Pawn’s Gambit

by Timothy Zahn

  “I understand all that,” Dan said, “but I don’t really know what to do about it. I’m not trying to make a legal or political statement with this, though I’m sure others will probably do so. But, then again, shouldn’t the law reflect medical realities wherever possible?”

  “Yes—but you’re talking metaphysics, not medicine,” McClain returned. “And as far as the law goes, what right do you or any other man have to tell women what we can or cannot do with our own bodies?”

  “Just a second,” I put in before Dan could reply. “Aren’t we jumping the gun just a little bit here? Dr. Staley hasn’t even done the experiment yet and already you’re complaining about the results. It’s entirely possible that the whole thing will be a boost to your point of view.”

  “You’re right, of course,” McClain admitted, cooling down a bit. “I’m sorry, Doctor; I guess I forgot that working with Pamela Halladay didn’t automatically mean you were against us.”

  Dan waved a hand. “That’s all right,” he said, clearly thankful the argument had been temporarily defused. “I was unaware when we started that Dr. Halladay had strong feelings on the subject, but I’m convinced she’ll be able to keep her feelings under wraps.”

  “I hope so.” McClain paused. “I wonder, Doctor, if you would consider allowing a member of NIFE to participate in the planning of your experiment. We have quite a few doctors and other bioscience people who would be qualified to understand and assist in your work.”

  “Actually, I don’t think we really need any help at the moment,” Dan said slowly. “There are only a couple of problems to be dealt with, and I’m sure we can find solutions reasonably quickly. If not, I’ll keep NIFE in mind.”

  “Will we at least be permitted to have an observer present during the main part of the experiment?” McClain persisted.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, sure,” Dan said tiredly. “Give Iris your phone number and we’ll do our best to keep you informed.”

  She gave me the number and then stood up, her expression that of someone who’s gotten more or less what she hoped for. “Thank you for your time, Doctor. I hope this Lifeline Experiment of yours will prove to be something we can wholeheartedly support.”

  I saw her out and returned to Dan’s office. “Is it my imagination,” I asked, “or is this project starting to get just a little out of hand?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe it. First the Family Alliance and now NIFE—people are practically standing in line for a chance to complain about the experiment. Is the opportunity to find out the truth really so frightening?”

  “I thought all psychologists were cynics,” I said. “Of course nobody wants to hear facts that’ll contradict their long-held beliefs. And organizations are even worse than individuals.”

  “I’d rather know what the truth is,” he countered. “So would you. Are we the only intellectually honest people around?” He held up a hand. “Skip it. I’m just tired. Let’s go somewhere quiet where we won’t run into a hit squad from the PTA and get some dinner.”

  Sometime that evening both the wire services and the major networks picked up on the story, and by the next morning the entire country was hearing about the Lifeline Experiment—the name, unfortunately, having been picked up as well. Commentaries, both pro and con, appeared soon after. Though the publicity was stifling to Dan’s everyday work, I think he found a grim sort of amusement in watching the creative ways various organizations phrased their statements so as to condemn the experiment without actually saying they would reject its results. Only the most fanatical were willing—or clumsy enough—to burn such a potentially useful bridge behind them.

  The reporters who began hanging around Dan’s home and office were more of a nuisance, but Dan had years ago mastered the art of giving newspeople enough to keep them satisfied without unduly encouraging them to keep coming. Fortunately, though, as the initial excitement passed and the experiment itself still seemed far in the nebulous future, the media’s interest waned, and within ten days of the story’s initial release the reporters’ physical presence was replaced by periodic phone calls asking if anything was new. I, at least, was relieved by this procedural change; my friend Kathy would be calling any day now, and I preferred sneaking away from telephones than from people.

  Late one evening in the last week of June the call came, and Dan and I drove down to Fresno for the birth of Kathy’s third daughter.

  It was the first birth I’d ever seen, but even so I gave the main operation scant attention; I was far more interested in what Dan was doing. The obstetrician, a close family friend, had been clued in, but I could still sense his professional uneasiness each time Dan’s ungloved hand probed gently into the birth canal. What was visible of Dan’s expression above his mask indicated a frown of intense concentration that remained even when his hand had been withdrawn, a look that silenced the questions I was dying to ask. He reached into the canal four times during the labor, and in addition had a hand on the baby’s head from its first appearance to the moment when the crying child was laid across her mother’s breast.

  “What did you find out?” I asked him a few minutes later, after our tactful withdrawal from the birthing room. “Can you reach the baby through its mother’s nervous system?”

  “Yes,” he said, absently picking at a bloodstain he hadn’t quite managed to get off his finger. “Once I knew what I was looking for I could find it even with the loud interference from Kathy’s mind. I wouldn’t want to try it with a baby much farther from term, though—we’re still going to have to find a safe way to knock out the mothers.”

  I nodded. “How about … humanness?”

  “No doubt,” he said promptly. “Those people who want to believe the first breath is the dividing line are fooling themselves. Elizabeth Anne’s mind was as human as ours in there.”

  “‘Elizabeth Anne’?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Well, that’s the name they were planning for a girl. I sort of picked that up along the way.” The smile vanished. “Picked it up through a lot of real trauma. I don’t think I ever realized before how much it hurts to have a baby—I’m exhausted, and I only got it secondhand.”

