Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

Author:Pat Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-01-06T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 9

Dr. Thompson arrived in the morning. He didn’t come alone. He brought Marge, Maria Ostenheimer, and J.C. Pogey. “This is the visiting delegation,” he explained. “I hope you have room for us.”

I told him to look around, and pick their own bedrooms. We had them to spare. “All except you,” I told Marge. “You know where you sleep.”

“Yes, darling,” Marge said, docilely.

“Why are you being so nice to me? What are you up to?”

“Why, nothing, sweetheart. Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Certainly I’m glad to see you, but when you get sugary like this I know that you’re up to something, or you’ve done something bad.”

Maria said that was nonsense, and that, as she always knew, I was a nasty and suspicious man. J.C. Pogey went prowling around, and said that the Adam suite was a classic example of government waste. He had counted eight bedrooms, and six baths, and there were only three people living in it, if you included Jane, who sometimes spent the night.

“I’ll tell you how it is,” I explained. “If A.I. doesn’t work, we’re going to use it as a sort of high-class male brothel.” Marge said I ought to be ashamed, and that I had shocked Homer, and indeed this was true, for his face was the color of his hair.

I noticed that Tommy kept watching Homer, closely, not saying anything. But I wasn’t worried, because Homer appeared to be in good spirits, his seizures of the shakes seemed to have deserted him, and he was even talkative.

At eleven o’clock Tommy and I took Homer to the U.S. Public Health Service for his examination. There were nine or ten doctors, representing all the departments and agencies that had their hand on the erratic pulse of this important human. They inspected him for an hour, and then went into conference for a few minutes, and then they came out and Tommy told me, “He’s okay. We’re getting out an official report—that is, the Surgeon General will get it out—but the main thing is that you can use Homer Adam on a limited scale.”

“What do you mean, ‘limited scale’?” I asked.

“Well, so long as everything goes along evenly, we can use Adam for the impregnation of, say, two or three women a week. After he gains more weight and his metabolism perks up he can be used more frequently, providing that there are no glandular disturbances. Of course, if he were subjected to great emotional shock, or his general physical condition started to get worse instead of better, then we’d have to call it off. But for now, you can go ahead.”

I almost shouted. I’m afraid I ran to the telephone like a cub reporter with his first flash. I called Abel Pumphrey, and gave him the news, and then I called Danny Williams at the White House. Danny was a little cagey, and made me repeat everything Tommy had said, and then he asked me: “I suppose you feel your job’s over now?”

I said,



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