"Look," I blurted with a sudden rush of brain to the head, "If I'm so
all-fired important to both sides, how come you managed to sequester me
for four months?"
"We do have the laws of privacy," said Farrow simply. "Which neither
side can afford to flout overtly. Furthermore, since neither side really
knew where you were, they've been busily prowling one another's camps
and locking up the prowlers from one another's camps, and playing spy
and counterspy and counter-counterspy, and generally piling it up
pyramid-wise," she finished with a chuckle. "You got away with following
that letter to Catherine because uppermost in your mind was the brain of
a lover hunting down his missing sweetheart. No one could go looking for
Steve Cornell, Mekstrom Carrier, for reasons not intrinsically private."
"For four months?" I asked, still incredulous.
"Well, one of the angles is that both sides knew you were immobilized
somewhere, going through this cure. Having you a full Mekstrom is
something that both sides want. So they've been willing to have you
cured."
"So long as someone does the work, huh?"
"Right," she said seriously.
"Well, then," I said with a grim smile, "the obvious thing for me to do
is to slink quietly into New Washington and to seek out some high
official in secrecy. I'll put my story and facts into his hands, make
him a Mekstrom, have him cured, and then we'll set up an agency to
provide the general public with--"
"Steve, you're an engineer. I presume you've studied mathematics. So
let's assume that you can--er--bite one person every ten seconds."
"That's six persons per minute; three-sixty per hour; and, ah,
eighty-six-forty per day. With one hundred and sixty million Americans
at the last census--um. Sixty years without sleep. I see what you mean."
"Not only that, Steve, but it would create a panic, if not a global war.
Make an announcement like that, and certain of our not-too-friendly
neighbors would demand their shares or else. So now add up your time to
take care of about three billion human souls on this Earth, Steve."
"All right. So I'll forget that cockeyed notion. But still, the
Government should know--"
"If we could be absolutely certain that every elected official is a
sensible, honest man, we could," said Farrow. "The trouble is that we've
got enough demagogues, publicity hounds, and rabble-rousers to make the
secret impossible to keep."
I couldn't argue against that. Farrow was right. Not only that, but
Government found it hard enough to function in this world of Rhine
Institute with honest secrets.
"Okay, then," I said. "The only thing to do is to go back to Homestead,
Texas, throw my aid to the Highways in Hiding, and see what we can do to
provide the Earth with some more sensible method of inoculation. I
obviously cannot go around biting people for the rest of my life."
"I guess that's it, Steve."