And a Hank of Hair

 

And a Hank of Hair

 

"Get me that guy!  Get him!  I want HIM!”

Tweedie gaped as his boss erupted out of his chair, almost knocking over the poker table.  Even without distractions, playing poker with Donny the Dome was an exacting occupation.  One had to be sure neither to win too much, nor to get too deeply into debt.  Err too far in one direction and you were history, too far in the other and you were meat.  He groped after his scattered wits and turned to stare at the TV that Donny was pointing at.  An interviewer had turned from his studio guest and, patronisingly confident of convulsing his audience, was clowning with his bald patch, saying: ". . .  Professor Returfet, who at long last has offered sufferers from baldness the Benefits of Modern Science!”

"Who Donny?” Tweedie asked nervously.  Donny didn't like to have to explain himself and had a short way with staff who didn't catch on fast.  He swung his convex, hairless bulk round, grabbed Tweedie by his jacket front with one massive paw and almost lifted him out of the seat, all 200-odd pounds of him.  "That guy there!  That Returfet guy, get it?  At the college.  GET him!”

"Sure Boss," Tweedie wheezed.  "Jas, find him at the college and rub him out.  Boss, we'll have him on ice this time tomorrow, right?”

Donny lost patience at his lieutenant's obtuseness and energetically corrected the error.  When all misunderstanding had been cleared up, and the dust had settled, Tweedie painfully picked himself out of the ruins of the card table: "Sure Boss, right away.  Jas, we'll go together now.  And you got that?  No rough stuff.  None!”

In the car, thankfully out of the rough stuff himself, Tweedie squeezed a handkerchief over his cheek, to stop an annoying trickle of blood.  A splinter from the table had gashed him and bloodstains on his new suede jacket he could do without.  Working for the Dome could be hell.  Being sent to fetch a blasted hair restorer, would you believe!  But he had more sense than to discuss the matter.  Donny was so sensitive about his baldness that to mention his nickname was sometimes fatal.  Fortunately the fatalities did not cut a large figure in the gang's turnover; even the slower members of his circle got the idea quickly.  Anyway, the fact that he was dome-shaped from the top down and his two-meter bulk was only half fat, did nothing to encourage irreverence.  He had been a super-heavyweight wrestler before taking over the Holey Mob and however artificial his performances may have been in the ring, in real life he was a terror; a "Holey" terror, as the quip went.

Professor Returfet found himself hustled into what looked like the set of a gangland soap opera.  Apart from a job lot of thugs scalier than he had ever seen close up, there were four females who looked like extras for a brothel scene.  Two were virulent bottle blondes and the others had hair redder than the costumes they were more or less wearing.  The most spectacular of the four was snuggling in the lap of a glistening monster, that looked like a shaven eunuch from a harem scene, except that it was aggressively masculine and altogether terrifying.  The blonde in its lap ignored their entry, but the hulk picked her up one-handed by the slack of her blouse, dropped her and said: "Beat it you guys, and take all the pussy with you.” No one stopped for more than a glance at the newcomers and in a few seconds Returfet was alone with the hulk and his two abductors.

Returfet was a nondescript man of medium height, slight build and surely the least imaginative clothing in town.  By the time that Jas and Tweedie let go his arms he had passed the vociferous stage and the Dome's presence inhibited his indignation enough to keep him quiet while Donny grated: "You the guy that grows hair?”

"Er, Yes Mr Dome, except. . .” Returfet's words died in his throat as the monster hurtled to its feet and loomed over him.

"WHAT did you call me?” It was like being interrogated by a stone crusher.  Returfet normally had an acid way with him and was used to quashing disrespect, but he could tell he was on the wrong dunghill.

"I. . .  I understood this man to say you were Mr Donald Dome. . .” he ducked and squeaked as Donny leaned forward and lifted the tactless Jas almost out of his checked shoes with a back-hander like a snapping hawser.

"Fresh Hah?” Pouting open-lipped like a homicidal orang utan, Donny lifted the stunned and bleeding hit man by his oily curls.  "Just cause you got a mop you think you can come the Tony Curtis with ME?  Next time I spread your tobacco juice all over the walls, get it?” He flung the writhing bundle into a corner and turned to the now fish-white Returfet: "Get this Prof, and get it good: you call me Donny or you call me Boss and then we stay pals, get it?"  Returfet nodded mutely.  "You grow hair, so grow mine back!  I had plenty when I was a kid and it is about time you smart guys learned to grow it back."

"Well it isn't so simple. . .  Donny.  I don't know what gave you the idea I could. . ."

"Don't play hard-to-get with ME Prof!  I heard what that bozo said on the box!"

". . .?  Oh HIM.  Er Donny. . .  that half-wit didn't understand a word I said to him.  I don't know why I wasted my time. . .”

"Hey, heeey Prof!  Don't kid me!  When I asked you, you said yes, so don't let’s get all difficult.  I'll pay plenty, so you needn't try dickering.  Dickering with Donny ain't smart Prof!  Get it?”

"But Donny, never mind the pay.  It is not an FDA-approved treatment.  There are risks. . .”

The Dome went brick red, scalp and all: "Risks!  Don't make a sissy of me Prof, or we're bad friends.  Get moving and grow me some hair!  Get it?” He listened to about five seconds' worth of sputtered objections, then cut them short: "Prepare?  So prepare!  I don't care if you got to go to Kalamazoo!  When I say prepare, you prepare, get it?  Tweedie can go along.  Tweedie, take Kenny with you; Jas don't look so good.”

