"That's probably his father," the voices whispered behind his ears.

"Yes; the archetype. He'll bring up the Mother, too, I'll bet...."

As in those paintings of the primitives where kings and queens are very tall and common folks are very small, Lee saw her now: Mother. That had been just after induction when he had brought her what he thought was joyous news. Her face filled the whole screen. It looked as if composed from jagged ectoplasms, quite transparent except for the eyes. Deep and burning with pain they were, boring into his own. And there was smoke coming out of her mouth and it formed words: "But, Semper, you are still a child. One mustn't use children for this sort of thing; one mustn't."

Every letter of these smoke-written words seemed to be flying toward him on wings....

"Terrific," the voices murmured at Lee's back. "Remember the case history? She died of cancer six months after he went overseas." "Yes, I remember; he's never seen her again. He's probably built up a strong complex out of that one, too."

On the screen now danced images almost totally abstracted from the realities of the filmed doc.u.mentaries from the war.

They were whirling columns of smoke; they were like the vast, dark interior of a huge thunderhead cloud through which a glider soars, illuminated only by the flashes of lightning as for split seconds they revealed a fraction of some horrible reality: A burning ocean with screaming human faces bobbing in the flames. The whirling tracks of a tank going across some writhing human body and leaving it flat in its tracks, sprawling like an empty coat dyed red. And then the swirling, howling darkness closing in again....

"Interesting eh?" A voice broke through his cataleptic trance and the other answered: "Beautiful; almost a cla.s.sical case. Great plasticity of imagination." "Yes; that's exactly what sets me wondering; the fellow should have cracked up by all the rules of the game." "How do we know that he hasn't? Maybe he was psycho and they didn't notice; they had some G.o.dawful a.s.ses for psychiatrists in war medicine. It's quite a possibility; well, his image production is ebbing now; I don't expect anything new of significance, what do you think?" "Now; we've got what we wanted anyway. Let's take him out of it; but go easy on the rheostats."

The projector stopped. The masterful, the ghostly fingers which had been playing on the keyboard of his mind very slowly receded from a furious fortissimo to a pianissimo. At first only the flutterings of the diaphragm eased, then the violent palpitations of a foreign pulse slipped off the heart; the liberated lungs expanded; tremors were running through the body as through the ice of a frozen river at spring; and then at last the mind escaped from its captivity.

Gradually as in a cinema after the show the lights reappeared. Blinking, Lee stared at the man who stood over him taking his pulse; it was Bondy.

Mellish stood at the foot of the table with his back to Lee; he seemed to watch some apparatus which made noises like a teletype machine.

Swinging his legs off the table Lee said:

"I'm okay; you needn't hold my hand."

But then he noticed that he wasn't. His head spun, his whole body was wet with perspiration, he felt very weak and limp. He swayed and buried his face in his hands trying to gain his balance, trying to shake off the trance. "Excuse me," he said. "I'm a bit dizzy."

As he opened his eyes again the two medics were standing right in front of him and smiling down on him with their bland, professional smiles.

Lee felt the upsurge of intense dislike. He had seen those smiles before, often--too often: they seemed to be standard equipment with the medical profession whenever a fellow was about to be dispatched to the "table", or worse, to the psychopathic ward. Instinct told him that there was something in the air and also that his best bet would be a brave show of normalcy:

"This test, these new methods of psychoa.n.a.lysis, they are extremely interesting," he said with an effort.

"Thank you, Dr. Lee," it was Mellish who spoke. "We knew you would find the experience worthwhile even if we put you under a considerable strain. A complete a.n.a.lysis in those olden days of Dr. Freud took three years; now thanks to The Brain we get approximately the same results within as many hours; that's some progress, isn't it?"

"Enormous," Lee said dryly while his eyes wandered over to Bondy; he knew the pattern, it would be Bondy's turn now to have a shot at him.

There it came; and how he loathed the false heartiness of that voice.

"Dr. Lee, I'm afraid we have a bit of bad news for you--your test--the results have been negative. You have failed."

"Failed?" For a fraction of a second Lee's heart stopped beating. "In what sense? And what does that mean?"

Now it was Mellish's turn. "Dr. Lee, there must be frankness amongst colleagues and as a fellow scientist you'll understand. In the first place the decision isn't ours; we merely conduct the test on behalf of The Brain. The Brain, as you know, is the most highly developed machine in all the world. Its functions, its whole existence depend entirely upon the human skills and the human loyalties amongst its staff. A three-billion-dollar investment, plus the vital role of The Brain in our national defence, justify the extreme precautions which we are forced to take for its protection."

"What exactly are you driving at?"

"Please don't take it as an insult," now it was Bondy again. "There's nothing personal in this. It's merely that your emotional-reaction chart definitely shows a certain antagonism which from childhood-experience and war-experience you have built up against technology. It's nothing but a potential; it is confined to your subconscious. But even a potential danger of subconscious revolt is more than The Brain can risk amongst its a.s.sociates. We fully appreciate the wish of our Dr. Scriven to enlist your very valuable aid, but...."

