The Complete Short Stories: Volume 1. Adam Thirlwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

       MANHOLE 69

      For the first few days all went well.

      ‘Keep away from windows and don’t think about it,’ Dr Neill told them. ‘As far as you’re concerned it was just another compulsion. At eleven thirty or twelve go down to the gym and throw a ball around, play some table-tennis. At two they’re running a film for you in the Neurology theatre. Read the papers for a couple of hours, put on some records. I’ll be down at six. By seven you’ll be in a manic swing.’

      ‘Any chance of a sudden blackout, Doctor?’ Avery asked.

      ‘Absolutely none,’ Neill said. ‘If you get tired, rest, of course. That’s the one thing you’ll probably have a little difficulty getting used to. Remember, you’re still using only 3,500 calories, so your kinetic level – and you’ll notice this most by day – will be about a third lower. You’ll have to take things easier, make allowances. Most of these have been programmed in for you, but start learning to play chess, focus that inner eye.’

      Gorrell leaned forward. ‘Doctor,’ he asked, ‘if we want to, can we look out of the windows?’

      Dr Neill smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The wires are cut. You couldn’t go to sleep now if you tried.’

      Neill waited until the three men had left the lecture room on their way back to the Recreation Wing and then stepped down from the dais and shut the door. He was a short, broad-shouldered man in his fifties, with a sharp, impatient mouth and small features. He swung a chair out of the front row and straddled it deftly.

      ‘Well?’ he asked.

      Morley was sitting on one of the desks against the back wall, playing aimlessly with a pencil. At thirty he was the youngest member of the team working under Neill at the Clinic, but for some reason Neill liked to talk to him.

      He saw Neill was waiting for an answer and shrugged.

      ‘Everything seems to be all right,’ he said. ‘Surgical convalescence is over. Cardiac rhythms and EEG are normal. I saw the X-rays this morning and everything has sealed beautifully.’

      Neill watched him quizzically. ‘You don’t sound as if you approve.’

      Morley laughed and stood up. ‘Of course I do.’ He walked down the aisle between the desks, white coat unbuttoned, hands sunk deep in his pockets. ‘No, so far you’ve vindicated yourself on every point. The party’s only just beginning, but the guests are in damn good shape. No doubt about it. I thought three weeks was a little early to bring them out of hypnosis, but you’ll probably be right there as well. Tonight is the first one they take on their own. Let’s see how they are tomorrow morning.’

      ‘What are you secretly expecting?’ Neill asked wryly. ‘Massive feedback from the medulla?’

      ‘No,’ Morley said. ‘There again the psychometric tests have shown absolutely nothing coming up at all. Not a single trauma.’ He stared at the blackboard and then looked round at Neill. ‘Yes, as a cautious estimate I’d say you’ve succeeded.’

      Neill leaned forward on his elbows. He flexed his jaw muscles. ‘I think I’ve more than succeeded. Blocking the medullary synapses has eliminated a lot of material I thought would still be there – the minor quirks and complexes, the petty aggressive phobias, the bad change in the psychic bank. Most of them have gone, or at least they don’t show in the tests. However, they’re the side targets, and thanks to you, John, and to everyone else in the team, we’ve hit a bull’s eye on the main one.’

      Morley murmured something, but Neill ran on in his clipped voice. ‘None of you realize it yet, but this is as big an advance as the step the first ichthyoid took out of the protozoic sea 300 million years ago. At last we’ve freed the mind, raised it out of that archaic sump called sleep, its nightly retreat into the medulla. With virtually one cut of the scalpel we’ve added twenty years to those men’s lives.’

      ‘I only hope they know what to do with them,’ Morley commented.

      ‘Come, John,’ Neill snapped back. ‘That’s not an argument. What they do with the time is their responsibility anyway. They’ll make the most of it, just as we’ve always made the most, eventually, of any opportunity given us. It’s too early to think about it yet, but visualize the universal application of our technique. For the first time Man will be living a full twenty-four hour day, not spending a third of it as an invalid, snoring his way through an eight-hour peepshow of infantile erotica.’

      Tired, Neill broke off and rubbed his eyes. ‘What’s worrying you?’

      Morley made a small, helpless gesture with one hand. ‘I’m not sure, it’s just that I …’ He played with the plastic brain mounted on a stand next to the blackboard. Reflected in one of the frontal whorls was a distorted image of Neill, with a twisted chinless face and vast domed cranium. Sitting alone among the desks in the empty lecture room he looked like an insane genius patiently waiting to take an examination no one could set him.

      Morley turned the model with his finger, watched the image blur and dissolve. Whatever his doubts, Neill was probably the last person to understand them.

      ‘I know all you’ve done is close off a few of the loops in the hypothalamus, and I realize the results are going to be spectacular. You’ll probably precipitate the greatest social and economic revolution since the Fall. But for some reason I can’t get that story of Chekov’s out of my mind – the one about the man who accepts a million-rouble bet that he can’t shut himself up alone for ten years. He tries to, nothing goes wrong, but one minute before the time is up he deliberately steps out of his room. Of course, he’s insane.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it all week.’

      Neill let out a light snort. ‘I suppose you’re trying to say that sleep is some sort of communal activity and that these three men are now isolated, exiled from the group unconscious, the dark oceanic dream. Is that it?’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘Nonsense, John. The further we hold back the unconscious the better. We’re reclaiming some of the marshland. Physiologically sleep is nothing more than an inconvenient symptom of cerebral anoxaemia. It’s not that you’re afraid of missing, it’s the dream. You want to hold on to your front-row seat at the peepshow.’

      ‘No,’ Morley said mildly. Sometimes Neill’s aggressiveness surprised him; it was almost as if he regarded sleep itself as secretly discreditable, a concealed vice. ‘What I really mean is that for better or worse Lang, Gorrell and Avery are now stuck with themselves. They’re never going to be able to get away, not even for a couple of minutes, let alone eight hours. How much of yourself can you stand? Maybe you need eight hours off a day just to get over the shock of being yourself. Remember, you and I aren’t always going to be around, feeding them with tests and films. What will happen if they get fed up with themselves?’

      ‘They won’t,’ Neill said. He stood up, suddenly bored by Morley’s questions. ‘The total tempo of their lives will be lower than ours, these stresses and tensions СКАЧАТЬ