“Oh! Sorry! I was expecting a call from a friend and— It’s my mother you want.” The voice was chastened now. “I’m sorry, she isn’t here.”
“Can you tell me when she’ll be back?” Frank asked. “I’m very anxious to reach her.”
“Not ’til Thursday. She’s up at Sunny Hills—you know, the sanitarium—-having a nervous breakdown.”
“That doesn’t sound like very much time for a nervous breakdown,” Frank opined. “Are you sure she’ll be back on Thursday?”
“Absolutely. Mother does everything on schedule.”
“Oh. Why is she having a nervous breakdown?” Frank thought he knew the answer, but he was fishing for any information he could get.
“Oh, come on now. You know. Don’t be polite. Everybody knows. She’s having a nervous breakdown because Little Lila—that’s me-—went and got herself with chee-ild. By the way,” she added as an afterthought, “who is this?”
“My name is Frank Pollener. I’m an attorney. I represent the Venus Observatory. And you must be Lila Slocum. You’re the reason I’m anxious to reach your mother.”
“I can imagine!” Lila Slocum giggled. “Listen, do you want to buy me off?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”
“Isn’t that what they always do with the fallen woman? Buy her off?”
“Do you think your mother would agree to—” Frank started to say cautiously.
“Oh, no! Not Mother!” Lila laughed outright. “Unlike me, she’s unbribable. She’s really hipped on this morality business, you know. Ever since her menopause. That’s when she started having her nervous breakdowns.”
“That’s very interesting.” Frank was sincere. He filed the information away in the back of his mind for possible future use.
“Yes. And now with my fall from grace, she’s really got something to get her teeth into. I don’t envy you having to lock horns with her, Mr. Lawyer.”
“You don’t sound too sympathetic towards your mother’s point of view,” Frank noticed.
“I’m not. Are you kidding? If it hadn’t been for Mumsy, I wouldn’t have had to resort to science to relieve me of my chastity. If she wasn’t such a watchdog, I could have let myself be seduced in the back seat of a car like any other normal, hot-blooded American girl.”
“You mean red-blooded.”
“That’s what you think!”
“Then the experiment at Venus really was the first time?” Frank fished.
“Yep. But it sure took. Wouldn’t you say?”
“I would say.” Frank had no choice but to agree.
“Presuming,” he added delicately, “that there was no extra-scientific experimentation involved.”
“Why, Mr. Pollener! What a thing to say!” Lila Slocum was indignant. “If that’s your attitude, why, I just don’t think I care to discuss the matter with you any further. Mother will be back on Thursday if you want to talk to her. Goodbye!”
The receiver clicked in Frank’s ear. Slowly, he hung up the phone. Mrs. S1ocum’s absence stymied him. If he couldn’t talk to her, there wasn’t much he could do about the situation. He’d just have to wait until Thursday and hope some opportunity for effective action would present itself then. If it didn’t, Judge O’Neill would be sure to issue the injunction not long after Thursday.
Frank glanced at his list and sighed. The sequence had been short-circuited. The only thing to do was skip to the end and go see Professor Woocheck.
At Frank’s request, Dr. Peerloin was also present at their meeting. He explained in detail to the two scientists just what restrictions they would have to place on the project if there was to be even a chance of treading the narrow line of legality. In particular, he stressed to them that they must take steps to guarantee that no virgins were included in the ranks of future subjects who participated in the program.
“But that cuts us off from information concerning a vital part of human sexuality!” Professor Woocheck protested.
“No virgins!” Frank was firm.
“Very well. No virgins.” Professor Woocheck sighed resignedly.
Frank turned to Dr. Peerloin and repeated himself. “No virgins.”
“No virgins,” she agreed. “I quite understand.” She glanced at her watch. “If you’re through now, Counselor, I’d like to be excused. I have some material to go over with my assistant.”
“Of course.” Frank waited until she was out of the room and then turned back to Professor Woocheck. “I’m glad of this opportunity to be alone with you, Professor,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about . . .”
As the Professor listened to Frank, his colleague was passing on the edict regarding virginity to her assistant. “The Professor is very disturbed by it,” Dr. Peerloin told Mercy. “He feels--as I do—that unless at least one virgin participates in the study, the validity of our conclusions will suffer.”
“I’m a virgin,” Mercy said thoughtfully . . .
Dr. Peerloin’s raised eyebrows were matched by those of the Professor as he stared at Frank. “You, mean you want to participate sexually in the program?” he asked the young lawyer.
“Yes. Why not? I believe in what you’re doing. I’ve thought it all out according to the tenets of Causocratic Effectivism. And just recently the hypocrisy of my not participating has been pointed out to me by a man whose opinion I value most highly.”
“Are those your only reasons?” the Professor asked shrewdly.
“No,” Frank confessed. “The truth is that up until about six months ago, I lived a very active sex life. But my becoming a disciple of the Swami Rhee Va changed that. In keeping with his principles, I had no sex at all because I could see no humanitarian result evolving out of committing sex acts. Frankly, it’s been so long that by now I’m ready to climb the walls. And by indulging in sex here, I can see a positive result which will satisfy my conscience. These are my motives. I hope you’re not disappointed in them.”
“Not at all,” the Professor assured him . . .
“Not at all,” Dr. Peerloin was echoing at exactly that moment. “Your desire to have sex for its own sake doesn’t shock me, Mercy. It’s natural. Particularly working in this environment where you’re subjected to constant stimulus. But I’m just not sure that it would be ethical for someone involved in the project to also participate in it sexually.”
“You’ve always said that a good social scientist shouldn’t stay aloof from the environment,” Mercy reminded her. “And didn’t you participate in the fertility rites with the Peruvian Indians when you were studying them?”
“Only in the dancing,” Dr. Peerloin said quickly. “Not in the actual rites. Besides, there’s a morale question. It could be very embarrassing for you and very sticky generally if the rest of the staff got wind of you participating.”
“They wouldn’t have to know. Only you and the camera man and Professor Woocheck would have to know. To everybody else I’d be just an anonymous interview card followed by an anonymous performance card. I can prepare my own interview myself. You know you can trust me to do that honestly. So I’ll be just a couple of punch-cards to be fed into the computer.”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Peerloin said. “I just don’t know . . .”
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t participate if you’re willing,” Professor Woocheck was telling Frank. “I can’t see any objection.”
“Swell.” Frank was satisfied. Then he had an afterthought. “Say, Professor, one thing.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about Fig. Will he be watching? I mean, somehow the idea of him watching just bothers me. It would really interfere with my performance.”
“You don’t have to worry,” the Professor assured him. “Since our activities have expanded, Mr. Newton has no time to spend in the observation room. He’s much too busy working with the computer to correlate results and match up subjects.”