Alternating Currents by Frederik Pohl

mind almost stopped functioning. He ate and slept, and when it grew cold he shivered and built fires, and that was all. The War Department wrote him two or three times, and finally a Government man came around to ask what had happened to the things that Gordy had promised to bring to Washington. But he looked queerly at the pink, hairless mice that fed unmolested in the filthy kitchen, and he stood a careful distance away from Gordy’s hairy face and torn clothes.
     
    He said, ‘The Secretary sent me here, Mr Gordy. He takes a personal interest in your discovery.’
     
    Gordy shook his head. ‘The Secretary’s dead,’ he said. ‘They were all killed when Washington went.’
     
    ‘There’s a new Secretary,’ the man explained. He puffed on his cigarette and tossed it into the patch Gordy was scrabbling into a truck garden. ‘Arnold Cavanagh. He knows a great deal about you, and he told me, “If Salva Gordy has a weapon, we must have it. Our strength has been shattered. Tell Gordy we need his help.”‘
     
    Gordy crossed his hands like a lean Buddha.
     
    ‘I haven’t got a weapon,’ he said.
     
    ‘You have something that can be used as a weapon. You wrote to Washington, before the war came, and said -’
     
    ‘The war is over,’ said Salva Gordy. The Government man sighed, and tried again, but in the end he went away. He never came back. The thing, Gordy thought, was undoubtedly written off as a crackpot idea after the man made his report; it was exactly that kind of a discovery anyhow.
     
    It was May when John de Terry appeared. Gordy was spading his garden. ‘Give me something to eat,’ said the voice behind Gordy’s back.
     
    Salva Gordy turned around and saw the small, dirty man who spoke. He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll have to work for it,’ he said.
     
    ‘All right.’ The newcomer set down his pack. ‘My name is John de Terry. I used to live here in Detroit.’
     
    Salva Gordy said, ‘So did I.’
     
    Gordy fed the man, and accepted a cigarette from him after they had eaten. The first puffs made him light-headed - it had been that long since he’d smoked - and through the smoke he looked at John de Terry amiably enough. Company would be all right, he thought. The pink mice had been company, of a sort; but it turned out that the mutation that made them hairless had also given them an appetite for meat. And after the morning when he had awakened to find tiny toothmarks in his leg, he’d had to destroy them. And there had been no other animal since, nothing but the ants.
     
    ‘Are you going to stay ?’ Gordy asked.
     
    De Terry said, ‘If I can. What’s your name ?’ When Gordy told him, some of the animal look went out of his eyes, and wonder took its place. ‘Doctor Salva Gordy?’ he asked. ‘Mathematics and physics in Pasadena ?’
     
    ‘Yes, I used to teach at Pasadena.’
     
    ‘And I studied there.’ John de Terry rubbed absently at his ruined clothes. ‘That was a long time ago. You didn’t know me; I majored in biology. But I knew you.’
     
    Gordy stood up and carefully put out the stub of his cigarette. ‘It was too long ago,’ he said. ‘I hardly remember. Shall we work in the garden now ?’
     
    Together they sweated in the spring sunlight that afternoon, and Gordy discovered that what had been hard work for one man went quickly enough for two. They worked clear to the edge of the plot before the sun reached the horizon. John de Terry stopped and leaned on his spade, panting.
     
    He gestured to the rank growth beyond Gordy’s patch. ‘We can make a bigger garden,’ he said. ‘Clear out that truck, and plant more food. We might even -’ He stopped. Gordy was shaking his head.
     
    ‘You can’t clear it out,’ said Gordy. ‘It’s rank stuff, a sort of crabgrass with a particularly tough root. I can’t even cut it. It’s all around here, and it’s spreading.’
     
    De Terry grimaced. ‘Mutation?’
     
    ‘I think