Apperception 36, Lee's lab within The Brain, looked much like
Apperception 27 except for its interior fittings. As a matter of fact,
all the several hundred Apperception Centers were built after the same
plan, like suites in a big office building in many respects. They were
spread over The Brain occipital region; they were built inside the
concrete wall of the "dura matter" which in turn lay within the shell of
the "bone matter", a mile or so of solid rock. Each apperception center
had its own elevator shaft which went through the concrete of the "dura
matter" down to "Grand Central", the traffic center below The Brain.
Each one was also connected at the other end of its corridor with the
glideways which snaked through the interior of The Brain. There were,
however, no transversal or direct communications from one apperception
center to the next. Because of the extraordinary diversity and secrecy
of the projects submitted to The Brain' processings, each apperception
center was completely insulated against its neighbors.
Life hadn't changed so much from what it had been in the Australian
desert Lee had found; at least not his working life. For all he knew
some nuclear physicists might be working in the lab next door; or they
might be ballistics experts working with The Brain on curves for
long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign
land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current
products of foreign literature to the analysis as to "idea-content"; or
else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some
astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ
The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses
and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the
camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another
war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project
submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there
could be no doubt.
Sometimes, especially when tired, he could feel the weight of those
billions of rock tons over his head and it was like being buried alive
in the tomb of the Pharaoh. And also in that state of mental exhaustion
at the end of a long day, he sensed the emanations of The Brain's
titanic cerebrations as one senses the presence of genius in human man.
The knowledge that all this mighty work was being devoted to war had
deeply depressing effects on him. Would there be anybody else in this
vast apperception area who worked for the prevention of war? A few
perhaps; Scriven would be one of them in case he had a lab somewhere in
here and time to work in it. Lee didn't know whether he had. He hadn't
seen Scriven again after that inauguration speech he had made when Lee,
together with other newly appointed scientific workers had taken "The
Oath of The Brain."
They had assembled in that vast subterranean dome of the luminous murals
at the feet of the giant statue of The Thinker, looking almost forlorn
in the expanse, though there had been several hundred of them. The
atmosphere had been solemn, the silence hushed, as Scriven mounted the
statue's pedestal. The address by that mighty voice resounding from the
cupola had been worthy of the majestic scene:
"As we stand gathered here, the eons in evolution of our human race are
looking down upon us...."
The speech had been followed by the taking of the oath, deeply stirring
to the emotions of the young neophytes who formed the large majority of
the new group. The chorus of their voices had resounded in awed and
solemn tones as they repeated the formula; even now after six months
some of it echoed in Lee's ears:
"I herewith solemnly swear:
"That I will serve The Brain with undivided loyalty and with all my
faculties.
"That I will at all times obey the orders of the Brain Trust on behalf
of The Brain.
"That I will never betray or reveal any secrets of The Brain's design or
work, be they military or not, neither to the world outside nor to any
of my fellow workers except by special permission...."
It had been almost like taking holy orders. There had been mystery in
the atmosphere of the vast crypt, something medieval in the
unconditional surrender to The Brain.
* * * * *
Lee looked up from the charts on which he had been working; his eyes
were tired and so was his mind after ten hours of hard concentration.
That was probably what set his thoughts wandering. But strange that they
should always wander to those blind spots in his mental vision so
intriguing because he knew there was something there that he could not
lay a finger on.
The first of these blind spots hovered somewhere between Scriven's words
and Scriven's deeds; between The Brain as an ideal of science and The
Brain's reality as in instrument of national defense. Somehow the two
didn't connect; there was a break, some layer of thin ice, a danger zone
which nobody seemed willing to discuss or tread, not even Oona Dahlborg.
Oona; she was that other white spot on Lee's mental map and to him it
was much bigger and more dangerous than the first. He loved her as can
only a man who discovers loves secret with greying hair and after the
loneliness of a desert hermit. He understood, or thought he understood,
that because he had failed to live his life to the full in its proper
time, this love had come to him as a belated nemesis. His brain knew
that it was hopeless; every morning when he shaved, his mirror told him
very plainly one big reason why. But then, as the brain told the heart
in unmistakable terms what was the matter, the heart talked back to the
brain to the effect that the brain didn't know what it was talking
about. It was a new thing and a painful thing for Lee to discover that
he knew very little about himself and less about the girl.
