For a minute or so he went through the complex and precise ritual of a bank cashier closing the vault.
"They"ll do it every time," he said reproachfully. "Catch me by surprise."
Lee grinned. It wasn"t The Brain"s fault if the midnight signal surprised Gus. It merely announced that the current was being cut off by the main power station. Repet.i.tion of this maneuver throughout all the convolutions and glands of The Brain was required for the added safety of the maintenance engineers, a double-check, a routine. Pointing to the gadget which looked somewhat like a big radio console Lee asked:
"This pulsemeter, Gus, what does it do? I haven"t seen it before."
"You haven"t?" the little man frowned. "Ah, no; you haven"t. It"s standard in most apperception centers, but not in yours. That"s because in yours The Brain works under a permanent problem-load."
Lee shook his head. "I don"t get it, Gus; you know I"m the village idiot of this mastermind community."
"It"s like this," Gus explained. "The Brain has a given capacity. The Brain also has an optimal operation speed, a definite rhythm in which it works best. Now, if they feed The Brain too many problems too fast, it results in a shock load, the operations rhythm gets disturbed, efficiency goes down. On the other hand if The Brain works with an under-capacity problem load, that"s just as bad. In that case the radioactive pyramidal cells will overheat and decompose. Consequently we must aim at a balanced and an even problems load. That"s why these pulsemeters are built into all problem-intake panels for the operators to check upon their speeds.
"Take an average problem--rocket ballistics, let"s say--parts of it may be as simple as adding two and two and others so bad Einstein would reach for the aspirin from out of his grave.
"Now I"ll show you how it works; the main power is cut off but there"s enough juice left in The Brain"s system to make this pulsemeter react; it"s even more sensitive than a Geiger-Mueller counter."
He surveyed a big switchboard and picked out an outlet marked "Pons Varolis for the plug-in." Then snapped a pair of earphones on Lee"s head.
"There," he said "you"ll both see and hear what it does in a little while."
A soft glow slowly spread over the slanting screen on top of the machine. A crackling as of static entered the earphones and turned into a low hum. On the left corner of the screen a faint green streak of luminosity crawled over to the right; its light gained in intensity and it began to weave and to dance. Simultaneously the hum became articulate like tickings of a heart only much faster.
"Is that the pulse of The Brain?" Lee asked.
"No," Gus snorted contemptuously. "The Brain isn"t even operating.
Nothing moves in The Brain now excepting those ebbing residual currents, too low in power to agitate anything but the amplifiers built into this thing. If these were normal operations with a million impulses per second pa.s.sing through The Brain you could hear and see as little of the pulse as of the beatings of a million mosquito wings. In that case the dial to your right works a reduction-gear, kind of an inverted stroboscope; that cuts the speed down a hundred-thousand to one and you just barely see and hear the rhythm of the beat."
"I see."
Fascinated by the dance of the green line Lee said absently, "This touches upon another question I had in mind; The Brain is expanding, that is, new cell groups and circuits are constantly being added.
Right?"
"Right."
"I also understand that The Brain is learning all the time. The cerebral mantle evolves through being worked; its cells enriched by the material submitted to them for processing; the richer the material, the richer their yield. Right?"
"Right."
"Okay; then what becomes of the new capacity which is being created by the adding of new workshops and the increased efficiency of the old ones? Is there a corresponding expansion of the apperception centers?"
Gus" smiling face suddenly turned serious. There was surprise mingled with respect in his voice as he said:
"Now there you"ve hit upon a funny thing, Aussie. I"ve been wondering about that myself of late: where does the new capacity go? Even the big shots like Dr. Scriven begin to ask questions about that; they don"t seem rightly to know. They must have gotten their wires crossed somewhere; the new capacity is there all right, only it doesn"t show up, it sort of evaporates.... Excuse me--"
Gus darted off to the front room with a jackrabbitt start. Voices were calling for him and fingers were drumming on the counter with the impatience of thirsty drinkers at a bar: Maintenance engineers, piling in and slapping down their orders for Gus to fill. This was the rush hour; Lee knew that it would be the same in all the tool and spare part distribution centers of The Brain. He probably couldn"t talk to Gus again before 2 A.M. Sometimes the ruthlessness with which he exploited the kindness of his little friend made Lee feel pretty bad; but then his hunger for more knowledge always won out over his shame.
To sit alone in the semidarkness of this egg-shaped little room with strange and fascinating things to play with as he willed was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. The dream had been of a night in the zoo. All the visitors and all the keepers would be asleep in their beds; he would be all alone with the animals. The light of a full moon would fall through the bars of the cages and he would slip in and play with them.
