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THE MIND GAME

Chapter Sixteen

White clouds and blue sky, and sometimes, far below like a huge and beautifully made full-color map but without all the lettering and lines, visions of sere dun-colored desert, shoulders of furry green mountains, checkerboards of brown and green, moving past ever so slowly like time itself, like thick clear molasses.

Sometimes the colors would melt into warmy curvy shapes that floated and engulfed each other like amoebas. Sometimes the amoebas would devour each other, leaving only warm blue or velvety soft blackness. Sometimes he would see the dark figures seated around a table doing something with cards and stacks of money. Once in a while a face would peer into his and then become an amoeboid shape or a fluffy white cloud or just infinite blueness.

It lasted forever, or it lasted no time at all. How could he tell? Why would he want to bother? It was so pleasant just to float along through the softly moving shapes, riding the gentle swell of the infinite river of time, totally peaceful, totally calm, no ticking of watches or rasping of sharp-edged thoughts to spoil the perfect peace of being a soft white cloud, of being nothing at all.

But then something happened to spoil it. He could feel a painful pressure where someone might have had ears, and the water balloon inside him seemed to rise unpleasantly upward.

Looking out his very own window, Weller saw the ground rushing up at him; low, wooded, rolling hills, incredibly lush and green. Then the world outside tilted and spiraled, and he saw tiny toy houses, open green fields, and a long gray line scribed on the ground, whirling up at him like a pinwheel.

The world straightened out and whooshed up at him. The model-railroad trees became real woods blossoming up just below the window, and the gray line on the ground became a concrete runway rolling arrow straight beneath the plane.

There was a hurricane sound which made him momentarily shut his eyes in confused terror and then a huge bump and more hurricane.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the plane was rolling to a stop in front of a low white building with a forest-green roof. Behind the building were the waving dark-green crowns of tightly packed trees. The forest extended around both edges of the building completely enclosing a large open area of thick green grass. They had landed in a huge grassy clearing in an endless wood. Wasn't that nice? The trees were full of deeply green foliage tossing gently in the wind, and the grass was like a picture postcard of an English park. It was so much greener and richer than the vegetation of Southern California that it didn't seem quite real. It was like a movie set of some African jungle, like a fairyland.

"End of the line, Weller," a voice said. Then hands were unbuckling his seat belt and guiding him down an aisle, through a door, and out into open air, incredibly fragrant with the green smells of growing things and the rich brown odor of loamy forest floor.

They guided him down a ramp, his legs very rubbery, his head reeling with the fragrant forest smells on the sudden free breezes, the expansion of the visual universe from the cramped reality of the jet to a disorienting infinity of green.

At the bottom of the ramp a bald older man dressed in white shirt and pants as if ready for a tennis match was waiting in a green golf cart. The Monitors sat Weller down beside him. The bald man smiled at him. "Welcome to the Transformational Research Institute," he said.

Weller smiled back at him but his mouth refused to form any words. The bald man scowled at the Monitors. "Fried to the eyeballs?" he said.

"Standard security procedure," said the gray-haired Monitor. "He's all yours now."

The bald man shook his head. "That will be all," he said to the Monitors, in what Weller thought was not a very friendly tone of voice. Then with a sudden lurch and a soft gentle hum, the golf cart drove off across the bright-green field toward the line of woods.

''I'm Dr. Irving Carson," the bald man said with exaggerated slowness. "I suppose it's up to me to apologize for the state you're in. Rest assured, we don't go in for such crudities here at the Institute."

Weller smiled at Dr. Carson. He wondered what Dr. Carson was apologizing for. But it all seemed much too complicated to bother with. It seemed much nicer just to enjoy the ride and smell the trees than to try to figure out what all that meant.

They drove into the woods and along a complex network of concrete paths, past a series of rough wooden bungalows, a low windowless white building, and a big four-story brick structure which looked like a small, posh hotel. Through the trees, Weller glimpsed more bungalows, a swimming pool, what might have been a barn, and another low white building. The Institute seemed like a very nice place, a very private country resort for very rich people. They've sent me on a vacation to the country, Weller thought. Isn't that considerate?

The golf cart pulled up beside the entrance to a small one-story building built of rough-cut gray stone. Dr. Carson checked his watch. "Dr. Bernstein has squeezed in au hour for you in thirty minutes," he said. "But we'd better clear the cobwebs out of your mind first."

