"S_Fowler_Wright_Brain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wright S Fowler)

Professor - now President - Brisket smiled silently, recalling the incidence that Dr. Binyon had happened to be in the city which been selected for the required example. His hesitations had ceased from troubling.

Power had come to the President, as it may never have come to earlier potentate in the history of the world. There was only the Council of the Twenty-One, and to each of these he had allotted their appropriate occupations.

Seventeen of them would continue the conquest of knowledge, by the power of which the world lay at their feet already; and the whole Universe was yielding, one by one, its cryptic secrets to their insatiate importunities. Of the other three, two were occupied in executive work as his enthusiastic subordinates. There was no danger from them. Professor Borthin? Well, he was not immortal. There might be a vacancy on the Council of Twenty-One. It might be very soon.

The President sat in his star-domed Studio of Contemplation, over the aromatic darkness of which its vault of stars gave the impression of the depths of space, without the risk of rain or cold or tempest, so that he might think without any triviality of distraction, and with the vast realm always before him - the realm of blind, unchanging law which lay, in its vast unconsciousness, awaiting the control of the advancing minds of men.

The hours passed, and he did not move. He was facing the most momentous decision of his life. More gigantic in possibilities, more fatal should his judgement err, than had been that which had established him as the head of the first purely scientific government that the earth had known.

It was three years ago that he had casually discovered, when his investigations were directed to quite other ends, the substance which stimulates the cerebral processes, and controls the functioning of the brain. He had been cautious in its application, because the occasion of his discovery had suggested that its use might not be without danger to a mammalian subject, and an injection into a young dog had produced a condition of such uncontrollable ferocity as to be indistinguishable from actual madness.

A viper, receiving a small, and then a larger injection, had shown no sign of any effect whatever. On receiving a third, it had died within a few hours.

The first real success had been with a minnow, one of five in a glass tank, to which he had given an infinitesimal injection. Two days afterwards, when he went to scatter their food on the water in the usual corner, he found that it was surrounded by a barrier of the floating weed which the tank contained, through which there was only one passage left, and that somewhat tortuous.

Through this passage the inoculated minnow darted swiftly, reaching the food sufficiently before its baffled companions to get the largest share of the meal.

He had disturbed the weed, and had found it rearranged on the next morning.

Disturbing it again, he had watched, and seen the fish actually tugging the floating weed to the required position.

After that, he had fed the fish on whatever part of the surface might be clear, lest the other four should be starved entirely.

Four days later, he had found three of them dead in the water, each with a wound behind the neck, the inoculated fish having evidently decided that one companion would be sufficient for its requirements, and would allow it to eat its fill.

This experiment had shown that he had been right in his judgement as to the nature of the substance which he had isolated, and, learning this, he had destroyed the too-intelligent minnow, and burnt its body, these precautions being taken because he was not sure whether the acquired characteristic, being physical in its basis, might not be transmitted to a succeeding generation, nor even whether there might not be a possibility that it might be transmissible to another fish which might swallow one which had benefited from the inoculation. He had no wish to create a race of pike with approximately human cunning.

Since that time he had made some fresh discoveries as to the nature and effects of the secretion and modifications in its preparation, which, he believed, would render it suitable for injection into the blood of the mammalia, and, specifically, into the human blood which was to be its ultimate destination.

But he had still much to learn as to its effects, and as to the dose which could be safely given, as to whether such effects were permanent, and concerning that most important question of whether it would be transmitted to the children of those who might benefit from it.

He had also perfected another injection, which could be relied upon to produce in those who received it a docility so great that all other passions or proclivities would be subdued by the desire to act at the call of duty, or to fulfil the wishes of those about them. On this latter preparation he relied with a reasonable confidence to control any unruly symptoms which might result from the major experiment.

Now he sat, in the artificial unchanging night of the studio, considering the conditions of his next experiment, and on whom or what it should be made.

It was a matter on which he had no confidant. It was a power too great to share. The time might come for its announcement, even for doling it out to others, in some lesser degree than his own benefit from it. It would make his dominance absolute. It would bring, no doubt, the worship which must be paid, sooner or later, to the Lord of Science who will control the world. But that time was not yet.

. . . At last, he rose, and passed out of the studio. His course was clearly determined. He summoned Wilkins, who superintended the scientific diet which had maintained his health so well, until he was now on the threshold of his eighty-second year.

"Wilkins," said the Premier, "I want you to speak to the farmer who supplies the eggs and milk for my own table. I want him to procure me a young sow-pig. The breed doesn't matter, and I will pay his price. But it must be healthy, intelligent, and good-tempered."

"Good-tempered, sir?"

"Yes, that's very important. It's not for the laboratory."

"No, sir?"

"No, I shall want two other pigs sent there. Two with good foreheads. I may want a look at their brains. But I want this one sent to Berkhampsted. I shall be going down on Tuesday. I know there are some good sties there; though we haven't used them. You can give instructions about the details."