“I don’t think we’ll want to go on living for very long—under circumstances like these,” he said slowly. “It’s hope of change—escape, a purpose in existence—that makes us want to keep on living for the moment. But I imagine most of the brains are yearning for death.”
“But it’s still crazy, isn’t it—wanting to live? No matter what happens we’ll never have release from these platinum boxes. We’ll never have the senses of our bodies again as long as we live.”
“We’ll have the frogs,” he said. “They can give us sight and sound and companionship. We have each other.”
“Each other,” she murmured. “You’re my husband and I can never know even the touch of your hand for the rest of our lives. I can never know what it’s like to see you coming home and feel your arms about me and your kisses on my lips.”
“Martha!”
“I’ll never be able to watch you grow old with me, and you can never tease me about that first gray hair. And those children we would have had—who will bear them now that I am a barren thing—a scrap of tissue in which I cower?”
“Stop it!” he commanded harshly.
“We’ve lost all those things,” he went on more gently. “But men have always believed there was a spirit within them that transcended all else. If it is ever to be proved we have a chance to do it. Perhaps we can reach that communion of which men have only dreamed.
“As to purpose in our existence—it’s greater than ever before. You and I—and Al if he has not come to harm—are the only ones who understand the state of the cybernetic brains and have some power to make that knowledge public.
“We’ve got to let the public know so that they can bring an end to cybernetic brain control at once before many more are imprisoned like us. Surely that is purpose great enough to fill our existence with meaning?”
“Yes, it is, darling. I’ll do all I can to help. But don’t be impatient with me—if those other hungers sometimes become more than I can bear.”
“Remember that I have them, too,” he said quietly. “Don’t you think I’ve seen the face of Donny while I’ve been here? He would have been the first one, remember? The one who would have had the cowlick and the freckled nose?”
CHAPTER VII
Contact Outside
THE noon sun burned down upon the white frog. He had come thirty miles since dawn. Part of the time had been spent in hitching rides on cars that stopped for service or shopping along the bright highway. Other long minutes had been wasted in devious corners, hiding when someone approached too closely.
John was satisfied with the progress, however, and he had gained experience in controlling the frog with minimum effort. He felt that he would almost proceed with the production of others while guiding this one but he didn’t want to risk its loss by not giving it full attention.
He wished that he might have gone ahead and used it in making others but he wanted to know about Al. Martha was worried because of her brother’s absence. The quickest way to find out would be to send the frog to his house.
By midafternoon the frog was less than a mile from the house where Kit and Al lived. The frog was progressing under its own power. It was here that John first noticed trouble. The sight of the frog was less clear. Frequently it was falling down, tumbling over on its side and on its eye.
John grew irritable with himself. He cursed his own inaccuracy of control. Perhaps it was the effect of distance. The telepathic powers might be incapable of operating at such a distance but he didn’t believe that explanation. It must be some fatigue effect. He waited a moment to let his powers and those of the frog rest.
While he rested the image in his mind grew dimmer. With a sudden thought he sent the frog clumsily toward the sunlit window of a nearby house. It leaped up and faced the glass.
In the faint reflection there John caught a glimpse of his creation. The white skin of the thing was burned and parched. The hot rays of the sun were destroying it. Quickly he dropped it to the ground amidst some shrubs. It lay there a moment and the vision slowly faded to darkness.
He felt fatigue then—such fatigue as he had not known since that first agony had begun to recede. He had to start all over again, blindly, without the help of that frog to make others. It was doubly hard and the risk of failure a hundred times as great as if he had the sight of one frog to guide the making of others.
And Martha—he was cut off from her again. He felt sick with pity for her. She would be in blind and silent abandonment again, wondering why he had left her.
He returned to the task of producing another frog, one that could withstand the rays of the sun, one whose eye could respond to infra-red light, that he might use it at night.
He set into play the hundreds of experimental forms that he had used before. The growth of the synthetic protein structure was a slow and cautious process. A moment’s haste would throw them into monstrous forms of uncontrolled growth that could perform none of the functions required of them.
Whether because of his anxiety regarding Martha or because of the new functions he was trying to incorporate there seemed to be a dozen times the failures he had experienced before. He started over the long weary process again and again—and produced only useless blobs of cells.
And then, in the midst of the recurrent failures, he was startled by a gentle sound.
“John—John, can you hear me?”
He didn’t believe he had heard it. He waited for its incredible repetition. “Martha! How did you—?”
“I’ve been watching you, darling. It reminded me of the time when Father asked you to build a shelf in his lab. Remember how you cut three of them before you got one halfway square and of the right length? But even then it was so bad he took it down after you left. I never did tell you.”
“I noticed later. I guess I’m not much better as a chemist than a carpenter. But what did you do? How are we talking?”
“I don’t know. The cybernetic controls were put into operation. I felt the information—you know what it’s like, of course. And then, all of a sudden, I seemed to be watching you at work, understanding your thoughts. And I knew if I spoke you would hear me.”
