Interface

If Dr. Radhakrishnan were to take certain doctrines of his religion absolutely literally, he would not be allowed to have any contact with either Mr. Easyrider or Mr. Scatflinger. Yet today he was going to carve great holes in their skulls and implant fresh biochips. Of course he was wearing gloves, so technically speaking he wasn't coming into contact with them. But this was a technicality.

Anyone who adhered, at least nominally, to any religion that was invented mille

"I am waiting for the biochips," he said into the telephone. "Waiting and waiting and waiting."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, or what passed for silence. Indian telephones had a sort of organic quality. Not the sterile silence of American fiber-optic linkups. On one of these phones, one felt that one was plugged into the electro­magnetic fabric of the entire universe; the phone system just one huge ante

"There's just one more bug that we really ought to get rid of," Zeldo said. "Twenty of the best guys in the business are going over this code line by line."

"Twenty? You only have four people there!"

"Most of the work is being done in California. Over a satellite link," Zeldo said.

''Well," Dr. Radhakrishnan said, "while your team is sipping espresso in Marin County, my team is standing in a hallway here at AIIMS with two brain-damaged patients on gurneys, waiting."

A long silence, the sonic curry poured forth from the telephone. "I don't know what to tell you," Zeldo said. "It's not quite ready."

"Did you hear about the programmer's wife?" Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "She is still a virgin. Her husband just sits on the edge of the bed every night and tells her how great it's going to be."

Zeldo did not laugh. Dr. Radhakrishnan was begi

He stuck his head out of the office and looked down the hallway. Mr. Scatflinger was lying on the gurney, quiescent, his head freshly shaved, blue lines drawn on his scalp like the rhumb lines of an ancient navigator.

"Can you or can you not reprogram this thing remotely, after implantation?"

"We can modify the software. That's how we're programming it as we speak. It's sitting in the culture tank and we're talking to it over the radio."

"It's finished."

"No."

"Put the culture tank into the truck and get it over here now. That is an order."

The chip consisted of a silicon part - the part that Zeldo was responsible for - surrounded by an inert teflon shell, co

Zeldo and his cohorts referred to the apparatus as the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. They hauled it around in the back of a truck. The truck poked its way slowly down the Delhi Ring Road, pulled off into the parking lots of AIIMS, and backed up to a loading dock.

The back door flew open and there were Zeldo and his hackers, surrounding the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, all blinking lights and bubbling tubes.

There was an interval of half an hour or so, during which the patients were prepared for surgery, the operating room people got scrubbed and gloved, and Zeldo and his crew got the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari transferred across the hospital to the operating theater, leapfrogging from one power outlet to the next, down hallways and up elevators. Then Dr. Radhakrishnan just had to perform a couple of operations.

It was strange, and possibly ludicrous, to be doing both Mr. Easyrider and Mr. Scatflinger at the same time. Each operation was a major event in itself. But there were many strange and ludicrous things about the way the Radhakrishnan Institute was currently functioning. As they went over the plans for this day, they had all shared a creepy, unspoken feeling that they were extending them­selves years beyond where they really ought to be, and that many things might go wrong.

The operations were conceptually simple. Incisions were made along the lines that had been drawn on the patients' shave heads. Flaps of scalp were peeled back and the bleeding was cauterized or clamped off. When the actual skull was exposed, Dr. Radhakrishnan cut through it with a bone saw.

A polygon of skull, a trap door of sorts, was cut into the side of the head and saved for later use. Still, the brain itself was not exposed; they looked through the hole at a tough i

"It was a debacle. I am personally ashamed. I will never do anything like that again. The level of incompetence makes me physically ill. I may shoot myself," Dr. Radhakrishnan was saying.

"Have a drink," Mr. Salvador said. This was easy to arrange because they were sitting in the bar of the Imperial.