Very gently Dr. Carson led Weller out of the golf cart, took his arm, and guided him inside the stone building. The halls were painted a soothing deep yellow with rich natural-wood moldings. There were women in crisp white nurses' uniforms bustling about and men in doctor's smocks. It seemed to be some kind of small hospital, though it didn't have that awful hospital odor or that sterile hospital decor. Weller was sure be was going to like the Institute if even the hospital was so nice and cozy.

Dr. Carson led him into a small examining room filled with medical cabinets, instruments, and strange lamps. But it was painted a bright royal blue and had pretty pictures on the walls, so Weller was not at all uneasy as Dr. Carson sat him down on the edge of the examining table. This was such a nice place that he was sure the people would be very understanding and friendly and that no one would hurt him.

Dr. Carson took a hypodermic out of an autoclave, went to one of the cabinets, and came back with a vial and a cotton swab. He stuck the needle through the rubber top of the vial and filled it with clear fluid. He swabbed the pit of Weller's right arm. "This won't hurt at all," he said, and stuck the needle into a vein.

As Dr. Carson slowly depressed the plunger of the hypodermic, a hard cold sensation moved up Weller's arm, across his shoulder, and into his head. Something like cotton candy began to melt away in his mind, slowly replacing itself with a dull, throbbing ache. His consciousness seemed to sink back into his body, and he became aware that all his muscles were aching and trembling. A terrible feeling of weariness came over him.

By the time Carson had withdrawn the hypodermic, Weller was shaking with fatigue, his eyeballs burned, his brain seemed to be trying to beat its way out of his skull, his mouth tasted like a toilet bowl, and a black rage was boiling through him. I've been drugged! he thought.  I've been fried out or my mind for hours! How long has it been? Where the hell is this place ... ? New York! Jesus, I've been stoned out of my mind clear across the country! Son of a bitch!

"How do you feel now?" Carson asked.

"How do I feel?" Weller snarled, "You bastards pump me full of downers and you ask me how I feel? I feel like I've swallowed a quart of Lysol, you son of a bitch!  My head is killing me!" A sudden wave of nausea passed through him and his head swam with vertigo, "Jesus ...," he groaned.

Carson smiled fatuously. "Well, at least you're obviously no longer sedated," he said, "Please understand that we at the Institute don't approve of these crude Monitor tactics."

"Fuck you," Weller moaned. I think I'm going to puke, he decided. I wish I could cut my fucking head off.

Nothing fazed Dr. Carson. "You're going to be surprised at all the advances we've made here," he said, going to one of the cabinets, taking out a bottle of green liquid, and pouring two inches of it into a water glass.

"You might as well begin your education with this," he said, handing the glass to Weller. "Go ahead, drink it. You'll feel much better."

Weller eyed the poisonous-looking stuff suspiciously. "What is it?" he said. "Rat poison?"

"Something for your head," Carson replied. "A massive dose of megavitamins. Plus a mixture of amino acids, MAO inhibitors, alkaloids, L-dopa, and central-nervous-system stimulators. Replaces depleted enzymes. Tones up the synapses. Raises the biochemistry of the brain to optimum function. We call it eptifier. Go ahead, drink it. Satisfaction guaranteed."

Weller sighed. Even a dose of cyanide would improve how he felt at this point. Resignedly he gulped down the green liquid. It tasted like cod-liver oil mixed with hair tonic.

"I don't feel any different," he said belligerently.

"You will," Carson said. "It takes a few minutes to metabolize." He checked his watch. "We've got to meet Dr. Bernstein now," he said. You'll be a new man before we reach his office."

***

By the time they had reached the golf cart, Weller was beginning to feel almost human; at least he could walk without vertigo, was no longer in imminent danger of barfing, and his pounding headache had receded to a vague broken-glass feeling in his brain.

Carson drove off in the general direction of the big brick main buildings, past bungalows, two low white buildings, the swimming pool, tennis courts.

"This place used to be a private resort for the idle rich," he said. "Institute Central was the main hotel. Most of the buildings you see were here when we bought the place. All we've had to build are a few lab buildings and the computer complex. There was even an airstrip, though the runway had to be lengthened and resurfaced to take John's Learjet. Still, it was an ideal purchase. As far as the outside world knows, it's still a private resort, and even most of the security set up was already in place."

