Dr. Nyet tmfo-4 Read online

  "That's quite an undertaking," I interrupted.

  "That it is. But they have already published some suggestions. For instance, they would change the famous Shakespearean line to read 'If you nick me, do I not bleed?' And they want to change one of his titles to The Assault of Lucretia. But they're not just limiting it to literature. They want butcher shops to sell 'chest of chicken,' and hardware stores to be enjoined from peddling nuts and screws, and fairy tales to be changed to 'gremlin stories,' and for the Department of Agriculture to force chicken farmers to call male fowl 'roosters' and cease and desist all mention of 'laying' eggs. They're even objecting to recruiting posters calling for men to enlist and 'do their duty.' And they want the phrase 'tit for tat' stricken from the shelves of the public libraries."

  "Sounds like a real fun-loving group," I observed.

  "Nor is language their major concern," Putnam continued. "They're also calling for legislation making it mandatory to use a method they've devised for changing babies' diapers so that the baby is never exposed. And they've stolen a leaf from that

  S.I.N.A. group and now they're insisting that animals must be clothed. Only they go further than S.I.N.A. ever did. They even want birds to wear panties. Even insects! Bees in particular! And they want a law passed against the public pollination of flowers. That will give you some idea of what kind of an outfit S.M.U.T. is."

  "But what has all this got to do with me?"

  "I'm coming to that. As I said before, S.M.U.T. started in the New York area. That was about three years ago, and they started small. But in those three years, they've grown unbelievably. They've not only spread throughout the U.S., but also in many other countries around the globe. They're truly an international organization now, and their power and influence is considerable. Still, it's only recently that the government has taken any notice of their activities. But once that notice was taken, we investigated – quietly, but extensively. And we learned two alarming things about S.M.U.T. But we learned them too late."

  "What do you mean?"

  "First of all, we found that S.M.U.T. is much more than it seems to be. As extensive as their operations are, those operations are only a front – albeit a useful one for their purposes. But behind that front, S.M.U.T. is ambitious, insidious, and dangerous. They seem to have unlimited funds to back them up. We're still trying to trace the sources of those funds. So far all we know is that they come from banks all over the world, banks which themselves are innocent of any involvement in S.M.U.T.'s activities or purposes."

  "Just what are those purposes?" I asked.

  "Summed up, they add to one thing," Putnam told me gravely. "They want to conquer the world."

  "Who doesn't?"

  "It's no joking matter, Mr. Victor. They are out for nothing less than that – world conquest. We've learned that they've been around much longer than their public image would suggest. There are certain neo-Nazi – or perhaps not so neo – ties that we haven't been able to fully trace. But we do know that their activities are as concentrated on the Communist world as on the West. And they are as much of a threat to them as to us. I'll come to the specifics of that in a moment. But first, you look like you want to ask something?"

  "Yes. Will you tell me just how a group can conquer the world with an anti- pornography crusade?"

  "It's much more than that, Mr. Victor. When we realized the scope of their activities, we knew that. It's not just an anti-pornography campaign. It's anti-sexual. It's anti anything that might even vaguely be construed as sexual. And we are only just beginning to appreciate the reason behind this."

  "What reason?"

  "Their true purpose, Mr. Victor, is to remove every available form of sexual sublimation from the human race so that there will be no substitute outlet for the sex act itself. What do you think will happen if they succeed in accomplishing that purpose, Mr. Victor?"

  "The pediatrics business will boom."

  "Exactly. And that's what they want. They want a worldwide population explosion. They want people to breed so profusely that they will by virtue of their numbers become as sheep. And then they want to control those sheep, breed them, enslave them."

  "But I don't get it. How could they enslave them? How could they feed them and house them? How could they keep the sheep from crowding the masters right off the face of the Earth?"

  "You've got me there, Mr. Victor. It's scientifically conceivable that they might succeed in herding them into the undeveloped areas of the Earth. But we don't know how they would feed them. Our government is working on that. But we do know that overpopulation is their aim."

  "How do you know that?"

  "By S.M.U.T.'s other actions which tie in with their attempting to remove all sex sublimation stimulation from the human environment. We have learned that they are conducting a campaign to undermine both the U.S. and the U.N. birth control programs. Are you familiar with the role your country plays in worldwide birth control, Mr. Victor?"

  "Only in a general way."

  "Then allow me to point out a few facts which are public knowledge, although the public seems to ignore them. First of all, the birth-control program now constitutes a major part of U.S. foreign aid. In the next three years the U.S. will be spending one hundred million dollars a year to fight the population explosion in underdeveloped countries. Right now in most of these countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the populations are increasing at a rate of about two-point-five percent a year. This means that in twenty-eight years these populations will double. But the average rate of increase in food production is only about one percent a year. People are starving in most of these places today. Can you imagine what it will be like in a quarter of a century?"

  "You remind me of when I was a kid," I grimaced. "With my mother telling me to finish every scrap on my plate and not waste food because I should remember the starving children in India."