Once they saw that it was only a little boy they would be very friendly; he was convinced of that. The tigers would purr like big contented cats, the sad-eyed chimpanzees would come to shake hands and the lion cubs would tumble all over him.... He felt the same now with all these gadgets and machines. Here they were rendered harmless, nor could he do any harm as experimentally he plugged them in and out, as he pushed b.u.t.tons and turned dials. This interesting pulsemeter, for instance; the beauty of it was that even with those weak residual currents it gave a semblence of functioning....
The switchboard-panel was within Lee"s reach.
"Let"s see what happens," he thought as he switched from main-circuit to main-circuit. "Nervus vagus--nervus trigeminus--nervus opticus."
The magic dance of the green line was different each time and so were the sounds in the phones. With the mainpower cut off, the residual currents seemed to vary in strength and in amplitude, gaining an individuality of their own within closed systems. Sometimes the swinging line, like an inspired ballerina, would take a mighty jump accompanied by rasping earphone sounds, not like tickings of a heart, but rather like a heavy breathing under emotional stress. There probably would be some repair work going on in those circuits....
He tried another outlet; this one was marked "pineal gland." What happened if one plugged some apparatus of the pineal gland into the circuit of the pineal gland? Lee vaguely wondered. "Nothing probably. It would be a closed circuit and a very small one at that."
Yes, he was right; the green line paled, its dance seemed tired and there were only whispering noises in the phones; a weak pulse, a shallow breathing as of a person after a heart attack. Lee closed his fatigued eyes to concentrate the better upon the rhythm of the sounds.... It was very irregular. It came in gusts. There was a pattern to these rasping breathings as of typewriter keys forming words. Somehow it was familiar.
Was he suffering hallucinations? This rhythmic pattern _was_ forming words. He _knew_ those words, they had engraved themselves indelibly in his memory cells; the judgment of The Brain as it had come over the teletype on a slip of yellow paper: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39--cortex capacity 119--sensitivity 208...."
It was repeated over and over again.
Lee opened his eyes to rea.s.sure himself that something was the matter with his ears.
There was the green line on the screen. It danced. It danced like a telegraph key under the fingers of a skilled operator. It had a very definite rhythm. And the rhythm spelled the selfsame words which continued to flow into the phones: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39...."
"G.o.d Almighty," Lee murmured and it seemed a magic word. The green dancer stopped its capers; now it merely ran back and forth across the stage in a series of pirouettes. Likewise there was only an angry buzzing in the microphones. For a moment Lee was able to catch his breath. But only for a moment and then the rasping, unearthly sounds started on a new rhythm, trying to form speech again. This time the rhythm was familiar too, but it was preserved in a much deeper layer of Lee"s memory.
"I think--therefore--I am. I think--therefore--I am."
Those would be Aristotle"s famous words. Almost twenty years ago Lee had heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What strange tricks a fellow"s memory could play....
But then: it _couldn"t_ be memory.... Never before had Lee"s memory expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the intonation in every possible way. Over and over it came:
"I _think_--therefore I am."
And then: "_I_ think--therefore _I_ am."
And then: "I think, therefore _I am_."
There was triumph, there was jubilance in that inhuman, that ghostly voice as of a deaf mute who by some miracle of medicine has just recovered speech. Behind that voice was a _feeling_, a swelling of the heart, a filling of the lungs such as Christopher Columbus might have experienced as he heard from the masthead of the Santa Maria the cry of victory: "Land, Land!" and _knew_ that he had found his--India....
Whatever Lee had experienced in his life, there was no parallel to this; in whatever manner he had expressed himself, there was no similarity to this. Up to this point his ratio like a nurse had soothed him: "It isn"t so, child, it isn"t so," but now ratio itself, thoroughly frightened, was driven into a corner and had to admit: "This thing cannot be an echo reverberating from the self; that"s impossible.... Consequently it must be something else; it must be something _outside_ the self; it is--_another_ self."
The green dancer whirled across the stage like a mad witch; the whispering voice in the earphones had turned into the shrillness of a Shamaan"s incantations. The irrationality of it all infuriated Lee: he fairly shouted at the machine:
"What is this? Who are you?"
In the midst of a crazy jump the green dancer halted and came down to earth; it fled, leaving only the train of its green costume behind. For a few seconds there was nothing but the asthmatic pantings of a struggle for breath in the microphones. Then the dancer reappeared on the other side of the stage, hesitant-like, expectant of pursuit. All of a sudden it rose into the air in that supreme effort called "ballooning" in the language of the Ballet Russe and there was a simultaneous outburst of that ghastly voice: