Garrod fingered the stacks of Press cuttings and broadcast transcripts Manston had set on his desk. “Aren’t you overselling me on this one? Is there really such an animal as a tide of public opinion?”
“Believe me, Alban, the tide is very real and very powerful. If it’s going the way you want it—great; if it’s running against you—you’re in trouble.” Manston handed over a sheet of paper. “This is an analysis of our image acceptance as revealed by these cuttings. Almost sixty per cent of the stories are openly unfavourable towards Retardite and related products, and another twelve per cent have hostile connotations.
“That, Alban, is what is known in the trade as a bad Press.”
Garrod looked at the tabulated figures, but Manston’s habit of addressing him by his full Christian name had reminded him of Esther and the message he had received from Eric Hubert. The operation had been successful, and now Esther was to see again—if one accepted the surgeon’s startling proposal as a means of “seeing”…
“Just look at the breakdown,” Manston was saying. “Look how many items deal with strikes and other industrial actions caused by unions objecting to slow glass monitors being installed in plants. Look at all these stories about civil rights associations fighting the Government’s decision that all road vehicles must carry slow glass telltales. And there’s the new Privacy League—it’s getting stronger every…”
“What do you propose to do about it?” Garrod said.
“We’ll have to spend money. I can get the agency to draw up a PR campaign, but it’s bound to cost at least a million.”
The meeting lasted a further twenty minutes while Manston went on to outline his preliminary ideas of how the campaign ought to be laid out. Garrod, who had been only half-listening, gave his approval and watched Manston hurry away filled with enthusiasm and gratitude. He had a feeling that if the Press clippings had been totally in favour of Retardite the public relations man would still have urged him to invest a million, to ride the crest of the wave. A million meant less to him now than a single dollar had done in his childhood in Barlow, Oregon, yet he had never quite managed to break the conditioning imposed by years of his uncle’s pennypinching. Each time he wrote a large cheque or authorized heavy capital expenditure he saw his uncle turning grey with apprehension.
His next meeting was with Schickert, head of the Liquid Light Paints Division. Its basic product was a thixotropic emulsion of clear resin and powder-fine slow glass beads with mixed delay periods ranging from hours to days. The paint’s main application was architectural—buildings coated with it shone with a soft radiance at night—but there had been an unprecedented demand for the Retardite particles from other paint manufacturers. Schickert wanted authorization for a new plant which would increase output by a thousand tons a week. Again, Garrod allowed himself to be sold the proposal while his thoughts were elsewhere. Finally, he looked at his watch, saw with relief that he was due to leave for Los Angeles in less than an hour, and made his escape from the office.
“There’s a little discomfort at this stage,” Eric Hubert said, “but Mrs. Garrod is seeing again.”
“Already!” Garrod had difficulty matching the words to the kaleidoscope of his feelings. “I…I’m grateful.”
Hubert gently fingered the vee-shaped artificial hairline which made him look like a pink plastic Mephistopheles. “The operation itself was quite simple—once we had sealed the anterior chamber with a skin of inert plastic jelly. That made it possible for us to remove the lens capsules and form small permanent slits in the corneas without losing the…I’m sorry—do you find this distressing?” “It’s all right.”
“One of the drawbacks of being an eye surgeon is that you can’t do much boasting about your work. The eye is a surprisingly tough organ, yet most people—especially men—can’t bear to hear details of even the simplest operation. People are their eyes, you know. It’s a kind of instinctive recognition of the fact that the retina is an extension of the brain, and therefore…”
“May I see my wife now?”
“Of course.” Hubert made no attempt to get up from his chair. He began rearranging small piles of paperwork. “Before we go to Mrs. Garrod’s room I want to make sure you know what’s required of you.”
“I don’t understand.” Garrod began to feel uneasy.
“I tried to convince Mrs. Garrod that it would be much better if a trained opthalmic nurse called to see her every day, but she wouldn’t hear of it.” Hubert gave Garrod a level, appraising stare. “She wants you to change her discs every morning.”
“Oh!” Garrod felt his abdomen contract in revulsion, the attempt of his genitals to steal back into the body’s protective cavities. “What does that involve exactly?”
“Nothing you can’t handle,” Hubert said kindly, and Garrod suddenly despised himself for having allowed his opinion of the surgeon to be influenced by the man’s rather ludicrous appearance. “These are the discs.”
He opened a flat case and exposed a number of small glass objects arranged in pairs. They were discs of less than a centimetre in diameter, with up-curving glass tails attached, like miniature translucent frying pans. Some of the discs were jet black, others glowed with colour and light.
Hubert smiled briefly. “I don’t need to tell you what kind of material this is. These Retardite discs have different delay periods—one, two or three days. One day is the shortest period because I don’t recommend opening the slits in the corneas any more frequently than once every twenty-four hours.
“To change them you will have to spray your wife’s eyes with a combined immobilizer and anaesthetic, grip the old discs firmly by the extensions, slide them out, slide in the new discs, and squeeze a little sealant gel over the slits, ft might sound like a major undertaking, but we’ll put you through the routine a few times before your wife leaves the clinic. After a while you’ll think nothing of it.”
Garrod nodded slowly. “And as far as my wife is concerned, she’ll have real vision again?”
“That’s it—except, of course, that everything she sees will be one, two or three days late, depending on which discs she’s using.”
“I wonder how it’ll compare with having normal eyes.” “The important thing, Mr Garrod,” Hubert said firmly, “is how it compares with having no eyes at all.”
“I’m sorry—I must have sounded as though I don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and that isn’t the case. How is Esther reacting?”
“Beautifully. She tells me she used to watch a lot of television, and now she can do that again.” Garrod frowned. “How about the sound?” “That can be recorded and played back in synch with what she’s seeing.” Hubert’s voice became enthusiastic. “This operation will help a lot of people—perhaps someday we’ll have State-sponsored television stations broadcasting sound on a separate wavelength exactly twenty-four hours later than their visual transmissions. That way, an ordinary tri-di set with only slight modification to the audio circuits…”
Garrod’s attention wandered as he began to accept the fact that his wife could see again. Esther had been blind for almost a year, during which time they had not spent one evening apart and had gone out on perhaps only six occasions. It seemed to Garrod that he had endured eons in the brown dimness of the library, describing the events on endless television shows.