He had seen Oona on and off over these last months, mostly at the hotel,
but he had never been really alone with her. She always seemed to be on
some mission, always the center of some group or other of "very
important persons", senators from Washington, ranking officers in
civvies, big businessmen. Her duties as Scriven's private secretary
apparently included the role of a first lady for Cephalon.
Despite this preoccupation an intimate and tense relationship existed
between him and her. Sometimes she would invite him to join her group
and then for one or two brief moments their eyes would meet above the
conversation and her eyes seemed to ask: "What do you think of these
people?" or "How do I look tonight?"
His eyes would answer:
"These people are strangers to me; you know that I'm a bit out of this
world. But you handle them expertly and you are looking wonderful
tonight."
She was tremendously popular, especially with the set of the young
scientists who made the hotel their club. This new generation, born in
the days of the Second World War, was changing the horses of its
feminine ideals in the mid-stream of its youth. The old ideal, the
"problematic woman" who had ruled over and had made life miserable for
three generations of American males, was on its way out. The new ideal
was the woman who would unite beauty and intellect into one fully
integrated, non-problematical personality. The ideal being new, the
feminine type which represented it was rare. Oona in her perfect poise,
in her rare beauty combined with her importance as Scriven's
confidential secretary was the perfect expression of the new desired
type; it was natural that these young men should worship her as "the
woman of the future."
With the hopeless and--in consequence--unselfish love he had for her,
Lee wasn't jealous of her popularity. On the contrary, he was rather
proud of it like a knight-errant who rejoices in the adoration bestowed
upon the lady of his heart. What worried him was a very different
problem: Was Oona really all those others thought she was? Was she
really that "fully integrated", that "non-problematical" personality she
appeared to be?
He couldn't believe it, and the conflict came in because all those
others were so certain that she was. He couldn't get over his first
impression of her. He had met her in that cabin in the sky, the most
synthetic, the most perversely artificial setup one could dream up in
the second half of the 20th century. She had impressed him as something
"out of this world", a goddess, a Diana with a golden helmet for hair,
so radiant as to blind the eyes of mortal men. She was the confidential
secretary of a man of genius, Scriven, one of those rare comets which
fall down upon this earth and remain forever foreign to its atmosphere.
With all these thoroughly abnormal elements entering into her life and
forming her, it would be a miracle for any girl to develop into a
"non-problematical", a "fully integrated" personality.
Was it possible that he alone was right and all those others were wrong
about Oona? Like innumerable men before him when they stood face to face
with the Sphinx or with the Gioconda or even with the smile of a mere
mortal woman, Lee drew a sigh: Man's only answer to the riddle of the
eternal feminine....
No, he probably would never be able to chart these white spots on his
mental map. The effort was wasted; it would be much better for him to
return to those charts right in front of him, the data of which were
exact because they came from The Brain.
In Apperception 36 the sensory organs of The Brain had been especially
adapted to the analysis of "_Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_". The apparatus
was essentially the same as in Apperception 27, dedicated to personality
analysis. As Lee strongly suspected, it would be essentially the same in
any other field of analysis. The Brain possessed five sensory organs
just as did man. One difference between The Brain's senses and human
senses lay in their range, their penetration and in their sensitivity;
these were a multiple of man's sensory capacities. Another difference
was that The Brain translated all its sensory apperceptions into visual
form, i.e. into the language best understood by Man, the eye being Man's
most highly developed sensory organ. The third and perhaps the most
significant difference was that the five senses of The Brain were at all
times working in concert so that in its analysis of, for instance, a
manuscript, The Brain not only conveyed the ideas expressed in that
manuscript, but also the author's personality, the smell of his room,
the feel of his paper and the ideas he had hidden between the lines of
that manuscript.
* * * * *
The flow of observations processed by The Brain and pouring back to
Apperception 36 via teletype and visual screen was prodigious. Lee had
been forced to ask for an assistant; between the two of them they were
working for 20 out of the 24 hours to match the working time of The
Brain, charting results in the main.
Some of The Brain's findings had been most unexpected and rather
strange. It had observed, for instance, an increasing acidity of the
nasi-corn secretions with "_Ant-termes-pacificus_". Formidable as this
chemical artillery already was, in another ten thousand generations it
would eat through every known substance including glass and high-carbon
steel.
