listened. Then he carefully placed the receiver back on the hook.
Lieberman stared at him.
“What did it say?”
Straut cleared his throat. He turned and looked at Lieberman for a long moment before answering.
“It said, ‘Please take good care of my little girl.’“
The Drug, by C.C. MacApp
Amos Parry, a regional manager for Whelan, Inc. (Farm & Ranch Chemicals & Feeds), had come to work a few minutes early and was waiting in the lab when Frank Barnes arrived. He saw that the division’s chief chemist was even more nervous than usual, so he invested a few minutes in soothing small talk before saying, “Frank, Sales is beginning to push for that new hormone.”
Immediately, Barnes came unsoothed. “Bill Detrick was on the phone about it yesterday, Mr. Parry. I’m sorry I was abrupt with him.”
Amos grinned. “If you were, he hasn’t had a chance to mention it to me yet. But I think we’d better light a fire under the thing. We’ll probably get a blast from Buffalo before long. How many men do you have on it?”
“Well, two helping with routine work, but I’ve done most of it myself, evenings and weekends. I didn’t want anybody to know too much about it. Mr. Parry, I’m worried about it.”
“Worried? How do you mean?”
“Well—let me show you the litter we’ve been testing it on.”
The pigs were in pens outside the lab. Amos had seen figures on weight gain and general health (the latter was what promised to be sensational) but hadn’t seen the animals for two weeks. He eyed the first bunch. “How old is that boar pig?”
“Not quite four months.”
Amos was no expert, but he’d spent many hours on customers’ farms and he thought the animal looked more mature than that. So did the shoats in the same pen, though they tended more to fat. All of the group had an odd look, certainly not normal for Yorkshires of their age. He thought of wild hogs. “Is it just the general health factor?” he asked.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Parry. You remember I told you this wasn’t actually a hormone.”
“I know. You wanted to call it that for secrecy, you told me.”
“Yes, sir, but I didn’t tell you what it really was. Mr. Parry, are you familiar with hypnotics? Mescaline, especially?”
“No, I’m not, Frank.”
“Well, it’s a drug that causes strong hallucinations. This is a chemical derivative of it.”
Amos grinned again. “Pipe dreams for hogs?”
He quit grinning as implications struck him. If this thing didn’t pan out, after the money they’d spent and the rumors that had seeped out, there’d be some nasty questions from Buffalo. And if it did, and they began selling it....
“What would it do to human beings?” asked Amos.
Barnes avoided his eyes. “That’s one of the things I’m worried about,” he said. “I want to show you another pig.”
This one was isolated in its own pen, and it looked even stranger than its siblings. In the first place, its hair was thicker, and black. There was an oddness in its shape and a vaguely familiar sinuousness in the way it moved that made Amos’ skin prickle.
“What’s wrong with it?” he asked.
“It’s healthy except for the way it looks and acts.”
“Same litter and dosage?”
“Yes, sir—all of them got just one dose. The effects seem to be permanent.”
They were leaning over the fence and the animal was looking up at them. There was an oddity in its eyes; not intelligence exactly, but something unpiglike. Abruptly, it stood up on its hind legs, putting its forefeet against the fence and raising its head toward them. It squealed as if begging for attention. Amos knew that pigs made affectionate pets. Drawn to it as well as repelled, he reached down and patted it, and the squealing stopped.
It was standing too easily in that position, and suddenly Amos recognized what was familiar about it. He jerked his hand away, feeling a strong desire for soap and water. “How long’s it been this way?”
“It’s changed fast in the last week.”
Amos looked toward the doorway of the lab, just inside of which a large black tomcat sat watching them. “Is the cat out here a lot?”
Barnes’ eyes went to the cat, widened, and turned back to the pig. He looked as ill as Amos felt.
When Amos got to his office, his sales manager was already waiting. His mind only half present, Amos sized up the stuffed briefcase and the wider-than-necessary smile as he responded automatically to the amenities. “Just get back?” he asked.
“Early train. Darned planes grounded again.” Detrick looked full of energy, though he’d undoubtedly rushed home, shaved, showered and changed, and hurried to the office with no rest. He sat down, extracted papers from the briefcase, and beamed, “Wrote up the Peach Association.”
He’ll give me the good news first, Amos thought. “Fine, fine,” he said. “The whole year?”
“Yep. Got a check from the Almond Growers, too. All paid up now.”
“Good,” said Amos, and waited.
It came. “Say, I was talking to Frank Barnes about that new hormone he’s got and he seemed a little negative about it. When do you think we can have it?”
It was a temptation to answer with false optimisms and duck the issue for a while, but Amos said, “The slowest thing will be State and Federal testing and registration. I’d say not less than a year.”
Detrick nodded. “Competition’s selling more and more stuff that’s not registered.”
“Fly-by-night outfits and they’re always getting caught.”
Detrick smiled. “Every night they fly away with more business.”
Amos managed a smile, though the argument was old and weary. “We’ll put it up to Buffalo if you want to, Bill. You know I can’t okay it myself.”
Detrick dropped the subject, not being a man to beat his head against a stone wall if there were ways around it, and for the next hour Amos had to listen to the troubles: competition had cut prices on this, upped active ingredients in that, put such and such a new product on the market (Whelan’s factories and warehouses already groaned under a crippling diversity of products but Sales didn’t feel that was their problem) and even the credit policies needed revising. But the worst of all was a fifteen-thousand-dollar claim for damage to pear trees, caused by a bad batch of Whelan’s arsenical insecticide.
Amos got rid of Detrick with a few definite concessions, some tentative
