The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) Read Online Free PDF

shuddering. ‘Poor little anapests.’

THE INSPECTOR GENERAL
     
    ‘“Es ist ein eigentümlicher Apparat,” sagte der Offizier.’
    K AFKA
     
     
    By three o’clock on the afternoon of the inspection, almost the entire staff of Wompler Research Laboratories had assembled on the lawn, wearing clean lab coats. They stood in serried ranks, so perfectly still that the loudest sound was the faint susurrus of the lawn sprinklers. At the fore, faces uplifted to the sun, stood Grandison and Louie, wearing lab coats especially designed for the occasion by Mrs. Lumsey.
    At precisely three o’clock, a silver helicopter descended from the sun. Its terrific downdraught ruffled the American flag on the flagpole and the two ‘E’ pennants below it. It stirred slightly the silver fringe on the pleated lab coats of the two Womplers. The helicopter settled in the lush carpet of green. A silver door swung open.
    General Grawk emerged amid a cloud of beautiful women. Actually there were only four redheaded women, each very like the other three, that is, tall, good-looking and possessed of curves even Air Force tailoring could not disguise as angles. Here were four sane, attractive WAF officers bustling about to adjust his ribbons, straighten his ties, hand him his cap and relight his black stump of a cigar—bathing, in short, in an ambience of lovely femininity—
    The ugliest man within a thousand miles.
    Imagine a face as red and furious as that of a newborn child. Imagine sparse black hair like broken quills, lying this way and
    that around a bald spot the colour of a baboon’s bum. Imagine the nose of a Pekinese but the upper lip of Peking man, and imagine moreover the former permanently wrinkled with disgust and the latter drawn back in a set sneer from yellow, crooked teeth. Add boiled, bulging eyes, an underslung jaw that needed a shave the day it was created, and the neck of a particularly obese walrus, complete with three folds of fat in back. Got all that? Now add black clots of eyebrow and asymmetric lumps as desired, set it all on a stumpy, strutting figure in uniform, and top it off—as Grawk now did—with a tall, tall cap loaded with silver foliage.
    Putting on his cap increased Grawk’s height to about five feet. He spat out the cigar and looked around, arms akimbo.
    ‘So this,’ he said, ‘is the great Wompler Research Laboratory, is it?’
    ‘Yes indeed. I’m Grandison Wompler and this is my son, Louie. Louie, say hello to General Grawk.’
    ‘Hi !’ shouted Louie.
    The general squinted the Womplers over, ignoring no detail but their proffered hands. ‘Cute little outfits you got there,’ he said, jabbing a finger at their silver fringe. ‘Who’s your dressmaker?’ Then to one of the WAF’s, ‘Make a note of it, Meg. First of all, they got cruddy security. Nobody asked to see my ID card. I coulda been a Russky spy, for chrissake. Second, I think the two top boys are fruits. Father and son, my eye ! And all dressed up in Mother’s clothes, I guess, eh?’
    Louie’s grin wavered, disappeared. ‘Now wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Whose mother? Now just wait a minute.’ His immense pudgy hands became fists.
    ‘Like to lose your old man a couple million in government contracts?’ shrilled the general. ‘Like to fix it so you’re out of government work for good? Well, just lay a mitt on me, Junior. Go ahead, hit me !’
    Grandison managed to keep his son from complying. Grawk smirked slightly, stretched out the folds of fat in his neck, and peered around him. ‘Are we gonna stand out here all day?’
    The entire ménage fell in behind Kurt and Karl, who guided the general to the outer door of the lab building. To Grawk’s fresh indignation, a marine guard insisted on seeing his ID card.
    ‘Great,’ he said, producing it. ‘Just great. This guy
can’t see
I’m wearing the uniform of a general in the US Air Force. He has to
make sure
. Just swell. Oh, I can see this is a well-run
    place all