The Wheels of If And Other Science-Fiction

"Now, I feegure that what has happened is that another change in the form of the molecule has taken place, changing it from beta to gamma—and gamma is a harmless and inert leetle fellow, like alpha. So we are back where we started.

"Our problem, yours and mine, is to find how to turn the gammas with wheech we are all swarming back into betas. In other words, now that we have become all of a sudden cured of the disease that was endemic in the whole race for thousands of years, we want our disease back again. And I theenk I see how it can be done."

I couldn't get much more out of him; he went to work harder than ever. After several weeks he announced that he was ready to experiment on himself; his method consisted of a combination of a number of drugs—one of them was the standard cure for glanders in horses, as I recall—and a high-frequency electromagnetic fever.

I wasn't very keen about it, because I'd gotten to like the fellow, and that awful dose he was going to give himself looked enough to kill a regiment. But he went right ahead.

Well, it nearly did kill him. But after three days he was more or less back to normal, and was whooping at the discovery that the hair on his limbs and body was rapidly falling out. In a couple of weeks he had no more hair than you'd expect a Mexican professor of virology to have.

But then our real surprise came, and it wasn't a pleasant one!

We expected to be more or less swamped by publicity, and had made our preparations accordingly. I remember staring into Oliveira's face for a full minute and then reassuring him that he had trimmed his mustache to exact symmetry, and getting him to straighten my new necktie.

Our epoch-making announcement dug up two personal calls from bored reporters, a couple of 'phone interviews from science editors, and not one photographer! We did make the science section of the New York Times, but with only about twelve lines of type—the paper merely stated that Professor Oliveira and his assistant—not named —had found the cause and cure of hyperpelosity; not a word about the possible effects of the discovery.

Our contracts with the Medical Center prohibited us from exploiting our discovery commercially, but we expected that plenty of other people would be quick to do so as soon as the method was made public. But it didn't happen. In fact, we might have discovered a correlation between temperature and the pitch of the bullfrog's croak for all the splash we made.

A week later Oliveira and I talked to the department head, Wheelock, about the discovery. Oliveira wanted him to use his influence to get a dehairing clinic set up. But Wheelock couldn't see it.

"We've had a couple of inquiries," he admitted, "but nothing to get excited about. Remember the rush there was when Zimmerman's cancer-treatment came out? Well, there's been nothing like that. In fact, I—ah—doubt whether I personally should care to undergo your treatment, sure-fire though it may be, Doctor Oliveira. I'm not in the least disparaging the remarkable piece of work you've done. But—ah—" here he ran his fingers through the hair on his chest, which was over six inches long, thick, and a beautiful silky white—"You know, I've gotten rather fond of the old pelt, and I'd feel slightly indecent back in my bare skin. Also, it's a lot more economical than a suit of clothes. And—ah—if I may say i with due modesty—I don't think it's bad-looking. My family has always ridden me about my sloppy clothes, but now the laugh's on them; not one of them can show a coat of fur like mine!"