Ferris turned, his thin face lit up with a flush of pleasure.
"Mitchell, we have something to make people permanently stupid! People
can stop thinking temporarily by using alcohol or narcotics or watching
television. But we--only you and I--have something to let them stop
thinking permanently. And we'll make them pay for it--for the shot and
the rent on the condition. Who _wants_ to think? A handful of people.
Who _has_ to think to do routine paperwork or push a button or pull
a lever? A bunch of happy, content morons can do all of that. We'll
return man to his natural, pre-evolutionary state of stupidity. As for
those of us who _don't_ take the treatment, we have it made! Made!"
Mitchell stared at him.
"Don't you get it, Mitchell?" Ferris roared. "_We have the ultimate
tranquilizer!_"
Mitchell thought of the world after the F-M Virus had been given it. He
thought: In his condition, if I shoved Ferris so that his head cracked
into the corner of the table, no one could prove anything. I could
destroy our records....
No, it wasn't any good. Some other researcher somewhere else was bound
to isolate the F-M Virus. None of it was any good.
He groped blindly towards the door. He had to get out, get to a
drugstore, buy some aspirins.
His head was killing him.