The Mannichon Solution

One light shone late in the dark bulk of the Vogel-Paulson Research Laboratories. Mice of all colors and genetic backgrounds slept in their cages. Monkeys dozed, dogs dreamed, classified albino rats waited predictably for the morning's scalpels and injections. Computers hummed quietly, preparing gigantic responses on shadowed floors for the morrow. Cultures spread like geometric flowers in shrouded test tubes; city-states of bacteria vanished in aseptic dishes washed by scientific night; surprising serums precipitated obscurely to dash or reward the hopes of daylight. Chemicals secretly traded molecules behind pulled blinds, atoms whirled unobserved, cures and poisons formed in locked rooms. Electromagnetic tumblers guarded a million formulas in safes that reflected a gleam of steel in stray rays of moonlight.

In the one brightly lit, scrubbed room, a figure in white moved from table to table, pouring a liquid into a shallow glass receptacle, adding a puce-colored powder to the contents of a beaker, making notes on a baby-blue work pad. This was Collier Mannichon. He was medium-sized, plump, his face was melon-round, melon-smooth (he had to shave only twice a week), his high forehead, melon-bulged. Looking at him, it was impossible not to be reminded of a smooth-skinned cantaloupe, ripe, but not particularly tasty, and equipped with thick glasses. He had teapot-blue eyes, with the expectant expression of an infant whose diapers have been wet for some time. There was a blondish fuzz on top of the melony forehead and a small watermelon of a paunch. Collier Mannichon did not look like a Nobel Prize winner. He was not a Nobel Prize winner. He was 29 years and 3 months old. He knew that statistics showed that the majority of great scientific discoveries had been made by men before they reached their 32nd birthday. He had two years and nine months to go.

His chances of making a great scientific discovery in the Vogel-Paulson Laboratories were remote. He was in the Detergents and Solvents department. He was assigned to the task of searching for a detergent that would eventually break down in water, as there had been several unpleasant articles in national magazines recently about frothing sewers and running brooks covered with layers of suds in which trout died. Mannichon knew that nobody had ever won the Nobel Prize for inventing a new detergent, even one that did not kill trout. In one week, he would be 29 years and 4 months old.

Other men in the laboratory, younger men, were working on leukemia and cancer of the cervix and compounds that showed promise in the treatment of schizophrenia. There was even a 20-year-old prodigy who was assigned to do something absolutely secret with free hydrogen. All possible roads to Stockholm. They were called in to high-level staff meetings, and Mr. Paulson invited them to the country club and to his home and they drove around in sports cars with pretty, lascivious girls, almost like movie actors. Mr. Paulson never came into the detergent department, and when he passed Mannichon in the corridors, he called him Jones. Somehow, six years ago, Mr. Paulson had got the idea that Mannichon's name was Jones.

Mannichon was married to a woman who looked like a casaba melon and he had two children, a boy and a girl, who looked like what you might expect them to look like, and he drove a 1959 Plymouth. His wife made no objections to his working at night. Quite the opposite.

Still, it was better than teaching chemistry in a high school.

He was working at night because he had been confronted by a puzzling reaction that afternoon. He had taken the company's standard detergent, Floxo, and added, more or less at random, some of the puce-colored powder, a comparatively simple mixture known familiarly as dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14, which was known to combine freely with certain stearates. It was an expensive chemical and he had had some unpleasant moments with the auditing department about his budget, so he had used only one gram to a pound of Floxo, which cost $1.80 a ton to produce and was sold at all your better supermarkets for 47 cents the convenient household economy-size giant package, with Green Stamps.

He had put in a piece of white cotton waste, stained with catsup from his luncheon lettuce-and-tomato sandwich and had been disappointed to see that while his control solution of pure Floxo had completely removed the stain from a similarly prepared piece of cotton waste, the solution with dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14 had left a clearly defined ring on the cloth, which looked just like what it was, catsup.

He had tried a solution with one milligram of dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14, but the result had been exactly the same. He had been working on the project for 16 months and he was understandably a little discouraged and was about to throw both samples out when he saw that while the pure Floxo was sudsing away in its usual national-magazine-disapproved manner, the treated mixture now looked like the most limpid mountain spring water.

When he realized the enormity of his discovery, he had to sit down, his knees too weak to carry him. Before his eyes danced a vision of sewers that looked just like sewers in 1890 and trout leaping at the very mouths of conduits leading from thickly settled housing developments. Mr. Paulson would no longer call him Jones. He would buy a Triumph. He would get a divorce and get fitted for contact lenses. He would be promoted to Cancer.

All that remained to be done was to find the right proportion of dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14 to Floxo, the exact ratio that would not produce post-operational suds and at the same time not leave rings and his future would be assured.

Trained researcher as he was, he set about methodically, though with quick-beating heart, making one mixture after another. He was lavish with the dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14. This was no moment for penny-pinching. He ran out of catsup and used tobacco tar from his pipe instead. But all through the afternoon, all through the lonely vigils of the night (he had called his wife and told her not to wait for dinner), the results were always the same. The telltale ring remained. It remained on cotton. It remained on linoleum. It remained on plastic. It remained on leatherette. It remained on the back of his hand.

He did not despair. Erlich had tried 605 combinations before the magic 606th. Science was long, time nothing.

He ran out of inanimate testing materials. He took out two white mice from a batch that had been given to him because they obstinately refused to grow tumors. Vogel-Paulson was running a campaign to induce dog owners to wash their animals' coats with Floxo, because Floxo was lagging in the household field behind its greatest competitor, Wondro, and new avenues of exploitation were being called for. The results on the mice were the same as on everything else. One mouse came out as white as the day it was born and the solution it had been washed in frothed normally. The other mouse looked as though it had been branded, but the solution Mannichon had used on it clarified within five minutes.

He killed the two mice. He was a conscientious man. He didn't use second-run mice. In killing the second mouse, he had the impression of being bitten. He prepared a new solution, this time with a millionth of a gram of dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14, and went to the cages and reached in for two more mice. He had a mixed lot in the cages. Since he got the mice that were considered scientifically useless everywhere else in the laboratories, he had mice that suffered from gigantism, blind mice, black mice, piebald mice, mice that ate their young, freakish yellow mice, gray mice with magenta spots and mice that dashed themselves to death against the bars of their cages upon hearing the note A-flat on a tuning fork.

Gingerly avoiding their fangs, he extracted two mice from their cages. The room in which the cages were kept was in darkness, in deference to the auditing department's views on the extravagant use of electric current in Detergents and Solvents, so Mannichon didn't see the color of the mice until he brought them into his laboratory. They were yellowish in tone, almost like an off-breed golden Labrador or an unwell Chinese laundry-man. He stained the mice carefully with tobacco tar. He had been smoking furiously to produce enough tobacco tar and his tongue was raw, but this was no time to balk at sacrifice.

