of primitive man. Only the strongest and tallest specimens would have survived to maturity, he says, so it’s futile making comparisons with civilised times, when life is held precious even for the weakest. He contends that the average man today is the tallest in history. And he refuses to accept that we’ve reached the limit. The human frame has the structural capacity — I believe I’m quoting him accurately — to absorb the anticipated increase for at least the next six decades. By the year two thousand the average will be up another inch.’
In the film at Cambria Pines, Serafin had presented Goldengirl as a prototype of the woman of the twenty-first century.