"I see" Lee interrupted, "but you would feel safer if I were to return to Australia by the next plane."

His head bent under the blow. A short 24 hours ago The Brain had been a nebulous, almost a non-existent thing. Since then a whole new world had been opened to him in revelations blinding and magnetic with infinite possibilities. His work--the efforts of a lifetime--would not equal what he could do in days with the aid of The Brain. His love--he would never see Oona Dahlborg again as he left under a shadow, rejected by The Brain.

"Sorry I wasted so much of your time," he said aloud. "I do not believe in this a.n.a.lysis; I cannot disprove it though. That's all, I guess; I better be going now."

"Here's your pa.s.s, Dr. Lee." He took mechanically the yellow slip which Bondy handed him....

He had already opened the door when somebody sharply called: "Dr. Lee, one moment please."

He whirled around. "Yes?"

"Will you please read what's written on your slip?"

Suspiciously he looked at the yellow paper; what more torture were these fellows going to inflict? Then his eyes popped as he read: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39: Cortex capacity 119%, Sensitivity 208%, Personality integration 95%, Service qualification 100%...." There were more data, but he didn't read them as wide-eyed he stared at the medics. With their faces beaming they looked like identical twins to him; Lee never knew who said the words:

"Congratulations Lee. That has been your last test. We just had to find out how you would take a serious frustration. You've pa.s.sed it with flying colors. Shake."

CHAPTER IV

Apperception 36, Lee's lab within The Brain, looked much like Apperception 27 except for its interior fittings. As a matter of fact, all the several hundred Apperception Centers were built after the same plan, like suites in a big office building in many respects. They were spread over The Brain occipital region; they were built inside the concrete wall of the "dura matter" which in turn lay within the sh.e.l.l of the "bone matter", a mile or so of solid rock. Each apperception center had its own elevator shaft which went through the concrete of the "dura matter" down to "Grand Central", the traffic center below The Brain.

Each one was also connected at the other end of its corridor with the glideways which snaked through the interior of The Brain. There were, however, no transversal or direct communications from one apperception center to the next. Because of the extraordinary diversity and secrecy of the projects submitted to The Brain' processings, each apperception center was completely insulated against its neighbors.

Life hadn't changed so much from what it had been in the Australian desert Lee had found; at least not his working life. For all he knew some nuclear physicists might be working in the lab next door; or they might be ballistics experts working with The Brain on curves for long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current products of foreign literature to the a.n.a.lysis as to "idea-content"; or else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there could be no doubt.

Sometimes, especially when tired, he could feel the weight of those billions of rock tons over his head and it was like being buried alive in the tomb of the Pharaoh. And also in that state of mental exhaustion at the end of a long day, he sensed the emanations of The Brain's t.i.tanic cerebrations as one senses the presence of genius in human man.

The knowledge that all this mighty work was being devoted to war had deeply depressing effects on him. Would there be anybody else in this vast apperception area who worked for the prevention of war? A few perhaps; Scriven would be one of them in case he had a lab somewhere in here and time to work in it. Lee didn't know whether he had. He hadn't seen Scriven again after that inauguration speech he had made when Lee, together with other newly appointed scientific workers had taken "The Oath of The Brain."

They had a.s.sembled in that vast subterranean dome of the luminous murals at the feet of the giant statue of The Thinker, looking almost forlorn in the expanse, though there had been several hundred of them. The atmosphere had been solemn, the silence hushed, as Scriven mounted the statue's pedestal. The address by that mighty voice resounding from the cupola had been worthy of the majestic scene:

"As we stand gathered here, the eons in evolution of our human race are looking down upon us...."

The speech had been followed by the taking of the oath, deeply stirring to the emotions of the young neophytes who formed the large majority of the new group. The chorus of their voices had resounded in awed and solemn tones as they repeated the formula; even now after six months some of it echoed in Lee's ears:

"I herewith solemnly swear:

"That I will serve The Brain with undivided loyalty and with all my faculties.

"That I will at all times obey the orders of the Brain Trust on behalf of The Brain.

"That I will never betray or reveal any secrets of The Brain's design or work, be they military or not, neither to the world outside nor to any of my fellow workers except by special permission...."

It had been almost like taking holy orders. There had been mystery in the atmosphere of the vast crypt, something medieval in the unconditional surrender to The Brain.

Lee looked up from the charts on which he had been working; his eyes were tired and so was his mind after ten hours of hard concentration.

That was probably what set his thoughts wandering. But strange that they should always wander to those blind spots in his mental vision so intriguing because he knew there was something there that he could not lay a finger on.

The first of these blind spots hovered somewhere between Scriven's words and Scriven's deeds; between The Brain as an ideal of science and The Brain's reality as in instrument of national defense. Somehow the two didn't connect; there was a break, some layer of thin ice, a danger zone which n.o.body seemed willing to discuss or tread, not even Oona Dahlborg.