He put one mouse in an inch of Floxo and distilled water and washed it carefully, after running alcohol over his hands. The mouse splashed brightly, seeming to enjoy its bath, as the stain vanished and the suds fizzed. He put the other mouse into a similar mixture and added a millionth of a gram of dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14. He washed his hands again in alcohol. When he turned back to the second mouse, he saw that it had fallen over on its side into the solution. He bent over and peered at the mouse. It was not breathing. It was dead. He had seen enough dead mice to know a dead mouse when he saw one. He felt a wave of irritation with the organization of the laboratory. How did they expect him to get any serious work done when they gave him mice that collapsed at the first touch of the human hand?

He disposed of the dead mouse and went into the next room for a fresh one. This time, he turned on the light. The hell with those bastards in Audit.

Moved by one of those flashes of inspiration that reason cannot explain but which have made for such leaps forward in the sciences, he picked out another yellowish mouse, a sister of the one that had died. Defiantly, he left the light on in the mouse room, which began to tweak at about eight decibels.

Back in die laboratory, he carefully anointed the new mouse with tobacco tar, noticing meanwhile that the first mouse was still happily frisking in its invigorating suds. He put the mouse he was carrying down in an empty glass dish, its sides just a little too high for jumping. Then he poured some of the mixture with dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14 in it over the new mouse. For a moment, nothing happened. He watched closely, his face six inches from the glass pan. The mouse sighed and lay down quietly and died.

Mannichon sat up. He stood up. He lit a new pipe. He went to the window. He looked out the window. The moon was sinking behind a chimney. He puffed on his pipe. Somewhere here, he sensed with his scientist's trained intuition, there was a cause and there was an effect. The effect was fairly evident. Two dead mice. But the first mouse, the white mouse, that he had put into practically the same solution, had not died, even though the stain had remained in its fur. White mouse, yellow mouse, yellow mouse, white mouse. Mannichon's head began to ache. The moon disappeared behind the chimney.

Mannichon went back to the table. The dead yellow mouse in one pan was already stiffening, looking peaceful in the clear, clean-looking liquid. In the other pan, the other yellow mouse was surfing on the pure Floxo suds. Mannichon removed the dead mouse and put it into the refrigerator for future reference.

He went back into the mouse room, now tweaking at 11 decibels. He brought back with him a gray mouse, a black mouse and a piebald mouse. Without bothering to stain them, he put them one by one into the solution in which the two yellow mice had died. They all seemed to relish the immersion and the piebald mouse was so frisky after it that it attempted to mate with the black mouse, even though they were both males. Mannichon put all three control mice back into portable cages and then stared hard and long at the yellow mouse, still basking in its miniature Mediterranean of loamy, never-failing Floxo.

Mannichon gently lifted the yellow mouse out of the suds. He dried it thoroughly, which seemed to irritate the beast. Somehow, Mannichon got the impression that he had been bitten again. Then he carefully let the yellow mouse down into the pan in which his two yellow brethren had died and in which the three varicolored control mice had sported.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, in his turn, the yellow mouse in the middle of the pan sighed and lay down and died.

Mannichon's headache made him close his eyes for 60 seconds. When he opened them, the yellow mouse was still dead, lying as it had fallen in the crystal-clear liquid.

Mannichon was assailed by a great weariness. Nothing like this had ever occurred to him in all the years he had been serving the cause of science. He was too tired to try to figure out what had been happening, whether it was for the better or for the worse, whether it advanced detergents or put them back 100 years, whether it moved him, Mannichon, closer to Cancer or back to Floor Wax and Glues, or even to severance pay. His brain refused to cope with die problem any longer that night and he mechanically put the dead mouse next to its mate in the refrigerator, tabbed the gray mouse, the black mouse and the piebald mouse, cleaned up, wrote his notes, put out the lights and started for home.

He didn't have the Plymouth tonight, because his wife had needed it to go to play bridge and all the buses had long since stopped running and he couldn't afford a taxi, even if he could have found one at that hour, so he walked home. On his way, he passed the Plymouth, parked in front of a darkened house on Sennett Street, more than a mile away from his home. Mannichon's wife had not told him whose home she was playing bridge in and he didn't recognize the house and he was surprised that people would still be playing bridge at two o'clock in the morning and with the curtains so tightly drawn that no beam of light shone through. But he didn't go in. His presence when she was playing bridge, his wife said, upset her bidding.

•••

"Collect your notes," Samuel Crockett was saying, "and put them in your briefcase and lock it. And lock the refrigerator." There were now 18 dead yellow mice in the refrigerator. "I think we'd better talk about this someplace where we won't be disturbed."

It was the next afternoon. Mannichon had called in Crockett, who worked in the laboratory next door, at 11 A.M. Mannichon had arrived at the lab at 6:30 A.M., unable to sleep, and had spent the morning dipping everything yellow he could find into the solution, which Crockett had begun calling the Mannichon solution at 2:17 P.M. It was the first time anything had been called after Mannichon (his two children were named after his father-in-law and his mother-in-law) and Mannichon was beginning, dimly, to see himself as a Figure in the World of Science. He had already decided to get himself fitted for contact lenses before they came to photograph him for the national magazines.

Crockett, or "Crock," as he was called, was one of the young men who drove around in an open sports car with lascivious girls. It was only a Lancia, but it was open. He had been top man in his class at MIT and was only 25 years and 3 months old and he was working on voluntary crystals and complex protein molecules, which was, in the Vogel-Paulson hierarchy, like being a marshal on Napoleon's staff. He was a lean, wiry Yankee who knew which side his experimental bread was buttered on. After the long morning of dipping bits of yellow everything (yellow silk, yellow cotton, yellow blotting paper) into the solution, with no reaction whatsoever, and executing more than a dozen yellow mice, Mannichon had felt the need for another mind and had gone next door, where Crockett had been sitting with his feet up on a stainless-steel laboratory table, chewing on a cube of sugar soaked in LSD and listening to Thelonious Monk on a portable phonograph.

There had been an initial burst of irritation. "What the hell do you want. Flox?" Crockett had said. Some of the younger men called Mannichon "Flox" as a form of professional banter. But then Crockett had consented to come along, after Mannichon had sketched out the nature of his visit. Enlisting Crockett's help had already paid off handsomely. He had had the dazzling idea at 1:57 P.M. of introducing drops of the solution orally to various colored mice, ending up with a yellow mouse, nearly the last of the batch in Mannichon's cages. The white mice, the gray mice, the black mice, the piebald mice, had reacted with vigor after a few drops of the solution, becoming gay and belligerent. The yellow mouse had quietly died 28 minutes after its drink. So now they knew the solution worked internally as well as externally. However, Crockett had not yet come up with any ideas on how to erase the telltale ring that remained after the solution was used to take out stains. He didn't seem to be too interested in that aspect of the problem. But he had been impressed by the way even the smallest proportion of dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14 had reduced the stubborn Floxo suds and had complimented Mannichon in his terse Yankee way. "You've got something there," he had said, sucking on an LSD sugar cube.

"Why can't we talk here?" Mannichon said, as Crockett made preliminary moves to get out of the laboratory. Mannichon punched in and punched out and he didn't want the personnel department coming asking him why he had taken half a Thursday afternoon off.

"Don't be naive, Flox," was all Crockett said by way of explanation. So Mannichon put all his notes in his briefcase, arranged on shelves all the apparatus and supplies they had been using, locked the refrigerator and followed Crockett out into the corridor.