“The dual control system! I remember now. Al told me about it and that it was being planned for General Biotics. This is it. The combination of two brains in simultaneous control to overcome the problems that have baffled cyberneticists so long.
“It means such close neural connections that our brains can operate as a single control. It also means we can talk without the use of telepathy or anything else. It also means—”
“John!”
“Well, all right. You can block off a few million cells and put up a Keep Out sign in front of them.”
The laughter died away and he could feel her changing mood like a dark tide rising. “We must be drunk or crazy,” she said. “How else could we be laughing?”
“Come and help me, Martha. I need your help with these frogs.”
He led her on, trying to teach her to forget. He showed her the laboratories he had taken over, taught her the synthesis that he had devised. “Now give me a hand with this batch. I haven’t been able to control and stop the growth at the right level.”
Some of the loneliness was gone, he thought. It was almost as it had once been. The two of them leaning over a laboratory bench, intent upon some biochemical process of fantastic complexity.
FOR an instant it was as if he could feel the brush of her hair against his cheek as she bent near.
The frogs were successful. They gave them eyes and now Martha was able to control and use them as well as he, though neither could explain her earlier failure.
“I never knew it was quite so wonderful just to see,” she murmured. The first frog in her control hopped deftly to the top of a shining brass cylinder. From there its gaze encompassed most of the laboratory in which it had been created.
It was not the cluttered maze of the manual laboratories she had known. There were order and beauty. G
lass and silver tubes in multiple bands cast reflected ribbons of light against the ceiling.
John felt the sensory ecstasy within her. “It was laid out by a cybernetic design machine,” he said. “You can be sure that everything is exactly where it ought to be from a performance standpoint.”
The frog hopped to the floor and went out. Between the distant towers of a building the sun was lowering between bands of clouds that colored the sky.
“We’ve got this,” murmured Martha. “And it’s glorious and wonderful. Am I greedy in wondering if we can ever have more?”
“I don’t know. After we see the end of the cybernetic brain program there will be time enough to find out.”
At Martha’s suggestion they improved the frogs still further before sending them out. The diminutive storage of energy made them short lived. They devised an elementary digestive system for a grass-eating form. It was a nightmare in appearance but it worked.
The skin was dark gray for better hiding and protection from ultraviolet rays. The single eye remained in the center of what might be called a face. There were no nostrils but a simple skin-absorption system provided oxygen.
The mouth was the esthetic failure of the whole creature. It was a vicious opening surrounded by small, rusty looking chisels of teeth—they were constructed with an iron base instead of calcium. It was, on the whole, as unlovely a creature as any surrealist had ever drawn upon canvas.
The most important improvement, however, was a cluster of memory cells. It was little more than a neuronic switch and timer but John believed it would relieve them of considerable burden in guiding the frogs.
He led five of them out of the laboratory and away from the plant. Then he set them on the highway. He gave them detailed instructions to proceed by any possible means and to reach a central meeting point without detection.
Like preset automatons they bounced off through the brush, ever careful to keep out of sight. It was a relief not to have to follow all the way. The bouncing vision made him dizzy.
During the afternoon he made occasional contact. They had successfully hitched rides on vehicles, though one had gone the wrong way for a time. With recognition of the error, preset synapses merely directed it to get off.
It did—with the car traveling a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It was nearly destroyed by the fall but it was serviceable and immediately hitched another ride in the right direction.
But something happened to one of them. When they were nearly there he checked them and could make contact with only four. The fifth had vanished.
He was concerned about it because he didn’t want them lost over the countryside.
It was dark when, the frogs reached the house. There was no light. Neither were there locked doors. The need for theft had long since vanished and psychopaths were destroyed at birth.
Al and Kit had only an air block against undesirable outside temperatures on their main entrance. He left three of the frogs outside and led one into the house. He found his way about easily with the infrared vision of the frog. He went into the bedroom wing.
Al was not there. Kit was alone in the big double bed. But she wasn’t sleeping. He could see her eyes were open as she lay there, staring in the darkness.
“Kit.” He made the telepathic call as gently as possible. She didn’t seem to have heard.
“Kit.”
“Be careful, don’t frighten her,” said Martha.
KIT’S eyes moved toward the doorway and she raised her head in a small start of fear. But she didn’t believe she had actually heard anything.
“Kit This is John.”
She sat up with a stifled cry. “Who is it? I can’t see. John who—?”
“Listen to me, Kit,” he said swiftly to get his message out before fear seized her. “You can’t see me but this is John Wilkins. I want to see Al. No, I’m not dead. I’m very much alive. Don’t be afraid. Listen to what I have to say.”
Her fear was not allayed. He could see the tension in her face reflected at near the bursting point. “You can’t be John Wilkins. He was killed. His brain is a cybernetic control. Who are you? What do you want of me?”
