Dr Johnson said sharply, "Nonsense, madam, even a--even a tree surgeon
has more respect for learning."
Mr Miller leaned slightly over the table. "Do you realize that in your
ignorant dabbling you have ruined hundreds of propertyowners and
taxpayers?"
"I thought there was some law against practicing without a license,"
speculated Assemblyman Brown.
"There is apparently no law applying intelligence qualifications for
members of the legislature," remarked Miss Francis pleasantly.
Senator Jones lifted his gavel, idle until now, and banged it on the
table, smashing his spectacles thoughtlessly placed in front of him a
moment before. This did nothing to appease his rising choler. "Silence,
madam! We have perhaps been too lenient in deference to your, um, sex.
I'll remind you that this body is vested with all the dignity of the
state of California. Unless you apologize instantly I shall cite you for
contempt."
"I beg the committee's pardon."
The investigators held a whispered conference among themselves,
evidently to determine whether this equivocal apology was to be
accepted. Apparently it was, for Dr Johnson now asked loftily and with
an abstracted air, as though he already knew the answer and considered
it beneath notice, "What was this magic formula you caused to be put on
the grass?"
Malicious spirits averred that Dickie Johnson had flunked out of
agricultural school, had an obscure European diploma, and that his fame
as a professor at Creighton University was based on the gleaming granite
and stainless steel building dedicated to research in agronomy which
bore the legend "Johnson Foundation" over the entrance. No one hearing
him pronounce "magic formula" putting into the word all the contempt of
the scientist for the quack, could ever put credence in the base
slander. "What was this 'magic formula' you caused to be put on the
grass?" he repeated.
Miss Francis reeled off a list of elements so swiftly I'm sure no one
but the stenographer caught them all. I know I didnt get more than half,
though I was sitting less than five feet from her. "Magnesium," she
stated, "iodine, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, potash, sulphur,
oxygen ..."
Dr Johnson seemed to have known its composition since grammarschool
days. Senator Jones asked, "And what effect did you expect this
extraordinary conglomeration to have?"
She repeated what she had told me at first and the deductions she had
made since. Dr Johnson smiled. "A true Man of Science," he stated, "one
who has labored for years to acquire those degrees you affect to
despise, would have been trained in selfless devotion to the service of
mankind, would never have made whatever gross error your ignorance,
heightened by projection into a sphere for which you are probably
biologically unfitted--though this is perhaps controversial--has
betrayed you into. For had you freely shared your work with colleagues
they would have been able to correct your mistakes and this catastrophe
brought on by selfish greed--a catastrophe which has already cost
millions--would not have occurred."
The entire committee, including Dr Johnson himself, seemed pleased with
this indictment. Attorney General Smith looked inquiringly at the
witness as though inviting her to answer _that_ if she could. Miss
Francis evidently took the invitation literally, for she addressed
herself directly to Dr Johnson.
"I do not know, Doctor, where these beautiful and eminently sensible
ideals you have so eloquently outlined are practiced, where scientists,
regardless of biological fitness, share with each other their advances
from moment to moment and so add to the security of civilization from
day to day. Is it in the great research foundations whose unlimited
funds are used to lure promising young men to their staffs, much as
athletes used to be given scholarships by universities anxious to
improve the physical qualities of American youth? Is it in the
experimental laboratories of great industries where technological
advances are daily suppressed, locked away in safes, so profits may not
be diminished by the expensive retooling necessary to put these advances
into effect? Or is it in a field closer to my own, in chemical
research--pure science, if you like--where truly secrets are shared on
an international scale in order to build up the cartels which choke
production by increasing prices and promote those industries which
thrive on international illwill?"
Assemblyman Brown rose to his feet and said in measured tones, "This
woman is a paid agent of the Communist International. I have heard such
rantings from demagogues on streetcorners. I demand the committee listen
to no more of this propaganda."
Mr Miller gave a polite wave of his hand toward the assemblyman,
indicating at once full agreement with what the legislator said and
apology for pursuing his questioning of Miss Francis. He then asked the
witness sternly, "What is your real name?"
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand. The only name I have is Josephine
Spencer Francis and so far as I know it is thus written on my birth
certificate."
"Birth certificate, ay? Where were you born? Speak up, don't mumble."
"Russia, without a doubt," muttered Assemblyman Brown.
"Youre sure it isnt Franciski or Franciscovitch? Or say, Finklestein?"
"My name is not Finkelstein, although I do not find myself terrified of
that combination of syllables. I was born in Moscow--"
Another sensation. "I thought so!" screamed Judge Robinson triumphantly.
"Aha!" exclaimed Senator Jones profoundly.
"The leopard doesnt change his spots or the Red his (or her) color,"
asserted Assemblyman Brown.
"A sabatoor," yelled several of the spectators. Only Dr Johnson seemed
unimpressed with the revelation; he smiled contentedly.
"--in Moscow, Idaho," concluded Miss Francis, picking her teeth with a
flourish.
Judge Robinson screeched, "Ay? Ay? What's all this hubbub?" Assemblyman
Brown sneered, "A very unlikely story." Attorney General Smith wanted it
proven in blackandwhite while Senator Jones remarked Miss Francis' taste
was on a level with her scholarship.
