Rule of the Brains

by John Russell Fearn

  “Sixty-six,” Brenda Charteris rapped out.

  Everything was going as it should. The noise of the machinery increased, and with this came a corresponding change in the needles of the various registers. In particular the thermometer registering the interior temperature of the tube began to show a decided drop.

  In a matter of three minutes the register needle was down to 32 F. degrees, and after that it began a steady crawl into the depths towards the normal Fahrenheit zero.

  Nor did it stop there. The register, specially devised for extreme below-zero temperatures, still continued the downward descent. Turner watched the meters intently and kept his hands on the controls; then he turned sharply at an exclamation from Brenda Charteris.

  “The heartbeats are only registering sixteen to the minute! Sherman can’t possibly live at such a low pulse-rate!”

  “I’m the best judge of that, Nurse Charteris. Even if the heartbeats only register two to the minute it will suffice.”

  Brenda Charteris bit her lip. In the past few days Sherman Clarke had come to mean more to her than she had cared to admit. “Only two—!” her voice tailed off.

  Turner took no notice. He knew exactly what he was doing. And only when the temperature was minus 120 F. degrees, did he switch the power off and turn to make a survey of the instruments Brenda Charteris had been watching. She gave him a troubled look. Over on the far side of the room the rest of the party were watching intently in complete silence.

  “Everything is exactly as it should be,” Turner said, at that moment sympathetic to the white-faced girl’s anxiety.

  “I would remind you that this experiment is right outside the field of ordinary medicine—hence the appearances are unusual. At the moment Sherman Clarke is in the coma caused by deep freezing. This is the vital part of the operation, where I start the brain surgery. Once I’ve set up these electrically controlled instruments through that tube I can complete the trepanning and synthetic nerve linkup without drawing a drop of blood.

  “What has happened is that the molecules of his body have been slowed down to the minimum. With that slowing down we get the extreme coldness, since all energy of motion is purely molecular activity. Clarke will remain like this until the operation is over, and I set the counteractive electrical energy in being, which will restore his molecular activity to normal.”

  Turner set to work, assembling his special instruments after he had sterilised his hands in the vat of antiseptic Brenda Charteris passed to him. In one respect Clarke was fortunate: the instruments would operate through specially prepared apertures in the tube just above the headrest, and the tube itself was effectively sealed off from the atmosphere—and possible infection—of the annex.

  Turner performed the trepanning with consummate skill—expert even for the advanced knowledge of 2068 medicine. No blood flowed; the freezing prevented it. Then delicate probes knitted the vital synthetic nerve to the operative and inoperative sections of Clarke’s naked brain.

  Almost an hour passed as he laboured on under the brilliant arcs, Brenda Charteris assisting tirelessly. The strain was intense, but at last his work was flawlessly done. He closed up the skull, grafted back skin and bone, wiped across pungent healing ointments. Broodingly he watched as the scar on Clarke’s forehead began to knit slowly to a thin pale line, rapidly disappearing. There was only the faintest trace that a surgical miracle had been carried out.

  The girl expelled a low, long sigh of relief that was echoed by the intent onlookers. Turner stood aside, mopping his perspiring face with a towel, which Brenda Charteris handed to him.

  “Stand by the gauges again,” he told her. “I’m going to attempt to restore him to normal temperature.”

  Deliberately he closed the make-and-break switch. Instantly the machinery began to hum, swiftly rising to the steady whine of maximum.

  Within the tube, nothing, so far, had happened. The filigree of wires around the tube immediately started to glow. The contact points shone brightly. Electric energy surged and then died away again.

  “Any reaction?” Turner demanded tensely.

  “Not yet. Heartbeats sixteen per minute. Temperature minus one-twenty Fahrenheit. Wait—seventeen!” The girl was exultant. “Eighteen! Heartbeats are becoming faster! Oh, this is wonderful! Temperature has risen one-eighteen. We’re on the right track!”