They met Mr. Paulson near the front gate. "Crock, old Crock," Mr. Paulson said, putting his arm fondly around Crockett's shoulder. "My boy. Hello, Jones. Where the hell are you going?"

"I----" Mannichon began, knowing he was going to stutter.

"Appointment at an optician's," Crockett said crisply. "I'm driving him."

"Aha," said Mr. Paulson. "Science has a million eyes. Good old Crock."

They went out the front gate.

"Aren't you taking your car, Mr. Jones?" the parking-lot attendant asked Mannichon. Four years before, he had heard Mr. Paulson call Mannichon "Jones."

"Here," Crockett cut in. He gave the parking-lot attendant a cube of LSD sugar as a tip. "Suck it."

"Thanks. Mr. Crockett." The parking-lot attendant popped the cube into his mouth and began to suck it. The Lancia swooped out of the lot onto the highway, Italian, the Via Veneto, national magazines, the Affluent Society, open to the sun, wind and rain. Ah, God, Mannichon thought, this is the way to live.

•••

"Now," said Crockett, "let's add up the pluses and the minuses."

They were sitting in a dark bar, decorated like an English coaching inn, curled brass horns, whips, hunting prints. At carefully spaced intervals along the mahogany bar, three married ladies sat in miniskirts, waiting for gentlemen who were not their husbands. Crockett was drinking Jack Daniel's and water. Mannichon sipped at an alexander, the only alcoholic drink he could get down, because it reminded him of a milk shake.

"Plus one," Crockett said. "No suds. Enormous advantage. The polluted rivers of the world. You will be hailed as a Culture Hero."

Mannichon began to sweat, pleasurably.

"Minus one," Crockett went on, waving for another Jack Daniel's. He drank fast. "Minus one--residual rings. Not an insuperable obstacle, perhaps."

"Question of time," Mannichon murmured. "With different catalysts, we might----"

"Perhaps," Crockett said. "Plus two. Distinct affinity, as yet unclear, to yellow living organisms, so far essentially confined to mice. Further experiment clearly indicated along this line. Still, a breakthrough. All specific chemical affinities with diverse particularized organisms eagerly sought after. Definitely a breakthrough. You will be praised."

"Well, Mr. Crockett," Mannichon said, sweating with even more pleasure, hearing language like that from a man who had been first in his year at MIT, "it certainly is----"

"Call me Crock," Crockett said. "We're in this together."

"Crock," Mannichon said gratefully, thinking of the Lancia.

"Minus two," Crockett said, accepting the fresh Jack Daniel's from the waiter. "Solution seems to be fatal to organisms for which it shows affinity. Question is--is it really a minus?"

"It's ... well ... unsettling," Mannichon said, thinking of the 18 rigid mice in the locked refrigerator.

"Negative reactions sometimes positive reactions in disguise. Depends upon point of view," Crockett said. "Natural cycle one of repair and destruction. Each at its own time in its own place. Mustn't lose sight."

"No," said Mannichon humbly, determined not to lose sight.

"Commercially," Crockett said. "Look at DDT. Myxomatosis. Invaluable in Australia. Overrun by rabbits. I didn't like that goldfish, though."

They had borrowed a goldfish off the desk of a receptionist and at 12:56 P.M. had put it first in pure Floxo and then in the Mannichon solution. It couldn't be said that the goldfish had seemed to enjoy the Floxo--it had stood on its head at the bottom of the pan and shuddered every 36 seconds--but it had lived. After 20 seconds in the Mannichon solution, it had expired. It was in the refrigerator now, with the 18 mice.

"No." Crockett repeated. "I didn't like the goldfish. Not at all."

They sat in silence, regretting the goldfish.

"Recapitulation." Crockett said. "We are in possession of formula with unusual qualities. Breaks down tensile balance of otherwise cohesive liquid molecules at normal temperatures. Laughably cheap to manufacture. Mineral traces in minute quantities almost impossible to identify. Highly toxic to certain, specific organisms, benevolent to others. I don't know how--yet--but somewhere here, there's a dollar to be made. I have a hunch ... a hunch. There may be a place we can...." He stopped, almost as if he couldn't trust Mannichon with his thoughts. "Yellow, yellow, yellow. What the hell is yellow that we are overrun with, like rabbits in Australia? We answer that question, we can clean up."

"Well," said Mannichon, "I suppose we would be in for a raise at the end of the year from Mr. Paulson. At least a bonus at Christmas."

"A bonus?" Crockett's voice rose for the first time. "A raise? Are you mad, man?"

"Well, my contract says that everything I develop is the property of Vogel-Paulson. In exchange for----Doesn't your contract read the same?"

"What are you, man?" Crockett asked disgustedly. "A Presbyterian?"

"Baptist," Mannichon said.

"Now you see why we had to get out of the laboratory to talk?" Crockett demanded.

"Well." said Mannichon, looking around at the bar and at the three wives in miniskirts, "I suppose this atmosphere is cozier than----"

"Cozier!" Crockett said. Then he used a rude word. "Don't you have a company, man?"

"A company?" Mannichon said, puzzled. "What would I do with a company? I make seventy-eight hundred dollars a year and what with withholding taxes and child psychiatrists and insurance.... Do you have a company?"

"Four, five. Maybe seven," Crockett said. "Who keeps track? One in Liechtenstein, two in the Bahamas, one in the name of a divorced nymphomaniac aunt with a legal residence in Ischia. Do I have a company!"

"At your age," Mannichon said admiringly. "At the age of twenty-five and three months. But what are they for?"

"Oh, I throw Paulson a bone from time to time," Crockett said. "A low-temperature treatment for polyesters, a crystallization process for storing unstable amino acids, bagatelles like that. Paulson slobbers in gratitude. But for anything big, man, you don't think I go trotting up to the front office, wagging my tail like a bird dog with a quail in its jaws. Christ, man, where've you been? Man, I have four patents in a company's name for the hardening of glass fibers in Germany alone. And as for low-grade bauxite...."

"You don't have to go into detail," Mannichon said, not wishing to seem inquisitive. He was beginning to understand where the Lancias and Corvettes and Mercedes in the laboratory parking lot came from.

"We'll set up a company in Guernsey," Crockett said. "You and I, and whoever else we need. I'm well placed in Guernsey and the bastards speak English. And for any subcompanies that come along, we can use my aunt in Ischia."

"Do you think we'll need anybody else?" Mannichon asked anxiously. In the space of ten minutes, he had acquired the first healthy instinct of a capitalist, not to share wealth unnecessarily.

"I'm afraid so." said Crockett, brooding. "We'll need a first-rate pathologist to tell us just how the Mannichon solution links up with the nuclear material of whatever cells it has an affinity for and how it penetrates the cell wall. We'll need a crackerjack biochemist. And an expert fieldworker to examine how the product behaves in a free environment. This is big, man. No use wasting time on bums. And then, of course, the angel."

"The angel?" Mannichon was at sea. Up to then, religion hadn't seemed to be an integral part of the operation.

"The moneybags," Crockett said impatiently. "All this is going to cost a packet. We can use the laboratory for a lot of things, but finally, we have to set up on our own."

