The Brain by Edmond Hamilton (best free ebook reader .txt) 📗

of motoric organs.... Why, unless—had it not been for tonight's accident, the sudden emergency and Scriven a little the worse for liquor under the pressure of it.... Would he ever have learned what was going on before it was too late?"

The silence was becoming awkward. It was broken by Oona's carefully composed voice.

"When is it going to happen—this invasion thing?"

The simple question seemed to startle Scriven who had been looking into his glass as if in reverie.

"When? Why, didn't I tell you the worst of it? Tonight!"

"Tonight?"

"Sure," Scriven cast a malicious glance up to the antique ship's chronometer which hung over the bar. "This very minute the honorable members are boarding their plane in Washington. They're going to descend upon us in sixty minutes flat."

"But that's impossible!" Oona said. "The Brain isn't a roadhouse. They can't do that to us in the middle of the night."

Scriven chuckled over his glass. Obviously he had regained his humor. "Sometimes, Oona, you're like a little child. You forget that this is meant to be a wonderful surprise. You forget that it comes armed with passes from the War Department and fully informed as to The Brain's midnight intermission-time. You forget that by those logical processes, peculiar to kings, dictators, and peoples' representatives, they will expect every courtesy extended to them in the midst of the unexpected surprise. Hotel reservations, careful guidance through The Brain, an inspired little speech by the Braintrust Director, fresh as a daisy as he ought to be at 3 a.m. Not to forget the refreshments of course. Why else do you think I've buttonholed you two out of the air? I literally put my life in your hands. Save me from this—if you can!"

Despite the obvious dramatic act he had put on in voice and gesture, there was a sincere pleading in Scriven's dark brown eyes.

"I will be glad to help as best I can," Lee said. "I'll make an awful job of it, I'm sure, but I'll try and do the conducting and the lecturing."

Scriven wiped his forehead with a big silk handkerchief. The leonine face beamed. "Lee, that will be a tremendous help. You see, they will feel flattered being conducted by somebody with a big name. They want an 'objective' view and you are not one of our regular employees, you're a guest scientist from Australia. That makes you just about ideal. But, Lee, much as it is against my interest, I ought to warn you: Do you realize the utter impossibility of this thing? Laymen, outsiders coming to investigate and to pass judgment upon the most complex electronic organism in the world! In two hours at the most they expect to be fully informed as to how The Brain works and somehow to be magically transformed into authorities entitled to mouth considered opinions about radioactive pyramidal cells in houses of government. Do you really think you could survive it, Lee?"

"At least I can try," Lee smiled.

"Good man." There was a new spring in Scriven's step as he came over to shake hands. "I can never thank you enough for this."

"I suppose I could hold the hospitality front," Oona said calmly.

Standing between the two, Scriven put his hands upon their shoulders. "Oona, you arm yourself with a phone. Lee, you rush over to The Brain. Oona will give you a pass to the Thorax. Every assistance you need will be at your disposal. I'll sit down and whip up some kind of a speech. We'll all meet again afterwards."

Seven hours later, one hour before sunrise and just in time to see the big official plane from Washington shoot up into the first grey streak of dawn, they met. They were all pale and shivering with the chill of the air, of physical and nervous exhaustion. There was a note of hysteria even in Oona's voice as she ordered a tremendous breakfast from the Skull Hotel. But then as the fragrance of coffee mingled with that of bacon and eggs, things rapidly improved and there were sudden uncontrollable bursts of laughter. They had only to look at one another to feel the tickle of renewed mirth.

The first thing to strike Lee, as he remembered, as he met the senatorial group in the subterranean dome of the murals, was their incongruity with the functional beauty which surrounded them, and the sharp contrast they formed to the scientific workers of The Brain. As they descended from their cars after a late dinner at the Skull Hotel they resembled an average tourist group in Carlsbad Caverns bent upon a good time and in a holiday mood.

There were seven. Two women senators among them, as they ascended with Lee at the head along "Glideway Y," the "Visitors' Special" as the brain-crews called it. It was wider than the service glideways and equipped with comfortable seats. It led through The Brains median section in-between the two hemispheres describing a loop which opened vistas into but did not enter any of the grey matter convolutions. It was brilliantly illuminated in order to forestall claustrophobia and also to forestall too close a view into the black-lighted interior of The Brain.

To Lee it was like a ride in an enormous Ferris Wheel fused with a nightmarish dream wherein one shouts for help and nobody hears or seems to understand: "... More than nine billion electronic tubes, more than ten billion resistors, two billion capacitators, eight billion miles of wires, etc., etc." He struggled trying to convey some idea of the magnitude of The Brain. "Did you say billion or did you say million professor?" The senator from Michigan was busily scribbling notes.

"... It is the cerebral hemispheres which analyze and synthesize the problems which are entered through the Apperception Centers in over a million ideopulses per minute. Racing through the centers these form the ideo-circuits...."

"I see, it's like a typewriter." That would be the senator from Vermont.

"In some types of circuits the wires are so fine that skilled weavers of Panama hats had to be brought in from Central America. Likewise from the Pavlov Institute in Leningrad a layout for the circuits of 'conditioned reflexes'...."

"I'm very much against that," the senator from Tennessee frowned. "All those foreigners. I would have voted against that had the measure come up in the House."

Lee felt the cold sweat of fear breaking out all over him, especially as now, in the region of the telencephalon, with nothing but acres of radioactive pyramidal cells around, when the senator from Connecticut in audible and agitated whispers inquired whether there was a ladies' powder room somewhere.

