The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) Read Free Page A

Frankenstein.’
    ‘But what were you telling me about Origami?’
    ‘Officially, I’m a mathematician. In fact, my duties include teaching Louie Origami. I’ve had to study up on it myself, of course. Luckily, I found this book at the drugstore.’ He riffled the pages of the paperback. ‘It’s a good job, all the same. I can make enough money at this to start my own statistical lab soon, and I only need to be silly for a half-hour a day.’
    ‘But how have you fooled them, if you don’t even know–—?’
    ‘It’s easy. You see, Louie thought Origami was a kind of Japanese self-defence. I’ve been able to make up my own rules, mostly, as we go along (I told him I was ‘black scissors’, and he was properly impressed).
    ‘As for Grandison Wompler, he seems to think I ought to speak Spanish, for some reason. I rather like the two of them. There are even days when I can stand the brothers F. The only person around here who gives me the creeps is Dr. Smilax himself.’
    ‘Have you met him? What’s he like?’ asked Cal.
    ‘No, I haven’t met him, and neither has anyone else I know of, except the twins; that’s the odd thing about him. No one even seems to know anything about him except that he’s a surgeon and a biochemist. You’d think the head of a research team would at least want to meet his subordinates, but he’s so inaccessible—’
    Cal nudged him and pointed to the entrance, above which a red bulb had begun glowing. The marine guard drew his automatic and covered the two persons entering, until they showed him the red badges of Kurt and Karl Mackintosh.
    Kurt skipped to get into step with his twin, and they strode on across the lab rapidly.
    Their immense, bulging foreheads, exaggerated by advanced baldness and invisibly pale eyebrows, loomed over tiny, pouting faces to give them the look of kewpies or dimestore cherubs. They were plump and sexless creatures, these two, and it was hard to believe them the best cybernetics engineers this side of the Iron Curtain. The only features they possessed that were not of idiot quality were their eyes. Restless, flickering, intelligent, they were the colour of bluebottle flies.
    The brothers flicked a glance at the empty tank, another at the chart, another at Cal.
    ‘We expected more of an MIT valedictorian,’ Karl said nastily, as if speaking to his brother.
    ‘That’s right, Karl. He has not only ruined experiment 173b, but we have not had a single original idea from him, and he has not hypothesized a single biomechanical arrangement.’
    ‘True enough, Kurt.’ The brothers, perhaps because of their similarity, seemed to find it desirable to identify one another often. ‘True it is, Kurt. I begin to wonder if MIT’s standards have not declined.’
    Hita cleared his throat. Steering themselves, as it were, by the clipboards under their arms, the two spun towards him. ‘But, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Potter was just now discussing with me his new idea for a biomechanical arrangement. A sort of steel-shelled oyster, wasn’t it, Cal?’
    ‘Yes. A sort of—um—steel-shelled oyster. Yes. You see, it would have a number of advantages. Too numerous to mention.’
    ‘Such as—?’ said the twins together.
    ‘Well—instead of a pearl, it produces a ball-bearing. A slow way to make ball-bearings, admittedly, but then we’re not really interested in the manufacture of—’
    ‘I hope, Kurt, that he will follow out his line of inquiry,’ said Karl.
    ‘And write a monograph,’ Kurt added. ‘But meanwhile we’ll assign him to Project 32 as a special assistant. He can help wire up circuits, Karl.’
    Cal felt he had been both chastised and given a second chance. He was about to stammer out his thanks when the light above the door glowed a second time.
    ‘Good evening !’ boomed Grandison Wompler from the doorway. ‘Say, it’s long after five, and we don’t pay overtime, you know.’
    The Mackintosh twins drew themselves up slightly. Karl