She waved the toothpick toward the chairman and politely waited for
either further questions or dismissal. All the while her intense
interest in each gesture of the inquisitors and every facet of the
investigation had not diminished at all. As she sat there patiently, her
eyes darted from one to the other as they consulted and only came to
rest on Senator Jones when he spoke directly to her again.
"And what steps can you take to undo, hum, this?"
"So far, none," admitted Miss Francis, "but since this thing has
happened I have given all my time to experiment hoping in some manner to
reverse the action of the Metamorphizer and evolve a formula whereby the
growth it induced will be inhibited. I cannot say I am even on the right
road yet, for you must recall I have spent my adult life going, as it
were, in one direction and it is now not a matter of merely retracing my
steps, but of starting out for an entirely different destination in a
field where there are no highwaymaps and few compasspoints. I cannot say
I am even optimistic of success, but it is not for want of trying--be
assured of that."
Another semisilence while the committee conferred once more. Finally
Senator Jones spoke in grave and measured tones: "It is a customary
politeness in hearings of this nature to thank the witness for his
helpfulness and cooperation. This courtesy I cannot with any sincerity
extend to you, madam. It seems to me you have proven yourself the
opposite of a good citizen, that you have set yourself up, in your
arrogance, against all logical authority and have presumed to look down
upon the work and methods of men whose standing and ways of procedure
are recognized by all sound people. By your conceit, madam, you have
caused the death of young men, the flower of our state's manhood, who
gave their lives in a vain attempt to destroy what your ignorance
created. If I may be permitted a rather daring and perhaps harsh aside,
I think this should strike you doubly, as a woman who has not brought
forth offspring to carry on the work of our forefathers and as one
who--with doubtful taste--boasts of that sterility. I think the results
of your socalled experiments should chasten you and make you heed the
words of men properly qualified in a field where you are clearly not
so."
Someone in the back of the room applauded the senator's eloquence.
"Senator Jones," said Miss Francis, turning her eyes on him with the
attention I knew so well, the look which meant she had found an interest
for the moment excluding all others, "you accuse me of what amounts to
crime or at least criminal folly and I must answer that your accusations
are at once both true and false. I have been foolish, but it was not in
despising the constrictions and falsity of the academic world. I _have_
flouted authority, but it was not the authority of the movingpicture
heroes, whose comic errors are perpetuated for generations, like those
of Pasteur, or so quietly repudiated their repudiation passes unnoticed,
like those of Lister, in order to protect a vested interest. The
authority I have flouted, in my arrogance as you call it, is that
authority all scientists recognized in the days when science was
scientific and called itself, not boastfully by the name of all
knowledge, but more humbly and decently, natural philosophy. That
authority is what theologians term the Will of God; others, the life
force, the immaterial principle, the common unconscious, or whatever you
will. When I, along with all the academic robots whom you admire, denied
that authority, we did not make ourselves, as we thought, men of pure
science, but, on the contrary, by deposing one master we invited in a
horde of others. Since we could not submit to moral force we submitted
in our blind stupidity--we called it the rejection of metaphysical
concepts--to financial force, to political force, to social force; and
finally, since there was no longer any reward in itself for our
speculations, we submitted to the lust for personal aggrandizement in
fortune, in notoriety, in castebound irresponsibility, and even for the
hypocritical backslapping of our fellows.
"In the counterrevolution known as the nineteenth century we even
repudiated the name of speculation and it became a term of disrepute,
like metaphysical. We went further than a mere disavowal of the name; we
disavowed the whole process and turned with disgust from the using of
our minds to the use of our hands in a manner which would have revolted
the most illiterate of Carpathian peasants. We extirpated the salivary
glands of dogs in order to find out if they would slobber without them.
We cut off the tails of mice to discover if the operation affected their
greatgrandchildren. We decapitated, emasculated, malnourished, and
poisoned rodents against whom we had no personal animus for no other
reason than to keep an elaborate apparatus in use.
"Even these pastimes failed to satisfy our undiscriminating appetite.
Someone a little stupider, a little less imaginative--though such
conditions must have been difficult indeed to achieve--invented what is
called the Control Experiment whereby, if theory tested be correct, half
the subjects are condemned without trial to execution.
"These are my sins: that in despising academic ends I did not despise
academic means, that in repudiating the brainlessness of the
professorial mind I did not attempt to use my own. Because I was proud
of the integrity which made me choose not to do the will of a research
foundation or industrial empire, I overlooked the vital fact that I had
also chosen not to do God's Will, but what I stupidly thought to be my
own. It was not. It was faintheartedness, sloth, placation, doubt,
vagueness and romantical misconception. In a word, it was the
aimlessness and falsity of the nineteenth century coming back in the
window after having been booted out the door; my folly was the failure
to recognize it. I have deluded myself, I have taken halfmeasures, I
have followed false paths. Condemn me for these crimes. I am guilty."
Attorney General Smith said acidly, "This is neither a psychiatrist's
consulting room, a confessional, nor a court of law. I suggest the
witness be excused and her last hysterical remarks expunged from the
record."
"It is so ordered," ruled Senator Jones. "And now, gentlemen, we shall
recess until tomorrow."