Страница 26 из 48
“He died at the age of twenty-three, still an animal, a wizened creature-boy looking hardly human in the bed of his padded cell. A post mortem revealed that his cortex had not developed fully, but that it existed in sufficient size to have justified belief that it might have been made to function.”
Dr. Kair ended, “We could have made George human now with what we know about the brain, but you will agree, I think, that your case and his are similar, with one difference—your start as a human being.”
Gosseyn was silent. For the first time, the problem of his extra brain had been clearly defined in the only possible rational way—by analysis and comparison. Until this moment his picture of it had been vague and idealistic, disturbing only because the new brain had shown no activity, no reactions whatever. But always, through the blur of his visualizations, hope had blazed. It had given him a measure of arrogance and of strength in the harder moments of his brief career as a potential savior of civilization. And somewhere inside his skin, permeating possibly his entire nervous system, he had felt pride that he was more than a man. That would remain, of course. It was human to be proud of physical or mental attributes that had come by chance. But as for the rest, as far as further development was concerned, it would undoubtedly take time.
The psychiatrist said, “If you are a true mutation, the man after man, and should it come down to a choice between saving you and letting this galactic army assault a peaceful civilization, then you may be sure that I shall choose you. And they”—he smiled grimly—“shall have their opportunity to test whether null-A can be destroyed by a first adversity.”
“But the Venusians don’t know.” Gosseyn found his voice. “They don’t even suspect.”
“That,” said Dr. Kair, “underlines with very special emphasis what our next move must be. Our future depends on whether or not we can escape from this house before dawn. And that”—he stood up with astonishingly youthful litheness—“brings us right back to our friend on the couch.”
It was easy to think again of urgent and deadly danger.
XVII
We copy animals in our nervous processes. . . . In man such nervous reactions lead to non-survival, pathological states of general infantilism, infantile private and public behavior. . . . And the more technically developed a nation or race is, the more cruel, ruthless, predatory, and commercialized its systems tend to become . . . all because we continue to think like animals and have not learned how to think consistently like human beings.
John Prescott, galactic agent. That much identification was admissible. The man lay on the couch and his eyes watched them. His blond hair seemed curiously whitish in the strong light. The faintest sneer lurked in the crinkles of his lips, in spite of the slightly bulging gag inside his mouth.
Gosseyn said with revulsion, “You know, there is something horrible here. This man allowed his wife to be murdered as a mere incident in a campaign to convince me of his bona fides. What took me in was that he had once been a partial believer in the null-A philosophy. I took it for granted, also, that his killing of ‘X’ and Hardie first was pure chance. But I recall now that he paused before he reached Thorson and gave me time to disarm him. In other words, he killed the two Earth men who had been used as a front by the galactic empire, which leaves only galactic people in control of the Earth government.”
Gosseyn closed his eyes. “Just a moment,” he said, “I’m thinking of something. The games. Weren’t this year’s games supposed to produce a successor to President Hardie?” He opened his eyes. “Who’s ahead so far? Who’s leading?”
Kair shrugged. “A man called Thorson.” He stopped and blinked. “You know,” he said slowly, “I didn’t co
Gosseyn said nothing. There was a thought in his mind that chilled him. It had very little to do with the fact that Jim Thorson, personal representative of a galactic emperor, would be the next president of Earth. The thought had to do with the Machine. It had outlived its usefulness. It would never again be trustworthy, now that it had proved vulnerable.
It was hard to imagine Earth without the Games Machine.
Beside him, Dr. Kair said gently, “All this is unimportant now. We have our own problem. As I see it, one of us must impersonate Prescott and go outside to assess the situation.”
Gosseyn drew a deep, slow breath, and was himself. He said quickly, “What about your wife? Is she here? I’ve been intending to ask. And children. Any children?”
“Three but not here. Venusian-born children ca
They smiled at each other, the doctor looking gleeful. He had a right to be. The two men were alone with their great problem: one, the doctor, of great attainment in his field; the other—well, the other had still to prove himself.
They decided without argument that Dr. Kair would go out to contact the gang’s agents. His white hair and his build gave him an appearance roughly similar to that of Prescott. It should suffice in the dark. Prescott’s shoes, while a little too long and half a size too narrow, fitted Kair. It seemed wise to wear the shoes that contained the locator. Imitating Prescott’s voice was comparatively easy. Like all trained speakers, like all Venusians, the psychiatrist had full control of the resonance chambers in his body and head. With a recent memory of Prescott’s voice and with Gosseyn there to check on the subtleties of tone, he had the imitation pat in three minutes, including an identifiable whisper.
“And now,” said Gosseyn in a steely voice, “we’ll find out from the gentleman himself the details of his arrangements with his friends outside.”
He bent down and removed the gag. The disgust he felt must have been in his ma
Gosseyn nodded to the psychiatrist. “All right, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll expect you back in five minutes. If you’re not, I’ll suppress my squeamishness and put a bullet through Prescott’s head.”
The doctor laughed without humor. “Maybe it would be just as well if I stayed out six or seven minutes.”
His laughter faded as he reached the door. The door moved slightly when he slipped through the opening. And then he was gone into the night and the fog.
Gosseyn glanced at his watch. “It is now ten minutes after four,” he said to Prescott, and drew his gun.
A tiny bead of perspiration started a path down Prescott’s cheek. It gave Gosseyn an idea. He looked again at his watch. The second hand, which had been at ten, was now at forty-five. Thirty-five seconds had passed. “One minute,” said Gosseyn.
Physiological time was a flux of irreversible changes of the tissues and cells. But inward time depended on the human system, on variable circumstances, and on each individual. It changed under stress. Duration was as firmly wedded to man and his momentary emotions as life was to the nervous system. The second hand was twitching toward the ten, completing its first round. Accordingly, one minute had actually passed since the departure of Dr. Kair.
“Two minutes,” said Gosseyn in an implacable tone.