Mr. Adam

CHAPTER 2

You will remember that on September 21 the great new nuclear fission plants at Bohrville, Mississippi—a city erected in the center of the state and named after one of the famous atomic physicists—disintegrated in an explosion that made Nagasaki and Hiroshima mere cap pistols by comparison.

Not only did Bohrville disintegrate but most of Mississippi went along with it. The blinding glare of the Bohrville disaster was seen as far north as Chicago, and across the Gulf of Mexico. St. Louis felt it as an earthshock, while the heat was dangerous in New Orleans.

What caused the explosion no man knew, for naturally there were no survivors. But it was known in Washington that the Bohrville plants were producing U-235, Plutonium, and even rarer and more violently radioactive substances in quantities that had been impossible in the plants at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington.

The effects of the explosion upon the world were profound, and not all of them could be classed as evil. For one thing the United States stopped making atomic bombs, and the other nations showed no desire to begin where we left off. Molotov issued a statement blaming the explosion on the greedy capitalistic system, and assured the Russians that there were no nuclear fission plants within the borders of the Soviet Union. In the Argentine, certain pro-Fascist scientists suddenly ceased their private experiments, and began to take up botany and ichthyology.

The United Nations had no trouble pledging its members to outlaw the atom as a weapon of war, but of course small wars kept going on, around the world.

Besides, nobody really missed Mississippi. The explosion eliminated Bilbo and Rankin, and anyway Mississippi was the most backward of states. People felt that if any one of the forty-eight states had to be sacrificed, it was just as well that it happened to Mississippi.

After the explosion I was assigned to interview the atomic physicists who lived in the New York area as to the probable cause, and the results. I remembered, now, that all the physicists had assured me that the explosion was only dangerous within a radius of a few hundred miles. But always I had had a disquieting feeling that there was something else they wished to say, but were afraid to say. It was as if there were something they were afraid to put into words, even to themselves.

Whenever I had asked about possible sterilization from Gamma rays, they’d clam up. Or they had pointed out, in words carefully picked and studied (for they knew they were talking for publication) that radioactive substances emitted Gamma rays “for only a comparatively short time.” Then they’d lapse into the jargon of the physicist, and lead me into a dark scientific jungle where my pedestrian, layman’s learning cast only a dim light.

Now I went to Professor Felix Pell, up at Columbia University. I went to Pell because, of all the surviving atomic physicists, he had talked least about the Mississippi disaster, although I had felt at the time that he could have told most.

Pell is a little man with narrow shoulders and uncertain legs, and you feel his body was constructed simply as a temporary support for his massive head. On his feet he is a caricature of a college professor, but in his own office, his shrunken body hidden behind an immense desk, he is imposing as a Supreme Court Justice posing for his first post-appointment picture.

Pell received me in his office. “I suppose,” he suggested, “that you’re still troubled about that business in Mississippi.”

“Well, not exactly,” I said. “I’m not troubled about Mississippi. Now I’m troubled about the world.”

Professor Pell allowed himself to smile, but I had a feeling—reporters are always getting feelings or they wouldn’t be reporters—that he was not completely at ease.

“It appears,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a cigarette in my attempt to be completely casual, “that the Mississippi explosion sterilized the human race.”

I will say this for Professor Pell. He was emotionally shockproof. “A most peculiar statement,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything about the human race being sterilized.”

“That is because,” I said, “you are not, at this stage in humanity’s development, able to read tomorrow’s newspapers.”

“You are serious?”

“I certainly am. I am sterile, and you are sterile.”

The professor’s head twisted on the thin, wrinkled stem of his neck, and he peered up at me for a period of seconds. Then he dropped his eyes and said: “And what has this alleged sterilization got to do with the Mississippi catastrophe?”

“Since Mississippi blew up, no babies have been conceived anywhere on earth, so far as we can find out.”

“That is hardly scientific proof.”

I suddenly discovered that I hated Professor Pell. Up to this moment I had regarded him with a great deal of respect, and even awe, for was he not one of the superior beings who had, in the President’s words, tapped the source from which the sun draws its power? But of a sudden I hated him, and I knew that I would not be alone in my hate. I put my hands on his desk, and leaned over it until my face was close to his face. “Professor Pell,” I said, “it may not be scientific proof, but it is pretty damn good circumstantial evidence.” I fixed my eyes on his turkey-thin neck. “It is good enough evidence to hang a man,” I continued. “It is good enough evidence to hang any man who even looked sideways at an atom.”

