about the medical award
from now on. This will be its swan song. It hits too close to home. Too
many people have been saying similar things about our profession and its
trend toward specialization. And to have the Nobel Prize confirm them
would alienate every doctor in the world. We simply can't do it."

"Yet who else has made a comparable discovery? Or one that is even half as
important?" Christianson asked.

"That's a good question," Carlstrom said, "and a good answer to it
isn't going to be easy to find. For my part, I can only wish that Alphax
Laboratories had displayed an interest in literature rather than medicine.
Then our colleagues at the Academy could have had the painful decision."

"Their task would be easier than ours," Christianson said wearily. "After
all, the criteria of art are more flexible. Medicine, unfortunately, is
based upon facts."

"That's the hell of it," Carlstrom said.

"There must be some way to solve this problem," Eklund said. "After all
it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a
physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. Perhaps that might
offer grounds--"

"I don't think so," Carlstrom interrupted. "The means in this case aren't
as important as the results, and we can't deny that the cancer problem is
virtually solved."

"Even though men have been saying for the past two generations that the
answer was probably in the literature and all that was needed was someone
with the intelligence and the time to put the facts together, the fact
remains that it was C. Edie who did the job. And it required quite a bit
more than merely collecting facts. Intelligence and original thinking of
a high order was involved." Christianson sighed.

"Some_one_," Eklund said bitterly. "Some _thing_ you mean. _C.
Edie_--C.E.D.--Computer, Extrapolating, Discriminatory. Manufactured
by Alphax Laboratories, Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. _C. Edie!_
Americans!!--always naming things. A machine wins the Nobel Prize.
It's fantastic!"

Christianson shook his head. "It's not fantastic, unfortunately. And I
see no way out. We can't even award the prize to the team of engineers who
designed and built Edie. Dr. Hanson is right when he says the discovery was
Edie's and not the engineers'. It would be like giving the prize to Albert
Einstein's parents because they created him."

* * * * *

"Is there any way we can keep the presentation secret?"