The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (21 page)

"We worked with it. We began introducing a high order
of similarity into the M and L environments, and then we arranged the suits so
that the L volunteer's sensory receptors would furnish his brain with no data.
We stopped up his eyes and ears. We deadened his skin. We partially narcotized
him. As we hoped, his brain began hunting for data, as any brain will if it
stops getting continuous proof that it is alive. It had only one place to find
that data—in the sensory impressions that were registering on the M brain.

"The contact fades, of course. Soon enough, despite
anything we can do, the L brain begins to record a trickle of stimuli which
come from its own body, and the contact fades sharply. But we can maintain it
for nearly twelve minutes, which is more than enough.

"So," Hawks finished, "now we have a means of
instantaneous, complete communication with the M volunteer. The L volunteer's
brain records everything he feels, everything he sees, everything he thinks.
And the information remains there, after the M volunteer dies, and could be
extracted by interviewing the L volunteer.

"There is only one drawback. When the M volunteer dies,
the L volunteer shares his feelings." Hawks looked steadily at Barker. "Ro-gan.
And others before him. They go insane, and the information is lost. So that's
your special qualification, Barker. No man can stand to die. But we're hoping
you won't go mad when you feel it. We're hoping you'll enjoy it. Over and over
again."

Barker straightened his shoulders into perfect symmetry,
threw the folded windbreaker half across his back, and stepped past Hawks into
the laboratory. He walked out a few feet into the main aisle between the
cabinets holding the voltage regulator series and put his hands in his pockets,
stopping to look around. Hawks stopped with him.

All the work lights were on. Barker turned his body slowly
from the hips, studying the galleries of signal-modulating equipment, and
watching the staff assistants running off component checks.

"Busy," he said, looking at the white-coated men,
who were consulting check-off sheets on their clipboards, setting switches,
cutting in signal generators from the service racks above each gallery,
switching off, re-setting, re-testing. His glance fell on the nearest of a
linked array of differential amplifier racks on the laboratory floor.
"Lots of wiring. I like that. Marvels of science. That sort of
thing."

"It's part of a man."

"Oh?" Barker lifted one eyebrow. His eyes were
dancing mockingly. "Plugs and wires and little ceramic widgets," he
challenged.

Hawks said: "That entire bank of amplifiers is set up
to contain an exact electronic description of a man. His physical structure,
down to the last moving particle of the last atom in the last molecule in the last
cell at the end of his little toe's nail. It knows, thereby, a good deal more
than we can learn—his nervous reaction time and volume, the range and nature of
his reflexes, the electrical capacity of each cell in his brain. It knows everything
it needs to know so it can tell another machine how to build that man.

"It happens to be a man named Sam Latourette, but it
could be anyone. It's our standard man. When the matter transmitter's scanner
converts you into a series of similar electron flows, the information goes on a
tape, to be filed. It also goes in here, so we can read out the differences
between you and the standard. That gives us a crosscheck when we need accurate
signal definition. That's what we're going to do today. Take our initial scan,
so we can have a control tape and a differential reading to use when we
transmit tomorrow."

Barker smiled. "Ain't science great?"

Hawks looked at him woodenly. "We're not conducting any
manhood contests here, Barker. We're working at a job. It's not necessary to
keep your guard up."

"Would you know a contest if you saw one, Doctor?"

Sam Latourette, who had come up behind Barker, growled:
"Shut up, Barker!"

Barker turned casually. "Jesus, fellow,  didn't eat
your baby."

"It's all right, Sam," Hawks said patiently.
"Al Barker, this is Sam Latourette. Doctor Samuel Latourette."