  Keeping his emotions well in hand, Turner still went systematically about his task. He was reflecting on the tragedy that Clifford Braxton had not lived to see the vindication of his experiments.

  There was no doubt that the reversal process was operating correctly. With the passage of seconds the temperature rose steadily and the increase in Clarke’s heartbeats and respiration kept exact step—until at length Turner had made all the possible moves on the switchboard, and there was nothing left for him to do but watch the outcome.

  The frost inside the tube gradually faded away into moisture, and that too finally dried away into vapour and passed off through vents specially contrived for the purpose. Brenda Charteris, eager as she was to take a look at Clarke, remained at her post before the meters.

  “Sixty-eight beats to the minute!” she exclaimed finally. “Temperature nearing seventy degrees, which is the room temperature. We’ve done it, Mr. Turner. Sherman is alive and well!”

  At that the other men and women in the room surged eagerly forward, crowding round Turner and shaking his hand and congratulating him on the miracle of surgery.

  The glaze of frozen solidity had left Clarke’s flesh. Into his face crept a faint flush of colour—and it was at this point that the hum of the machinery suddenly ceased.

  Instantly Brenda Charteris and the others wheeled in alarm, staring at it. Then Turner’s taut, excited voice reassured them.

  “Nothing to worry about. Cliff Braxton constructed his apparatus to automatically cut itself out on the thermostatic principle once the correct level has been reached.”

  “Thank heaven for that!” someone exclaimed. “It seemed as if the apparatus had broken down at a vital moment—”

  Then Clarke opened his eyes—not slowly like one aroused from sleep, but as though he had suddenly been called by name.

  Immediately there was a flurry in the party. Now that Clarke was conscious there was even a sense of embarrassment amongst the women onlookers. The men stared fixedly in relief and incredulity.

  As Clarke stirred within the tube, Boyd Turner went into action, spinning the wing nuts swiftly and then taking off the heavy cover. The airtight rubber sheath followed, and the end of the tube was wide open with Clarke’s shaven head facing towards him.

  “Are—are you all right?” he asked, a slight catch in his voice.

  Within the tube Clarke smiled. “Of course I’m all right. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?”

  Getting out of the tube presented a certain problem. In the first instance Clarke had had to be ‘inserted’ in the tube: now the opposite performance was called for. He pushed with his bare feet until his head emerged, then Brenda Charteris fussed uncertainly at the vision of bare arms and shoulders sliding towards her.

  “Er—perhaps you—” She looked hopefully at Turner.

  He gave a nod, seized Clarke firmly under the arms and tugged. In a moment he had slithered headlong out of the tube and then stood up.

  “Thanks,” he smiled at Turner, “for everything.” The emphasis on the last word was unmistakable. “And you too, Brenda—” he broke off as he saw the girl regarding him with increasing embarrassment.

  “Perhaps someone could pass me my clothes—?” he suggested.

  “Coming right up,” Thomas Lannon said, reaching to where Clarke had left them.

  Clarke quickly donned his clothes with easy familiarity, then he regarded the assembly. They had gathered a respectable distance away from him. Something about his voice—an odd note of command—and the look in his eyes made them momentarily uneasy.

  “I sense from your expressions and from y
our minds that you are wondering just what effect Boyd Turner’s experiment has had.” Again that strange smile. “Yes, your minds: I can read them clearly. I have certain powers. The experiment has succeeded.”

  * * * *

  By early evening, just as the first lights should have been coming up in the city, evidence of the breakdown in power which Clarke had forecast became noticeable. The Atomic Transformer in Machine Hall burned out its dampening controls. Unable to cope with a rapidly rising overload it caught fire, eating out its core.

  The effect was immediate—and cataclysmic, since many other machines were linked to it—and they in turn sent their power to the vital feeder cables to other cities. The first collapse was seen in a universal failure of the lighting systems. Desperate radio signals flashed out to Major City, and were ignored by the Arbiter standing immovable in its darkened room.

