Dr. Rodman felt himself flushing, and found he had difficulty speaking. "The Earth," he said, "is a large and very complex lifeboat. We still do not know what can or can't be done with a proper distribution of resources and it is notorious that to this very day we have not really made an effort to distribute them. In many places on Earth, food is wasted daily, and it is that knowledge that drives hungry men mad."
"I agree with you," said Mare coolly, "but we cannot have the world as we want it to be. We must deal with it as it is."
"Then deal with me as I am" You will want me to supply the necessary LP molecules-and I will not do so. I will not lift a finger in that direction."
"Then," said Mare, "you will be a greater mass murderer than you are accusing me of being. And I think you will change your mind when you have thought it through."
He was visited nearly daily, by one official or another, all of them well fed. Rodman was becoming very sensitive to the way in which all those who discussed the need for killing the-hungry were themselves well fed.
The National Secretary of Agriculture said to him, insinuatingly, on one of these occasions, "Would you not favor killing a herd of cattle infected with hoof -and-mouth disease or with anthrax in order to avoid the spread of infection to healthy herds?"
"Human beings are not cattle," said Rodman, "and famine is not contagious."
"But it is," said the Secretary. "That is precisely the point. If we don't winnow the overcrowded masses of humanity, their famine will spread to as yet unaffected areas. You must not refuse to help us."
"How can you make me? Torture?"
"We wouldn't harm a hair on your body. Your skill in this matter is too precious to us. Food stamps can be withdrawn, however."
"Starvation would harm me," surely."
"Not you. But if we are prepared to kill several billion people for the sake of the human race, then surely we are ready for the much less difficult task of withdrawing food stamps from your daughter, her husband, and her baby."
Rodman was silent, and the Secretary said, "We'll give you time to think. We don't want to take action against your family, but we will if we have to. Take a week to think about it. Next Thursday the entire committee will be on hand. You will then be committed to our project and there must be no further delay."
Security was redoubled and Rodman was openly and completely a prisoner. A week later, all fifteen members of the World Food Council, together with the National Secretary of Agriculture and a few members of the National Legislature, arrived at his laboratory. They sat about the long table in the conference room of the lavish research building that had been built out of public funds.
For hours they talked and planned, incorporating those answers which Rodman gave to specific questions. No one asked Rodman if he would cooperate; there seemed no thought that he could do anything else.
Finally Rodman said, "Your project cannot, in any case, work. Shortly after a shipment of grain arrives in some particular region of the world, people will die by the hundreds of millions. Do you suppose those who survive will not make the connection and that you will not risk the desperate retaliation of nuclear bombs?"
Affare, who sat directly opposite Rodman, across the short axis of the table, said, "We are aware of that possibility. Do you think we have spent years determining a course of action and have not considered the possible reaction of those regions chosen for winnowing?"
"Do you expect them to be thankful?" asked Rodman bitterly.
"They will not know they are being singled out. Not all shipments of grain will be LP-infected. No one place will be concentrated on. We will see to it that locally grown grain supplies are infected here and there. In addition, not everyone will die and only a few will die at once. Some who eat much of the grain will not die at all, and some who eat only a small amount will die quickly-depending on their membranes. It will seem like a plague, like the Black Death returned."
Rodman said, "Have you thought of the effect of the Black Death returned? Have you thought of the panic?"
"It will do them good," growled the Secretary from one end of the table. "It might teach them a lesson."
"We will announce the discovery of an antitoxin," said Affare, shrugging. "There will be wholesale inoculations in regions we know will not be affected. Dr. Rodman, the world is desperately ill, and must have a desperate remedy. Mankind is on the brink of a horrible death, so please do not quarrel with the only course that can save it."
"That's the point. Is it the only course or are you just taking an easy way out that will not ask any sacrifices of you-merely of billions of others?"
Rodman broke off as a food trolley was brought in. He muttered, "I have arranged for some refreshments. May we have a few moments of truce while we eat?"
He reached for a sandwich and then, after a while, said between sips of coffee, "We eat well, at least, as we discuss the greatest mass murder in history."
Affare looked critically at his own half-eaten sandwich. "This is not eating well. Egg salad on white bread of indifferent freshness is not eating well, and I would change whatever coffee shop supplied this, if I were you." He sighed.
"Well, in a world of famine, one should not waste food," and he finished the sandwich.
Rodman watched the others and then reached for the last remaining sandwich on the tray. "I thought," he said, "that perhaps some of you might suffer a loss of appetite in view of the subject matter of discussion, but I see none of you did. Each one of you has eaten."
"As did you," said Mare impatiently. "You are still eating."
"Yes, I am," said Rodman, chewing slowly. "And I apologize for the lack of freshness in the bread. I made the sandwiches myself last night and they are fifteen hours old."
"You made them yourself?" said Mare.
"I had to, since I could in no other way be certain of introducing the proper LP."
"What are you talking about?"
"Gentlemen, you tell me it is necessary to kill some to save others. Perhaps you are right. You have convinced me. But in order to know exactly what it is we are doing we should perhaps experience it ourselves. I have engaged in a little triage on my own, and the sandwiches we have all just eaten are an experiment in that direction."
Some of the officials were rising to their feet. "We're poisoned?" gasped the Secretary.
Rodman said, "Not very effectively. Unfortunately, I don't know your biochemistries thoroughly, so I can't guarantee the seventy per cent death rate you would like."
They were staring at him in frozen horror, and Dr. Rodman's eyelids drooped. "Still, it's likely that two or three of you will die within the next week or so, and you need only wait to see who it will be. There's no cure or antidote, but don't worry. It's a quite painless death, and it will be the finger of God, as one of you told me. It's a good lesson, as another of you said. For those of you who survive, there may be new views on triage."
Affare said, "This is a bluff. You've eaten the sandwiches yourself."
Rodman said, "I know. I matched the LP to my own biochemistry, so I will go fast. " His eyes closed. "You'll have to carryon without me-those of you who survive."
The next story has rather a sad history, though I myself emerged unscathed. Here's how it goes.
In January 1975, Naomi Gordon, a very charming woman from Philadelphia, visited me and explained what I thought was a delightful idea for an anthology. It was to be entitled The Bicentennial Man; It was to contain ten stories by top authors, with each one built about that phrase; and it was to be published in connection with the Bicentennial. The well known science fiction enthusiast Forrest J. Ackerman was to do the editing. Naomi also had rather grandiose notions of preparing a very limited, very expensive edition.