I could see that I had shaken Pell loose from his equanimity. In this moment he was an old man, afraid for his life. “Please sit down,” he said, “and tell me what you want of me, but I would rather not have my name connected with this.”

“You didn’t mind having your name at the top of the list when they were passing out credit for developing the bomb.”

He nodded. “That is true,” he said slowly. “That is perfectly true, and with the credit must go the blame. We have always known that this risk existed, and certainly at every stage in our research and production we took the most careful precautions to safeguard our personnel. But the risk was always there.”

Pell touched a stapled sheaf of papers on the corner of his desk. I could read Top Secret on the first page. “Ever since the Mississippi explosion,” he continued, “we have speculated on the possible harmful effects of unloosing such an unprecedented quantity of radioactive substances—along with obscure rays of which we know little—upon the earth. This is my analysis, which I was about to forward to the National Research Council.”

“And what was your conclusion?” I asked.

“My conclusion,” he said hesitantly, “was that such an explosion would send very penetrating radiations, encompassing the whole spectrum, around the world with the speed of light. Not only Gamma rays, and Alpha and Beta rays and particles, but their obscure variations. It was also my conclusion that these rays would prove harmful, but to what extent it was impossible to predict.”

“Now we know,” I said.

“Yes, indeed,” Pell said, “now we know.” Then he added: “Tell me, were women affected as well as men?”

“Of course the investigations aren’t complete,” I said. “A group of doctors has been making as many examinations as possible. But thus far they’ve found that all men are sterilized without exception, while few if any women were affected. The doctors say almost all women still ovulate, and the Fallopian tubes have not been damaged.”

“The human body,” said Pell, “is a strange business. There are chemistries of the body more mysterious than any problem in physics. Now I asked that question for a good reason. Men have always been more susceptible to certain rays than women. But all known harmful rays have affected both men and women. So the ray which did the damage must be one with which we are not as yet familiar.”

“I don’t see that it matters very much,” I said.

“Well,” said Pell, “it is an interesting aspect of the phenomenon, although its importance henceforth can only be classed as theoretical.”

“Henceforth,” I said, rising, “the importance of everything will only be theoretical.” He was puzzling that one out as I left.

That night we began to move the story across our wires. The reactions, throughout the world, were immediate and fearful. I could trot out all the Hollywood adjectives, and run them into a sentence, two by two, like Noah’s animals entering the Ark, and they would not begin to describe what started happening that night, and kept on happening.

J.C. Pogey, handling the story with no more flurry than if it were a national election, kept me at the rewrite desk until dawn. By that time, the story was not dissimilar to an election, for the whole world was split straight up the middle—those who believed it and those who didn’t.

Strange little sidebar stories began to creep into the main trunk wires.

In Boston, an eminent churchman, hauled from his bed by the local press, denounced the whole thing as a vicious hoax. In Baltimore an equally eminent churchman said he’d been expecting it all along, and added that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if the world didn’t blow up within forty-eight hours.

In London, the King spoke over the BBC, and reassured the Empire that His Majesty’s government was, and had been, well aware of the situation, was conducting an investigation, and was taking the necessary steps.

There were riots in Paris, but there are always riots in Paris.

Moscow cut itself off from the world.

The President urged the nation to be calm.

Up in Morningside Heights, a group of serious young women stoned the apartment house inhabited by Professor Pell.

Spontaneous rumors started simultaneously in Vienna, Budapest, Frankfurt am Main. Madrid and Berne said it was a plot on the part of Jewish scientists.

But it is best, perhaps, to describe what went on in my own particular household.

When I got home, just after the milkman but before the morning papers, Marge was curled up in one corner of Smith Field. I could tell, by the number of cigarette butts, that she had been up all night, undoubtedly listening to the news on the radio. The radio was still on, tuned to a Newark station, and giving out boogie-woogie.

I undressed, tossing my trousers and shirt across the back of a chair. I was examining myself in the full length mirror, wondering how a man who kept such irregular hours, and ate so erratically, could develop a definite belly, when the boogie-woogie faded, and a girl announcer said in the peculiar clipped sing-song which is currently the fashion among swing shift announcers:

“We are interrupting for another news flash. Washington—Surgeon General George Gail announced that he has called a congress of the nation’s leading physicians and scientists early next week. They will meet in the capital to plan national re-fertilization. Next you will hear that international wartime favorite, ‘Lili Marlene,’ and while I adjust the needle, let me remind you that this program comes to you through the courtesy of SILK E. RUB Furniture Polish, pronounced Silky Rub, the polish of Gracious Living.”

