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“Shut up or I’ll turn you off,” Bickel warned.
He knelt with a substitute neuron block, inserted it between the Ox and the computer wall, began making connections.
“Please, John,” Prudence begged, “if you’d—”
“You’re not going to stop him by talking to him,” Flattery said.
“Listen to Raj.” Bickel slipped another neuron block into place against the wall, made new connections.
“Rhythm,” he said. “I went to sleep on it … and it woke me up—that and your yakking. Rhythm.”
Another substitute neuron block went into place beneath the first two.
“Describe what you’re doing,” Flattery said, and he motioned for Timberlake to come to his side.
“Brain-vision anatomy can be reduced to the mathematical description of a scanning process,” Bickel answered. “It follows that any other brain-function anatomy—including consciousness—should submit to the same approach. I can duplicate the alpha-rhythm cycle for a brain-scanning sweep by setting it up in the time-cycle of these neuron blocks. If I trace each rhythm from a human model and duplicate—”
“What’s the function of each of these human rhythms?” Flattery demanded.
As he spoke, Flattery scribbled a note on a pad of ship flimsy, pressed it into Timberlake’s hand.
Timberlake looked up to the screen, but Bickel still had his back to the video eyes that matched the screen-view.
“We don’t know that function for certain, do we?” Flattery asked, and he motioned frantically for Timberlake to read the note.
Timberlake turned his attention onto the paper, read:
“Back way, around the hyb tanks. Bickel hasn’t jammed the hatch from quarters. Take the other tube and surprise him.”
Again, Timberlake looked up to the screen.
The Ox was taking on new shape under Bickel’s hands—reaching out to the angle of the shop against the computer wall. It began to assume a feeling of topological improbability in Timberlake’s eyes—with jutting triangles of plastic, oblongs of neuron couplers, strips of Eng multipliers … and the color-coded leads interweaving like a crazy spider web.
Timberlake felt a hand grab his arm, shake him. He looked at the hand, followed its arm to Flattery’s glaring face.
Flattery gestured to the note in Timberlake’s other hand.
Again, Timberlake looked at the note, recognizing why he remained rooted to this spot. Around the hyb tanks?
No.
It would have to be through the hyb tanks.
Flattery must know that.
Timberlake turned his tortured gaze on Flattery, bringing the terror up to full awareness. Bickel has infected me with his cynical skepticism. I’m afraid of what I’ll find in the hyb tanks if I look too close. I’ll find the tanks empty, and nothing but leads back into the computer from the tanks. And the computer will be programmed to simulate the presence of hybernating life in those tanks. The whole thing will turn out to be a monstrous hoax.
I’ll discover I’ve been life-systems engineer to … nothing.…
Why do I fear that? he wondered. Even this thought set him shivering.
Again, Flattery shook his arm.
Why doesn’t he go? Timberlake wondered. He’s so anxious!
The answer was obvious: Flattery wasn’t as knowledgeable about computers. He couldn’t analyze what Bickel was doing and repair—if that was possible—the damage.
I’m panic-stricken, Timberlake thought.
But he knew he couldn’t stay rooted here. He had to take that other passage. And when he got into the hyb tanks, he wouldn’t be able to resist the close inspection. He’d look beyond the dials and gauges and repeaters. He’d look into the tanks.
Despite his unexplainable terror, the other possibility remained—that the tanks contained life, and this life shared their danger.
Chapter 19
The cell has energies that oscillate and pulse with the tumult of living. We see reflections of this root-activity in that coordinated cell structure which we commonly refer to as a human being. Have you ever watched a man tapping his finger nervously on a desktop? Have you ever timed the periodicity of the human eyeblink? Breathing has characteristic rhythms for different conditions of the total cell structure. You must keep this in mind when you design devices to be used and occupied by this human bundle of cells. You must always remember the pulse and the needs of the component cells.
—Vincent Frame, Biochemist/Designer
I’ll use the shot-effect generator again, Bickel thought.
