The Maxwell Equations

by Anatoly Dnieprov

  Hard as I beat my brains, however, I could think of nothing plausible. And then that girl who said, "They will know." How scared she was!

  After a few days of tormenting guess-work. I finally realised that unless I cracked the mystery I would probably crack up myself.

  First of all I wanted to make sure that the Kraftstudt in question was that same war criminal.

  4

  Finding myself at the low door of Kraftstudt and Co. for the third time, I felt that what was to happen next would influence my whole life. For no reason I could understand then or later, I paid off the taxi and rang the bell only after the cab swung round the corner.

  It seemed to me that the young man with his crumpled old-mannish face had been waiting for me. Without saying a word he took me by the hand and led me through the dark subterranean maze into the reception hall where I had been on the two previous occasions.

  "Well, what brings you here this time?" he asked in what seemed to me a mocking tone of voice.

  "I wish to speak to Herr Kraftstudt personally," I demanded.

  "Our firm is not satisfying you in some way, Professor?" he asked.

  "I wish to speak to Herr Kraftstudt," I insisted, trying not to look into his prominent black eyes, which now shone with malicious mockery.

  "As you wish. It's none of my business," he said after a long scrutiny. "Wait here."

  Then he disappeared through one of the doors behind the glass partition.

  He was gone over half an hour arid I was dozing off when a rustle came to me from a corner and out of the semi-darkness stepped a white-smocked figure with a stethoscope in hand. "A doctor," flashed through my mind. "Come to examine me. Is this really necessary to see Herr Kraftstudt?"

  "Follow me," the doctor said peremptorily and I followed him, having no idea what was to happen next and why I had ever started it.

  Light filtered into the long corridor in which we now were through a skylight high up somewhere. The corridor ended with a tall massive door. The doctor stopped.

  "Wait here. Herr Kraftstudt will see you presently."

  In about five minutes he opened the door wide for me.

  "Well, let's go," he said in the tone of a man who was regretting what was going to happen.

  I obediently followed him. We entered a wing with large bright windows and I shut my eyes involuntarily.

  I was brought out of my momentary stupor by a sharp voice:

  "Why don't you come up, Professor Rauch?"

  I turned to my right and saw Kraftstudt in a deep wicker-work chair, the very man whom I remembered so well from the newspaper pictures.

  "You wished to see me?" he asked, without greeting me or rising from his desk. "What can I do for you?"

  I controlled myself with an effort and went right up to his desk.

  "So you have changed your occupation?" I asked, looking hard at him. He had aged in those fifteen years and the skin on his face had gathered into large flabby folds.

  "What do you mean, Professor?" he asked, looking me over carefully.

  "I had thought, Herr Kraftstudt, or rather hoped that you were still…"

  "Ah, I see." And he guffawed.

  "Times have changed, Rauch. Incidentally, it's not so much your hopes I am interested in at present, as the reasons that brought you here."

  "As you can probably guess, Herr Kraftstudt, I have a fair knowledge of mathematics, I mean modern mathematics. I thought at first you had organised an ordinary computer centre equipped with electronic machinery. However I'm now convinced that this is not the case. In your establishment it's men who solve the problems. As only men of genius would solve them. And what is most strange-with monstrous, inhuman speed. If you like, I presumed to come and meet your mathematicians, who are indeed extraordinary men."

  Kraftstudt first smiled, then began to laugh quietly, then louder and louder.

  "I don't see the joke, Herr Kraftstudt," I said indignantly. "My wish appears ridiculous to you, does it? But don't you realise that anybody with an interest in mathematics would have the same wish on seeing the kind of solution I got from your firm?"

  "I'm laughing at something quite different, Rauch. I'm laughing at your provincial narrow-mindedness. I'm laughing at you, Professor, a man respected in the town, whose learnedness has always boggled the imagination of immature maidens and old spinsters, at the way you hopelessly lag behind the swift strides of modern science!"

  I was staggered by the insolence of that ex-Nazi interrogator.