It took Professor Returfet most of the rest of the night to prepare and collect all he needed from his laboratory.  With two thugs watching his every move, he tried no tricks.  The casual brutality he had witnessed discouraged heroics.  Kenny looked like a giggling moron, but the effect was even less reassuring than Jas's callous efficiency.  As far as he could, Returfet tried to keep Tweedie between them.  Kenny seemed interested mainly in any excuse for the fun of crushing his prisoner's skull.  Returfet packed a suitcase with equipment and containers then nodded miserably to Tweedie.  On the way out they had a couple of narrow squeaks with campus security, but the dim-looking Kenny showed impressive professionalism behind the wheel.  On squealing tyres he shook off pursuit and conveyed Returfet, terrified but unharmed, back to the "Holey hole".

This time Donny was alone with the spectacular blonde and paying her a lot more attention than before.  She was displaying a lot more too, but neither of the two seemed put out by the interruption.  Donny said: "Out, Gloria.  Business!” She abruptly stopped her gasping and writhing, glanced dismissively at Returfet as she climbed down and left without bothering to cover the odd nipple or buttock.  The professorial type obviously didn't figure in her scheme of things.  That suited Returfet; he in turn, wasn't taken with such a brassy and painted style of girl.  In fact he normally was too busy for any sex life to speak of.  He put down the case and, reaching into his pocket, turned back to Donny.  The move was too smooth and practised.  He found himself looking down Tweedie's and Kenny's pistol barrels.

"Didn't you frisk him, you mutts?”

"Sure we did Boss!  He was clean.  He musta picked up some heat somewhere.  Drop it Prof.  That was a dumb move.”

The terrified professor gabbled something unintelligible to his captors.  They did not bother to listen, but slammed him against a wall and frisked him again with far more thoroughness than before.  All they found in the pocket in question was a patently harmless, but unfamiliar device.  "Careful!  That is my lens!” wailed Returfet.  In due course he convinced the hoods that he needed the lens, that it was harmless and that he was unarmed and in general, unthreatening.  He also promised to move more carefully in future.  Once he had his shaking under control and had confirmed that his nose wasn't bleeding, he approached his subject again, lovingly polishing Tweedie's fingerprints from the lens.

"First Donny, let me examine your er, head to see whether you have d-dormant follicles.  If not, it is a waste of time, I'm afraid.  Now, you say you had plenty of hair when you were younger?  Hmm.  No beard either. . .  Did it ever grow?  Hmm. . .” He examined the Dome minutely with his lens and began to lose himself in the interest of the task.  "Hmmm. . .  Remove your upper garments. . .  I mean take off your shirt. . .  Your undershirts as well; I need to examine your skin.  Yes, I know it is on your head that you want the hair.  Please don't tell me what needs to be done.  Hmm. . .  Actually, you are unusually well-endowed with dormant follicles.  They seem healthy though. . .  Lift your arm. . .  Mm. . .  Now the other arm. . .  Quite unusual for them to go inactive all over. . .  Hmm. . .  Only partly hormonal it seems. . .  Yeess, phase three, mmm. . .  definitely phase three. . .  Maybe we could do something. . .”

After nearly an hour of muttering and grunting, when his glazed-eyed captors were practically hypnotised into catatonia, Returfet snapped shut his lens.  He set to wiping his fingers on his handkerchief and said: "Donny, you are in fact a promising subject.  I should guess the probability of your follicles responding to initiator at about. . .  hmmm. . .  87 percent, guessing from your ethnic type and the frequency of the Hol13- gene in the local population.  The trouble is that the procedure is very slow and I have not yet started preparing the initiator in large quantities.  I have to inject the initiator into almost every follicle on your scal. . .  er, head and it not only takes time, it is painful.  I DO have a prototype mechanical injector back at the laboratory and it is more efficient too, but it was too bulky to bring.  Now, why not come back to the laboratory and. . .  Oh, all right, but you will find that it really isn't pleasant this way and I might have problems with supplies.  Now first go and shower or something and don't just wash your head, scrub and soap it all over for at least quarter of an hour and don't apply any of that er. . .  lubricant. . .  We must avoid infection and contamination.  No really, you will be a very sick man if you don't take my word for this.”

When the Dome finally settled down, apprehensively for all his bravado, Returfet started by re‑cleaning the scalp to surgical standards, then created an anti-climax by taking from his bag a hypodermic with a needle so fine that his audience could hardly see it.  "Trying to scare me with that!” scoffed Donny.

"Just wait," replied Returfet slightly grimly, "it is after the first hour or two that things get worst!” He settled his subject with a tumbler of something fiery and proceeded to work over the scalp with even greater minuteness than he had examined it with the lens.  At first Donny rumbled and scoffed at the sissiness of quacks that made a fuss of such a tiny sensation.  Returfet would growl absently at him for moving, and all went amicably enough for some time.  After a quarter of an hour though, when his torturer had covered about half a square inch, Donny fell silent.  After half an hour Returfet was frequently admonishing him to sit still or he would break the needle and damage his scalp.  After an hour and a half of Returfet's inconceivable assiduity, Donny had had all he was going to take.

"You are torturing me, you . . .” he bellowed with fervent but uncreative obscenity.  "Stop . . . ing about and do it properly.  Get it?”

"Keep your hands away from your scalp damn it!  Now look Donny, I warned you.  And I can't stop now; if this works, you should have a patch of hair on that spot soon and it will start looking funny in a few days at the latest.  I told you we should have gone back to the laboratory; you are a most promising subject and I would. . .”

"NO!” Donny had his own reasons for not appearing freely in public and his figure did not lend itself to disguise, except perhaps as a telephone booth or a portable lavatory.  "That's all for now.  A coupla days, huh?  We'll see first.  It'd better show by then.  Meanwhile you stay here.  Get it?”