Carson smiled at Weller confidentially. "I believe the original owners were Mafia connected," he said. ''Who else would've had the estate already enclosed by electrified barbed-wire fencing and had guard-dog kennels already set up? As I understand it, even our Dobermans and Shepherds were bred from stock they threw into the deal."

Perhaps it was the fresh air, or perhaps the Institute really had developed a magic hangover cure, for Weller found that his mind was becoming crystal clear. It was obvious to him that Carson's chatty little talk was coldly calculated to casually inform him that this place was under very tight security, that he could forget about just walking out whenever he pleased.

Realizing that, and realizing how alertly he had perceived it, he also realized that his headache was now gone, along with. his vertigo, his nausea, his muscular tremors, and even his fatigue. Even the cruddy taste in his mouth was fading away. He could feel and enjoy the intermittent warm sunlight dappling his skin through the trees and smell the heady wet perfume of an eastern forest, so unlike the dry chaparral of Southern California. Birds chirped music in the treetops, and his eyes caught them flitting from branch to branch. Goddamn it, he was beginning to feel not merely recovered. but physically great and mentally alive.

"You ought to package that stuff as Instant Hangover Cure," he told Carson. "You could make millions."

"Oh, it's much more than that," Carson said. "For now we don't want to call public attention to the Institute. But Dr. Bernstein will brief you. Arthur's not only the director, he set the place up. It's as much his baby as John's."

They had reached the main building: a rambling four-story brick structure with a big glassed-in portico, and a main entrance facade done up with pseudo-Georgian white columns. Carson drove around to the side of the building where another golf cart was parked beside a round redwood table. Sitting at the table was a slightly built man in his sixties in tan chinos and matching bush shirt, with thin birdlike features and long, unruly white hair, looking for all the world like a mad scientist from central casting.

The old man got up as they pulled up beside him and got out of the golf cart. "Ah, Mr. Weller," he said, extending a bony hand. "I'm Arthur Bernstein. I trust you've recovered from your trip well enough to take the ten-penny tour. John wants to get you oriented as quickly as possible for some mysterious reason, and this is my only free time for two days."

Weller shook Bernstein's hand perfunctorily, studying the old man's face. Though Bernstein spoke in a high, rapid voice and seemed to tremble with nervous energy or perhaps merely the frailness of age, there was something calm and oceanic about his cool green eyes, as if some vaster and entirely different being inhabited this ancient fleshly envelope.

"No thanks to the Monitors," Weller said. "But I've got to admit that the stuff Dr. Carson gave me is something else again."

Bernstein cocked an eyebrow at Carson.

"Formula three," Carson said.

Bernstein nodded. "Good enough for a start," he said. "Monitor security measures aren't exactly designed to insure mental clarity," he told Weller. "But then, that's their business and enhancing consciousness is ours, hmmm? It all balances out. Well, we'd better get started. As usual, my schedule is terribly tight."

With a dismissive nod to Carson he led Weller to the other golf cart and drove around to the main drive at the front of the building. "John tells me you're highly motivated, Mr. Weller," he said. "Excellent. You won't be disappointed. We're at the cutting edge of human knowledge here. The Institute is the essence of Transformationalism -- our goal is nothing less than the total understanding of human consciousness on a rigorous scientific level, and no expense has been spared to give us the means of achieving it. You're a lucky man to be here, Mr. Weller."

It had all come out rapid-fire and flawlessly like an often-repeated guidebook spiel, but Weller sensed that Bernstein was sincere, that he could not even entertain the notion that anyone else did not share his dedication to his work. The movies' traditional mad scientist -- except there was no disheveled aura of crankiness about him.

Bernstein abruptly stopped the golf cart in front of a low windowless white building. "This is our computer complex," he said. The logical place to begin."

He led Weller into the building through a double-doored, airtight vestibule, down a gleaming white hallway, and into a huge room. Reels of tape spun on memory units. Card-punch machines and automatic typewriters clattered. Numbers, curves, and shapes flickered on dozens of assorted cathode-ray tubes. A dozen white-smocked technicians scampered around busily like the machine tenders of Metropolis. The exciting electric odor of ozone hummed in the air. Whatever this place actually did, Weller had to admit, it certainly would make the ideal set for a movie about itself.