  "Listen, you," I shouted. "Only fifteen years ago your speciality was applying hot irons to innocent people. What right have you to prattle about swift strides of science? Come to that, I wished to see you to find what methods you use to force the brilliant people in your power to perform work which would take men of genius several years or perhaps all their life to do. I'm very glad I have found you. I consider it my duty as a scientist and citizen to let all the people in our town know that a former Nazi hangman has chosen as his new trade to abase men of science, men whose duty has always been to work for the good of humanity."

  Kraftstudt got up from his chair and, frowning, approached me.

  "Listen to me, Rauch. Take my advice and do not provoke me. I knew you would come to me sooner or later. But I never imagined you would be such an idiot. Frankly speaking, I thought I would find in you an ally, so to speak, and a helper."

  "What?" I exclaimed- "First you explain to me by what honest or dishonest means you are exploiting the people who bring you profit."

  Before my very eyes his face shrunk into a lump of dirty-yellowish skin. The pale-blue eyes behind the pince-nez turned into two slits that bore into me acidly. For a fleeting moment I had a feeling of a thing being examined by a prospective buyer.

  "So you want me to explain to you how honestly our firm operates? So you're not satisfied with having your idiotic sums done for you as they should be done in the twentieth century? You want to experience for yourself what it means to be solving such problems?" he hissed, his vile face a mask pulsating with rage and hate.

  "I don't believe all is above-board here. Your reputation is proof enough. And then I overheard one of your men screaming-"

  "That's enough," Kraftstudt barked. "After all I never asked you to come. But since you are here -and in such a mood-we'll make use of you whether you like it or not."

  I had been unaware that the doctor who had brought me there was standing all the time behind me. At a signal from Kraftstudt a muscular hand closed on my mouth, and a piece of cotton soaked in something pungent was thrust under my nose. I lost consciousness.

  5

  I came to slowly and realised that I was lying stretched on a bed. Voices of men in a heated argument crowded in on me. For a while all I knew was that their subject was scientific. Then, as my head cleared a little, I could understand what it was about.

  "I can tell you this: your Nichols is no example. The coding of stimulation is highly individual, you know. What stimulates will-power in one man might stimulate something quite different in another. For instance, an electric impulse that gives Nichols pleasure deafens me. When I get k I've a feeling two tubes have been thrust into my ears with a couple of aircraft engines revving up at the other end."

  "All the same the activity rhythm of neurone groups in the brain doesn't differ much from man to man. That's what our teacher's 'taking advantage of really."

  "With not much success though," a tired voice said. "Nothing beyond mathematical analysis so far."

  "It's all a matter of time. No short cuts here. Nobody would introduce an electrode into your brain to examine the impulses, because that would damage the brain and consequently the impulses. Now a generator allows for a wide range of change in coded impulses. And that makes for experiments without damage.to the brain."

  "That's as may be," the tired voice demurred. "The cases of Gorin and Void don't bear you out. The former died within ten seconds of being put inside a frequency-modulated field. The latte
r screamed with pain, so the generator had to be switched off immediately. You seem to forget the principal thing about neurocybernetics, friends, and that is that the network of neurones in the human body effects immense numbers of synapses. The impulses these transmit have their own frequency. As soon as you are in resonance with this natural frequency your circuit gets tremendously excited. The doctor's probing blindfolded, so to speak. And that we are still alive is pure chance."

  At that moment I opened my eyes. I was lying in a room that looked like a large hospital ward with beds lining the walls. In the middle stood a big deal table piled high with remnants of food, empty tins, cigarette stubs and scraps of paper. The scene was lit dimly by electric light. I rose on my elbows and looked round. Immediately the conversation stopped.

  "Where am I?" I whispered, looking over the faces staring at me.

  A voice whispered, "The new chap's come to."

  "Where am I?" I repeated, addressing them all.

  "So you don't know?" asked a young man in his underwear, sitting upright in the bed to my right. "This is the firm of Kraftstudt, our creator and teacher."

