“But I’m not ready to accept Nirvana.”
“That is true.” The Swami pondered a moment. “You say that despite all of your potency failures, you think you would have succeeded with this Mercy if she had not fled the scene.”
“I’n1 sure of that.”
“Are you in love with her?” the Swami asked.
“I don’t know. How do you tell?”
The Swami pondered that one too. “If you are correct in saying you would have succeeded with her, then your trouble must be solved by the process of Causocratic Elimination.”
“I haven’t had any difficulties with that.” Frank was confused.
“You misunderstand. Causocratic Elimination is a matter of choosing between am-ness factors, which to discard, which to retain. In your case, it means deciding whether the cause of your last potency was the girl, or the environment.”
“I thought my problem was impotency.”
“Where have I failed?” The Swami sighed. “Your problem is to find the reason behind your moment of potency. You think it was the girl. But right now your am-ness is in such turmoil as to blind you to the other possibility. It may have been the environment. Since the girl is unavailable at present, the only way to determine the truth is to test your potency in the environment.”
“You mean go back to the Observatory? But suppose I get the same girl?”
“Then it will prove nothing,” the Swami said patiently. “You must arrange things so that you do not get the same girl.”
“I see.” Frank thanked the Swami and hung up. He pondered the advice a few moments, and then re-dialed.
“Hello-hello!” Professor Woocheck’s voice was barely discernible through the loud sounds of running water.
“Hello, Professor. I—”
“Mr. Pollener? Mr. Pollener, is that you? I’ve been trying desperately to get you. Your line was busy.” The rest of the Professor’s words were lost in the gurgling noise.
“Wait a minute, Professor! Not so fast! I can’t understand you. I’m having difficulty hearing. What’s that noise in the background?”
“I say I’ve just been served with a paper and I don’t understand it!” the Professor shouted.
“Ouch! Are you trying to break my eardrum? What kind of a paper? What are you talking about? And what’s that damn noise?”
“It’s the water running in the sink,” the Professor shouted. “I’m washing my hands.”
“Well, turn it off, dammit.” The sound in Frank’s ear receded to a faint drip-drip and then stopped altogether.
“That’s better. I can hear. Now what’s all this about a paper?”
“It’s a legal paper. A lawsuit. We’re being sued.”
“Calm down,” Frank soothed him. “Now, tell me what you’re being sued for.”
“It’s a paternity suit,” the Professor moaned. “Lila Slocum is naming the Venus Bio-Erotic Research Observatory as the father of her unborn child!”
“I’ll be damned!” Frank said. “Hold on a minute, Professor.”
“Where are you going?”
“To wash my hands,” Frank told him. “I’m going to wash my hands.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“At no point in the time-span of the survey was its very existence so seriously threatened as when the charges of the primigravida elicited the danger of a suspension of funding. Early courtroom examination of the primigravida’s claims pointed to an unsatisfactory prognosis regarding the continued existence of the Venus Bio-Erotic Research Observatory. However, when the primigravida, in testifying as to the dyspareunia which accompanied the alleged inception of her condition, mentioned that examination determining estrus had been followed by injection with a nylon needle which bypassed the fornix and entered the cervix, counsel for Venus seized upon the evidence and . . .”
Chapter Seven, survey of Bio-Erotic Behavior
Patterns in Human Beings,
by Woocheck & Peerloin
It never rains but it pours. When Mothers for Morality had voted to drop their request for an injunction to force the Venus Observatory to cease its researches, Frank Pollener hadn’t foreseen that Lila Slocum’s condition might be the basis for an attack on the Observatory from another direction. Without the backing of her organization, Frank had thought that Lila’s mother would drop her attack and concentrate on coping with her daughter’s problem. Instead, she had elected to start a personal action. In retrospect, Frank wasn’t sure whether he’d underestimated or overestimated the power of motherhood as typified by Mrs. Slocum. In any case, she had instituted a paternity suit and named the Venus Observatory as the father of her unborn grandchild. Almost immediately the suit came to the attention of the executors of the Estate of Samuel Venus and they threatened to cut off the Observatory from any further funds if a judgment was granted against them in the paternity suit. Their attitude—which Samuel Venus himself might well not have supported when he was alive—was that the bequest had never been intended to pay the costs of such a claim as this.
So the pressure was on from two directions. Frank had to cope with the legal problems involved and he had to keep in mind the financial ones as well. His first move was to get Lila Slocum’s attorney to agree to have the case decided by a judge, rather than a jury. Next he persuaded the opposing attorney to join him in a plea to the judge that newsmen and spectators be barred from the trial. On Frank’s part this move was prompted by the knowledge that the less publicity the case received, the longer the Venus trustees would hold off cutting off the Observatory’s funds. The opposing attorney agreed in the interest of protecting his client from embarrassment. The judge granted the request and the case was heard in chambers.
Frank had one stroke of luck. Judge O’Neill was assigned to the case. It wasn’t that Frank felt his relationship with the Judge would sway him. It was just that Judge O’Neill was a stickler for the letter of the law and not likely to be swayed by sympathy for the unwed mother-to-be.
Nevertheless, Frank’s first legal tactic was shot down by the Judge. Frank had prepared a brief asking that the case be dismissed on the grounds that the Venus Bio-Erotic Research Observatory was an institution, not an entity, and therefore incapable of fathering a child. The opposing attorney anticipated this move and was ready with a counter-brief. Judge O’Neill called a recess while he read over both arguments, and announced his decision at the beginning of the second session of the hearing.
“Defense counsel is to be complimented on the thoroughness of his reasoning,” Judge O’Neill said, “but plaintiff’s attorney makes the valid point that since the institution represented by the defense is committed to refusing to name the possible father of the unborn child, it must shoulder the obligations of paternity itself.”
Similar reasoning defeated Frank’s second motion that the case be postponed until termination of pregnancy so that blood tests might be made on the child as a means of either proving or disproving paternity. “Since the Venus Observatory refuses to identify the possible father,” Judge O’Neill echoed his first reasoning, “there is no basis for postponement. Motion denied.”
Frank had expected the decision. He’d only made the plea in the hope that a postponement might also delay any action by the trustees. Professor Woocheck had already told Frank something that made it clear such a postponement probably couldn’t affect the outcome of the case.
“According to our records,” Professor Woocheck informed Frank, “Lila Slocum’s pre-participation physical examination revealed the hymen membrane to be intact. That examination took place the day before her actual participation.”