The room where they kept the professor was neither particularly comfortable nor clean.  It clearly had hosted unwilling guests in its time and it bore unnerving souvenirs of his predecessors.  He had a miserable day and night.  He was a solitary bachelor of irregular habits and no one would miss him for a few days, perhaps even a week or two.  These savages might turn violent if the treatment didn't work and he had a feeling that they would not be receptive to technical explanations.  In fact they seemed impervious to explanations of any sort.  As far as they were concerned he might as well have waved a towel over the Dome and muttered spells.  The concept of rigorous explanation seemed not so much too difficult for them as alien.  They were worse than that TV interviewer.

Well, just as bad anyway. 

They no more cared about logic than about. . .  There was no way Returfet could express such indifference to himself.  And another thing: their attitude towards him personally was somehow similar.  He simply meant one thing in their lives; hair for the Dome.  For the rest he might have been livestock, vermin. . .  He simply didn't count.

The thug that brought him his breakfast seemed to combine a Valentino self-image with a Karloff physique.  He apparently found his gum far more interesting than his guest, whom he did not at first dignify with so much as a glance.  Returfet begged for something to read.  For the first time he got some attention: an uncomprehending stare.

"Read?  Read what?”

"What do you have?” Even more stare.  Even less comprehension.  "Well, anything to read?” The stare became slightly nervous and the jailer stopped chewing his gum.  He obviously wasn't used to guests irrational enough to read when they didn't have to.  And guests who didn't even know what they wanted to read. . .  Uneasily he began to back out.  As the door closed, Returfet called plaintively: "Don't you even have a newspaper?” It was a measure of desperation, but in the light of evidence to hand, he considered (correctly, by the way) that the prospects for getting a copy of the Transactions of the Dermatological Society or the Journal of Cytogenetics, were unpromising.  He cursed his lack of foresight in not packing reading matter along with his kit.

To do them justice, the thugs were not particularly malicious, just out of their depth, much as Returfet was.  After some bemused discussion, they sent out for a newspaper and gingerly passed it to their prisoner.  After a few minutes of sampling a gutter press tabloid, he began to think he understood their distaste for reading.  It was heavy stuff.  Full of True Confessions and the like.  He could not remember anything so incomprehensible since the day he had accidentally opened a work of poetic criticism.  Still, it was obviously all he would get.  He ploughed numbly on.

Later in the morning things became little more cheerful.  Jas fetched Returfet from his room to get down to business.  Jas was nursing a badly bruised face and his nose and right eye were still swollen shut from Donny's admonition, but things were a lot better with the Dome.  He had seemed a promising subject anyway, but his follicles had responded better than anything Returfet had ever seen.  "Donny, this is amazing!  I wish you would let me treat you formally.  I can see the effect on the follicles already.  Palpably phase one!  You should have an actual fuzz over this spot in a couple of days.  Never mind the dark patch, it is just bruising from all the needling; should be gone in a week.  Let me start on the treatment again.  I should be able to cover half your scalp in a few more days. . .”

"Nothing doing!  There's got to be a better way.  No, I told you I wasn't going to your emphasised lab.  Think up something else!”

"But Donny, you are making it impossible.  Be reasonable.  Look, the injections were a product of this virus infected tissue culture.” He took an ampoule of freeze-dried material out of his case.  "It is not a commercial procedure yet.  What I am using on you is the product of two months of culture and extraction.  Injecting it manually is wasteful and it will take me at least another month to produce enough to treat the whole of your head and your eyebrows if what I have isn't enough.  And by then it will be time to start over again.”

"What?  you mean it ain't for keeps?” Donny took on the expression of a psychotic portable comfort station.  He began to loom out of his chair, the whites of his eyes showing terrifyingly.

"No, Donny, don't!  You see, the stuff all comes from this viral strain.  It has to be propagated in a tissue culture. . .” Returfet's voice trailed off as Donny snatched the ampoule.  The Dome examined it then broke off the neck and shook the fine powder into his palm.  The professor gibbered in horror as the monster poked uncomprehendingly at the powder , then sniffed at it.

"Chriiist, are you MAAAD?  No one knows what that will do to you.  It is a chimeric strain I constructed; it doesn't exist in nature.”

"What you mean?  I ain't done nothing with it and it don't smell special.  Stop that flapping or I'll stomp you.”

"But Donny, that was the ampoule of the err. . .  the… the… the GERMS that make the stuff.  They aren't supposed to go in your nose.  They aren't supposed to go into you at all.  God only knows what they will do to you.” Donny sneezed titanically and Jas and Tweedie murmured Gesundheit.  "See, now your sneezing may have infected these two as well!”

"These two" did their best to look indifferent, but Returfet's frantic sincerity was obviously having an effect on them.

"What now Boss?”

"Shut up!  Listen Prof, if this is a sickness, how long before it shows?”

"I don't know!  It is new.  It wasn't supposed to go into humans at all, only tissue culture.  Maybe a week or so; maybe tomorrow; maybe not at all.  I am probably immune, because I got immunised against all the strains I was working on, but I don't really know.  We don't make the stuff for infecting people, we make it to culture the initiator.”

"Right.  Be our guest for a week.  And say your prayers every damn day.  Get it?”

In many ways it was an interesting time.  Returfet was not the praying type, but he learned to live with an agony of suspense greater than anything he had experienced.  He read the newspaper through about five times, then stopped abruptly when he realised that it was starting to seem to make sense.  He couldn't afford to lose his grip on reality; not now.  Instead he asked for writing material and demanded to examine his captors every few hours.  He achieved some relief in making copious notes of developments.

On the second day Donny developed a fever that began to abate on the third, when he broke into a copious sweat.  He had to drink like a fish to avoid dehydration and as he was not fond of non‑alcoholic refreshment, Returfet had his work cut out to keep him drinking.  Donny's temper was not sweetened by a ferocious itch that began as the sweating tailed off.  It rendered him dangerous to be with.  Returfet had to send out some thugs to get drugs to control his patient's torment.

