by Isaac Asimov
Susan stared at him solemnly. 'Do you want me to go to the movies, or just into the next room?'
'If you could visit a friend--'
'No,' said Susan, firmly.
'You can dispose of your time as you please, of course. A movie, if you wish.'
'When I said "No,"' said Susan, 'I meant I wasn't leaving. I want to know what this is about.'
Kupfer seemed nonplussed. He stared at Anderson for a moment, then said, 'It's confidential, as Mr Heath explained to you, I hope.'
John, looking uneasy, said, 'I explained that. Susan understands--'
'Susan', said Susan, 'doesn't understand and wasn't given to understand that she was to absent herself from the proceedings. This is my apartment and Johnny and I are being married in two weeks - exactly two weeks from today. We are the firm of Johnny and Sue and you'll have to deal with the firm.'
Anderson's voice sounded for the first time, surprisingly deep and as smooth as though it had been waxed. 'Boris, the young woman is right. As Mr Heath's soon-to-be wife, she will have a great interest in what we have come here to suggest and it would be wrong to exclude her. She has so firm an interest in our proposal that if she were to wish to leave, I would urge her most strongly to remain.'
'Well, then, my friends,' said Susan, 'what will you have to drink? Once I bring you those drinks, we can begin.'
Both were seated rather stiffly and had sipped cautiously at their drinks, and then Kupfer said, 'Heath, I don't suppose you know much about the chemical details of the company's work - the cerebro-chemicals, for instance.'
'Not a bit,' said John, uneasily.
'No reason you should,' said Anderson, silkily.
'It's like this,' said Kupfer, casting an uneasy glance at Susan--
'No reason to go into technical details,' said Anderson, almost at the lower level of audibility.
Kupfer coloured slightly. 'Without technical details, Quantum Pharmaceuticals deals with cerebro-chemicals which are, as the name implies, chemicals that affect the cerebrum; that is, the higher functioning of the brain.'
'It must be very complicated work,' said Susan, with composure.
'It is,' said Kupfer. 'The mammalian brain has hundreds of characteristic molecular varieties found nowhere else, which serve to modulate cerebral activity, including aspects of what we might term the intellectual life. The work is under the closest corporate security, which is why Anderson wants no technical details. I can say this, though. - We can go no further with animal experiments. We're up against a brick wall if we can't try the human response.'
'Then why don't you?' said Susan. 'What stops you?'
'Public reaction if something goes wrong!'
'Use volunteers, then.'
'That won't help. Quantum Pharmaceuticals couldn't take the adverse publicity if something went wrong.'
Susan looked at them mockingly. 'Are you two working on your own, then?'
Anderson raised his hand to stop Kupfer. 'Young woman,' he said, 'let me explain briefly in order to put an end to wasteful verbal fencing. If we succeed, we will be enormously rewarded. If we fail, Quantum Pharmaceuticals will disown us and we will pay what penalty there is to be paid, such as the ending of our careers. If you ask us, why we are willing to take this risk, the answer is, we do not think a risk exists. We are reasonably sure we will succeed; entirely sure we will do no harm. The corporation feels it cannot take the chance; but we feel we can. - Now, Kupfer, proceed!'
Kupfer said, 'We have a memory chemical. It works with every animal we have tried. Their learning ability improves amazingly. It should work on human beings, too.'
John said, That sounds exciting.'
'It is exciting,' said Kupfer. 'Memory is not improved by devising a way for the brain to store information more efficiently. All our studies show that the brain stores almost unlimited numbers of items perfectly and permanently. The difficulty lies in recall. How many times have you had a name at the tip of your tongue and couldn't get it? How many times have you failed to come up with something you knew you knew, and then did come up with it two hours later when you were thinking about something else? - Am I putting it correctly, David?'
'You are,' said Anderson. 'Recall is inhibited, we think, because the mammalian brain outraced its needs by developing a too-perfect recording system. A mammal stores more bits of information than it needs or is capable of using and if all of it was on tap at all times, it would never be able to choose among them quickly enough for appropriate reaction. Recall is inhibited, therefore, to ensure that items emerge from memory storage in manipulable numbers, and with those items most desired not blurred by the accompaniment of numerous other items of no interest.
