[III]
That same night, at his home in the suburbs, Ed Dukas read an article that had especially attracted his attention. Could vitaplasm be grown into forms unknown before? Could it be shaped from a plan—a blueprint—like the metal and plastic forming a machine? Heart here, lungs there, nervous system arranged so? Scaly armor, long, creeping body? Or wings that fluttered through the air? The author saw no reason why this could not happen. Monstrous things. Ed Dukas chuckled at the melodramatic idea. But he suspected that it was far from impossible.
Young Dukas also had a caller that night.
"You said I should come to see you," Tom Granger told him when they were alone in Ed's room. Ed was on guard at once.
His visitor's mood seemed to have changed since the afternoon.
"Sorry if I seemed out of line today," Granger said. "My motives are good. And I didn't want to insult you."
"Thanks," Ed responded shortly. "But you didn't come here just to tell me that. How does it happen that you're not in jail?"
"Abel Freeman discreetly pressed no charges. I wish he had. But, like you, he just disappeared. There was only that hole in the ground—made by the Midas Touch pistol—a feeble thing to admit for a publicity showdown. So I kept still, and the police couldn't hold me. Fact is, most of them seem sympathetic to what I stand for—the venerable human privilege of walking on one's own green planet as a natural animal, loving one's wife and children in the ancient, simple manner."
Granger was a good orator. Mysteriously, Ed was faintly moved. Perhaps the gentle argument was too plain and clear. But Ed remained wary of the traps of language and feeling, and of perhaps impractical dreams.
His anger sharpened. Then, knowing the possibly deadly quality of anger in these times and wishing to counteract that everywhere, he yearned desperately to be a master psychologist, always calm and smiling and supremely persuasive. But he could not be like that. He was too human and limited. Maybe too primitive.