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"Thanks," said Winnie with a grateful sigh, massaging his temples.
I went and got him an aspirin. I thought of adding a little mixer to the glass of water
that went with it, but there wasn't anything in the medicine chest that looked right, and besides
it's against the law. I don't mind admitting it, I never liked Winnie McGhee, and it isn't just
because he swiped my bride from me. Well, she smartened up after six months, and then, when she
turned up with an annulment and sincere repentance-well, I've never regretted marrying her. Or
anyway, not much. But you can't expect me to like McGhee. My heavens, if I'd never seen the man
before I'd hate his little purple guts on first contact, because he looks like a poet and talks
like a scientist and acts like a jerk.
I started back to the living room and yelled: "The baby!"
Margery turned away from simpering at her former husband and sprang for the puppy's dish.
She got it away from the baby, but not quite full. There was a good baby-sized mouthful of mixed
milk and dog-biscuit that she had to excavate for, and naturally the baby had his way of counter-
attacking for that.
"No bite!" she yelled, pulling her finger out of his mouth and putting it in hers. Then
she smiled sweetly. "Isn't he a darling, Winnie? He's got his daddy's nose, of course. But don't
you think he has my eyes?"
"He'll have your fingers too, if you don't keep them out of his mouth," I told her.
Winnie said: "That's normal. After all, with twenty-four paired chromosomes forming the
gamete, it is perfectly obvious that the probability of inheriting none of his traits from one
parent-that is, being exactly like the other-is one chance in 8,388,608. Ooh, my head."
Margery gave him a small frown. "What?"
He was like a wound-up phonograph. "That's without allowance for spontaneous mutation," he
added. "Or induced. And considering the environmental factors in utero-that is, broad-spectrum
antibiotics, tripling of the background radiation count due to nuclear weapons, dietary
influences, et cetera-yes, I should put the probability of induced mutation rather high. Yes.
Perhaps of the order of-"
I interrupted. "Here's your aspirin. Now, what do you want?"
"Harlan!" Margery said warningly.
"I mean-well, what do you want?"
He leaned his head on his hands. "I want you to help me conquer the world," he said.
Crash-splash. "Go get a mop!" Margery ordered; the baby had just spilled the puppy's
water. She glared at me and smiled at Winnie. "Go ahead," she coaxed. "Take your nice aspirin, and
we'll talk about your trip around the world later."
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But that hadn't been what he had said.
Conquer the world. I heard it plain as day. I went to fetch the mop, because that was as
good a way as any to think over what to do about Winston McNeely McGhee. I mean, what did I want
with the world? Uncle Otto had already bequeathed me the world, or anyway as much of it as I ever
hoped to own.
When I came back Winnie was tottering around the room, followed at a respectful distance
by my wife holding the baby. She was saying to the prospective conqueror of all the world:
"How did you hear about Harlan's good lu- About the tragic loss of his dear uncle, I
mean?"
He groaned, "I read it in the paper." He fiddled aimlessly with the phone.
"It's all for the best, I say," said Margery in a philosophic tone, carving damp graham-
cracker crumbs out of the baby's ear. "Dear Otto lived a rich and full life. Think of all those
years in Yemen! And the enormous satisfaction it must have given him to be personally responsible
for the installation of the largest petroleum-cracking still west of the Suez!"
"East, my dear. East. The Mutawakelite Kingdom lies just south of Saudi Arabia."
She looked at him thoughtfully, but all she said was, "Winnie, you've changed."
And so he had; but for that matter so had she. It was not like Margery to be a hypocrite.
Simpering over her ex-husband I could understand-it wasn't so bad; she was merely showing the poor
guy how very much better off she was than she ever would have been with him. But the tragic loss
of my dear uncle had never occasioned a moment's regret in her-or in me; the plain fact of the
matter is that until the man from the Associated Press called up she didn't even know I had an
Uncle Otto. And I had pretty nearly forgotten it myself. Otto was the brother that my mother's
family didn't talk about. How were they to know that he was laying up treasures of oil and gold on
the Arabian Peninsula?
The phone rang; Winnie had thoughtlessly put it back on the hook. "No!" Margery cried into
it, hardly listening, "We don't want any uranium stock! We've got closets full!"
I said, taking advantage of the fact that her attention was diverted: "Winnie. I'm a busy
man. How about you telling me what you want?" He sat down with his head on his hands and made a
great effort.
"It's-difficult," he said, speaking very slowly. Each word came out by itself, as though
he had to choose and sort painfully among all the words that were rushing to his mouth. "I-
invented something. You understand? And when I heard about you inheriting money-"
"You thought you could get some of it away from me," I sneered.
"No!" He sat up sharply-and winced and clutched his head. "I want to make money for you."
"We've got closets full," I said gently.
He said in a desperate tone, "But I can give you the world, Harlan. Trust me!"
"I never have-"
"Trust me now! You don't understand, Harlan. We can own the world, the two of us, if
you'll just give me a little financial help. I've invented a drug that gives me total recall."
"How nice for you," I said, reaching for the knob of the door.
But then I began to think.
"Total recall?" I asked.
He said, sputtering with eagerness, "The upwelling of the unconscious! The ability to
remember everything-the eidetic memory of an idiot savant and the indexing system of a quiz
winner. You want to know the first six kings of England? Egbert, Etheiwulf, Ethelbald, Ethelbert,
Ethelred and Alfred. You want to know the mating call of a ruff-necked grouse?" He demonstrated
the call of the ruff-necked grouse.
"Oh," said Margery, coming back into the room with the freshly diapered baby. "Bird
imitations."
"And more!" cried Winnie. "Do you know about the time the United States had two
presidents?"
"No, but-"
"March the third," he said. "Eighteen seventy-seven. Rutherford B. Hayes-I'd better say [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]