"The sum total of the most advanced human knowledge about the mind and its workings is stored and correlated here," Bernstein said, with the ardor of a doting grandfather. "The memory banks are updated daily, so we can call up a real-time picture of where we stand at any moment. It all comes through here."

Bernstein sat down in front of a typewriter with a screen display. "I'll show you," he said. He typed a few lines. "Brainwave change correlations with eptifier formula twelve," he said, as columns of figures appeared on the screen. "The molecular structure of RNA." A helical chemical diagram replaced the numbers. "Yesterday's creativity curve of Frederick Conners." A spiky curve replaced the chemical diagram.

"And so forth," Bernstein said, looking back and up at Weller.

''I'm afraid all this is Greek to me," Weller said.

"Oh?" Bernstein said, surprised for some reason. "I thought you were going to be filming some of our activities for the archives," he said. "I had assumed John sent for a man with the technical background."

Is that what I'm supposed to be here for? Weller wondered. Or is Steinhardt not above even telling this character some cover story? Something told him he should keep his mouth as shut as possible.

"My technical background is in film making," he said. "I guess John felt it would be easier to brief a professional film maker on the technicalities than to make a director out of some scientist."

Bernstein looked at him most peculiarly. "I see," he said. Suddenly, for no discernible reason, he was nervous.

He stood up and seemed to distance himself inside a professorial persona. ''I'll try to keep it in layman's terms then," he said, waving his arms for emphasis, almost as if he were on a lectern. "Here at the Institute we are experimenting in many areas. We're trying to obtain as total a description of human consciousness as possible. The structure of the brain. The biochemistry of the mind. The electronic nature of thought and mental states themselves. We are quite close to our first-stage goal, a rigorous scientific model of total human consciousness, a biophysics of the mind."

He leaned against the typewriter console, more for emphasis than for support. "In this computer everything we have learned is stored and constantly updated as we learn more. This computer also does the necessary calculations for all of our various projects. He thumped the console affectionately.

"But this computer contains much more than even that," he said, a far away look coming into his oceanic green eyes. "It contains a complete systems model of what we now know of human consciousness. A subprogram simulates the bio-chemistry of the brain, another simulates brainwave patterns, yet others simulate sight, vision, smell, all the human sensory input. And so forth. Everything that interacts to form human consciousness can be made to interact electronically here in patterns and combinations of our choosing. Are you following me so far, Mr. Weller?"

"I'm not sure," Weller said. "Sounds to me like you're playing with one of those intelligent computers that get temperamental and take over the world. I may not be a scientist, but I've sure seen the movie."

"Artificial intelligence?" Bernstein snorted. "Pointless rubbish! We're not trying to imitate the human mind with some clumsy simulacrum. We're using a computer simulation of how the human mind works so that we can learn how to make it work better. We test our experimental results against our computer model of consciousness to see whether our inputs make its outputs simulate the known human patterns. If they do, we know we have learned something, and if they don't, we mow we have to update our model."

He smiled a fatuous, reassuring smile at Weller. "Rest assured, Mr. Weller," he said. "We're not replicating Dr. Frankenstein's monster in electronic software. We're simply using the latest computer technology to maximize the efficiency of our research and development programs. If those fools at the Pentagon did the same, they'd save the taxpayers ten times over the cost of financing this work."

From the vehemence of the sudden shift Weller got the feeling that Bernstein had had some frustrating experience with  the military-industrial complex at some point in his past.

"I gather you've worked for the Pentagon then?" Weller asked.

Bernstein did a short take and hurriedly ignored the question. "And now I think you'd like to see some of what we are actually doing in concrete terms, wouldn't you, Mr. Weller?" he said. "There's really nothing here to actually see, is there, after all? Nothing that would make for dramatic film. And that's what you're here to do -- isn't it, Mr. Weller?"

"Yeah," Weller said, unable to fathom why Bernstein had become almost fearful of him. Could it be more Monitor paranoia, even at this level? Even the director of the Institute has to watch over his shoulder for secret Monitor agents?

"Shall we continue the ten-penny tour?" Weller said, amusing himself with a slightly authoritative tone that did indeed seem to keep Bernstein guessing. '"I'm sure your time is valuable."