  "The point is, Mr. Victor, that our government, very quietly, has taken a strong pro-birth-control stand and backed it up in countries beyond its borders. But in these same countries S.M.U.T. has been waging a propaganda offensive against birth control. The strength of this offensive is what convinced us that S.M.U.T.'s anti-sex activities are really a screen to both aid and conceal their real objective: a catastrophic population increase. Now, at first, we thought they might be fronting for the Commies. But then we found that they've been active behind the Iron Curtain and not just in spots where the Reds might consider starvation and birthrate increase a prod to revolution. And most recently there has been a development which forces us to cooperate with the Commies – yes, even the Red Chinese – in the fight against S.M.U.T."

  "What is this development?"

  "The defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T.," Putnam announced dramatically.

  "Why don't you try blowing your nose?" I asked delicately.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "It's all right. Don't be self-conscious. Go ahead and give a good blow."

  "Mr. Victor," Putnam said with some asperity, "my nasal passages are quite clear. Now can we please get back to the matter at hand? As I was saying, with the defection of Dr. Nyet to S.M.U.T., it has become necessary for us to join forces with the Reds in an effort to get her back."

  "Her who?"

  "Who? Ha! Her! Dr. Nyet, of course."

  "And just who is Dr. Nyet?" I wanted to know.

  "That's part of the problem," Putnam explained. "We're not really sure who she is. And the Russians won't tell us."

  "Then how can they expect us to help them get her back from S.M.U.T.?"

  "Their idea was that we should help return her to Russia without really knowing who or what we were returning. It's an involved business. Let me try to piece it together for you in sequence. When Dr. Nyet defected, the Russians quite naturally thought she had defected to us. And so they made certain very complex and very secret diplomatic overtures to us to arrange an exchange. The bait they dangled was very high since the first overtures they made were through
the British. Do you remember the two prominent British atomic scientists who defected to Moscow a few years back?"

  "Yes." I knew who he meant, although I couldn't recall their names at the moment.

  "Well, they offered to swap them for Dr. Nyet. It was the magnanimity of that offer that really aroused our suspicions. We knew that this Dr. Nyet must be pretty hot potatoes indeed if they were willing to give up two top atomic scientists for her. The Russians should have been shrewder. By showing how eager they were to get her back, they aroused our interest. They thought we had her and we didn't. But we let them go right on thinking so while we tried to find out just who and what Dr. Nyet was, and why she was so important to them."

  "What did you learn?"

  "Not so very much, Mr. Victor. We're still working on it, and right now our information is limited. But if you will be good enough to listen, I will tell you everything we do know."

  "Shoot."

  "Very well then. First the physical description. Dr. Nyet is a 24-year-old Russian female. She is described as slender but voluptuous, with a large bosom, a small waist and ample hips. Her legs are said to be very good. She has been called beautiful, although that may be an exaggeration. Her hair is long and black and she was in the habit of wearing it very simply – loose and parted in the middle. High cheekbones, an oval face, small straight nose and deep-set blue eyes."

  "Sounds very attractive," I observed.

  "Yes. So they say. To continue, she was born in Stalingrad, and her family moved to Moscow when she was six years old. She grew up there and received her education there. Her father was a government statistician, her mother a minor mucky-muck in the party. From her earliest childhood Dr. Nyet displayed a brilliance well beyond either of them. By the time she was twenty-one, she received her doctorate in biochemistry. At twenty-three the government provided her with a research laboratory of her own, complete with staff and the latest equipment. A year later she had made an important discovery. Before this was transmitted to the Russian government, however, she disappeared. The N.K.V.D. found she had been consorting with certain American tourists. They took it for granted that she had defected to us. However, we have since learned that these people work for S.M.U.T. And we are reasonably sure that she has joined forces with them."

  "How come if you know so much about her," I queried, "you haven't been able to find out her real name?"

  "You can blame that on the Russian psychology. It thrives on intrigue, you know. With typical double-think, the government refuses to tell us her name. And our own source of information about her transmitted all this data as his final act of service to us. The N.K.V.D. must have picked him up. In any case, his last dispatch was incomplete. Our guess is that he was trying to be dramatic and left her real name as the last thing to be divulged. But he was caught – or so we guess – before he could finish the message and reveal her name."

  "But why do you call her Dr. Nyet?"

  "Two reasons. First of all, part of the information transmitted to us concerned her personal life. Her beauty attracted many men, but she had a reputation for leading them on and then, when the chips were down, for turning up her nose and saying 'Nyet!', which in Russian means -"

  "No. I know," I interrupted. "So she's a virgin, is that it?"

  "Well, we can't be absolutely sure, of course, but it does seem likely. This anti- sex attitude of hers was probably what attracted her to S.M.U.T. in the first place, and it's pretty consistent with what she discovered in her research, which brings us to the second reason we dubbed her Dr. Nyet."

  "What did she discover?"

  "An anti-birth-control pill."

  "What?"

  "That's right," Putnam nodded. "Now do you see why she's so important to the Russians, to S.M.U.T., and to us? She invented a substance which neutralizes birth- control pills. And it has certain side effects she was working to overcome which have even more important implications when S.M.U.T.'s aim of overpopulation is considered."

