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"You said you were stuck," I prompted, resolved to get the painful interview over with. "Stuck? Stuck? Oh money to perfect the Metamorphizer. Luckily it will do it itself." "I don't catch." "Look about you what do you see?"
Searching my mind to find a tactful approach again to the subject of proper distribution of the Metamorphizer, I felt my opportunity slipping away every moment. She, on her part, was silent and so abstracted that I often had to put out a guiding hand to avert collision with other pedestrians or stationary objects. I doubt if I'd been gone from Mrs Dinkman's threequarters of an hour.
But I wasted no more thought on her, putting the whole episode of the Metamorphizer behind me, for I now had some liquid capital. It was true it didnt amount to much, but it existed, crinkled in my pocket, and I was sure with my experience and native ability I could turn the Daily Intelligencer's forty dollars into a much larger sum.
"I know these longbearded scientific nuts. They can find calamity around the corner quicker than a drunk can find a bar." "The discoverer of the Metamorphizer is a woman, so her long beard is doubtful," I told him, just a little irritated by his cocksureness. He laughed with as much ease at himself as at anything else. "A woman scientist, ay? Funny things womenll do when they can't get a man.
The Metamorphizer not only worked, but it worked with unbelievable rapidity. Overnight. I knew nothing about the speed at which ordinary fertilizers, plant stimulants or hormones took hold, but commonsense told me nothing like this had ever happened so quickly.
Since it takes all kinds to make a world and Josephine Spencer Francis was one of those kinds, wasnt it only reasonable to suppose there were other kinds who would buy the stuff she'd invented? The only way to sell something is first to sell yourself and I piously went over the virtues of the Metamorphizer in my mind. What if by its very nature there could be no repeat business?
A new crop of suggestions was harvested by the Intelligencer; in addition to the old they included such expedients as reinoculating the grass with the Metamorphizer in the hope either of its cannibalistically feeding upon itself or becoming so infected with giantism as to blow up and burst the failure of the experiment on the Russian steppes was ignored or forgotten by these contributors; building barriers of dryice; and the use of infrared lamps.
I want no more backward countries; no more famines in India or China; no more dustbowls; no more wars, depressions, hungry children. For this I produced the Metamorphizer to make not two blades of grass grow where one sprouted before, but whole fields flourish where only rocks and sandpiles lay.
There was money; there had to be money lots and lots of it in the Metamorphizer, but it was possible there was trouble lots and lots of it also. The thing was, well, dangerous. What was the use of expending ability in selling something which could have kickbacks acting as deterrents to future sales? Of course a man had to take risks....
In my haste I overlooked a detail yesterday, trivial maybe perhaps vital. I should never have let you start out so soon." This was bad; I was struggling now for my job and for the future of the Metamorphizer. "Miss Francis, I don't know what you mean by mistakes or trivial details or how I could have started out too soon, but whatever the trouble is I'm sure it can be smoothed out easily.
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