so that farmers could get all their crops from farms to the coast and make a better profit. I mean, they do much more good than all the high-powered scientists do. Scientists can only think of things for destroying you. Well, that’s the sort of thing I said to Robbie. Quite nicely, of course, as a kind of joke. He’d been just telling me that some splendid things had been done in the scientific world about germ warfare and experiments with biology and what you can do to unborn babies if you get at them early enough. And also some peculiarly nasty and very unpleasant gases and saying how silly people were to protest against nuclear bombs because they were really a kindness compared to some of the other things that had been invented since then. And so I said it’d be much more to the point if Robbie, or someone clever like Robbie, could think of something really sensible. And he looked at me with that, you know, little twinkle he has in his eye sometimes and said, “Well what would you consider sensible?” And I said, “Well, instead of inventing all these germ warfares and these nasty gases, and all the rest of it, why don’t you just invent something that makes people feel happy?” I said it oughtn’t to be any more difficult to do. I said, “You’ve talked about this operation where, I think you said, they took out a bit of the front of your brain or maybe the back of your brain. But anyway it made a great difference in people’s dispositions. They’d become quite different. They hadn’t worried any more or they hadn’t wanted to commit suicide. But,” I said, “well, if you can change people like that just by taking a little bit of bone or muscle or nerve or tinkering up a gland or taking out a gland or putting in more of a gland,” I said, “if you can make all that difference in people’s dispositions, why can’t you invent something that will make people pleasant or just sleepy perhaps? Supposing you had something, not a sleeping draught, but just something that people sat down in a chair and had a nice dream. Twenty-four hours or so and just woke up to be fed now and again.” I said it would be a much better idea.’
‘And is that what Project B was?’
‘Well, of course he never told me what it was exactly. But he was excited with an idea and he said I’d put it into his head, so it must have been something rather pleasant I’d put into his head, mustn’t it? I mean, I hadn’t suggested any ideas to him of any nastier ways for killing people and I didn’t want people even –you know–to cry, like tear gas or anything like that. Perhaps laughing–yes, I believe I mentioned laughing gas. I said well if you have your teeth out, they give you three sniffs of it and you laugh, well, surely, surely you could invent something that’s as useful as that but would last a little longer. Because I believe laughing gas only lasts about fifty seconds, doesn’t it? I know my brother had some teeth out once. The dentist’s chair was very near the window and my brother was laughing so much, when he was unconscious, I mean, that he stretched his leg right out and put it through the dentist’s window and all the glass fell in the street, and the dentist was very cross about it.’
‘Your stories always have such strange side-kicks,’ said the Admiral. ‘Anyway, this is what Robbie Shoreham had chosen to get on with, from your advice.’
‘Well, I don’t know what it was exactly. I mean, I don’t think it was sleeping or laughing. At any rate, it was something. It wasn’t really Project B. It had another name.’
‘What sort of a name?’
‘Well, he did mention it once I think, or twice. The name he’d given it. Rather like Benger’s Food,’ said Aunt Matilda, considering thoughtfully.
‘Some soothing agent for the digestion?’
‘I don’t think it had anything to do with the digestion. I rather think it was something you sniffed or something, perhaps it was a gland. You know we talked of so many things that you never quite knew what he was talking about at the moment. Benger’s Food. Ben–Ben–it did begin with Ben. And there was a pleasant word associated with it.’
‘Is that all you can remember