  "What side effects?"

  "The bio-chemical substance she originated is also strongly aphrodisiac. It's a sex stimulant which works so instantaneously as to make the victim incapable of taking the time to consider any means of contraception. Obviously, in the hands of S.M.U.T., such a substance is a threat to the entire world. The very idea has had an unparalleled impact on current diplomacy."

  "What sort of impact?"

  "Well, for one thing," Putnam told me, "there have been a series of highly secret meetings between the Russians, the Red Chinese, the French, the English and ourselves to evolve a cooperative effort to stamp out S.M.U.T. Of course the Reds are playing it very cagey. Ostensibly they're cooperating with us fully in an effort to get Dr. Nyet away from S.M.U.T. But in actuality there's a three-way race between us and the Russians and the Chinese to get her. Just the fact of getting her right name from the Russians, for instance. Every time the subject comes up, their translator develops a sudden inability to get the question over. It's like Alice in Wonderland, some of the dialogue that goes on at those meetings. 'What is the real name of Dr. Nyet?' our man asks. 'The Berlin wall stays up; this is not a topic for discussion at these meetings.' That's the answer that comes back. 'We're not talking about the Berlin wall, we just want to know who Dr. Nyet is,' we try again. Da, we might consider enlarging the cultural exchange program,' and both the Russian and the translator sit there grinning. It would be infuriating if it weren't for the fact that the Chinese are even more infuriated than we are. No Oriental inscrutability for them; they show it. See, they're convinced that we're making some sort of deal in code, a deal aimed at ganging up on them. So they're determined to get Dr. Nyet before we do. And so are the Russians."

  "Then why bother with these conferences at all?" I wanted to know.

  "Because in other respects they have been useful. Apart from the Dr. Nyet aspect, both the Russians and the Chinese have been of some limited use in gathering information on S.M.U.T. And, for their own purposes it's true, they may cooperate with us in wiping S.M.U.T. out. Even if it doesn't work out, it's worth keeping the lines of communication open."

  "I see. But what about me? Where do I come into all this?"

  "You're the one man best qualified to help us find Dr. Nyet. You see, there's a strong lead indicating that she may be in New York. That's still the headquarters of S.M.U.T. – on the surface, at least. As the man from O.R.G.Y., you have something of a reputation. We want you to offer your services as a sex expert to them. You'll have to convince them of your sincere belief in their cause – the one they admit to, I mean, the anti-pornography crusade. You can tell them that your investigations have really impressed on you that pornography is an evil. If you handle it right, they'll appreciate that you can be of great value to them publicity-wise and in other respects, and they should jump at the chance to have you join them."

  "I see. I'm to infiltrate them and find Dr. Nyet. But how will I know her when I do find her? It's a pretty thin description you've given me."

  "I'm afraid, Mr. Victor, that that will be your problem. I've told you everything I know. The rest is up to you. Will you do it?"

  "Yes. I'll leave for New York immediately."

  "Good. I was sure we could count on you." He started to lead me to the door, but we never got there because -

  Because suddenly all hell broke loose!

  A brick shattered the window, and a roar like that of stampeding animals followed it. There was the sound of police sirens in the distance, but the roar grew louder and drowned them out even as they drew closer. More objects crashed through the window, and Putnam and I dived for the floor together.

  After a moment, we cautiously raised our heads, crawled over to the window, and dared to peep through the drapes. The scene outside was chaos. There must have been at least a thousand people milling around. Some of them carried banners, but they were too far away to be seen. Still, even at that distance, their violence could be felt. It's been said that a mob is an enraged animal gone berse
rk, and looking at this mob I could well believe it.

  "What is it?" I asked Putnam.

  "I don't know. Perhaps it's the American flag on the building and the way it's done up. Maybe they think this is really the American embassy and they're staging some sort of protest. I can't imagine what they'd be protesting, though."

  "You can't? I can. There's Viet Nam, the Dominican Republic, unpunished murder in our very own Southland – oh, if they think this is the American embassy, there's no end to the things they might be protesting against."

  "I suppose you're right," Putnam granted. "Still, the English are usually such a law-abiding, unexcitable sort of people. It's not like them to get this violent. They look like they're about to storm the building."

  Putnam was proven right. The mob surged toward the locked gate, and it went down under their weight. They rushed across the grounds and up to the front door of the house itself. A moment later they were inside, howling through the hallways. And then Putnam and I were face to face with their faceless faces.

  It was like looking into a blazing red smokecloud of sheer violent emotions. But what did their violence stem from? What did they want? What had fired them up to this pitch?

  As they made for us, I seriously wondered if we'd live long enough to find out the answers!

  CHAPTER TWO

  "The Beatles!"

  "What? What do you want?" I couldn't help admiring the way Putnam stood his ground with his jaw stuck out.

  "The Beatles! The Beatles! We know they're here! Where are you hiding them?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Putnam said, maintaining his usual icy composure.