Jeff would play his part.
As soon as the Aldriches were gone, Engersol accompanied Hildie Kramer back to her office. Then he rode the clattering brass elevator up to his apartment, let himself in, and immediately released the hidden catch on the bookcase. Stepping into the concealed elevator, he pulled the bookcase closed and descended to the laboratory buried deep beneath the basement. Scanning the monitors that displayed every aspect of the physical condition of the two brains submerged in their twin tanks, he stopped for a moment to admire the organs themselves.
They looked almost artificial in their perfection, the folds of their lobes twisting over upon themselves, expanding their surfaces tenfold over what they might have been without the folds.
Both brains, released now from the confines of the skulls they had so perfectly filled, seemed to be expanding, the folds loosening slightly, the surface area increasing.
Adam’s brain, larger than Amy’s, seemed to Engersol to have grown overnight. When he checked its displacement factor in the tank, he found he was right, though the growth wasn’t quite as much as he’d hoped for. Still, Adam’s brain was expanding rapidly, and Amy’s was beginning to grow as well.
What would happen as the organs continued to grow? Would the intelligence of the two personalities contained within the organs increase, too?
And what would happen to the personalities themselves? Would they be affected?
But how could they not, given the circumstances under which they now lived?
He tried to imagine what it would be like to live without a body, to exist in the world as pure intellect, freed forever from the everyday inconveniences of maintaining a body.
In a way, he almost wished that he himself could go into one of the tanks, be done with all the annoyances that distracted him from his work all but a few hours a day. But right now it was impossible. Until he’d watched these two brains, and the ones that soon would join them, and understood exactly how they functioned in the artificial environment he had created for them, he dared not risk it.
After all, these two brains — and possibly many more to follow — might yet die. Indeed, there was a good possibility that he might have to kill Amy Carlson this very afternoon.
He’d been thinking about the problem of Amy all night, getting only an hour or two of sleep just before dawn, then awakening in the bright sunlight with the answer in his mind.
By now, undoubtedly, she had calmed down. She was one of the most intelligent children who had ever come to the Academy. Certainly by this morning she would understand that there was nothing she could do about her situation.
Nor could he, or anyone else.
It was one thing to remove a living brain from its skull and keep it alive in the nutrient solution.
It was quite another to put it back into its host body, for the body, of course, had died the moment the brain was removed.
Surely Amy had figured that out by now, and come to accept her circumstances. Her choice was simple — either cooperate with him, or die.
And die she would, for he had already devised a method to circumvent the sabotage she’d planned.
It was simply a matter of putting her to sleep.
First, though, he was going to have to deal with Adam Aldrich. He tapped instructions into the keyboard, instructions that would activate the sound system.
A message appeared on the screen:
SOUND SYSTEM ALREADY ACTIVATED.
Engersol frowned. He was certain he’d turned the sound off last night. He and Hildie had been discussing things neither of them wanted Adam or Amy to hear.
But now it was on.
How long had it been on?
“Adam,” he said, his voice quiet, but heavy with the anger he was feeling toward the boy. “I want to talk to you.”
Instantly the monitor above Adam’s tank flashed on and an image of the boy appeared. His eyes were wide, his expression worried. “Y-You found out, didn’t you?” he asked. “Dad told you what I did.”
“Yes, he did. And if Jeff hadn’t acted guilty, you could have jeopardized the entire project Do you understand that?”
“Y-Yes,” Adam stammered. “Are you really mad at me?”
“Of course I am,” Dr. Engersol replied. “You’ve gotten your brother into a lot of trouble, and you might have gotten all of us into a lot of trouble.”
On the monitor above the screen, Adam’s chin quivered. “I didn’t mean to get Jeff in—” he began, but Engersol didn’t let him finish.
“I need Jeff here, Adam. I need him for the project, and he wants to be part of it. I don’t expect you to do anything else to jeopardize it Is that clear?”
On the screen, Adam’s image nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“I expect that you’ll be hearing from Jeff soon,” Engersol went on. “I want you to do whatever he asks you to do.”
“But what if—” Adam began, but once again Engersol didn’t let him finish.
“Did I make a mistake, Adam?” he asked. “Should I start all over again? I’m sure Jeff would be more than willing to take your place in the project.”
Adam was silent for a moment as his mind absorbed Engersol’s words. At last, his voice shaking, he spoke once more. “Ill do whatever Jeff wants,” he said. “As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.”
“Good,” Engersol agreed. “I’m sure Jeff doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore than the rest of us do. He simply wants to be part of the project, that’s all. Do we understand each other?”
On the monitor, Adam’s image nodded in assent.
“Very well, then,” Engersol went on. “You may go back to whatever you were doing.” As Adam’s image faded away from the monitor, Engersol turned his attention to the one above the other tank. “Amy!” he said sharply. “Can you hear me?”
Instantly a blip appeared on the graph reflecting Amy’s alpha waves. Though the blip disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, it wasn’t fast enough. “All right, Amy,” George Engersol continued. “I know you’re listening, and I think we should have a talk.”
He studied the graphs on Amy’s monitor, then glanced at the screen above the tank. Despite whatever efforts she might be putting forth to suppress them, he could see the graphic displays of her various brain waves reacting to his words almost as clearly as if she still had a face. But on the screen above her tank, Amy was showing nothing.
He suspected she was pretending to be asleep.
“I know you’re listening to me, Amy, and I suspect I know what’s going on in your head. You’re angry. And I suppose you have a right to be. Perhaps I was wrong to include you in the project at all. But it’s done now, and there’s nothing either you or I can do about it. And I think you know that destroying the project won’t accomplish anything. Nor, for that matter, will your trying to tell anyone about it. Don’t you see? No one will believe you. Even if someone does, and comes looking for you, you’ll be long gone. Both you and Adam will be dead, and all that will be down here is the Croyden computer, which I’m using in my very well-publicized search for artificial intelligence. The lab will be inspected, as will the chimpanzees’ brains that will have replaced yours in the tanks, and that will be that. The files will be restored, and the research will continue. Which means that you have a choice. You can either be part of it, or you can remain silent, and sulk.” His voice changed, taking on a hard edge. “I don’t like sulky children, Amy. Do you understand that?”
There was no reply from Amy at all. The speakers in the ceiling remained silent; the monitor above her tank remained blank. Engersol waited a few minutes. He was certain she had heard every word he spoke, equally certain that it had been Amy herself who had turned the sound system back on after he had turned it off last night.