My Uncle Oswald

That pulled him up a little. 'What would you charge for this sperm,' he said.

'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 a 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 potpourri. 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 that it is yours.'

'Don't be so foolish, Cornelius. You can't make me do something I don't want to do.'

'That's all I'm prepared to say.'

He squinted at me through the pipe smoke. 'You wouldn't threaten me in some way, would you?' he said. 'Or torture me?'