"I've been looking over the file Personnel sent down on
you, Barker," Latourette said. "1 wanted to see what your chances
were of being any use to us here. And I just want you to remember one
thing." Latourette had lowered his head until his neck was almost buried
between his massive shoulders, and his face was broadened by parallel rows of
yellowish flesh that sprang into thick furrows down the sides of his jaw. "When
you talk to Doctor Hawks, you're talking to the only man in the world who could
have built this." His pawing gesture took in the galleries, the catwalks,
the amplifier bank, the transmitter hulking at the far wall. "You're
talking to a man who's as far removed from muddleheadedness—from what you and I
think of as normal human error—as you are from a chimp. You're not fit to judge
his work, or make smart cracks about it. Your little personality twists aren't
fit for his concern. You've been hired to do a job here, just like the rest of
us. If you can't do it without making more trouble for him than you're worth,
get out—don't add to his burden. He's got enough on his mind already."
Latourette flashed a deep-eyed look at Hawks. "More than enough." His
forearms dangled loosely and warily. "Got it straight, now?"

Barker's expression was attentive and dispassionate as he
looked at Latourette. His weight had shifted almost entirely away from his
artificial leg, but there was no other sign of tension in him. He was deathly
calm.

"Sam," Hawks said, "I want you to supervise
the tests on the lab receiver. It needs doing now. Then I need a check on the
telemeter data from the relay tower and the Moon receiver. Let me know as soon
as you've done that."

Barker watched Latourette turn and stride soundlessly away
down along the amplifier banks toward the receiving stage, where a group of
technicians was fluoroscoping a series of test objects being transmitted to it
by another team.

"Come with me, please," Hawks said to Barker and
walked slowly toward the table where the suit lay.

"So they talk about you like that around here,"
Barker said, still turning his head from side to side as they walked. "No
wonder you get impatient when you're outside dealing with the big world."

"Barker, it's important that you concern yourself only
with what you're here to do. It's removed from all human experience, and if
we're all to go through it successfully, we must try to keep personalities out
of it."

"How about your boy, over there? Latourette?"

"Sam's a very good man," Hawks said slowly.

"And that's his excuse."

"It's his reason for being here. Ordinarily, he'd be in
a sanatorium under sedation for his pain. He has an inoperable cancer. He will
be dead next year."

They had passed the low wall of linked gray steel cabinets.
Barker's head jerked back around. "Oh," he said. "That's why
he's the standard man in there. Nothing eating at the flesh. Eternal
life."

"No usual man wants to die," Hawks said, touching
Barker's shoulder and moving him gently toward the suit. The men of the Navy
crew were darting covert glances at Barker only after looking around to see if
any of their team mates were watching them at that particular instant.
"Otherwise, the world would be swept by suicides."

Hawks pointed to the suit. "Now, this is the best we
can do for you in the way of protection. You get into it here, on the table,
and you'll be wheeled into the transmitter. You'll be beamed up to the Moon
receiver in it—once there, you'll find it comfortable and easily maneuverable.
You have power assists activated by the various pressures your body puts on
them. The suit will comply to all your movements. I'm told it feels like
swimming. You have a selection of all the tools we know you'll need, and a
number of others we think might be called for. That's something you'll have to
tell us afterward, if you can. Now I'd like you to get into it, so the ensign
and his men, here, can check you."

The naval officer in charge of the specialist crew stepped
forward. "Excuse me, Doctor," he said. "I understand the
volunteer has an artificial limb." He turned to Barker. "If you'll
please remove your trousers, sir?"

Hawks smiled uncomfortably. "I'll hold your
jacket," he said to Barker.

Barker looked around. Beads of cold moisture appeared on his
forehead. His eyes were suddenly much whiter than the flesh around them. He
handed the windbreaker to Hawks without turning his face toward him. He opened
his belt and stepped out of the slacks. He stood with them clutched in his
hands, looked at Hawks, then rolled them up quickly and put them down on the
edge of the table.

"Now, if you'll just lie down in the suit, sir, we'll
see what needs adjusting." The ensign gestured to his team, and they
closed in around Barker, lifting him up and putting him down on his back inside
the opened suit. Barker lay rigid, staring up, and the ensign said: "Move
yourself around, please—we want to make sure your muscles make firm contacts
with all the servomotor pressure plates."

Barker began stiffly moving his body.

