“Exactly!” Professor Tektodi nodded firmly. “This computer has made human thought obsolete.”
“And human beings?” Jan-San Relevant asked gently. “Has it made them obsolete too?”
“Has it made human beings obsolete?” Professor Tektodi pondered the question. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “I shall have to ask the computer.” He turned away and began punching a keyboard feeder mechanism as Glover and Jonathan Relevant continued on into the next laboratory.
“Dr. Shpritzsvet?” Glover called out the name as they entered.
From somewhere in the center of the horror-movie collection of bubbling test tubes and hissing electrodes popped up the head of a man with ears pointed like bat wings and jet-black eyebrows that formed a V over glowing coals. Dragging one leg, he approached Peter Glover and Jonathan Relevant. He seemed oblivious to the occasional crackle of electricity bouncing off him as he passed through the assembled paraphernalia.
“Dr. Shpritzsvet heads up our chemical research project,” Peter Glover informed Jonathan Relevant.
Red eyes glowing with fanatic zeal, the doctor approached them, spraying the air before him with the con- tents of a large aerosol can as he came.
“Dr. Shpritzsvet is working on perfecting a universal deodorant,” Glover added.
“Amazing!” Dr. Shpritzsvet circled Jonathan Relevant sniffing. “No body odor whatsoever!” He stared at Jonathan with unqualified admiration.
“Dr. Shpritzsvet is of the opinion that all the problems of the world will be solved when people no longer have to smell each other,” Glover explained.
“Smells are the cause of all aggressions!” Dr. Shpritzsvet elaborated to Jonathan Relevant. “I must compliment you, sir, on your complete lack of hostile odors.”
“Are you sure you don’t have a cold?” Jonathan Relevant inquired.
“Condom-Inium, Inc., will market Dr. Shpritzsvet’s deodorant as soon as he gets the bugs out,” Peter Glover confided. “And the government’s interested too. If the formula really overcomes hostility, it might be the answer to the Vietcong. Provided it can be controlled so it doesn’t foul up our side’s aggressiveness. We’ll have to cut the university in on the earnings, of course, but there should be plenty to go around. Just thought I’d tell you so you can get in on the ground floor.”
“Thanks.”
“Think nothing of it. After all, it’s—-”
“The American way.” Jonathan Relevant smiled humorlessly and finished the sentence.
“I detect the odor of avarice,” Dr. Shpritzsvet said disapprovingly.
“Don’t be so sensitive,” Peter Glover told him.
“. . . Don’t be so sensitive!” Chancellor Hardlign remonstrated with his wife, Nancy.
“But your elbows are digging into my ribs!” Her purple-splotched body tried to shift under the weight pinning it to their marriage bed.
“I’m hurting you, am I? Well, good!”
“A gentleman always leans on his elbows. And I always thought you were a gentleman.”
“Not tonight I’m not! Tonight I’m a primeval beast filled with lust and sadism!”
“Of course you are, dear.” Nancy sighed. “Which reminds me, I thought you were going to beat me.”
“I did beat you! And just as hard as I was able! My arm is sore from beating you!”
“You call that beating me? With an ostrich feather?”
“Was it very frustrating?”
“Yes!”
“Good!”
“I thought you were really going to flagellate me.” Nancy wriggled masochistically. “Do it, darling! Beat me with your belt!”
“No!” the chancellor refused sadistically.
“Then will you please move.” Nancy scowled. “My back is killing me.”
“From being beaten with an ostrich feather?”
“No. From trampling grapes. Do you think it’s easy to—” Nancy was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. She stretched out to the night table, picked it up, and held it to her ear. “Hello.” She listened a moment. “It’s for you, De Sade,” she told the chancellor sarcastically.
“Who is it?”
“They said it was the President.”
“What does he want? I just saw him at that Board of Trustees meeting.”
“Not the president of Harnell.” Nancy handed him the phone. “The President of the United States.”
The chancellor took it from her and shouted into the mouthpiece angrily. “You kids may think it’s funny to call my home at this time of night, but when I find out who’s responsible—-” The chancellor’s jaw dropped open. He was silent for a long moment. “It really is the President!” he gulped finally.
“Don’t forget to ask him how his hemorrhoids are” was Nancy’s wifely advice.
“Yes, Mr. President. . . . I see, Mr. President. . . . Of course, Mr. President. . . . Paratroopers? But, Mr. President! . . . No, I didn’t mean. . . . I agree, Mr. President. You can’t swat an elephant with an ostrich feather. . . .”
Nancy giggled.
“. . . but we already have the local police and the National Guard. . . . The hostages? Well, no, I don’t really know what the students are planning to do with them. . . . All right, Mr. President. I’ll do my best.”
“Regards to Strom,” Nancy hissed. But it was too late.
The chancellor had hung up.
“I have to contact those kids at the Science Research Institute,” Chancellor Hardlign said. “If they don’t release those hostages, the U.S. Army is going to fall in on us.” He dialed quickly.
“Hello. Effete Intellectual Snobs, Harnell Division. To which anarchist did you wish to speak?” A pretty little girl whose father was rumored to be fairly high up in the national government answered the phone. She listened a moment and then summoned Minerva Kaufman. “It’s the chancellor,” she told Minerva. “I guess you’d better talk to him.”
Minerva took the phone. Her conversation with the chancellor was short. But when she hung up, she was obviously shaken. “That settles it! We have to get those hostages out of here!” she said to no one in particular. She headed down the hall toward the room in which the hostages had been assembled.
Inside the room, Jonathan Relevant had been cornered by Leander Pigbaigh. The CIA man was whispering into his ear with great urgency. “Little gook runs the thank-tank—-” Pigbaigh pointed surreptitiously at Professor Tektodi. “Watch him. He’s been cleared bah See-curity, but yew nevah know. ’Member the Yeller Peril!”
Before Jonathan could reply, the door opened to admit Minerva Kaufman. The CIA Indian followed her into the room. He took one look at Leander Pigbaigh and seemed to go berserk.
“Do away with the CIA!” he screamed, jumping up and down and scratching himself. “Kill the Gestapo!” He punctuated the demand with a hearty sneeze. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
Pigbaigh turned pale and wriggled his ears at the Indian in Morse code. “Don’t overact!” he cautioned. “You’re going too far! Be careful you don’t convince them!”
The Indian subsided. Minerva ignored his outburst and spoke to the hostages in a calm voice. “In the morning we’re going to let you all leave under a flag of truce,” she told them.
The hostages huddled among themselves for a moment. Then Leander Pigbaigh turned and faced Minerva. There was no doubt that he spoke for all the prisoners.
“We won’t go!” Pigbaigh announced.
“We’re staying!” Peter Glover backed him up. “We have every right to be on these premises and you have none!”
“My computer predicted you’d try to ameliorate your circumstances by releasing us,” Professor Tektodi said.
“But it won’t work!” Dr. Handelquim’s head poked out from under Dr. Ludmilla Skivar’s dress to utter the statement and then immediately vanished again.