His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

Passion Pills

The only dignified thing about Richard Claxton Hanbury III was his name, and it served only to underscore the grotesqueness of his appearance. Richard at 23 years was of average height but stooped by a mild spinal curvature into shrimphood; his face thrust boldly forward from a negligible chin and a raked forehead toward what could have been an impressive corvine mask if he had only nose enough to sustain the effect, but Richard's nose was an uncute button.

He had, of course, brains. The Great Kidder does not vouchsafe spectacular ugliness to anybody who is unable to appreciate it fully.

Richard knew perfectly well Bernard Shaw's dictum that there is nobody so ugly or disagreeable that he or she cannot find a spouse, but it happened that a spouse was not what he wanted. What he wanted was Girls. The author admits that this was not very intelligent of Richard, but pleads that he was brainwashed by Twentieth Century Western Culture. A shy and unattractive man like he would in simpler times have found himself in a monastery doing at least no harm and not worrying about bosoms. In a more vicious day he would have found himself now and then in a Place of Ill Repute with nothing more to worry him than the possibility of contracting a ludicrous minor tribulation thought to be no worse than a bad cold. In more practical times he would have arranged with the parent (the parent then!) of a

"female" to take said female off said parent's hands and board bill in exchange for a cash settlement; the female would have called him "Mr.

Hanbury" even after the marriage, and it would not have occurred to either of them to worry about love.

The era in which Richard had been raised, however, was neither vicious, simple nor practical. The iconographer of Richard's era was Mr.

Jon Whitcomb, and the ritual illustration he has done for a thousand ritual magazine stories sums up the age. There is a yellow convertible with the top down, and there is a tanned blonde girl in the convertible.

She is plainly about sixteen years old for her skin is that of an unblemished child, and she is plainly a new mother for her bosom is of a size functional only in a lactating woman; who has committed this crime upon her? Yet the text says she is a virgin! She smiles, and she is plainly an Innocent who has escaped from three-nurse custodial care in the first auto she found, for in that smile there is no trace of human intelligence but only the animal bliss of a bear who has found honey.

Yet the text says she is a Ph.D. in astrophysics! She is plainly a narcissistic she-monster, for every hair of every wisp is in its calculated place and her garb is tight where tight and loose where loose to the predetermined thousandth of an inch at the cost of nightly toil, mad self-love and abnegation of all other activity. Yet the text calls her casual, vital, warm!

She was the girl whom Richard wanted, poor fellow, and he wanted lots of her—blonde, red-haired, brunette, tanned and pale, playtime, daytime and gay-time, tall and rangy, cute and cuddly, the sophisticate who learns in the back pages that brains are not enough, the naïve thing who turns out in the back pages to have brains enough to save the day.

My readers have of course all seen through the pitiful sham, and will feel only amused compassion for Richard.

Through grammar school and high school Richard met several dozen versions of The Girl, and for each one he carefully thought out the witty opening phrase of a campaign that would end only with her as helpless putty in his hands. It happened, however, that he never got to speak the carefully-composed phrase. He would choke up; or the girl would say

"Well, dig you later" and breeze off wobbling tantalizingly; or a football player would roar up out of nowhere and slap him on the back; or the class bell would ring—always something.

That was the way it went through college too, except for one evening when he got carried away and attempted near-assault on a field-hockey-playing version ofThe Girl. They patched him up at the infirmary and believed him when he said he had been hit by a runaway three-quarter-ton truck.

After his bones had knit Richard said to himself: "The hell with this noise. Charm I do not have. Muscle too I lack. What I do possess, some knowledge of biochemistry, seems irrelevant to the problem. Or—or is it?" For Richard was majoring in biochemistry because Of an aptitude test he had taken, in the course of which his punch card had been put into a machine upside-down.

Richard leaped to his feet and cried "Thalassarsince his talent for languages was almost as slight as his aptitude for biochemistry. Then, more collectedly, he schemed: "The girl shall be mine through the science which I am learning, and specifically through those certain pills and fluids of which one has heard!"

Forthwith he plunged into a reading program to establish the basis for his research. The first thing he learned in his quest for what are euphemistically called "love philtres" was the discouraging fact that there are no such things, vulgar superstition to the contrary notwithstanding. Such diverse substances as cabbage juice, powdered mandrake, muscatel wine, oysters on the half-shell, and frog spawn have had their vogues, he learned, but proved to have no effect except an imaginary one. The notorious Spanish Fly, he discovered, is about as effective a love potion as a kick in the stomach, which is to say not very.

Richard concluded his first week of reading by slamming his books shut, hurling them into the corner of his dormitory room and stalking with agitation out into the campus night. "Thunderation!" he growled.

