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

If his brain were stimulated. . . . He saw that the time had come to call in the aid of the unsuspected power which he held reserved. Surely, after all his experiments . . . ? He would try an infinitesimal dose at first, and then a larger one, when he had experienced its effects.

It was about half an hour before he felt the effect of the injection. Then he became aware of an increased clarity of vision, by which the minor details of the objects around him, which he had previously overlooked, were thrown into a vivid prominence. Then he was conscious of a new mental energy, and a quickened perception of abstract things. It was absurd that he should have been troubled by the sluggish cerebrations of Professor Sturmie, who had a mind that floundered like a hippopotamus. And the problem itself was of a childish simplicity. Quiescent Space could have no Time at all. Therefore they could not be identical.

Space must be invaded by Energy: then Time was needed for its operations. Time commenced with its own occasion.

That was the sequence. Space must first exist. Then there must be the invasion of Energy. Then there must be Time for its operations.

So far he saw - or thought he saw - very clearly. But there was something further. Something behind, and beyond, of which his mind was aware, but which it could not reach. Something that vexed and baffled, like a half-faded dream. Something which, could he grasp it, would bring conviction to all who heard, and confound his opponents with a swift derision.

He saw that he would need a further injection before he would be able to overwhelm his enemies. With the experience which he had gained, he no longer feared it. He resolved to take the Council into a partial confidence. He would tell them of the discovery he had made. He would take a further injection before their eyes. He would discourse upon it for half an hour, telling of the experiments which he had made already - telling everything but the formula itself offering to share his discovery with his colleagues, and to confine it to them, so that, even among their fellow-scientists, they would be assured of a continued supremacy.

Meanwhile, the injection would operate in him, and would demonstrate the miracle which he had achieved.

After that, he would know how to deal with Borthin, even with Sturmie, should they dare to attack him. Should they be silent, he would also deal with them, quickly and quietly, after the Council had risen.

Meanwhile, he could put the question from his mind entirely. He was disposed to experiment with the second preparation, to ascertain its effects upon those who had been exhilarated by the first already. Not, of course, upon himself. He went to the laboratory, filled a syringe, and went down to the pigsty.

He entered it by the sliding door, at the back of the sleeping-compartment. The sow, sprawled in clean straw, after a heavy lunch of her beloved barley-meal, was snoring happily. He applied the syringe behind her ear, and gave her an ample dose. The ear flicked, as though a fly had vexed it, but the sow did not waken.

President Brisket was not lacking in self-control, and there were probably few men who were less under the domination of the physical. Yet he had developed certain habits of which he vaguely disapproved, and against which he fought a desultory battle, in which he was never decisively victorious.

Among these habits was one of muttering to himself, more or less audibly, when he imagined himself to be alone, and sometimes even when those were present before whom a firmer restraint was desirable.

It was unfortunate for himself, and of momentous consequence to the world, that he had been particularly injudicious on more than one occasion when he had been lost in thought, sitting at the table, or pacing the private yard, after he had finished one of his instructive interviews with the animal intelligence that he had stimulated, and after the sow had retired to her own quarters. With all his wisdom, he had not considered that the hearing of a sow is more acute than that of a man, and that the alertness of the senses of this particular animal rendered the closing of the partition a useless obstacle to the hearing of the words which he subsequently muttered, however indistinctly.

It followed that the animal had been able to supplement the information which he thought well to give her with a knowledge of the preparations he was using, and of his hopes and plans, which he would have found very disconcerting, had he been aware of this development, and still more so had he suspected the conclusions to which they had led her.

As we have remarked already, although she had become a pig of very exceptional intelligence, she was a pig still. She was not concerned with the stars, nor with the good of humanity, nor with the pursuit of science, nor even with the good of her own kind. She was concerned solely and entirely with her own physical welfare. Because she had learnt of the general destiny of pigs without resentment, it did not follow that she was willing to feel a knife in her own neck. Rather, she recognised that this was the one problem with which it was essential that she should deal successfully. It did not appear that it was of an immediate urgency, but it was of an overwhelming importance.

When the self-communings of the President had informed her of the nature of the cultures which he had produced, and of his intentions concerning them, she had seen at once that her ultimate hope must lie in the second of these preparations, which, administered at the right time, and to the right individual, could hardly fail to direct his mind to a universal benevolence, from which she would benefit, in common with all the other creatures around him.

But she was too clear-sighted to minimise the difficulties of such a programme. She was aware of her physical limitations, and she felt no assurance, even should she be able to obtain and secrete some of the drug or culture in question (she was not very clear as to its exact nature), that the final assault upon herself would give her an opportunity of using it successfully.

She was, as we know, a very sensible animal, and she could not imagine a murderous-minded butcher, who might be short either of time or temper, delaying operations at her request, so that she might give him an injection in the right arm.

Beyond that, the mutterings of President Brisket had left her in doubt as to how soon the injection would take effect, and it is obvious that time would be of vital importance under such conditions as she had imagined.

She had a very practical mind, and it would have been no consolation to her to know that a repentant butcher would wreathe her corpse with flowers.

Finally, she had decided that her best hope lay in causing the President to take a sufficient dose of the second preparation to cause him to become of an overwhelming amiability, in which case the beneficence of his disposition could hardly fail to favour one who had been brought into such close and intellectually intimate relations with him.

That, at least, seemed her best hope, and she had now been watching for some weeks for an opportunity of putting into operation the simple but audacious plan by which she hoped to insure her safety.

This plan was to penetrate into the President's laboratory, and so to mix or interchange the cultures as to insure that when, as she had learnt from his own lips that he intended, he should aim to inoculate himself with the first, he should actually take an injection of the second. But in this enterprise she could not afford to fail, and as she did not consider it urgent, she had delayed for choice of opportunity, until, as we have seen, President Brisket had already commenced the process of brain-stimulation which it was her object to complicate.

She went first into the outer sty, to observe the position of the sun, from which she was able to estimate the time - about three hours - which would elapse before her snout would sink suckingly into the ecstasy of the evening meal. Then she returned, somewhat uncertainly, to the inner sty. She had a vague impulse of beneficence, such as she had never known before, causing her to feel that her time was wasted unless she were doing good to someone.

Someone certainly included herself. When she remembered the project that had recently possessed her mind, it had acquired an even greater importance than it had had previously. She observed that the absentminded President had failed to close the sliding hatch from which he had entered to disturb her sleep so momentously.