"H. L. Gold - Fog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gold H. L)

Cobb shrugged. "What's the difference? He can't live. We can go on, though, just as if he were going
to live."

THE GRAY LUMP of tissue lay inertly on the table, containing every impression and memory of the
patientтАФthe victim now. Rollins tore his eyes away from the morbid fascination and watched Cobb. He
wandered absently from the operating table, hypodermic in hand, and searched vaguely over rows of
bottles standing on the shelves against the wall. As if not certain which one he wanted, he picked one,
almost at random it seemed, and charged his hypodermic.
"What's that?" Rollins asked.
Cobb looked up at him. "Pineal extract," he muttered.
"What're you going to do with it?"
Cobb walked over to the operating table, lecturing as he went. "Suppose I were to stimulate the
pineal glandтАФwhat would happen? Nobody knows. But this much is believed: the pineal gland controls
the racial memory of man; in other words the instincts. Now, with complete amnesia there is only loss of
memory, but an attempt at ratiocination. With the instincts stimulated until they have gained complete
control over the brain and body, we have a pure beast, an omnivorous brute, activated solely by
instinct."
Rollins thought a moment. "What'd be the advantage of that?"
"Very little practical advantage," Cobb admitted. "But so very little is known about the functions of
the brain тАФof the various portions that isтАФthat the establishment of proof that the frontal lobes do
control memory and the pineal gland the instincts, is vastly important both to surgery and psychology. It
may be possible at some time, basing the experiment on the results of this one, to stimulate the racial
memory, and even to divide it minutely into aeons, centuries, or evenтАФthough the possibility is
smallтАФinto single events.
"Reason is based on the memory of the animal. We don't know how primitive beast-men would react
to a given stimulus, because we've never had a real beast-man to work with. Now, experimenting on the
reactions of this subject, if he lives, we can perhaps solve the mystery of thought. The individual memory,
contained in these two lobes, can never be solved. I think."
"How're you going to stimulate the pineal gland?"
"Well, I can't inject it into the pineal gland itself, because it's down at the very base of the brain, and
to reach it I'd have to cut through the entire brain. Besides, it's only about fourteen millimeters in length,
and quite hard to find. So I stimulate it in the same way any gland is stimulatedтАФby glandular extract
injected intravenously."
He inserted the point of the hypodermic into a vein in the left arm, and pressed the plunger.
Withdrawing the hypodermic, Dr. Cobb placed it on the tray at his elbow and prepared to close the
skull. First he removed the thin layer of bone wax; then set the top of the skull into place, after throwing
the three membranes back into position. Stitching the scalp was a routine task that took him only a short
time. He then bandaged the head tightly.
Rollins removed the ether cone. Tired after the ordeal with its discouraging complications, Cobb
pulled off his powerful glasses and switched off the operating lights. As they turned to go to the wash
room, Rollins glanced back. The weird, white scene, centering on the still patient, became normal once
more. He looked again at the victim's face, a twinge of guilt torturing him. It was white; the features had
relaxed into a vacuous, brutal expression, like nothing he had ever seen on an anaesthetized person. He
shuddered and followed Dr. Cobb.
The tiny operating laboratory down in the cellar of the old yellow brick house near Central Park, was
quiet. But the subject, even without his frontal lobes, breathed normally

FOR DAYS after that, Cobb was unable to leave his bed. He was completely exhausted. Rollins had
to remain in the house, taking care of the old surgeon and his patient. A friend, meanwhile, took care of
his tiny practice in his absence. It was a small job.