"I'm going to have to start from scratch and invent this whole science in the lab with my own two hands!" From this the reader may gauge the depths of his determination.

After that it was no unusual thing to see the lights burning late in the biochemistry building, or to behold a single shadow moving busily against the drawn blind, ever pouring, mixing, distilling, titrating, centrifuging. "A good lad, Hanbury," his professors took to telling one another. "Pity he's such a gargoyle."

It will be a little difficult for the lay reader to follow the ensuing passage without the utmost concentration, so the author requests that the television set be turned off, the mind be cleared, the lamp adjusted to shine over the left shoulder without glare and the feet slightly elevated on a stool or hassock to promote a stimulating flow of blood to the brain.

Richard began his attempts at synthesis of an aphrodisiac by hooking two benzene rings symmetrically to one end of a long-chain hydrocarbon, mainly because the molecular diagram of this compound looked reasonably suggestive. He found, however, that it was instantly toxic to the laboratory hamsters even though it made a fair fuel for his motor scooter, and so was forced to abandon this line. Next he isolated the congenerics of muscatel wine, that is, the trace substances responsible for muscatel's peculiar flavor, using in the process several gallons of the stuff. His attempt to win the radium of truth from the pitchblende of folklore was a failure. The isolated congenerics proved to be a malodorous sludge which caused the hamsters to turn blue and die as if relieved to have done with the awful taste in their little mouths; also, his heavy purchases at the liquor shop gained him an undeserved reputation as a wino which almost resulted in his expulsion from the college.

But as we learn from the illustrious histories of Robert the Bruce, Thomas the Dewey and Adlai the Stevenson, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." Richard did, and by catalyzing hexylmethyldiethylstilbestrol in the presence of, oddly enough, tri-tri-tri-ethylmermanotic acid he precipitated two five-grain tablets, each one stamped INSTANT LUST.

Obviously success was his at last, and obviously there was no question of testing the pills on a hamster; they were too precious. For days he went about the campus absently juggling his pills in his hand, his eye roving from blonde to brunette to redhead. All unaware, they paraded for him in their youth and beauty.

As if by inspiration the answer came to him after a pleasant week spent in the first eliminations, the finals, and the semi-finals. In a blow the two campus queens (they knew it not) who were vying for his dear smile were swept aside and undone. Studs Flanagan would be his choice.

At first blush this would appear an odd choice, for Studs was moon-faced, stringy-haired, bony of figure and awkward of movement. Studs proceeding along the gravel walks of the campus reminded students from the great Dakota wheat fields of a steam thresher in full career across the golden harvest bounty. Studs appropriately was in economics. Economics is known as "the dismal science," and it seemed to suit her. Her social life consisted of arguing bitterly with other economics majors about the rediscount rate and the validity of bat-guano tonnage importations as an index of agricultural prosperity.

Start small, a little voice had told Richard; that was why he chose Studs to be the first to taste his pills. Were he suddenly to become the adored one of a reigning campus queen, there would be no end of talk. He could not immediately afford the luxury of a great beauty; he would have to start small—and who smaller than Studs?—and work his way up while people slowly got used to the idea of him as a successful lover.

He hailed Studs one afternoon at the co-op; she was alone and reading gloomily; untasted cocoa stood before her. "Hi," said Richard, his throat sealed almost shut by globus hystericus. "Wanted to talk to you about the bat-guano situation."

She eyed him coldly. "What about it?"

"Well, the effects of synthetic fertilizer, ah, man-made guano so to speak—I'm in biochem, you know—isn't that Professor Guano—I mean Granotto—over there?"

She looked over there; splash-splash went the two little pills into her cocoa. She looked back. "No," she said.

"Have your cocoa," he invited her largely.

"Thanks," she said satirically, and sipped. "Tastes odd," she said, and took a larger gulp, rolled it unattractively around her mouth, and swallowed. Richard sat back complacently waiting for it to begin.

It began. His pulses started to pound; his eyes popped a little; his heart convulsed in his breast. He was in love with Studs Flanagan.

"Watcha staring at me for?" she demanded. "You chemistry creeps been synthesizing cocaine again?"

"Studs," he said hoarsely, "darling Studs, did anybody ever tell you that you have the most beautiful case of acne in the world?"

"Insults from a monkey like you I don't have to take," she snorted, and stalked out of the co-op. Richard Claxton Hanbury III trailed after her like an arbutus plant.

Eventually he persuaded her of his sincerity and they were married.

Everybody cautiously said that they were well matched. Sometimes Richard would see a tanned, long-limbed blonde lounging in a yellow convertible and suffer an anachronistic pang, but it did not happen often. He was happy in the dear presence of his Studs, and at all times profoundly grateful that he had not tried out the pills on a hamster.

Some things are practically impossible to explain, and that would have been one of them.