'There is a definite chemical in the brain that functions as a recall inhibitor, and we have a chemical that neutralizes the inhibitor. We call it a disinhibitor, and as far as we have been able to ascertain the matter, it has no deleterious side effects.'
Susan laughed. 'I see what's coming, Johnny. You can leave now, gentlemen. You just said that recall is inhibited to allow mammals to react more efficiently, and now you say that the disinhibitor has no deleterious side effects. Surely the disinhibitor will make the mammals react less efficiently; perhaps find themselves unable to react at all. And now you are going to propose that you try it on Johnny and see if you reduce him to catatonic immobility or not.'
Anderson rose, his thin lips quivering. He took a few rapid strides to the far end of the room and back. When he sat down, he was composed and smiling, 'In the first place, Miss Collins, it's a matter of dosage. We told you that the experimental animals all displayed enhanced learning ability. Naturally, we didn't eliminate the inhibitor entirely; we merely suppressed it in part. Secondly, we have reason to think the human brain can handle complete disinhibition. It is much larger than the brain of any animal we have tested and we all know its incomparable capacity for abstract thought.
'It is a brain designed for perfect recall, but the blind forces of evolution have not managed to remove the inhibiting chemical which, after all, was designed for and inherited from the lower animals.'
'Are you sure?' asked John.
'You can't be sure,' said Susan, flatly.
Kupfer said, 'We are sure, but we need the proof to convince others. That's why we have to try a human being.'
'John, in fact,' said Susan.
'Yes.'
'Which brings us', said Susan, 'to the key question. Why John?'
'Well,' said Kupfer, slowly, 'we need someone for whom chances of success are most nearly certain, and in whom it would be most demonstrable. We don't want someone so low in mental capacity that we must use dangerously large doses of the disinhibitor; nor do we want someone so bright that the effect will not be sufficiently noticeable. We need someone who's average. Fortunately, we have the full physical and psychological profiles of all the employees at Quantum and in this and, in fact, all other ways, Mr Heath is ideal.'
'Dead average?' said Susan.
John looked stricken at the use of the phrase he had thought his own innermost, and disgraceful, secret. 'Come on, now,' he said.
Ignoring John's outcry, Kupfer answered Susan, 'Yes.'
'And he won't be, if he submits to treatment?'
Anderson's lips stretched into another one of his cheerless smiles. 'That's right. He won't be. This is something to think about if you're going to be married soon - the firm of Johnny and Sue, I think you called it. As it is, I don't think the firm will advance at Quantum, Miss Collins, for although Heath is a good and reliable employee he is, as you say, dead average. If he takes the disinhibitor, however, he will become a remarkable person and move upwards with astonishing speed. Consider what that will mean to the firm.'
'What does the firm have to lose?' asked Susan, grimly.
Anderson said. 'I don't see how you can lose anything. It will be a sensible dose which can be administered at the laboratories tomorrow - Sunday. We will have the floor to ourselves; we will keep
him under surveillance for a few hours. - It is certain nothing could go wrong. If I could tell you of our painstaking experimentation and of our thoroughgoing exploration of all possible side effects--'
'On animals,' said Susan, not giving in inch.
But John said, tightly, 'I'll make the decision, Sue. I've had it up to here with that dead-average bit. It's worth some risk to me if it means getting off that dead-average dead end.'
'Johnny,' said Susan, 'don't jump.'
'I'm thinking of the firm, Sue. I want to contribute my share.'
Anderson said, 'Good, but sleep on it. We will leave two copies of an agreement we will ask you to look over and sign. Please don't show it to anybody whether you sign or not. We will be here tomorrow morning again to take you to the laboratory.'
They smiled, rose, and left.
John read over the agreement with a troubled frown, then looked up. 'You don't think I should be doing this, do you, Sue?'
'It worries me, sure.'
