Part 1

THE BIG HEADACHE

BY JIM HARMON

What's the principal cause of headaches? Why, having a head, of course!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

I

"Do you think we'll have to use force on Macklin to get him to cooperate in the experiment?" Ferris asked eagerly.

"How are you going to go about forcing him, Doctor?" Mitchell inquired. "He outweighs you by fifty pounds and you needn't look to _me_ for help against that repatriated fullback."

Ferris fingered the collar of his starched lab smock. "Guess I got carried away for a moment. But Macklin is exactly what we need for a quick, dramatic test. We've had it if he turns us down."

"I know," Mitchell said, exhaling deeply. "Somehow the men with the money just can't seem to understand basic research. Who would have financed a study of cyclic periods of the hedgehog? Yet the information gained from that study is vital in cancer research."

"When we prove our results that should be of enough practical value for anyone. But those crummy trustees didn't even leave us enough for a field test." Ferris scrubbed his thin hand over the bony ridge of his forehead. "I've been worrying so much about this I've got the ancestor of all headaches."

Mitchell's blue eyes narrowed and his boyish face took on an expression of demonic intensity. "Ferris, would you consider--?"

"No!" the smaller man yelled. "You can't expect me to violate professional ethics and test my own discovery on myself."

"_Our_ discovery," Mitchell said politely.

"That's what I meant to say. But I'm not sure it would be completely ethical with even a discovery partly mine."

"You're right. Besides who cares if you or I are cured of headaches? Our reputations don't go outside our own fields," Mitchell said. "But now Macklin--"

Elliot Macklin had inherited the reputation of the late Albert Einstein in the popular mind. He was the man people thought of when the word "mathematician" or even "scientist" was mentioned. No one knew whether his Theory of Spatium was correct or not because no one had yet been able to frame an argument with it. Macklin was in his early fifties but looked in his late thirties, with the build of a football player. The government took up a lot of his time using him as the symbol of the Ideal Scientist to help recruit Science and Engineering Cadets.

For the past seven years Macklin--who _was_ the Advanced Studies Department of Firestone University--had been involved in devising a faster-than-light drive to help the Army reach Pluto and eventually the nearer stars. Mitchell had overheard two coeds talking and so knew that the project was nearing completion. If so, it was a case of _Ad astra per aspirin_.

The only thing that could delay the project was Macklin's health.

Despite his impressive body, some years before he had suffered a mild stroke ... or at least a vascular spasm of a cerebral artery. It was known that he suffered from the vilest variety of migraine. A cycle of the headaches had caused him to be absent from his classes for several weeks, and there were an unusual number of military uniforms seen around the campus.

* * * * *

Ferris paced off the tidy measurements of the office outside the laboratory in the biology building. Mitchell sat slumped in the chair behind the blond imitation wood desk, watching him disinterestedly.

"Do you suppose the Great Man will actually show up?" Ferris demanded, pausing in mid-stride.

"I imagine he will," Mitchell said. "Macklin's always seemed a decent enough fellow when I've had lunch with him or seen him at the trustees meetings."

"He's always treated me like dirt," Ferris said heatedly. "Everyone on this campus treats biologists like dirt. Sometimes I want to bash in their smug faces."

Sometimes, Mitchell reflected, Ferris displayed a certain lack of scientific detachment.

There came a discreet knock on the door.

"Please come in," Mitchell said.

Elliot Macklin entered in a cloud of pipe smoke and a tweed jacket. He looked more than a little like a postgraduate student, and Mitchell suspected that that was his intention.

He shook hands warmly with Mitchell. "Good of you to ask me over, Steven."

Macklin threw a big arm across Ferris' shoulders. "How have you been, Harold?"

Ferris' face flickered between pink and white. "Fine, thank you, doctor."

Macklin dropped on the edge of the desk and adjusted his pipe. "Now what's this about you wanting my help on something? And please keep the explanation simple. Biology isn't my field, you know."

Mitchell moved around the desk casually. "Actually, Doctor, we haven't the right to ask this of a man of your importance. There may be an element of risk."

The mathematician clamped onto his pipe and showed his teeth. "Now you have me intrigued. What is it all about?"

"Doctor, we understand you have severe headaches," Mitchell said.

Macklin nodded. "That's right, Steven. Migraine."

