Shadows

you hear me?”

Instantly a blip appeared on the graph reflecting Amy’s alpha waves. Though the blip disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, it wasn’t fast enough. “All right, Amy,” George Engersol continued. “I know you’re listening, and I think we should have a talk.”

He studied the graphs on Amy’s monitor, then glanced at the screen above the tank. Despite whatever efforts she might be putting forth to suppress them, he could see the graphic displays of her various brain waves reacting to his words almost as clearly as if she still had a face. But on the screen above her tank, Amy was showing nothing.

He suspected she was pretending to be asleep.

“I know you’re listening to me, Amy, and I suspect I know what’s going on in your head. You’re angry. And I suppose you have a right to be. Perhaps I was wrong to include you in the project at all. But it’s done now, and there’s nothing either you or I can do about it. And I think you know that destroying the project won’t accomplish anything. Nor, for that matter, will your trying to tell anyone about it. Don’t you see? No one will believe you. Even if someone does, and comes looking for you, you’ll be long gone. Both you and Adam will be dead, and all that will be down here is the Croyden computer, which I’m using in my very well-publicized search for artificial intelligence. The lab will be inspected, as will the chimpanzees’ brains that will have replaced yours in the tanks, and that will be that. The files will be restored, and the research will continue. Which means that you have a choice. You can either be part of it, or you can remain silent, and sulk.” His voice changed, taking on a hard edge. “I don’t like sulky children, Amy. Do you understand that?”

There was no reply from Amy at all. The speakers in the ceiling remained silent; the monitor above her tank remained blank. Engersol waited a few minutes. He was certain she had heard every word he spoke, equally certain that it had been Amy herself who had turned the sound system back on after he had turned it off last night.

At last he made up his mind.

He went to the room next door, unlocked the drug cabinet and took out a vial of sodium Pentothal. Returning to the lab, he attached the vial to the artificial circulatory system that kept Amy’s brain supplied with blood, and opened a valve a fraction of a turn.

The drug would begin entering Amy’s brain in such minute amounts that she would never notice what was happening to her until it was too late.

Instantly, Amy’s voice filled the room.

“Turn it off!”

Engersol froze. How could she have known already? The Pentothal couldn’t have reached her brain yet.

As if she knew what he was thinking, Amy spoke again.

“I’m monitoring all my support systems, Dr. Engersol. I know what you’re doing. You’re adding Pentothal to my blood supply. Turn it off.”

Engersol stepped back and gazed at the monitor above Amy’s tank. She was there now, her eyes angry, her lips pressed together.

“I just told you, Amy. There’s nothing you can do. I’ve decided to put you to sleep.”

“Don’t,” Amy told him. “I’m busy, and I don’t want you to bother me. I don’t like you, and I don’t want to talk to you anymore! And if you don’t turn off the drug, I’m not going to just wreck your project. I’m going to wreck everything!”

Engersol hesitated. Wreck everything? What was she talking about?

Again, it was as if she knew what he was thinking. “I can do it, too. I can get into any computer anywhere. And if I can get into them, I can do anything I want with them. I won’t hurt anyone if you just leave me alone.”

Engersol hesitated, his mind racing. What was she doing? And what could she do before the drug took effect and she went to sleep?

He realized he didn’t know.

Nor, he suddenly knew, did he want to find out.

If it was true that she could reach into any computer anywhere — and he only now realized that it undoubtedly was true, given the sophistication of the Croyden’s communication systems — the damage she could cause was incalculable.

He turned the valve off and removed the vial from the circulatory apparatus.

“Thank you,” Amy said, instantly analyzing the change in the blood supply. “I really don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want you to leave me alone.”

“But why, Amy?” George Engersol asked. “What are you doing?”

On the monitor above her tank, Amy’s image smiled enigmatically. “I’m working on a project,” she said. “A project of my own.”

The speakers fell silent. Amy’s image disappeared.

25

Jeff wasn’t sure exactly when the idea first came into his mind. Maybe it was this morning, when his parents made him go home from the Academy right from Dr. Engersol’s office, without even giving him a chance to go back to his room and get any of his stuff.

It was like he was a baby or something.

That’s how they’d started treating him; like some kind of baby, who’d spilled a glass of milk and now had to sit in a corner.

He hadn’t said a word on the way home, hadn’t even listened to much of what his father had been saying, since he’d already heard it in Dr. Engersol’s office.

“You’ll stay home and think about what you’ve done until you decide to tell us how you did it, and who helped you.”

Who’d helped him? How dumb were they? Nobody had helped him, because he hadn’t done anything. And even if he had pulled off that stunt last night, he wouldn’t have needed any help. All it would take was the right computer, and he knew exactly where that computer was.

But his father would never believe that it had actually been Adam on the tape — or at least an image that Adam himself had created — and now he was stuck.

Unless he told the truth.

But he couldn’t tell the truth, either, without sending the whole project down the tubes.

It was so stupid!

Why hadn’t he gone first? Why had they decided that Adam should go? But he already knew the answer to that. Adam wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut. The first time their mother started crying, Adam would have spilled the beans. So the three of them — he, Dr. Engersol, and Adam — had decided that Adam would go first. At the time, Jeff had felt relieved. After all, what if it hadn’t worked? What if his brain had actually died while Dr. E was moving it from his head into the tank? Of course, he’d known it wouldn’t, since he’d actually seen the brains of the chimpanzees in the tanks into which Dr. E had put them.

The brains that were still alive after six months.

Alive, and healthy.

“It’s time to start working with a human brain,” Dr. E had told them that day last spring when he’d shown them the secret lab buried under the house. “It’s working perfectly — the brains of the chimps are functioning, receiving information from the Croyden. The problem is that the apes are simply not smart enough to realize where the information is coming from and what they can do with it. And they’re certainly not intelligent enough to actually interact with the computer.” His eyes had fixed on them then. “What we need is a very special mind. A mind that can not only grasp the importance of the project, but that also has the intelligence to comprehend an entirely new form of stimulation. Whoever is selected to be the first human to genuinely interact with a computer will have to have the intelligence to interpret data in a whole new way, a way I’m not sure even I can fully comprehend