There was one welcome distraction.  The patch where Returfet had laboured so unstintingly with the needle, showed a fuzz of hair by now obvious to anybody.  Donny would sit stroking it almost by the hour.  Apparently having forgotten the torment of the injections, he told the professor to continue on another patch, but Returfet felt it could be dangerous before the infection had run its course.

The question of further scalp treatment became academic as the reason for the itching emerged.  The virus had infected the Dome's follicles and was stimulating them to vigorous growth.  Vigorous was putting it mildly.  At the end of the third day Donny had a fuzz over the left half or so of his scalp, running down over his neck and the middle of his spine.

The fuzz was inconspicuous because the Dome was tow haired.  He repeatedly examined his scalp with mingled excitement and misgivings.  Did this mean that he would have only half a head of hair?  Returfet had to reassure him repeatedly that the follicles over the entire scalp were active.

Donny's persistence on the point was understandable though; there was definitely a note of uncertainty in Returfet's assurances.  Returfet was not used to lying.  Actually, he was not lying now, but he was uncomfortably aware of being economical with the truth.  What worried him was that he could find no border between the follicles activated on Donny's scalp and those on his neck.  it seemed that Donny was on his way to growing a mane and Returfet was afraid that he might react badly to the news that he might have to shave his neck.

Meanwhile Jas had gone down with the same fever and Tweedie, who had no fever, but looked fretful, started to scratch persistently.  All three sneezed frequently and the sneezing had spread to several other thugs.  Returfet was not much of a people person, but he couldn't help noticing with wry internal amusement how the gang, real plebs in most ways, were ritually compulsive with their "Gesundheits".  The Holey hole began to sound like an uncreative cross-talk act.

This made no impression on Donny.  He was still mightily uncomfortable and took to his bed early in the evening.  To take his mind off the itching, he gathered up Gloria and enough whisky to lay out a horse.  It was about dawn that the full horror of the situation began to emerge.

Donny woke with howls of fright and rage.  Everyone else who could, came charging out of their rooms.  When Donny emerged, the rest of them numbly tried to rub the sleep out of their eyes and focus, but without much success.  "Boss," mumbled Tweedie, "what's that thing you got on?”

Fortunately for Tweedie, the Dome was having trouble with his ears.  He roared for Returfet till someone went to fetch him from his cell.  Donny grabbed the professor and bellowed into his face: "Whatta you DONE to me you Frankenstein?  Fix me up or I'll kill you!  Get it?”

During the night Donny's hair had grown about an inch.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that it had grown practically over his whole visible surface.  Returfet had been rousted out of a deep sleep, a reaction to days of anxiety insomnia.  He was not yet lucid and for a moment was unnerved more by being grabbed by an apparent abominable snowman than by the threat.

Once he had deduced the identity of the blond gorilla, Returfet suspected, correctly, that except round Donny's eyes, the palms of his hands, foot soles, and so on, hair was sprouting over that entire extensive hide.  But there was more.  What had woken Donny was earache and nasal discomfort.  Hair was practically fountaining out of the orifices.  Gloria joined the crowd in the hallway, belatedly gathering a gown round her assets.  She got her first look at Donny in the light and gave a little lady-like shriek.  Then she realised who it was and screamed like a siren.  Luckily for her everyone was preoccupied and Donny couldn't hear much, so she was still in working order by the time she subsided and stood staring dumbly at the proceedings.

With some difficulty the professor picked the hair in the ear passages and nostrils into a position in which it emerged smoothly.  That relieved the pain, and it could be kept under control with occasional gentle tugs.  Donny wanted to clip it immediately, but Returfet restrained him, as it would then have to be trained to emerge smoothly again.  "Donny, I told you not to fiddle with the virus.  My guess is that it has infected your follicles selectively and it is now producing initiator there far more effectively than ever I could with my needle.  I can hardly distinguish the patch I treated.  This growth is amazing.  I can hardly believe it.  It must be over a millimetre an hour.  I can't see how the body can do it.”

"Never mind that, you mutt, fix me up!” Windows rattled and Returfet cringed, his ears singing.

"Donny, it was your fault.  Fixing you up isn't going to be easy.  Better start with a shave.  Uuuugh . . .  no, damn it, put me down or I won't . . .  be . . .  able . . .  to help you at all.  I'm not making fun of you!  The reason for the shave is so that I can measure the rate of growth.”

It had been years since the Dome had had occasion to shave.  He had to commandeer a razor.  It was an electric razor which for the most part skimmed over his thatch with hardly any effect.  After five minutes of this everyone in range ducked shrapnel when the razor hit the wall.

Someone hastily produced a stainless steel razor.  It worked, after a fashion, but Donny was badly out of practice.  After a while the professor had to take over the task before cuts, razor burn and clogging of the blades goaded Donny into wrecking the place and everyone in it.  In fairness, no normal man had to shave his entire face and neck, let alone remove a coarse inch-long thatch.

At first Gloria had tried to assist, but Donny had become so dangerous that she had retired to their room and taken a hair of the dog.  The phrase was not one she normally used, but had sprung unbidden from some subconscious font of pun.  Unbidden and unwelcomed.  She shuddered, and that hair of the dog became a lock and the lock became a mane before she passed out in bed, the whisky bottle practically empty.  As the drink took effect, a fanciful idea formed in her mind, but deep down, and in her befuddlement she could not retrieve it.  But it darkened her thoughts as the whisky claimed her.

Meanwhile the professor-turned-barber had used up the third razor in finishing with Donny's face and neck.  He was no coiffurist and the hairline he created was not really flattering.  An unbiased critic though, would have been hard put to say how to produce anything attractive from Donny the Dome.  Donny's torso Returfet left to fountain its mat of hair uninterrupted.  Not only was it too intimidating a challenge in its own right, but Donny was becoming unmanageable.  Returfet said nothing, but he was worried.  He could have sworn that by the time he had put aside the third ruined razor, the first areas he had shaved were no longer as smooth as when he had started.  Of course, the shaving had been a slow process, but even so. . .

