All I want, he thought, is health, fame and fortune. Then I’ll settle down and live happily ever after, without a care or worry. I won’t need this enchanted case after that. Happy ending.
On impulse he took out the box and examined it. He tried to pry it open and failed. His finger hovered over the button.
“How can I—” he thought, and his finger moved half an inch. …
It wasn’t so alien now that he was drunk. The future man’s name was Quarra Vee. Odd he had never realized that before, but how often does a man think of his own name? Quarra Vee was playing some sort of game vaguely reminiscent of chess, but his opponent was on a planet of Sirius, some distance away. The chessmen were all unfamiliar. Complicated, dizzying space-time gambits flashed through Quarra Vee’s mind as Kelvin listened in. Then Kelvin’s problem thrust through, the compulsion hit Quarra Vee, and—
It was all mixed up. There were two problems, really. How to cure a cold—coryza. And how to become healthy, rich and famous in a practically prehistoric era—for Quarra Vee.
A small problem, however, to Quarra Vee. He solved it and went back to his game with the Sirian.
Kelvin was back in the hotel room in New Orleans.
He was very drunk or he wouldn’t have risked it. The method involved using his brain to tune in on another brain in this present twentieth century that had exactly the wavelength he required. All sorts of factors would build up to the sum total of that wavelength—experience, opportunity, position, knowledge, imagination, honesty—but he found it at last, after hesitating among three totals that were all nearly right. Still, one was righter, to three decimal points. Still drunk as a lord, Kelvin clamped on a mental tight beam, turned on the teleportation, and rode the beam across America to a well-equipped laboratory where a man sat reading.
The man was bald and had a bristling red moustache. He looked up sharply at some sound Kelvin made.
“Hey!” he said. “How did you get in here?”
“Ask Quarra Vee,” Kelvin said.
“Who? What?” The man put down his book.
Kelvin called on his memory. It seemed to be slipping. He used the rapport case for an instant, and refreshed his mind. Not so unpleasant this time, either. He was beginning to understand Quarra Vee’s world a little. He liked it. However, he supposed he’d forget that too.
“An improvement on Woodward’s protein analogues,” he told the red-moustached man. “Simple synthesis will do it.”
“Who the devil are you?”
“Call me Jim,” Kelvin said simply. “And shut up and listen.” He began to explain, as to a small, stupid child. (The man before him was one of America’s foremost chemists.) “Proteins are made of amino acids. There are about thirty-three amino acids—”
“There aren’t.”
“There are. Shut up. Their molecules can be arranged in lots of ways. So we get an almost infinite variety of proteins. And all living things are forms of protein. The absolute synthesis involves a chain of amino acids long enough to recognize clearly as a protein molecule. That’s been the trouble.”
The man with the red moustache seemed quite interested. “Fischer assembled a chain of eighteen,” he said, blinking. “Abderhalden got up to nineteen, and Woodward, of course, has made chains ten thousand units long. But as for testing—”
“The complete protein molecule consists of complete sets of sequences. But if you can test only one or two sections of an analogue you can’t be sure of the others. Wait a minute.” Kelvin used the rapport case again. “Now I know. Well, you can make almost anything out of synthesized protein. Silk, wool, hair—but the main thing, of course,” he said, sneezing, “is a cure for coryza.”
“Now look—” said the red-moustached man.
“Some of the viruses are chains of amino acids, aren’t they? Well, modify their structure. Make ’em harmless. Bacteria too. And synthesize antibiotics.”
“I wish I could. However, Mr.—”
“Just call me Jim.”
“Yes. However, all this is old stuff.”
“Grab your pencil,” Kelvin said. “From now on it’ll be solid, with riffs. The method of synthesizing and testing is as follows—”
He explained, very thoroughly and clearly. He had to use the rapport case only twice. And when he had finished, the man with the red moustache laid down his pencil and stared.
“This is incredible,” he said. “If it works—”
“I want health, fame and fortune,” Kelvin said stubbornly. “It’ll work.”
“Yes, but—my good man—”
However, Kelvin insisted. Luckily for himself, the mental testing of the red-moustached man had included briefing for honesty and opportunity, and it ended with the chemist agreeing to sign partnership papers with Kelvin. The commercial possibilities of the process were unbounded. Dupont or G.M. would be glad to buy it.
“I want lots of money. A fortune.”
“You’ll make a million dollars,” the red-moustached man said patiently.
“Then I want a receipt. Have to have this in black and white. Unless you want to give me my million now.”
Frowning, the chemist shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’ll have to run tests, open negotiations—but don’t worry about that. Your discovery is certainly worth a million. You’ll be famous, too.”
“And healthy?”
“There won’t be any more disease, after a while,” the chemist said quietly. “That’s the real miracle.”
“Write it down,” Kelvin clamored.
“All right. We can have partnership papers drawn up tomorrow. This will do temporarily. Understand, the actual credit belongs to you.”
“It’s got to be in ink. A pencil won’t do.”
“Just a minute, then,” the red-moustached man said, and went away in search of ink. Kelvin looked around the laboratory, beaming happily.
Tharn materialized three feet away. Tharn was holding the rod-weapon. He lifted it.
Kelvin instantly used the rapport case. Then he thumbed his nose at Tharn and teleported himself far away.
He was immediately in a cornfield, somewhere, but undistilled corn was not what Kelvin wanted. He tried again. This time he reached Seattle.
That was the beginning of Kelvin’s monumental