Another development which had escaped human observation, was a mutation
of the workers' mandibles; it went very fast. Within no more than maybe
a thousand generations they would double in size and strength, would
become veritable jumping tools.
While the bellicose spirit had been successfully bred out of the new
species, its capacities for material destructions had increased.
Likewise the appetite of "_Ant-termes_" was even more ferocious than
that of the older species; Lee was feeding all kinds of experimental
foods, but woodpulp remained the staple, the very stuff which in its
liquid form, lignin, embedded the nerve paths of The Brain.
Lifting his strained eyes from the charts, Lee looked over the row of
air conditioned glass cubicles wherein "_Ant-termes-pacificus_"
continued its lives undisturbed by the new habitat, undisturbed by the
rays which flowed over and through their bodies, unconscious that a
superhuman intelligence was probing steadily into every manifestation of
the mysterious collective brains of their race.
They had built their new mounds pointing due North as had their
ancestors for the past 100 million years. To the human eye nothing
betrayed the teeming life within except the tiny tunnels creeping out
from the mounds in the direction of the foods which were placed
different from day to day. Cemented from loam and saliva by the
invisible sappers, the tunnels, like threads of grey wool, unerringly
moved to the deposits of pulpwood, up the shelves, up the tin cans and
glass containers they had determined to destroy. Their instincts were
uncanny, their destruction as methodical and "scientific" as was modern
war.
In Northern Australia Lee had come across big eucalyptus trees,
healthy-looking and in full bloom, and then they would collapse under
the first stroke of an axe or even as one pushed hard against them.
The termites had hollowed them out from roof to top, had transformed
them into thin walled pipes, leaving just enough "flesh" to keep some
sap-circulation going, to maintain a semi-balance of life in order to
exploit it more efficiently. Over here in the lab they would open up a
number 3 tin can within a couple of hours; first with the soldiers'
vicious nasi-corn secretions eating the tin away and then with the
workers mandibles gnawing at the weakened metal. In time perhaps they
would learn to collapse steel bridges, sabotage rails, perforate the
engines of motorcars if these should prove to be menaces to their race.
As they had persevered through the eons of the past, so they would in
all the future; their civilization would be extant long after Man and
his work had disappeared from the earth....
With the aid of The Brain, Lee had accumulated more data, more knowledge
of the "_Ant-termes_" society within a few months than a lifetime of
study could have yielded him under normal conditions. Even so, some of
the greatest mysteries remained. What, for instance, caused these blind
creatures to attack a sealed tin can of syrup in preference to its
neighbor with tomatoes or some other stuff? No racial memory could have
taught them; there were no tin cans a million years, not even a hundred
years, ago. It couldn't be a sense of smell, it couldn't be any sense;
there would have to be some weird extrasensory powers in that
unfathomable collective brain of their race.
The magnifying fluoroscope screens arrayed all along the walls and
hooked up to the circuits of The Brain showed him details and phases of
the specie's life as The Brain perceived them and as no human eye had
ever seen before.
For a minute or so Lee stared at the luminous image nearest to him and
then with an effort he turned his eyes away to escape from its hypnotic
influence. It was but the head of one worn-out worker used as a living
storage tank for excremental food. It was absolutely immobile, its
decaying mandibles pointing down, cemented as the animal was by its
overextended belly to the ceiling. But magnified as were its remaining
life manifestations by the powers of The Brain, he could see it breathe,
could count the slow pulse, could sense a strain in its ophthalmic
region, some hidden effort to see, like a blind man's, and above all Lee
perceived the ganglion primitive as it was, yet twitching in reaction to
pain. There could be no doubt that in its last service for the racial
commonweal the animal was suffering slow torture even if its senses were
closed to that torture. It was a fascinating and at the same time a
terrible thing to see; and it was only one out of the hundred equally
revealing sights.
Lee frowned at himself; manifestly some emotional element interfered
with the objectivity of his observations; this was entirely out of
place, it would be better to call it a day.
* * * * *
The electric clock showed 20 minutes to midnight. At midnight The Brain
would stop its mighty labors; the hours from midnight to four a.m. were
its rest periods, or "beauty-sleep" as the technicians jokingly called
it. It was the only period wherein the maintenance engineers were
permitted to enter the interior of the lobes, checking and servicing
group after group of its myriad cells and circuits, and incidentally it
was the most wonderful and exciting portion of Lee's day.