Even so.  By the time they had all had a more or less liquid breakfast, Returfet knew that his impression had been correct.  Instant five-o-clock shadow.  He could hardly bring himself to believe what he was seeing.  Donny's beard was growing at more than two millimetres per hour.  This probably explained the peculiar, almost frothy, texture of the hairs, but it was still incredible.  Returfet was thinking furiously about implications, both physiological and technical.  A question occurred to him.  "Donny, you had better think about eating something solid.  Don't you feel hungry?”

"Come to that, I sure do.  Tweedie, order us up some of our usual, but make mine extra.”

"Donny, I don't think that is a good idea.  Don't you think you would prefer eggs or steak?”

Donny looked at Returfet in surprise: "Y'know, prof, you're right.  Tweedie, make mine steak and onions and make it snappy, get it?  Hey, make it two doubles.” Donny had enough fat to march for a month, but his expression was somehow haggard behind the stubble.  "Prof, what is going on with me?”

"It is the hair growing, Donny.  It has to come from somewhere and you will have to eat a lot of sulphur-rich proteins to make up for it.  At the rate it is growing it must be soaking up every free amino acid in your blood.  You must eat eggs, lean meat and fish.  No fat.”

"I'll stick to meat.  Eggs and fish are for kids.  Now what're you gonna do about this?” He felt his scalp.  The original patch of fuzz was by now hopelessly lost.  His head was almost evenly covered with a respectable mat of strawy texture.  The luxuriance seemed to afford him little satisfaction though.

"I'll have to think about it.  I told you not to. . .  All right, all right, I was just saying.  What?  Oh, that stuff?  No Donny, standard depilatories will not be suitable.  No better than shaving and they will harm your skin.  They may be all right for a spot of underarm hair, but this is another matter.  No, I warn you, you'll be sorry!  They'll really take your skin off where it hurts most.”

"Well, I can't go round like a gorilla!” Actually he was beginning to look more like a haystack.  "How long does this keep up?  It can't last much longer can it, prof?  I don't feel sick any more and the itching ain't so bad any more, so I must be getting over it, right?”

"Well, yes Donny, but. . .” Returfet paused.  It seemed impolitic to explain his suspicion that the virus had spliced itself into the genetic material of the follicles.  If it had, then the effects would probably be irreversible for the foreseeable future.  A lecture on reverse transcription and nucleic acid splicing might clear the matter up, but somehow his experiences of the last few days led him to doubt it.  He had never had any closer contact with the underworld than reading a few thrillers in his youth, but he was learning.  Even so, lying still did not come naturally to him.  "Well, it might be a while before this stops.” He saw Donny's expression and hastily tried to change the subject: "I need to have a look at the others' progress to get a better idea.  By now Jasper and Tweedle may be giving an indication of the course of the disease.  They certainly seemed to be infected.”

Those two gentlemen looked apprehensive.  Jas was sweaty, with his fever just broken and Tweedie's ears and neck were painful with scratching and his nose was stuffy.  There were intimations of resistance at first, but a growl from the haystack brought the two into line.  Returfet examined their faces and heads, with special attention to the receding hairline over Tweedie's temples.  Then he inspected their torsos, grunting and muttering to himself for nearly an hour.  Finally he put away his lens and said: "I'll be able to tell you more tomorrow, but there are definite signs of initiation and patches where the growth is starting.  Tweedle. . .  Oh?  Sorry, Tweedie then.  I think you will find your hairline stops receding.  And you had better use a toothpick to make sure your nose hairs and ears don't clog up.  In fact, better come to me for your ears every couple of hours or you might hurt yourself.”

In the event, it was not necessary to wait for the next day.  By evening patches of hair were showing over both the henchthugs, as Returfet mentally termed them.  Donny had a head start however and was evenly covered like a bearskin rug, except for a shorter coat on his face and neck, where Returfet had shaved him.  He actually had to shed a lot of his clothing to keep cool, even though the season was still chilly.  They had given up shaving him, except where the hair interfered with his vision.  Things were bad enough at that, but the gang soon learned that it was a good idea to keep steak and onions handy, because he went through it at an amazing rate and every time the titre dropped, his temper, always vile, became impossible.

What the staff of the take-away restaurant thought of this sudden run on steak and onions was not recorded; the enterprise had been in business in that location for a long time and they had strong survival instincts.  They uncomplainingly accepted the strong hint that if they knew what was good for business they would shut up and deliver and if they knew what was good for their necks, they would be sure not to run low on stock.

By the next morning Donny wore a four‑inch pile all over, except for shorter patches which had been shaved most often.  Jas and Tweedie were heavily matted as well.  Returfet had to think of a tactful way to suggest the purchase of heavy-duty poodle shears.

"Listen prof, there's got to be a better way!” The whites of Donny's eyes were showing again through the thicket.  It was clear that not to promise something at least, would be risky.  The haystack was dangerous and increasingly irrational.

"Donny, I am no expert on removing hair; I grow it.  There are substances that make it fall out, but I'll have to go and find references and sources.”

"Huh?”

"I mean I need to go to the technical library to find out how to make it fall out.”

"Not without us you don't, Prof!  Get it?”

"Well then for God's sake, send two of these thugs with me for nannies!” Returfet's self-control was cracking.  "I can't stand here and pick miracles out of my nose.  If you don't want to spend the rest of your life looking like a burst mattress, you must let me get what I need.  And that goes for the rest of your gang too!  Jasper and Tweed. . .  er Tweedie are certainly infected and so are that red-headed fellow and the man who brought me the paper and the way you all are sneezing, I'll bet they are not the only ones.  If that virus strain is stable, God knows where it will stop!”

