The World of Null-A

XVI

The light that poked through the long crack made by the partly open outer door must now temporarily be their shield. So long as the door remained as it was, the watchers outside would see a blurred shaft of brightness and all would seem well to them. There would, of course, be a limit to their patience and gullibility.

They tied Prescott hand and foot, and they gagged him, all with a swiftness that did not shrink from rough handling. Then they talked over the limitations of their temporary safety.

“He hasn't been outside,” Gosseyn pointed out soberly. “But he must have established contact in some way.”

Dr. Kair said, “I don't think we should let that bother us just now.”

“Eh?”

The doctor's face was calm, his eyes grave. “What I've discovered about you,” he said, “comes first.” His tone grew more urgent. “You don't seem to realize, Gosseyn, that you're the important person in all this. There just isn't anything that matters so much, and we've got to take all the attendant risks.”

It took time to really accept that, time to assemble his powers of concentration, and to lock the outside danger into a separate compartment of his mind and leave it there. It even took time to realize that he could listen to the most important information of his individual universe, and simultaneously carry on vital work.

“What you have in your head,” the psychiatrist began, “is not an extra brain in the sense that you now have a higher intelligence potential. That isn't possible. The human brain that created the Games Machine and similar electronic and mechanical organisms has not even theoretically an intellectual equal in the universe. People sometimes think that the electronic brain system of the Machine constitutes a development superior to that of man. They marvel at the Machine's capacity to handle twenty-five thousand individuals at once, but actually it can do so only because twenty-five thousand electronic brains were set up in intricate series for just that purpose. And besides, these operations are all of a routine nature.

“That is not to say that the Machine cannot think creatively. It is located over a multimetal mine, which is completely under its control. It has laboratories, where robots work under its direction. It is capable of manufacturing tools, and does all its own replacement and repair work. It has a virtually inexhaustible source of atomic energy. The Machine, in short, is self-sufficient and superlatively intelligent, but it has limitations. These limitations were implanted from the beginning, and consist of three broadly based directives.

“It must operate the games fairly, within the framework of the laws laid down long ago by the Institute of General Semantics. It must protect the development of null-A in the broadest sense. It can kill human beings only when they directly attack it.”

Gosseyn was searching Prescott. No detail of the man's clothing escaped his probing fingers. The pockets yielded a pistol and two blasters, extra ammunition, a box of Drae powder capsules, a packet of antidote pills, and a pocket-book. He didn't stop with the pockets, but examined the cloth itself. The material was plastic, of the kind that was worn a few times and then discarded.

It was on the side of the heel of the right shoe that he found the printed instrument. It was an electronic locator device made of the same plastic as the shoe, and recognizable only by the pattern of wires that had been printed from a photographically reduced cut. Gosseyn sighed as he discovered it. It must have been by the use of such a device that Patricia Hardie had been able to run into his arms that first day, pretending she needed protection. He hadn't had time, then, to find out how he had been located. It was good to know. Explanations made the mind easy, took a score of tiny strains off the nervous system, and released the body from the thrall of negative excitations for more positive activity. It was easier, suddenly, to listen to the psychologist.

The doctor, too, had been combining activity with conversation. From his very first word, he had started packing the test material into a leather case. Photographs and notes went in the case. He opened machines and removed recording tubes, wires, screens, rolls of film, ribbons of autotype paper, and special sensitive sound and light tracks. Almost every item, before he packed it, was briefly interpreted.

“This proves the new brain is not cortical material . . . and this . . . and this . . . and this . . . that the cells are not thalamic . . . memory . . . association. Here are some of the main channels by which it is connected to the rest of the brain. . . . No indication that any impulses have flowed to or from the new gray matter.”

He looked up finally. “The evidence shows, Gosseyn, that what you have resembles not so much a brain as the great control systems in the solar plexus and the spine. Only it is the most compact setup of controls that I have ever seen. The number of cells involved is equal to about a third of the total now in your brain. You've got enough control apparatus in your head to direct atomic and electronic operations in the microcosm, and there just aren't enough objects in the macrocosm to ever engage the full potential control power of the automatic switches and relays now in your brain.”

Gosseyn hadn't intended to interrupt. But he couldn't help himself. “Is there any possibility,” he said in a strained voice, “that I can learn to integrate that new brain during the next hour?”

The answer was a grave shake of the head. “Not in an hour, or a day, or a week. Have you ever heard of George, the boy who lived with the animals?

“George, a two-year-old baby boy, wandered off into the wilderness of foothills and brush behind his parents' farm. Somehow, he fumbled his way into the lair of a renegade female dog which had just given birth to a litter of pups. Most of the pups died, and the wretched bitch, heavy with milk, its ferocity restrained by dimly remembered human training, permitted the child to feed.

“Later, it hunted food for him, but hunger must have come often, because ants, worms, beetles, anything that moved and had life, were found to be part of the boy's diet when he was captured at the age of eleven, a sullen, ferocious animal, as wild as the pack of dogs whose leader he had become. His early history was pieced together from his actions and habits.

“Grunts, snarls, growls, and a very passable bark-that was his language. Sociologists and psychologists realized the opportunity he represented, and failed hopelessly in their efforts to educate him. Five years after his capture, he had been taught to set up alphabet blocks, spelling out his name and the names of a few other objects. His aspect at this stage remained bestial. His eyes glowed with easy hatred. He descended frequently and with great agility to all fours, and, even after half a decade, his forest lore was astounding. The tracks of animals, even if hours old, could set him into such a state of excitement that he would jump up and down and whine with eagerness.

“He died at the age of twenty-three, still an animal, a wizened creature-boy looking hardly human in the bed of his padded cell. A post mortem revealed that his cortex had not developed fully, but that it existed in sufficient size to have justified belief that it might have been made to function.”

Dr. Kair ended, “We could have made George human now with what we know about the brain, but you will agree, I think, that your case and his are similar, with one difference-your start as a human being.”

Gosseyn was silent. For the first time, the problem of his extra brain had been clearly defined in the only possible rational way-by analysis and comparison. Until this moment his picture of it had been vague and idealistic, disturbing only because the new brain had shown no activity, no reactions whatever. But always, through the blur of his visualizations, hope had blazed. It had given him a measure of arrogance and of strength in the harder moments of his brief career as a potential savior of civilization. And somewhere inside his skin, permeating possibly his entire nervous system, he had felt pride that he was more than a man. That would remain, of course. It was human to be proud of physical or mental attributes that had come by chance. But as for the rest, as far as further development was concerned, it would undoubtedly take time.

The psychiatrist said, “Ifyou are a true mutation, the man after man, and should it come down to a choice between saving you and letting this galactic army assault a peaceful civilization, then you may be sure that I shall choose you. And they”–he smiled grimly–“shall have their opportunity to test whether null-A can be destroyed by a first adversity.”

“But the Venusians don't know.” Gosseyn found his voice. “They don't even suspect.”

“That,” said Dr. Kair, “underlines with very special emphasis what our next move must be. Our future depends on whether or not we can escape from this house before dawn. And that”–he stood up with astonishingly youthful litheness–“brings us right back to our friend on the couch.”

It was easy to think again of urgent and deadly danger.