Inside, the cabin in the sky seemed to be built almost entirely around a
huge primeval looking fireplace. Despite the fierceness of the Arizona
sun there was a fire in it of long and bluish flames, one of those
modern inventions which reverse the processes of nature. Like the gas
refrigerators of an older period, this fire worked in combination with
the airconditioning system to _cool_ the house, lending to it in the
midst of summer heat the same attractions which it had in winter.
In front of the fire and framed by its rather ghostly light, there stood
a man with his head bowed down, pensively staring at the flames. As
Lee's steps resounded from the ancient millstones which formed the
floor, Dr. Scriven wheeled around; he approached the man from Down-Under
with outstretched hands.
Rarely had Lee seen such a distinguished looking figure of a man. He
looked more like a diplomat of the extinct old school than a scientist,
with the immaculate expanse of his white tropical suit and the dignity
of his leonine head. His width of shoulder and the smooth agility with
which he moved gave the impression of great strength. Only his fingers
were small, slender, almost like a woman's.
The reluctant softness of their pressure contrasted so much with his
heartiness of manner that Lee felt repulsed by their touch until he
remembered that a great surgeon lived and caused others to live by his
sensitivity of hand.
"Dr. Lee, I'm happy, most happy, that you have been able to come."
Scriven's voice was soft, but he spoke with an extraordinary precision
of diction which had a quality almost of command. "Over there, please,
by the fire...."
From the blue flames there came the freshness and the coolness of an
ocean breeze; the rawhide chairs, built for barbaric chieftains as they
seemed, proved to be most comfortable; the semidarkness, the roughness
of the unhewn stone, gave a sense of the phantastical and the paradox.
Lee sat and waited patiently for Scriven to explain.
"In case you're wondering a little about this setup," Scriven made a
sweeping gesture around the room, "I've long since reached the
conclusion that in these mad times a man needs above all some padded
cell, some shell in which to retire and preserve his sanity. This is my
padded cell, soundproof, lightproof, telephoneproof; a wholesome
reminder of the basic, the primeval things. Simple, isn't it?"
Lee blinked at the extravagance of this statement. "Do you really call
that simple?" he asked.
Scriven grinned: "You are right; it is of course a willed reversal from
the complex, synthetic and perhaps a little perverse. But then, not
everybody has the opportunity you had in living in the heart of nature.
Frankly I envy you; your work reflects the depth of thinking which comes
out of retirement from the world. That's why I called you here; that's
why I am so sure you'll understand."
He paused. Lee thought that he saw what was perhaps a mannerism; the
great surgeon didn't look at his visitor. With his head turned aside,
staring into the flames, stroking his chin, speaking as if to himself,
he reminded Lee of some medieval alchemist.
"It's a long story, Lee," Scriven continued. "It starts way back with a
letter I wrote to the President of the United States. In this letter I
pointed to the immense dangers which I anticipated in the event of an
atom war; dangers to which the military appeared to be blind. I am
referring to the inadequacy of the human brain and its susceptibility to
mental and psychic shock. I explained how science and technology over
the past few hundred years had developed by the _pooled_ efforts of the
_elite_ in human brains, but that the individual brain, even if
outstanding, was lagging farther and farther below the dizzy peak which
science and technology in their totality had reached. I further
explained, by the example of the Nazi and Jap States, how the collective
brains of modern masses are reverting from and are hostile to a high
level of civilization because it is beyond their mental reach. You know
all this, of course, Lee. I made it clear that not even the collective
brains of a general staff could be relied upon for normal functioning;
that no matter how carefully protected physically, they remained exposed
to psychic shock with its resultant errors of judgment. How much less
then could production and transportation workers be expected to function
effectively in the apocalyptic horrors they would have to face...."