“Listen! Didn’t Al ever tell you he believed the brains were alive?”
“Yes—yes!”
“He was right. I am a cybernetic brain but I’m alive too. I’ve found a way to freedom that none of them has ever found before. Martha is here with me.”
“Yes, I’m here,” said Martha. “Believe us, Kit. Where is Al?”
She ignored their question. She seemed almost in a stupor of shock. “I don’t understand—I don’t see how—”
He told her of the frog and how they had made it.
“Let me see the frog,” she said abruptly. “Show me something that I can see with my eyes, so that I will know I’m not in a nightmare.”
“You wouldn’t want to, Kit,” said Martha quickly. “It’s a nightmare in itself. We didn’t make it very pretty.”
“I want to see.”
“On the night table, then,” said John.
The frog leaped to the table top as Kit brushed the light cord. It sat there, its green, Cyclopean eye reflecting the light of the lamp. Its open mouth showed the ring of murderous teeth.
Kit gave a single shrill scream as she saw it there almost on a level with her eyes.
“Please!” begged John.
She clung to the filmy cover that lay over her. Forcing her hand in the face of unabated terror she reached out and touched the frog. Somehow it seemed a reassuringly dead and artificial thing to her.
“It’s the only way we could make contact,” said John. “We want Al to see it. Will you tell us where he is?”
“I’m sorry I screamed,” Kit apologized. Then her voice broke in a repressed sob. She put her face in her hands and sat up in bed. “I’m worn out with worry and sickness over the loss of Al. I have no presence of mind left.”
John felt the sudden chill of fear that swept through Martha. “Loss of Al! Kit—what do you mean? What’s happened to Al?”
Kit looked up into the unblinking eye of the frog. “You couldn’t have known, of course. It was after you—He’s dead.”
“Oh, no! Not Al, Kit.”
All their lives Martha and Al had been close, John thought. Surely there could have been a kinder fate that would have spared her this now.
“How did it happen?” Martha said at last.
“He told me about the message he wrote you, John. The next day he said he was going to the Board. But he never returned from the Institute… An accident in his laboratory, they told me. And they took, his brain immediately.
“I didn’t even know he had a contract. In the face of what he believed I can’t imagine him taking out one but they showed it to me. I don’t know what to believe but it all seems so horribly wrong and mixed up—Al just disappearing from me that way.”
“We’ll find him if they made a control of him. I don’t think he would volunteer for that, knowing what he knew.”
Kit looked up as if startled by a thought that was strange and unbelievable. “If you did that could I talk to him—just as I am talking with you?”
“Yes.” And then he saw her face darken, and knew what she was thinking. Al, a poor remnant of a human being, a handful of neurons, blind, deaf, helpless—but alive.
Her face plunged against her hands again, and Martha and John did not attempt to halt her sobbing.
WHEN she quieted at last John said, “Did Al leave any of his notes and papers around here? That’s one thing I would like to see. I want to try to understand just what he knew and how much he might have revealed.”
“Yes. I have all his work here. There was a strange thing in connection with that. Before they notified me of his death two of his assistants came to the house and said Al wanted me to hide the papers they brought.
“They said he was with the Board at the moment and he just wanted these papers hidden securely. Soon after, word of his death came. I ne
ver saw the assistants again. I have not been able to locate them.”
“That sounds as if Al almost expected something to happen!” said Martha.
“Show us his work. Please, Kit.”
She put on a robe and slippers and went toward the door, glancing uneasily around at the ungainly frog hopping behind her. She led the way toward the opposite wing of the house and entered the study that had been Al’s. She reached for the light.
“Don’t turn it on. I can see quite well in the dark.”
“Why is it necessary?”
“If they would kill they would certainly steal. At least Al apparently thought so.”
“Kill? I didn’t—”
“You don’t think Al died the way they said. Neither do I.”
“But the Institute!” said Kit. “Surely they—”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been thinking? Isn’t that what you wanted to say back there in the bedroom?”
“Oh, yes, John! I’ve believed it and I’ve wanted to say it. But how can anyone say a thing like that about the Institute? It’s—it’s like the government.”
“I don’t know the answer but I think I can see how the Institute or perhaps some group within it would see Al’s story as a threat to their personal power.
“We’ll find the answer. Put his papers on the table for me, please.”
The frog leaped to the top of the desk. Kit spread out her husband’s research notes and data and turned pages as John read swiftly in the darkness. Occasionally he asked her to lay one aside.
“This is good enough,” he said at last. “Hide them in the best place you can think of in the house. Tomorrow morning make copies of these I’ve separated and mail them to Jerry Randolph at News Central. “Tell him Al left word that if anything happened to him the papers were to be sent there.”
“Will they distribute such a thing as this?”
“That’s what I want to find out. We want the public to know. If anyone is exerting pressure to keep the public from knowing we should learn about it this way.
The Cybernetic Brains Page 6