"That must be terrible," Ferris said. "All your fine reputation and lavish salary can't be much consolation when that ripping, tearing agony begins, can it?"

"No, Harold, it isn't," Macklin admitted. "What does your project have to do with my headaches?"

"Doctor," Mitchell said, "what would you say the most common complaint of man is?"

"I would have said the common cold," Macklin replied, "but I suppose from what you have said you mean headaches."

* * * * *

"Headaches," Mitchell agreed. "Everybody has them at some time in his life. Some people have them every day. Some are driven to suicide by their headaches."

"Yes," Macklin said.

"But think," Ferris interjected, "what a boon it would be if everyone could be cured of headaches _forever_ by one simple injection."

"I don't suppose the manufacturers of aspirin would like you. But it would please about everybody else."

"Aspirins would still be used to reduce fever and relieve muscular pains," Mitchell said.

"I see. Are you two saying you _have_ such a shot? Can you cure headaches?"

"We think we can," Ferris said.

"How can you have a specific for a number of different causes?" Macklin asked. "I know that much about the subject."

"There _are_ a number of different causes for headaches--nervous strain, fatigue, physical diseases from kidney complaints to tumors, over-indulgence--but there is one _effect_ of all of this, the one real cause of headaches," Mitchell announced.

"We have definitely established this for this first time," Ferris added.

"That's fine," Macklin said, sucking on his pipe. "And this effect that produces headaches is?"

"The pressure effect caused by pituitrin in the brain," Mitchell said eagerly. "That is, the constriction of blood vessels in the telencephalon section of the frontal lobes. It's caused by an over-production of the pituitary gland. We have artificially bred a virus that feeds on pituitrin."

"That may mean the end of headaches, but I would think it would mean the end of the race as well," Macklin said. "In certain areas it is valuable to have a constriction of blood vessels."

"The virus," Ferris explained, "can easily be localized and stabilized. A colony of virus in the brain cells will relax the cerebral vessels--and only the cerebral vessels--so that the cerebrospinal fluid doesn't create pressure in the cavities of the brain."

The mathematician took the pipe out of his mouth. "If this really works, I could stop using that damned gynergen, couldn't I? The stuff makes me violently sick to my stomach. But it's better than the migraine. How should I go about removing my curse?" He reinserted the pipe.

"I assure you, you can forget ergotamine tartrate," Ferris said. "Our discovery will work."

* * * * *

"Will work," Macklin said thoughtfully. "The operative word. It _hasn't_ worked then?"

"Certainly it has," Ferris said. "On rats, on chimps...."

"But not on humans?" Macklin asked.

"Not yet," Mitchell admitted.

"Well," Macklin said. "Well." He thumped pipe ashes out into his palm. "Certainly you can get volunteers. Convicts. Conscientious objectors from the Army."

"We want you," Ferris told him.

Macklin coughed. "I don't want to overestimate my value but the government wouldn't like it very well if I died in the middle of this project. My wife would like it even less."

Ferris turned his back on the mathematician. Mitchell could see him mouthing the word _yellow_.

"Doctor," Mitchell said quickly, "I know it's a tremendous favor to ask of a man of your position. But you can understand our problem. Unless we can produce quick, conclusive and dramatic proof of our studies we can get no more financial backing. We _should_ run a large-scale field test. But we haven't the time or money for that. We can cure the headaches of one person and that's the limit of our resources."

"I'm tempted," Macklin said hesitantly, "but the answer is go. I mean '_no_'. I'd like to help you out, but I'm afraid I owe too much to others to take the rest--the risk, I mean."

Macklin ran the back of his knuckles across his forehead. "I really would like to take you up on it. When I start making slips like that it means another attack of migraine. The drilling, grinding pain through my temples and around my eyeballs. The flashes of light, the rioting pools of color playing on the back of my lids. Ugh."

Ferris smiled. "Gynergen makes you sick, does it, doctor? Produces nausea, eh? The pain of that turns you almost wrong side out, doesn't it? You aren't much better off with it than without, are you? I've heard some say they preferred the migraine."

Macklin carefully arranged his pipe along with the tools he used to tend it in a worn leather case. "Tell me," he said, "what is the worst that could happen to me?"

"Low blood pressure," Ferris said.

"That's not so bad," Macklin said. "How low can it get?"