"Of course," Mannichon said, his vocabulary as well as his vision enlarged.

"First, the pathologist," Crockett said. "The best man in the country is right in the shop. Good old Tageka Kyh."

Mannichon nodded. Tageka Kyh had been top man in his year at Kyoto and then top man at Berkeley. He drove a Jaguar XK-E. Tageka Kyh had spoken to him. Once. In a movie. Tageka Kyh had said, "Is this seat taken?" Mannichon had said. "No." He remembered the exchange.

"OK," Crockett said. "Let's go catch Kyh before he goes home. No sense in wasting time." He left a ten-dollar bill on the table and Mannichon followed him toward die door, feeling the attractiveness of wealth. He passed the three wives at the bar. One day soon, he thought, a woman like that will be waiting for me at a bar. He shivered deliciously.

On the way to the laboratory, they bought a goldfish for the receptionist. They had promised to bring her fish back. She was attached to it, she said.

•----

"Interesting, interesting," Tageka Kyh was saying. He had riffled quickly through Mannichon's notes and taken a flat, Oriental glance at the 18 mice in the refrigerator. They were in Mannichon's lab. Crockett was sure that his room and Tageka Kyh's were bugged and that Paulson ran the tapes every night. They all agreed that nobody would bother bugging Detergents and Solvents, so they could speak freely, although in lowered voices.

"Interesting," Tageka Kyh repeated. He spoke perfect English, with a Texas accent. He had put on "no" plays in San Francisco and was an authority on tobacco mosaic. "The cut is as follows. If there ever is a cut. All partners share equally and I have exclusive rights to Guatemala and Costa Rica."

"Kyh," Crockett protested.

"I have certain connections in the Caribbean I have to consider," Tageka Kyh said. "Take it or leave it, pardner."

"Ok," Crockett said. Tageka was a lot closer to the Nobel Prize than Crockett and had companies in Panama, Nigeria and Zurich.

Tageka Kyh offhandedly slipped the tray of dead mice out of the refrigerator and the single goldfish on a flat aluminum shovel.

"Excuse me." Mannichon said. A thought had just occurred to him. "I don't like to interfere, but they're yellow--the mice, I mean----" He was sweating now, and not pleasurably. "What I'm trying to say is that up to now, at least, the ... uh ... the solution...." Later, he would be able to say the Mannichon solution without blushing, but he wasn't up to that yet. "That is," he went on, stuttering, "the solution so far has been toxic only to ... uh ... organisms whose dominant, as it were, pigment, in a manner of speaking, might be described as ... well ... yellowish."

"What are you trying to say, pardner?" Tageka Kyh said, wintry-Texas and pre-Perry samurai at one and the same time.

"It's just that, well," Mannichon stammered, sorry he had started this, "well, there might be certain dangers. Rubber gloves, at the very least. Complete asepsis, if I might presume to advise. I'm the last man in the world to dwell on racial ... uh ... characteristics, but I'd feel guilty if anything ... well, you know, if anything happened, as it were...."

"Don't you worry about your little yellow brother, pardner," Tageka Kyh said evenly. He went out carrying the tray (continued on page 122) mannichon solution (continued from page 116) and the aluminum shovel debonairly, like an old judo trophy.

"Grasping bastard," Crockett said bitterly, as the door closed behind the pathologist. "Exclusive rights to Guatemala and Costa Rica. The Rising Sun. March into Manchuria. Just like the last time."

As he drove home, Mannichon had the impression that Crockett and Tageka Kyh, though confronted with the same data as himself, somehow were leaping to conclusions still very much hidden from him. That's why they drive Lancias and Jaguars, he thought.

•••

The telephone rang at three in the morning. Mrs. Mannichon groaned as Mannichon reached blearily over her to pick it up. She didn't like him to touch her without warning.

"Crockett here," said the voice on the phone. "I'm at Tageka's. Get over here." He barked out the address. "Pronto."

Mannichon hung up and staggered out of bed and started to dress. He had heartburn from die alexander.

"Where going?" Mrs. Mannichon said, in a nonmelony voice.

"Conference."

"At three in the morning." She didn't open her eyes, but her mouth certainly moved.

"I haven't looked at the time," Mannichon said, thinking, Not for long, oh, Lord, not for long.

"Good night, Romeo," Mrs. Mannichon said, her eyes still closed.

"That was Samuel Crockett," Mannichon said, fumbling with his pants.

"Fag," Mrs. Mannichon said. "I always knew it."

"Now, Lulu...." After all, Crockett was his partner.

"Bring home some LSD," Mrs. Mannichon said, falling asleep.

Now, that was a funny thing for her to say, Mannichon thought, as he softly closed the door of the split-level behind him, so as not to awaken the children. Both of the children had a deeply rooted fear of sudden noises, the child psychiatrist had told him.

•••

Tageka Kyh lived downtown in die penthouse apartment of a 13-story building. His Jaguar was parked in front, and Crockett's Lancia. Mannichon parked the Plymouth behind his partners' cars, thinking, Maybe a Ferrari.

Mannichon had to admit to himself that he was surprised when he was let into the apartment by a Negro butler in a yellow striped vest and immaculate white shirt sleeves with large gold cuff links. Mannichon had expected a severe modern decor, perhaps with a Japanese touch--bamboo mats, ebony headrests, washy prints of rainy bridges on the walls. But it was all done in pure Cape Cod--chintz, cobbler's benches, captain's chairs, scrubbed pine tables, lamps made out of ships' binnacles. Poor man, Mannichon thought, he is trying to assimilate.

Crockett was waiting in die living room, drinking beer and standing looking at a full-rigged clipper ship in a bottle on the mantel.

"Hi," Crockett said. "Have a nice trip?"

"Well," Mannichon said, rubbing at his red eyes behind his glasses, "I must confess I'm not completely on the quivive. I'm used to eight hours' sleep and----"

"Got to learn to cut it down," Crockett said. "I do on two." He drank some beer. "Good old Tageka'll be ready for us any minute. He's in his lab."

A door opened and a lascivious girl in tight silk oft-mauve pants came in with some more beer and a plate of chocolate marshmallow cookies. She smiled lasciviously at Mannichon as she offered him the tray. He took a beer and two cookies for her sake.

"His," Crockett said.

"You bet," said the girl.

Oh, to be a Japanese pathologist, Mannichon thought.

A buzzer rang dimly. "Captain Ahab," said the girl. "He's ready for you. You know the way, Sammy."

"This way, Flox," Crockett said, starting out of the room.

"Got some, Sammy?" the girl asked.

Crockett tossed her a sugar cube. She was lying down, with her off-mauve legs high over the back of a ten-foot-long chintz couch and nibbling on the sugar with small white teeth before they were out of the room.

Tageka Kyh's laboratory was bigger and more elaborately equipped than any at Vogel-Paulson. There was a large operating table that could be rotated to any position, powerful lamps on pulleys and swivels, banks of instrument cases, sterilizers, refrigerators with glass doors, a gigantic X-ray machine, stainless-steel sinks and tables and basins, strobo-microscopes, the lot.

