My Uncle Oswald Part 6

"Just plain glycerol?"

"Yes. But even that didn't work at first. It didn't work properly until I also discovered that the cooling process must be done very gradually. Spermatozoa are delicate little fellows. They don't like shocks. You cause them distress if you subject them straightaway to minus one nine seven degrees."

"So you cooled them gradually?"

"Exactly. Here is what you must do. You mix the sperm with the glycerol and put it in a small rubber container. A test tube is no good. It would crack at low temperatures. And by the way, you must do all this as soon as the sperm has been obtained. You must hurry. You cannot hang about or it will die. So first you put your precious package on ordinary ice to reduce the temperature to freezing point. Next, you put it into nitrogen vapour to freeze it deeper. Finally you pop it into the deepest freeze of all, liquid nitrogen. It's a step by step process. You acclimatize the sperm gradually to coldness."

"And it works?"

"Oh, it works all right. I am quite certain that sperm which has been protected with glycerol and then frozen slowly will stay alive at minus one nine seven for as long as you like."

"For a hundred years?"

"Absolutely, provided you keep it at minus one nine seven degrees."

"And you could thaw it out after that time and it would fertilize a woman?"

"I'm quite sure of it. But having got that far I began to lose interest in the human aspect. I wanted to go a lot further. I had many more experiments to do. But one cannot experiment with men and women, not in the way I wanted to."

"How did you want to experiment?"

"I wanted to find out how much sperm wastage there was in a single e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n."

"I'm not with you. What d'you mean by sperm wastage?"

"The average e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n from a large animal such as a bull or a horse produces five cc's of s.e.m.e.n. Each cc contains one thousand million separate spermatozoa. This means five thousand million sperm all together."

"Not five thousand _million!_ Not in one go!"

"That's what I said."

"It's unbelievable."

"It's true."

"How much does a human produce?"

"About half that. About two cc's and two thousand million."

"You mean to tell me," I said, "that every time I pleasure a young lady, I shoot into her two thousand million spermatozoa?"

"Absolutely."

"All squiggling and squirming and thras.h.i.+ng about?"

"Of course."

"No wonder it gives her a charge," I said.

A. R. Woresley was not interested in that aspect. "The point is this," he said. "A bull, for example, definitely does _not_ need five thousand million spermatozoa in order to achieve fertilization with a cow. Ultimately, he needs only a single sperm. But in order to make sure of hitting the target, he has to use a few million at least. But how many million? That was my next question."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because, my dear fellow, I wanted to find out just how many females, whether they were cows, mares, humans, or whatever, could ultimately be fertilized by a single e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. I was a.s.suming, of course, that all those millions of sperm could be divided up and shared among them. Do you see what I'm driving at?"

"Perfectly. What animals did you use for these experiments?"

"Bulls and cows," A. R. Woresley said. "I have a brother who owns a small dairy farm over at Steeple b.u.mpstead not far from here. He had a bull and about eighty cows. We had always been good friends, my brother and I. So I confided in him, and he agreed to let me use his animals. After all, I wasn't going to hurt them. I might even do him a favour."

"How could you do him a favour?"

"My brother has never been well off. His own bull, the only one he could afford, was of moderate quality. He would dearly love to have had his whole herd of cows bear calves by a splendid prize bull from very high milkyielding stock."

"You mean someone else's bull?"

"Yes, I do."

"How would you go about obtaining s.e.m.e.n from someone else's valuable bull?"

"I would steal it."

"Ah-ha."

"I would steal one e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and then, provided of course that I was successful with my experiments, I would share out that single e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, those five thousand million sperm, among all of my brother's eighty cows."

"How would you share it out?" I asked.

"By what I call hypodermic insemination. By injecting the sperm into the cow with a syringe."

"I suppose that's possible."

"Of course it's possible," he said. "After all, the male s.e.xual organ is itself really nothing more than a syringe for injecting s.e.m.e.n."

"Steady on," I said. "Mine's a bit more than that."

"I don't doubt it, Cornelius, I don't doubt it," he answered dryly. "But shall we stick to the point?"

"Sorry."

"So I started experimenting with bulls' s.e.m.e.n."

I picked up the bottle of port and refilled his gla.s.s. I had the feeling now that old Woresley was onto something pretty interesting and I wanted to keep him going.

"I've told you," he said, "that the average bull produces about five cc's of fluid each time. That's not much. Even when mixed with glycerol there wouldn't be enough there for me to start dividing it up into a great many parts and then expect to be able to inject each of those tiny parts into separate cows. So I had to find a dilutant, something to increase the volume."

"Why not add more glycerol?"

"I tried it. It didn't work. Altogether too viscous. I won't bore you with a list of all the curious substances I experimented with. I will simply tell you the one that works. Skimmed milk works. Eighty per cent skimmed milk, ten per cent egg yolk, and ten per cent glycerol. That's the magic mixture. The sperm love it. You simply mix the whole c.o.c.ktail thoroughly, and that, as you can see, gave me a practical volume of fluid to experiment with. So for several years, I worked with my brother's cows, and finally I arrived at the optimum dose."

"What was it?"

"The optimum dose was no more than twenty million spermatozoa per cow. When I injected that into a cow at the right time, I got eighty per cent pregnancies. And don't forget, Cornelius," he went on excitedly, "that each bull's e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n contains five thousand million sperm. Divided up into doses of twenty million, that gives two hundred and fifty separate doses! It was amazing! I was flabbergasted!"

"Does that mean," I said, "that with just one of my own e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns I could make two hundred and fifty women pregnant?"

"You are not a bull, Cornelius, much as you may like to think you are."

"How many females could one of my e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns do?"

