Part 15 (1/2)
The silence was becoming awkward. It was broken by Oona's carefully composed voice.
”When is it going to happen--this invasion thing?”
The simple question seemed to startle Scriven who had been looking into his gla.s.s as if in reverie.
”_When?_ Why, didn't I tell you the worst of it? _Tonight!_”
”_Tonight?_”
”Sure,” Scriven cast a malicious glance up to the antique s.h.i.+p's chronometer which hung over the bar. ”This very minute the honorable members are boarding their plane in Was.h.i.+ngton. They're going to descend upon us in sixty minutes flat.”
”But that's impossible!” Oona said. ”The Brain isn't a roadhouse. They can't do that to us in the middle of the night.”
Scriven chuckled over his gla.s.s. Obviously he had regained his humor.
”Sometimes, Oona, you're like a little child. You forget that this is meant to be a wonderful surprise. You forget that it comes armed with pa.s.ses from the War Department and fully informed as to The Brain's midnight intermission-time. You forget that by those logical processes, peculiar to kings, dictators, and peoples' representatives, they will expect every courtesy extended to them in the midst of the unexpected surprise. Hotel reservations, careful guidance through The Brain, an inspired little speech by the Braintrust Director, fresh as a daisy as he ought to be at 3 a.m. Not to forget the refreshments of course. Why else do you think I've b.u.t.tonholed you two out of the air? I literally put my life in your hands. Save me from this--if you can!”
Despite the obvious dramatic act he had put on in voice and gesture, there was a sincere pleading in Scriven's dark brown eyes.
”I will be glad to help as best I can,” Lee said. ”I'll make an awful job of it, I'm sure, but I'll try and do the conducting and the lecturing.”
Scriven wiped his forehead with a big silk handkerchief. The leonine face beamed. ”Lee, that will be a tremendous help. You see, they will feel flattered being conducted by somebody with a big name. They want an 'objective' view and you are not one of our regular employees, you're a guest scientist from Australia. That makes you just about ideal. But, Lee, much as it is against my interest, I ought to warn you: Do you realize the utter impossibility of this thing? Laymen, outsiders coming to investigate and to pa.s.s judgment upon the most complex electronic organism in the world! In two hours at the most they expect to be fully informed as to how The Brain works and somehow to be magically transformed into authorities ent.i.tled to mouth considered opinions about radioactive pyramidal cells in houses of government. Do you really think you could survive it, Lee?”
”At least I can try,” Lee smiled.
”Good man.” There was a new spring in Scriven's step as he came over to shake hands. ”I can never thank you enough for this.”
”I suppose I could hold the hospitality front,” Oona said calmly.
Standing between the two, Scriven put his hands upon their shoulders.
”Oona, you arm yourself with a phone. Lee, you rush over to The Brain.
Oona will give you a pa.s.s to the Thorax. Every a.s.sistance you need will be at your disposal. I'll sit down and whip up some kind of a speech.
We'll all meet again afterwards.”
Seven hours later, one hour before sunrise and just in time to see the big official plane from Was.h.i.+ngton shoot up into the first grey streak of dawn, they met. They were all pale and s.h.i.+vering with the chill of the air, of physical and nervous exhaustion. There was a note of hysteria even in Oona's voice as she ordered a tremendous breakfast from the Skull Hotel. But then as the fragrance of coffee mingled with that of bacon and eggs, things rapidly improved and there were sudden uncontrollable bursts of laughter. They had only to look at one another to feel the tickle of renewed mirth.
The first thing to strike Lee, as he remembered, as he met the senatorial group in the subterranean dome of the murals, was their incongruity with the functional beauty which surrounded them, and the sharp contrast they formed to the scientific workers of The Brain. As they descended from their cars after a late dinner at the Skull Hotel they resembled an average tourist group in Carlsbad Caverns bent upon a good time and in a holiday mood.
There were seven. Two women senators among them, as they ascended with Lee at the head along ”Glideway Y,” the ”Visitors' Special” as the brain-crews called it. It was wider than the service glideways and equipped with comfortable seats. It led through The Brains median section in-between the two hemispheres describing a loop which opened vistas into but did not enter any of the grey matter convolutions. It was brilliantly illuminated in order to forestall claustrophobia and also to forestall too close a view into the black-lighted interior of The Brain.
To Lee it was like a ride in an enormous Ferris Wheel fused with a nightmarish dream wherein one shouts for help and n.o.body hears or seems to understand: ”... More than nine billion electronic tubes, more than ten billion resistors, two billion capacitators, eight billion miles of wires, etc., etc.” He struggled trying to convey some idea of the magnitude of The Brain. ”Did you say _billion_ or did you say _million_ professor?” The senator from Michigan was busily scribbling notes.
”... It is the cerebral hemispheres which a.n.a.lyze and synthesize the problems which are entered through the Apperception Centers in over a million ideopulses per minute. Racing through the centers these form the ideo-circuits....”
”I see, it's like a _typewriter_.” That would be the senator from Vermont.
”In some types of circuits the wires are so fine that skilled weavers of Panama hats had to be brought in from Central America. Likewise from the Pavlov Inst.i.tute in Leningrad a layout for the circuits of 'conditioned reflexes'....”
”I'm very much against that,” the senator from Tennessee frowned. ”All those foreigners. I would have voted against that had the measure come up in the House.”