expressed with the lucidity so typical of the first-rate mind. This time he seemed muddled, with little new to say. His audience excused this as the muffling effects of security. Ain then got into a tangled point about the course of evolution in which he seemed to be trying to show that something was very wrong indeed. When he wound up with a reference to Hudson’s bellbird “singing for a later race,” several listeners wondered if he could be drunk.
The big security break came right at the end, when he suddenly began to describe the methods he had used to mutate and redesign a leukemia virus. He explained the procedure with admirable clarity in four sentences and paused. Then gave a terse description of the effects of the mutated strain, which were maximal only in the higher primates. Recovery rate among the lower mammals and other orders was close to ninety percent. As to vectors, he went on, any warm-blooded animal served. In addition, the virus retained its viability in most environmental media and performed very well airborne. Contagion rate was extremely high. Almost offhand, Ain added that no test primate or accidentally exposed human had survived beyond the twenty-second day.
These words fell into a silence broken only by the running feet of the Egyptian delegate making for the door. Then a gilt chair went over as an American bolted after him.
Ain seemed unaware that his audience was in a state of unbelieving paralysis. It had all come so fast: a man who had been blowing his nose was staring pop-eyed around his handkerchief. Another who had been lighting a pipe grunted as his fingers singed. Two men chatting by the door missed his words entirely, and their laughter chimed into a dead silence in which echoed Ain’s words: “—really no point in attempting.”
Later they found he had been explaining that the virus utilized the body’s own immunomechanisms, and so defense was by definition hopeless.
That was all. Ain looked around vaguely for questions and then started down the aisle. By the time he got to the door, people were swarming after him. He wheeled about and said rather crossly, “Yes, of course it is very wrong. I told you that. We are all wrong. Now it’s over.”
An hour later they found he had gone, having apparently reserved a Sinair flight to Karachi.
The security men caught up with him at Hong Kong. By then he seemed really very ill, and went with them peacefully. They started back to the States via Hawaii.
His captors were civilized types; they saw he was gentle and treated him accordingly. He had no weapons or drugs on him. They took him out handcuffed for a stroll at Osaka, let him feed his crumbs to the birds, and they listened with interest to his account of the migration routes of the common brown sandpiper. He was very hoarse. At that point, he was wanted only for the security thing. There was no question of a woman at all.
He dozed most of the way to the islands, but when they came in sight he pressed to the window and began to mutter. The security man behind him got the first inkling that there was a woman in it, and turned on his recorder.
“. . . Blue, blue and green until you see the wounds. O my girl, O beautiful, you won’t die. I won’t let you die. I tell you girl, it’s over. . . . Lustrous eyes, look at me, let me see you now alive! Great queen, my sweet body, my girl, have I saved you? . . . O terrible to know, and noble, Chaos’s child green-robed in blue and golden light . . . the thrown and spinning ball of life alone in space. . . . Have I saved you?”
On the last leg, he was obviously feverish.
“She may have tricked me, you know,” he said confidentially to the government man. “You have to be prepared for that, of course. I know her!” He chuckled confidentially. “She’s no small thing. But wring your heart out—”
Coming over San Francisco he was merry. “Don’t you know the otters will go back in there? I’m certain of it. That fill
Janwillem van de Wetering