"About a hundred. But I am not about to help you."

By G.o.d, I thought, I could knock up about seven hundred women a week at that rate! "Have you actually proved this with your brother's bull?" I asked.

"Many times," A. R. Woresley said. "It works. I collect one e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, then I quickly mix it up with skimmed milk, egg yolk, and glycerol, then I measure it into single doses before freezing."

"What volume of fluid in each dose?" I asked.

"Very small. Just half a cc."

"Is that all you inject into the cow, just half a cc of fluid?"

"That's all. But don't forget there's twenty million living spermatozoa in that half cc."

"Ah, yes."

"I put these little doses separately into small rubber tubes," he said. "I call them straws. I seal both ends, then I freeze. Just think of it, Cornelius! Two hundred and fifty highly potent straws of spermatozoa from a single e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n!"

"I _am_ thinking about it," I said. "It's a b.l.o.o.d.y miracle."

"And I can store them for as long as I like, deep frozen. All I have to do when a cow starts bulling is take out one straw from the liquid nitrogen flask, thaw it, which doesn't take a minute, transfer the contents to a syringe, and shoot it into the cow."

The bottle of port was three-quarters empty now and A. R. Woresley was getting a bit tipsy. I refilled his gla.s.s again.

"What about this prize bull you were talking about?" I said.

"I'm coming to that, my boy. That's the lovely part of the whole thing. That's the dividend."

"Tell me."

"Of course I'll tell you. So I said to my brother--this was three years ago, right in the middle of the war; my brother was exempt from the army, you see, because he was a farmer--so I said to Ernest, 'Ernest,' I said, 'if you had the choice of any bull in England to service your entire herd, which one would you choose?'

"'I don't know about in England,' Ernest said, 'but the finest bull in these parts is Champion Glory of Friesland, owned by Lord Somerton. He's a purebred Friesian, and those Friesians are the best milk producers in the world. My G.o.d, Arthur,' he said, 'you should see that bull! He's a giant! He cost ten thousand pounds and every calf he gets turns out to be a tremendous milker!'

"'Where is this bull kept?' I asked my brother.

"'On Lord Somerton's estate. That's over in Birdbrook.'

"'Birdbrook? That's quite close, isn't it?'

"'Three miles away,' my brother said. 'They've got around two hundred pedigree Friesian dairy cattle and the bull runs with the herd. He's beautiful, Arthur, he really is.'

"'Right,' I said. 'In the next twelve months, eighty per cent of your cows are going to have calves by that bull. Would you like that?'

"'Like it!' my brother said. 'It would double my milk yield.' Could I trouble you, my dear Cornelius, for one last gla.s.s of your excellent port?"

I gave him what there was. I even gave him the lees in the bottom of the bottle. "Tell me what you did," I said.

"We waited until one of my brother's cows was bulling good and proper. Then, in the dead of night--this took courage, Cornelius, it took a lot of courage . . ."

"I'm sure it did."

"In the dead of night, Ernest put a halter on the cow and he led her along the country lanes to Lord Somerton's place three miles away."

"Didn't you go with them?"

"I went beside them on a bicycle."

"Why the bicycle?"

"You'll see in a moment. It was the month of May, nice and warm, and the time was around one in the morning. There was a bit of a moon s.h.i.+ning, which made it more dangerous, but we had to have some light to do what we were going to do. The journey took us an hour.

"'There you are,' my brother said. 'Over there. Can you see them?'

"We were by a gate leading into a twenty-acre field and in the moonlight I could see the great herd of Friesians grazing all over the field. To one side, not far away, was the big house itself, Somerton Hall. There was a single light in one of the upstairs windows. 'Where's the bull?' I said.

"'He'll be in there somewhere,' my brother said. 'He's with the herd.'

"Our cow," A. R. Woresley said to me, "was mooing away like mad. They always do when they're bulling. They're calling the bull, you see. The gate into the field was padlocked with a chain, but my brother was ready for that. He pulled out a hacksaw and sawed through the chain. He opened the gate. I leaned my bike against the hedge and we went into the field, leading the cow. The field was milky white in the moonlight. Our cow, sensing the presence of other animals, began mooing louder than ever."

"Were you frightened?" I asked.

"Terrified," A. R. Woresley said. "I am a quiet man, Cornelius. I lead a quiet life. I am not cut out for escapades like this. Every second I expected to see his lords.h.i.+p's bailiff come running toward us with a shotgun in his hands. But I forced myself to keep going because this thing we were doing was in the cause of science. Also, I had an obligation to my brother. He had helped me greatly. Now I must help him."

The pipe had gone out. A. R. Woresley began to refill it from a tin of cheap tobacco.

"Go on," I said.

"The bull must have heard our cow calling to him. 'There he is!' my brother cried. 'Here he comes!'

"A ma.s.sive white and black creature had detached himself from the herd and was trotting our way. He had a pair of short sharp horns on his head. Lethal, they looked. 'Get ready!' my brother snapped. 'He won't wait! He'll go right at her! Give me the rubber bag! Quick!'"

"What rubber bag?" I said to Woresley.

"The s.e.m.e.n collector, my dear boy. My own invention, an elongated bag with thick rubber lips, a kind of false v.a.g.i.n.a. Very effective too. But let me go on."

"Go on," I said.

"'Where's the bag?' my brother shouted. 'Hurry up, man!' I was carrying the thing in a knapsack. I got it out and handed it to my brother. He took up his station near the cow's rear and to one side. I stood on the other side, ready to do my bit. I was so frightened, Cornelius, I was sweating all over and I kept wanting to urinate. I was frightened of the bull and I was frightened of that light in the window of Somerton Hall behind me, but I stood my ground.