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INTERFACEby A. A. AttanasioMorning sunlight running invisibly through the long, slender glass windows gives the laboratory a surreal attitude. The walls are white, circular, and indifferent. And the remote ceiling is a luminescent circle with an eleven-meter diameter. The cylindrical room itself is a menagerie of electrical equipment describing the circumference of an amphitheater recessed in the center of the room. In the amphitheater is a mechanized chair of graying leather before a television screen. The floor is well waxed.Dr. Michel Ibu advances several paces into the laboratory and looks across the amphitheater at a small bank of data collaters, mute in the sunlight. Their metallic faces, catching the sun, wear several small rainbows.Dr. Ibu walks around a crowd of oxygen tanks and stands at the edge of the amphitheater. He is lanky and has a slight stoop. His face would be virtually flat except for high, prominent cheekbones laced with fine wrinkles in the black skin. His temples are gray.?Dr. Reed?? he calls tentatively.?Be with you in a minute,? a distracted female voice answers.Dr. Ibu folds his arms and grins.So this is how we meet, he thinks.A slender, dark-haired woman in a light-blue lab smock emerges from behind a portable canvas partition that has a large, assertive red ! printed on it. She is tall, and her hair is loose, falling about her shoulders.?Yes?? she asks.?Dr. Reed, I?m Michel Ibu from the marine labs.?She raises her eyebrows in a gesture of surprise. ?So you?re the neurophysiologist-biophysicist I?ve been warned about,? she says without a smile.?I?ve been tracking you down for two weeks.? Ibu grins. ?It seems you?re kept quite busy here.??Frankly, Dr. Ibu, I?ve just been trying to avoid you.?He cracks a disconcerted smile. ?Why???I?m not interested in working with terminal patients.??How do you know I?m going to ask you to???Are you going to be coy???Who told you about the project???I received your first invitation to work on the project, and then I went to Comptrol, and I looked into it myself. I?m just not interested in working on it.??But do you understand what it?s about???I don?t understand why you have to use a terminal patient.??Look, Dr. Reed, have you had breakfast yet???Yes.??Well, I?d like to talk with you?to familiarize you with the project.??I?m listening.??Well, why don?t you let me take you down to the marine labs so I can show you what we?re doing???I haven?t got the time, Dr. Ibu.??Okay,? he says, exasperated, running one hand over his face. ?In a nutshell, I?m on the verge of interspecies communication. I?m working with Lenny, a dolphin, and Heath Underhill, an eighteen-year-old terminal.??Underhill? Do you mean he?s from Underhill Clone???Yes. But it would be more accurate to say that he?s a reject from Underhill Clone. He?s a ?cdd??the defect is on an independent geriatric allele. In a short while, two or three years, he?ll start decomposing. But right now he?s in perfect health and with an IQ that easily categorizes him as a genius. He was purchased for just those reasons.?Underhill Clone sent me Heath when he was six months old. As a ?cdd? he would have been euthed immediately. But we kept him here, and when he turned seven, we introduced him to Lenny. They?ve grown up together; their psyches have been interacting for most of their lives. They have a good, healthy relationship.??You talk as if they?re equals.??If anything, Lenny is Heath?s superior. The dolphin has a cerebral cortex the size of a human?s. But the parietal area, the silent zone linked to abstract thinking, is almost twice as large. When I began to study dolphin sounds, I found they had an immensely more complex communication system than we do. This is what led me to question whether we might establish interspecies communication. Our biggest problem right now is structural. The dolphin language is sonic, but it?s waterborne and is therefore ten times faster than ours. We just think too slowly to talk with a dolphin. But that?s where you come in.??And how?s that???Your field is psychobiology. Your specialty is neurology. And your research project for the past six years, since you first came to the clinic, has been autonomous visceral control. I know that you?ve taught subjects how to control their heartbeat, blood pressure, even certain glandular excretions. What I?d like is for you to teach Heath much of the same, only more intensively.??But what has that to do with talking dolphins???Dr. Madoc, the psychophysicist here, has synthesized a hallucinogen that, in some way I?m not familiar with, mobilizes awareness. It distorts temporal perception