by Earl
Terry looked helplessly at Hackworth, flushing.
“I’m sorry’—I should have thought—”
Hackworth motioned to a corner of the room where they would be out of ear-shot of the workers.
“Never mind, Terry,” he said. “We could not have withheld it indefinitely, anyway.” He turned slowly to Williams. “Dan, the controlling mechanism for all these machines is. . . . a brain—a human brain!”
Williams almost staggered.
“Sarto je Bru!” he gasped. “A human brain! A living brain?”
“No!” cried Hackworth. He spoke rapidly now. “Not a living brain in the true sense of the word, but—”
He broke off and began again. “A brain taken from a dead body and rejuvenated somehow so that it can still perform mental tasks. Technically, I don’t suppose anybody can explain how it’s done, except perhaps the Scientists—”
“The Scientists again!” burst in Williams. “It sounds just as inhuman as the Eugenics Law.”
He breathed a moment deeply as though controlling violent emotions. The others stood as though stricken.
“Let’s go,” said Williams quietly after a moment, “and see it.”
Terry led the way up steps to the floor above. Its long hallway had numerous alternate rooms which contained stores of chemicals. At the exact center of the entire Branch E building it led to a circular chamber from which came the sound of clicking relays.
They stepped into an open doorway and onto a platform only a few yards square surrounded by a railing. A neon sign above read: “Visitors must not smoke.”
The sight that met Williams’ eyes as he stepped on the platform brought an involuntary cry of amazement to his lips. The entire wall-surface with the exception of the part near the doorway was taken up by an unbroken control-board with thousands of relays—tiny contact magnets—and pilot lights. There was a constant ticking noise and twinkling of the tiny globes. Across the ceiling from the boards stretched innumerable insulated wires, a tremendous network of them, to the affair in the center of the room.
This latter object riveted Williams’ gaze after he had taken in the control-board. It consisted of a cylindrical solid base of metal surmounted by an intricate system of what seemed to be mirrors and tubes. But topping that was another object that brought a quick contraction to Williams’ brow.
It was a circular glass globe suspended from the ceiling by a thick rod of metal.
From it led a trail of thousands of fine silver wires, which connected to the mirrored mechanism below. From opposite points of the globe led two thin tubes which ran parallel after meeting at the back down to a black metal box on the floor of the room.
“That must be the brain!” murmured Williams. Staring at it he could faintly make out the irregular outline of a greyish object suspended in a viscid liquid inside the globe.
Terry began softly explaining, knowing that Williams would ask about it.
“The brain is suspended in a nutritive fluid which is pumped up and down those two tubes from the black box that contains what might be called a mechanical heart. The mirrors and photoelectric tubes are the “eyes” of the brain, with which it examines the readings of the gauges next to the wall relays. By some intricate system of semi-nerve control, it operates the various relays and switches which keep the machines below running smoothly and regularly.”
“How can one brain control so many machines, when it would take dozens of attendants otherwise?”
“Because every cell of the brain IS used. In life we never use the full capacity of our brains; much of it lies dormant, subconscious.”
“What if a part breaks down, either here or below? Surely the brain can’t do anything about that?”
“No. The brain merely controls the power input and product output, and takes care of variations. For instance, if the raw product put into any one machine happens to be especially hard to grind into powder and takes longer to crush, the Brain-control automatically adjusts the timing to fit the new conditions. But whenever repairs are needed, the Brain-control merely flashes a signal along a special communication system. This signal goes to the central office of Branch E where the official in charge at the time sends a repairman to the required machine. Sometimes for days at a time the whole system of machines of Branch E operates without the intervention of human hands, except, of course, the routine testing.”
Dan Williams suddenly sickened of the sight and turned away. The mere thought of a human brain—once having occupied a living body like his own—perched up there like a frosty, evil eye, turned him cold. There is a sort of delicate feeling in all human beings that revolts against thought of any human organ being taken from the grave, from its rightful resting place, and brought to the harsh light of the upper world. “Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust—” And this thing!—hanging there, fed by a mechanical heart—he shuddered.
They left and went to the Hackworth home for a belated dinner, Terry with them, having been invited by Hackworth. All of them felt depressed and subdued. After the meal, they sat and smoked in the lounge, exchanging a few words on the subject of machinery. But Williams resolutely avoided referring to the Brain-control, and his companions were secretly relieved. Hackworth, knowing his cousin’s 1933 prejudices, had expected him to show more feeling about the Brain-control. After all, it was a gruesome thing to be so suddenly revealed to a person from an age when even vivisection had been declaimed by pious people.
Suddenly Hackworth turned a deathly white.
Williams had just asked a question he had hoped would never be uttered by his lips: “By the way, where was my sister Helen buried?”
If Williams bad not had a keen mind, he might have merely asked his cousin if he were ill, and advised him to go to bed. But in a flash, his thoughts seared to a horrible culmination.
Nothing was said for a minute but the question seemed to fee still ringing in the room and Williams’ eyes still asked the answer as they bored flint-like at Hackworth.
Hackworth would have given half his wealth to lie his way out of it, but he knew those steady blue eyes would detect the slightest sign of prevarication.