"When your heart stops, your blood pressure goes to its lowest point," Mitchell said.

A dew of perspiration had bloomed on Macklin's forehead. "Is there much risk of that?"

"Practically none," Mitchell said. "We have to give you the worst possibilities. _All_ our test animals survived and seem perfectly happy and contented. As I said, the virus is self-stabilizing. Ferris and I are confident that there is no danger.... But we may be wrong."

Macklin held his head in both hands. "Why did you two select _me_?"

"You're an important man, doctor," Ferris said. "Nobody would care if Mitchell or I cured ourselves of headaches--they might not even believe us if we said we did. But the proper authorities will believe a man of your reputation. Besides, neither of us has a record of chronic migraine. You do."

"Yes, I do," Macklin said. "Very well. Go ahead. Give me your injection."

Mitchell cleared his throat. "Are you positive, doctor?" he asked uncertainly. "Perhaps you would like a few days to think it over."

"No! I'm ready. Go ahead, right now."

"There's a simple release," Ferris said smoothly.

Macklin groped in his pocket for a pen.

II

"Ferris!" Mitchell yelled, slamming the laboratory door behind him.

"Right here," the small man said briskly. He was sitting at a work table, penciling notes. "I've been expecting you."

"Doctor--Harold--you shouldn't have given this story to the newspapers," Mitchell said. He tapped the back of his hand against the folded paper.

"On the contrary, I should and I did," Ferris answered. "We wanted something dramatic to show to the trustees and here it is."

"Yes, we wanted to show our proof to the trustees--but not broadcast unverified results to the press. It's too early for that!"

"Don't be so stuffy and conservative, Mitchell! Macklin's cured, isn't he? By established periodic cycle he should be suffering hell right now, shouldn't he? But thanks to our treatment he is perfectly happy, with no unfortunate side effects such as gynergen produces."

"It's a significant test case, yes. But not enough to go to the newspapers with. If it wasn't enough to go to the press with, it wasn't enough to try and breach the trustees with. Don't you see? The public will hand down a ukase demanding our virus, just as they demanded the Salk vaccine and the Grennell serum."

"But--"

The shrill call of the telephone interrupted Mitchell's objections.

Ferris excused himself and crossed to the instrument. He answered it and listened for a moment, his face growing impatient.

"It's Macklin's wife," Ferris said. "Do you want to talk to her? I'm no good with hysterical women."

"Hysterical?" Mitchell muttered in alarm and went to the phone.

"Hello?" Mitchell said reluctantly. "Mrs. Macklin?"

"You are the other one," the clear feminine voice said. "Your name is Mitchell."

She couldn't have sounded calmer or more self-possessed, Mitchell thought.

"That's right, Mrs. Macklin. I'm Dr. Steven Mitchell, Dr. Ferris's associate."

"Do you have a license to dispense narcotics?"

"What do you mean by that, Mrs. Macklin," Mitchell said sharply.

"I used to be a nurse, Dr. Mitchell. I know you've given my husband heroin."

"That's absurd. What makes you think a thing like that?"

"The--trance he's in now."

"Now, Mrs. Macklin. Neither Dr. Ferris or myself have been near your husband for a full day. The effects of a narcotic would have worn off by this time."

"Most known narcotics," she admitted, "but evidently you have discovered something new. Is it so expensive to refine you and Ferris have to recruit new customers to keep yourselves supplied?"

"Mrs. Macklin! I think I had better talk to you later when you are calmer."

Mitchell dropped the receiver heavily. "What could be wrong with Macklin?" he asked without removing his hand from the telephone.

Ferris frowned, making quotation marks above his nose. "Let's have a look at the test animals."

Together they marched over to the cages and peered through the honeycomb pattern of the wire. The test chimp, Dean, was sitting peacefully in a corner scratching under his arms with the back of his knuckles. Jerry, their control in the experiment, who was practically Dean's twin except that he had received no injection of the E-M Virus, was stomping up and down punching his fingers through the wire, worrying the lock on the cage.

"Jerry _is_ a great deal more active than Dean," Mitchell said.

"Yes, but Dean isn't sick. He just doesn't seem to have as much nervous energy to burn up. Nothing wrong with his thyroid either."

They went to the smaller cages. They found the situation with the rats, Bud and Lou, much the same.

