Read Ebook: The Brain by Hamilton Edmond

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Ebook has 876 lines and 59750 words, and 18 pages

"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.

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:

"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:

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.

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.

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...."

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?"

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.

"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.

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?

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."

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:

"Fine; but why a car? It's only a few steps...." He stopped, confused by the hearty laughter in the wake of his words.

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