* * * * *
Lee's eyes had narrowed in the concentration of listening; his head
nodded approval. He wasn't conscious of it, but Scriven took note of it
by a quick glance. His voice quickened:
"That was the first part of my letter, Lee. I then came out squarely
with the project which has since become the work of my life. I told the
President that under these circumstances the most needed thing for our
country's national security would be the creation of a _mechanical_
brain, some central ganglion bigger and better than its human
counterpart, immune to shock of any kind. This ganglion to be
established in the innermost fortress of America as an auxiliary
augmenting and controlling the work of a general staff. I gave him a
fairly detailed outline of just how the thing could be done. There was
really nothing basically new involved. Personally I have held for a long
time that Man never "invents", that in fact it is constitutionally
impossible for him to do so. Being a part of nature Man merely
_discovers_ what nature has "invented" in some form of its own a long
time ago. Mechanical brains. Lord, we have had them in their rudiments
for the past hundred thousand years, at a minimum. The calendar is one;
every printed book is one; the simplest of machines incorporates one.
And ever since the first mechanical clock started its ticking we have
developed them by leaps and bounds!"
"And did the President react positively to this project?" Lee asked.
Scriven shook his head. "He did not."
Then he paused. Little beads of perspiration had appeared on his
forehead; he wiped them away with a handkerchief:
"That year, Lee," he began again, "when the decision was pending and I
could do nothing but wait, knowing that there was no other defense
against the Atom Bomb, knowing that our country's fate was at stake--it
made me grey, it came pretty close to shattering my nerve.... But
_then_...." His body tightened, the small fist pounded the rail of the
chair: "... _But then We BUILT THE BRAIN._"
He said it almost in a triumphant cry.
Mounting tension had Lee almost frozen to his seat. Now he stirred and
leaned forward.
"It actually exists? I mean it works? It is not limited to the analysis
of mathematical problems but capable of cerebrations after the manner of
the human brain?"
Scriven, with a startling change, sounded dry, very factual in a tired
way as he answered: "I appreciate your difficulty of realization, Dr.
Lee. The whole idea is new to you and I have presented it in a rather
abrupt and inadequate way. In time, and if we get together, as I hope we
will, you shall get visual impressions which are better than words. For
the moment, just to give you a general idea and to prove that this is
not a small matter, let me give you a few facts: Our first monetary
appropriation for The Brain, as an unspecified part of the military
budget, of course, was for one billion dollars. We have since received
two more appropriations of an equal size."
Lee's gasp made a sound like a low whistle. With a depreciating gesture
Scriven waved it away.
"While these funds could only cover the first stages in the construction
of The Brain," he calmly went on, "we have been able to build a
mechanical cortex mantle composed of ninety billion electronic cells.
Considering that the cortex mantle of the human brain contains over 9
billion cells, this doesn't sound like much. Our synthetic or mechanical
cells are a little better than the organic, natural cells, but not very
much. So alone and by themselves their number would indicate only a ten
times superiority of The Brain over its human counterpart. If that were
all the result of our labors, a brain of, let's say, twice genius
capacity, we would be a miserable failure. But then we _have_ achieved a
very considerable improvement in the _utilization_ of the The Brain's
cortex capacity. In the first place we have full control over the
intake of thought impulses; and more important, we use multiple wave
lengths in feeding impulses to The Brain and throughout all the
impulse-processings. Even the human brain has some capacity of
simultaneous thought on different levels of consciousness, but its range
in this respect is extremely limited. The Brain by way of contrast
operates on two thousand different wave lengths, which means that The
Brain can process at least 2000 problems at one time. Finally, the
absence of fatigue in The Brain makes operations possible for 20 out of
the 24 hours of the day--the rest of the time we need for servicing and
overhauling."
* * * * *
With apparent effort Scriven turned his face away from the blue flames.
His dark brown eyes probed into Lee's as he summed up:
"All together, Lee, The Brain has now reached the approximate capacity
of 25,000 first class human brains. You as a man of vision will
understand what that means...."
Lee had his face upturned. The tension of thought gave to his features
something of the ecstatic or the somnambulist. Slowly he said:
"The equivalent of twenty-five-thousand human brains--there is no
comparison other than a God's...."
Striven had jumped from his chair. He started pacing the flagstones in
front of the fire, whirling his mighty frame around at every corner with
a sort of wrath, as if about to meet some attack.