"I don't know. Maybe they just have tired blood," Mitchell ventured.

"Iron deficiency anemia?"

"Never mind, doctor. It was a form of humor. I think we had better see exactly what is wrong with Elliot Macklin."

"There's nothing wrong with him," Ferris snapped. "He's probably just trying to get us in trouble, the ingrate!"

* * * * *

Macklin's traditional ranch house was small but attractive in aqua-tinted aluminum.

Under Mitchell's thumb the bell chimbed _dum-de-de-dum-dum-dum_.

As they waited Mitchell glanced at Ferris. He seemed completely undisturbed, perhaps slightly curious.

The door unlatched and swung back.

"Mrs. Macklin," Mitchell said quickly, "I'm sure we can help if there is anything wrong with your husband. This is Dr. Ferris. I am Dr. Mitchell."

"You had certainly _better_ help him, gentlemen." She stood out of the doorway for them to pass.

Mrs. Macklin was an attractive brunette in her late thirties. She wore an expensive yellow dress. And she had a sharp-cornered jawline.

The Army officer came out into the hall to meet them.

"You are the gentlemen who gave Dr. Macklin the unauthorized injection," he said.

It wasn't a question.

"I don't like that 'unauthorized'," Ferris snapped.

The colonel--Mitchell spotted the eagles on his green tunic--lifted a heavy eyebrow. "No? Are you medical doctors? Are you authorized to treat illnesses?"

"We weren't treating an illness," Mitchell said. "We were discovering a method of treatment. What concern is it of yours?"

The colonel smiled thinly. "Dr. Macklin is my concern. And everything that happens to him. The Army doesn't like what you have done to him."

Mitchell wondered desperately just what they had done to the man.

"Can we see him?" Mitchell asked.

"Why not? You can't do much worse than murder him now. That might be just as well. We have laws to cover that."

The colonel led them into the comfortable, over-feminine living room. Macklin sat in an easy chair draped in embroidery, smoking. Mitchell suddenly realized Macklin used a pipe as a form of masculine protest to his home surroundings.

On the coffee table in front of Macklin were some odd-shaped building blocks such as were used in nursery schools. A second uniformed man--another colonel but with the snake-entwined staff of the medical corps in his insignia--was kneeling at the table on the marble-effect carpet.

The Army physician stood up and brushed his knees, undusted from the scrupulously clean rug.

"What's wrong with him, Sidney?" the other officer asked the doctor.

"Not a thing," Sidney said. "He's the healthiest, happiest, most well-adjusted man I've ever examined, Carson."

"But--" Colonel Carson protested.

"Oh, he's changed all right," the Army doctor answered. "He's not the same man as he used to be."

"How is he different?" Mitchell demanded.

The medic examined Mitchell and Ferris critically before answering. "He used to be a mathematical genius."

"And now?" Mitchell said impatiently.

"Now he is a moron," the medic said.

III

Mitchell tried to stop Colonel Sidney as he went past, but the doctor mumbled he had a report to make.

Mitchell and Ferris stared at Colonel Carson and Macklin and at each other.

"What did he mean, Macklin is an idiot?" Mitchell asked.

"Not an idiot," Colonel Carson corrected primly. "Dr. Macklin is a moron. He's legally responsible, but he's extremely stupid."

"I'm not so dumb," Macklin said defensively.

"I beg your pardon, sir," Carson said. "I didn't intend any offense. But according to all the standard intelligence tests we have given you, your clinical intelligence quotient is that of a moron."

"That's just on book learning," Macklin said. "There's a lot you learn in life that you don't get out of books, son."

"I'm confident that's true, sir," Colonel Carson said. He turned to the two biologists. "Perhaps we had better speak outside."

"But--" Mitchell said, impatient to examine Macklin for himself. "Very well. Let's step into the hall."

Ferris followed them docilely.

"What have you done to him?" the colonel asked straightforwardly.

"We merely cured him of his headaches," Mitchell said.

"How?"

Mitchell did his best to explain the F-M Virus.

"You mean," the Army officer said levelly "you have infected him with some kind of a disease to rot his brain?"

"No, no! Could I talk to the other man, the doctor? Maybe I can make him understand."

"All I want to know is why Elliot Macklin has been made as simple as if he had been kicked in the head by a mule," Colonel Carson said.

