Orsino did so with Berkowitz’s not-entirely-approving help. Again, Orsino cocked his head and listened. “I hear words,” he said, “but they’re disjointed and overlapping, like different people speaking.”
“I’m not trying to think consciously,” said Renshaw. “When you talk, I hear an echo.”
Berkowitz said, dryly, “Don’t talk, Jenny. Blank out your mind and see if he doesn’t hear you think.”
Orsino said, “I don’t hear any echo when you talk, Jim.”
Berkowitz said, “If you don’t shut up, you won’t hear anything.”
A heavy silence fell on all three. Then, Orsino nodded, reached for pen and paper on the desk and wrote something.
Renshaw reached out, threw a switch and pulled the leads up and over her head, shaking her hair back into place. She said, “1 hope that what you wrote down was: ‘ Adam, raise Cain with the front office and Jim will eat crow.’ “
Orsino said, “It’s what I wrote down, word for word.”
Renshaw said, “Well, there you are. Working telepathy, and we don’t have to use it to transmit nonsense sentences either. Think of the use in psychiatry and in the treatment of mental disease. Think of its use in education and in teaching machines. Think of its use in legal investigations and criminal trials.”
Orsino said, wide-eyed, “Frankly, the social implications are staggering. I don’t know if something like this should be allowed.”
“Under proper legal safeguards, why not?” said Renshaw, indifferently. “Anyway-if you two join me now, our combined weight can carry this thing and push it over. And if you come along with me it will be Nobel Prize time for-”
Berkowitz said grimly, “I’m not in this. Not yet.”
“What? What do you mean?” Renshaw sounded outraged, her coldly beautiful face flushed suddenly.
“Telepathy is too touchy. It’s too fascinating, too desired. We could be fooling ourselves.”
“Listen for yourself, Jim.”
“I could be fooling myself, too. I want a control.” “What do you mean, a control?”
“Short-circuit the origin of thought. Leave out the animal. No marmoset. No human being. Let Orsino listen to metal and glass and laser light and if he still hears thought, then we’re kidding ourselves.”
“Suppose he detects nothing.”
“Then I’ll listen and if without looking-if you can arrange to have me in the next room-I can tell when you are in and when you are out of circuit, then I’ll consider joining you in this thing.”
“Very well, then,” said Renshaw, “we’ll try a control. I’ve never done it, but it isn’t hard.” She maneuvered the leads that had been over her head and put them into contact with each other. “Now, Adam, if you will resume-”
But before she could go further, there came a cold, clear sound, as pure and as clean as the tinkle of breaking icicles:
“At last!”
Renshaw said, “What?”
Orsino said, “Who said-”
Berkowitz said, “Did someone say, “At last’?”
Renshaw, pale, said, “It wasn’t sound. It was in my-Did you two-”
The clear sound came again, “I’m Mi-”
And Renshaw tore the leads apart and there was silence. She said with a voiceless motion of her lips, “I think it’s my computer-Mike.”
“You mean he’s thinking?” said Orsino, nearly as voiceless. Renshaw said in an unrecognizable voice that at least had regained sound, “I said it was complex enough to have something-Do you suppose-It always turned automatically to the abstract-thought gram of whatever brain was in its circuit. Do you suppose that with no brain in the circuit, it turned to its own?”
There was silence, then Berkowitz said, “ Are you trying to say that this computer thinks, but can’t express its thoughts as long as it’s under force of programming, but that given the chance in your LEG system-”
“But that can’t be so?” said Orsino, high-pitched. “No one was receiving. It’s not the same thing.”
Renshaw said, “The computer works on much greater power-intensities than brains do. I suppose it can magnify itself to the point where we can detect it directly without artificial aid. How else can you explain-”
Berkowitz said, abruptly, “Well, you have another application of lasers, then. It enables you to talk to computers as independent intelligences, person to person.”
And Renshaw said, “Oh, God, what do we do now?”
Segregationist
The surgeon looked up without expression. “Is he ready?”
“Ready is a relative term,” said the med-eng. “We’re ready. He’s restless.”
“They always are… Well, it’s a serious operation.”
“Serious or not, he should be thankful. He’s been chosen for it over an enormous number of possibles and frankly, I don’t think…”
“Don’t say it,” said the surgeon. “The decision is not ours to make.”
“We accept it. But do we have to agree?”
“Yes,” said the surgeon, crisply. “We agree. Completely and wholeheartedly. The operation is entirely too intricate to approach with mental reservations. This man has proven his worth in a number of ways and his profile is suitable for the Board of Mortality.”
“All right,” said the med-eng, unmollified.
The surgeon said, “I’ll see him right in here, I think. It is small enough and personal enough to be comforting.”
“It won’t help. He’s nervous, and he’s made up his mind.”
“Has he indeed?”
“Yes. He wants metal; they always do.”
The surgeon’s face did not change expression. He stared at his hands. “Sometimes one can talk them out of it.”
“Why bother?” said the med-eng, indifferently. “If he wants metal, let it be metal.”
“You don’t care?”
“Why should I?” The med-eng said it almost brutally. “Either way it’s a medical engineering problem and I’m a medical engineer. Either way, I can handle it. Why should I go beyond that?”
The surgeon said stolidly, “To me, it is a matter of the fitness of things.”
“Fitness! You can’t use that as an argument. What does the patient care about the fitness of things?”
“I care.”
“You care in a minority. The trend is against you. You have no chance.”
“I have to try.” The surgeon waved the med-eng into silence with a quick wave of his hand-no impatience to it, merely quickness. He had already informed the nurse and he had already been signaled concerning her approach. He pressed a small button and the double-door pulled swiftly apart. The patient moved inward in his motorchair, the nurse stepping briskly along beside him.
“You may go, nurse,” said the surgeon, “but wait outside. I will be calling you.” He nodded to the med-eng, who left with the nurse, and the door closed behind them.
The man in the chair looked over his shoulder and watched them go. His neck was scrawny and there were fine wrinkles about his eyes. He was freshly shaven and the fingers of his hands, as they gripped the arms of the chair tightly, showed manicured nails. He was a high-priority patient and he was being taken care of… But there was a look of settled peevishness on his face.
He said, “Will we be starting today?”
The surgeon nodded. “This afternoon, Senator.”
“I understand it will take weeks.”
“Not for the operation itself, Senator. But there are a number of subsidiary points to be taken care of. There are some circulatory renovations that must be carried through, and hormonal adjustments. These are tricky things.”
“Are they dangerous?” Then, as though feeling the need for establishing a friendly relationship, but patently against his will, he added, “… doctor?”
The surgeon paid no attention to the nuances of expression. He said, flatly, “Everything is dangerous. We take our time in order that it be less dangerous. It is the time required, the skill of many individuals united, the equipment, that makes such operations available to so few…”