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“The strangest thing,” Prudence said. “I feel as though I’d been a little bit asleep all along, not awake enough to realize what Bickel was driving at.”
“But now you’re beginning to get it,” Timberlake said.
“That storm of sense impressions doesn’t stop when you’re asleep,” Flattery argued. “Are you trying to tell me that sleep is a form of consciousness?”
As he spoke, he remembered making the same argument to Bickel, but now he had to be honest with himself and face up to the obvious answer plus everything that the answer implied.
“Yes, of course,” Flattery said. “Sleep’s a form of consciousness. It just falls near one end of the spectrum.”
“And all that unexplained energy?” Timberlake insisted.
“It has to be used for something,” Flattery said. “Yes, I see that.”
“All right,” Timberlake said. “The consciousness-effect—field or whatever—may mediate that energy balance. Perhaps it’s a homeostat.”
“All biological control mechanisms are homeostats,” Prudence said. “So what?”
“It’s not enough to say that consciousness juggles the storm of sense impressions,” Flattery said. “That still leaves your question unanswered, Tim. What happens to the energy?”
“There must be another effect somewhere in the system,” Timberlake said. “There has to be an unexplained flow of energy somewhere—or a flow that’s been explained the wrong—”
“Synergy,” Prudence said.
Flattery shot a surprised glance at her. The word had been on the tip of his tongue.
“Synergy,” Timberlake mused. “Any medical surprises in there?”
Prudence heard the question within the question. The life-systems engineer had a working acquaintance with synergy, but he wanted to know if a medical simplification might help him. Timberlake was sniffing down a hot trail.
“It’s the effect produced by our spinal reflexes,” she said. “Synergy acts through the cerebellum, an extra effect. It’s on the side of the … ahhh, circuit that leads out from the cortex.”
“We’re looking for an integrating or balancing effect,” Timberlake said.
“That’s … possible,” Flattery said.
This wasn’t enough for Timberlake. “Simple synaptic integration is enough on the side leading toward the cortex. Does synergy involve output from the frontal lobes or the gyrus? Could it account for our missing energy?”
“Why the gyrus?” Flattery asked.
“I keep looking for secondary mediation areas. We don’t dare overlook anything. We have to be right the first time or we go down the tube the same way all the other ships did.”
“You’re going around in circles the same way Bickel does,” Flattery objected. “So you narrow down the mediating area to the frontal lobes. So what?”
Timberlake wouldn’t be distracted. “Lot’s of researchers think the frontal lobes—”
“Fine!” Flattery interrupted. “No end of good people may’ve suggested that the frontal lobes are the mysterious center of consciousness. But Prue may be closer to it than you are. Motile, remember? There may be no seat of consciousness.”
Timberlake blinked. “What good does it do to know where it is if you don’t know what it is?”
Flattery pressed him. “Synergy may not be totally explained, but it’s still useful as a concept. However, if you’re suggesting that synergy is consciousness …”
“Dead end,” Timberlake said. “But Bickel thinks we’re after a field-regulating sensor which deals with mental and emotional responses.”
So that’s what’s bothering him! Prudence thought. She said aloud: “If we’re going to reproduce this thing artificially, whatever we build has to have sensory, mental, and emotional responses to regulate.”
Flattery pressed himself back into his couch. “Ahhhhh. We can give Bickel’s Ox its sensory and mental responses—but how do we give it emotions?”
“What about negative feedback?” Timberlake asked. “Emotions always involve a goal. Negative feedback suggests a goal-seeking element in the system.”
“Consciousness requires a goal?” Flattery asked.
He realized by the sudden silence greeting his question that they had lifted themselves to a critical point of this analysis. They could all feel it. Bickel’s challenging ideas had goaded them to this effort and now all of them were poised, sprinters waiting for the gun.
“A goal,” Timberlake whispered. His voice grew louder. “An object on which to focus.” He looked at Flattery. “The field relationship?”
Close, but not quite it, Prudence thought.
Flattery said: “Not an entity or a thing or an area of the brain, but a connecting link between such things or entities or areas.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Flattery saw Prudence adjust a dial on the big console. He sensed the waiting tensions in her movements.
“A bridge!” Timberlake shouted. “Of course! Of course! A bridge!”
“A bridge built out of language?” Prudence asked.
“But the symbols are loaded with errors, with weaknesses and flaws,” Timberlake said. “That’s it.”
Flattery saw a new quickness and sureness enter Prudence’s movements as she digested this.
“Time spanning,” she said. “With words … with symbols.”
And Flattery thought: There is a gateway to the imagination you must enter before you are conscious and the keys to the gate are symbols. You can carry ideas through the gate from one time-place to another time-place, but you must carry the ideas in symbols. Do you know, though, what you carry … and who it is that carries?
“Every symbol has hidden premises behind it,” Flattery said. “Every word carries unspoken assumptions.”
“And the most critical word in the whole problem is the word consciousness,” Timberlake said.
“Which assumes,” Prudence said, “that there is a self to be conscious.”
“A bridge crosses from one place to another place,” Timberlake went on. “If it starts breaking down, the engineers get out the original blueprints, the materials orders; and they go to the bridge and examine it. They study the bridge under static conditions and under loads. Then they may replace parts, put in new bracings—”
“Or tear the whole damn thing down and start over,” said Prudence. “Didn’t either one of you hear me? Our word assumes there’s a self to be conscious.”
“We heard you,” Flattery said. “But there are more important hidden assumptions than ‘Know thyself.’ “What about ‘Know thy limits’?”
“Limits,” Timberlake picked up the word. “At one end—sleep or the sleep of death; and at the other end—waking.”
“And the question of Western religion,” Flattery said, “is: What lies beyond death? But the question of the Zen master is: What lies beyond waking?”
“For Kee-rist’s sake!”
The voice was Bickel’s and it plunged down onto them from the command-circuit screen overhead.
Flattery looked up with a smug smile to find Bickel glaring down at him from the screen.
“I leave you for a half-hour, and you lure these poor fools down some mystical dead end! Tossing labels around just like those jackasses back at UMB! Zen master! Next you’ll trot out Cosmic Consciousness! Of all the impractical—”
“John, we’ve refined this question down to its essence,” Timberlake said. “If you’d—”
“I asked you to give me some circuit suggestions. I’ve been listening to you play verbal medicine ball for ten minutes, and what I want to know is this: How will all that yakking build one circuit? Just one circuit!”
“You yourself asked UMB to define consciousness,” Prudence protested.
“Because I wanted to keep them occupied and out of our hair.” The screen went blank.
Flattery looked over to the console in front of Prudence, saw that the command-circuit key pointed to “on,” but the screen remained blank.
r /> That key is on! Flattery told himself. It had to be turned on deliberately. She did it! To waken Bickel.
But why was the screen blank?
As though she read his mind, Prudence said: “John’s installed an override on the command circuit. Any idea why?”
“Didn’t you see where he was?” Timberlake demanded. “He was in the shop—working on that Ox mess!”
Timberlake unlocked his action couch and, in almost the same motion, launched himself at the hatch to the computer maintenance shop. He wrenched at the lock dogs, but they remained immovable.
“He’s jammed the lock!” Timberlake’s voice rose in fear. “If he wrecks our computer …”
“You noticed … so you may as well watch,” taunted Bickel’s voice.
They looked up to see a view of the shop on their big screen. Bickel stood with the detritus of the initial Ox installation around him—dangling leads, meters, neuron blocks—all stacked precariously away from the computer wall.
“Bickel, listen to reason,” Timberlake pleaded. “You can’t just tear into—”
