The funniest part was that he didn't need lab apparatus or control circuits. All he had to do was lie in a darkened room, eyes closed and ears plugged, and listen to himself in a half — dreaming state. Strange sensations came from within: the spleen, changing the blood, itched, and intestines tickled when they contracted; the salivary glands felt cold under his chin; the adrenals reacted to nerve signals with a delicious shudder, and the part of the blood enriched with adrenalin and glucose spread warmth through the body like a sip of wine. The sick cells in the muscles made themselves known with a gentle prickling.
Using engineering terminology, he was checking out his body with nerves the way an assembler checks out a circuit with a tester.
By this time he had a clear understanding of the binary arithmetic of sensation: painful — pleasant. And it occurred to him that the simplest way of subjugating the cellular processes to his consciousness was to make them hurt. It was quite possible that the incident with the icicle prompted this discovery; the idea came to him right after it.
Of course, the cells that were deteriorating and dying from various causes let themselves be known very palpably. The organism itself, without any orders from “above” sent leucocytes, feverish tissue, enzymes, and hormones to help. All he had to do was either speed up or slow down these microscopic struggles for life.
He injected and cut muscles everywhere he could reach with a needle or a scalpel. He injected fatal doses of typhus and cholera bacteria cultures. He inhaled mercury vapor, drank mixtures of corrosive sublimate and wood alcohol. (He didn't have the nerve to try faster — acting poisons, however.) And the more he tried the better his organism handled all the dangers he was aware of.
And then he caused cancer in himself. Cause cancer! Any doctor would spit in his eye for an announcement like that. To cause cancer you have to know what causes cancer. To be perfectly honest, he wouldn't maintain that he knew the causes of cancer, but this was simply because he couldn't translate into words all the feelings that accompanied the changes in the skin on his right side. He began with questioning the patients who were undertaking gamma therapy at the lab. What did they feel? This was not kind — asking terrified, exhausted people, contorted by pain, about their experiences and not promising anything in return — but that was how he understood the image of a cancer patient.
The growth was getting bigger and harder. Smaller growths began branching off from it — strange greenish purple ones, like cauliflower. Pain chewed up his side and shoulder. At the university clinic, where he went for a diagnosis, they suggested an immediate operation, without even letting him leave the place. He got out of it by lying and saying that he wanted to undergo radiation therapy first.
Graduate student Krivoshein, crumpling a cigarette, stepped out onto the balcony. It was a warm night. A car, waving its headlights, raced down a side road. Two little lights, a red one and a green one, traveled from Cygnus to Lyra. Behind them followed the roar of a jet engine. Like a match across a cover, a meteor struck the sky.
Back in his room, standing in front of the mirror, he concentrated his will and feelings, and the growth melted away in fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes later there was nothing but a purple spot the size of a saucer. Another ten minutes later there was just his usual skin, in goose bumps — it was chilly in the room.
But he couldn't express his knowledge about stopping cancer in either prescriptions or medical advice. What he could describe in words wouldn't heal anyone, except maybe other doubles like himself. So all his knowledge applied only to them.
With time, probably, he would learn to overcome the barrier between the doubles of the computer — womb and regular people. After all, biologically they were not too different. And the knowledge was there. Even if he couldn't express it verbally, they could record the fluctuations of his biopotentials, graph his temperatures, develop numbers of analysis in computers — medicine was a precise science now. And finally they would come around to recording and transmitting precise sensations. Words were not necessary. The important thing for a sick person was to get well, and not to write a dissertation on his recovery. That wasn't the point.
The student's attention was riveted by a light exploding below. He looked closely: leaning against a lamp post, the fellow in the cape from yesterday, the detective, was lighting a cigarette. He tossed the match and walked away slowly.
“So he found me, the damn creep! He's stuck on me like a burr!” Krivoshein's mood was ruined. He went back inside and sat down to read the diary.
Chapter 14
Life is short. There is barely enough time to make an adequate
number of mistakes. Repeating them, that's an unforgivable
luxury.
— K. Prutkov — engineer, Thought 22
Now the student was reading the notations with envious curiosity. Well, what had he achieved, when all he wanted was to twirl knobs?
June I. Phew… finished! The information chamber is ready. I begin the experiments with the rabbits tomorrow. If I follow tradition, I should begin with frogs. but I would never pick the disgusting things up! No, let my double play with toads. He's a brilliant student, quite industrious.
I wonder how he's doing.
June 2.1 equipped the rabbits with electrodes and sensors and put them all in the chamber. Let them overload it with information.
June 7. The rabbits lived in the chamber for four days. They munched carrots and cabbage leaves, wriggled their noses, fought, copulated, and napped. I did my first tests today. I put on Monomakh's Crown, mentally ordered “Proceed!” — and the computer — womb worked. Four rabbit doubles in an hour and a half.
What a relief — the machine worked.
An interesting detaiclass="underline" the visual appearance of the rabbits (what happens before that, I don't know) begins with the circulatory system; the blue red vessels show up in the golden fluid just as they do in the yolk of a fertilized chicken egg.
As they came to life, the rabbits floated up. I pulled them out by the ears, bathed them in a tub, all warm and trembling, and then put them in with the regular ones. The encounter between the natural and artificial doubles had an even more banal character than my meeting with my double. They stared at each other in disbelief, sniffed each other, and (since they don't have a secondary signal system, to explain) fought. Then they got tired, sniffed some more and went on with the normal rabbit routine.
The important thing is that the computer works on my command, without any additions. You put on the crown, remember (preferably with a mental image) which rabbit you want copied, give permission mentally — and in twenty — five to thirty minutes it's flopping around in the tank. The reverse operation — dissolving an appearing rabbit with the command “No!” — the computer — womb also does without reproach.
For its success and hard work I feed it salts, acids, glycerine, vitamins, and reagents. Just like giving fish to a trained seal.
June 20. When it works, it works. And when it doesn't you could just beat your head on the wall. All this time I've been trying to stop the synthesis of a rabbit at some stage. No matter what command I've tried: “Stop!” “Halt!” “Enough!” “Cut it out!” — both mentally and verbally — nothing helps. Either the synthesis goes on to the end, or there is dissolution.
It looks like the computer — womb works like a flip — flop circuit in a computer, that is, either open or closed, and has no in — between positions. But you would expect a complex machine to be more flexible than that silly circuit.