delivery. The drug would be carried on small patches applied directly to the skin.' 'Now you're talking!'
Knacker cried enthusiastically. 'The bugle blows our boys stick on their patches, and pick up their rifles.
Correct?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'And I suspect a skin patch might have a longer-lasting effect than injection or pill.' ,Sounds good to me,' the colonel said. 'Now what's the other problem?'
'The conversion of the ZAP formulation for use by humans.
There are actually two questions involved here. First of all, sir, you should be aware that sometimes drugs have effects on laboratory animals that cannot be duplicated in humans. The physiologies, of course, are q r not it will work uite different. The testosterone works on mice, as you have seen. Whether o on humans remains to be proved.
'The second part of the same question is what quantity of the formulation should be recommended for human use. Usually this is a technical problem in which the body weights of mouse and man are compared to calculate the proper volume of the human dose.
Conversion is an inexact science, and too much human dose or too testosterone may be given in the little. Really, the most effective conversions result from trial and error.'
The officer looked at me with a pitying smile. 'That's no problem, son,' he said. 'You get your pill made in the strength you think best and give, me a shout. I can provide all the human guinea pigs you need.
Listen, we have plenty of fuck-ups in the stockade right now who'll be happy to volunteer to gulp down a ZAP pill if they'll get time knocked off their sentence. You follow, boy?'
'Yes, sir,' I said. 'Then you wish to go directly from rodent to human tests without trials on larger laboratory animals?'
'You've got it, son, and the sooner the better. You give me the ZAP pill, and within a few days, a week at the most, I'll be able to tell you if you've got a winner or a washout.
Okeydokey?'
'Yes, sir,' I said.
I locked the door after he departed. I thought he was a dreadful man, but at least I had won his approval to go directly from mouse testing to man testing.
Of course I had no intention of providing Colonel Knacker with a supply of pills, assuming I was successful in developing an oral form of the sex hormone. I had absolutely no wish to use imprisoned soldiers as 'human guinea pigs.' That would be such an immoral thing to do that I had rejected it even as he had proposed it.
My only ethical course of action, obviously, was to test the ZAP pill on myself. I doubted if it presented any mortal danger, but that had to be proved. And self-administration would give me much more precise observation of the results than if the drug was tried on other volunteers.
I must confess that I was eager to try the ZAP pill. I assure you again that I had no desire to become more aggressive.
At the same time I recognized that it would do no harm if I became, even temporarily, bolder and more assertive.
Both my wife and Marleen Todd had, on occasion, remarked on my indecision and a lack of determination that amounted to what they apparently saw as insipidity. Their comments disturbed me.
I was curious (and hopeful, I must admit) as to what effects the sex hormone would have on my behavior and personality.
That evening, before dinner, Mabel said to me, 'Guess what?
We've been invited to a cocktail party.'
'Oh?' I said. 'Who's giving it?'
'Laura Gunther. She takes care of me at Hashbeam's Bo-teek.
I've known her for years. Well, she's having a cocktail party at her condo for all her best customers and their husbands or boyfriends. it sounds like fun.' ,when is it to be?'
'Saturday afternoon at two o'clock.'
'I'm afraid I won't be able to make it,' I said at once. 'I have to work on Saturday. But why don't you go. I'm sure you'll have a good time.'
'I don't want to go alone,' she protested. 'Laura specifically asked that I bring you. She wants to meet you. I don't see why you can't forget your job for one Saturday afternoon.'
'You don't understand,' I said, 'I'm behind schedule on a very important project, and I've just got to get caught up.'
'You never want to go anywhere with me,' she said angrily.
'Sometimes I think you're ashamed of me.'
'That's not true, Mabel,' I said.
'Well, I'm not going to the party by myself. I'll just spend another lonely Saturday afternoon at home. Laura will be so disappointed when we don't show up.'
I sighed. 'I'll tell you what, Mabel, suppose I take an hour or so off from work and meet you at the party. I'll have a drink or two and then go back to the lab. Will that be satisfactory?'
'I guess it'll have to be,' she said. 'What an old fogy you are.'
My life was changing. I was aware of it, but the M odd thing was that I didn't seem responsible for the changes. I mean I wasn't consciously doing things differently. It was more like I was an observer, sitting back and noting my own metamorphosis.
I knew a lot of it was due to Cherry Noble. After she spruced up my studio, almost immediately I spruced up myself. it just seemed wrong to live like an unshaved bum when she had gone to all that trouble to make my home attractive.
But those were just the physical changes in my life. As a matter of fact, I duplicated the situation in my new book, The Romance of Tommy Termite. Lucy, his girlfriend, cleans up Tommy's nest, and before he knows it, he's bathing in rainwater every day and wearing a tie.
My more important transformations were things you couldn't see because they were happening inside me. The only way I can describe them is to liken them to a thaw. Something that had been frozen was warming. It was the damnedest thing. I knew it was, happening, but I didn't know why or what it portended.
For instance, on the days Cherry didn't visit, I'd phone her at home.
We'd have long, inconsequential talks, but I'd always hang up smiling.
And when she did show up at my place, I'd usually read to her what I had written about Tommy Termite's romance, and we'd discuss it and sometimes we'd argue. Cherry had some great ideas.
I don't think there was any exact date when it popped into my mind that I was in love with this woman. There was no sudden revelation, just a slow, gradual realization of how much she meant to me and how and my life would be without her. It scared me.
My brother came over for our usual Thursday lunch, and I was tempted to tell him how I felt. But I realized that was hopeless because I really didn't know how I felt. And besides, all he wanted to talk about were his own problems.
He mixed us heavy bourbon highballs in my new glasses, and we sat at the new dining table wolfing down the roast beef sandwiches and potato salad he had brought.
'I wasn't going to tell you this, Chas,' he said, not looking at me.
'What the hell, you've got your own troubles. But Marleen wants a divorce.'
' Shit, ' I said. Then I groaned.
'Yeah,' he said, 'that was my reaction. But if that's what she wants, I'm not going to stand in her way.'
I stopped eating to stare at him. He didn't look so good.
His face was puffy, eyes bloodshot, and he had put on so much lard that everything he wore looked a size too small. He was beginning to get a few red lines in his nose, and his cheeks were mottled. Pop began to look like that about five years before his liver gave out.
'Herm, you're an asshole,' I told him 'Marleen is a fine woman. If you had half a brain you'd do whatever you could to hang on to her. And there's Tania to think about.'
'I know,' he said miserably. 'But what's the use? I'm never going to change.'
'You can change. If you want to. You just don't want to.'
'Oh, I want to,' he said, 'but I can't. I just don't have the gumption.'