"I think I can explain," Ferris interrupted.

"You can?" Mitchell said.

Ferris nodded. "We made a slight miscalculation. It appears as if the virus colony overcontrols the supply of posterior pituitary extract in the cerebrum. It isn't more than necessary to stop headaches. But that necessary amount of control to stop pain is too much to allow the brain cells to function properly."

"Why won't they function?" Carson roared.

"They don't get enough food--blood, oxygen, hemoglobin," Ferris explained. "The cerebral vessels don't contract enough to pump the blood through the brain as fast and as hard as is needed. The brain cells remain sluggish, dormant. Perhaps decaying."

The colonel yelled.

Mitchell groaned. He was abruptly sure Ferris was correct.

* * * * *

The colonel drew himself to attention, fists trembling at his sides. "I'll see you hung for treason! Don't you know what Elliot Macklin means to us? Do you want those filthy Luxemburgians to reach Pluto before we do? Macklin's formula is essential to the FTL engine. You might just as well have blown up Washington, D.C. Better! The capital is replaceable. But the chances of an Elliot Macklin are very nearly once in a human race."

"Just a moment," Mitchell interrupted, "we can cure Macklin."

"You _can_?" Carson said. For a moment Mitchell thought the man was going to clasp his hands and sink to his knees.

"Certainly. We have learned to stabilize the virus colonies. We have antitoxin to combat the virus. We had always thought of it as a beneficial parasite, but we can wipe it out if necessary."

"Good!" Carson clasped his hands and gave at least slightly at the knees.

"Just you wait a second now, boys," Elliot Macklin said. He was leaning in the doorway, holding his pipe. "I've been listening to what you've been saying and I don't like it."

"What do you mean you don't like it?" Carson demanded. He added, "Sir?"

"I figure you mean to put me back like I used to be."

"Yes, doctor," Mitchell said eagerly, "just as you used to be."

"_With_ my headaches, like before?"

Mitchell coughed into his fist for an instant, to give him time to frame an answer. "Unfortunately, yes. Apparently if your mind functions properly once again you will have the headaches again. Our research is a dismal failure."

"I wouldn't go that far," Ferris remarked cheerfully.

Mitchell was about to ask his associate what he meant when he saw Macklin slowly shaking his head.

"No, sir!" the mathematician said. "I shall not go back to my original state. I can remember what it was like. Always worrying, worrying, worrying."

"You mean wondering," Mitchell said.

Macklin nodded. "Troubled, anyway. Disturbed by every little thing. How high was up, which infinity was bigger than what infinity--say, what was an infinity anyway? All that sort of schoolboy things. It's peaceful this way. My head doesn't hurt. I've got a good-looking wife and all the money I need. I've got it made. Why worry?"

Colonel Carson opened his mouth, then closed it.

"That's right, Colonel. There's no use in arguing with him," Mitchell said.

"It's not his decision to make," the colonel said. "He's an idiot now."

"No, Colonel. As you said, he's a moron. He seems an idiot compared to his former level of intelligence but he's legally responsible. There are millions of morons running around loose in the United States. They can get married, own property, vote, even hold office. Many of them do. You can't force him into being cured.... At least, I don't _think_ you can."

"No, I can't. This is hardly a totalitarian state." The colonel looked momentarily glum that it wasn't.

Mitchell looked back at Macklin. "Where did his wife get to, Colonel? I don't think that even previously he made too many personal decisions for himself. Perhaps she could influence him."

"Maybe," the colonel said. "Let's find her."

* * * * *

They found Mrs. Macklin in the dining room, her face at the picture window an attractive silhouette. She turned as the men approached.

"Mrs. Macklin," the colonel began, "these gentlemen believe they can cure your husband of his present condition."

"Really?" she said. "Did you speak to Elliot about that?"

"Y-yes," Colonel Carson said, "but he's not himself. He refused the treatment. He wants to remain in his state of lower intelligence."

She nodded. "If those are his wishes, I can't go against them."

"But Mrs. Macklin!" Mitchell protested. "You will have to get a court order overruling your husband's wishes."

She smoothed an eyebrow with the third finger of her right hand. "That was my original thought. But I've redecided."

"Redecided!" Carson burst out almost hysterically.