Chapter II

Inside, the cabin in the sky seemed to be built almost entirely around a huge primeval looking fireplace. Despite the fierceness of the Arizona sun there was a fire in it of long and bluish flames, one of those modern inventions which reverse the processes of nature. Like the gas refrigerators of an older period, this fire worked in combination with the airconditioning system to _cool_ the house, lending to it in the midst of summer heat the same attractions which it had in winter.

In front of the fire and framed by its rather ghostly light, there stood a man with his head bowed down, pensively staring at the flames. As Lee's steps resounded from the ancient millstones which formed the floor, Dr. Scriven wheeled around; he approached the man from Down-Under with outstretched hands.

Rarely had Lee seen such a distinguished looking figure of a man. He looked more like a diplomat of the extinct old school than a scientist, with the immaculate expanse of his white tropical suit and the dignity of his leonine head. His width of shoulder and the smooth agility with which he moved gave the impression of great strength. Only his fingers were small, slender, almost like a woman's.

The reluctant softness of their pressure contrasted so much with his heartiness of manner that Lee felt repulsed by their touch until he remembered that a great surgeon lived and caused others to live by his sensitivity of hand.

"Dr. Lee, I'm happy, most happy, that you have been able to come." Scriven's voice was soft, but he spoke with an extraordinary precision of diction which had a quality almost of command. "Over there, please, by the fire...."

From the blue flames there came the freshness and the coolness of an ocean breeze; the rawhide chairs, built for barbaric chieftains as they seemed, proved to be most comfortable; the semidarkness, the roughness of the unhewn stone, gave a sense of the phantastical and the paradox. Lee sat and waited patiently for Scriven to explain.

"In case you're wondering a little about this setup," Scriven made a sweeping gesture around the room, "I've long since reached the conclusion that in these mad times a man needs above all some padded cell, some shell in which to retire and preserve his sanity. This is my padded cell, soundproof, lightproof, telephoneproof; a wholesome reminder of the basic, the primeval things. Simple, isn't it?"

Lee blinked at the extravagance of this statement. "Do you really call that simple?" he asked.

Scriven grinned: "You are right; it is of course a willed reversal from the complex, synthetic and perhaps a little perverse. But then, not everybody has the opportunity you had in living in the heart of nature. Frankly I envy you; your work reflects the depth of thinking which comes out of retirement from the world. That's why I called you here; that's why I am so sure you'll understand."

He paused. Lee thought that he saw what was perhaps a mannerism; the great surgeon didn't look at his visitor. With his head turned aside, staring into the flames, stroking his chin, speaking as if to himself, he reminded Lee of some medieval alchemist.

"It's a long story, Lee," Scriven continued. "It starts way back with a letter I wrote to the President of the United States. In this letter I pointed to the immense dangers which I anticipated in the event of an atom war; dangers to which the military appeared to be blind. I am referring to the inadequacy of the human brain and its susceptibility to mental and psychic shock. I explained how science and technology over the past few hundred years had developed by the _pooled_ efforts of the _elite_ in human brains, but that the individual brain, even if outstanding, was lagging farther and farther below the dizzy peak which science and technology in their totality had reached. I further explained, by the example of the Nazi and Jap States, how the collective brains of modern masses are reverting from and are hostile to a high level of civilization because it is beyond their mental reach. You know all this, of course, Lee. I made it clear that not even the collective brains of a general staff could be relied upon for normal functioning; that no matter how carefully protected physically, they remained exposed to psychic shock with its resultant errors of judgment. How much less then could production and transportation workers be expected to function effectively in the apocalyptic horrors they would have to face...."

* * * * *

Lee's eyes had narrowed in the concentration of listening; his head nodded approval. He wasn't conscious of it, but Scriven took note of it by a quick glance. His voice quickened:

"That was the first part of my letter, Lee. I then came out squarely with the project which has since become the work of my life. I told the President that under these circumstances the most needed thing for our country's national security would be the creation of a _mechanical_ brain, some central ganglion bigger and better than its human counterpart, immune to shock of any kind. This ganglion to be established in the innermost fortress of America as an auxiliary augmenting and controlling the work of a general staff. I gave him a fairly detailed outline of just how the thing could be done. There was really nothing basically new involved. Personally I have held for a long time that Man never "invents", that in fact it is constitutionally impossible for him to do so. Being a part of nature Man merely _discovers_ what nature has "invented" in some form of its own a long time ago. Mechanical brains. Lord, we have had them in their rudiments for the past hundred thousand years, at a minimum. The calendar is one; every printed book is one; the simplest of machines incorporates one. And ever since the first mechanical clock started its ticking we have developed them by leaps and bounds!"

"And did the President react positively to this project?" Lee asked.

Scriven shook his head. "He did not."