The gang were beginning to feel like juveniles who had set the city on fire by playing with matches.  Visible fear was prohibited by their code, but their demoralisation showed plainly in their jumpy, snappish behaviour.  Returfet knew better than to trade on it too openly, but he became a lot less apologetic about ordering them around.  He wanted to get out of their clutches, not so much for his own sake any more, as because he was terrified by the possible consequences if the virus started an epidemic.  He couldn’t work effectively in the Holey hole.

In the mean time he had to do what he could.  It was too early to be sure, but it did seem that the virus was not affecting him, so his immunisation was probably effective.  However, the incubation period was alarmingly short, perhaps because of the influenza genetic material in the virus.  Getting information to the medical community might make all the difference between a contained infection and an epidemic.  At the same time, the infections might be a mere fluke.

And how would he go about alerting the medical authorities even if he could contact them?  He would certainly get nowhere, unless he had good, hard evidence.  He had visions of: "Health office?  I want to report a new and dreadfully infectious epidemic of hair growing. . .”

No, not really.

Not easy to convey by phone.  At the same time, if he tried to get anyone to examine the evidence in the Holey hole, he would be dead before Donny had finished explaining his foolishness.

The next morning, two junior hooligans who had not yet started sneezing, escorted him to the college library.  He spent most of the day gathering material on viral genetics, looking up references to systemic depilatories and phoning pharmaceutical supply houses.  In the late afternoon he broke off his research when one of his two keepers sneezed.  One sneeze did not an infection make, but he was taking no chances.

It was just as well.  By the time they got back to the Holey hole, his precautions seemed justified.  The escorting hooligan was eliciting a monotonous string of "Gesundheits" from his colleague.  Returfet felt he would go mad if he did not get away from that word.  It had him so irritated by the time they got "home" that he had quite forgotten to wonder whether anything had developed in his absence.

In fact, a lot had developed.  The place was a shambles and a shaggy corpse lay in one corner.  Both Jas and Tweedie had developed thatches almost as even as Donny's, though not as impressive.  Several other thugs were in the process of growing their own coats.  Each had his own style.  Jas's hair was curly black, suggesting pubic hair to Returfet, and it left more skin bare round the eyes, for instance.  Tweedie's mouse hair came out wavy and his nose was almost hairless.  The corpse wore a respectable auburn fleece and so did three more junior members of the gang, possibly brothers.

Most of the rest of the thugs were trying to suppress sneezes and avoid scratching, as if denying the symptoms would frustrate the fuzz.  No one's hair was growing as fast as Donny's, though.  He looked like a pug-faced polar bear with a six‑inch coat.  The only clothing he still wore was trousers and they were threatening to burst.  Obviously he had been unable to take the heat, as all the windows in the place were open, apparently for the first time since they had been installed.

Actually, Returfet thought, the fur coat improved Donny vastly.  The hair was settling into a natural lie and no longer stuck out like hay.  It softened his grossness and gave him a bear-like dignity.  The trousers were the only discordant note.  They looked almost irresistibly laughable, but after one glance at the corpse, Returfet did manage to resist all the same.

What was more urgent was the fact that he was facing what amounted to a lynch mob with divided factions.  Some of them wanted his guts smoking hot to go; the rest wanted to conserve those guts till he had found a way to cram the genie back into the bottle.  Plans for what happened afterwards were as yet undefined.  During the debate one of the hasty faction had forgotten himself in the stress of finding his hair threatening to smother him.  In his panic he had given Donny too much lip at a tense moment.  Hence the corpse.  The incident had cooled tempers a bit and some of the hastiness had gone out of the aggressive faction.

"Look Gentlemen," Returfet said when the situation had been explained, "I have located some dichlor. . .  some stuff they are experimenting with to shear sheep without using shears. . .” He broke off as the Dome grabbed him, bellowing something about being called a sheep.  Returfet managed to stay alive long enough to point out that once he was dead he couldn't help them; that anyway the stuff wasn't actually used on sheep and that in general they had better pull themselves together if they were to have any hope of sorting things out again.  It would be a couple of days before the stuff he had ordered would arrive and in the mean time those of them who had too much of a problem had better use pet shears.  He tactfully omitted the fact that reason the stuff was not used on sheep was because of practical problems such as wool-loss and expense.  It also seemed a poor time to mention that if the treatment worked at all, the patients would be totally without hair until it grew back.

By this time they were so desperate that they actually sent out two as‑yet‑unmatted stalwarts to borrow shears from a contact in a poodle parlour.  The messengers did not explain to the contact what it was they wanted the poodle shears for and their expressions intimated to the obliging, but puzzled, pooch polisher that it would be equally obliging and a lot healthier not to ask.  At least all this kept them busy and out of Returfet's hair, though he had the tact not to put it that way.

He examined all the gang, except the women.  In fact he had forgotten the women, partly because it was midnight before he had finished with the men and partly because the more or less sober females had retired to avoid the violence.  And, unknown to him, Gloria was still unconscious in Donny's room.

When Returfet had done he drew Donny aside: "Donny, more than three quarters of them have certainly been infected and are actually growing hair already.  Things look so bad that I am wondering about trying some of the vaccines I used on myself.  I don't know for sure that they will have any effect, especially after the fact; in fact, they could be dangerous, but things look pretty bad.”

"Whyn't you say so before?  Where you got the stuff?”

"Put me down!  I tell you, I have no idea how dangerous it might be!  You want to lose your skin?  Or die?  I couldn't just go injecting you with something that could be fatal!  Now look," as Donny put him down, "If you take me back to my office tomorrow, I will try to get enough of the vaccines together to treat you fellows.  Then you can draw straws to see who tries it first.  If it doesn't cause too much obvious harm we can try it on some more of you and see whether it seems to do any good.  Now look, we can't do anything before morning and we are all exhausted.  Let's get some sleep.”