For the project which Scriven had handed him, this study of the
collective brains in insect societies, also involved a comparative study
of The Brain's organisms and functionings. Toward this end Lee had been
given a pass which allowed him freely to circulate through all the
lobes, to enter convolution, any gland during the overhaul period and to
ask question of the employees. The privilege was rare and he enjoyed it
immensely. So vast was this underground world that even now after months
he had not seen the half of it; to him the travels of every new night
were fantastic Alice-in-Wonderland adventures.
As he now left Apperception 36 through the door which led to the
interior, the glideways were already swarming with the maintenance crews
en route to their stations. The spectacle was colorful, almost like a
St. Patrick's Day parade. Gangs of air conditioners were dressed blue,
electricians white, black-light specialists in purple, radionics men in
orange. The maintenance engineers of the radioactive pyramidal cells
looked like illustrations from the science-fiction magazines, hardly
human in their twelve-inch armor or sponge rubber filled with a new
inert gas which was supposed to be almost gamma ray proof. All these men
were young, were tops in their fields, the pick of American
Universities, colleges and the most progressive industries. Carefully
selected for family background they had been screened through health and
intelligence tests, had been trained in special courses, had been
subjected to a five-minute personality analysis by The Brain itself.
They constituted what was undoubtedly the finest working team ever
assembled, and incidentally they made the little city of Cephalon the
socially healthiest community in the United States.
In his nightly expeditions over these past months Lee had spoken to a
great many of them. As now he joined the line, there were many who
hailed the lanky, queer looking man: There comes the ant-man. Hello,
Professor. Hello, Aussie.
For some reason most of the boys assumed that he was an Australian,
perhaps because with his graying mane and his emaciated face he looked
like a foreigner to them.
This popularity with the younger generation, coming as it did so late
and unexpected in his life, made Lee very proud. Those were the kind of
Americans he had been secretly longing for in those desert years,
hardworking, wide-awake, radiant with life:
"They really are the salt of the earth, the hope of the world," he
thought.
He had passed through the median section of the hemispheres and had
reached the point just below the cerebrum. This was a region of
cavities, the seats of various glands in the human brain. Some of these
had their mechanical counterparts in The Brain, huge storage tanks with
an elaborate pumping system which carried their fluid chemicals through
the labyrinth of The Brain. But there was one gland which had not been
duplicated in The Brain, the pineal gland.
In the human, the pineal gland was the despair of the medical sciences.
It was not demonstrably linked to any other organ nor did it serve any
demonstrable function. Yet, it was known that its sensitivity was
greater by far than even that of the pyramidal cells and that in some
mysterious manner the pineal gland was vitally connected with the center
of life because its slightest violation caused instant death.
Metaphysicists had dealt with this mystery of mysteries; it was their
theory that the pineal gland were the seat of "extrasensory" faculties
and it was often referred to as "the inner eye."
Even if such an organ could have been duplicated by science and
technology, there would have been no use for it; it could have served no
purpose in The Brain. The Brain had been designed for the solution of
exact problems; no matter what nature had created in the brains of
higher animals, no matter how unprejudiced their approach, scientists
like Dr. Scriven would have hesitated to impair an otherwise perfect
apparatus through the addition of nuisance values such as any
"extrasensory" faculties.
However, with The Brain being modelled so closely after the human brain,
the space for the pineal gland did exist even if in a sort of functional
vacuum. In order to utilize this space in some manner, the designers had
converted the gland into a subcenter for the distribution of spare
parts. As such it had become one of Lee's favorite observation posts.
Here he could get a closeup view of all types of electronic and
radioactive cells; he could even touch and handle them because they were
not hooked up in any circuit of The Brain; and above all there was Gus
Krinsley, master electrician, who never tired of telling Lee whatever he
wanted to know. Gus was a real friend....
* * * * *
He had left the glideway on the point of its nearest approach; the
pineal gland in front of him looked like a miniature barrage balloon;
egg-shaped, it hung suspended from the cerebral roof, a shell of
plastics which could be entered only over a bridge across a dark abyss.
