Passenger to Frankfurt - Agatha Christie [90]
‘How long does it last?’ said Colonel Munro. ‘Twenty-four hours? Longer?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Miss Neumann. ‘It is permanent.’
‘Permanent? You’ve changed a man’s nature, you’ve altered a component, a physical component, of course, of his being which has produced the effect of a permanent change in his nature. And you cannot go back on that? You cannot put him back to where he was again. It has to be accepted as a permanent change?’
‘Yes. It was, perhaps, a discovery more of medical interest at first, but Professor Shoreham had conceived of it as a deterrent to be used in war, in mass risings, riotings, revolutions, anarchy. He didn’t think of it as merely medical. It does not produce happiness in the subject, only a great wish for others to be happy. That is an effect, he says, that everyone feels in their life at one time or another. They have a great wish to make someone, one person or many people–to make them comfortable, happy, in good health, all these things. And since people can and do feel these things, there is, we both believed, a component that controls that desire in their bodies, and if you once put that component in operation it can go on in perpetuity.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Mr Robinson.
He spoke thoughtfully rather than enthusiastically.
‘Wonderful. What a thing to have discovered. What a thing to be able to put into action if–but why?’
The head resting towards the back of the chair turned slowly towards Mr Robinson. Miss Neumann said:
‘He says you understand better than the others.’
‘But it’s the answer,’ said James Kleek. ‘It’s the exact answer! It’s wonderful.’ His face was enthusiastically excited.
Miss Neumann was shaking her head.
‘Project Benvo,’ she said, ‘is not for sale and not for a gift. It has been relinquished.’
‘Are you telling us the answer is no?’ said Colonel Munro incredulously.
‘Yes. Professor Shoreham says the answer is no. He decided that it was against–’ she paused a minute and turned to look at the man in the chair. He made quaint gestures with his head, with one hand, and a few guttural sounds came from his mouth. She waited and then she said, ‘He will tell you himself, he was afraid. Afraid of what science has done in its time of triumph. The things it has found out and known, the things it has discovered and given to the world. The wonder drugs that have not always been wonder drugs, the penicillin that has saved lives and the penicillin that has taken lives, the heart transplants that have brought disillusion and the disappointment of a death not expected. He has lived in the period of nuclear fission; new weapons that have slain. The tragedies of radio-activity; the pollutions that new industrial discoveries have brought about. He has been afraid of what science could do, used indiscriminately.’
‘But this is a benefit. A benefit to everyone,’ cried Munro.
‘So have many things been. Always greeted as great benefits to humanity, as great wonders. And then come the side effects, and worse than that, the fact that they have sometimes brought not benefit but disaster. And so he decided that he would give up. He says’–she read from a paper she held, whilst beside her he nodded agreement from his chair–
‘“I am satisfied that I have done what I set out to do, that I made my discovery. But I decided not to put it into circulation. It must be destroyed. And so it has been destroyed. And so the answer to you is no. There is no benevolence on tap. There could have been once, but now all the formulae, all the know-how, my notes and my account of the necessary procedure are gone–burnt to ashes–I have destroyed my brain child.”’
II
Robert Shoreham struggled into raucous difficult speech.
‘I have destroyed my brain child and nobody in the world knows how I