Mr. Adam by Pat Frank

shouted, leaning forward, pounding my knees with my fists as Cliffdweller labored towards the finish. At this point, it seemed that the television screen had shifted to slow motion.
    â€œStephen!” Marge shouted.
    The horses crossed the finish line. “It’s a photo!” shouted Parkinson. I fell back against the pillow.
    â€œSo this is why I haven’t been able to get you on the telephone all afternoon!” Marge said. “Sneaked off to the races!”
    I looked up at her. She was remarkably businesslike and trim and tidy in a blue suit and a white blouse that concealed, and yet promised, the smooth curves underneath. She was a very admirable-looking woman, but she was very angry. In a case like this, I believe that the best defense is an offense. “Here I am, down in bed with a chill, and I get abused!” I reproached her.
    Marge smiled, and touched my forehead lightly with her fingers. She knew that I wasn’t ill, and she knew that I knew that she knew. “Come on! Get off the Field and into the living room. I brought home some people.”
    Parkinson’s cheerful, weathered face appeared on the screen. “Who?” I asked absent-mindedly.
    â€œIn just a second,” said Parkinson, “the judges will have inspected the picture, and we will have the result of the sixth. Meanwhile, let me tell you that I’ve never seen Hialeah more colorful than it is today, here in the bright sunshine, with the brilliant plumage of the famous flamingoes out by the lake. And remember that for relaxation like a trip to the Southland, always smoke—”
    â€œThat man is a bad influence on you,” Marge interrupted. “Shoo him away. Anyway, it gives me the creeps to have strange men in the bedroom, staring at us.”
    â€œHere’s the results,” said Parkinson. “It’s Cliffdweller, by a whisker.”
    I flicked the switch and rolled off Smith Field, feeling better. Out in the living room, their faces flushed by the cold wind, Maria Ostenheimer and my friend of the Apennines and Polyclinic, Dr. Thompson, were standing close to the fire. “Hello,” I greeted them, “didn’t know you two knew each other.”
    â€œOur acquaintanceship,” said Thompson, “is strictly professional—at least thus far.” Maria, delicately made, looked almost childlike alongside his bulk. “We’re on the same committee,” she explained.
    Marge inspected me thoughtfully, tapping a cigarette on the mantel. “They’ve just come from Washington,” she said. “They appeared before both the Executive Inter-Departmental group and the Joint Congressional Committee on behalf of the National Re-fertilization Project. They testified for A.I.”
    â€œWell, Maria did,” amended Thompson. “I’m more interested in another aspect of the problem.”
    â€œAll I’ve heard today,” I complained, “is A.I.” A startling, and horrible possibility gripped me. I pointed my finger at Marge. “If you think for one instant,” I told her, “that we are going to fill this apartment with lanky, redheaded children all subject to inferiority complexes, and none of them mine, then you had better start thinking again. You’re not going to be any female guinea pig to test the productive capacity of Mr. Adam!”
    Thompson threw back his head and laughed. “Relax, Steve,” he said. “Relax!”
    â€œAnyway,” said Marge, acidly, “I understand that Washington has been simply snowed under with applications. There are thousands ahead of me, even if I wanted an Adam child. There are plenty of husbands whose sense of responsibility to the human race is greater than their selfishness and stupid jealousy!”
    Maria cocked her head on the side and looked at me with her wise, dark eyes. “I have just finished telling our distinguished statesmen,” she said,