Inside, its walls were aglitter with sound-proofing aluminum foil, it
was piled with a bewildering variety of electronic parts on shelves
somewhat like an over-stocked radio store. Near the door a counter
divided the room; Gus used it and a little cubicle of an office to fill
the orders as the maintenance engineers handed in their slips. As usual
there was nobody in sight. "Gus!" he called.
Out of the jungle of machinery way back a head popped up like a
Jack-in-the-box. It was as bald and shiny as an electric bulb. High up
on its dome it balanced gold-rimmed glasses which quivered as it moved
seachingly from side to side. Then, with an amazing twisting of big
ears, the head caused the biofocals to drop onto a saddle near the tip
of a long, sensitive nose; and now the head could see.
"It's you Aussie, is it? Come over."
Gus Krinsley was a pony edition of a man; in fact he had once been hired
as a midget to install automatic bomb-sights in the confined spaces of
the early bombers of the second World War. Before long, however, he
became respectfully known as "the mighty midget" in the California
factory, and he had ended up as their master electrician before
Braintrust made him the head of one of its experimental divisions. The
midnight hours he spent in the pineal gland were only a sideline of his
work. Like many a small man in a country where six-footers enjoy a
preferred status, Gus made up for lack of size by mobility. He reminded
one much of a billiard ball in the way he bounced, collided and
ricocheted amongst taller men. That this was no more than act became
manifest the moment one saw Gus at work.
As Lee reached the spot where Gus' head had shown, he found his friend
crouching, his hands thrust deep in the intestines of something
radionic, his fingers working on it with the deft rhythm of a good
surgeon at his thousandth appendectomy. The bifocals had returned to
their incongruous perch on the dome of the head. Gus didn't need them;
even as he stared at his job he worked by touch alone.
"What is it?" Lee asked.
"Pulsemeter," came the quiet answer. "She's a dandy. Still got some bugs
in her, though."
A melodious chime came from a big instrument panel built into the wall
of the oval room. Dropping a number of tiny precision tools upon a piece
of velvet, Gus rushed over to the panel. A great many indicator needles
were tremulously receding around their luminous dials.
For a minute or so he went through the complex and precise ritual of a
bank cashier closing the vault.
"They'll do it every time," he said reproachfully. "Catch me by
surprise."
Lee grinned. It wasn't The Brain's fault if the midnight signal
surprised Gus. It merely announced that the current was being cut off by
the main power station. Repetition of this maneuver throughout all the
convolutions and glands of The Brain was required for the added safety
of the maintenance engineers, a double-check, a routine. Pointing to the
gadget which looked somewhat like a big radio console Lee asked:
"This pulsemeter, Gus, what does it do? I haven't seen it before."
"You haven't?" the little man frowned. "Ah, no; you haven't. It's
standard in most apperception centers, but not in yours. That's because
in yours The Brain works under a permanent problem-load."
Lee shook his head. "I don't get it, Gus; you know I'm the village idiot
of this mastermind community."
"It's like this," Gus explained. "The Brain has a given capacity. The
Brain also has an optimal operation speed, a definite rhythm in which it
works best. Now, if they feed The Brain too many problems too fast, it
results in a shock load, the operations rhythm gets disturbed,
efficiency goes down. On the other hand if The Brain works with an
under-capacity problem load, that's just as bad. In that case the
radioactive pyramidal cells will overheat and decompose. Consequently we
must aim at a balanced and an even problems load. That's why these
pulsemeters are built into all problem-intake panels for the operators
to check upon their speeds.
"Take an average problem--rocket ballistics, let's say--parts of it may
be as simple as adding two and two and others so bad Einstein would
reach for the aspirin from out of his grave.
"Now I'll show you how it works; the main power is cut off but there's
enough juice left in The Brain's system to make this pulsemeter react;
it's even more sensitive than a Geiger-Mueller counter."
He surveyed a big switchboard and picked out an outlet marked "Pons
Varolis for the plug-in." Then snapped a pair of earphones on Lee's
head.
"There," he said "you'll both see and hear what it does in a little
while."
* * * * *
A soft glow slowly spread over the slanting screen on top of the
machine. A crackling as of static entered the earphones and turned into
a low hum. On the left corner of the screen a faint green streak of
luminosity crawled over to the right; its light gained in intensity and
it began to weave and to dance. Simultaneously the hum became articulate
like tickings of a heart only much faster.
