"Yes. I have seen crates of guinea-pigs and monkeys at the laboratory door. I'm afraid it always made me a little unhappy. But I suppose it's the only way to get certain results. And you always give them something, don't you?"
"Always. They don't suffer more than a man would while healing a deep clean cut. In other words, they don't suffer at all. And they're not unhappy, and they don't bear malice. And still I wouldn't do it, if I could help myself. I think, my dear, that I have been chosen for my sins to introduce a great benefit to mankind. It seems now only a question of perfecting the technique. I've already had extraordinary results."
"What's the idea?"
"You know, of course, that a piece of skin from one man can be successfully grafted on another man. Well, so can a liver, a finger, a hand, a foot, an arm, a leg. I have two monkeys now: a black and a gray. The black monkey has the gray hands and forearms, the gray monkey has the black. I made the exchange eighteen months ago. And they have developed the same strength and skill with the grafted members that they had with their own. I have a monkey who had only one eye when he came. Now he has two--they aren't a good color match, but he sees as well with one as the other. When these ideas are perfected it will be possible, perhaps, to make old people young. The secret is absolute cleanliness and the accuracy in joining of a Chippendale or an Adams. So you see," he smiled, "that in a way you and I are chasing the same ambition--how to express the thing imagined through perfection of technique."
"Are you the only man working along these lines?"
"Heavens, no! Aristotle probably believed in animal grafting. But I think that, owing to a natural talent for doing close and accurate work with my hands, I have gone farther than anybody else. What gave you the impulse to be a sculptor, Barbs?"
She laughed gayly. "The statues in the Metropolitan that have lost their arms and heads and legs. I felt very sorry for them. I was very young and foolish, and I invented a game to play. I'd select a statue that needed an arm, say, and then I'd hunt among the other statues for an arm that would fit, or for a head or whatever else was missing. Through playing that game I got the idea of making whole statues from the beginning and not bothering with fragments."
"And to think," said Dr. Ferris, "that we have failed to understand each other. Why, Barbs, your ambition is a direct lineal descendant of mine. It was a maimed marble that showed you your life's work. It was a maimed child that showed me mine. It seems that at heart we are both menders."
"I began on dolls," said Barbara.
"And I began on guinea-pigs."