In the background I could hear the opening bars of “Lili Marlene,” and then a deep-voiced female quartet cut in with:

“Lili Marlene” swelled up, and I remembered the last time I had heard it, and the lyrics that went with it, while the Army trucks bound for the repple-depple in Naples rumbled by, and I began to sing the lyrics aloud:

Marge stirred, and inched across Smith Field until she reached the corner farthest away from me. “Damn you!” she grumbled sleepily. “Damn you!”

“I’m sorry, darling,” I said. “Had to work all night. Big story.”

Marge propped herself on her elbows and rubbed her eyes. “I’ll say it was a big story,” she exclaimed. “Oh, yes, it was the very biggest story—you eunuch, you!”

I didn’t say anything, because it was the first time I had heard it put that way, and I was somewhat shocked, but I began to understand that the situation was complicated beyond anything either I or J.C. had imagined.

“You eunuch, you!” she repeated.

“Is that nice?” I inquired.

Marge sat up straight. She wore the red silk pajamas fashioned from the ammo chute I’d scrounged when the British paratroops jumped into Megara, Greece. You put a blonde into red pajamas, piped with white silken parachute cord, and ruffle her hair, and let indignant fire run out of her eyes, and you have something particularly lovable, if she is in the mood to be loved. She was not in that mood. She said: “You sleep on your own side of the field!”

“But darling,” I protested, “is it my fault?”

“Of course it’s your fault,” she said. “At least it is your fault that we didn’t start any children before it happened.”

“Who was it,” I asked, “who said the world wasn’t a fit place to produce babies?”

“That was in forty-three,” she retorted. “It wasn’t, then.”

“Is it my fault, entirely,” I enquired, “that Mississippi blew up? Simply because Mississippi blew up, are we going to go through the remainder of our lives like distant and not-too-friendly cousins?”

“Stephen Decatur Smith,” Marge said, “I know it sounds silly to you but I think it is a dirty trick on the part of the whole male population. For the rest of your lives you will be rabbiting around, smirking, all equipped with built-in contraceptives.”

It didn’t seem necessary to answer. I got into my own side of Smith Field. “Not being a woman, you could never completely understand,” Marge went on. “Men will continue to live their lives. But to every woman, it will be as if she were already dead.”

Later, I found that Marge’s evaluation was accurate, and until the miracle of Mr. Adam, the feminine suicide rate rose considerably.

But generally, life continued on an astoundingly normal plane. The world ticked on, like a clock that would never be wound again, but which would continue to tell time and sound off the hours until it finally ran down.

Winter slipped into spring. There was the usual art fair in Washington Square. Young people in love held hands and planned plastic houses, including nurseries, in the blind confidence of love and youth. Radical plastic automobiles appeared, the United Nations reached agreement on the Hungarian-Slovak border, and a United States oil company succeeded in obtaining a ninety-nine-year lease on the new field in Iraq.

The front pages of the newspapers, of course, were devoted to little except stories on World Sterilization, or, as abbreviated by the tabloid headline writers, W.S. But so long as babies continued to be born, the whole thing seemed incredible and fantastic, and indeed it was denounced every day, officially, by experts such as Congressmen, Anglican Bishops, the President of the Chamber of Commerce, Dorothy Thompson, and three- and four-star generals.

But things began to get tense in June, and as the month slid by, apprehension increased. By this time, of course, the facts had been so well established, in every country and on every continent, including the interior of Africa and the Eskimos near the Pole, that there was no reason for hope—and yet hope persisted. On June 21 the Daily News ran a banner, “W.S. DAY TOMORROW!”

The world held its breath, prepared for the worst, and the worst happened.

For the remainder of the month, and indeed well into July, there were sporadic bursts of optimism as communities reported births, but all these, it developed, were the result of over-long periods of gestation.

False alarms were frequent, naturally, and we realized that they would continue for a generation or two. But for the most part, by autumn the world had composed itself to slow death, although the President had allotted unlimited funds, and all science had been enlisted, for the N.R.P., or National Re-fertilization Project. The Sunday supplements began to speculate as to who would inherit the earth—the insects, or the fishes.