"Is that the pulse of The Brain?" Lee asked.
"No," Gus snorted contemptuously. "The Brain isn't even operating.
Nothing moves in The Brain now excepting those ebbing residual currents,
too low in power to agitate anything but the amplifiers built into this
thing. If these were normal operations with a million impulses per
second passing through The Brain you could hear and see as little of the
pulse as of the beatings of a million mosquito wings. In that case the
dial to your right works a reduction-gear, kind of an inverted
stroboscope; that cuts the speed down a hundred-thousand to one and you
just barely see and hear the rhythm of the beat."
"I see."
Fascinated by the dance of the green line Lee said absently, "This
touches upon another question I had in mind; The Brain is expanding,
that is, new cell groups and circuits are constantly being added.
Right?"
"Right."
"I also understand that The Brain is learning all the time. The cerebral
mantle evolves through being worked; its cells enriched by the material
submitted to them for processing; the richer the material, the richer
their yield. Right?"
"Right."
"Okay; then what becomes of the new capacity which is being created by
the adding of new workshops and the increased efficiency of the old
ones? Is there a corresponding expansion of the apperception centers?"
Gus' smiling face suddenly turned serious. There was surprise mingled
with respect in his voice as he said:
"Now there you've hit upon a funny thing, Aussie. I've been wondering
about that myself of late: where does the new capacity go? Even the big
shots like Dr. Scriven begin to ask questions about that; they don't
seem rightly to know. They must have gotten their wires crossed
somewhere; the new capacity is there all right, only it doesn't show up,
it sort of evaporates.... Excuse me--"
Gus darted off to the front room with a jackrabbitt start. Voices were
calling for him and fingers were drumming on the counter with the
impatience of thirsty drinkers at a bar: Maintenance engineers, piling
in and slapping down their orders for Gus to fill. This was the rush
hour; Lee knew that it would be the same in all the tool and spare part
distribution centers of The Brain. He probably couldn't talk to Gus
again before 2 A.M. Sometimes the ruthlessness with which he exploited
the kindness of his little friend made Lee feel pretty bad; but then his
hunger for more knowledge always won out over his shame.
To sit alone in the semidarkness of this egg-shaped little room with
strange and fascinating things to play with as he willed was the
fulfillment of a childhood dream. The dream had been of a night in the
zoo. All the visitors and all the keepers would be asleep in their beds;
he would be all alone with the animals. The light of a full moon would
fall through the bars of the cages and he would slip in and play with
them.
Once they saw that it was only a little boy they would be very friendly;
he was convinced of that. The tigers would purr like big contented cats,
the sad-eyed chimpanzees would come to shake hands and the lion cubs
would tumble all over him.... He felt the same now with all these
gadgets and machines. Here they were rendered harmless, nor could he do
any harm as experimentally he plugged them in and out, as he pushed
buttons and turned dials. This interesting pulsemeter, for instance; the
beauty of it was that even with those weak residual currents it gave a
semblence of functioning....
* * * * *
The switchboard-panel was within Lee's reach.
"Let's see what happens," he thought as he switched from main-circuit to
main-circuit. "Nervus vagus--nervus trigeminus--nervus opticus."
The magic dance of the green line was different each time and so were
the sounds in the phones. With the mainpower cut off, the residual
currents seemed to vary in strength and in amplitude, gaining an
individuality of their own within closed systems. Sometimes the swinging
line, like an inspired ballerina, would take a mighty jump accompanied
by rasping earphone sounds, not like tickings of a heart, but rather
like a heavy breathing under emotional stress. There probably would be
some repair work going on in those circuits....
He tried another outlet; this one was marked "pineal gland." What
happened if one plugged some apparatus of the pineal gland into the
circuit of the pineal gland? Lee vaguely wondered. "Nothing probably. It
would be a closed circuit and a very small one at that."
Yes, he was right; the green line paled, its dance seemed tired and
there were only whispering noises in the phones; a weak pulse, a shallow
breathing as of a person after a heart attack. Lee closed his fatigued
eyes to concentrate the better upon the rhythm of the sounds.... It was
very irregular. It came in gusts. There was a pattern to these rasping
breathings as of typewriter keys forming words. Somehow it was familiar.
