Tell me, how did you come to make
your great discovery?"

"I was born. I went to school. I read books. I reached maturity. I
looked through a microscope."

"Yes?" prodded Gootes.

"That's all."

"Lassie," urged Gootes, underlining the honey of his voice with a
tantalizing glimpse of a rapidfire snatching of three colored
handkerchiefs out of the air, "tis no sensible course ye follow. Think,
gurrl, what the press can do to a recalcitrant lass like yoursel. Ye
wouldna like it if tomorrow's paper branded you--and I quote--'an
unsexed harpy, a traitor to mankind, a heartless, soulless--'"

"Oh, shut up. What do you want to know?"

"First," said Gootes briskly, "what is this stuff?"

"The Metamorphizer?"

He nodded.

"You want the chemical formula?"

"Wouldnt do me or my readers the least bit of good and you wouldnt give
it to me if I asked. Why should you? No, enlighten me in English."

"It is a compound on the order of colchicine, acting through the
somaplasm of the plant. It is apparently effective only on the family
Gramineae, producing a constitutional metabolic change. I have no means
of knowing as yet whether this change is transmissible through seed to
offspring--"

"Hay, wait a minute. 'Producing a constitutional metabolic change.' How
do you spell metabolic--never mind, the proofreaders'll catch it. What
constitutional change?"

"Are you a botanist, young man?" Gootes shook his head. "An
agrostologist? Even an agronomist? Then you can't have the slightest
idea what I'm talking about."

"Maybe not," retorted Gootes, "but one of my readers might. Just give me
a rough idea."

"Plants absorb certain minerals in suspension. That is, they absorb some
and reject others. The Metamorphizer seems to give them the ability to
break down even the most stable compound, select what they need, and
also fix the inert nitrogen of the air to nourish themselves."

"'Themselves,'" repeated Gootes, writing rapidly. "O K. If I get
you--which is doubtful--so far it sounds just like a good new
fertilizer."

"Really? I tried to make myself clear."

"Now don't get sore, Professor. Just give out on what made the grass go
wild."

"I can only hazard a guess. As I told Weener, if you create a capacity,
you engender an appetite. I imagine that patch of _Cynodon dactylon_
just couldnt stop absorbing once it had been inoculated."

"Aha. Like giving a man a taste for bourbon."

"If it pleases you to put it that way."