  Then the signals ceased as their source of power failed as well.... The stoppage of power brought a foretaste of hell to every city, and the capital in particular. It struck terror into the hearts and minds of renegade Workers in the streets, and the Duty Officers abandoned trying to quell the revolution, which had spread like a devouring flame.

  Lifts crashed to the bottom of their shafts; radiation-power driven cars, aero-taxis, planes, and countless other vehicles went hurtling to destruction. In the darkness was an inconceivable and cumulative chaos.

  Then the failure of the weather-machines became evident by reason of a sudden terrific storm which burst over the metropolis. A deluge of rain and hail, a thing unknown in such violence for fifty years, drove the people to the best shelter they could find. Jagged flashes of lightning revealed their pell-mell struggle to get out of the catastrophe that had descended. Here and there a voice called on the Arbiter for assistance—in vain.

  The Arbiter, in truth, was otherwise occupied. Ever since it had destroyed Dr. Carfax, it had been trying futilely to nail down one particular mind to obey its orders, to force that person to get together a force sufficient to flush out Sherman Clarke and his followers and destroy them. But the confusion of thoughts, the terror abroad in the stricken city—the more horrible because it was unaccustomed—had prevented such action. It would have to wait until things were calmer.

  Waiting, however, was not the wish of Sherman Clarke. He knew just how desperate things were. There was a real possibility of city after city being destroyed if an effort were not made to get order out of chaos and repair some of the ruined engineering giants. The people too, like hothouse plants exposed now to the winds of normal everyday life in a pitiless world, would die in the tens of thousands. His sensitive mind was fully attuned to the terror around him, the stark possibilities fully realised.

  For two hours, whilst his body was recovering from the operation and freezing, Clarke had been in conversation with Boyd Turner and his comrades. They were discussing science, a plan of attack, and above all the Arbiter. Whilst they had talked in the light of the battery-driven lamps, their ears had become attuned to the savage onslaught of the elements outside.

  “I underwent the operation for a purpose, and I mean to fulfil it,” Clarke said deliberately. “No matter what the possible consequences to myself.”

  There was no response. The others could not possibly view the situation with the same standpoint as a mental colossus. The brain operation made them as apart as the denizens of two distinct planets.

  “It would seem that you are still baffled by the Arbiter’s lack of interest in any future development,” Clarke remarked presently.

  “We have been right from the start,” Brenda Charteris agreed. “I suppose it must be because the Arbiter is not normal flesh and blood.”

  “At least you touch the hem of the truth. Carfax forgot that a brain, in progressing, must expand. Boyd Turner’s operation on me has proved that human beings use only a fifth of their full brain capacity that, later, will develop. But in the machine it was strangled. Carfax and the surgeon Claythorne made these mechanical brains fixed to what was, at that time, the present! To the Arbiter, it is always the present! Being rigid metal, the brains can’t expand, are unable to go a step beyond the day of their creation. And the replacement of flesh and blood by machinery means that the brains cannot apply human intuition or responses.

  “That is why the Arbiter destroys all things that suggest progress, and also because it fears any sign of progress will bring its power to an end. Having no human sentiment, it destroys without question....”

  “Conservatism gone mad,” Boyd Turner muttered. “And the thing is invulnerable,” he added dispiritedly. “Overwhelming mental force inside a framework of interlocked atoms. A hell of a combination!”

  “Devilish, certainly, but not insurmountable.”

  “You—you mean—?” Hope leapt into Turner’s eyes, and the rest of the assembly listened attentively.

  “I mean that the Arbiter can—and must—be destroyed!”

  Clarke sat brooding for a long time as the others waited anxiously. His calm, mysterious eyes watched the men and women moving about the chamber in restless anxiety. What thoughts were passing through his five-fold brain they did not know—until at last they were put into words.