"Yes, you are right," he almost shouted, "we hold that power; that power
almost of a God's. And how we are wasting it."
"What do you mean?" Lee's eye-brows shot up. "You would not waste those
powers once you have them. You would turn them to the most constructive
use--the advancement of science, of humanity!"
Scriven froze in his steps. A cruel smile parted his lips; there was a
gnashing sound of big white teeth. He pointed a finger at his visitor.
"Idealist, eh? That's what I thought I was ten years ago. That's what I
had in mind with The Brain right from the start. As it has turned out,
however, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and half a dozen other government
departments, besieged The Brain for the solution of their "problems",
some of them as destructive as warfare, others as insipid as the trend
of the popular vote in some provincial primaries. Sometimes Uncle Sam
even farms out the services of the Brain to aid some friendly foreign
government--without that government's knowledge as to where the solution
is coming from. To cut a long story short: What these fellows utterly
fail to understand is that The Brain is not a finite mechanism like any
other, but a mechanism which unendingly evolves and becomes richer in
its associations by the material which is being fed into its cells. In
other words; the Brain _learns_; consequently it must be _taught_, it
must be given the wherewithal for its own self-improvement...."
Scriven halted his impatient step by the other's chair. His nervous
fingers tapped Lee's shoulder: "And that is where you come in."
"Me?" Lee asked, startled. "What you just told me, Dr. Scriven, it will
take me weeks to comprehend. At the moment I am at a loss to see how my
work could connect...."
The surgeon's sensitive hand patted Lee's shoulder as if it were the
neck of a shy horse. "You _will_ comprehend--in just another moment."
He pressed a button; in the entrance to the cabin in the sky the girl
appeared, like an apparition. She approached, her hair a golden halo,
her tunic transparent against the glare of the summer day. "Yes?"
"Oona, _please_"
She seemed familiar with the boss' code. With a smile on her lips she
walked over to one of the pillars, opened a hidden recess and brought
out the Scotch and syphon using an Egyptian clay tablet for a tray. With
surgical exactitude Scriven poured out a good two fingers for his guest
and an exceedingly small one for himself. "Stay with us for a moment,
Oona, please," he said. "I didn't tell you the idea behind my calling
Dr. Lee; you might be interested."
Wordlessly she slid into a seat, attentive and yet fading somehow into
the background, as if trying to remain unnoticed. In that she did not
succeed. Her beauty was such that its very presence changed the
atmosphere; it put Lee under a strain to keep his eyes off her. As to
Scriven, he seemed to address her almost as much as he did Lee.
"You have met Dr. Lee, haven't you, Oona; but do you know _whom_ you
have met? He probably wouldn't admit it; nevertheless Dr. Lee is the
most successful peacemaker on earth, I think. He has just put an end to
the oldest war in this world between the two most venerable
civilizations in existence. That war between the states of the ants and
the states of the termites has been waged with never abating fury for
millions of years--until Dr. Lee came along with the perfect solution of
the eternal dispute. All he did was to crossbreed the belligerents and
now we have "united nations", _Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_ which lives up
to the spirit of its name. Elementary, isn't it?"
"So elementary," the girl said with ironical sweetness, "that the
so-called peacemakers of the international conferences must have
considered it below their dignity to stoop to it. How exactly did you do
it; I mean the crossbreeding?"
* * * * *
Lee felt his cheeks burn; it was extremely irritating that this should
happen to him every time Oona Dahlborg spoke to him, especially when it
was in praise.
"It wasn't too hard," he said depreciatingly. "The main difficulty lay
not with the termite queen nor with the furtive little king of the ants
themselves. Biggest trouble was in getting the potential lovers together
against the bulldog determination of their palace guards. To use force
was out of the question. So I had to trick the guards, smuggle in the
male and keep him hidden under the royal abdomen of his spouse."
She smiled amused. "What a perfect classic; the story of Romeo and
Juliet all over--and with you in the role of the nurse."