Then he paused. Little beads of perspiration had appeared on his forehead; he wiped them away with a handkerchief:

"That year, Lee," he began again, "when the decision was pending and I could do nothing but wait, knowing that there was no other defense against the Atom Bomb, knowing that our country's fate was at stake--it made me grey, it came pretty close to shattering my nerve.... But _then_...." His body tightened, the small fist pounded the rail of the chair: "... _But then We BUILT THE BRAIN._"

He said it almost in a triumphant cry.

Mounting tension had Lee almost frozen to his seat. Now he stirred and leaned forward.

"It actually exists? I mean it works? It is not limited to the analysis of mathematical problems but capable of cerebrations after the manner of the human brain?"

Scriven, with a startling change, sounded dry, very factual in a tired way as he answered: "I appreciate your difficulty of realization, Dr. Lee. The whole idea is new to you and I have presented it in a rather abrupt and inadequate way. In time, and if we get together, as I hope we will, you shall get visual impressions which are better than words. For the moment, just to give you a general idea and to prove that this is not a small matter, let me give you a few facts: Our first monetary appropriation for The Brain, as an unspecified part of the military budget, of course, was for one billion dollars. We have since received two more appropriations of an equal size."

Lee's gasp made a sound like a low whistle. With a depreciating gesture Scriven waved it away.

"While these funds could only cover the first stages in the construction of The Brain," he calmly went on, "we have been able to build a mechanical cortex mantle composed of ninety billion electronic cells. Considering that the cortex mantle of the human brain contains over 9 billion cells, this doesn't sound like much. Our synthetic or mechanical cells are a little better than the organic, natural cells, but not very much. So alone and by themselves their number would indicate only a ten times superiority of The Brain over its human counterpart. If that were all the result of our labors, a brain of, let's say, twice genius capacity, we would be a miserable failure. But then we _have_ achieved a very considerable improvement in the _utilization_ of the The Brain's cortex capacity. In the first place we have full control over the intake of thought impulses; and more important, we use multiple wave lengths in feeding impulses to The Brain and throughout all the impulse-processings. Even the human brain has some capacity of simultaneous thought on different levels of consciousness, but its range in this respect is extremely limited. The Brain by way of contrast operates on two thousand different wave lengths, which means that The Brain can process at least 2000 problems at one time. Finally, the absence of fatigue in The Brain makes operations possible for 20 out of the 24 hours of the day--the rest of the time we need for servicing and overhauling."

* * * * *

With apparent effort Scriven turned his face away from the blue flames. His dark brown eyes probed into Lee's as he summed up:

"All together, Lee, The Brain has now reached the approximate capacity of 25,000 first class human brains. You as a man of vision will understand what that means...."

Lee had his face upturned. The tension of thought gave to his features something of the ecstatic or the somnambulist. Slowly he said:

"The equivalent of twenty-five-thousand human brains--there is no comparison other than a God's...."

Striven had jumped from his chair. He started pacing the flagstones in front of the fire, whirling his mighty frame around at every corner with a sort of wrath, as if about to meet some attack.

"Yes, you are right," he almost shouted, "we hold that power; that power almost of a God's. And how we are wasting it."

"What do you mean?" Lee's eye-brows shot up. "You would not waste those powers once you have them. You would turn them to the most constructive use--the advancement of science, of humanity!"

Scriven froze in his steps. A cruel smile parted his lips; there was a gnashing sound of big white teeth. He pointed a finger at his visitor.

"Idealist, eh? That's what I thought I was ten years ago. That's what I had in mind with The Brain right from the start. As it has turned out, however, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and half a dozen other government departments, besieged The Brain for the solution of their "problems", some of them as destructive as warfare, others as insipid as the trend of the popular vote in some provincial primaries. Sometimes Uncle Sam even farms out the services of the Brain to aid some friendly foreign government--without that government's knowledge as to where the solution is coming from. To cut a long story short: What these fellows utterly fail to understand is that The Brain is not a finite mechanism like any other, but a mechanism which unendingly evolves and becomes richer in its associations by the material which is being fed into its cells. In other words; the Brain _learns_; consequently it must be _taught_, it must be given the wherewithal for its own self-improvement...."

Scriven halted his impatient step by the other's chair. His nervous fingers tapped Lee's shoulder: "And that is where you come in."

"Me?" Lee asked, startled. "What you just told me, Dr. Scriven, it will take me weeks to comprehend. At the moment I am at a loss to see how my work could connect...."

The surgeon's sensitive hand patted Lee's shoulder as if it were the neck of a shy horse. "You _will_ comprehend--in just another moment."

He pressed a button; in the entrance to the cabin in the sky the girl appeared, like an apparition. She approached, her hair a golden halo, her tunic transparent against the glare of the summer day. "Yes?"