so radically that, for any practical purposes, time for the user no longer exists. Most remarkably, it?s possible when using this drug to shift consciousness to any part of the body. There?s one drawback: even the smallest trace quantities of this drug are enough to dislocate consciousness for hours. And he?s found, working with rats, and in the six volunteer cases he?s had, that it?s impossible to survive without extensive conscious visceral control. Many of the primitive parts of the brain are shut down by the drug, and normally independent functions simply stop. Only one of the six volunteers survived.??I still don?t see where the talking dolphins come in.??It?s the mutual belief of Dr. Madoc and myself that within the expanded state of awareness of this drug, it will be possible to ?race up the mind,? so to speak, to the faster rate of communication that the dolphin employs. With the proper precontact training, most of which in Heath?s case is unnecessary, considering the simpatico between him and Lenny as it is, we may establish the first interspecies communication; we may be exposed to a culture whose structure is totally alien to us.?Dr. Reed deliberates for a brief moment. Presently she says, ?There are two others in this department who have been working on visceral control?Kapowitz and Jennings.??Yes, but only you have had extensive experience with humans. Heath may be synthetic, but he?s still human, and you?re the most qualified to deal with him.??All right,? she says, shrugging. ?I have to admit you?ve interested me. When do we begin??* * * *?You may begin whenever you?re ready,? she says, securing the headrest. ?Take it from sixty-four to one hundred and ten.?Dr. Reed walks to the front of the amphitheater and steps behind a console, from where she can monitor the heartbeat of the young man in the mechanized chair and still observe him. The subject?s face is calm, and his eyes are fixed on the TV screen in front and slightly above him.Several minutes of inactivity pass, and then a small red light on the face of the screen blimps once, indicating an alteration in the heartbeat of the young man.Focus on that, Dr. Reed thinks.Another red light blimps. A moment passes, and then there is another flash. And then another. The TV screen registers an acceleration of heartbeat by displaying a cardiograph with more frequent spikes. With deliberation, the rate climbs to one hundred and ten beats per minute.?Okay, now bring it down to fifty,? Dr. Reed orders.Immediately another red light flashes on the screen. This occurs once more before the spikes on the cardiograph become more separated, spacing out to fifty beats per minute.?Fine,? she says. ?Now maintain that rate, and increase your blood pressure. Take it to one-twenty over ninety.?Another graph flicks onto the TV screen, showing his relative blood pressure. Thirty seconds pass before the graph indicates an increase in the pressure. It increases steadily, leveling off at the assigned pressure.?Very good,? Dr. Reed says, recording the time intervals on a clipboard.?He?s progressing well, I take it,? a gravel voice says at her side. It?s Dr. Ibu.?Hold it there for another minute,? she directs, and then turns her attention to Ibu. ?Yes, his will is remarkably well integrated. He?s a good subject to work with.??I?m glad to hear that you?re satisfied,? Ibu says. ?Would you say, then, that he?s ready???Ready for what? Short-term suspension of visceral control?yes. Prolonged suspension?no.??You?ve been working with him for six weeks. How much longer before he can master his visceral responses???Master them for what period of time???Indefinitely.?Dr. Reed turns back to the experiment. ?That?s it for now, Heath.? She looks at Ibu. ?I?ll need another two weeks, at least.?Ibu?s mouth slips open. ?Two weeks! My dear, do you realize how impatient I am???I?m doing as thorough a job as I can, as quickly as I can, doctor,? she says, studying her console and recording some final data. ?You yourself pointed out that if he doesn?t master this, his life may be forsaken. Besides, if you didn?t hog all of his time, this process would have been over long ago.??I?m not hogging his time. It?s Lenny. But that?s necessary, too. Their relationship is important.?She shrugs.?I just think you?re jealous of Lenny,? Ibu says mock seriously.Dr. Reed puts down her clipboard and regards him with a solemn stare. She looks vexed.?Hello, Michel,? Heath says, approaching them. He is of average height, perhaps a trifle smaller. His complexion is light and smoothly clear, enhan... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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