“It’s even better if you’re here,” Adam whispered. “From where I am now, it isn’t just an image, Josh. It’s real. It happens inside your brain instead of on a screen in front of your eyes, and it’s as real as if it were actually happening. You don’t need eyes and ears, Josh. You don’t need any thing. Everything you want is right there, and all you have to do is think it to make it real.”
“H-How?” Josh breathed. “How does it work?”
Adam smiled at him again. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “The only way to know is to do it yourself. And you can do it, Josh. You can come here, too.”
Josh’s heart was pounding. It was all impossible. Everything he was hearing and seeing was impossible.
And yet it was happening. Adam was there, an image of him so perfect that Josh felt as if he could actually touch him.
His gloved hand went up, and the image of his hand on the screen rose with it. He reached out, but just as he was about to brush his fingers against Adam Aldrich’s face, he froze as another voice came through the headphones that covered his ears.
“Help me, someone help me …”
Josh’s blood ran cold as he recognized Amy Carlson’s voice. He tore the mask from his face and jerked the glove from his hand. But as he reached out with his trembling fingers to turn off the computer, he knew without a doubt that what he had heard had been real.
Amy was still alive somewhere.
But whom could he tell?
Who would believe him?
23
Hildie Kramer came awake to the insistent electronic beeping of the phone by her bed. She groped in the darkness, found the receiver and put it against her ear, her eyes still closed. When she heard George Engersol’s voice, her eyes snapped open and she sat straight up in bed.
“You’d better come down here right away. We have a problem.”
She didn’t have to ask where he was — the single word “down” told her he was in the lab beneath the mansion’s basement. The last vestiges of sleep dropping away, she heaved herself out of bed, dressed quickly, and left her apartment, slipping quietly up the stairs to the fourth floor instead of using the noisy antique elevator. Letting herself into Engersol’s apartment, she summoned the second elevator that was hidden behind the bookshelves. Descending into the depths of the sub-basement, she wondered what could have happened to make Engersol summon her after midnight.
The elevator doors slid open, and Hildie stepped out into the tiled hall, turning toward the primary laboratory at the end of the short corridor. As she entered the room she stopped short, staring at the monitor that hung on the wall above the tank containing Amy Carlson’s brain.
On the monitor an image was flickering. At first Hildie couldn’t figure out what it was, for it seemed to be almost fluid, shimmering and breaking up like a reflection on the surface of a rippling pool. Then, for a moment, the image steadied.
The pale face of a young girl, framed by curling tresses of red hair.
Amy Carlson’s face.
And yet, not Amy’s face.
The image held for a few seconds, then began to waver, dissolving for an instant, then reforming, but slightly differently from the way it had appeared before.
“What is it?” Hildie breathed, instinctively knowing that this was what Engersol had summoned her to see.
Engersol, who had been standing with his back to Hildie, his eyes fixed on the monitor, spoke without turning around. “It’s Amy. She’s already learned how to handle the graphics program.”
“But it can’t be,” Hildie replied. “It took Adam five days before he discovered how to manipulate it at all. And Amy’s only been awake for—”
“Twelve hours,” Engersol finished.
“Can she hear us?” Hildie asked.
Engersol shook his head. “I’ve turned the sound system off. But I’ve been watching her all evening, and I’m not sure what to do. She’s learning much faster than Adam did.”
He handed Hildie a stack of computer printouts, which Hildie quickly scanned, although most of the numbers and graphs meant little to her. On the last page she saw a comparison graph showing the learning curves of the two brains in the tanks.
Adam Aldrich’s brain had remained quiescent for the first two days after it had been put into the tank, and it wasn’t until the third day that it began to show signs of exploring the environment around itself, sending barely measurable electronic impulses through the leads to which it was attached, into the computers at the other ends of those leads. From there the curve had gone slowly but steadily upward as Adam’s brain learned to tap into the computer network of which it was now a part.
By the fourth day Adam had begun discovering how to locate the data he needed, and how to manipulate that data so he could communicate with the world beyond the glass tank in which his brain was now ensconced.
It had been less than forty-eight hours ago that he had first sent that brief message to his mother’s computer, and only yesterday afternoon that he had begun experimenting with the full graphic potential of the Croyden computer in the adjoining room, constructing in his mind a program of complex bitmaps that he could then export to the Croyden, which, in its turn, would build the images Adam imagined on the monitor above his tank.
Amy Carlson, Hildie could see from the second learning curve displayed by the chart, had accomplished in only half a day almost everything that it had taken Adam Aldrich nearly a week to learn.
Hildie unconsciously ran her tongue over her lower lip as she thought about what it might mean.
“Is she learning from Adam?” she asked finally, setting the sheaf of data on the desk next to which she was standing.
“I think that might be part of it,” Engersol mused. “But there’s more to it.”
“She’s smarter than Adam,” Hildie pointed out. “Her IQ is seventeen points higher than his.”
“That’s another part of it. But I think it’s even more than that. Look.”
He picked up the sheaf of paper from where Hildie had left it, flipped through it quickly, then pulled out a single sheet. Hildie glanced at it, recognizing it immediately. It was a partial printout of the display she’d seen on the monitor above Amy’s tank as she’d awakened earlier that day. As Hildie was examining it more closely, Engersol gave her a second chart, this one showing the activity in Adam Aldrich’s mind as he’d awakened after the operation that had transferred his brain into the tank.
While Amy’s mind had gone mad with activity, creating graphic images that were nothing more than meaningless jumbles, Adam’s brain waves showed much more normal activity, clearly reflecting the pattern of a human mind awakening from a deep sleep.
Hildie glanced up at Engersol. “Obviously you see something here that I don’t. It looks as if Amy went insane as soon as she woke up. But from what’s been happening to her since then, she apparently didn’t.”
Engersol’s finger tapped on the graphic display of Amy’s mental condition that morning. “Ruling out insanity,” he said, “what is the first word that comes into your mind when you look at that?”
Hildie’s eyes went once more to the graph, and she spoke without thinking. “Temper tantrum.”
“Exactly,” Engersol agreed. “What you’re looking at is a very angry child. She figured out very quickly what happened to her, and she’s furious about it. And she’s trying to do something about it.”
Hildie’s brows came together. “But what?” she asked. “What’s she trying to do?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to her yet. That’s why I called you. We’ll both listen to her, and then decide what has to be done.”