"I gave you four brains, severed at the medula. The occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the front lobes were all undamaged."
"Right," said Dr. Caldwell. He needed a medical lecture from this clown like he needed an asphalt enema.
"I was especially careful of the occipital lobe, which we do know is the area of elaboration of thought."
"Good," said Dr. Caldwell. "Very good. You pronounce medical terms very well. Sure you didn't study medicine?"
"Medicine was fed into me."
"Intravenously?"
"No, medical knowledge. Garbage in, garbage out."
"Heh, heh, you sound like a computer."
"In a way. But not as viable as I should like."
"Don't we all feel that way?" said Dr. Caldwell. He drank to that.
"Now, have you isolated that area of the brain which has the greatest creativity? What we will do once we isolate this area is transform the weak electro-chemical signals of the body to electronic signals that I can use. We would need living people for that."
"Brilliant," said Dr. Caldwell. "I toast your genius."
"Have you done it?"
"No," said Dr. Caldwell.
"Why not?"
"I think we're approaching this unscientifically."
"I am open to your suggestions."
"Let's discuss it over a drink at Mitro's."
"I need no drink, and you have one."
"All right. I'll be frank. I took this case hoping I would be able to help you. But you haven't helped me."
"In what way?" asked Mr. Gordons.
"I need more information. You haven't been honest with me."
"I am incapable of being dishonest under normal circumstances."
"On that, sir, I will say you need a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist. It is humanly impossible to be honest all the time. Impossible. Thank you for coming, but I think your case is hopeless, and frankly, I need a good drink now more than I need an incurable patient. I always get the hopeless ones. When they're terminal, give 'em to old Caldwell. No wonder I have to drink. Do you know how many people I've had to tell that their loved ones did not survive operations?"
"No."
"Plenty. I figured out that I, more than any doctor in the hospital, had to inform more families of the deaths of their loved ones than anyone else. Any other doctor. Even those cancer freaks. You know why?"
"Possibly."
"I'll tell you why. I got the shit patients. I'd get tumors that weren't quite what they looked like on X-rays. I'd get brain structure that, while it looked normal, wasn't really all that normal, and all the while, with these really fucked-up brains, nurses betraying me with vicious little lies about drunkenness. Vicious. That was all I needed to top off the worst patient list in the hospital. Send the disasters to Caldwell. And now I've got another one. You."
"I said I was incapable under most circumstances of being dishonest. In my case this is not a mental illness but a scientific fact. It takes creativity to be a truly good liar. I seek creativity."
"You want to be creative," said Dr. Caldwell, filling his glass angrily. Who wouldn't drink, with these dumdums all around? "You want to be creative, you go to Hollywood. You want the best brain surgeon ever held a scalpel, you come to me. Now what the fuck do you want from me?"
"I thought you would isolate that area of the brain that provides creativity."
"It's in the occipital lobe. And no, you can't transform creative waves. Just impulses which aren't creativity." Dr. Caldwell weaved from the table, with the rye bottle firmly in his left hand, the glass in his right.
"You want brilliant brain surgery? Here I am. But don't come to me with creativity nonsense. I'm a brain surgeon." There was something slippery on the floor, and Dr. Caldwell lost his balance. Very close to the wooden floor now, he searched for what he had slipped on. Couldn't find it. He got to his feet again, rather easily. He was being helped up by Mr. Gordons. Strong sonuvabitch, but weren't the insane always strong?
Why was it he always got the weirdos? This one even started on the story of his life. Mr. Gordons was born two years ago. Two years ago? Right. Okay. I'll drink to that. A two-year-old who looked like he was in his mid-thirties and hoisted brilliant brain surgeons around as if they were feathers.
Wasn't born exactly. Well, that was nice. Maybe he was immaculately conceived? No, he wasn't. Not in that sense although his first environment was incredibly free of dust and germs. He was one of a generation of space products. Vehicles created to survive in outer space.
Mr. Gordons was an android. He was the best of the space machines. His inventor was a brilliant scientist but she found herself unable to design a truly creative machine, one that could think for itself in unforeseen situations. She did the best she could. She invented Mr. Gordons who was a survival machine. While he could not be creative, he could find ways to survive. He could change his appearance, his functions. Anything to survive.
His inventor had had a drinking problem also. She named all her space inventions for brands of alcohol. Hence Mr. Gordons. Sometimes he used Mr. Regal. But that was unimportant. At one point, it became a verified fact that to stay at the laboratory where he had been created would mean destruction, and so he left.
He had no great problems except for two humans who would ultimately destroy him, if he did not destroy them. For this, Mr. Gordons needed access to creativity. Did Dr. Caldwell understand?
"What do you mean 'drinking problem also'?"
"You are an alcoholic."
"What do you know? You're a machine anyhow. Hey, don't bother me. You want some Hollywood agent. Not me."
And then something peculiar happened. Along with the brains, Dr. Caldwell found himself shut inside the refrigerator. And it was cold. But he didn't mind. He had his bottle, and besides, he felt sleepy.
Very sleepy.
CHAPTER SIX
Remo stretched his arms slowly, reaching farther and farther. He pushed his heels out farther and farther. He let the air come into his lungs more and more, and then, when he was at the fullest capacity, he held, suspended like a white light in an eternity of darkness. He felt beyond the mat on which he lay face downward, beyond the motel room in Burwell, Nebraska. He was one with the original light, light of life, force in voice, one.
If a passerby could have looked into the motel room, he would have seen a man lying on a mat on the floor with his arms and legs outstretched, not even stretched beyond normal. He would have seen the figure lying very still. And he would have passed on and missed the uniqueness of the exercise.
For Remo was this way nearly half an hour, and his heartbeat had slowed close to death. Even his blood pumped more lightly, the heart at the very shallow edge of stopping.
The light filled and was him. And then he let it go. Slowly. First from his fingers, then from his toes, up his limbs, the light returning quietly to the universe, and then it left his shoulders and his head and his heart. With a snapping motion, the flat form was on its feet, and Remo was breathing normally.
Chiun was catching up on his daytime dramas. A taping device which had been provided by CURE picked up those shows which ran simultaneously so that Chiun could watch the soap operas for six hours straight, though lately he complained about their filth and violence. He was now seeing the taped reruns of the shows he had missed on the day they had gone to Folcroft. He began at dawn, and at 11 A.M. he would switch to the current shows.
"Disgusting," said Chiun as Varna Haltington made a lewd suggestion to Dr. Bruce Andrews, whom she knew to be married to Alice Freemantle, her own niece, who had been raped by Damien Plester, an ex-minister of the Universal Realism Church, and who was now contemplating an abortion. According to Remo's recollection, Alice had been contemplating this abortion since the previous March, and the kid should have been born by now, a normal fourteen-month full-term infant, weighing somewhere between forty and fifty pounds.