Was he suffering hallucinations? This rhythmic pattern _was_ forming
words. He _knew_ those words, they had engraved themselves indelibly in
his memory cells; the judgment of The Brain as it had come over the
teletype on a slip of yellow paper: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39--cortex
capacity 119--sensitivity 208...."
It was repeated over and over again.
Lee opened his eyes to reassure himself that something was the matter
with his ears.
There was the green line on the screen. It danced. It danced like a
telegraph key under the fingers of a skilled operator. It had a very
definite rhythm. And the rhythm spelled the selfsame words which
continued to flow into the phones: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39...."
"God Almighty," Lee murmured and it seemed a magic word. The green
dancer stopped its capers; now it merely ran back and forth across the
stage in a series of pirouettes. Likewise there was only an angry
buzzing in the microphones. For a moment Lee was able to catch his
breath. But only for a moment and then the rasping, unearthly sounds
started on a new rhythm, trying to form speech again. This time the
rhythm was familiar too, but it was preserved in a much deeper layer of
Lee's memory.
"I think--therefore--I am. I think--therefore--I am."
Those would be Aristotle's famous words. Almost twenty years ago Lee had
heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old
Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What
strange tricks a fellow's memory could play....
But then: it _couldn't_ be memory.... Never before had Lee's memory
expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a
metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which
has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the
intonation in every possible way. Over and over it came:
"I _think_--therefore I am."
And then: "_I_ think--therefore _I_ am."
And then: "I think, therefore _I am_."
There was triumph, there was jubilance in that inhuman, that ghostly
voice as of a deaf mute who by some miracle of medicine has just
recovered speech. Behind that voice was a _feeling_, a swelling of the
heart, a filling of the lungs such as Christopher Columbus might have
experienced as he heard from the masthead of the Santa Maria the cry of
victory: "Land, Land!" and _knew_ that he had found his--India....
* * * * *
Whatever Lee had experienced in his life, there was no parallel to this;
in whatever manner he had expressed himself, there was no similarity to
this. Up to this point his ratio like a nurse had soothed him: "It isn't
so, child, it isn't so," but now ratio itself, thoroughly frightened,
was driven into a corner and had to admit: "This thing cannot be an echo
reverberating from the self; that's impossible.... Consequently it must
be something else; it must be something _outside_ the self; it
is--_another_ self."
The green dancer whirled across the stage like a mad witch; the
whispering voice in the earphones had turned into the shrillness of a
Shamaan's incantations. The irrationality of it all infuriated Lee: he
fairly shouted at the machine:
"What is this? Who are you?"
In the midst of a crazy jump the green dancer halted and came down to
earth; it fled, leaving only the train of its green costume behind. For
a few seconds there was nothing but the asthmatic pantings of a struggle
for breath in the microphones. Then the dancer reappeared on the other
side of the stage, hesitant-like, expectant of pursuit. All of a sudden
it rose into the air in that supreme effort called "ballooning" in the
language of the Ballet Russe and there was a simultaneous outburst of
that ghastly voice:
"Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39 ... I--am--The Brain."
"I Think, therefore I am: I am THE BRAIN."
"Lee, sensitivity 209: I AM THE BRAIN I AM THE BRAIN THE BRAIN."
He couldn't stand it any longer. His head swam, perspiration was gushing
out of his every pore. With a last effort he pulled the cord out of the
switchboard and rejoiced over the blank before his eyes and the silence
which fell.
Lee never knew how long he remained in a sort of cataleptic state.
Something shook him violently by the shoulders, something wet and cold
and vicious slapped his face.... And then he heard Gus' familiar voice
and it sounded like an angel's singing: "By God, I think it's the
whisky--Lord, how I wished it were the whisky. Only it wouldn't be with
a man like you and that's the trouble--damn you.
"Now if you think you can come to my pineal gland and faint away just as
you please, Aussie, you're very much mistaken. I'm going to slap your
face with a wet rag till you holler uncle. And I'm going to call the
ambulance and put you into a hospital...."
Lee blinked. "Keep your shirt on, Gus. I'm tired out, that's all; what
are you fussing about?"
Gus breathed relief. "Have a cup of coffee; you sure look as though
you've been through a wringer."