Lee blushed still deeper at that. "Yes", he admitted, "I was very much
reminded of that story and my role in it. Only I had to avoid the tragic
end."
"And how did you avoid the Shakespearean end?"
"In the best cloak and dagger manner, Miss Dahlborg. First I made the
guards drunk; that's easy enough with termites. Then I broke into the
chamber where they keep the queen immured. I killed her legitimate
consort and substituted my own candidate after having anointed him with
the genuine termite smell. Finally I re-immured the pair. There are only
little holes in the walls through which the royal family is serviced,
they are never really in touch with their guards. That's why it could
work."
"And thus they lived happy forever afterwards," the girl concluded.
"I'm afraid not, Miss Dahlborg," he said, "there is no such thing as
happiness in the eternal gloom of termite society. But even if not
happy, the match I brought about was definitely blessed. In due course I
became godfather to 30,000 baby ant-termes; I've about 15 million now in
different hybrid strains. Now that I have an inkling of the grandiose
work you are doing over here I am ashamed to mention mine; it's very
small, very insignificant and I still don't see where it comes in."
The girl seemed to cross out those words with an energetic move of her
head. "No," she said, "your work is not small nor is it insignificant;
it is great and contains the most intriguing possibilities."
"Ah!" Scriven interrupted. "I have been waiting for this. I knew that
Oona would hit upon those intriguing possibilities; her's is an
unspoiled intelligence; it penetrates to the core of things. Dr. Lee,
let me begin at the beginning so you will understand just where you and
your work connect with The Brain. The society of the higher insect
states like bees and ants and termites constitutes the oldest and the
most stable civilizations in this world. Human society by way of
contrast has created the youngest and the most unstable civilization
amongst higher animals. Throughout history we find collapse after
collapse of civilization. Quite possibly civilizations higher than ours
may have existed in prehistoric times. Right?"
Lee nodded assent.
"Fine. From that it follows that Man has much to learn from the society
of the higher insects. Their ingenious laws and methods, their "spirit
of the hive," the incredible renouncement of individual existence and
individual advantage, their undying devotion to the race.... We must
study those if ever we want to reach anything like stability in _our_
society. We ought to model our civilization after theirs, especially now
that we have this new species "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" which has
renounced war. There is something basically wrong with the type of
civilizations which Man builds and which ceaselessly devour one another.
No doubt you see the third World War approaching inexorably just as I
do; civilization forging ahead, for what? For the big plunge into
suicide. It's sickening to think of it. Do you feel I'm right?"
Unconscious of himself Lee had arisen and paced the room. With his lean
long-legged figure bending slightly forward and wild-maned head bowed
down in thought he resembled a big heron stalking the shallows for prey.
* * * * *
Fascinated, Oona's eyes followed the two contrasting men as their paths
criss-crossed like guards before some palace gate. She alone had kept
her seat. It was with greater assurance than before that Lee now spoke.
"I can see eye to eye with you, Scriven, as to the wrongs of man-made
civilization and its probable course. But I do not think it desirable
that we should model human society after the insect states. Ingenious as
it is, their system is the most terrifying tyrany I could imagine. Just
think of it: they literally work themselves to death. Workers who have
outlived their usefulness are either killed off, or else they become the
bloated, living containers for the tribe's staple food."
"You, yourself, can see the similar trend in Man, today. Our production
of new thought is lagging; not starting from the roots, it becomes
superficial, cut off from the roots. The results? The curse of the
Babylonian confusion of the tongues under which we live. We are rapidly
becoming thought-impotent. Cerebral fatigue, dissociation of its nerve
paths, emotionalism which rejects logic as "too difficult", mass idiocy
and relapse to barbarism.... It is by our brains, it is by this highest
evolution of matter that we have built this civilization of ours; and
now our own brainchild proceeds with might and with main to destroy the
very organ of its creation. Is that not irony supreme?
