Ferris turned, his thin face lit up with a flush of pleasure. "Mitchell, we have something to make people permanently stupid! People can stop thinking temporarily by using alcohol or narcotics or watching television. But we—only you and I—have something to let them stop thinking permanently. And we'll make them pay for it—for the shot and the rent on the condition. Who wants to think? A handful of people. Who has to think to do routine paperwork or push a button or pull a lever? A bunch of happy, content morons can do all of that. We'll return man to his natural, pre-evolutionary state of stupidity. As for those of us who don't take the treatment, we have it made! Made!"
Mitchell stared at him.
"Don't you get it, Mitchell?" Ferris roared. "We have the ultimate tranquilizer!"
Mitchell thought of the world after the F-M Virus had been given it. He thought: In his condition, if I shoved Ferris so that his head cracked into the corner of the table, no one could prove anything. I could destroy our records....
No, it wasn't any good. Some other researcher somewhere else was bound to isolate the F-M Virus. None of it was any good.
He groped blindly towards the door. He had to get out, get to a drugstore, buy some aspirins.
His head was killing him.