On the first anniversary of the Mississippi explosion I awoke at noon. Marge was sitting, cross-legged, at the other end of Smith Field, and I smelled fresh coffee. “You see what I’ve done,” she said. “I’ve installed a percolator here at the corner. We weren’t using this corner at all.”

“You’re a genius,” I admitted.

“I’ve got another idea,” she said. “When the new television sets come out, we can put a screen down here at the bottom of the field, and on Saturday afternoons we can lie in bed and watch the football games.”

“Some day,” I warned, “people will find out about the way we live, and will put us on exhibition.”

The phone rang, and Marge picked up the extension. “It’s Maria Ostenheimer,” she said, puzzled, “for you.”

I took the telephone, and said, “Hello, Maria, what are you doing for a living nowadays?”

“That’s not very funny,” the lady obstetrician said. “I’ve got a good mind not to tell you what I called about.”

There was excitement in her voice. I said: “Go ahead, Maria, talk.”

“Stephen,” she said, “listen carefully. A baby is going to be born—may have been born already—in Tarrytown.”

“Now Maria,” I said, “just last week I flew down to a place called Big Stone Gap, Virginia, on one of those tips, and we landed in a cornfield and ground-looped, and it turned out to be a baby, all right, but a baby born to a circus elephant named Priscilla.”

“Stephen,” said Maria, enunciating her words slowly and carefully, “this is the real thing. You will remember I mentioned Dr. Blandy, who practises in Westchester. He was called on this case four months ago, back in May.”

“Why didn’t he mention it before?” I demanded.

“You dunce!” Maria said. “At first he thought it was going to be an abnormally small baby, and after the end of June he thought it might be an unusually long pregnancy. He didn’t want to say a word about it until he was absolutely sure.”

“And is he sure now?”

“There can be no doubt of it. The baby was conceived exactly nine months ago—three months after those damn uranium rays sterilized all the men. Blandy brought all the records of the case to my office this morning.”

“Why did he bring them to you?” I asked, looking for a loophole I was sure existed.

“I am,” said Maria, “on the executive board of the New York City investigating committee for the N.R.P. Besides, he knew there would be a great deal of publicity after the baby was born, and he wanted my advice. I said,” she continued sarcastically, “that I might persuade you to handle the press, since you had some experience along those lines, and were sometimes considered reliable.”

“Bless you! Maria. Bless you!” I exclaimed.

“What’s going on here?” Marge interrupted.

“Quiet!” I shouted.

“You’re not going to leave me out of this,” Marge said. She went to the closet and took out a blue dress. Then she began to pull underthings out of a drawer.

“Maria,” I said into the phone, “where is this child being born?”

There was a pause, and I knew she was searching for a memorandum. I considered all the things that J.C. would want me to do. “The address,” Maria said, “is The Gatehouse, Rosemere, Tarrytown.”

“That sounds like an estate,” I said.

“It sounds like the gatehouse on an estate,” Maria amended. “You’d better get going, Stephen, because it may happen any time this afternoon, according to Blandy. And remember, I’m depending on you to help him out.”

My pajamas were off before I was out of bed. “I never,” said Marge, startled, “saw you move so fast in all my life before.”

“Throw some shirts and socks and shorts and my shaving kit and handkerchiefs into a bag,” I yelled. “A baby is being born!”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Tarrytown.”

“But that’s only—”

“If this thing is true, I’m going to stay.”

“You mean we are going to stay. This is just as important for me as it is for you. More!” I could see that Marge was already dressed, and was packing two bags, swiftly and efficiently, as if we were off for the weekend, and the train was going to leave in twenty minutes.

We caught a cab on Fifth Avenue, and the lights were with us all the way to Grand Central. The next train for Tarrytown was the Croton local. I bought a paper, and we fidgeted over a couple of milk shakes until it left.

It was an absurd train that crawled up the Hudson, pausing like a crosstown trolley at every intersection. I ticked off the stations—Glenwood, Greystone, Hastings-on-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry. Finally there came Irvington, and the next stop was Tarrytown.

There was a taxi at the station. “Do you know,” I asked the driver, “where Rosemere is? I think it’s an estate.”

The hackman removed the stub of a cigar from his mouth. “Sure,” he said, “been living here all my life. You want to go to Rosemere?”

“That’s right,” I said, throwing the bags into the back seat.

“Don’t you want to put them in the trunk compartment?” the driver asked.

“No!” I said. “No! They are perfectly okay.”