"Now we have The Brain, this truly superlative tool of 20,000 times
human capacity. All we have to do now is to submit the various societies
which nature has built: insect states, other animal states, Man and his
state to the analysis of The Brain. Have their good and their bad
features tested and compared. Let The Brain synthesize all the
beneficial components, let it shape the pattern of a new civilization
more enduring and better adapted to the nature of Man. And then abide by
the laws which The Brain lays down. I need your aid, Lee. You have
already made one most valuable contribution to "peace on earth" with
your "_Ant-termes-pacificus_". This is your big chance to continue the
good work; be with us, be our man."
In silence both men stood close to each other, eyes searching. All Oona
Dahlborg could hear was their heavy breathing. Instinctively she crossed
her fingers; never before to her knowledge had Scriven opened his mind
with such reckless abandon--and to a perfect stranger at that. Her
respect for the strange, the birdlike man from Down-Under skyrocketed.
"He really must be a great man," she thought, and, "Howard and he will
be either fast friends or very violent enemies."
At last Lee's voice came, husky and highpitched with emotion: "I cannot
conceive of a man-made superhuman intelligence. Neither can I believe
that mankind could or should be _forced_ into its happiness by an
intelligent machine. But that's besides the point ... the idea is
grandiose. It has the sponsorship of the government. You say that The
Brain needs me. That makes it a duty; so here I am."
He stretched out his hand and felt the cautiously eager grip of the
surgeon's sensitive fingers. The great man beamed. "Good," he said, "I
knew you would. Oona, like a good girl--the glasses, yours too. This
really deserves a toast."
The girl stepped between the two men. Handing Lee his glass she said:
"Today you may follow only the call of duty; tomorrow it will be the
call of love. I've never met any man who has not fallen in love with his
work for The Brain."
"I think you are quite right in that, Miss Dahlborg," he answered,
wondering vaguely exactly what her words meant, wondering also just how
much his decision was inspired by the wish to see more of her.
* * * * *
They drank their toast in silence. Scriven then turned to the girl:
"Apperception center 36," he said. "Yes, I think 36 will be the best.
Get in touch with Operations, Oona. Tell them I want 36 cleared for the
exclusive use of Dr. Lee. Call Experimental; I want the whole batch of
"_Ant-termes-pacificus_" transferred to Apperception 36 by tomorrow
morning. Then--no, today is too late and Dr. Lee is tired, he needs
rest--but tomorrow at 8 A.M. I want a car for him to go over to The
Brain. Would that suit you, Lee?"
"Fine; but why a car? It's only a few steps...." He stopped, confused by
the hearty laughter in the wake of his words.
"It's quite a few steps, Dr. Lee." Oona said, "you would be _very_ tired
before you got there; chances are that your feet wouldn't carry you that
far."
"But this is the Brain Trust Building," he stammered.
"It is," Scriven answered, "but it houses only part of the
administration, not The Brain. You wouldn't expect us to place a thing
of such vital strategic importance in a skyscraper on a wide open plain
as a landmark for every enemy?"
"No, I guess not." Lee said. "But since I'm briefed to go there, where
is it?"
"That," Scriven frowned, "is a very reasonable and a simple question.
Unfortunately, _I do not know_."
Lee felt a wave of red anger; it rose into his cheeks because he saw the
sparks of frank amusement dancing in Oona Dahlborg's eyes. He opened his
mouth to some bitter remark about this hoax when Scriven put a
restraining hand upon his arm.
"This is no joke, Lee. I have planned The Brain, have in part designed
it, seen it under construction for the past ten years, managed its
affairs--but I don't know where it is and that's a fact."
He led his speechless guest to a lookout on the west side of the room.
Beyond the lush, green oasis of Cephalon the desert stretched unbroken
till on the far horizon the mountains of the High Sierra rose in a blue
haze of scorching sun. His hand moved sweepingly from north to south.
"Over there," he said, "somewhere inside those mountains; that's where
it is. But its location? Your guess is as good as mine. Take your choice
of any of the mountains, attach a name to it; I've done so myself. One
of them must be "The Cranium", but the question remains: which? There
are people who know, of course; military intelligence, the general
staff; but that," he shrugged his shoulders, "... isn't my department."