Benicoff nodded in understanding. He had been present when General Schorcht had chewed the Sergeant out, him with hash marks up to his elbows, a Master Sergeant, not that the General cared. “I got my troubles with him too — which is why I’m here.”
“It’s a tough life,” the Sergeant said with marked lack of sympathy. Benicoff found the internal phone and called Snaresbrook’s secretary, discovered that the surgeon was in the library, got instructions how to find it.
Leather-bound medical books lined the walls; but all of them were years out of date and just there for decoration. The library was completely computerized, since all technical books were published in digital form. This had only become possible when conventions and standards were set for illustrations and graphics which were animated most of the time. So any medical book or journal was entered into the library’s data base the instant that it was published. Erin Snaresbrook sat in front of a terminal speaking instructions.
“Can I interrupt?” Benicoff asked.
“In two seconds. I went to make a copy of this in my computer. There.” She hit return and the item was instantly transferred to the data base in her own computer upstairs. The surgeon nodded and spun about in her chair. “I was talking to a friend in Russia this a.m., he told me about this. It’s in St. Petersburg, a student of Luria. Some very original work on nerve regeneration. What can I do for you?”
“General Schorcht keeps bugging me for more detailed reports. So I bug you.”
“Niet prahblem, as our Russian friends say. But what about your end? Progress there?”
“An absolute dead end. If there is a trail, and I doubt it, it gets colder every day. No hints, no clues, no idea of who did it or how they did it. I’m not supposed to know this, but the FBI has managed to get undercover data taps into every AI lab or department of every university, every major industry in the country, to report any sudden changes or input of new information. They are looking out for the AI data stolen from Brian. Of course the trouble is that they don’t exactly know what to look for.”
“Sounds sort of illegal, snooping like that.”
“It is. But I’ll put up with it for a short time before I blow the whistle on them. But that’s not what worries me. The real question is whether the security agencies have enough experts to interpret any or all of that data. We must get a lead. Which of course is why the General is bugging me.”
“Because the possibility that Brian may remember something, recover, respond in any way — is the only chance we have? Fascinating. I’ve read in bad novels ‘he nodded gloomily’ Now I know what it looks like because you just did it.”
“Gloomily, depressingly, suicidally — take your pick. And Brian?”
“Our progress has been good, but we are running out of time.”
“He’s getting worse, regressing!”
“Not that, you misunderstood. Modern medicine can stabilize a body, keep it alive for years when the mind is not in control. Physically, I could leave Brian in the recovery unit until he died of old age. I don’t think we want to do that. What I mean is that I have traced and reconnected nearly a million nerve fibers. I’ve tracked and accessed Brian’s earliest memories, from birth right up until about age twelve. The film connectors and computer are in place and in the very near future they should have hopefully made all of the possible connections. I have gone about as far as I can go with this technique.”
“Why are you working on his childhood — when it is the adult we need to answer our questions?”
“Because the old expression about the child being the father of the man is quite true. There is no way we can restore the higher level brain connections until the lower levels begin to operate. This means that the enormous structure of the human mind can be rebuilt only from the bottom up — in much the same way it was built in the first place…”
“When you say building a mind — built of what?”
“The mind is made of many small parts, each mindless by itself. We call these basic parts agents. Each agent by itself can only do some simple thing that needs no mind or thought at all. But when the agents get connected up, in certain very social ways, they work together as societies — -that’s how intelligence emerges from non-intelligence.
“Fortunately, most of the agents themselves are okay, because their brain cells are located in the uninjured gray matter. But most of the connections between the agents thread their way through the brain’s white matter — and too many of those connections have been severed. That is where I am now. Locating and reconnecting large numbers of the simplest agents, at the sensory and motor levels. If I can reconstruct enough of the society of agents formed during each stage of Brian’s development, that will give me a foundation for repairing the structures that were formed in his next period. Stage after stage. Layer after layer. And the different kinds of cross-connections between them. While at the same time I have to restore the feedback loops between the agents at each level, as well as the systems in other parts of the brain that control reasoning and learning. These different kinds of loops and rings are crucial because they are what supports the thoughtful and reflective activity that distinguishes human from animal thinking. At the present time I am almost at the end of this first period of rebuilding. In a few days I will know if I have succeeded or not.”
Benicoff shook his head in wonderment. “You are getting me used to thinking the unthinkable as a daily habit. What you are doing is so new, so different, that I find it basically — I’m sorry to say this — incomprehensible. That you can enter Brian’s head, listen to his thoughts and repair the damage done! Better you than me. Does he feel anything while you are doing this?”
Snaresbrook shrugged. “There is really no way to tell. I suppose the experience will be indescribable because it is happening to a mind that is not yet human. My personal belief, however, is that while his brain is being reconstructed his mind might very well be retracing and reliving the important early events of his life.”
Dolly could hear the clatter of computer keys as she came down the hall; she smiled. Brian was usually alone so much, it was nice to see him with a school friend.
“Anyone for a fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookie?” she said, holding out the plate. Kim squeaked with pleasure.
“Me for one, Mrs. Delaney. Thanks!”
“Brian?”
“Finish this first,” he muttered. “Come on, Kim. It would be a lot better if you did this before you take a break. You are just beginning to understand what basis vectors are.”
“We can finish it later. Take one.”
Brian sighed and pushed one of the still-warm cookies into his mouth. “Good,” he spluttered.
“I’ll get some cold milk to go with that.”
When Dolly brought the tray with the filled glasses she had her purse with her. “I’ve got to go to the market and it is going to be crowded. Which means I’ll be late and your father will be upset if he gets in before I do. Tell him that dinner will be at six like always and it’s ready for the microwave now. You won’t forget?”
Brian shook his head and drained the glass as Dolly left. He put it down and turned back to the computer. “Now to pick up where we left off.”
“No!” Kim said. “We’re taking a break, remember?” She pushed the books aside and dropped onto the bed, punched his pillow into a mound and settled it behind her back. “A break is a break — and you have to learn that.”
“Work is work and you have to learn that. Just look at your term paper, for instance.” He spun his revolving chair about and punched the scroll button. The copy flipped by in the screen, most of it white letters against red blocks. “Do you see all the red copy? You know what it means?”
“You had a nosebleed?”
“You ought to take this seriously, Kim. You know that I’ve been helping you with this paper for Bastard Betser, adding bits and straightening it out when you get it wrong. Just for the heck of it I wanted to check up on my input and started marking off the blocks of what I was doing in red, all the corrections and changes that I had made. There is sure a lot more red than white here.”