Goldengirl

Professor Walsh smiled. ‘You’ve got it. If we extrapolate from Bill’s figures, and mankind survives the next two hundred years, everyone should be twenty centimetres, or eight inches, taller. It’s an open question whether the human skeleton is structured to cope with such an increase.’

‘Perhaps we’ll level out before then.’

She paused to consider the point. ‘Quite probably. I think Bill Serafin might admit that. But he’s still convinced that average height will increase for several decades yet.’

‘Is there any reason why it shouldn’t?’ asked Dryden.

‘A whole lot of people think it won’t. They argue that the apparent increases this century are exceptional. They say the present average, that’s one hundred and seventy-three centimetres, or five feet eight, is just about the optimum, and they have evidence to show that the size of the human frame hasn’t changed much since the Stone Age. Measurements of skeletons show Old Stone Age man as averaging five feet nine, Neolithic five-six, Bronze Age five-eight, Iron Age five-six, Anglo-Saxon five-seven.’

‘When did the shrinking set in?’

‘Almost certainly in the industrial revolution. Urbanization brought about a deterioration in living standards. People were literally stunted by the conditions. The theory is that it’s taken over a century to recover from that, but now we’re back to what the good Lord intended us to be.’

‘Sounds reasonable,’ said Dryden. ‘What does Serafin say about that?’

‘He won’t admit the validity of the measurements of primitive man. Only the strongest and tallest specimens would have survived to maturity, he says, so it’s futile making comparisons with civilised times, when life is held precious even for the weakest. He contends that the average man today is the tallest in history. And he refuses to accept that we’ve reached the limit. The human frame has the structural capacity — I believe I’m quoting him accurately — to absorb the anticipated increase for at least the next six decades. By the year two thousand the average will be up another inch.’

In the film at Cambria Pines, Serafin had presented Goldengirl as a prototype of the woman of the twenty-first century.

‘Is it important?’ Dryden asked.

‘It is to Bill Serafin,’ Professor Walsh said emphatically. ‘His Vienna research is the main thing in his life. He sees it as the bedrock of his theories — I’m calling them his, but many others share them. In his years here, he submitted numerous papers to the scientific press. Few, I’m afraid, ever got into print. He got the reputation of being obsessed with this theory of increasing growth, without ever adding anything of substance to his research in Vienna. And a lot of people, including close colleagues, I may say, began to wonder, like you, if it was important.’

‘It was, I expect, if you had to work with the man.’

She nodded. ‘You must understand this, Mr. Dryden. Medical history rings with the names of men and women who devoted the greater part of their lives to investigating some hypothesis, often counter to the orthodoxy of current practice. As working associates, people like that can be extremely tiresome to get along with, but there’s always the chance they will make a breakthrough that transforms our thinking. Yet I suppose for every one who makes it, there are scores who never do. Where fulfillment might have been, there is emptiness, a vacuum. Bill Serafin, I think, fits that category. He left this place an embittered man. The morale among the rest of us was pretty low when I took over. I had to make it clear from the beginning that I saw the role of professor differently. This room used to be his office. It didn’t look like this. He would shut himself in here with his books and write papers no journal wanted to publish. Rightly or wrongly, the rest of the staff forgot about him. The department was managed by his secretary, a formidable character. I made it a condition of my appointment that she be transferred, and she was. Now she runs Bio-Engineering instead. I could see, too, that if I moved in here, where Bill used to shut himself away, I’d be sunk. Things wouldn’t alter. So I took over a small office up the corridor nearer the rest of the staff, and had this place decorated and furnished as a general-purpose tutorial room. I use it as well for receiving VIP visitors, like publishers back from the dead.’

Dryden grinned, but thought fast. She was rounding off the interview. There was something else to confirm. ‘Before I cap that by floating gently out of the window, may I ask a damn-fool question about Dr. Serafin’s theory? He has to prove the human skeleton structurally capable of accepting an increase in size, is that right?’

‘That has to be faced, if his ideas on growth are valid. Scientists from Galileo onward have argued that nature can’t construct an animal beyond a certain size without altering the proportions and materials that give it its characteristic appearance.’