“Don’t. . . . don’t ask me that.” he almost screamed.
“I want to know,” said Williams implacably. “The truth,” he added.
CHAPTER VI
A Terrible Revelation
l Hackworth waved a hand that said:
“Then I have no choice.”
“Dan,” he said aloud, “Helen’s body was cremated by the Unidum, after her brain was removed and—”
“God!” cried Williams, his face working. “Helen’s brain—” He trailed off into muttered Bantu dialect. Then there was a long silence. Hackworth looked at a rug design in abject misery. He had hoped that the subject would never come to light, hut subconsciously he had known it was inevitable. Williams’ only link with the past, with his father dead, had been his sister. He waited for his bronzed cousin to break out in violent anger, as he had at the cold-blooded Eugenics Law.
But when Williams spoke, his voice was quiet, ominously controlled.
“Begin at the beginning and tell me about the whole thing,” be demanded. “And how my sister came to be involved.”
At a sign from Hackworth, Terry spoke, for he was more familiar with the scientific aspects of the modern world than the older man.
“It was just five years ago,” began the young chemist, “that a Scientist whose name is unknown succeeded in an experiment upon which he had labored, it is said, for many years. He announced that his work made it possible to take the brain from a dead person before decomposition had advanced, and bring hack to it a semblance of life—not actual life, you understand, for then they could apply the method to the brain in the body, but a sort of semi-subconscious existence. His exhaustive tests had shown that this rejuvenated brain could still exert its full intellectual resources, if given a mechanical contract with the living world. Immediately the Scientists saw a use for such a d
ead-alive brain: a substitute for a living brain or group of brains. Since the owner of the brain was officially dead, and since the Unidum had authority to conscript any bodies or parts of bodies under the Vivisection Law, it was decided to use such dead-alive brains for the benefit of the state.”
“Why? For what purpose?” asked Williams. “Haven’t you told me already that working hours are short? If the Brain-control supplants but say fifty workers, it means little in the total mass of people.”
“Yes,” nodded Terry. “But suppose all machines were given Brain-control! That would release millions upon millions of workers. The work could then be redivided and cut the working week to twelve or fifteen hours.”
“And the people would die of boredom,” said Williams deprecatingly. “Already, as Earl has told me, the people of Unitaria hardly know what to do with their leisure time. What possible advantage would more leisure time bring?”
“That I don’t know,” said Terry, shaking his head. “The Unidum has been rather secretive about their motives in this matter. Of course, that will not be a paramount question till many years in the future. At present there are only about 2000 Brain-controls in Unitaria, and as yet the only machines fitted with them are the vitamin units of the food products system.”
“But Andrew Grant has told me confidentially,” interposed Hackworth, “that plans are going through now to begin outfitting all food products machinery with Brain-controls.”
“Which means,” added Williams, “that the Unidum is determined to increase the use of them, without a logical reason for doing so.”
“The logical reason,” returned Hackworth half defiantly, “is to take more of the load of work from human hands.”
“But to what advantage?” asked Williams again. “ ‘Idle hands do mischief make,’ ” he quoted.
“Dan, be reasonable,” answered Hackworth. “The Unidum has ruled wisely and justly for thirty years, and has met all previous problems with an eye to the future. In this case they must have plans of some sort to balance the shifting amounts of work and leisure.”
Williams sprang to his feet and strode up and down the room for a minute.
“Somehow,” he said half to himself, “there seems to be something sinister behind it. Can it be that the Unidum is retrograding, as all systems of government in past history rose to a peak and then fell to decay?”
Hackworth and Terry shot a guarded glance to one another. Dan Williams was putting into words things that were only breathed in Unitaria. Hackworth, in upholding the Unidum, had used mere words, for the sake of taking his cousin’s mind from the thought of his sister’s. . . .
Williams was speaking again: “And what is the public attitude toward the Brain-controls?—that is, if the public dares to have an attitude in this day of scientific dictatorship,” he finished somewhat bitterly.
“Public opinion is divided,” answered Hackworth. “For the most part, especially among the workers who tend machines, it is considered a great advancement. They envision the day when everyone will be his own master for the greater part of his life. But to tell the truth, there has also been much disapproval, mainly by those who believe it is sacrilegious to. . . . to disturb the dead, as you do.”
“And as you do!” said Williams quickly, facing his cousin.
“Yes, as I do,” admitted Hackworth, unable to meet the other’s eyes.
“And now, Terry,” said Williams, facing the younger man, “what more can you tell me about the brain itself that is used like a piece of super-sensitive machinery? To control machinery in place of humans it must think, and if it thinks it Is not really dead, and if it is not actually dead it must fed! Must have emotion or consciousness of some sort!”
Hackworth blanched and remonstrated inarticulately, but Terry answered a pair of compelling blue eyes.
“Yes, they do feel!” cried the young chemist. He faced the father of the girl he loved. “Mr. Hackworth, there is no use withholding these things. They can’t be denied. I’ll tell him all!”
Hackworth slumped back in his chair.
