The Incorrigible
L. Sprague de Camp
"... and therefore, by the authority vested in my, I confer upon you, honoris causa, the degree of Doctor of Science, and all rights, privileges, and prerogatives pertaining thereto." The president of the university extended the scroll. The politician accepted it, bowed, and smiled. The president bowed and smiled back. Flynn, the politician, stepped to the front of the stage and began his speech on "Science and the People."
In the audience, Mrs. Alonso, who had come to see her son graduate, squirmed, for she was fleshy and June days in New York are apt to be sultry. Then she became aware of something peculiar about one of the wearers of academic caps who occupied the front rows. The normal human ear is pink and hairless, and lies more or less flat against the skull. The ears of the cap-wearer were covered with black fur, and stuck out at an altogether unhuman angle. The ears' owner turned his head slightly, and Mrs. Alonso gasped. The cap was that of a receiver of a degree at Columbia University, but the yellowish muzzle was that of a bear!
Johnny Black lay prone in the warm Caribbean sun, reading a book propped against the roots of a tree in the courtyard. A fly buzzed around his head; Johnny watched it out of the corner of his eye. The opportune moment came; his jaws snapped, and there was no more fly. He swallowed, and reflected that there were some advantages in being a healthy American black bear—strong muscles, lightning reflexes, and a stomach that could digest anything short of scrap-iron. A man, now, would be nauseated by the mere thought of eating a fly.
Still, he wished he could talk like a man, instead of having to write with one claw on one of those trick pads on which a mark appears when you scrape it, or pick away laboriously with his claws at a typewriter, whenever he had something to say. Take those scientists who came down to the St. Croix Biological Station to give him mental tests—they often inferred that because he couldn't talk he couldn't think either. He knew that, thanks to Methuen's famous cerebral injection, he was as smart as most of them, and it annoyed him to have them talk pidgen-English to him. He also resented the familiarity that some developed. During one test he had been irritated enough to scrawl on his pad, "Do you scratch all your test subjects behind the ears?" and shove the pad in the professor's face. Well, there had been fewer of those fellows around lately; there were, it appeared, financial difficulties I the science business.
He pushed his spectacles, which had been displace by the jerk of his head, back into place, and resumed reading. But it was interrupted again, this time by a thin, piping song:
Old Sarratt again, thought Johnny. Gordon Sarratt, tottering wreck of what had once been a great geneticist, was allowed to live at the Station and putter with goat-breeding as a sentimental gesture toward his past scientific accomplishments and reputation.
A storklike man with a little gray goatee strolled into the courtyard: Ira Methuen, Johnny's moss and the Station's new director. After him came chubby young Edgar Banta.
"Hey, Ira!" called the latter."How long have you been back."
"Couple of hours; I just finished unpacking. What's new around here? From the song, I take it the Old Boy is the same."
"Yeah; it's funny, too, because we've been cutting down steadily on his alcohol, but still he's soused. I don't see how he does it. What's new by you?"
"Oh, I saw a lot of people in New York—old Weinstraub for one. He's the same old kidder—told me he'd been lucky to quit the directorship when he did, and razzed me unmercifully about the trouble I'd steeped into by taking the job. But he'll try to help us out with H. R. 1346. Then I saw my boy—he's got a job in the New York City high schools, you know."
"How's that damned bill coming along?"
"H. R. 1346? It looked bad when I stopped in Washington. The affaire Bemis had quite an effect. People are saying that, if a scientist can discover something that would give him control of the planet, the way Bemis' molds would have if Johnny hadn't interfered, the sort of thing ought to be discouraged.
"We thought it was very nice of the government to pass the McQuade Bill giving us all a handout to make up for our losses on income in recent years. But we forgot that there wasn't anything we could do if they changed their minds. And the Bemis business seems to have changed their minds. So they cut off the appropriation, and now they're going to pass this new bill stopping such grants in the future. When the Council of Eastern Universities finds that they have to cut expenses again, we'll be the first to catch it."
"Hell's fire!" snorted Banta."Just when I'm getting somewhere with my protoplasm rejuvenation research. If I can keep going for another year, I can lick the problem and add 50 percent to the average human life. But if the money stops—the time and funds I've spent so far are just wasted."
"I know," replied Methuen."You want to lick the problem so you can get a raise and get married; I want to get some income for the Station to bring the old place back to life. I suppose Johnny there is the only one who doesn't want anything. But cheer up, Ed; you can become a draftsman if you have to, and Johnny and I can join a circus."
Methuen erred in saying that Johnny didn't want anything. The bear had been listening; he was a natural-born eavesdropper. It was easy, because people so readily forgot that he understood them. And what Johnny wanted was to know. Now Sarratt's behaviour in the face of the reduction of his alcohol intake called for investigation. Johnny welcome a little mystery; the Station had been rather dull since lack of funds had forced most of the scientists to leave. He put his book away and shuffled off toward the goat-pasture.
He found Sarratt peacefully snoozing on the grass on the edge of the pasture. A few feet away a billy goat cropped methodically. Johnny sat down to watch, far enough away to to alarm the animal. There was little sound but the snapping of grass-stems. The goat's nose came nearer the sleeping man's head. Johnny held his breath. To those stupid brutes anything that looked like grass was edible. Would it—
The little man awoke with a shriek, clutched his desecrated whiskers, and slammed a bony fist into the goat's face. The goat jumped back and galloped off, to resume its feeding at a safe distance. Sarratt muttered in his beard and went back to sleep.
Johnny experienced that warm feeling inside which, in human beings, is accompanied by laughter. Apparently the geneticist hadn't seen him. He trotted over to the shed and investigated it. Johnny suspected that the goat business was a blind; that the old man had a still concealed somewhere. But inside he found nothing suspicious. There were the simple equipment of animal husbandry a few pieces of discarded scientific apparatus, a C02 container, a microscope, a pile of notebooks, a number of jars full of vinegar flies, and a Sarratt Mutator. This was a fairly simple machine for focusing beams of particles such as protons on the desired parts of the experimentee's anatomy. Johnny had a vague notion of how it worked; it hardly seemed usable as a still. He plodded out and watched Sarratt again, and presently dropped off to sleep himself—
Two days later he lay on the edge of the roof of the biophysics building, soaking in sunlight. So far, all the results that his snooping had produced were that Sarratt had let him into the shed while he made a blood-test on a newborn kid.
Below him, the Station's three remaining scientists (if you didn't count Sarratt) were earnestly conversing. Methuen said, "This is the worst news I've had yet. It not only looks as though H. R. 1346 were going through, but there's a move o to forbid all scientific research."