***

Bernstein whisked Weller around to about a dozen assorted laboratories within the next hour, exactly like a plant manager showing what he imagined were choice locations to the commercial director sent down to him from the home office to film his premises. Long on scenes where people were doing outre things with exotic equipment, but short on specific information as to what was really going on.

There were three or four chemical laboratories full of glass tubing, electronic instruments, and foul smells. According to Bernstein they were experimenting with brain biochemistry.

What did that mean?

They were experimenting with chemical enhancement of consciousness.

"Why, Dr. Bernstein," Weller chided, as they stood in one of the bubbling alchemist laboratories surrounded by tables of incredibly complex glassworks, "you mean you're inventing new kinds of psychedelic drugs?"

Bernstein almost physically flinched. "Psychedelic drugs are to what we are doing here as a witch doctor is to a brain surgeon," he said indignantly. "You're not alone, Mr. Weller. Most people have difficulty distinguishing science from witchcraft in this area. As witness the impossibility of getting research grants from the government or from industry. Only John Steinhardt has had the vision to support this work. Everyone else has assumed that I'd be concocting mind poisons for rebellious youth."

"You've got to admit that seems like a fine distinction to a layman like me," Weller said, "Are you saying you're not inventing new ways to get stoned?"

"Get stoned?" Bernstein snapped. "What an archaic, useless conception. Is that what you felt today when you drank the eptifier, Mr. Weller? Stoned? High? Disoriented? Hallucinative? I think not!"

"Was that stuff developed here?" Weller said, suitably impressed.

"Of course it was," Bernstein said. "We're not interested in strange new alkaloids that produce random disorientation. All human consciousness exists in a biochemical matrix. Therefore there must be chemical differences in the brains of ordinary men, morons, and geniuses, for example. Our goal here is nothing less than to develop the chemical means of giving every human being on the Earth the brain metabolism of a charismatic, creative, visionary genius."

"Like John?" Weller said half humorously. How Faustian could you get?

"Like John," Bernstein answered, in utter dead earnest. "Beyond John. There is no reason why we cannot go beyond the raising of the mass consciousness to the level of the best of us. Someday we will know enough to go beyond eptifying what we evolved with and create the biochemical base for a whole new level of human consciousness that has never existed before. True Transformational Man."

"Are you really serious?" Weller asked.

"Of course, I'm serious," Bernstein said. "Don't you find that your mind is working as well now as it ever has? Isn't that proof that we have at least begun the process?"

Considering that he had had the mind of a carrot not too long ago, Weller had to admit that his head seemed to be rolling along in high gear. He had been able to grasp most of what Bernstein was talking about once the technical jargon had been left behind. He had picked up the man's Monitor paranoia and even played with it. He had sussed out that Bernstein had worked for the Pentagon, had been unable to get research grants for this kind of work from the usual sources, and thus was grateful to Steinhardt for backing him. But not grateful enough, apparently, to trust him entirely. Not bad, Weller, not bad.

"I guess you have a point, Doctor," he said.

From there, Bernstein had grown a little less hostile, a little less contemptuous, though his nervousness remained. At least he stopped assuming that Weller was skeptical of everything he saw. And for his part, Weller was beginning to question his own skepticism too.

There were dissecting laboratories filled with bottled brains and sensory-deprivation tanks and huge human-sized mazes with moving walls and strange optical effects controlled from a central console, and so many other things that he had seen so fast that it all became a blur. It was clear that Transformationalism had spent tens of millions of dollars setting up this place. It was not clear at all how they could possibly expect to return a profit on the investment, which certainly could not be said of any other of John B. Steinhardt's manifold enterprises.

Bernstein himself might be a little weird, a little defensively self-righteous, a little afraid of phantom Monitors, maybe even a little nuts in spots, but he did seem to be sincere about what he was doing. If anything, a little too sincere. And the wonders he was predicting seemed more and more possible as Weller got a fuller and fuller picture of how many people were working here, how many projects they were running, and how much this must be setting Steinhardt back. One thing Transformationalism didn't seem to be into was expenditure without results.

