In theory what Rogov had proposed and Cherpas seconded was imaginable. It consisted of an attempt to work out an integrated theory for all the electrical and radiation phenomena accompanying consciousness, and to duplicate the electrical functions of mind without the use of animal material.
The range of potential products was immense.
The first product Stalin had asked for was a receiver, if possible, one capable of tuning in the thoughts of a human mind and of translating those thoughts either into a punch tape machine, an adapted German Hellschreiber machine, or phonetic speech. If the grids could be turned around, the brain-equivalent machine as a transmitter might be able to send out stunning forces which would paralyze or kill the process of thought.
At its best, Rogov’s machine was designed to confuse human thought over great distances, to select human targets to be confused, and to maintain an electronic jamming system which would jam straight into the human mind without the requirements of tubes or receivers.
He had succeeded-in part. He had given himself a violent headache in the first year of work.
In the third year he had killed mice at a distance of ten kilometers. In the seventh year he had brought on mass hallucinations and a wave of suicides in a neighboring village. It was this which impressed Khrushchev.
Rogov was now working on the receiver end. No one had ever explored the infinitely narrow, infinitely subtle bands of radiation which distinguished one human mind from another, but Rogov was trying, as it were, to tune in on minds far away.
He had tried to develop a telepathic helmet of some kind, but it did not work. He had then turned away from the reception of pure thought to the reception of visual and auditory images. Where the nerve-ends reached the brain itself, he had managed over the years to distinguish whole packets of microphenomena, and on some of these he had managed to get a fix.
With infinitely delicate tuning he had succeeded one day in picking up the eyesight of their second chauffeur, and had managed, thanks to a needle thrust in just below his own right eyelid, to “see” through the other man’s eyes as the other man, all unaware, washed their Zis limousine sixteen hundred meters away.
Cherpas had surpassed his feat later that winter, and had managed to bring in an entire family having dinner over in a near-by city. She had invited B. Gauck to have a needle inserted into his cheekbone so that be could see with the eyes of an unsuspecting spied-on stranger. Gauck had refused any kind of needles, but Gausgofer had joined in the experiment and had expressed her satisfaction with the work.
The espionage machine was beginning to take form.
Two more steps remained. The first step consisted of tuning in on some remote target, such as the White House in Washington or the NATO Headquarters outside Paris.
The second problem consisted of finding a method of jamming those minds at a distance, stunning them so that the subject personnel fell into tears, confusion, or insanity.
Rogov had tried, but he had never gotten more than thirty kilometers from the nameless village of Ya. Ch.
One November there had been seventy cases of hysteria, most of them ending in suicide, down in the city of Kharkov several hundred kilometers away, but Rogov was not sure that his own machine was doing it.
Comrade Gausgofer dared to stroke his sleeve. Her white lips smiled and her watery eyes grew happy as she said in her high, cruel voice, “You can do it, comrade. You can do it.”
Cherpas looked on with contempt. Gauck said nothing.
The female agent Gausgofer saw Cherpas’s eyes upon her, and for a moment an arc of living hatred leaped between the two women.
The three of them went back to work on the machine.
Gauck sat on his stool and watched them.
It was the year in which Eristratov died that the machine made a breakthrough. Eristratov died after the Soviet and People’s democracies had tried to end the cold war with the Americans.
It was May. Outside the laboratory the squirrels ran among the trees. The leftovers from the night’s rain dripped on the ground and kept the earth moist. It was comfortable to leave a few windows open and to let the smell of the forest into the workshop.
The smell of their oil-burning heaters, the stale smell of insulation, of ozone, and of the heated electronic gear was something with which all of them were much too familiar.
Rogov had found that his eyesight was beginning to suffer because he had to get the receiver needle somewhere near his optic nerve in order to obtain visual impressions from the machine. After months of experimentation with both animal and human subjects he had decided to copy one of their last experiments, successfully performed on a prisoner boy fifteen years of age, by having the needle slipped directly through the skull, up and behind the eye. Rogov had disliked using prisoners, because Gauck, speaking on behalf of security, always insisted that a prisoner used in experiments be destroyed in not less than five days from the beginning of the experiment. Rogov had satisfied himself that the skull-and-needle technique was safe, but he was very tired of trying to get frightened, unscientific people to carry the load of intense, scientific attentiveness required by the machine.
Somewhat ill-humored, he shouted at Gauck, “Have you ever known what this is all about? You’ve been here years. Do you know what we’re trying to do? Don’t you ever want to take part in the experiments yourself? Do you realize how many yean of mathematics have gone into the making of these grids and the calculation of these wave patterns? Are you good for anything?”
Gauck had said, tonelessly and without anger, “Comrade professor, I am obeying orders. You are obeying orders too. I’ve never impeded you.”
Rogov raved, “I know you never got in my way. We’re all good servants of the Soviet State. It’s not a question of loyalty. It’s a question of enthusiasm. Don’t you ever want to glimpse the science we’re making? We are a hundred yean or a thousand yean ahead of the capitalist Americans. Doesn’t that excite you? Aren’t you a human being? Why don’t you take part? How will you understand me when I explain it?”
Gauck said nothing; he looked at Rogov with his beady eyes. His dirty-gray face did not change expression. Cherpas said, “Go ahead, Nikolai. The comrade can follow if he wants to.”
Gausgofer looked enviously at Cherpas. She seemed inclined to keep quiet, but then had to speak. She said, “Do go ahead, comrade professor.”
Said Rogov, “Kharosho, I’ll do what I can. The machine is now ready to receive minds over immense distances.” He wrinkled his lip in amused scorn. “We may even spy into the brain of the chief rascal himself and find out what Eisenhower is planning to do today against the Soviet people. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our machine could stun him and leave him sitting addled at his desk?”
Gauck commented, “Don’t try it. Not without orders.”
Rogov ignored the interruption and went on. “First I receive. I don’t know what I will get, who I will get, or where they will be. All I know is that this machine will reach out across all the minds of men and beasts now living and it will bring the eyes and ears of a single mind directly into mine. With the new needle going directly into the brain it will be possible for me to get a very sharp fixation of position. The trouble with that boy last week was that even though we knew he was seeing something outside this room, he appeared to be getting sounds in a foreign language and did not know enough English or German to realize where or what the machine had taken him to see.”
Cherpas laughed. “I’m not worried. I saw then it was safe. You go first, my husband. If our comrades don’t mind-?”
Gauck nodded.
Gausgofer lifted her bony hand breathlessly to her skinny throat and said, “Of course, Comrade Rogov, of course. You did all the work. You must be the first.”