  “Why do you think they call it labor?” I asked, only half humorously. He grimaced, and I quickly changed the subject. “So what does a baby think about in there? I mean, she couldn’t have all that much sensory experience to draw on and certainly wouldn’t have what we’d consider abstract thoughts.”

  “Oh, there really was a fair amount of sensory input—tactile and auditory mostly, but taste and even vision also got used some.” He shook his head thoughtfully, his forehead corrugated with concentration. “But it wasn’t the use of her senses, or even the way that such information was processed that made her a human being. It was—oh, I don’t know: a feeling of kinship, I guess I’d have to say. Something familiar in the mental patterns, though I’ll be damned if I can describe it.”

  “Whatever it was didn’t change at the actual birth?”

  “Not really. There was a sudden sensory overload, of course, but if anything it heightened the feeling …” He trailed off, then abruptly snapped his fingers. “That’s what it was. On some very deep level the baby felt herself to be an individual, distinct in some way from the rest of the universe.”

  “I didn’t think even young children understood that,” I said.

  “On a conscious level, no—but that part of the mind seems to be the last to develop, long after the more instinctive levels are firmly in place. Now that I think about it, I’ve picked up this sense of distinctness in babies before—even in the Kilogram Kids I worked with at Stanford last year—but just never bothered to put a label on it.”

  I pondered that for a moment. “Is that the yardstick you’re going to use, then?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “Unless I can come up with something better, I guess I’ll h
ave to. I know it sounds like pretty flimsy evidence, but it really seems to be an easy characteristic to pick up. And I’m sure I’ve never felt it in any of the other mammals I’ve touched.”

  “Um. It still sounds awfully mystical for an experiment that purports to be scientific.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a touch of asperity. “It’s the best I can do. If you don’t think it’s worth anything we can quit right now.”

  I took his arm, realizing for the first time how heavily the national controversy was weighing on him. “It’ll be all right,” I soothed him. “As long as people know exactly what you’re testing for, no one will be able to claim you misrepresented either yourself or the experiment.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed and looked at his watch. “Two-thirty. No wonder I’m dead tired. Come on, Iris; let’s go say goodbye to your friends and get out of here.”

  For a wonder, the news of our unofficial test run didn’t leak to the media at that time, and so Dan was spared the extra attention such a revelation would have generated. As it was, public interest—which had remained at a low level for the past two or three weeks—began to rise again as the procedural problems began to be worked out and Jordan announced a tentative date of July 25 for the experiment to take place.

  In light of the recently discovered papers, there is one conversation from that period that I feel must be included in this report.

  It took place on the evening of July 12 at the home of Ron Brady and his wife Susan. It had been only the previous day that Halladay’s idea of using electrical sleep stimulation had been proved adequate for Dan’s needs, removing the final obstacle still holding things up.

  “So the Lifeline Experiment’s going to come off after all,” Ron said after the dinner dishes had been cleared and the four of us had settled down in the living room.

  Dan nodded. “Looks that way. Eliot and Pam are lining up volunteers now; they expect to have that finished in ten days at the most.” He cocked an eyebrow. “You seem disapproving, somehow.”

  Ron and his wife exchanged glances. “It’s not disapproval, exactly,” Ron said hesitantly, “and it’s certainly not aimed at you. But we are a little worried about the potential influence this one experiment is going to have on the way people think about abortion and human life in general, both here and in other countries.”

  Dan shrugged. “I’m just trying to inject some facts into the situation. Is influencing people to use rational thought instead of emotion a bad thing?”

  “No, of course not,” Susan said. “But what you’re doing and what the public perceives you as doing are not necessarily the same. You’re searching for the place where a fetus’s mind becomes human; but a person is more than just his mind. Will the Lifeline Experiment show where the child’s soul and spirit enter him? I’m not at all sure it will.”

  “That almost sounds like quibbling,” I pointed out. “If Dan can detect a unique humanness in the mind, isn’t that basically the same thing as the soul?”

  “I don’t know,” Susan said frankly. “What’s more, I haven’t the foggiest idea of how you’d even begin to test that kind of assumption. It’s just the fact that the assumption is being made that concerns me.”

  “The problem we see,” Ron put in, “is that the media isn’t bothering with this—to us, at least—very important point, but is preparing the public to expect a clear-cut answer to come out of the experiment. What’s worse, every organized group that sees support for their point of view will immediately jump on the bandwagon, reinforcing the media’s oversimplification. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  “Yes.” Dan pulled at his lower lip. “Iris, have I been clear enough with the media as to exactly what the Lifeline Experiment will and won’t show?”

  Dan had talked to reporters over a hundred times since the story’s first appearance; quickly, I played back the relevant parts. “I think so,” I said slowly. “Especially since our trip to Fresno.”

  “The media’s not picking up on it,” Ron insisted.

  I nodded. “He’s right, Dan. I haven’t seen any major newspaper or TV report even mention questions like Susan’s, let alone seriously discuss them.”

