“Here I am among the greats,” he thought, as he waited with Emily in the clinic’s waiting room, stylishly upholstered in gnoff leather. Dr. Denkmal said he would meet them personally at first, as per procedure, although the actual therapy would then be carried out by members of his staff.
“This makes me nervous,” murmured Emily. She had a magazine in her lap but couldn’t read it. “It’s all so… unnatural.”
“Damn, it’s actually the opposite,” Hnatt said fervently. “It’s just an acceleration of the natural evolutionary process that would happen anyway; it’s just normally so slow we can’t perceive it. I mean, think of our ancestors in the caves—they were covered with hair all over their bodies, had no chin, and their brains had a very limited frontal area. And huge molars fused together for grinding raw seeds.
“Okay,” Emily nodded.
“The more we can distance ourselves from them, the better. Anyway, they evolved to face the Ice Age; we must evolve to face the Burning Age, exactly the opposite. We need that kind of chitinous epidermis, that cortex, and that metabolic alteration that allows us to sleep in broad daylight, as well as an enhanced oxygenation system, and also…”
From the inner office emerged Dr. Denkmal, a middle-class German, small and round, with white hair and Albert Schweitzer–style mustaches. He was accompanied by another man, and for the first time Richard Hnatt saw the effects of Therapy E up close. It was nothing like the photos in the social pages of the Omeodians.
The man’s head reminded him of an image he had once seen in a textbook, captioned: hydrocephalic. The same dome-shaped bulge above the brow ridge, strangely fragile in appearance… he instantly understood why wealthy people who had undergone evolution were crudely called bubbleheads. About to burst, he thought, impressed. And… the thickness of that cortex! The hair had given way to the darker, uniform texture of the chitinous shell. Bubblehead? It looks more like a coconut.
“Mr. Hnatt,” Dr. Denkmal said, addressing him.
Pause. Then he added: “And Frau Hnatt. I’ll be with you in a moment.” He turned to the man accompanying him. “It’s purely by chance that we managed to squeeze you in today, Mr. Bulero, on such short notice. Still, you haven’t lost ground; in fact, you’ve gained.”
Mr. Bulero, however, was staring at Richard Hnatt.
“Where have I heard your name before? Ah, yes. Felix Blau mentioned you to me.” His exceptionally intelligent eyes darkened, and he added: “Recently, didn’t you sign an agreement with a Boston firm called…” His elongated, distorted face, like a permanent funhouse mirror, twisted. “…Chew-Z Manufacturers?”
“Damn you,” stammered Hnatt. “Your pre-Vog consultants had rejected us.”