  "Creator and teacher?" I mumbled, rubbing my leaden forehead. "What do you mean-teacher? He's a war criminal."

  "Crime is relative. It all depends on the purpose. If the end is noble, any action is good," trotted out my neighbour on the right.

  This piece of vulgar Machiavellianism made me look at the man with renewed curiosity.

  "Where did you pick up that bit of wisdom, young man?" I said, letting my feet down and facing him.

  "Herr Kraftstudt is our creator and teacher," they suddenly began to chant in chorus.

  So I have landed in the Wise Men's Home after all, I thought.

  "Well, friends, things must be very bad for you to say a thing like that," I said, looking them over again.

  "I bet the new boy has his maths in a frequency band between ninety and ninety-five cycles!" a stout fellow shouted, half-rising from his bed.

  "And he'll squeal with pain at no more than 140 cycles in the uniformly accelerated pulse code!" bellowed another.

  "And he'll be forced to sleep by receiving a series of eight pulses per second with a pause of two seconds after each series!"

  "I am certain the new boy will develop ravenous hunger if stimulated at a frequency of 103 cycles with a logarithmic increase in the pulse power."

  The worst I could imagine had happened. I was indeed among madmen. The strange thing, however, was that they all seemed to have the same obsession: the possible influence of some kind of codes and pulses on my sensations. They thronged round me goggle-eyed, shouting out figures, giving modulations and powers, betting on how I would act "inside the generator" and "between the walls" and what power I was likely to consume.

  Knowing from books that madmen should not be contradicted, I decided not to start any arguments but to try and behave like one of them. So I spoke in as inoffensive a tone as possible to my neighbour on the right. He seemed just a bit more normal than the others.

  "Would you please tell me what you're all talking about? I must admit I'm completely ignorant of the subject. All these codes, pulses, neurones, stimulations-"

  The room shook to a burst of guffaw. The inmates reeled with laughter, holding their sides, rocking and doubling up. The laughter became hysterical when I rose in indignation to shout them down.

  "Circuit Number Fourteen. Frequency eighty-five cycles! Stimulation of anger!" somebody shouted and their laughter crescendoed.

  Then I sat on the bed and resolved to wait till they calmed down.

  My neighbour on the right was the first to do so. Then he sat on my bed and fixed his eyes on mine.

  "Do you mean to say you really don't know anything?"

  "Word of honour, not a thing. I can't make head or tail of what you were saying."

  "Word of honour?"

  "Word of honour."

  "All right. We'll believe you, though you're certainly a rare case. Deinis, get up and tell the new boy what we're here for."

  "Yes, Deinis, get up and tell him all about it. Let him be as happy as we are."

  "Happy?" I asked, surprised. "Are you happy?"

  "Of course we are, of course we are,".they all shouted. "Why, we know ourselves now. Man's highest bliss is to know himself."

  "Didn't you know yourselves before?" I asked.

  "Of course not. People don't know themselves. Only those who are familiar with neurocybernetics know themselves."

  "Long live our teacher!" someone shouted.

  "Long live our teacher!" they all shouted in automatic unison.

  The man whom they called Deinis came up and sat down on the bed next to mine.

  "What education have you?" he asked in a hollow tired voice.

  "I am a professor of physics."

  "Do you know anything about neuropsychology?"

  "Nothing at all."

  "Cybernetics?"

  "Almost nothing."

  "Neurocybernetics and the general theory of biologic regulation?"

  "Not the vaguest idea."

  An exclamation of surprise sounded in the room. "Not a chance," Deinis muttered. "He won't understand."

  "Go on, please, I'll try my best to follow you." "He'll understand all right after a dozen generator sessions or so," a voice said.

  "I understood after five!" someone shouted. "A couple of turns between the walls will be even better."

  "Anyway, explain things to me, Deinis," I insisted, fighting down a terrible premonition. "Well, do you understand what life is?" For a long time I said nothing, staring at Deinis. "Life is a complex natural phenomenon," I uttered at last.