Was this what really lay at the heart of Transformationalism? A dedicated effort to advance the level of human consciousness with Steinhardt's own psychic Manhattan Project? Was it possible? But how could something really worthwhile come out of the cynical scams, the broken lives, the power trips, the mind-control numbers, the fascist secret-police methods of the Monitors? How could you make gold out of shit? How could you advance human consciousness by screwing up human minds?

The tour was almost over, and they were about to enter the building where the biofeedback labs that had developed the brainwave monitor were located. Bernstein and Weller were getting along at least to the point where Bernstein had started to notice Weller's mood.

He paused, touched Weller on the arm, studied his face for a moment, and said, "You seem a bit confused, Mr. Weller. Are you having trouble understanding what you're seeing?"

"In a way."

"Well, is there anything you'd like me to clarify for you before we wind things up? This will be our last stop, and I can only give you about another seven minutes of my time."

Weller laughed. "There's plenty I'd like you to clarify for me," he snapped, "but I doubt if you can."

"Try me," Bernstein said, giving him a grandfatherly look with those big eyes.

Well, here I am at the Institute, Weller thought. If I'm not going to be me now, I don't know when else I will. Try me, the man says ...?

"All right, Dr. Bernstein, I'll try you. Don't you ever think about justifying what you're doing to yourself? While you're playing with your fancy scientific toys, don't you ever think about what pays for them?"

Bernstein slammed the inquiry shut like an angry clam. "I would think that the justification for our work would be self-evident to anyone with a modicum of intelligence."

''I'm not talking about what you're trying to accomplish, Dr. Bernstein," Weller said. "For the sake of argument, let's say I'm sold on that." He paused, pondered for a moment. Bernstein was obviously sincerely dedicated to what he was doing, perhaps too dedicated, judging from his little dig at the Pentagon. But he also had expressed distaste for Monitor methods and seemed to have a certain fear of them. If nothing else, it would be interesting, perhaps ultimately useful, to find out where he really stood.

''I'm talking about Transformationalism," Weller said.

"Transformationalism?" Bernstein's expression became distant again, guarded.

Leave us not be too obvious, Weller thought. "Look, you apparently worked for the Pentagon," he said, "and I doubt somehow that you were truly dedicated to the military aspect of the work. You probably didn't give much thought to that; all you were interested in was the funding. Now you're being funded by Transformationalism. How about leveling with me? Do you give a damn about the people whose money is supporting your work now?"

Now Bernstein was obviously furious at something, but he kept his rage under tight control. "I get the feeling you're a Monitor, Mr. Weller," he said, biting off his words.

"Oh, come on, Doctor. Would John send someone to spy on you?"

Bernstein just snorted.

"So you yourself feel that your dedication to Transformationalism might be questioned?" Weller said devilishly.

"All right, whoever you are," Bernstein said, "if this is going to get back to John, then let it. John knows that he and I have a working relationship, a quid pro quo, that I am not a worshiper of his and never will be. That was made clear and agreed to at the outset. We both know that, don't we, so shall we stop playing games? I'm doing exactly what I said I would. John has no reason to question my loyalty, and I resent being grilled like this."

"You just told me you've never been a worshiper of John, and in the next breath you tell me he has no reason to question your loyalty?" Weller said.

"Don't play your little Monitor games with me?" Bernstein said shrilly. "I know more about the mind than your kind will ever dream of knowing."

"But Dr. Bernstein. I never said I was a Monitor," Weller said. ''I'm not a Monitor. I'm making a film. I'm just trying to get some depth in my material. Honest. Really."

"Just as you say," Bernstein said coldly. "Shall we conclude our innocent little tour then?"

So saying, Bernstein turned and trotted into the biofeedback building, forcing Weller to tag along at his heels and terminate the conversation. I'm not sure why I'm doing this, Weller mused, but it's beginning to get a little interesting.

Bernstein whisked him in and out of a series of electronic workshops and laboratories, where brainwave monitors were being assembled from crated parts, where lab technicians were working on scratch-built experimental models, where other electronic esoterica were being fiddled with.

"Our earlier work with biofeedback led to the brainwave monitor," Bernstein told him. "Or rather we went to biofeedback principles to invent what John was looking for."

"The brainwave monitor was John's idea, not yours, then?" Weller asked, as Bernstein led him down a long blue hallway.