Donny didn't like the idea of delay, but there was not much choice.  Campus security could attract attention to the gang if they went at that time of night again.  There had been that bit of fuss when they had gone to collect Returfet's equipment a few days ago.  The way things were, the last thing he wanted was police attention, or for that matter, any attention at all.  The Holey Mob was dominant in that area, but there was no way they could stand this story getting out among their rivals.

Donny had the professor packed off to his cell and sat down wearily.  His trousers split raucously.  He cursed viciously and tore them off.  Then he saw himself in a wall mirror and tore off his underclothes as well.  By this time it had practically no effect on his modesty.  In fact it looked a lot better than the crazily bulging crotch of the trousers and shorts.  He made to jump the queue for the shears, then changed his mind and instead went off to filter some steak and whisky through his whiskers.

By this time most of the gang were well into the phase of the craving for meat.  No one could rival Donny, but they still went through beef at an amazing rate.  The take-away was a small family business and that family was being run ragged.  They found themselves dragooned into all-night service.  Protests that they were not a round-the-clock operation were curtly contradicted; as of now round-the-clock was just what they were and they had better count the profits and shut up if they did not want to give a wholly new meaning to "meat supply".  When the boss of the joint so far forgot himself as to ask what the Sam Hill was causing the sudden run on steak, it transpired that the question was unintentionally tactless.  For some hours much of the steak supplied to the Holey mob, first did duty on the face of the owner of the take-away. 

He saw no reason to compound his tactlessness by troubling the customers with such unsolicited details, though.  Instead he re-organised his operation for round-the-clock service.  He also asked no more questions.  He could take a hint.

When Donny had gorged himself again, the state of his nerves did not encourage thoughts of sleep.  He called a few of the gang together for a poker school.  It was a miserable game.  Everyone was tired, but too nerve-racked to sleep.  No one could keep his mind on the cards, and everyone was snappy.  Miraculously there were no serious casualties before morning.  It was dawn before tempers flared till there was more furniture smashing.  The junior three girls and a job lot of the guys who had spent the night with them, awoke and came tumbling out of the rooms they had occupied.

Swinging a couple of his companions, one in each paw, Donny was smashing the table to matchwood.  The spectators crowded in the hallway and the rest of the card players cowered into various corners of the room.  After a while Donny subsided a bit and dropped his two table-demolishers.  One staggered off painfully and found his way out.  The other had a broken leg and tried to stifle his agony as he crawled to the door.  For a moment Donny watched his progress and seemed just about to follow and put him out of his misery, when reaction to the whole unmanageable situation hit him.  He put his hands up and covered his face.

That broke the spell.  One of the girls sneezed.  Another looked at her, gasped, then looked down at her own nakedness and then at the men.  She screamed.  "Look at us!  We are all turning into monkeys!  Run!  Run!” She suited action to word and the panic hit most of the men present as well as the girls.  Before Donny and a couple of the top dogs could react, the bulk of the gang were charging down the hallway, trampling the hood with the broken leg.  Most of them grabbed some personal items on the way out, but dressed or not, all of them crashed out of the front door, sweating, sneezing and screaming.  At least nobody said "Gesundheit".

A delivery boy, also sweating and sneezing, was at the front door with a large tray of steak.  The door burst open as he knocked, and a torrent of howling maniacs tumbled and trampled him and dispersed into the early-morning traffic.  Not one of them paused to pay any attention to accidents or catcalls.  They might not be sure where they were going, but one thing they all knew for certain was that they were not going back!

After a while Donny sent a residual hood to close the door and fetch the prof.  "See this?  This is your doing, get it?  What are you going to do about it?”

Professor Returfet saw death in the eyes of the shaggy monster.  He knew that nothing short of some drastic lying would save him.  "Donny, tomorrow that stuff should come and I can start treating you.  It will make the hair fall out.  I don't know how many doses it will take, but we'll get it all fixed up!  Really!  I assure you!” This seemed to be the stuff all right; Donny was just subsiding when the door to his room flew open with a crash.  And there stood Gloria, stark naked. 

Well, sort of stark naked. . .

Gloria had spent about thirty six hours in varying degrees of stupor.  It had not been peaceful stupor, being riddled with dreams of mad scientists, cats, monsters and disease.  Apart from a couple of visits to the bathroom, eyes closed in agony, she had been solidly in bed.  The whisky had not been replenished because for a full day Donny had not been to bed.  The screams and violence outside woke her slowly, but finally she surfaced into sick lucidity.

She got up and went to the bathroom, relieved herself with closed eyes,  then forced them open and stared into the mirror.  Then she tried to refocus her vision.  It did not help.  The image remained unambiguous.  As reality filtered through to her, she knew that this time it was not a dream.  She screamed, but what with the closed door and the racket that had not yet subsided outside, no one noticed.  After a while she sat down and tried to collect her wits.  The black thought that had evaded her as she had fallen asleep had woven through her dreams and now began to surface.  She could almost grasp it: that prof guy would turn them all into animals.  He was a real mad scientist.  He had to be stopped.

She grabbed an item from her purse and stormed out of the bedroom door into the now tensely calm common-room.  Returfet was cowering in front of a huge, shaggy monster.  Donny's hair had grown so much since she had last seen him that for a moment she once again did not recognise him.  She stood mutely in the doorway while they all turned to look at her.