"Wow!" Mannichon said, standing at the door, taking it in.

"Ford," Tageka said. He was dressed in a surgeon's apron and he was pulling off a surgeon's mask and cap. Under his apron, Mannichon could see the rolled-up ends of blue jeans and high-heeled, silver-worked cowboy boots. "Well," Tageka said, "I've been teasing away at our problem." He poured himself a tumbler of California sherry from a gallon jug in a corner and drank thirstily. "I've dissected the eighteen mice. Yellow." He smiled at Mannichon with a gleam of samurai teeth. "I've looked at the slides. It's too early to say anything definite yet, Mannichon; all I can offer is an educated guess, but you've hit on something brand-new."

"Have I?" Mannichon said eagerly. "What is it?"

Tageka Kyh and Crockett exchanged significant glances, the born big-leaguers noting with pity and understanding the entrance of the born bush leaguer into the locker room. "I'm not quite sure yet, pardner," Tageka Kyh said gently. "All I'm sure of is that whatever it is, it's new. And we live in an age in which being new is enough. Remember Man Tan, remember the hula hoop, remember No-Cal, remember the stereoscope glasses for three-dimensional films. Fortunes were made. In the space of months." Mannichon began to pant. Tageka shed his apron. Under it he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. "My preliminary conclusions," he said briskly. "A nontoxic substance, to be designated, for the sake of convenience, as Floxo, combined with another known nonloxic substance, dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14, shows a demonstrable swift affinity for the pigment material of eighteen yellowish mice and one goldfish----"

"Nineteen," Mannichon said, remembering the first yellow mouse he had thrown into the incinerator.

"Eighteen," Tageka said. "I do not work on hearsay."

"I'm sorry," said Mannichon.

"Examination of cells," Tageka went on, "and other organs leads to the observation that in a manner as yet undiscovered, the solution unites with the pigmental matter in the cells, whose chemical formula I shall not at this moment trouble you with, to produce a new compound, formula to be ascertained, that attacks, with great speed and violence, the sympathetic nervous system, leading to almost immediate nonfunctioning of that system and subsequent stoppage of breathing, movement and heartbeat." He poured himself another tumbler of sherry. "Why are your eyes so red, pardner?"

"Well, I'm used to eight hours of sleep a night and----" Mannichon said.

"Learn to cut down," Tageka said. "I do on one."

"Yes, sir," Mannichon said.

"What practical use can be made of this interesting relationship between our solution and certain organic pigments is not within my province," Tageka said. "I'm merely a pathologist. But I am sure a bright young man can come up with a suggestion. Nothing is useless in the halls of science. After all, the Curies discovered the properties of radium because a key left overnight in a darkened room with a lump of refined pitchblende allowed its photograph to be taken. After all, nobody is much interested in taking photographs of keys, are they, pardner?" He giggled unexpectedly.

(continued on page 282) mannichon solution (continued from page 122)

Japanese are lunny, Mannichon thought. They are not like us.

Tageka grew serious again. "Further exhaustive investigation, carefully controlled, will perhaps enlighten us. Experiments with at least five hundred other yellow mice, to begin with, with five hundred controls. A thousand goldfish, similar procedure. Naturally yellow organisms, such as daffodils, parrots, squash, corn, etc., similar procedure. Higher vertebrates, dogs, a certain yellow-bottomed baboon, to be found in the rain forests of New Guinea, unfortunately rare, two horses, roans will do----"

"How can I get two horses into Detergents and Solvents?" Mannichon asked, his head reeling. "Especially if we have to keep this quiet?"

"This laboratory"--Tageka made a courteous east-wind gesture of his hand at the gleam around them--"is at the service of my honorable friends. And we must show a certain amount of initiative in conducting some of our experiments in other localities. All I need is a few correctly prepared tissue slides, stained as I direct."

"But I can't put in request forms for baboons and horses," Mannichon said, sweating again.

"I had thought it understood that we would undertake this privately." Tageka said frostily, looking at Crockett.

"That's right," Crockett said.

"But where's the money going to come from? Yellow-bottomed baboons, for God's sake," Mannichon cried.

"I am merely a pathologist," Tageka said. He drank some more sherry.

"I'm in." Crockett said.

"You can be in," Mannichon said, near tears. "You have companies all over the world. Liechtenstein, Ischia.... I make seven thousand, eight hundred dollars a----"

"We know what you make, pardner," Tageka said. "I will absorb your share of the preliminary expenses, along with my own."

Mannichon breathed heavily with gratitude. There was no doubt about it, he was finally in with Class.

"I hardly know what to say...." he began.

"There is no need to say anything," said Tageka. "As partial reimbursement for funds laid out, I shall take the exclusive rights of your share of all of northern Europe for the first ten years, on a line drawn from London to Berlin."

"Yes, sir," said Mannichon. He would have liked to say something else, but what came out was, "Yes, sir."

"I reckon that's about it for the night, pardners," Tageka said. "I don't like to rush you, but I have some work to do before I go to sleep."

He escorted Crockett and Mannichon politely to the door of the laboratory. They heard it lock behind them.

"The Oriental mind," Crockett said. "Always suspicious."

The girl in the off-mauve pants was still lying on the couch. Her eyes were open, but she didn't seem to see anything.

There's no doubt of it, Mannichon thought, taking a last devouring look at the girl, this is the age of specialization.

•••

The next weeks were frantic. Mannichon spent his days in Detergents and Solvents writing up reports on nonexistent experiments to indicate on the weekly reviews that he was earning his salary and loyally advancing the interests of Vogel-Paulson. The nights were spent in Tageka Kyh's laboratory. Mannichon had got his sleep down to three hours. The tests went on methodically. The 500 yellow mice duly succumbed. A yellow Afghan with an illustrious pedigree, bought at great expense, lasted less than an hour after lapping up several drops of Mannichon's solution in a bowl of milk, while a black-and-white mongrel liberated from the pound for three dollars barked happily for two days after sharing the same meal. Dead goldfish lay by the hundreds in Tageka's refrigerators and the yellow-bottomed baboon, after showing deep affection for Tageka, tolerance for Crockett and a desire to murder Mannichon, was laid to rest only ten minutes after its relevant parts had been laved in a purposely weakened variant of the solution.

During this period, Mannichon's domestic situation was not all that it might have been. His nightly absences had begun to annoy Mrs. Mannichon. He could not tell her what he was doing, except that he was working with Crockett and Tageka. Because of the community-property laws, he was planning to divorce her before the company showed any profit.

"What have you fellows got going up there every night?" Mrs. Mannichon demanded. "A rainbow-colored daisy chain?"

One more cross to bear, Mannichon thought. Temporarily.

•••

Flowers and vegetables had not been affected by the solution and they had not yet tried horses. And despite some ingenious manipulations of the solution by Crockett (he had managed to subtract two hydrocarbon molecules from Floxo and had bombarded dioxotetramercphenoferrogene 14 with a large variety of radioactive isotopes), the residual rings always remained on whatever materials they tried, even after exhaustive scrubbing. While the two other men worked on serenely, checking all leads meticulously night after night and producing dazzling results for Vogel-Paulson day after day, Mannichon, vertiginous from lack of sleep, was beginning to despair of ever finding any practical use for the Mannichon solution. He would write a little paper that might or might not get published, two or three biochemists throughout the country might thumb through the pages offhandedly and another curious little dead end of research would be closed out and forgotten. He would drive the 1959 Plymouth for the rest of his life and he would never see the inside of a divorce court.

