'What is this development?'
'The defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T.,' Putnam announced dramatically.
'Why don't you try blowing your nose?' I asked delicately.
'I beg your pardon?'
'It's all right. Don't be self-conscious. Go ahead and give a good blow.'
'Mr. Victor,' Putnam said with some asperity, 'my nasal passages are quite clear. Now can we please get back to the matter at hand? As I was saying, with the defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T., it has become necessary for us to join forces with the Reds in an effort to get her back.'
'Her who?'
'Who? Ha! Her! Dr. Nyet, of course.'
'And just who is Dr. Nyet?' I wanted to know.
'That's part of the problem,' Putnam explained. 'We're not really sure who she is. And the Russians won't tell us.'
'Then how can they expect us to help them get her back from S.M.U.T.?'
'Their idea was that we should help return her to Russia without really knowing who or what we were returning. It's an involved business. Let me try to piece it together for you in sequence. When Dr. Nyet defected, the Russians quite naturally thought she had defected to us. And so they made certain very complex and very secret diplomatic overtures to us to arrange an exchange. The bait they dangled was very high since the first overtures they made were through the British. Do you remember the two prominent British atomic scientists who defected to Moscow a few years back?'
'Yes.' I knew who he meant, although I couldn't recall their names at the moment.
'Well, they offered to swap them for Dr. Nyet. It was the magnanimity of that offer that really aroused our suspicions. We knew that this Dr. Nyet must be pretty hot potatoes indeed if they were willing to give up two top atomic scientists for her. The Russians should have been shrewder. By showing how eager they were to get her back, they aroused our interest. They thought we had her and we didn't. But we let them go right on thinking so while we tried to find out just who and what Dr. Nyet was, and why she was so important to them.'
'What did you learn?'
'Not so very much, Mr. Victor. We're still working on it, and right now our information is limited. But if you will be good enough to listen, I will tell you everything we do know.'
'Shoot.'
'Very well then. First the physical description. Dr. Nyet is a 24-year-old Russian female. She is described as slender but voluptuous, with a large bosom, a small waist and ample hips. Her legs are said to be very good. She has been called beautiful, although that may be an exaggeration. Her hair is long and black and she was in the habit of wearing it very simply – loose and parted in the middle. High cheekbones, an oval face, small straight nose and deep-set blue eyes.'
'Sounds very attractive,' I observed.
'Yes. So they say. To continue, she was born in Stalingrad, and her family moved to Moscow when she was six years old. She grew up there and received her education there. Her father was a government statistician, her mother a minor mucky-muck in the party. From her earliest childhood Dr. Nyet displayed a brilliance well beyond either of them. By the time she was twenty-one, she received her doctorate in biochemistry. At twenty-three the government provided her with a research laboratory of her own, complete with staff and the latest equipment. A year later she had made an important discovery. Before this was transmitted to the Russian government, however, she disappeared. The N.K.V.D. found she had been consorting with certain American tourists. They took it for granted that she had defected to us. However, we have since learned that these people work for S.M.U.T. And we are reasonably sure that she has joined forces with them.'
'How come if you know so much about her,' I queried, 'you haven't been able to find out her real name?'
'You can blame that on the Russian psychology. It thrives on intrigue, you know. With typical double-think, the government refuses to tell us her name. And our own source of information about her transmitted all this data as his final act of service to us. The N.K.V.D. must have picked him up. In any case, his last dispatch was incomplete. Our guess is that he was trying to be dramatic and left her real name as the last thing to be divulged. But he was caught – or so we guess – before he could finish the message and reveal her name.'
'But why do you call her Dr. Nyet?'
'Two reasons. First of all, part of the information transmitted to us concerned her personal life. Her beauty attracted many men, but she had a reputation for leading them on and then, when the chips were down, for turning up her nose and saying 'Nyet!', which in Russian means -'
'No. I know,' I interrupted. 'So she's a virgin, is that it?'
'Well, we can't be absolutely sure, of course, but it does seem likely. This anti- sex attitude of hers was probably what attracted her to S.M.U.T. in the first place, and it's pretty consistent with what she discovered in her research, which brings us to the second reason we dubbed her Dr. Nyet.'
'What did she discover?'
'An anti-birth-control pill.'
'What?'
'That's right,' Putnam nodded. 'Now do you see why she's so important to the Russians, to S.M.U.T., and to us? She invented a substance which neutralizes birth- control pills. And it has certain side effects she was working to overcome which have even more important implications when S.M.U.T.'s aim of overpopulation is considered.'
'What side effects?'
'The bio-chemical substance she originated is also strongly aphrodisiac. It's a sex stimulant which works so instantaneously as to make the victim incapable of taking the time to consider any means of contraception. Obviously, in the hands of S.M.U.T., such a substance is a threat to the entire world. The very idea has had an unparalleled impact on current diplomacy.'
'What sort of impact?'
'Well, for one thing,' Putnam told me, 'there have been a series of highly secret meetings between the Russians, the Red Chinese, the French, the English and ourselves to evolve a cooperative effort to stamp out S.M.U.T. Of course the Reds are playing it very cagey. Ostensibly they're cooperating with us fully in an effort to get Dr. Nyet away from S.M.U.T. But in actuality there's a three-way race between us and the Russians and the Chinese to get her. Just the fact of getting her right name from the Russians, for instance. Every time the subject comes up, their translator develops a sudden inability to get the question over. It's like
'Then why bother with these conferences at all?' I wanted to know.
'Because in other respects they have been useful. Apart from the Dr. Nyet aspect, both the Russians and the Chinese have been of some limited use in gathering information on S.M.U.T. And, for their own purposes it's true, they may cooperate with us in wiping S.M.U.T. out. Even if it doesn't work out, it's worth keeping the lines of communication open.'
'I see. But what about me? Where do I come into all this?'
'You're the one man best qualified to help us find Dr. Nyet. You see, there's a strong lead indicating that she may be in New York. That's still the headquarters of S.M.U.T. – on the surface, at least. As the man from O.R.G.Y., you have something of a reputation. We want you to offer your services as a sex expert to them. You'll have to convince them of your sincere belief in their cause – the one they admit to, I mean, the anti-pornography crusade. You can tell them that your investigations have really impressed on you that pornography is an evil. If you handle it right, they'll appreciate that you can be of great value to them publicity-wise and in other respects, and they should jump at the chance to have you join them.'