"I've never claimed otherwise," Bernstein said defensively, but also with a strange tinge of contempt. "John wanted an impressive-looking device that would scientifically measure mental states. He told me forthrightly that the processee's belief in the credibility of the brainwave monitor was what counted. As he put it, 'It would also be nice if it kind of worked. But whether it does or not, I need it in three months.'"

Bernstein shook his head, and now he seemed to be talking half to himself. "Those were the parameters. It then became a simple matter of turning biofeedback machines into a kind of lie detector. After all, a lie detector is a crude attempt to measure mental states indirectly. It measures skin resistance, and breathing rate and so forth, which measures physical stress, and if you assume that physical stress correlates with mental stress, you at least have a machine that tells you when a question is making someone nervous."

"That seems pretty crude to me," Weller said. "And it's not admissible evidence in court in many places."

Bernstein didn't look at Weller, but his voice sharpened, as if he were talking to a bright student who had just made an intelligent point. "Of course. It doesn't at all get at what's going on in the brain. The electroencephalograph does that, gives you a picture of the brainwaves, and biofeedback work proves that brainwave patterns have some correlation with mental states because it shows that people can learn to change their brainwave patterns on a screen by meditating, or deliberately thinking hostile thoughts, for example."

Bernstein paused outside a heavy steel door. He looked up at Weller, and for the moment at least seemed to forget that he thought Weller was a Monitor. "So you see, it was really a rather simple matter to turn a standard multichannel biofeedback machine into the brainwave monitor. About all I had to do was turn the screen around so that the processor was watching it rather than the subject whose brain was wired into it. In fact, as you've seen, we put the things together out of standard biofeedback components, for the most part. John's idea was the main thing, what I did was rather an obvious solution to the technical problem."

"But does the thing really work?"

Bernstein shrugged. "At least it does something," he said, so in theory such a device should be possible."

"In theory? You mean the brainwave monitor is a phony?"

Strangely Bernstein didn't slip back into his Monitor paranoia. Somehow Weller had gotten him onto his professional program. "The brainwave monitor does give us data on what's going on inside the brain," he said. "Interpreting it coherently is the problem. We don't yet know enough to judge whether the thing does what we say it does or not."

"You mean not even you know whether it's real or a phony?"

"Precisely, my dear Mr. Weller," Bernstein said, putting his hand on the knob of the heavy steel door. "That's why we're running many of our projects here on determining relationships between brainwaves and mental states. On John's direct orders. We don't know what we have ourselves."

Something ironic came into his attitude. "Now in here," he said, "we have something else that's eating up a lot of time and money at John's direct order." Was Bernstein trying to say something to Steinhardt through what he supposed was a Monitor overseer? That he himself thought that Steinhardt was wasting his time on crackpot schemes? That Steinhardt should realize that it was after all his own money he was wasting. along with the time of busy scientists?

Bernstein led him into a small, stark cubicle like a projectionist's booth. One whole wall of the room was a heavy window overlooking a larger room where, of all, things, some kind of unreal concert was going on. A piano player, a saxophonist, a drummer, and a guitarist were jamming silently behind the soundproof glass. Each of them wore a brainwave monitor headband, trailing a long wire which was plugged into a bank of electronic consoles lined up behind them like monster amps. The consoles had four oscilloscopes wired into them. Four white-smocked technicians were studying them intently, fiddling with controls. A fifth technician was supervising the group -- not the musicians but the control technicians.

"What on God's green Earth is that?" Weller exclaimed.

"That," Bernstein said, "is our latest project. "An attempt to reverse the brainwave monitor. If specific brainwave patterns correlate with specific mental states, why can't you induce specific mental states by transmitting their electronic patterns into the brain? So here we have a group of jazz musicians improvising. Each one is receiving controlled electronic input into his brain, and the patterns of various mental state models are tried. Can we make the saxophone player more creative? Can we give the piano a depressive chord structure? Can we make the drummer pound out an angry beat?"

"Push-button brainwashing," Weller whispered. "A goddamn mind-fucking machine!"

"I suppose it might be," Bernstein said dryly. "If it worked."

"It doesn't work? Then why are you doing it?"

''This project is being pushed forward on John's direct orders," Bernstein said, making the last two words a disclaimer of any responsibility of his own. "He thought of the idea, and he believes in it. This isn't all of it either; we're doing the same thing with other areas of creative work, among other things. It's quite an extensive series of projects."

