Revenge

Excerpt

Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned,
but the fury of a biochemist scorned is just as great
—and much more fiendish.

If the Syndicate is half as powerful as some people have claimed, they'll murder me any day now. I object on principle to being killed by evil men for a good deed, so maybe lynching by stupid ones is preferable. I mean you, and you—the suetheads who profited by my work, but refused your help.

You've been yammering about narcotics for years—how drug addiction was spreading, reaching down even to your unmannerly, spoiled brats, who despise their parents and our venal society to the same degree. The stuff comes in by the ton across the Mexican border; they grow it for our benefit in Red China; and a few "friendly" Asian countries don't mind exporting some now and then, either. In spite of heroic work by our small group of poorly financed narcotics agents, the flow of drugs cannot be halted.

Oh, you and your elected representatives made a lot of panicky moves to combat this threat. The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was given a new Bureau, set up like the F.B.I., and headed by Myron P. Bishop, a man trained by that distinguished expert on narcotics, Anslinger, himself.

But as to sensible solutions, such as legalizing the sale of heroin to break the world-wide criminal control on the distribution of drugs—that your vapid Puritan morality wouldn't permit. Millions of dollars for enforcement, and to punish the sick, but not one cent for prevention, and almost nothing to find out why people become addicts in the first place, and how to cure them.

It wasn't entirely your fault. You listened to the experts, usually career policemen who expect to cure any social evil with clubs and prisons. I am reminded of the simpleton found measuring two horses with a tape in order to be able to distinguish the black one from the white. Until I came along, nobody had ever reached the core of the matter. You don't kill a flourishing plant—in this case an Upas Tree—by lopping off a handful of leaves. You strike at the roots. That's what I meant to do—and did—for your benefit. Oh, I admit there were a few dollars in it for me, but so what? The ox that treads the wheat is not muzzled. When a man saves a manufacturer $50,000 a year by some improved process, or even by using three bolts someplace instead of four, they gladly pay him three per cent of the annual savings, or something like that, as a reward. Most big outfits have such a policy, and it's a good one. Well, if I cut millions off the government budget, is a lousy $100,000 too much to ask? I just wanted to go on with my researches without battling a horde of bill collectors every month. Fat chance—I didn't get a measly dime. You, your elected and appointed officials, and your kept press just gave me the all-time horse-laugh. Well, he who laughs last—you'll remember the old saw; I'll see to that.

I'm writing this so you'll know how they treated me. You mustn't think I'm a crank, mad at the world for no reason. My case is better than Dreyfus' and Sacco-Vanzetti's combined. Here I was prepared to remove the drug scourge forever, and at a piddling cost....