Flowers for Algernon

Nemur's conclusions had been premature. For both Algernon and myself, it would take more time to see if this change would stick The professors had made a mistake, and no one else had caught it. I wanted to jump up and tell them, but I couldn't move. Like Algernon, I found my­self behind the mesh of the cage they had built around me.

Now there would be a question period, and before I would be allowed to have my dinner, I would be required to perform before this distinguished gathering. No. I had to get out of there.

'… In one sense, he was the result of modern psycho­logical experimentation. In place of a feeble-minded shell, a burden on the society that must fear his irresponsible be­havior, we have a man of dignity and sensitivity, ready to take his place as a contributing member of society. I should like you all to hear a few words from Charlie Gordon…'

God damn him. He didn't know what he was talking about. At that point, the compulsion overwhelmed me. I watched in fascination as my hand moved, independent of my will, to pull down the latch of Algernon's cage. As I opened it he looked up at me and paused. Then he turned, darted out of his cage, and scampered across the long table.

At first, he was lost against the damask tablecloth, a blur of white on white, until a woman at the table screamed, knocking her chair backwards as she leaped to her feet. Beyond her, pitchers of water overturned, and then Burt shouted. 'Algernon's loose!' Algernon jumped down from the table, onto the platform and then to the floor.

'Get him! Get him!' Nemur screeched as the audience, divided in its aims, became a tangle of arms and legs. Some of the women (non-experimentalists?) tried to stand on the unstable folding chairs while others, trying to help corner Algernon, knocked them over.

'Close those back doors!' shouted Burt, who realized Algernon was smart enough to head in that direction.

'Run,' I heard myself shout. 'The side door!'

'He's gone out the side door,' someone echoed.

'Get him! Get him!' begged Nemur.

The crowd surged out of the Grand Ballroom into the corridor, as Algernon, scampering along the maroon car­peted hallway, led them a merry chase. Under Louis XIV tables, around potted palms, up stairways, around corners, down stairways, into the main lobby, picking up other people as we went. Seeing them all running back and forth in the lobby, chasing a white mouse smarter than many of them, was the funniest thing that had happened in a long time.

'Go ahead, laugh!' snorted Nemur, who nearly bumped into me, 'but if we don't find him, the whole ex­ periment is in danger.'

I pretended to be looking for Algernon under a waste basket. 'Do you know something?' I said. 'You've made a mistake. And after today, maybe it just won't matter at all.'

Seconds later, half a dozen women came screaming out of the powder room, skirts clutched frantically around their legs.

'He's in there,' someone yelled. But for a moment, the searching crowd was stayed by the handwriting on the wall—Ladies. I was the first to cross the invisible barrier and enter the sacred gates.

Algernon was perched on top of one of the wash­basins, glaring at his reflection in the mirror.

'Come on,' I said. 'We'll get out of here together.'

He let me pick him up and put him into my jacket pocket. 'Stay in there quietly until I tell you.'

The others came bursting through the swinging doors—looking guiltily as if they expected to see scream­ing nude females. I walked out as they searched the wash­room, and I heard Burt's voice. 'There's a hole in that ventilator. Maybe he went up there.'

'Find out where it leads to,' said Strauss.

'You go up to the second floor,' said Nemur, waving to Strauss. 'I'll go down to the basement.'

At this point they burst out of the lathes' room and the forces split. I followed behind the Strauss contingent up to the second floor as they tried to discover where the ventilator led to. When Strauss and White and their half- dozen followers turned right down Corridor B, I turned left up Corridor C and took the elevator to my room.

I closed the door behind me, and patted my pocket. A pink snout and white fuzz poked out and looked around. 'I'll just get my things packed,' I said, 'and we'll take off—just you and me—a couple of man-made geniuses on the run.'

I had the bellhop put the bags and the tape-recorder into a waiting taxi, paid my hotel bill, and walked out the revolving door with the object of the search nestling in my jacket pocket. I used my return-flight ticket to New York.

Instead of going back to my place, I plan to stay at a hotel here in the city for one or two nights. We'll use that as a base of operations while I look for a furnished apartment, somewhere midtown. I want to be near Times Square.

Talking all this out makes me feel a lot better—even a little silly. I don't really know why I got so upset, or what I'm doing on a jet heading back to New York with Alger­non in a shoebox under the seat. I mustn't panic. The mis­take doesn't necessarily mean anything serious. It's just that things are not as definite as Nemur believed. But where do I go from here?

First, I've got to see my parents. As soon as I can.

I may not have all the time I thought I had….

PROGRESS REPORT 14

June 15

Our escape hit the papers yesterday, and the tabloids had a field day. On the second page of the Daily Press there was an old picture of me and a sketch of a white mouse. The headline read: Moron-Genius and Mouse Go Berserk. Nemur and Strauss are reported as saying I had been under tremendous strain and that I would undoubtedly return soon. They offered a five-hundred-dollar reward for Algernon, not realizing we were together.

When I turned to the later story on the fifth page, I was stunned to find a picture of my mother and sister. Some reporter had obviously done his legwork.

SISTER UNAWARE OF MORON-GENIUS' WHEREABOUTS

(Special to the Daily Press)

Brooklyn, N.Y., June 14—Miss Norma Gordon, who lives with her mother, Rose Gordon, at 4136 Marks Street, Brooklyn, N.Y., denied any knowledge of her brother's whereabouts. Miss Gordon said, 'We haven't seen him or heard from him in more than seventeen years.'

Miss Gordon says she believed her brother dead until last March, when the head of the psychology de­ partment at Beekman University approached her for permission to use Charlie in an experiment.

'My mother told me he had been sent to the War­ren place,' (Warren State Home and Training School, in Warren, Long Island) said Miss Gordon, 'and that he died there a few years later. I had no idea then that he was still alive.'

Miss Gordon requests that anyone who has any news about her brother's whereabouts communicate with the family at their home address.

The father, Matthew Gordon, who is not living with his wife and daughter, now operates a barber­shop in the Bronx.

I stared at the news story for a while, and then I turned back and looked at the picture again. How can I describe them?

I can't say I remember Rose's face. Although the recent photograph is a clear one, I still see it through the gauze of childhood. I knew her, and I didn't know her. Had we passed on the street, I would not have recognized