"Which you, I gather, think are a wasted effort."

Bernstein snapped back into his official shell, as if he were addressing Steinhardt through a supposed Monitor but was determined to get his displeasure through without crossing some invisible line. "The idea has merit and possibilities, but it's about twenty years premature. We don't even know to what extent the brainwave monitor works, and here we are trying to program thought processes through electronic wave patterns. It's like trying to do chemistry before you've figured out the nature of the atom.

"But then, John was a science-fiction writer, not a scientist. He could brilliantly visualize an inevitable scientific development long before the state of knowledge necessary to bring it about. Ten or twenty years from now this kind of thing will be possible here at the Institute, and then this work will have to all be done over again anyway. Right now...."

He shrugged. "John is as entitled to his obsessions as I am to mine," he said. "After all, he's paying for both."

With that he opened the door and ushered Weller back into the hallway. "And that concludes the time I have to spare, Mr. Weller," he said. ''I'll drive you to Institute Central, where, I understand, there is a temporary room waiting for you. I hope I've been informative."

"Oh, you have, Dr. Bernstein, you have," Weller said. Bernstein gave him another nervous look, and they walked back to the golf cart in uneasy silence.

"There's just one thing," Weller said, as he climbed into the cart beside Bernstein. "A while back you told me John had no reason to question your loyalty. Yet apparently you think his pet project here is wasting your time. I mean, what kind of loyalty is that?"

Bernstein stared at Weller. His eyes flashed through anger and then seemed to glide upward onto some plane of oceanic calm, beyond Monitor paranoia. "The only kind of loyalty that's worth anything," he said. "Honest loyalty."

"Mr. Weller," he said, starting the golf cart, "awhile back you also asked me about my moral position on where my funding came from. Well, now I'll tell you. Before I met John Steinhardt, I had a vision of transforming human consciousness, and no hope of bringing it about. "

They drove past the computer complex and out onto a main pathway, past labs and bungalows and guard-dog kennels and who knew what else. "I dreamed of a facility like this and the freedom to use it," Bernstein said. "But, what I was actually doing was pitiful and frustrating. I spent years working in inadequate laboratories niggardly financed by poverty-stricken universities. I spent years working for military psychological warfare units. For a time I was even reduced to doing motivational research for an advertising agency."

He waved an arm as if to embrace the entire Institute. "And then John came along," he said. "A man who also had a vision of the further evolution of human consciousness, maybe not the same vision, but at least a vision. But John wasn't like me. Somehow he knew how to apply his vision to the real world. He knew how to make money. He already had vast financial resources. And he was willing to use them."

Around a gentle bend in the path the brick main building became visible behind a low copse of trees. "Mr. Weller, have you ever heard of a government or a corporation spending millions of dollars to advance scientific development purely out of a desire to advance the course of knowledge and better the human condition? I haven't. Only John B. Steinhardt is doing that without any foreseeable hope of turning a profit."

They reached the front of Institute Central. Bernstein stopped the golf cart and turned to Weller. "And you can doubt my real loyalty to John?" he said contemptuously. "I don't have to agree with all his methods to be loyal to him. I don't have to believe that he always knows what he's talking about, and I don't even have to understand his motives. Because I don't care if he's doing it to feed his ego or leave a monument to posterity or achieve scientific respectability by validating his own pet crackpot theories or make himself more powerful or all of them. My loyalty to John is based entirely on the fact that we share a common goal which both of us believe is of transcendent importance."

He looked Weller full in the face but seemed to speak through him to someone else, to Steinhardt. "As far as I'm concerned, that makes any other differences irrelevant. And I trust John still feels the same way."

"Oh, I'm sure he does," Weller said, climbing down from the golf cart. "I don't think you have anything to worry about."

"I'm glad to hear that," Bernstein said. He turned on the golf cart's electric engine. "I hope I've helped you with your film," he said. "I will see you again when you're ready to shoot this film, won't I, Mr. Weller? You will be shooting a film, won't you?"

"You'll have to ask John that," Weller said. "He's the boss."

"I understand the message," Bernstein said peculiarly, and he drove off leaving Weller to wonder what message he had just transmitted from the ectoplasmic Steinhardt.

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