The ensign said: "Yes, I thought so. The artificial
limb will have to be built up in the region of the calf, and on the knee joint.
Fidanzato—" He gestured to one of his men. "Measure those clearances
and then get down to the machine shop. I want some shim plates on there. I'm
sorry, sir," he said to Barker, "but you'll have to let my man take
the leg with him. It won't take long. You can just lie there comfortably
meanwhile. Sampson—help this man off with his shirt so you can get at the
shoulder strap."

Barker jerked his arms up out of the suit, grasped the edges
of the torso backplate, and pulled himself up to a sitting position. "I'll
take my own shirt off, Sonny." His eyes were whiter. A flash of pain
crossed Hawks' face as he looked at him.

Fidanzato walked away with Barker's leg. Hawks said:
"Excuse me," quickly, and crossed the laboratory floor to where Sam
Latourette was working. "Sam. How's it going?" he asked gently.

"Fine," Latourette said over his shoulder.
"Just fine."

Hawks caught his lower lip between his teeth. "Sam, you
know, he's putting a lot into this, too. It may not look like it to most
people, but he's a complicated—"

"Everybody's complicated. I'm complicated. You're
complicated. Everybody bleeds inside for some reason. What counts is the
reason. I don't think his is any good at all. He's wild and
unpredictable." Latourette pawed clumsily at the air, red-faced. "Ed,
you can't
use
Barker! You can't afford it. It won't work—it'll be too
much! My God, you've known him one day and you're already involved with
him!"

Hawks stood still, his eyes shut. "Don't you think
he'll work out, Sam?"

"Listen, if he has to be put up with day after day,
it'll get worse all the time!"

"So you do think he'll work out." Hawks opened his
eyes at Latourette. "You're afraid he'll work out."

Latourette looked frightened. "Ed, he doesn't have
sense enough not to poke at every sore spot he finds in you. It'll get worse,
and worse, and the longer he lasts, the worse it'll be!"

"But what has it got to do with the work?" After a
moment, he sent Latourette back to the transmitter, and walked across the
laboratory toward Barker.

When Barker's leg came back, Hawks stood watching it being
refitted. Bulges of freshly ground aluminum were bolted to the flesh-colored
material. Then he was put in with the first of his undersuits.

Barker sat on the edge of the dressing table, smoothing the
porous silk over his skin, with talcum powder showing white at his wristlets
and around the turtle neck. The undersuit was bright orange.

"I look like a circus acrobat."

Hawks looked at his wristwatch. "We'll be ready to scan
in about twenty minutes. I want to be with the transmitter crew in five. Pay
attention to what I'm going to tell you."

"Is there more?"

"There are details. I've told you all there is to the
program. You're an intelligent human being and perhaps you'll be able to think
out the details for yourself. Some or all of them," Hawks said.
"Nevertheless," he went on after a moment, "I want to remind
you. This is the first scan. We have no control tape on you—that's why we're
taking this scan now. So the fidelity of the transmission depends entirely on
how good our basic hardware is—on how little static is permitted to appear as
noise in the speaker cone, if you want a simple analogy. Even after we have a
file tape, we have to introduce a statistical correction in each transmission,
to account for the time lapse between the making of the tape and the time of
the transmission.

"But this first time, you're trusting entirely to our skill
as engineers. There won't be any gross errors. But there may be errors our
equipment is too crude to correct or control—naturally, we can't know that.

"You have to realize—we don't know
why
the
scanner works. We have no theory in this field. We only know how it works, and
that may not be enough.

"Once the scan is in progress, we can't correct any
errors. The equipment is in motion, and we can only make sure it keeps moving.
We're blind. We don't know which bit of the signal describes which bit of the man,
any more than Thomas Edison knew which bit of scratch on his first recording
cylinder contained which precise bit of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb.' We never
know."

Barker said patiently: "Would you please make your
point, Doctor? I know this is a crash program, and we're all in a hurry."

"A man is a phoenix, Barker," Hawks persisted.
"He has to be reborn from his own ashes, for there isn't another being
like him in the Universe. If the wind stirs the ashes into a parody, there is
nothing we can do about it."