“You wait,” I said. “You haven’t heard the half of it yet. And we won’t stop at George the Fifth. We must have a very comprehensive stock indeed of royal sperm. All the kings in Europe. Let’s see. There’s Haakon of Norway. There’s Gustav of Sweden. Christian of Denmark. Albert of Belgium. Alfonso of Spain. Carol of Rumania. Boris of Bulgaria. Victor Emmanuel of Italy.”
“You’re being silly.”
“No, I’m not. Wealthy Spanish ladies of aristocratic blood would crave for a baby by Alfonso. It’ll be the same in every country. The aristocracy worships the monarchy. It is essential that we have a good stock of royal sperm in our vault. And I’ll get it. Don’t you worry. I’ll get it.”
“It’s a hare-brained and impracticable stunt,” A. R. Woresley said. He put a lump of Stilton in his mouth and swilled it round with port. Thus he ruined both the cheese and the wine.
“I am prepared,” I said slowly, “to invest every penny of my one hundred thousand pounds into our partnership. That’s how hare-brained I think it is.”
“You’re mad.”
“You’d have told me I was mad if you’d seen me setting off for the Sudan at the age of seventeen in search of Blister Beetle powder. You would, wouldn’t you?”
That pulled him up a little. “What would you charge for this sperm?” he asked.
“A fortune,” I said. “Nobody is going to get a baby Einstein cheap. Or a baby Sibelius. Or a baby King Albert of the Belgians. Hey! I’ve just had a thought. Would a king’s baby be in line for the throne?”
“He’d be a bastard.”
“He’d be in line for something. Royal bastards always are. We must charge a packet for king’s sperm.”
“How much would you charge?”
“I think about twenty thousand pounds a shot. Commoners would be slightly cheaper. We would have a price list and a range of prices. But kings would be the most expensive.”
“H. G. Wells!” he said suddenly. “He’s around.”
“Yes. We might put him on the list.”
A. R. Woresley leaned back in his chair and sipped his port. “Assuming,” he said, “just assuming we did have this remarkable sperm vault, who would go out and find the rich women buyers?”
“I would.”
“And who would inseminate them?”
“I would.”
“You don’t know how to do it.”
“I could soon learn. It might be rather fun.”
“There is a flaw in this scheme of yours,” A. R. Woresley said. “A serious flaw.”
“What is it?”
“The really valuable sperm is not Einstein’s or Stravinsky’s. It’s Einstein’s father’s. Or Stravinsky’s father’s. Those are the men who actually sired the geniuses.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But by the time a man becomes a recognized genius, his father is dead.”
“So your scheme is fraudulent.”
“We’re out to make money,” I said, “not to breed geniuses. These women aren’t going to want Sibelius’s father’s sperm anyway. What they’ll be after is a nice hot injection of twenty million living spermatozoa from the great man himself.”
A. R. Woresley had his awful pipe going now and clouds of smoke enveloped his head. “I will admit,” he said, “yes, I am prepared to grant you that you could find wealthy female buyers for the sperm of geniuses and royalty. But your entire bizarre scheme is unfortunately doomed to failure for the simple reason that you will be unable to obtain your supplies of sperm. You don’t seriously believe that great men and kings will be prepared to go through the . . . the extremely embarrassing motions of producing an ejaculation of sperm for some totally unknown young man.”
“That’s not the way I’ll do it.”
“How will you do it?”
“The way I’ll do it, not a single one of them will be able to resist becoming a donor.”
“Rubbish. I’d resist it.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” I put a thin slice of apple in my mouth and ate it. I raised the glass of port to my nose. It had a bouquet of mushrooms. I took a sip and rolled it on my tongue. The flavour filled my mouth. It reminded me of pot-pourri. For a few moments I was captivated by the loveliness of the wine I was tasting. And what a remarkable follow-through it had after the swallow. The flavour lingered in the back of the nose for a long time. “Give me three days,” I said, “and I guarantee that I’ll have in my possession one complete and genuine ejaculation of your own sperm together with a statement signed by you certifying it is yours.”