“Could you explore the mind directly?”
“Only in level two exploration,” Martin said. “I’ve only done that once.”
“My engineers tell me level one exploration is not going to be possible. Your equipment was tampered with by investigators six months ago. Your simulation or buffer computer is in Washington DC right now. Lawyers have impounded it for comparison with imported torture devices used by Selectors. Are you willing to engage our subject mind to mind?”
Martin looked around the room, working his chin back and forth. Smiled and leaned back in the chair. “This is a new game, gentlemen,” he said. “I didn’t know about the impounding. The federals are completely off track; my equipment is nothing like a hellcrown. Now I have no idea what I can do or not do.”
“The computer cannot be retrieved. We can find another—”
“I built that computer myself,” Martin said. “Grew it from a nano pup. It’s not a thinker, but it’s almost as complicated as the brains it simulates.”
“Then the project is impossible,” Albigoni said almost hopefully.
Martin clenched his jaw muscles and stared out the window. Blue and electric green winter roses blossomed in a neat hedge; green lawn dusty green oaks golden brown hills beyond.
The final push of the sword. To make the decision and then have it all taken away. Too much. “It’s probably still possible. Whether it’s advisable or not…”
“Dangers?”
“Direct mind to mind is more strenuous on the subject and the researcher. Less time in the Country is allowed. Probably no more than an hour or two. An older, smaller computer I designed could partially interface and boost comprehensibility; it acts as an interpreter so to speak but not as a buffer. I hope that equipment is still available.”
Albigoni looked to Lascal, who nodded. “If our inventory is correct, it is.”
“How did you reopen the IPR?” Martin asked.
Lascal said that did not really concern him. He was right; it was idle curiosity. It did not matter so long as it was true. What were the limits to the power of a man with wealth? They might all be found out, the result of a rich man’s fapup or the folly of an unknown subordinate.
“Why does the Country of the Mind exist, Mr. Burke?” Albigoni asked. “I’ve read your papers and books but they’re quite technical.”
Martin gathered his thoughts though he had explained this a hundred times to colleagues and even the general public. This time he would not allow any artistic embellishments. The Country was fabulous enough in plain.
“It’s the ground of all human thought, of all our big and little selves. It’s different in each of us. There is no such thing as a unified human consciousness. There are primary routines which we call personalities, one of which usually makes up the conscious self, and they are partially integrated with other routines which I call subpersonalities, talents, or agents. These are actually limited versions of personalities, not complete; to be expressed, or put in control of the overall mind, they need to be brought forward and smoothly meshed with the primary personality, that is, what used to be called the consciousness, our foremost self.
“Talents are complexes of skills and instincts, learned and prepatterned behavior. Sex is the most obvious and numerous—twenty talents in full grown adults. Anger is another; there are usually five talents devoted to anger response. In an integrated, socially adapted adult older than thirty, only two such anger talents usually remain—social anger and personal anger. Ours is an age of social anger.”
Albigoni listened without nodding.
“For example, the Selectors are dominated by social anger. They have confused it with personal anger. Social anger talents control their primary routines.”
“Talents are personalities,” Lascal said uncertainly.
“Not fully developed. They are not autonomous in balanced and healthy individuals.”
“All right,” Albigoni said. “That much is clear. What other kinds of talents are there?”
“Hundreds, most rudimentary, nearly all borrowing or in parallel with the primary routines, all smoothly integrating, meshing”—he knitted his knuckles gearwise and twisted his hands—“to make up the healthy individual.”
“You say nearly all. What about those routines and subroutines that don’t borrow, that are most likely to be—” He referred to his notes. “What you call subpersonalities or close secondaries.”
“Very complex diagram,” Martin said. “It’s in my second book.” He nodded at the slate’s screen. “Subpersonalities or close secondaries include male/female modeling routines, what Jung called animus and anima…Major occupation routines, that is, the personality one assumes when carrying out one’s business or a major role in society…Any routine that could conceivably inform or replace the primary personality for a substantial length of time.”
“Being an artist or a poet, perhaps?”
“Or a husband/wife or a father/mother.”
Albigoni nodded, eyes closed and almost lost in his broad face. “From what little research I’ve managed to do in the last thirty six hours, I’ve learned that therapy is more often than not a stimulus of discarded or suppressed routines and subroutines to achieve a closer balance.”
Martin nodded. “Or the suppression of an unwanted or defective subpersonality. That can sometimes be done through exterior therapy—talking it out—or through interior stimulus, such as direct simulation of fantasized growth experiences. Or it can be done through physical remodeling of the brain, chemical expression and repression, or more radically, microsurgery to close off the loci of undesired dominant routines.”
“In a sexual offender, for example…”
“Typical therapy for a sex offender is to destroy the loci of an undesired dominant sexual routine.”
“Very carefully.”
“Indeed,” Martin said. “Dominant routines can subsume large sectors of primary personality. Separating them out is a delicate art.”
“And a primitive art, until you came along with your work at IPR.”
Martin agreed modestly.
“Radical therapy was only fifty percent effective until you made the procedures more precise.” Albigoni raised his dull eyes to Martin’s and smiled faintly. “Thereby putting the final touches on a transformation of law and society in the last fifteen years.”
“And earning myself a scapegoat’s bell,” Martin said.
“You discovered psychological dynamite, Dr. Burke,” Albigoni said. “My company has published over six hundred books and seventy five LitVids on the subject in the past six years.”
It had not dawned on Martin until now what connection he had with Albigoni. “You published a couple of books about the IPR and me…Didn’t you?”
“We did.”
Martin hummed and put a finger to his lips. “Not very flattering books.”
“They weren’t meant to please you.”
Martin narrowed his eyes. “Did you agree with their conclusions?”
“Mr. Albigoni is not required to agree with the books or LitVids he publishes,” Lascal said, somehow managing to hover without moving from his position standing catercorner between them.
“I agreed with them at the time,” Albigoni said. “Your work seemed dangerously close to removing the last shred of our private humanity.”
Martin’s face reddened. An old accusation that had never lost its pain. “I explored new territory and described it. I did not create it. Don’t blame the conduit for the lightning.”
“When a man reaches up to touch the clouds, can you blame him for the stray bolt? But we’re babbling, Dr. Burke. I have no argument with you now. I need your talents to…help a friend. To purge myself of a soul eating hatred. To help us all understand.”