Returfet had never in his life seen such a beautiful creature.  Gloria's natural hair colour was an attractive light brown.  Her new three-inch pelage was as even as Donny's, but much finer and had a far more elegant lie.  The hair on her body covered her decently, but without diluting her female-ness one whit.  On her ears and eyebrows it had formed pixie-like points which seemed so fitting that Returfet somehow couldn't imagine a woman looking natural without them.  Of course it could not occur to him in those few seconds that the hair also hid her complexion, which would be vile with stale make-up and baggy with hangover.  Gloria was a naturally graceful mover and her current pose was totally unstudied and far more attractive than anything she could have composed.  Her bleached hair, now atop a three‑inch base of brown, no longer looked cheap, but like a crowning white flame.  If a magic spell could have turned a Canadian lynx in its winter coat into a woman, then crowned it with a platinum mane, this might have been the result.

Returfet just stared stunned while the glorious creature stared in turn at Donny.  After what felt like a long while, she realised what the white bear was and screamed again.  To Returfet It seemed not like a woman's scream of fright, but a fighting cat's scream of rage.  Still spellbound, he did not react when she raised her .32 pistol and shot him.  Staring, he clutched his chest and slowly crumpled.  Darkness took him before he realised what had happened.

It took a few seconds for all the implications of the prof's death to hit the Dome and his remaining cohorts.  The promised cure receded like a toy balloon whose string had snapped.  Donny turned on Gloria in a killing rage: "You stupid, intensively elaborated, crazy bitch!  Who the minutely particularised hell is going to fix us now?” He charged at her and in her terror she emptied her pistol at him.  She was no trick shottist and her neat dispatch of the prof had been a fluke, but she topped the fluke now.  One bullet hit Donny squarely in the left carotid plexus and he fell as if pole-axed.

As far as the rest of the gang were concerned, that was the ultimate straw.  They were fewer than the previous exodus, but no less single- minded.  The now unconscious hood with the broken leg got trampled again, but the take-away delivery boy had left, sneezes and all.  Only a few steaks in their gravy remained for some of the stampede to slip on, smashing coccyx or spraining ankle.  In either case, they rose without complaint and never returned.  The Holey gang was de facto disbanded.

Gloria stood stunned for a while.  The prof slumped a little further, making her jump.  After a while, Donny began to have unnerving convulsions along just his right side.  The blood from his throat was now soaking through his fur and pooling busily on the floor.  She had seen quite a few deaths in this room in the past year or so, but there were limits.  Gagging a little, she turned away and found herself facing a full‑length mirror which had escaped the violence with only one corner shattered.  She stopped to shudder at her own appearance.  Some of her mane had fallen over her face and she unthinkingly put down the pistol to arrange the hair.  Then she went for a comb.  First she mechanically got the hair in order, then she became involved and found herself combing her face and ears.  She shuddered again and stopped, staring in a sort of horror at her new self.  She stared for a long time.

Perhaps it was a flicker of sanity, perhaps of insanity, but suddenly she saw what Returfet had seen.  And that black thought surfaced in its entirety: Returfet would turn her into a cat.

And yet, was that so bad, now that she had to face it?  She loved cats.  As if in a dream she picked up the comb again.

She started by tidying all the tousled tufts in her coat.  This didn't take long, but did take her on a tour of her whole body.  She worked with an increasingly conscious feline delicacy.  As a cat that has been in a fight will groom itself with its tongue, so she worked with her comb.  As she became tidier she came to appreciate some of her own potential.  She sensed something special.

In her teens she had been a dancer with real talent and now, in this mad setting she felt stirrings of an almost forgotten artistry.  She combed her breasts, evenly furred, except on the areola and nipple.  Combed naturally, the hair modestly covered them, but with the slightest encouragement. . .

She put a hand on one breast and felt the novel texture.  There was something unbearably sensual about it.  She breathed deeply and writhed gently in pleasure, partly personal, partly vicarious, imagining the effect on a man, of doing it; a real man, not Donny.  He never taken the slightest interest in anything more than the accessibility of her crotch.  Being his piece had been rewarding only monetarily and in status.  He had been a slob in all the worst ways.  Emotionally, he was no loss.

She experimented a little with the comb and tried the effect of dangling her blonde hair over the breasts.  Very seductive; very!  She ran her hands down over her hips.  Mmmm. . .  She had never done much to comb pubic hair before, but now it seemed quite natural.  The curls peeped out from the smooth, slightly wavy, body pelage.  The effect was as attractive as the nipples under the breast hair and somehow just as neat.  In no way cheap, and so very female!

She stared at herself again and with only a hint of humour, went on all fours and yowled like a cat at her own reflection.  Tigress!  She rolled over and experimented with motions and attitudes.  She developed the moves into some of her old dance sequences.  Power!  She could make a fortune as a photographic model alone.  NO one else had this!

She got up again and began to experiment with the comb, styling the lie of her hair on her torso.  Hmm. . .  possibilities, but better wait for it to grow a bit more.  Tomorrow this time maybe?  She noticed the exciting contrast of the blonde hair with her natural warm brown colour.  More possibilities?  With some face powder she experimented with patterns.  Hmmm. . .  it would take time to master the medium.  Better start out plain.  However, she did put on a pendant and tied a ribbon into the fur above one breast.  It matched the bleached hair and looked good!

Donny's last spasm was more violent than the rest and his foot noisily overturned half a table.  The racket broke the spell.  Sphincters were opening, the place was now smelling bad, and anyway someone might come.  She had been at her researches for perhaps an hour.  She realised that she was ravenous.  A take-away tray was standing unopened.  She tore off the top and found gelid steak and onions.  Red meat was not normally her favourite, but at the moment it looked marvellous.  She quickly stuffed herself, then went to clean up and get dressed.

Problem!  No matter what she wore, it all looked ludicrous.  In the end she scavenged a few grand in ready cash which Donny hadn't locked away and put it into her purse.  Then she donned a pair of high-heeled sandals, checked the lie of her fur, and with a gait which would never have suited her before, stepped out into her new life.