'Look, if I have a chance to get away from that dead average--'
Susan said, 'What's wrong with that? I've met so many nuts and cranks in my short life that I welcome a nice, average guy like you, Johnny. Listen, I'm dead average too.'
'You dead average. With your looks? Your figure?'
Susan looked down upon herself with a touch of complacency. 'Well, then, I'm just your dead-average gorgeous girl,' she said.
The injection took place at 8 A.M. Sunday, no more than twelve hours after the proposition had been advanced. A thoroughly computerized body sensor was attached to John in a dozen places, while Susan watched with keen-eyed apprehension.
Kupfer said, 'Please, Heath, relax. All is going well, but tension speeds the heart rate, raises the blood pressure, and skews our results.'
'How can I relax?' muttered John.
Susan put in sharply, 'Skews the results to the point where you don't know what's going on?'
'No, no,' said Anderson. 'Boris said all is going well and it is. It is just that our animals were always sedated before the injection, and we did not feel sedation would have been appropriate in this case. So if we can't have sedation, we must expect tension. Just breathe slowly and do your best to minimize it.'
It was late afternoon before he was finally disconnected.
'How do you feel?' asked Anderson.
'Nervous,' said John. 'Otherwise, all right.'
'No headache?'
'No. But I want to visit the bathroom. I can't exactly relax with a bedpan.'
'Of course.'
John emerged, frowning. 'I don't notice any particular memory improvement.'
'That will take some time and will be gradual. The disinhibitor must leak across the blood-brain barrier, you know,' said Anderson.
4
It was nearly midnight when Susan broke what had turned out to be an oppressively silent evening in which neither had much responded to the television.
She said, 'You'll have to stay here overnight, I don't want you alone when we don't really know what's going to happen.'
'I don't feel a thing,' said John, gloomily. 'I'm still me.'
'I'll settle for that, Johnny,' said Susan. 'Do you feel any pains or discomforts or oddnesses at all?'
'I don't think so.'
'I wish we hadn't done it.'
'For the firm,' said John, smiling weakly. 'We've got to take some chances for the firm.'
5
John slept poorly, and woke drearily, but on time. And he arrived at work on time too, to start the new week. By 11 A.M., however, his morose air had attracted the unfavourable attention of his immediate superior, Michael Ross. Ross was burly and black-browed and fit the stereotype of the stevedore without being one. John got along with him though he did not like him.
Ross said, in his bass-baritone, 'What's happened to your cheery disposition, Heath - your jokes - your lilting laughter?' Ross cultivated a certain preciosity of speech as though he were anxious to negate the stevedore image.
'Don't exactly feel tip-top,' said John, not looking up.
'Hangover?'
'No, sir,' said John, coldly.
'Well, cheer up, then. You'll win no friends, scattering stink-weeds over the fields as you gambol along.'
John would have liked to groan. Ross's subliterary affectations were wearisome at the best of times and this wasn't the best of times.
And to make matters worse, John smelled the foul odour of a rancid cigar and knew that James Arnold Prescott -the head of the sales division - could not be far behind.
Nor was he. He looked about, and said, 'Mike, when and what did we sell Rahway last spring or thereabouts? There's some damned question about it and I think the details have been mis-computerized.'
The question was not addressed to him, but John said quietly, 'Forty-two vials of PCAP. That was on 14 April, JP, invoice number P-20543, with a five per cent discount granted on payment within thirty days. Payment, in full, received on 8 May.'
Apparently everyone in the room had heard that. At least, everyone looked up.
Prescott said, 'How the hell do you happen to know all that?'
John stared at Prescott for a moment, a vast surprise on his face. 'I just happened to remember, JP.'
'You did, eh? Repeat it.'
John did, faltering a bit, and Prescott wrote it down on one of the papers on John's desk, wheezing slightly as the bend at his waist compressed his portly abdomen up against his diaphragm and made breathing difficult. John tried to duck the smoke from the cigar without seeming to do so.
Prescott said, 'Ross, check this out on your computer and see if there's anything to it at all.' He turned to John with an aggrieved look. 'I don't like practical jokers. What would you have done if I had accepted these figures of yours and walked off with them?'
