Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

cortex. A few stitches, and we'll be finished. I rather suspect that psychopaths will find that you will not require any mental reconditioning. The jealousy spasm was purely plandular.” “You mean, I wouldn’t have—have disintegrated her if my glands had been normal?” asked the youth. His facial muscles contracted pitifully as he spoke. ae: 7 ) V67 was busy with his surgical dressing. He nodded sadly as he sewed and kneaded the lacerated tissues into a semblance of normality. “I’m afraid the glands were at the root of all your troubles, boy,” he said. “Your parental supervisors should have corrected’ the maladjustment: in childhood.” “But several thousand years ago men often killed their wives,” said the youth. ras 3 “Several thousand years ago men murdered one another on a wholesale scale in hideous blood-letting contests,” said V67. “They had no control whatever. You can not justify your conduct by exalting the primitive, my lad. If our race has raised itself above the level of the jungle it has done so only by a long process of selective mating. When the eugenists of the Twenty-second Century started selecting stocks on a glandular basis the ” “Were blind!” interrupted the youth, in desperation. “Blind, I tell you. War was awful, but love é V67 shrugged. “We still love,” he said. The youth’s face twisted in a grimace. “You think you do,” he said. “We have overcome certain crude and violent prejudices, that is all,” said V67 calmly. He wished the young man would not talk so much, His ceaseless, primitive chatter unnerved him, despite the astravasin in his blood-stream. He did not realize that the young man was talking to keep up his courage. It was not so much the pain that the young man dreaded. He dreaded the thought that he would become like his benefactor—high-minded, impartial and serene. | ! But there was nothing the young man could do. He was bound and help- less. He would be turned into a cool, impersonal cog in the vast mechanism of the Corporate State. “Curse them!” he muttered, in jungle fury. “Curse them all!” . : : His resentment was short-lived, The excess glandular secretions were ceasing to stimulate his brain even as he spoke. With the glands removed, the remaining hormones became mild aids to normality instead of goads to anti-social action. For exactly forty-five minutes V67 labored with painstaking care. Then he straightened, dipped his instruments in a basin of pale blue antiseptic, and drew a thin sheet of transparent rubber over the breast and limbs of his patient, “You'll be all right now,” he said. “I'll prescribe a cathartic, and your digestion will be checked by the dietician.” : : ee The youth’s eyes were melancholy, and resigned. “Thank you, Surgeon,” he said. Ten minutes later V67 was standing before a vacuum chute in the Release Corridor of Level TG. He was very tired. His work was exacting and ardu- ous, and the unstable portions of his personality were in mild revolt. It was COMME COOKS