  “I’ve been pondering ways and means,” Clarke explained. “One can kill a human being by sealing it up in an airtight room, but you can’t kill a machine in that fashion. But I was wondering if I could devise a means of reflecting the Arbiter’s high-powered thoughts back on itself. They might recoil with sufficient devastation to unhinge the brains and cause insanity. But that might have repercussions. Even as it is, comparatively sane, the Arbiter is deadly....”

  Sherman Clarke hesitated, then shook his head.

  “No, that’s out. We need total destruction, so the only course is to destroy the machine which houses the brains, then the brains themselves.”

  “But how can that be done?” Brenda Charteris asked anxiously, standing beside Turner. “The metal was specially treated by Dr. Carfax.”

  “So it was. But since my operation I understand atomic science in all its complex detail because my mind is attuned to it. I understand it as clearly as normal people understand the processes that govern birth. Carfax once outlined a theory to me that the cosmos itself is structured from infinite thought, that all around us is a sea of thought. The moment that I was given that synthetic connection between the normal and subconscious areas of my brain, I became attuned to the outpourings of the universe. I am the first man possessing the necessary brain structure to interpret the vast selection of metaphysical radiations that go to make up physical reality.

  “Hitherto science has only assumed facts about sub-atomic science. I understand them intuitively. Carfax was ingenious enough to find a way of mating materials so that their atomic spaces fitted into the atomic matter of the other, meshing as tightly as the cogs in a gear wheel. He also chose materials with opposite atomic poles, knowing that by the law of opposites the two would attract each other and therefore lock immovably.”

  There was a silence at this astonishing scientific exposition. Brenda Charteris stared wide-eyed. There was something uncanny about Clarke’s transfiguration.

  “But there’s no known power which can tear atomic charges apart!” Boyd Turner insisted.

  Sherman Clarke gave a mystical smile. “I think there is. Opposite charges cancel out by neutralisation. In other words, all I need is a magnetism strong enough to force the poles of those atomic systems to point in one direction only. With both pointing the same way the charge will not be opposite, but identical—and of course like charges repel. The whole structure will fall to pieces....”

  His mind made up, Sherman Clarke turned aside and examined Clifford Braxton’s apparatus. In a few minutes he had removed a section of the covering and was keenly examining the wiring within. His eyes strayed to the battery-driven lights dotted about in various positions. The lamps, as he well knew, used atomic force emitted in very slight charges. They utilised a tiny copper cube,
which was atomically unstable, giving off its energy on a trickle-dispersion system.

  Clarke’s eyes gleamed. “If I use the power-cores of these lamps, I’ll have a portable power system to provide the radiation I need.” His hands reached out to strip the wiring coils from the suspended animation casket. “These can easily be transformed....” He glanced up at the bewildered faces around him and smiled.

  “Just do as I ask,” he ordered, “and leave the rest to me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  It was perhaps three hours before Sherman Clarke had finished. Though the men and women had stood about and watched they had not understood a fraction of the intricacies involved.

  “Here, I think, we have the key to our liberty,” Clarke said finally, surveying the queer arrangements of coils and battery-cores he had fashioned into the shape of a projector. “The surest way to find out is to try it...if you are prepared for that?”

  Heads nodded resolutely in the glow of the single remaining lamp.

  “We’re ready,” Boyd Turner answered quietly. “Let’s get the thing over before matters get any worse.”

  Clarke picked up the equipment in his powerful arms and led the way to the door. He opened it, then as a single body they went through the deserted hallway and out into the tempest.

  It was still raining heavily. An icy wind buffeted through the darkness.

  “Do you feel the Arbiter’s mind trying to reach you, destroy you?” Clarke asked through clenched teeth as they advanced down the empty main street towards the city centre.

  “Not exactly,” Boyd Turner answered, doubtfully. “I can feel a headache, but nothing more.”

  “As we come nearer to the Arbiter you’ll know what I mean! Being more sensitive, I can detect it at a distance.... We shall have to fight this thing by willpower alone, refuse to be smashed down by it. Perhaps I should have made protective helmets, except for the time it would have taken....”