'I wouldn't have done anything. They're correct,' said John, conscious of himself as the full centre of attention.
Ross handed Prescott the readout. Prescott looked at it and said, 'This is from the computer?'
'Yes, JP.'
Prescott stared at it, then said, with a jerk of his head towards John, 'And what's he? Another computer? His figures were correct.'
John tried a weak smile, but Prescott growled and left, the stench of his cigar a lingering reminder of his presence.
Ross said, 'What the hell was that little bit of legerdemain, Heath? You found out what he wanted to know and looked it up in advance to get some kudos?'
'No, sir,' said John, who was gathering confidence. 'I just happened to remember. I have a good memory for these things.'
'And took the trouble to keep it from your loyal companions all these years? There's no one here who had any idea you hid a good memory behind that unremarkable forehead of yours.'
'No point in showing it, Mr Ross, is there? Now when I have, it doesn't seem to have gained me any good-will, does it?'
And it hadn't. Ross glowered at him and turned away.
6
John's excitement over the dinner table at Gino's that night made it difficult for him to talk coherently, but Susan listened patiently and tried to act as a stabilizing force.
'You might just have happened to remember, you know,' she said. 'By itself it doesn't prove anything, Johnny.'
'Are you crazy?' He lowered his voice at Susan's gesture and quick glance about. He repeated in a semiwhisper, 'Are you crazy? You don't suppose it's the only thing I remember, do you? I think I can remember anything I ever heard. It's just a question of recall. For instance, quote some line out of Shakespeare.'
'To be or not to be.'
John looked scornful. 'Don't be funny. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. The point is that if you recite any line, I can carry on from there for as long as you like. I read some of the plays for English Lit classes at college and some for myself and I can bring any of it back. I've tried. It flows! I suppose I can bring back any part of any book or article or newspaper I've ever read, or any TV show I've ever watched - word for
word or scene for scene.'
Susan said, 'What will you do with all that?'
John said, 'I don't have that consciously in my head at all times. Surely you don't - wait, let's order--'
Five minutes later, he said, 'Surely you don't-- My God, I haven't forgotten where we left off. Isn't it amazing? -- Surely you don't think I'm swimming in a mental sea of Shakespearean sentences at all times. The recall takes an effort; not much of one, but an effort.'
'How does it work?'
'I don't know. How do you lift your arm? What orders do you give your muscles? You just will the arm to lift upwards and it does so. It's no trouble to do so, but your arm doesn't lift until you want it to. Well, I remember anything I've ever read or seen when I want to but not when I don't want to. I don't know how I do it, but I do it.'
The first course arrived and John tackled it happily.
Susan picked at her stuffed mushrooms. 'It sounds exciting.'
'Exciting? I've got the biggest, most wonderful toy in the world. My own brain. Listen, I can spell any word correctly and I'm pretty sure I won't ever make any grammatical mistake.'
'Because you remember all the dictionaries and grammars you ever read?'
John looked at her sharply. 'Don't be sarcastic, Sue.'
'I wasn't being--'
He waved her silent. 'I never used dictionaries as light reading. But I do remember words and sentences in my reading and they were correctly spelled and correctly parsed.'
'Don't be sure. You've seen any word misspelled in every possible way and every possible example of twisted grammar, too.'
'Those were exceptions. By far the largest number of times I've encountered literary English, I've encountered it used correctly. It outweighs accidents, errors, and ignorance. What's more, I'm sure I'm improving even as I sit here, growing more intelligent steadily.'
'And you're not worried. What if--'
'What if I become too intelligent? Tell me how on Earth you think becoming too intelligent can be harmful.'
'I was going to say', said Susan, coldly, 'that what you're experiencing is not intelligence. It's only total recall.'
'How do you mean "only"? If I recall perfectly, if I use the English language correctly, if I know endless quantities of material, isn't that going to make me seem more intelligent? How else need one define intelligence? You aren't growing just a little jealous, are you, Sue?'
