"Why do you think they call it labor?" I asked, only half humorously. He grimaced, and I quickly changed the subject. "So what does a baby think about in there? I mean, she couldn't have all that much sensory experience to draw on and certainly wouldn't have what we'd consider abstract thoughts."
"Oh, there really was a fair amount of sensory input—tactile and auditory mostly, but taste and even vision also got used some." He shook his head thoughtfully, his forehead corrugated with concentration. "But it wasn't the use of her senses, or even the way that such information was processed that made her a human being. It was—oh, I don't know: a feeling of kinship, I guess I'd have to say. Something familiar in the mental patterns, though I'll be damned if I can describe it."
"Whatever it was didn't change at the actual birth?"
"Not really. There was a sudden sensory overload, of course, but if anything it heightened the feeling..." He trailed off, then abruptly snapped his fingers. "That's what it was. On some very deep level the baby felt herself to be an individual, distinct in some way from the rest of the universe." "I didn't think even young children understood that," I said.
"On a conscious level, no—but that part of the mind seems to be the last to develop, long after the more instinctive levels are firmly in place. Now that I think about it, I've picked up this sense of distinctness in babies before—even in the Kilogram Kids I worked with at Stanford last year—but just never bothered to put a label on it."
I pondered that for a moment. "Is that the yardstick you're going to use, then?"
He shrugged uncomfortably. "Unless I can come up with something better, I guess I'll have to. I know it sounds like pretty flimsy evidence, but it really seems to be an easy characteristic to pick up. And I'm sure I've never felt it in any of the other mammals I've touched."
"Um. It still sounds awfully mystical for an experiment that purports to be scientific."
"I'm sorry," he said with a touch of asperity. "It's the best I can do. If you don't think it's worth anything we can quit right now."
I took his arm, realizing for the first time how heavily the national controversy was weighing on him. "It'll be all right," I soothed him. "As long as people know exactly what you're testing for, no one will be able to claim you misrepresented either yourself or the experiment."
"Yeah." He sighed and looked at his watch. "Two-thirty. No wonder I'm dead tired. Come on, Iris; let's go say goodbye to your friends and get out of here."
—
For a wonder, the news of our unofficial test run didn't leak to the media at that time, and so Dan was spared the extra attention such a revelation would have generated. As it was, public interest—which had remained at a low level for the past two or three weeks—began to rise again as the procedural problems began to be worked out and Jordan announced a tentative date of July 25 for the experiment to take place.
In light of the recently discovered papers, there is one conversation from that period that I feel must be included in this report.
It took place on the evening of July 12 at the home of Ron Brady and his wife Susan. It had been only the previous day that Halladay's idea of using electrical sleep stimulation had been proved adequate for Dan's needs, removing the final obstacle still holding things up.
"So the Lifeline Experiments going to come off after all," Ron said after the dinner dishes had been cleared and the four of us had settled down in the living room.
Dan nodded. "Looks that way. Eliot and Pam are lining up volunteers now; they expect to have that finished in ten days at the most." He cocked an eyebrow. "You seem disapproving, somehow."
Ron and his wife exchanged glances. "It's not disapproval, exactly," Ron said hesitantly, "and it's certainly not aimed at you. But we are a little worried about the potential influence this one experiment is going to have on the way people think about abortion and human life in general, both here and in other countries."
Dan shrugged. "I'm just trying to inject some facts into the situation. Is influencing people to use rational thought instead of emotion a bad thing?"
"No, of course not," Susan said. "But what you're doing and what the public perceives you as doing are not necessarily the same. You're searching for the place where a fetus's mind becomes human; but a person is more than just his mind. Will the Lifeline Experiment show where the child's soul and spirit enter him? I'm not at all sure it will."
"That almost sounds like quibbling," I pointed out. "If Dan can detect a unique humanness in the mind, isn't that basically the same thing as the soul?"
"I don't know," Susan said frankly. "What's more, I haven't the foggiest idea of how you'd even begin to test that kind of assumption. It's just the fact that the assumption is being made that concerns me."
"The problem we see," Ron put in, "is that the media isn't bothering with this—to us, at least—very important point, but is preparing the public to expect a clear-cut answer to come out of the experiment. What's worse, every organized group that sees support for their point of view will immediately jump on the bandwagon, reinforcing the media's oversimplification. Do you see what I'm getting at?"
"Yes." Dan pulled at his lower lip. "Iris, have I been clear enough with the media as to exactly what the Lifeline Experiment will and won't show?"
Dan had talked to reporters over a hundred times since the story's first appearance; quickly, I played back the relevant parts. "I think so," I said slowly. "Especially since our trip to Fresno."
"The media's not picking up on it," Ron insisted.
I nodded. "He's right, Dan. I haven't seen any major newspaper or TV report even mention questions like Susans, let alone seriously discuss them."
Dan pondered a moment. "Well, what do you think I should do about it? I could yell a little louder, I suppose, but evidence to date indicates that won't do a lot of good." "I tend to agree," Ron said. "You've been something of a folk hero since you fought the National Academy of Sciences and won, but the extremists—on both sides—have louder voices. I'm afraid yours would probably get lost amid the postexperiment gloatings and denunciations."
"Do you think I should cancel the whole thing, then?" Dan asked bluntly.
For a moment there was silence. Then Susan shook her head. "I almost wish you could, or at least that you could postpone it for a while. But at this late date canceling would probably just start fresh rumors, with each faction trying to persuade people that you'd quit because you'd learned something that supported their particular point of view and conflicted with your own."
Dan's own words the morning the story appeared in the Chronicle came back to me; from the look on his face I knew he was remembering them, too. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
I think we all heard the pain in his voice. Susan was the first one to respond to it. "I'm sorry, Dan—we didn't mean to add to the pressure. We're not blaming you for what other people are doing with your words."
"I know," Dan said. "Don't worry about it—the pressure was there long before tonight." He sighed. "I really wasn't expecting it to be so intense, somehow. It wasn't nearly this bad when I was trying to prove my telepathic ability, not even when they were calling me a criminal fraud on network TV I must be getting soft in my old age."