biochemistry than a baboon. In the first paper I'd found this gem: "It is well known that a mammal reproduces by suckling its young." Faced with more of the same, it was a pleasure to be fired.

Now, in any really civilized society, they'd have my statue on top of the capitol building, and with neon lights to boot. But in our bureaucratic wilderness of Washington, with a thousand government-hired cretins running interference for each big, appointed super-cretin, my troubles had just begun.

I took some sample poppies to the H.E.W. offices. They were in vacuum-sealed plastic envelopes, because I knew that once my virus spores got loose in the atmosphere, they'd spread all over the world like radioactive dust, or faster. I hoped to see the Commissioner of Narcotics, Myron P. Bishop, but His Magnificence was harder to reach than the whole College of Cardinals. It was impossible to put my point across. Plants, was it? That way to the Department of Agriculture. Oh, poppies. Pamphlets on wildflowers could be had from Documents.

I wrote countless letters, pulled what few wires were within my reach, and haunted Washington like the ghost of Calhoun. And finally I got ten minutes with El Pomposo himself.

As I've said, dumb students are nothing new to me. But even the worst of them couldn't have been any more obtuse than Bishop. I had the dead plants, all brown and withered. There were simple charts showing exactly, in terms of time, how the virus worked, killing the poppy within forty-eight hours, and even destroying the viability of any seeds that might be ripening.

Did this jughead appointed by the President to fight the terrible drug problem comprehend the miracle being offered to him? The simple solution that would make him the greatest—in fact, the only—success in his post that this country had ever known? Not he. I had to spell it out in nursery school terms.

But I've penetrated many a numbskull in class by dint of persistent drilling, and finally got through to the cold oatmeal under his parietal bones.

Did that clear the air? If you think so, guess again. He threw up his hands in horror. Turn a plant disease loose on the world deliberately! It was a violation of the conventions against germ warfare. It was barred by international law. It was unthinkable that the United States would indulge in such irresponsible behavior.

All right, I said. Take it to the U.N. Let them distribute the poppy killer. He brightened a little at that, since every bureaucrat loves above all to pass the buck. A clear-cut decision is fatal to the species. Then he gave me a note to our delegate, Wilbur Cavanaugh, Jr.

This character was a bit sharper. He heard me out, looked at my deceased poppies, and arranged a conference with a bigwig from the State Department. Then things got really messy. When I pointed out that in a few weeks every damned opium plant in Asia would be deader than the Ming Dynasty, this little creep from Foggy Bottom almost had kittens on the spot. It seems that just now our relations with Red China are highly delicate. If we turned the virus loose on them, even if it did kill only poppies (and he had his doubts about that. What if—shudder—it attacked rice?) the Reds would scream murder. They'd yell germ warfare, and have us cold. They could ship us opium by the long ton—that didn't affect the delicate condition, though.

It seemed to me, however, that there was something ambiguous and wistful in the State man's attitude, and I thought I understood. When a country sends a spy to do some dirty job, they disown him officially if he is caught. Except for that U-2 fiasco some years ago, when the U.S. broke all the unwritten rules and made jackasses of us before the world. Now, obviously, if I killed all the poppies in the world, that would be a fait accompli. Washington could deny knowing anything about the cause of death, especially since it would work indiscriminately even in friendly parts of Asia. Just as long as I got my hundred thousand, I didn't