Joseph Samachson

“ He said mildly, "Not too reformed, I hope."
"Crime doesn't pay—except when it's within the law. That's the chief thing I learned."
"Even then it doesn't pay," he said moodily. "Except in money, of course. But what's the use of money?"
here wasn't anything to say to that. I said, probing delicately, "I figured you were loaded. If you can use your demons to separate U-235 from U-238, you can use them for separating gold from sea water. You can use them for damn near anything."
"Damn near," he concurred. "Virgie, you may be of some help to me. Obviously you've been reading up on Maxwell." ”

“ He said, "I've had demons inside of me for six years. It seems they're a bit choosy about where they'll live. They don't inhabit the whole body, just parts of it—heart, lungs, liver. Maybe bones. Maybe some of the glands—perhaps that' s why I feel so chipper physically. But not my brain, or not yet. Fortunately."
"Fortunately? But that's wrong, Greek! If your brain grew younger too—"
"Fool! If I had a young brain, I'd forget everything I learned, like unrolling a tape backwards! That's the danger, Virgie, the immediate danger that's pressing me—that's why I needed help! ”

“ Dead was dead. We could kill the animals by making them too young. We could kill the animals by making them too old. But keep them alive, once the demons were in them, we could not.
Greco evolved a plan: Mix the two breeds of demons! Take an animal with the young-age demons already in it, then add a batch that worked in the other direction!
or a while, it seemed to work—but only for a while. After a couple of weeks, one breed or the other would gain the upper hand. And the animals died.
It was fast in mice, slow in humans. Minnie stayed alive. ”

“ Just so with demons! You're not so stupid after all, are you? It's like improving the breed of dogs. You take a common ancestral mutt, and generations later you can develop an Airedale, a dachshund or a Spitz. How? By selection. My demon entities grow, they split, the new entities adapt themselves to new conditions. There's a process of evolution. ”

“ Our carriers—from Grand Rapids and from the hotel—had spread to California and the East Coast, to the North and to the South, throughout the country, perhaps by now through the world. It would be slower with the aging demons—there was only one of Minnie—but it would be equally sure.
Greco began drinking heavily.
"It's the end," he brooded. "We're licked."
"No, Greek! We can't give up!"
"We have to give up. The demons are loose in the Earth, Virgie! Those people in the headlines—they'll die of young age. So will others—even plants and animals, and bacteria, as the demons adapt to them. ”

“ The flames drove Greco off, but he tried again. They drove him off again, and this time for good.
He stumbled toward me. "Out! It's hopeless!" He turned, stared blindly at the hotel employees with their chain of buckets. "You! What do you think you're doing? That's—" He stopped, wetting his lips. "That's a gasoline fire," he lied, "and there's dynamite in my luggage. ”

“ I had got a lot of use out of the prison library—even to the point of learning all there was to learn about Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest of physicists, and his little demons. I had rehearsed it thoroughly for El Greco.
"Suppose," I said, "that you had a little compartment inside a pipe of flowing gas or liquid. That's what Maxwell said. Suppose the compartment had a little door that allowed molecules to enter or leave. You station a demon—that's what Maxie called them himself—at the door. The demon sees a hot molecule coming, he opens the door. He sees a cold one, he closes it. ”

“ The thing was, some of the "strange particles" were stranger than even most physicists knew. Some—in combination—were in fact Greco's demons.
We bought animals—mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, even dogs. We infected the young with some of our own demons—that was simple enough, frighteningly simple; all we had to do was handle them a bit. And we watched what happened.
They died—of young age.
Some vital organ or another regressed to embryonic condition, and they died—as Greco and I would die, if we didn't find the answer. As the whole world might die. ”

“ Some of the demons hit the brain in some of their victims and—
Well, it's pretty bad.
Greco got the answer after a while. Both types of demons were loose in the world, and both, by and by, were in every individual.
But they didn't kill each other off.
One simply grew more rapidly, took over control, until it ran out of the kind of molecules it needed. Then the other took over.
Then the first.
Then the other again....
Mice are short-lived. It's like balancing a needle on the end of your nose; there isn't enough space in a mouse's short span for balance, any more than there is in a needle's. ”

“ There are aging demons loose too!"
A breath of hope!
But hope died. Sure, he was right—as far as it went.
There were aging demons. We isolated them in some of our experimental animals. First we had to lure Minnie into standing still while Greco, swearing horribly, took a tissue sample; she didn't like that, but a hundred-dollar bonus converted her. Solid CO2 froze the skin; snip, and a tiny flake of flesh came out of her nose at the point of Greco's scalpel; he put the sample of flesh through a few tricks and, at the end of the day, we tried it on some of our mice. ”

“ Money buys a lot of help. I've got a lot of money."
"Oh." I cleared my throat again.
Greco looked at me, nodding thoughtfully to himself. There was one good thing; maybe he knew about my trouble with Pudge, but he also had gone out of his way to find me. So he wanted something out of me.
He said suddenly, "Virgie, you were a damned fool."
"I was," I admitted honestly. "Worse than you know. But I am no longer. Greek, old boy, all this stuff you told me about those demons got me interested. I had plenty of time for reading in prison. ”

“ He hesitated. "Certain—particles, which are of importance to my research, have a tendency to go free. I can keep them under a measure of control only by means of electrostatic forces, generated in this." He waved the thing that looked like a toaster on a stick. "And as for what they do—well, watch."
l Greco began to putter with gleamy, glassy gadgets on one of the tables and I watched him with, I admit, a certain amount of suspicion.
"What are you doing, Greek?" I asked pretty bluntly. ”

“ Then when the hotel burned. Plenty have been exposed—you more than most, I guess, ever since the day you walked into my lab and I was trying to recapture some that had got away. Well, I don't guess I recaptured them all."
"You mean I—"
He nodded. "Some of the demons make people younger. And you've got a colony of them in you."
swallowed and sat down. "You mean I'm going to get younger and younger, until finally I become a baby? And then—what then, Greek?"
He shrugged. "How do I know? Ask me in another ten years. Look at me, Virgie!" he cried, suddenly loud. "How old do I look to you? ”

“ Minnie popped her head in the door and giggled. I waved her away.
"She could use some of your demons," I remarked. "Sometimes I think she has awfully young ideas, for a woman who's sixty if she's a day."
Greco laughed crazily. "Minnie? She's been working for me for a year. ”

“ I couldn't decide. It was dying, all the same. When an embryonic heart or liver is called on to do a job for a mature organism, there is only one way out. Death.
And after death—the demons went on; the dog we fed on the remains of the guinea pigs followed them to extinction in a matter of weeks.
Minnie was an interesting case.
She was going about her work with more energy every day, and I'll be blasted if I didn't catch her casting a lingering Marilyn Monroe sort of look at me when Greco's back was turned.
"Shall we fire her?" I asked El Greco when I told him about it. ”

“ But energy—free energy—it was there for the taking. From the molecules of the air, for instance. Refrigerators could be cooled, boilers could get up steam, homes could be heated, forges could be fired—and all without fuel. Planes could fly through the air without a drop of gasoline in their tanks. ”

“ We looked at each other.
"They're out in force," said Theobald Greco soberly. "And we don't have the cure."
IV
he world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared, talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don't mind admitting that I was worried.
And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to be that the two varieties of demons—the aging and the youthing—were not compatible; if one took up residence in a given section of an organism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker ”

“ Don't lie to me—you never heard of Old Ugly, not even if I tell you it's Oglethorpe A. & M. There were fifty-eight of us in my graduating class—that's 1940—and exactly thirty turned up for the tenth reunion. ”