He didn't communicate his fears to Crockett and Tageka Kyh. It was hard to communicate anything to them. In the beginning, they rarely listened when he talked and after a couple of weeks, they didn't listen at all. He did his work in silence. His work finally consisted of washing up, taking dictation and filing slides. He was having his troubles at Vogel-Paulson, too. His weekly running digests of nonexistent experiments were not being received with enthusiasm and an ominous memo had come to him in a baby-blue envelope from Mr. Paulson himself. "Well?" Mr. Paulson had scrawled on a large piece of paper. Just that. It was not promising.

He had decided to quit. He had to quit. He needed at least one night's sleep. He wanted to announce it to his partners, but it was difficult to find the appropriate time. He knew he couldn't say it in front of Tageka Kyh, who was a remote man, but there was a chance that if he got Crockett alone for a minute or two, he could get it out. After all, Crockett was white.

So he took to tagging after Crockett and lying in wait for him whenever he could. But it took nearly another week before his opportunity presented itself. He was waiting in front of the restaurant where Crockett often lunched, usually with a lascivious girl or several lascivious girls. The restaurant was called La Belle Provençale and a meal there never cost less than ten dollars. That is, if you didn't order wine. Mannichon had never eaten there, of course. He took his lunch at the Vogel-Paulson commissary. You could eat there for 85 cents. That was one good thing about Vogel-Paulson.

It was a hot day and there was no shade. Because of his vertigo, Mannichon rocked from side to side as he waited, as though he were on the deck of a heaving ship. Then he saw the Lancia drive up. For once, Crockett was alone. He left the motor running as he stepped out and turned the car over to the attendant to park. He didn't notice Mannichon as he strode toward the door of La Belle Provençale, although he passed within three feet of him.

"Crock," Mannichon said.

Crockett stopped and looked around. A look of displeasure angled across the Yankee angles of his face. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said.

"Crock," Mannichon said, "I have to talk to you----"

"What the hell're you rocking for?" Crockett asked. "Are you drunk?"

"That's one of the things I wanted to----"

A funny expression, intense and cold, came over Crockett's face. He was staring past Mannichon, over Mannichon's shoulder. "Look!" he said.

"You fellers've been great and all that," Mannichon said, lurching closer to Crockett, "but I have to----"

Crockett grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him around. "I said, 'Look.' "

Mannichon sighed and looked. There was nothing much to look at. Across the street, in front of a bar, there was a broken-down old wagon full of empty ginger-ale bottles and an old horse, its head drooping in the heat.

"Look at what, Crock?" Mannichon said. He was now seeing double, but he didn't want to burden Crockett with his troubles.

"The horse, man, the horse."

"What about the horse, Crock?"

"What color is it, man?"

"They're yellow. I mean, it's yellow," Mannichon said, correcting for his double vision.

"Everything comes to him who waits," Crockett said. He took out a small bottle of the Mannichon solution. He never went anyplace without it. He was a dedicated scientist, not one of those timeservers who lock their minds when they lock their office doors. Swiftly, Crockett poured some of the solution on his right hand. He gave Mannichon the bottle to hold, in case the police ever asked any questions. Then he sauntered across the street toward the old yellow horse and the wagon full of empty ginger-ale bottles. It was the first time Mannichon had seen Crockett saunter anywhere.

Crockett went up to the horse. The driver was nowhere in sight. A Buick passed with a colored man at the wheel; but aside from that, the street was empty.

"Good old dobbin." Crockett said. He patted the horse kindly on the muzzle with his wet hand. Then he sauntered back toward Mannichon. "Put that goddamn bottle in your pocket, man," he whispered. He took Mannichon's arm, wiping the last drops of the liquid off on Mannichon's sleeve. It looked friendly, but the fingers felt like steel hooks. Mannichon put the bottle of the solution in his pocket and, side by side, he and Crockett went into the restaurant.

The bar of La Belle Provençale was parallel to the front window and the bottles were arranged on glass shelves up against the window. With the light from the street coming in from behind them, the bottles looked like jewelry. It was an artistic effect. There were quite a few people eating ten-dollar lunches in the dark interior of the restaurant, in a hush of expensive French food, but there was nobody else at the bar. The room was air conditioned and Mannichon shivered uncontrollably as he sat on the bar stool, looking out at the street through the bottles. He could see the yellow horse between a bottle of Chartreuse and a bottle of Noilly-Prat. The yellow horse hadn't moved. He was still there in the heat with his head down.

"What'll it be, Mr. Crockett?" the bartender said. "The usual?" Everybody always knew Crockett's name.

"The usual, Benny," Crockett said. "And an alexander for my friend." Crockett never forgot anything.

They watched the horse through the bottles while Benny prepared the Jack Daniel's and the alexander. The horse didn't do anything.

The bartender served the drinks and Crockett drank half of his in one gulp. Mannichon sipped at his alexander. "Crock," he said, "I really do have to talk to you. This whole thing is getting me----"

"Sssh," Crockett said. The driver of the wagon was coming out of the bar across the street. He climbed up onto the seat of the wagon and picked up the reins. The horse slowly went down on its knees and then all the way down between the traces. The horse didn't move anymore.

"Send two more drinks to the table, Benny," Crockett said. "Come on, Flox, I'll buy you lunch."

Crockett ordered tripes à la mode de Caen for lunch and a bottle of hard cider. Crockett certainly wasn't a typical Yankee. As soon as Mannichon saw and smelled the dish, he knew his stomach was going to make some peculiar claims on his attention that afternoon. He never did manage to tell Crockett that he wanted to quit.

•••

"Now for the next step," Tageka Kyh was saying. All three of them were in his laboratory in the penthouse. It was comparatively early, only 2:30 A.M. Tageka had taken the news about the horse without surprise, although he did say that it was too bad they hadn't gotten any slides. "We've gone just about as far as necessary with the lower vertebrates," Tageka Kyh said. "The next experiment suggests itself inevitably."

It didn't suggest itself inevitably to Mannichon. "What's that?" he said.

For once, Tageka Kyh answered one of Mannichon's questions. "Man," he said simply.

Mannichon opened his mouth and kept it open. He didn't close it for some time.

Crockett had his face squeezed up into lines of concentration. "I foresee certain complications." he said.

"Nothing serious," Tageka Kyh said. "All it needs is access to a hospital with a decent selection of pigmented subjects."

"Well, I know everybody at Lakeview General downtown, of course," Crockett said, "but I don't think we'd find the proper range. After all, we're in die Midwest. I doubt if you'd even find more than two or three Indians in a year."

Mannichon still had his mouth open.

"I don't trust those fellows at General," Tageka Kyh said. "They're sloppy. And whatever man we pick we'll have to bring in as a full partner, of course, and I don't like anyone down at General enough to dump a fortune in his lap."

