Mr. Adam by Pat Frank Page A

“that A.I. may be the only salvation for mankind. I say may”—her words tripped out slowly and daintily, as if they were being carefully marched across a narrow plank—“I say may because right at present A.I. is the only solution which we know will work. Artificial insemination is bound to furnish at least a limited number of males in another generation.”
    â€œCan you imagine,” I exclaimed, “the whole world peopled with redheaded beanpoles, all looking exactly like Homer Adam!”
    â€œBut that’s not why we came to see you,” Maria said, and for a small, quite pretty and young girl she was alarmingly grave. “We came to see you about Homer Adam himself.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” I asked. “Is he pining away without his Mary Ellen?”
    â€œWell, something like that,” Maria said, still grave and troubled. “You see, this business has naturally been a very great shock to him. And they mauled and manhandled him fearfully when he got to Washington.”
    â€œThat Phelps-Smythe!” said Thompson. “The first thing the Eastern Defense Command did to Adam was fill him up with shots until he was a walking pharmaceutical encyclopedia. They shot him full of paratyphoid, typhus, yellow fever, influenza, cholera—as if he were going to catch cholera at Fort Myer—smallpox, and I don’t know what else besides.”
    â€œPhelps-Smythe,” I remarked, “is a revolving son-of-a-bitch.”
    â€œAnd all the brass exhibits poor Mr. Adam at dinners,” said Maria, “as if he were a freak.”
    â€œPhelps-Smythe,” I said, “is bucking for a star. If he pleases enough generals, maybe one day he’ll get to be a general himself. Ask any correspondent who was in the Southwest Pacific. They’ll tell you how it works. They had a beaut out there.”
    Thompson held out his huge hands, six inches apart. “Adam,” he said, “is now no wider than that. Furthermore, he has developed a twitch.”
    â€œIt is really very serious,” said Maria. “As things are now, everything depends on the well-being of one man—a sensitive man who apparently was never very strong. If his health is ruined—either his physical health or his mental health—it imperils the chances of successful artificial insemination.
    â€œLet me put it this way. Our present methods of A.I. are still fairly crude. It is true that you will find millions of motile sperm cells in one male specimen, but we have not yet found a way to isolate these cells—keep each one of them alive, happy, and potent so that each one has a chance of causing pregnancy. Artificial insemination is still a matter of mass impregnation. You use millions of cells, but only one does the job.”
    â€œWhat a waste!” I said.
    â€œWhat a waste indeed, at this period in history,” said Marge.
    â€œWell, we’re working on the isolation problems, but meanwhile we want to start A.I. as quickly as possible,” Maria continued. “Suppose something happened to Homer Adam before we began? Anyway, we can not make maximum—perhaps not even normal—use of Homer Adam until he again becomes a tranquil, normal man. Even if we were able to use him in his present state—which is doubtful—we might create a race of physical and nervous wrecks.”
    I didn’t sense what was coming. “What,” I inquired, “has this got to do with me?”
    â€œI talked to Adam,” said Thompson. “He likes you, he trusts you, and he wonders what became of you. You made a very deep impression on him. What did you do?”
    â€œNothing,” I replied, “except let him beat me at gin rummy occasionally.”
    Thompson grinned. “There is nothing so good for a man’s ego as to believe himself a shark at gin,” he said.
    â€œIn any case,” Maria concluded, “if the