“You’re in an awfully big hurry, fellow,” the driver ventured.

I didn’t say anything. I kept wondering what sort of people lived in the gatehouse. Probably, I thought, servants. Probably a butler and an upstairs maid had had some sort of an affair.

“Stephen,” Marge said, “sit back and take it easy. You can’t make it go any faster.”

We crawled up the hill, and the cab stopped before stone gateposts with a chain stretched between them, and a gravel drive beyond. “You want to go to the big house?” the hackman asked. “I hear it’s closed up. The people go South this time every year.”

“No,” I said. “The gatehouse.”

He unhooked the chain, and the cab crept up the driveway for fifty yards. The gatehouse was a compact, squat, two-story cottage, solidly constructed of field stone, with a mangy oak arched over the faded red tiles of its roof. There was a forty-six Buick sedan parked in front, with the little green marker that identifies the physician attached to its license plate. I gave the hackman a dollar, he backed down the driveway, and I pushed the bell and then knocked loudly on the door.

The door swung open, and Marge and I entered, carrying our weekend bags. “You’re Smith,” said a stocky, red-faced, perspiring man, perhaps forty-five, perhaps fifty. He was coatless, and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He looked as if he had been working.

“I’m Smith,” I said, “and this is Mrs. Smith.”

“How d’you do,” he said, “I’m Blandy. Can’t shake hands. Just washed ’em. Ostenheimer told me about you. She didn’t say anything about Mrs. Smith.”

“I just horned in,” said Marge. “If I’m in the way—”

“Not at all. I’ve got a good nurse upstairs, but there are plenty of things you can do later. Anyway, your first job is to take care of him.” Blandy nodded towards a corner which I had dismissed as being inhabited completely by a grand piano. Then he puffed up the steps.

In the corner, half-hidden by the piano, and seated on a green hassock, utterly uncomfortable and miserable, with his long chin cupped in his hands, and his knees and elbows askew, was a man. I said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” he said, and got to his feet, unbelievably stretching out to some six feet plus four or five or even six inches. “I’m Adam.”

“You’re what?”

“Adam. Homer Adam.”

“You’re the—”

“Yes, I’m going to have a baby. I mean Mary Ellen is.” He kept putting his hands into his coat pockets and taking them out again. They were long, bony hands, and they were trembling. His shock of bright red hair appeared to be attempting to fly off his scalp in all directions.

“Now, look, fellow,” I said with what I believed to be cheerful confidence, “take it easy. My name is Steve Smith, from the AP. I’m here to help you. Don’t be so nervous. You’d think there’d never been a baby born before.”

“There hasn’t been, recently,” Adam said. “That’s just it.”

Marge, who had been prowling the room, examining the hunting prints, the fireplace, the bookcases, and the curtains, giggled. “I like him,” she said to nobody in particular. “He’s nice.”

From the upstairs came a sharp, feminine cry, suddenly bitten off in the middle. Adam began to shake. He collapsed on the sofa, and I was startled by the small number of cubic feet he occupied, sitting down, contrasted with his height, standing up.

“Look, Homer,” I said, sitting down beside him, “I’m going to have to ask you a lot of questions, so I might as well start now.”

Marge produced highballs, and an hour later she appeared with sandwiches. Just after dark the sounds from upstairs became more businesslike, and then Dr. Blandy shouted: “Hey, down there. It’s all over. It’s a girl—a fine girl! No trouble at all!”

“How much,” I yelled back, “does she weigh?”

“What an inane question!” Marge said.

“I know, but you always ask it first.”

Dr. Blandy shouted: “She’s average and normal. When they’re average and normal I always say they weigh seven pounds.”

I walked to the phone on the hall table and called Circle 6-4111, and asked for Pogey. “J.C.,” I said, “here is a flash.” I enunciated each word clearly: “Flash—a girl baby was born to Mr. and Mrs. Homer Adam in Tarrytown, New York, at”—I glanced at my watch—“six fifty-one today!”

“You sane and sober, Steve?” J.C. inquired.

“Certainly.”

“Did you say Adam?”

“Honest to Christ, J.C., it is Adam A-D-A-M.”

“You will,” J.C. ordered quietly, “give me a bulletin to follow flash within five minutes. You will then dictate a complete story, and don’t hesitate to call in with new leads and inserts. Why this is the biggest story—”

“Since the Creation,” I suggested.

“No,” he said quietly, “just the biggest since Mississippi.”