Mannichon would have liked to interrupt at this point. Tageka Kyh's use of the word fortune seemed careless, to say the least. Everything they had done up to now, as far as Mannichon was concerned, had been rigorously devoid of all possibility of profit. But Tageka Kyh was caught up in his planning, speaking smoothly, articulating well, pronouncing every syllable.

"I think all indications point to the West Coast. San Francisco comes to mind," Tageka Kyh said. "A sizable non-white population, well-run hospitals with large nonsegregated charily wards...."

"Chinatown," Mannichon said. He had been there on his honeymoon. He had had shark's-fin soup. You only get married once, he had said to Lulu.

"I have a friend on the staff of Mercy and Cancer," Tageka Kyh said. "Ludwig Qvelch."

"Of course," Crockett nodded. "Qvelch. Prostate. Top-notch." Crockett had heard of everybody.

"He was first in his class at Berkeley three years before me," Tageka Kyh said. "I think I'll give him a tinkle." He reached for the phone.

"Wait a minute, please, Mr. Tageka." Mannichon said hoarsely. "Do you mean to say you are going to experiment on living human beings? Maybe kill them?"

"Crock," Tageka Kyh said, "you brought this fellow in on this. You handle him."

"Flox," Crockett said, with evident irritation, "it boils down to this--are you a scientist or aren't you a scientist?"

Tageka Kyh was already dialing San Francisco.

•••

"Let me see, now," Ludwig Qvelch was saying, "what have we got on hand? I'm thinking of the Blumstein wing. That would seem to be the place to begin, don't you agree, Tageka?"

Tageka Kyh nodded. "The Blumstein wing. Ideal," he said.

Qvelch had arrived only 14 hours alter the call to San Francisco. He had closeted himself with Tageka Kyh and Crockett all afternoon and evening. It was midnight now and Mannichon had been admitted to the conference, which was taking place in the Cape Cod living room. Ludwig Qvelch was a huge, tall man, with wonderful white teeth and a hearty Western manner. He wore $300 suits with light ties and he was a man you would instinctively trust anywhere. He had made some marvelously eloquent speeches on national television against Medicare.

Qvelch took out a small black alligator notebook and thumbed through it. "At the moment." he said, "we have thirty-three Caucasians, twelve Negroes, three indeterminate, one Hindu, one Berber and seven Orientals, six presumably of Chinese extraction, one definitely Japanese. All male, of course." He laughed heartily at this allusion to his specialty, the prostate gland. "I would call that a fair enough sampling, wouldn't you?"

"It'll do," Tageka Kyh said.

"All terminal?" Crockett asked.

"I would say roughly eighty percent," Qvelch said. "Why do you ask?"

"For his sake." Crockett gestured toward Mannichon. "He was worried."

"I'm glad to see that the rarefied air of research hasn't wiped out your admirable youthful scruples," Qvelch said, putting a large Western hand on Mannichon's shoulder. "Have no fear. No life will be shortened--appreciably."

"Thanks, doctor," Mannichon mumbled.

Qvelch looked at his watch. "Well, I've got to be tootling back," he said. "I'll keep in touch." He put a liter bottle, usually reserved for carrying volatile acids and encased in lead, into his valise. "You'll be hearing from me." He started briskly toward the door, Tageka Kyh accompanying him. Qvelch stopped before he reached the door. "What is it again? One quarter of all proceeds to each partner, with Guatemala and Costa Rica exclusive to Kyh and Mannichon's share of northern Europe for ten years...?"

"It's all in the memorandum I gave you this afternoon," Tageka Kyh said.

"Yes, of course," Qvelch said. "I just wanted to be able to clear up any little points with my lawyers when the incorporation papers come through. Nice meeting you fellers." He waved to Crockett and Mannichon and was gone.

"I'm afraid we'll have to break it up early tonight, pardners." Tageka Kyh said. "I have some work to do."

Mannichon went right home, looking forward to his first good night's sleep in months. His wife was out playing bridge, so he should have been able to sleep like a baby; but for some reason, he couldn't close his eyes until dawn.

•••

"Qvelch called this afternoon," Tageka Kyh said. "He reports results."

Mannichon's eyelids began to twitch in little spasms and he found that his lungs had suddenly begun to reject air. "Do you mind if I sit down?" he said. He had just rung the bell of Tageka's apartment and Tageka himself had come to the door. Supporting himself with his hands against the wall, he made his way into the living room and sat unsteadily in a captain's chair. Crockett was sprawled on the couch, a glass of whiskey on his breastbone. Mannichon couldn't tell from the expression on Crockett's face whether he was sad or happy or drunk.

Tageka followed Mannichon into the room. "Can I get you anything?" Tageka asked, being a host. "A beer? A juice?"

"Nothing, thank you," Mannichon said. This was the first time since they had met that Tageka had been polite to him. He was being prepared for something horrible, he was sure. "What did Dr. Qvelch have to say?"

"He asked to be remembered to you," Tageka said, sitting between Crockett and Mannichon on a cobbler's bench and taking in a hole on the chased-silver buckle of the belt of his jeans.

"What else?" Mannichon asked.

"The first experiment has been concluded. Qvelch himself administered the solution epidermally to eight subjects, five white, two black and one yellow. Seven of the subjects have registered no reaction. The autopsy on the eighth----"

"Autopsy!" Mannichon's lungs were rejecting air in jets. "We've killed a man!"

"Oh, be reasonable, Flox." It was Crockett talking, wearily, the whiskey glass going up and down evenly on his chest. "It happened in San Francisco. Two thousand miles away from here."

"But it's my solution. I----"

"Our solution, Mannichon," Tageka said evenly. "With Qvelch, we number four."

"Mine, ours, what's the difference? There's a poor dead Chinaman lying on a slab in----"

"With your temperament, Mannichon," Tageka said, "I don't understand how you happened to go into research instead of psychiatry. If you're going to do business with us, you'll have to restrain yourself."

"Business!" Mannichon staggered to his feet. "What kind of business do you call this? Killing off Chinamen with cancer in San Francisco! Boy," he said with unaccustomed irony, "if ever I heard of a money-maker, this is it."

"Do you want to listen or do you want to make an oration?" Tageka said. "I have many interesting and valuable things to tell you. But I have work to do and I can't waste my time. That's better. Sit down."

Mannichon sat down.

"And stay down," Crockett said.

"The autopsy, as I was saying," Tageka went on, "indicated that the subject died a natural death. No traces of any unusual matter in any of the organs. Death occurred quietly, due, by inference, to a secondary flash reaction to cancerous material in the region of the prostate gland. We know better, of course."

"I'm a murderer," Mannichon said, putting his head between his hands.

"I really can't tolerate language like that in my house, Crock," Tageka said. "Perhaps we had better let him disassociate."

"If you want to go back to Detergents and Solvents, Flox," Crockett said, without moving from the couch, "you know where the door is."

"That's exactly what I want to do," Mannichon said. He stood up and started toward the door.

"You're walking out on the best part of a million dollars, man," Crockett said calmly.

Mannichon stopped walking toward the door. He turned. He went back to the captain's chair. He sat down. "I might as well hear the worst," he said.