"Oona, _please_"

She seemed familiar with the boss' code. With a smile on her lips she walked over to one of the pillars, opened a hidden recess and brought out the Scotch and syphon using an Egyptian clay tablet for a tray. With surgical exactitude Scriven poured out a good two fingers for his guest and an exceedingly small one for himself. "Stay with us for a moment, Oona, please," he said. "I didn't tell you the idea behind my calling Dr. Lee; you might be interested."

Wordlessly she slid into a seat, attentive and yet fading somehow into the background, as if trying to remain unnoticed. In that she did not succeed. Her beauty was such that its very presence changed the atmosphere; it put Lee under a strain to keep his eyes off her. As to Scriven, he seemed to address her almost as much as he did Lee.

"You have met Dr. Lee, haven't you, Oona; but do you know _whom_ you have met? He probably wouldn't admit it; nevertheless Dr. Lee is the most successful peacemaker on earth, I think. He has just put an end to the oldest war in this world between the two most venerable civilizations in existence. That war between the states of the ants and the states of the termites has been waged with never abating fury for millions of years--until Dr. Lee came along with the perfect solution of the eternal dispute. All he did was to crossbreed the belligerents and now we have "united nations", _Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_ which lives up to the spirit of its name. Elementary, isn't it?"

"So elementary," the girl said with ironical sweetness, "that the so-called peacemakers of the international conferences must have considered it below their dignity to stoop to it. How exactly did you do it; I mean the crossbreeding?"

* * * * *

Lee felt his cheeks burn; it was extremely irritating that this should happen to him every time Oona Dahlborg spoke to him, especially when it was in praise.

"It wasn't too hard," he said depreciatingly. "The main difficulty lay not with the termite queen nor with the furtive little king of the ants themselves. Biggest trouble was in getting the potential lovers together against the bulldog determination of their palace guards. To use force was out of the question. So I had to trick the guards, smuggle in the male and keep him hidden under the royal abdomen of his spouse."

She smiled amused. "What a perfect classic; the story of Romeo and Juliet all over--and with you in the role of the nurse."

Lee blushed still deeper at that. "Yes", he admitted, "I was very much reminded of that story and my role in it. Only I had to avoid the tragic end."

"And how did you avoid the Shakespearean end?"

"In the best cloak and dagger manner, Miss Dahlborg. First I made the guards drunk; that's easy enough with termites. Then I broke into the chamber where they keep the queen immured. I killed her legitimate consort and substituted my own candidate after having anointed him with the genuine termite smell. Finally I re-immured the pair. There are only little holes in the walls through which the royal family is serviced, they are never really in touch with their guards. That's why it could work."

"And thus they lived happy forever afterwards," the girl concluded.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Dahlborg," he said, "there is no such thing as happiness in the eternal gloom of termite society. But even if not happy, the match I brought about was definitely blessed. In due course I became godfather to 30,000 baby ant-termes; I've about 15 million now in different hybrid strains. Now that I have an inkling of the grandiose work you are doing over here I am ashamed to mention mine; it's very small, very insignificant and I still don't see where it comes in."

The girl seemed to cross out those words with an energetic move of her head. "No," she said, "your work is not small nor is it insignificant; it is great and contains the most intriguing possibilities."

"Ah!" Scriven interrupted. "I have been waiting for this. I knew that Oona would hit upon those intriguing possibilities; her's is an unspoiled intelligence; it penetrates to the core of things. Dr. Lee, let me begin at the beginning so you will understand just where you and your work connect with The Brain. The society of the higher insect states like bees and ants and termites constitutes the oldest and the most stable civilizations in this world. Human society by way of contrast has created the youngest and the most unstable civilization amongst higher animals. Throughout history we find collapse after collapse of civilization. Quite possibly civilizations higher than ours may have existed in prehistoric times. Right?"

Lee nodded assent.

"Fine. From that it follows that Man has much to learn from the society of the higher insects. Their ingenious laws and methods, their "spirit of the hive," the incredible renouncement of individual existence and individual advantage, their undying devotion to the race.... We must study those if ever we want to reach anything like stability in _our_ society. We ought to model our civilization after theirs, especially now that we have this new species "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" which has renounced war. There is something basically wrong with the type of civilizations which Man builds and which ceaselessly devour one another. No doubt you see the third World War approaching inexorably just as I do; civilization forging ahead, for what? For the big plunge into suicide. It's sickening to think of it. Do you feel I'm right?"

Unconscious of himself Lee had arisen and paced the room. With his lean long-legged figure bending slightly forward and wild-maned head bowed down in thought he resembled a big heron stalking the shallows for prey.

* * * * *

Fascinated, Oona's eyes followed the two contrasting men as their paths criss-crossed like guards before some palace gate. She alone had kept her seat. It was with greater assurance than before that Lee now spoke.

