Ben Bova - New Earth

“Really,” Elyse said.

“Anyway, I apologize. That drink hit me pretty hard, I guess.”

“No need for an apology,” Jordan said. “Brothers should be able to speak their minds to each other.” Yet he was thinking, In vino veritas .

Thornberry’s head was swiveling back and forth like a spectator’s at a tennis match. But he kept his silence.

After breakfast, Brandon and Elyse started out for the observatory, while Jordan led Thornberry to Adri’s office, up on the top floor of the building.

Aditi was there when they arrived.

“Have you had breakfast?” Jordan asked her, by way of greeting.

“I had some fruit here, with Adri,” she said.

Adri said, “Aditi will run the stimulation; it is her area of expertise.”

“Brain stimulation?” Thornberry asked, surprised.

“Education,” said Aditi. “My field is education.”

Jordan said, “And you educate people through direct brain stimulation.”

“Yes,” she said. “Whenever possible.”

Aditi led Jordan and Thornberry downstairs, leaving Adri in his office. They entered a small room that looked more like an office than a neurological laboratory. There was a desk in one corner, a pair of comfortable-looking upholstered chairs, and a padded couch along the far wall.

“This is where the deed is done, is it?” Thornberry asked, looking around the room for equipment.

Aditi nodded. “This is my office. And my schoolroom.”

“Where’s the equipment?” Jordan asked.

“In the walls, mostly,” she replied. “Behind the ceiling panels, too.”

She seemed perfectly relaxed, at ease in her own surroundings. Thornberry looked a little edgy.

“So what do I do?” he asked.

Gesturing to the couch, Aditi said, “You lie down and relax while I set up the equipment.”

As Jordan sat in one of the chairs, she went to her desk and pulled a lower drawer open. Thornberry stretched out on the couch, while Aditi took out what looked to Jordan like old-fashioned wireless earphones.

“What’s that?” Thornberry asked.

“The transceivers,” Aditi replied easily. Walking to the couch, she explained, “The first thing we must do is map your brain’s neural activity.”

She handed the earphones to Thornberry, who fumbled with them, trying to slip them on.

Aditi explained, “No, no, not in your ears. Press the pads against your temples.”

Jordan saw the uneasy expression on Thornberry’s face. He felt a little nervous himself. But the headphones stuck to Thornberry’s temples with no trouble.

Aditi seemed perfectly at home. She went back to her desk chair and played her fingers across the empty desktop. Jordan saw it was a digital display screen, showing an image of a keyboard.

The wall above the desk began to glow and the image of a human brain took form, false-colored pale pink, deep lavender, and pearl gray against the screen’s bright blue background. Jordan could see sparkles of light flickering across the brain. Nerve impulses, he thought.

“Is that me?” Thornberry asked.

“That’s your brain,” Aditi said, without taking her eyes off the screen. “Impressive,” she murmured.

“What happens now?”

“Once the mapping is finished, you go to sleep,” Aditi said, still with her back to Thornberry.

“Um … I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

Jordan stifled a laugh.

Aditi said, “I’m sorry. I should have thought of that.” She tapped at her desktop and the wall screen went dark.

Once Thornberry pulled off the headphones and hurried out of the office, Jordan said to Aditi, “I had no idea you were so … competent.”

“I told you I was a teacher,” she said.

“Yes, but you didn’t tell me how you teach.”

“Once Dr. Thornberry returns, I’ll sedate him neurally and the downloading can begin. He’ll be asleep and there won’t be anything for you to do. You could leave and return in three hours.”

Jordan thought it over for all of a second. “I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind. I ought to witness the entire procedure, boring though it may be.”

She arched a brow at him. “You want to make certain I don’t do anything terrible to him.”

Jordan shook his head slightly. “My dear, I’m sure you could do whatever you want to him while I’m watching you do it and I wouldn’t know that anything nefarious was going on.”

Her expression grew serious. “I’m not going to hurt him, Jordan.”

“I know,” he said. “But I should stay through the whole procedure.” Then he smiled and added, “Besides, it’ll give me the chance to stay with you.”

She blushed slightly, but before she could reply Thornberry reentered the room. “Well, that’s a load off me mind,” he said. “So to speak.”

They all laughed.

Aditi was wrong. It was anything but boring.

Mapping Thornberry’s brain took less than half an hour. Once she was satisfied with it, Aditi said to Thornberry, “You’re going to go to sleep now.”

“Wish me pleasant dreams, why don’t you?”

“Pleasant dreams, Dr. Thornberry,” Aditi said. Turning back to her keyboard, she murmured, “Now we deactivate the parietal cortex.”

She tapped a key on the desktop and Thornberry’s eyes fluttered and closed. In a moment he seemed deeply asleep, his chest rising regularly, his arms relaxed at his side.

Watching the brain image on the wall screen intently, Aditi touched another key. Jordan turned his attention from her toward Thornberry. He could see the man’s eyeballs moving rapidly behind their closed lids. REM sleep, Jordan realized.

Deeply asleep, Thornberry stirred slightly, clenched his fists and then opened them again. He muttered something incomprehensible.

“Is this normal?” Jordan whispered.

Aditi nodded, her eyes focused on the image of Thornberry’s brain. It was flickering madly now, nerve impulses racing back and forth. Thornberry groaned softly and his arms tensed, his legs shifted, as if he were straining to get up.

Aditi touched another key and Thornberry relaxed, his arms and legs going limp, his breathing deep and slow and regular.

For a while nothing seemed to happen. But Jordan could see that three small sections of Thornberry’s brain seemed to be glowing with activity. He wished he knew enough about brain physiology to tell what those sections were, what their functions might be. He thought a bright pink region near the base of Thornberry’s brain might be the thalamus, but he wasn’t sure. He recognized the frontal cortex, which seemed ablaze with neural activity.

When he looked back at Thornberry, Jordan saw that the man’s beefy face was swathed with perspiration. His body was arched with tension and his eyes were still moving back and forth behind their closed lids.

Jordan whispered again to Aditi, “Should I wipe his brow?”

“Don’t touch him!” she hissed, without taking her eyes off the wall screen. “This is the most critical period of the download.”

Biting his lip in apprehension, Jordan stared at Thornberry’s struggling figure. He looks like he’s fighting demons, Jordan thought. Like a soul being exorcised.

And then Thornberry relaxed again, totally, as limp as a flag on an utterly still day. His eye movements slowed, although they did not cease altogether. A crooked smile spread across his sweat-soaked face.

Aditi turned in her desk chair toward Jordan. “It will be easier from here on. Everything’s fine now.”

“What happened?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

She drew in a breath, then explained, “It’s quite natural for us to resist new ideas, especially if they conflict with what we already believe. Dr. Thornberry’s brain was suddenly invaded by a massive dose of new concepts, and he instinctively resisted. Perfectly natural.”