"I was down in Washington three days ago," Crockett said. "I dropped in on an old friend. Simon Bunswanger. I went to school with him at Boston Latin. You haven't heard of him. Nobody's heard of him. He's in the CIA. Big man in the CIA. Big, big man. I gave him a little rundown on our project. He was titillated. He promised to call a meeting of some of the boys in his shop for briefing and proposals." Crockett looked at his watch. "He's due here any minute."

"The CIA?" Mannichon now felt completely adrift. "What'd you do that for? They'll put us all in jail."

"Quite the opposite," Crockett said. "Quite the opposite. I'll bet you two alexanders he comes in here with a nice, fat proposition...."

"For what?" Mannichon asked. Now he was sure that all those companies and all that lack of sleep had made irreparable inroads on Crockett's reason. "What would they want with the Mannichon solution?"

"Remember the first day you came to me, Flox?" Crockett finally got to his feet. He was in his socks and he padded over to the bar to pour himself a fresh Jack Daniel's. "I said, we answer one question, we can clean up. Remember that?"

"More or less, " Mannichon said.

"Do you remember what that one question was?" Crockett said, drinking, sounding liquid. "I'll refresh your little old memory cells, reactivate the old nerve patterns. The question was, 'What the hell is yellow that we are overrun with, like rabbits in Australia?' Remember that?"

"Yes," Mannichon said. "But what has the CIA got to ...?"

"The CIA, man," said Crockett, "knows exactly what is yellow and what we are overrun with." He paused, dropped a piece of ice into his drink and stirred with his finger. "Chinamen, man."

The doorbell rang. "That must be Bunswanger," Crockett said. "I'll go."

"This is the last time I'll do any work with anybody like you. Mannichon," Tageka said icily. "You're psychically unstable."

Crockett came back into the room with a man who looked as though he could have made a good living as a female impersonator in the old days of vaudeville. He was willowy and had fine blond hair and a small bow mouth and a blushing complexion.

"Si," Crockett said, "I want you to meet my partners." He introduced Tageka, who bowed, and Mannichon, who couldn't look into Bunswangcr's eyes as they shook hands. Bunswanger's grip was not that of a female impersonator.

"I'll have a Jack Daniel's, Crock," Bunswanger said. It must have been the campus drink at old Boston Latin. Bunswanger had a voice that reminded Mannichon of Carborundum.

Glass in hand, Bunswanger sat on one of the scrubbed pine tables, his legs crossed in a fetching manner. "Well, the boys in the shop think you fellows have done a dandy little piece of creative research," Bunswanger began. "We had some tests run and they bear your papers out one hundred percent. Did you hear from Qvelch?"

"This afternoon," Tageka said. "Results positive."

Bunswanger nodded. "The boys in the shop said they would be. Well, no use beating around the bush. We want it. The solution. We've already set up preliminary target zones. The source of the Yangtze, three or four lakes in the north, two of the tributaries of the Yellow River, places like that. You don't happen to have a map of China handy, do you?"

"Sorry," said Tageka.

"Pity," Bunswanger said. "It would clear up the picture for you fellows." He looked around. "Nice place you have here. You'd be surprised what they ask for a decent place to live in Washington. Of course, the Russians will help us. We've sounded them out already. Makes it more comfy, reduces the risks. That long border with Siberia and all those delegations. Of course, that's the beauty of the stuff. No bang. We've been searching for something without a bang for years. Nothing satisfactory's come up, until this. Did you fellows test all the way down? I didn't see it in your papers. I was in a hurry, of course, but I wondered."

"Test what down?" Mannichon asked.

"Flox," Crockett said wearily.

"Mannichon," Tageka said warningly.

"Down to effective reaction at lowest possible percentage of solution in H Two O," Bunswanger said.

"We didn't push to the limit, Si," Crockett said. "We only worked nights."

"Amazing efficiency," Bunswanger said. He took a delicate sip of his whiskey. "We ran a few trials. One two-billionth of a part in fresh water. One three-billionth of a part in salt water." He laughed, sounding girlish, remembering something. "There's a curious side effect. It cures jaundice. You could set up a company, pharmaceutical only, and make a wad just on that. Only on a doctor's prescription, of course. You'd have to make sure nobody used it on Orientals or there'd be hell to pay. Well, just a detail. Now"--he uncrossed his legs--"practical matters. We'll pay you two million cold for it. Out of unvouchered funds. So you don't have to pay the tax boys anything on it. No record. Nothing in writing. It's a great shop to do business for. No niggling."

Mannichon was panting again.

"Are you all right, sir?" Bunswanger asked, real concern in his voice.

"Fine," Mannichon said, continuing to pant.

"Of course," Bunswanger said, still looking concernedly at Mannichon, "if we ever use it, it swings over on a royalty basis. But we can't guarantee that it will ever go operational. Though the way things look right now...." He left the sentence unfinished.

Mannichon thought of Ferrari after Ferrari, dozens of girls in off-mauve pants.

"One more little thing and I'm off," Bunswanger said. "I have a visit to make in Venezuela tomorrow. Hear this," his voice was as precise as a gun sight. "I'm in for twenty percent. One fifth. For services rendered." He looked around.

Crockett nodded.

Tageka nodded.

Mannichon nodded, slowly.

"I'm off to Caracas," Bunswanger said gaily. He finished his drink. They shook hands all round. "There'll be a fellow here in the morning," Bunswanger said, "with the loot. In cash, naturally. What time is convenient?"

"Six A.M.," Tageka said.

"Done and done," Bunswanger said, making a quick entry in a small alligator-bound notebook. "Glad you dropped in the other day, Crock. Don't bother seeing me to the door." And he was gone.

There was little more to be done. Since they were going to be paid in cash, they had to figure out what compensation Tageka was to get for his Caribbean rights and his ten-year share of Mannichon's portion of the rights for northern Europe. It didn't take long. Tageka was just as good a mathematician as a pathologist.

Crockett and Mannichon left the apartment together. Crockett had a date at a bar nearby with Mr. Paulson's third and present wife and he was in a hurry to be off. "So long, Flox," he said as he got into his Lancia. "Not a bad day's work." He was humming as he spurted off.

Mannichon got into the Plymouth. He sat there for a while, trying to decide what to do first. He finally decided that first things came first. He drove home at 30 miles an hour to tell Mrs. Mannichon he was going to get a divorce.

•••

Up in the apartment, Tageka was sitting on the cobbler's bench, making neat ideograms with a brush and ink on a scratch-pad. After a while, he pressed a buzzer. The Negro butler came in, dressed in his yellow striped vest and white shirt sleeves with heavy gold cuff links.

"James," Tageka Kyh said to the butler, "tomorrow I want you to order five hundred grams each of dioxotetramerc-phenoferrogene, 14, 15 and 17. And five hundred pink mice. No--on second thought, better make it a thousand."

"Yes, sir," said James.

"Oh, and James"--Tageka Kyh waved the brush negligently at the butler. "Will you be good enough to put in a call to the Japanese embassy in Washington. I'll speak to the ambassador personally."

"Yes, sir," James said and picked up the phone.