Tiger by the tail, p.17
Tiger by the Tail,
p.17
Dr. Hogan’s face was turning a dangerous vermilion hue, his eyes bulging from their sockets. “Superficialities!” he hissed, wiping his forehead with a pudgy hand. “Of all the impertinent, disgraceful ideas—”
“But there are other ‘superficialities,’ ” Dr. Tally cut in. “Pigs and men have cartilage all round their noses, while monkeys and apes have slit noses. Pigs and men have that odd bit of useless tissue, the uvula, tacked on to the back of their palates, while there is little or no uvula among monkeys and apes. These are superficialities, of course, but doesn’t science demand attention to little things? Now—” “Preposterous!” sputtered Dr. Hogan.
“. . . Now, let’s go a little deeper. How about parasites? Ever hear of Trichina? Or Macracanthorynchus, and other hook-headed worms? What mammalian forms do these parasites attack? Man and pig, but never apes and monkeys. How about serological comparisons—blood serum and cells, and the like? Man stands no farther serologically from pigs than from apes—I could go on for hours, Dr. Hogan, but there’s one comparison that puts the clincher on the whole thing. We’ve talked about paleontology and anatomy and physiology —how about psychology?”
“Well, what about psychology?” roared Dr. Hogan, his whole body trembling.
A sly smile appeared on Dr. Tally’s face. “Why are pigs used for conditioning experiments now, in preference to rats and dogs and cats? Because they react more like Man. The pig stands far above cats and dogs and rats and many monkeys on the intelligence scale. And what other animal, Dr. Hogan, besides man, is so consistently lazy, gluttonous, dirty, selfish, treacherous or pugnacious?”
Dr. Hogan was not merely sitting in his chair, he was fairly quivering, his round fat face damp with small beads of perspiration. “You . . . you’d never dare to publish such a thing!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “What would it do to our culture? What would people think, what would they say? They’d never believe it or accept it. We’d have to rearrange our entire thinkingprocesses, our philosophical values. It would throw the world into chaos, Dr. Tally—why, you’d have almost every religious group in the country down on our necks.”
Dr. Tally was smiling. “And I might, just possibly, make people wonder if Horace Hogan isn’t just a bit of a goat with his ‘Back to the Apes’ theory, mightn’t I?”
Dr. Hogan purpled, his voice laboring under the strain of civility. “Now, Herman, we’ve been friends for years—associates in our work—almost brothers, you might say,” he wheezed, his little pig eyes watching Tally shrewdly. “I know you wouldn’t want to discredit me, who has done so much for you, and I know you wouldn’t want to start any such storm as this. Now, I could make you an Associate Professor, and see that you get a substantial raise in salary—”
Dr. Tally shook his head, grinning widely. “There’s something I’d much rather do,” he said. “I’d rather see Horace Hogan grow thin—with worry, perhaps. You can’t talk me out of it, Horace. I’m going to put the skids under that book of yours.”
This time the fat man did hoist himself out of his seat, his face deep purple. “Traitor!” he screamed. “Ingrate! Get out! You’re fired. Get out! Do your worst! But you won’t get anywhere. The Board of Trustees will throw you out on your ear, and you’ll be the laughingstock of the scholarly world. Pigs, indeed!” Frantically he fumbled for a telephone, his face apoplectic. “I'll call the Board right now, and you’ll be through—”
Dr. Tally coughed gently. “Dr. Hogan. You won’t have to call the Board. As a matter of fact, they’re waiting out in the office right now. I’ve already told them, you see, and they’re —interested. Yes, you might say they’re interested, and I’ve taken the liberty to arrange a little tour for them. Over at St. Christopher's Hospital—”
They were five elderly gentlemen. All five were tall, and all were lean, with narrow hawk noses and stooped shoulders, and sharp blue eyes peering disapprovingly at Dr. Horace Hogan as they made their way up the stairs to the hospital nursery. Dr. Hogan waddled ahead of them, panting and spluttering, for all the world like an overfed sow routed from her wallow. His pudgy face was damp, and his hands trembled as he worked his way up the steps, stopping periodically to pant a few spluttered words of protest. “Pigs! Can you imagine, gentlemen, the temerity of this man—”
“Yes, yes, Dr. Hogan, but if, as he says, there is some reason to believe—”
“Preposterous! My work has been most scientific, there have been no loopholes. All the important evidence points—”
One of the elderly gentlemen looked down his lean nose at Dr. Hogan. “But surely a man with your acquaintance with scientific methods should be willing at least to listen!”
Dr. Tally sprinted up the stairs ahead of them, his face pale, lines of worry on his forehead. At the top of the stairs he showed the men to seats in the anteroom. “If you’ll just be seated, gentlemen. Ill check to make sure we aren’t disturbing feeding—” He disappeared through a white-painted door, and almost collided with Dr. Barret.
The interne looked up, and grabbed at Dr. Tally’s sleeve nervously. “Look, Doc—that’s the Board of Trustees out there! They hire and fire around here! You didn’t tell me it would be themwhen you called this morning—you just said some old fogies—”
Dr. Tally nodded his head vigorously. “You’ve got everything arranged?”
The interne looked worriedly over his shoulder. “Sure, everything’s just like you said, but you’ll never get away with it—”
“I’ve got to get away with it! I’ve planted the seed in fertile minds, and they’ll see what they want to see. And particularly, they’ll see Horace Hogan—” He patted the interne nervously on the arm and hurried back to the waiting room. “Now, gentlemen, if you’ll just come with me.”
Slowly they walked through the door and down the darkened corridor, past the viewing windows, to the very last room. The five members of the Board and Dr. Hogan filed up to the window and looked in, and silence fell abruptly over the party.
Inside, a subdued Miss Henderson moved efficiently from basket to basket, gently turning back the pink and blue blankets—
“What—”
“Impossible! Why, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes—”
“There is a resemblance! Unmistakable! Why, how could this have been missed all these years? Dr. Tally, this is the most remarkable—”
Suddenly in the corridor there was a choked roar of anguish and despair, ending in a little gurgle and a heavy thud. This time Dr. Hogan fainted dead away. The elderly men looked around in alarm as several ovemervous internes appeared to ease Hogan’s bulk onto a stretcher and start work resuscitating him, and Dr. Tally herded his charges gently out into the bright light of the anteroom once again.
“Basically unstable,” he whispered, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Couldn’t bear to have his ideas refuted. But I’m sure you can see, gentlemen, that here is something worthy of careful investigation.”
The five elderly gentlemen looked at each other, and back at Dr. Tally, and suddenly there appeared five broad and understanding smiles. “Yes, Dr. Tally. We’re quite sure.”
“What I can’t see,” said Dr. Barret later, as Dr. Tally helped him lug the heavy, squealing crates back toward the Agricultural Experiment Station, “is how you can reconcile this sort of thing with the ‘scientific method’ you’re always yapping about. So maybe men came from pigs—it seems quite possible—but this is a funny way to prove it.”
“Oh, it’s quite possible. But this wasn’t supposed to prove anything at all, really. Merely to give me a chance to try. We won’t be bothered by Dr. Hogan and his wretched book any more.” Dr. Tally turned twinkling eyes toward the young interne. “Though I’m afraid my methods of convincing would have insulted one of the greatest minds Man has ever turned out—the very father of the scientific method.”
Dr. Barret looked up sharply. “You mean—”
Dr. Tally nodded apologetically. “Roger Bacon,” he said.
Alan E. Nourse, Tiger by the Tail