During the steep descent things went from bad to worse as the honorable member from Kentucky discovered some interesting parallel between The Brain and a coal mine he had previously seen and, as in between two of The Brain's convolutions dedi-[A] woman from Connecticut went violently sick....

In the "Brainwave's" cabin the great Scriven convulsed with laughter as Lee narrated these things; Oona clapped her hands in delight: "Oh, how wonderful; and do you remember how they solved the servant problem when they saw those 'Gog and Magog' things?"

Yes, Lee remembered. His own conducted tour had been only the beginnings of last nights nightmares of which there seemed to be no end....

Somewhat restored by black coffee at the communications center the intrepid group had descended into those lower regions of the Thorax which Lee himself had never before seen.

The drop of the freight-elevator was a good mile. Through the transparent walls of the cage they saw new excavations being made on various levels, all of them by powertools and chemicals alone, since explosives might have caused tremors dangerous to The Brain. It was like watching a skyscraper being built from the top down and all the way vast amber colored, translucent pillars had followed them down the shaft, the spinal column of The Brain.

Down at the lowest level the gentlemanly plainclothesmen of "Military Intelligence" took over and did all the explaining. There were visions of scores of tunnel tubes curving into the rock with the gleaming eyes of narrow-gauge electric trains streaking away into the infinite; visions of forbidding steel doors operated by photoelectric cells which opened at a finger's raising of a guard's hand: "This is the Atomic Powerplant," and their astonished eyes looked down from a dizzy height into something like a huge drydock with something like the inverted hull of an oceanliner in the middle of it, a selfcontained machine which would continue to pour kilowatts for years, for decades on end without a moving part, without a human being anywhere in sight. Vistas of breathtaking airconditioning plants, vistas of giant mess halls, living quarters, kitchens, plotting-rooms, all ready for immediate occupancy in the event of war but yawning now with emptiness in the sleep of an uneasy peace....

But the most awe-inspiring and, to Lee, foreboding sights, were the "C.P.F.'s" as the guards called them, the "Critical-Parts-Factories." On a superficial glance they looked ordinary modern plants: staggered rows of machine tools sprouting from the main stem of the assembly line. There was the familiar din of steel, the piercing screeches of the multiple drills, the heavy pantings of the hydraulic presses. But after a minute or so the visitors felt a vague uneasiness and then the realization dawned that there was something missing and that this something was human life.

"Aren't there even machine tenders or supervisors? Isn't there anybody?"

"Not a soul," the answer came. "It's all automatic. Full automatic down here."

They stared at the end of the assembly line; every twenty seconds it spit out a fractional horsepower motor onto a transport band which nursed the newborn engine into the rows of testing machines.

The elevator brought them back to the communication center where the Terminal Cafeteria was ablaze with lights and where Dr. Scriven, received his honored guests.

The guests were seated after the manner of a French restaurant, all in one row, and as they raised expectant faces in the direction of the service entrance "Gog and Magog" entered the room carrying trays with refreshments which they served with the skill and the dignity of accomplished waiters.

Gog and Magog were products of two assembly lines down in the Thorax. Robots, still in an experimental stage, yet of remarkable perfection. Both of them were about human size and approximately human-shaped but the design of the two was different. Gog, the "light-duty" robot, balanced itself by a gyroscope on a pair of stumpy legs, while the "heavy-duty" Magog crawled noiselessly and rapidly on caterpillar rubbertracks like a miniature tank. Of both types the arms were uncommonly long and simian-like, but the remarkable progress made in the engineering of prothesis after the Second World War had lent them perfect articulation and sensitivity down to the last hydraulically operated fingerjoint.

The photoelectric cells of their eyes looked pale and repulsive; the square audion-screens of their ears however made up for that by the comical precision with which they turned in every direction at the sound of a commanding human voice. Their understanding of any given order appeared perfect.

"Congratulations, Dr. Scriven, you've got the country's servant problem licked at last."

"I wonder whether one could buy one and how much he would be?"

"First waiter who ever came when I called him."

"What a butler Gog would make, the perfect Jeeves. Could he learn to answer the phone?"

"I bet he would even make a fourth at bridge."

"Magog, the check please."

"See, how he understands. He shakes his head; he says it's on the house."

"Let's try to tip him: Gog, here's fifty cents for you; no he won't take it."

"He has no use for it, no taste for a glass of beer, I suppose."

"What do you feed him, Dr. Scriven; a glass of electric juice for breakfast? Is he AC or DC or both?"

Scriven's leonine face beamed; the stunt had come off.

Lee on the other hand had paled. He hadn't said a word ever since Gog and Magog had trotted in. Now he took a silver dollar out of his pocket and beckoning to Magog he handed it to him. "Magog, will you please break this in two for me?"

For a second the Robot stood without motion as if undecided what to do. Then he took the piece between two steely fingers. Inside his breast one could hear the soft swoosh of the hydraulic pump; there was a sharp report as of a small calibre gun; two bent and broken pieces were politely handed back to Lee.

"Thank you, Magog," Lee said. "That's what I wanted to know." From a corner of his eye he saw Oona and Scriven watching him with uneasy looks.

Into the sudden and shocked silence of the table, there fell the tinkling of a glass. On the other end of the table the great Scriven had arisen to deliver the little speech he had prepared.

"... I wished you would think of The Brain, not in terms of