«Just lie on the couch. I attach these two little electrodes to your head.» Dr. Young pulled a small plastic bag from his jacket pocket. Inside was something that looked rather like the earphones that are handed out on airplanes for listening to the movie or stereo tapes.
«It won’t hurt a bit,» Dr. Young promised.
Henry just glared at him sullenly.
«I’ll explain it again,» Dr. Young said, as calmly as he could manage. It was like coaxing a four-year-old: «You don’t want to talk to psychiatrists or anyone else—for security reasons. So I’ve programmed my own company’s computer with the correlations determined by six of the nation’s leading psychiatrists. All you have to do is answer a few questions that I’ll ask you, and the computer will be able to translate your answers into an understanding of your subconscious desires—your real wishes, the dream girl that your conscious mind is too repressed to verbalize.»
«I’m not sure I like this.»
«It’s harmless.»
«What are the electrodes for?»
Dr. Young tried to make his reply sound casual, airy. «Oh, they’re just something like lie detectors, not that you’re consciously lying, of course. But they’ll compare your brain’s various electrical waves with your conscious words and allow the computer to determine what’s really on your mind.»
«A computer that can read minds?» Henry took a halfstep back toward the door.
«Not at all,» Dr. Young assured him and grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket. «It doesn’t read your mind. How could it? It’s only a computer. It merely correlates your spoken words with your brain waves, that’s all. Then it’s up to a human being—me, in this case—to interpret those correlations.»
As he half dragged Henry to the couch, Dr. Young wondered if he should tell him that the computer did most of the correlation work itself. And thanks to the clandestine link between his company’s computer here in this building and the FBI’s monster machine, the correlations would come out as specific names and addresses.
«You really think this will work?» Henry asked as Dr. Young pushed him down onto the couch.
«Not only do I think it will work, but the President thinks it will. Now we wouldn’t want to disappoint the President, would we?»
Henry lay back and closed his eyes. «No, I suppose not.»
«Fine,» said Dr. Young. He pulled the electrodes from the bag. «Now this isn’t going to hurt at all.» Henry jumped when the soft rubberized pads touched his temples.
«And if it doesn’t work?» the President’s voice sounded darkly troubled. «How can I get Chou to meet me at the airport if Henry isn’t available to set things up?»
«It will work, Mr. Pre-Uh, sir. I’m sure of it,» Dr. Young said into the phone. It better work, he said to himself. Tonight’s the night. We’ll find out for sure tonight.
«I don’t like it. I want to make that perfectly clear. I don’t like this one little bit.»
«It’s scientific, sir. You can’t argue with science.»
«It had better be worth the money we’ve spent,» was the President’s only reply.
Henry was strangely calm as he stepped out of the limousine and walked up the steps to the plain, red brick house in Georgetown. It was barely dusk, not dark enough to worry about muggers yet.
There was only one bell button at the door. Usually these homes were split into several apartments. This one was not. He and his dream girl would have it all to themselves.
He sighed. He had waited so long, been through so much. And now some computer-designated girl was waiting for him. Well, maybe it would work out all right. All he had ever wanted was a lovely, sweet woman to make him feel wanted and worthwhile.
He pressed the button. A buzzer sounded gratingly and he pushed the front door open and stepped inside.
The hallway led straight to the back of the house.
«In the kitchen!» a voice called out.
Briefly he wondered whether he should stop here and take off his topcoat. He was holding a bouquet of gladiolas in one hand, stiffly wrapped in green paper. Squaring his shoulders manfully, he strode down the hallway to the kitchen.
The lights were bright, the radio blaring, and the kitchen was filled with delicious warm aromas and sizzlings. The woman was standing at the range with her back to him.
Without turning, she said:
«Put the flowers on the table and take off your coat. Then wash your hands and we’ll eat.»
With a thrill that surpassed understanding, Henry said, «Yes, Momma.»
JOVIAN DREAMS
Why do human beings explore? Since long before history began to be written, humans have pushed themselves into new territories, sought new vistas, crossed deserts and oceans and chains of mountains. Why? Why have men deliberately gone into dangers that often killed them? For glory? For gain? For knowledge?
Here is an explorer who thinks he knows why he is risking his life in the globe-girdling ocean of our solar system’s largest planet.
But he learns better.
Floating in the submersible’s artificial womb, deep in Jupiter’s planet-girdling ocean, Po Han dreamed of his martyred ancestor, Zheng He.
Forty years before Columbus was even born, Zheng He commanded the Ming emperor’s mighty treasure fleets. He had sailed ships crewed by thousands of men across the wide Pacific and Indian Oceans, he had established trading posts among the primitives of North and South America and the kingdoms of Africa’s east coast. He had explored Australia and he made the rulers of Indonesia kowtow to the Emperor. He had brought treasure and knowledge to China.
But when the old emperor died the Mandarins who supervised the newly crowned child on the throne forbade all exploratory voyages, burned the treasure fleets, castrated Zheng He far more cruelly than the Arab slave traders who had emasculated him in his youth.
In Po Han’s dream, the Mandarins of the Chinese court and the bureaucrats of the International Astronautical Authority melted together into one stern, austere figure: Po Han’s own father.
«Give up this madness,» his father warned him. «There is nothing for you in Jupiter except pain and death.»
Pain, yes. Po Han knew enough about pain now. He had run away from the safety of Beijing and the faculty post at the university that had been offered to him. He had flown to Jupiter to explore, to learn, to break the barriers of ignorance that lay between the humans of Earth and the gigantic Leviathans that swam the endless ocean of Jupiter.
«I’ll show them,» he swore to himself. «I’ll make them all admit that I am the greatest explorer of them all.»
He had to be surgically transformed. Not castrated, as Zheng He was, but altered to breathe the cold, slimy, high-pressure liquid that filled his submersible. There was no other way for fragile humans to stand the immense pressures of the deep Jovian ocean.
So Po Han floated in the cold liquid, his lungs, every cell of his body bathed in the thick, frigid, viscous fluid that filled the submersible. He was no longer a human being, he knew. Now he was a cyborg, part man, part machine, linked to the ship’s systems by electronic connectors that allowed him to see what the sensors observed, feel the thrum of the ship’s engines as his own heartbeat, hear the weird alien calls and cackles of the Jovian creatures that lived in the worldwide ocean.
An ocean ten times larger than the planet Earth. An ocean that had no land, no rocky shore, no sandy beach, nothing but chains of waves that surged unbroken for tens of thousands of kilometers, driven by storms that dwarfed entire worlds.
An ocean that was getting warmer as he sank deeper. Po Han felt the rising temperature of the acid-laced water beyond the sub’s hull as heat against his own skin. He welcomed the warmth. Deeper, he directed his submersible. Deeper, into the realm of the Leviathans.