held it as a gladiator holds a sword, but there were no cheers. The film came to an end. Eugene Dazzy had edited it severely.
The lights came on, but Kennedy remained still. He felt a familiar weakening of his body. He couldn't move his legs or his torso.
But his mind was clear, there was no shock or disorder in his brain. He did not feel the helplessness of tragedy's victim. He would not have to struggle against fate or God. He only had to struggle against his enemies in this world and he would conquer them.
He would not let mortal man defeat him. When his wife died, he'd had no recourse against the hand of God, the faults of nature. He had bowed his entire being in acceptance. But his daughter's man-made death, engineered by malice-that he could punish, and redress. This time he would not bow his head. Woe to that world, to his enemies, woe to the wicked in this world.
When he was finally able to lift his body from the chair, he smiled reassuringly to the men around him. He had accomplished his purpose. He had made his closest and most powerful friends suffer with him. They would not now so easily oppose the actions he must take.
Kennedy left the room and his staff sat in silence. It almost seemed as if the air of power, burnt with misuse, had spread a sulfurous odor through the room. The terror that had sprung from the desert of Sherhaben had even more frighteningly invaded this room.
What remained unsaid was that now they were perhaps more worried about Francis Kennedy than about Yabril.
Oddblood Gray finally broke the silence. 'Do you think the President has gone a little crazy?' he said.
Eugene Dazzy shook his head. 'It doesn't matter. Maybe we're all a little crazy. We have to support him now. We have to win.'
Dr. Zed Annaccone was one of those short thin men with a big chest. He looked extraordinarily alert and what seemed like superciliousness in his facial expression was actually just the confidence of a man who believed he knew more about the important things on this earth than anyone else. Which was quite true.
Dr. Annaccone was, the medical science adviser to the President of the United States. He was also the director of the National Brain Research Institute and the administrative head of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Security Commission. Once at a White House dinner party, Klee had heard him say that the brain was such a sophisticated organ that it could produce whatever chemicals the body needed. And Klee had simply thought, So what?
The doctor, reading his mind, patted him on the shoulder and said, 'That fact is more important to civilization than anything you guys can do here in the White House. And all we need is a billion dollars to prove it. What the hell is that, one aircraft carrier?' Then he had smiled at Klee to show that he meant no offense.
And now he was smiling when Klee walked into his office.
'So,' Dr. Annaccone said, 'finally even the lawyers come to me. You realize our philosophies are directly opposed?'
Klee knew that Dr. Annaccone was about to make a joke about the legal profession and was slightly irritated. Why did people always make wise-ass remarks about lawyers?
'Truth,' Dr. Annaccone said. 'Lawyers always seek to obscure it, we scientists try to reveal it.' He smiled again.
'No, no,' Klee said and smiled to show he had a sense of humor. 'I'm here for information. We have a situation that calls for that special PET study under the Atomic Weapons Control Act.'
'You know you have to get the President's signature on that,' Dr. Annaccone said. 'Personally I'd do the procedure for many other situations, but the civil libertarians would kick my ass.'
'I know,' Christian said. Then he explained the situation of the atom bomb and capture of Gresse and Tibbot. 'Nobody thinks there is really a bomb, but if there is, then the time factor is crucially important. And the President refuses to sign the order.'
'Why?' Dr. Annaccone asked.
'Because of the possible brain damage that could occur during the procedure,' Klee said.
This seemed to surprise Annaccone. He thought for a moment. 'The possibility of significant brain damage is very small,' he said. 'Maybe ten percent. The greater danger is the rare incidence of cardiac arrest and the even rarer side effect of complete and total memory loss.
Complete amnesia. But even that shouldn't dissuade him in this case. I've sent the President papers on it, I hope he reads them.'
'He reads everything,' Christian said. 'But I'm afraid it won't change his mind.'
'Too bad we don't have more time,' Dr. Annaccone said. 'We are just completing tests that will result in an infallible lie detector based on computer measurement of the chemical changes in the brain. The new test is much like the PET but without the ten percent damage risk. It will be completely safe. But we can't use that now; there would be too many elements of doubt until further data are compiled to satisfy the legal requirements.'
Christian felt a tinge of excitement. 'A safe, infallible lie detector whose findings would be admitted into court?' he said.
'As to being admitted into a court of law, I don't know,' Dr. Annaccone said. 'Scientifically, when our tests have been thoroughly analyzed and compiled by the computers, the new brain lie-detector test will be as infallible as DNA and fingerprinting. That's one thing. But to get it enacted into law is another.
The civil liberties groups will fight it to the death. They're convinced that a man should not be used to testify against himself. And how would people in Congress like the idea that they could be made to take such a test under criminal law?'
Klee said, 'I wouldn't like to take it.'
Annaccone laughed. 'Congress would be signing its own political death warrant. And yet where's the true logic? Our laws were made to prevent confessions obtained by foul means. However, this is science.' He paused for a moment. 'How about business leaders or even errant husbands and wives?'
'That's a little creepy,' Klee admitted.
Dr. Annaccone said, 'But what about all those old sayings, like, 'The truth shall make you free'? Like, 'Truth is the greatest of virtues.' Like,
'Truth is the very essence of life.' That man's struggle to discover truth is his greatest ideal?' Dr. Annaccone laughed. 'When our tests are verified, I'll bet my institute budget will get chopped.'
Christian said, 'That's my area of competence. We dress up the law. We specify that your test can be used only in important criminal cases. We restrict its use to the government. Make it like a strictly controlled narcotics substance or arms manufacturing. So if you can get the test proven scientifically, I can get the legislation.' Then he asked, 'Exactly how the hell does that work anyway?'
'The new PETT' Dr. Annaccone said. 'It's very simple. Physically not invasive. No surgeon with a blade in his hand. No obvious scars. Just a small injection of a chemical substance into the brain through the blood vessels. Chemical self-sabotage with psychopharmaceuticals.'
'It's voodoo to me,' Christian said. 'You should be in jail with those two physics guys.'
Dr. Annaccone laughed. 'No connection,' he said. 'Those guys work to blow up the world. I work to get at the inner truths-how man really thinks, what he really feels.'
But even Dr. Annaccone knew that a brain lie-detector test meant legal trouble. 'This will be perhaps the most important discovery in the medical history of our time,' Dr. Annaccone said. 'Imagine if we could read the brain. All you lawyers would be out of a job.'
Christian said, 'Do you think it's possible to figure out how the brain works, really?'
Dr. Annaccone shrugged. 'No,' he said. 'If the brain were that simple, we would be too simple to figure it out.' He gave Christian another grin.
'Catch– 22. Our brain will never catch up with the brain. Because of that, no matter what happens, mankind can never be more than a higher form of animal.' He seemed overjoyed by this fact.
He became abstracted for a moment. 'You know there's a 'ghost in the machine,' Koestler's phrase. Man has two brains really, the primitive brain and the overlying civilized brain. Have you noticed there is a certain unexplainable malice in human beings. A useless malice?'
Christian said, 'Call the President about the PET. Try to persuade him. '
Dr. Annaccone said, 'I will. He is really being too chicken. The procedure won't damage those kids a