  Dan pondered a moment. “Well, what do you think I should do about it? I could yell a little louder, I suppose, but evidence to date indicates that won’t do a lot of good.”

  “I tend to agree,” Ron said. “You’ve been something of a folk hero since you fought the National Academy of Sciences and won, but the extremists—on both sides—have louder voices. I’m afraid yours would probably get lost amid the postexperiment gloatings and denunciations.”

  “Do you think I should cancel the whole thing, then?” Dan asked bluntly.

  For a moment there was silence. Then Susan shook her head. “I almost wish you could, or at least that you could postpone it for a while. But at this late date canceling would probably just start fresh rumors, with each faction trying to persuade people that you’d quit because you’d learned something that supported their particular point of view and conflicted with your own.”

  Dan’s own words the morning the story appeared in the Chronicle came back to me; from the look on his face I knew he was remembering them, too. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  I think we all heard the pain in his voice. Susan was the first one to respond to it. “I’m sorry, Dan—we didn’t mean to add to the pressure. We’re not blaming you for what other people are doing with your words.”

  “I know,” Dan said. “Don’t worry about it—the pressure was there long before tonight.” He sighed. “I really wasn’t expecting it to be so intense, somehow. It wasn’t nearly this bad when I was trying to prove my telepathic ability, not even when they were calling me a criminal fraud on network TV. I must be getting soft in my old age.”

  “I doubt it,” Ron said. “The problem is more likely that last time you were the only one under the hatchet, so to speak, whereas this time your actions are going to be affecting the lives of others. You’re suffering because, whatever happens, the Lifeline Experiment is likely to hurt some group of people. That’s an infinitely heavier burden for someone like you than watching your own name dragged through the mud.”

  Dan nodded. “I wish I’d thought about that two months ago. If I’d known how I’d react, I’d never have started this whole thing in motion.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better,” Susan said gently, “it’s only because you’re so sensitive that Ron and I aren’t more worried about the experiment. We can trust you, at least, to be as honest and fair-minded in what you report as is humanly possible.”

  “Thanks.” Dan took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

  There are films of the Lifeline Experiment itself, of course, films that have been shown endless times over the past twenty years. I have seen them all and do not deny that they adequately portray the physical events that took place on July 25, 1994. But there was more than just a scientific test taking place that day. There was a battle taking place in Dan’s own mind, a battle between what his senses told him and what his reason could accept; and it was this unresolved conflict, I know now, that ultimately led to the secret study whose results have only now come to light.

  Dan and I arrived at the small lecture room where the experiment was to take place just before one o’clock. The TV and film cameras had long since been set up, and the spectators’ gallery was crammed with nearly fifty reporters and representatives of interested groups. I glimpsed Eve Unger, NIFE’s handpicked representative, and John Cooper of the Family Alliance sitting several rows apart. Near the front, in seats Dan had had reserved for them, were Ron and Susan Brady.

  The front of the room looked uncomfortably like a morgue. Laid out in neat rows were thirty waist-high gurneys, each bearing the form of a sleeping woman. From the neck down each was co
vered by a pup-tent sort of arrangement designed to give Dan limited access to the area near the uterus while minimizing physical cues that might otherwise influence him. A number was sewn onto each tent, corresponding to a numbered envelope containing the woman’s name and length of time she’d been pregnant. At a raised table at one end of the floor sat Jordan, Halladay, and John Cottingham of the Associated Press, who held the stack of envelopes.

  “We’re all set here, Dan,” Jordan said as we reached the table. “You can begin whenever you want.”

  Dan nodded, and as I slid into my own front-row seat he stepped to the nearest gurney. With a single glance at the cameras, he reached into the tents access tunnel. Almost immediately he withdrew his hand and silently picked up the number card lying on the gurney beside her. Marking one of the squares on the card, he stepped carefully over the sleep-stimulator wires and walked to the table, placing the card face down in front of Cottingham so that only its number showed. “Is it a boy or a girl, Dr. Staley?” the reporter quipped, sliding the card to one side without turning it over.

  “I’m not even going to try to guess, Mr. Cottingham,” Dan said. A slightly nervous chuckle rippled through the spectators; but I could see that Dan hadn’t meant the comment to be funny. Not even a hint of a smile made it to his face as he walked back to the next gurney. He held the contact a little longer this time, but there was no hesitation I could detect as he picked up her card and marked it. Cottingham didn’t try any jokes this time, and Dan went on to the third woman.

  All the reports I’ve ever seen refer to the tension in the room that afternoon; what they don’t usually mention is the strangely uneven quality the experimental setup imposed on it. Dan had expected—correctly, as it turned out—that the younger the fetus, the harder it would be to make both the initial contact and the determination of its humanness. But with the random order and the camouflaging tents it was impossible for anyone watching to tell how far along a given mother was. With some, the spectators would barely have settled into a watchful silence before Dan was walking away with the card; but with others, he would stand motionlessly for minutes at a time as the tension slowly grew more and more oppressive. At those times, his movement toward the card was like a lifting of Medusa’s curse, and there would be a brief flurry of noise as people shifted in their seats and whispered comments to each other. The reprieve would last until Dan started his next contact, and the tension would then begin its slow rise again.