  There was a snigger. Then another. Then many more. The inmates of the ward were looking at me as though I had just uttered some obscene nonsense. Deinis shook his head disapprovingly.

  "You're in a bad way. You've a lot to learn," he said.

  "Tell me where I am wrong."

  "Go on, Deinis, explain to him," they all shouted in unison.

  "Very well. Listen. Life is constant circulation of coded electrochemical stimulations along the neurones of your organism."

  I thought that over. Circulation of stimulations along neurones. I seemed to remember hearing something like that before.

  "Well, carry on."

  "All the sensations that go to make up your spiritual ego are nothing but electrochemical impulses that travel from receptors up to the brain to be processed, and then down to effectors."

  "Yes, well?"

  "All sensations of the outer world pass along the nerve fibres to the brain. Each sensation has its own code, frequency and speed. And these three parameters determine its quality, intensity and duration. Understand that?"

  "Let's assume I do."

  "Hence life is nothing more nor less than the passage of coded information along your nerve fibres. And thought is the circulation of frequency-modulated information through the neurone synapses in the central regions of the nervous system, that is, in the brain."

  "I don't quite understand that," I confessed.

  "It's like this. The brain is made up of close on ten thousand million neurones similar to electric relays. They are linked up into an elaborately interconnected system by fibres called axones. These conduct stimulation from neurone to neurone. It is this wandering of stimulation along the neurones that we call thought."

  My premonition grew to fear.

  "He won't understand a thing until he's been inside the generator or between the walls," shouted several voices at once.

  "Well, let's assume you're right. What follows from that?" I said to Deinis.

  "That life can be shaped at will. By means of pulse generators stimulating the corresponding codes in the neurone synapses. And that is of enormous practical importance."

  "Meaning?" I asked softly, sensing that I was about to get an insight into Kraftstudt and Co.'s activities.

  "That can be best explained by an example. Let us consider the
stimulation of mathematical activity. Certain backward countries are at present building what are called electronic computers. The number of triggers, or relays, such machines have does not exceed five to ten thousand. The number of triggers in the mathematical areas of the human brain is in the order of one thousand million. Nobody will ever be able to build a machine with anywhere near that number."

  "Well, what of it?"

  "Here you are: mathematical problems can be solved much more efficiently and cheaply by a mechanism created by Mother Nature and lodged here," Deinis passed his hand across his forehead, "than by any expensive junk built for the job."

  "But machines work quicker!" I exclaimed. "A neurone, as far as I remember, can be excited no more than 200 times per second, whereas an electronic trigger can take millions of pulses. That is precisely why fast-working machines are more efficient!"

  The ward rocked with laughter again. Deinis alone retained his poker face.

  "You're wrong there. Neurones can be made to take impulses at any speed provided the exciter has a sufficiently high frequency. For example, an electrostatic generator operating in the pulsed condition. If you place a brain in the radiation field of such a generator it can be made to work to any speed."

  "So that is 'the way Kraftstudt and Co. make their money, is it!" I said, jumping up from the bed.

  "He is our teacher!" they all chanted again. "Repeat it, new boy. He is our teacher!"

  "Leave him," Deinis ordered suddenly. "He will understand in time that Herr Kraftstudt is our teacher. He doesn't know anything yet. Listen to this, new boy. Every sensation has its own code, its intensity and duration. The sensation of happiness-55 cycles per second with coded series of one hundred pulses each. The sensation of grief-62 cycles with a pause of 0.1 second between pulses. The sensation of joy-47 cycles with pulses increasing in intensity. The sensation of sadness-203 cycles, pain-123 cycles, love-14 cycles, poetic mood-31, anger-85, fatigue-17, sleepiness-eight, and so on. Coded pulses in these frequencies move along the neurones and thus you experience all the sensations I've mentioned. They can all be produced by a pulse generator created by our teacher. He has opened our eyes to the meaning of life."