“The brains do feel!” continued Terry, with his eyes on Williams. “They have a residue of conscious life, enough to make it purgatory for them! They know what it’s all about; they live in an endless Hell!”
He went on rapidly now in a flood of words.
“For three years now I’ve worked at Branch E. Always I’ve been tortured by the thought, of that sentient brain upstairs, sending its impulses through cold silver wires, directing dozens of complicated machines. It must be a living nightmare! Hour after hour. Day after day. The brain cannot rebel! The Scientists have them under some hypnotic or drugged spell. But they can feel! They can remember their former life. They know pain, weariness, despair, futile anger—just as living persons. It has been proven. Two men, Scientists themselves, investigated and proved it. They were humane and not blinded by scientific zeal. But when they attempted to tell the world, the Unidum hounded them, drove them out, perhaps killed them—no one knows. Rumors spread like wildfire; their statements leaked out. But only a few, like myself, believe them. The rest are content to think of the Brain-controls as organic machinery, and to believe the Unidum which promises a future state in which each human will work only a small part of the time. But they forget the misery of the brains! Sometimes I think: what if my brain were taken from my dead body and. . . . Everyone is faced with that. There can be no more ‘Rest in Peace’ now!”
Hackworth had listened in great astonishment, not at the revelations, but at Terry’s own emotional outburst. He had never realized that the young chemist had such violent antipathy toward the Brain-control innovation.
The effect of these words on Williams was fearful to behold. A livid fire shot from his eyes. His lips twisted into a hideous snarl. Zulus in Africa had seen that expression and turned ashen under their black skin. It was a compound of mighty rage and purple hatred. Terry quailed before him as he saw powerful shoulders knot into corded muscles under his shirt; he seemed about to spring to attack.
But suddenly Williams relaxed. His features smoothed to normal. He glanced apologetically at the other two men.
“Earl,” he asked his cousin, “how did they come to use Helen’s. . . . brain?”
“It was just at the time that the first Brain-controls were made five years ago that Helen died. Since newly deceased persons only could furnish undecayed brains, all those who died on that certain day were conscripted by the Unidum. Their names were published as being ‘honored’ in being the first to initiate that great advancement in science, as it was called. The Unidum saw its mistake, for there were riots that same day—friends and relatives of the ‘honored’ deceased. But the Unidum did not see its greatest mistake in ever authorizing the use of Brain-controls. And to this day, it does not see it, or does not care to see it.”
“Has there been no protest, no organized opposition?”
“Not as yet, although feeling has run high at times.”
“Sarto! What sort of a world is this?” exclaimed Williams. “An inhuman, coldblooded, repulsive scientific horror like that and nothing is done! And the Eugenics Law, again inhuman and anti-social, and there are no people of spirit to revolt.”
“Revolt? The Unidum is all-powerful—practically a dictatorship. And the regulating pendulum is a group of Scientists to whom both the Eugenics Law and the Brain-control movement are laudable advancements. What can the masses do? What can you expect them to do when the Unidum has given them a hundred benefits never known on earth before? Remember, Dan, as I’ve said before, the Unidum has done far more good than harm.”
“I suppose I should look at it that way,” answered Williams. “Yet mistakes can multiply. And the mere thought of Helen. . . .
“Tell me, where is the Brain-control which—”
“I don’t know.”
“You do!”
“Dan, I tell you. . . .”
Hackworth sweated a moment under the adamant blue eyes of his cous
in and then whispered: “Boston.”
“Then I’m going to Boston!”
“What do you mean?” cried Hackworth, scrambling to his feet.
“I simply mean that if it’s the last act of my life, I’m going to see that my sister’s. . . . brain dies its proper death!”
“You’re mad!”
“Do you think I could live in peace, or die in peace, knowing Helen, all that is still conscious of her, lies in perpetual torment?”
“But there is nothing you can do! It’s been tried before.” Hackworth turned with a note of pleading to the young chemist, “You tell him, Terry. You tell him it’s impossible.”
“Yes, that’s right, Mr. Williams,” said Terry. “You could do nothing.”
“I can wreck the whole control.”
“Even if you break all the contacts and smash the mirror-eyes,” returned Terry, “the brain does not die. As long as the nutritive fluid surrounds it, it lives. You can’t harm that because the mechanical heart is enclosed in heavy steel. No key will open its lock except one that the Scientist has who renews the fluid periodically. The pipes leading upward are out of reach; so is the brain-case out of reach.”
“What would a well-aimed bullet do if it struck the brain-case?”
“Why, smash it. But you need a gun for that.”
“And you can’t get a gun no matter how hard you try,” interposed Hackworth. “You remember I left all my guns at Kabinda, Africa. No one can import a gun into Unitaria. And none are sold here either. The Unidum has completely disarmed the citizens of Unitaria.”
l Williams drew his brows together thoughtfully at this. It began to look less simple than at first.
“Nevertheless, I’m going to Boston and look the thing over,” he said firmly. “Somehow, sometime, I’ll figure out a way.”
“But Lila! Dan, you haven’t forgotten—”
“No, Earl, I haven’t. However, in the case of Lila, we can do nothing till we hear from Andrew Grant. In the meantime I will go to Boston and—”