"I can see eye to eye with you, Scriven, as to the wrongs of man-made civilization and its probable course. But I do not think it desirable that we should model human society after the insect states. Ingenious as it is, their system is the most terrifying tyrany I could imagine. Just think of it: they literally work themselves to death. Workers who have outlived their usefulness are either killed off, or else they become the bloated, living containers for the tribe's staple food."

"You, yourself, can see the similar trend in Man, today. Our production of new thought is lagging; not starting from the roots, it becomes superficial, cut off from the roots. The results? The curse of the Babylonian confusion of the tongues under which we live. We are rapidly becoming thought-impotent. Cerebral fatigue, dissociation of its nerve paths, emotionalism which rejects logic as "too difficult", mass idiocy and relapse to barbarism.... It is by our brains, it is by this highest evolution of matter that we have built this civilization of ours; and now our own brainchild proceeds with might and with main to destroy the very organ of its creation. Is that not irony supreme?

"Now we have The Brain, this truly superlative tool of 20,000 times human capacity. All we have to do now is to submit the various societies which nature has built: insect states, other animal states, Man and his state to the analysis of The Brain. Have their good and their bad features tested and compared. Let The Brain synthesize all the beneficial components, let it shape the pattern of a new civilization more enduring and better adapted to the nature of Man. And then abide by the laws which The Brain lays down. I need your aid, Lee. You have already made one most valuable contribution to "peace on earth" with your "_Ant-termes-pacificus_". This is your big chance to continue the good work; be with us, be our man."

In silence both men stood close to each other, eyes searching. All Oona Dahlborg could hear was their heavy breathing. Instinctively she crossed her fingers; never before to her knowledge had Scriven opened his mind with such reckless abandon--and to a perfect stranger at that. Her respect for the strange, the birdlike man from Down-Under skyrocketed.

"He really must be a great man," she thought, and, "Howard and he will be either fast friends or very violent enemies."

At last Lee's voice came, husky and highpitched with emotion: "I cannot conceive of a man-made superhuman intelligence. Neither can I believe that mankind could or should be _forced_ into its happiness by an intelligent machine. But that's besides the point ... the idea is grandiose. It has the sponsorship of the government. You say that The Brain needs me. That makes it a duty; so here I am."

He stretched out his hand and felt the cautiously eager grip of the surgeon's sensitive fingers. The great man beamed. "Good," he said, "I knew you would. Oona, like a good girl--the glasses, yours too. This really deserves a toast."

The girl stepped between the two men. Handing Lee his glass she said: "Today you may follow only the call of duty; tomorrow it will be the call of love. I've never met any man who has not fallen in love with his work for The Brain."

"I think you are quite right in that, Miss Dahlborg," he answered, wondering vaguely exactly what her words meant, wondering also just how much his decision was inspired by the wish to see more of her.

* * * * *

They drank their toast in silence. Scriven then turned to the girl:

"Apperception center 36," he said. "Yes, I think 36 will be the best. Get in touch with Operations, Oona. Tell them I want 36 cleared for the exclusive use of Dr. Lee. Call Experimental; I want the whole batch of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" transferred to Apperception 36 by tomorrow morning. Then--no, today is too late and Dr. Lee is tired, he needs rest--but tomorrow at 8 A.M. I want a car for him to go over to The Brain. Would that suit you, Lee?"

"Fine; but why a car? It's only a few steps...." He stopped, confused by the hearty laughter in the wake of his words.

"It's quite a few steps, Dr. Lee." Oona said, "you would be _very_ tired before you got there; chances are that your feet wouldn't carry you that far."

"But this is the Brain Trust Building," he stammered.

"It is," Scriven answered, "but it houses only part of the administration, not The Brain. You wouldn't expect us to place a thing of such vital strategic importance in a skyscraper on a wide open plain as a landmark for every enemy?"

"No, I guess not." Lee said. "But since I'm briefed to go there, where is it?"

"That," Scriven frowned, "is a very reasonable and a simple question. Unfortunately, _I do not know_."

Lee felt a wave of red anger; it rose into his cheeks because he saw the sparks of frank amusement dancing in Oona Dahlborg's eyes. He opened his mouth to some bitter remark about this hoax when Scriven put a restraining hand upon his arm.

"This is no joke, Lee. I have planned The Brain, have in part designed it, seen it under construction for the past ten years, managed its affairs--but I don't know where it is and that's a fact."

He led his speechless guest to a lookout on the west side of the room. Beyond the lush, green oasis of Cephalon the desert stretched unbroken till on the far horizon the mountains of the High Sierra rose in a blue haze of scorching sun. His hand moved sweepingly from north to south.

"Over there," he said, "somewhere inside those mountains; that's where it is. But its location? Your guess is as good as mine. Take your choice of any of the mountains, attach a name to it; I've done so myself. One of them must be "The Cranium", but the question remains: which? There are people who know, of course; military intelligence, the general staff; but that," he shrugged his shoulders, "... isn't my department."