He leaned into the organized clutter of the Ox, clipped a lead onto the temporary input, threaded the lead out, and draped it to one side.
The effect and the way to achieve it were still clear in his mind. He had awakened suddenly, not knowing how long he had slept, but feeling refreshed and with this answer filling his mind.
He turned to the computer leads, linked the Ox through a buffer that would feed its impulses into a test-memory bank, connected this to the new bank of neuron blocks, and put the system on full interlock.
“Will you at least explain what you’re doing, John?” Flattery’s voice flowed out of the screen.”
Bickel glanced back, saw Prudence at the controls, Flattery sitting on the edge of an action couch—no sign of Timberlake. But this screen’s eyes didn’t expose all of Comcentral. It was probable that Timberlake was trying the hatch. Well let him.
“We have only ourselves to use as models for producing this Consciousness Function,” Bickel said. “And everybody keeps saying we can’t get into ourselves the way an engineer should to duplicate the mechanism. But, friend, there’s another approach—thoroughly tested and effective.”
Prudence said: “Raj?”
Flattery looked at her.
“I’m getting current drift on the auxiliary power supply.”
“It’s the shop,” Flattery stated flatly. “John’s taken a direct line to prevent us from shutting him off.” He looked back at Bickel. “Right?”
“Right. It shouldn’t cause you any trouble. I’ve isolated the line. Your main board is still functioning.” Bickel turned back to the Ox, began tying in a series of timed neurofibers.
“What’s the tested, effective method?” Flattery looked up at the telltales on the Com-central board, following Timberlake’s progress by the heat sensors. Timberlake was out in the second zone now, turning in toward the opposite side of the shielding and the hyb tanks.
Why was Tim so reluctant to go? Flattery wondered.
Bickel finished a triple connection along the timed fibers, straightened. “The system you can’t tear apart and examine is called a black box. If we can make a white box sufficiently similar and general in potential to the black box—that is, make it sufficiently complex—then we can force the black box, by its own operation, to transfer its pattern of action to the white box. We cross-link th
em and subject each to identical shot-effect bursts.”
“What’s your white box?” Flattery asked, his interest and attention caught in spite of his fears. “That thing?” He nodded toward the crazy-block construction of the Ox.
“Hell, no, this is nowhere near complex enough. But our entire computer system is.”
He’s gone crazy! Flattery thought. He can’t be suggesting seriously that he’d throw a scrambling shot- effect burst into the computer!
Again, Flattery glanced up at the telltales. Timberlake was at the edge of the hyb tanks, moving at a maddeningly slow pace.
“Then … how does the Ox function in this?” Flattery asked, returning his attention to the screen.
“This is our sorter,” Bickel said. “It sorts the rhythms of the system and acts as a crude set of frontal lobes.” He linked two parts of his construction by cross-jacks in a patchboard. “There. Now to run a few tests.”
“Shouldn’t you wait?” Flattery demanded. “Shouldn’t we discuss this a bit more? What if you’ve made a mistake and—”
“No mistake,” Bickel said.
Flattery looked to the telltales. Timberlake was in the hyb tanks now, but he wasn’t moving—just stopped there.
We set Bickel, our “organ of analysis,” at too high a pitch, Flattery thought. We should’ve known it could run wild.
What was keeping Timberlake?
“Straight-line test, first,” Bickel said, and closed a key on the computer wall. He stared at the diagnostic-circuit dials above him.
Flattery held his breath, turned slowly to look at the big board in front of Prudence. If Bickel’s test loused up the central computer system, it’d show up first on the big board.
The flashboard retained its quiet green. The steady ticking of relays through the graph counters and monitors held at an even pace. Everything appeared soothingly ordinary.
“I’m getting individual nerve-net responses on the separate blocks,” Bickel said.
Flattery kept his attention on the flashboard. If Bickel ruined the computer, the ship was dead. Most of the Tin Egg’s automatic systems depended on the computer’s inner lines of communication and supervisory control programs.
