Brain Wave (6 page)

“The janitor and the elevator man at the Institute quit yesterday,” said Helga. “Said the work was too monotonous. What happens when all the janitors and garbage men and ditchdiggers and assembly-line workers decide to quit?”

“They won’t all do it,” said Mandelbaum. He knocked out his pipe and went over to get some coffee. “Some will
be afraid, some will have the sense to see we’ve got to keep going, some—well, there’s no simple answer to this. I agree we’re in for a rough period of transition at the very least—people throwing up their jobs, people getting scared, people going crazy in one way or another. What we need is a local interim organization to see us through the next few months. I think the labor unions could be a nucleus—I’m working on that, and when I’ve got the boys talked and bullied into line, I’m going to approach City Hall with an offer to help.”

After a silence, Helga glanced over at Lewis. “You still haven’t any idea as to the cause of it all?”

“Oh, yes,” said the biologist. “Any number of ideas, and no way of choosing between them. We’ll just have to study and think some more, that’s all.”

“It’s a physical phenomenon embracing at least the whole Solar System,” declared Corinth. “The observatories have established that much through spectroscopic studies. It may be that the sun, in its orbit around the center of the galaxy, has entered some kind of force-field. But on theoretical grounds—dammit, I won’t scrap general relativity till I have to!—on theoretical grounds, I’m inclined to think it’s more likely a matter of our having
left
a force-field which slows down light and otherwise affects electromagnetic and electrochemical processes.”

“In other words,” said Mandelbaum slowly, “we’re actually entering a normal state of affairs? All our past has been spent under abnormal conditions?”

“Maybe. Only, of course, those conditions are normal for us. We’ve evolved under them. We may be like deep-sea fish, which explode when they’re brought up to ordinary pressures.”

“Heh! Pleasant thought!”

“I don’t think I’m afraid to die,” said Sheila in a small voice, “but being changed like this—”

“Keep a tight rein on yourself,” said Lewis sharply. “I suspect this unbalance is going to drive a lot of people actually insane. Don’t be one of them.”

He knocked the ash off his cigar. “We have found out some things at the lab,” he went on in a dispassionate tone. “As Pete says, it’s a physical thing, either a force-field or
the lack of one, affecting electronic interactions. The effect is actually rather small, quantitatively. Ordinary chemical reactions go on pretty much as before, in fact I don’t think any significant change in the speed of inorganic reactions has been detected. But the more complex and delicate a structure is, the more it feels that slight effect.

“You must have noticed that you’re more energetic lately. We’ve tested basal metabolism rates, and they have increased, not much but some. Your motor reactions are faster too, though you may not have noticed that because your subjective time sense is also speeded up. In other words, not much change in muscular, glandular, vascular, and the other purely somatic functions, just enough to make you feel nervous; and you’ll adjust to that pretty quick, if nothing else happens.

“On the other hand, the most highly organized cells—neurones, and above all the neurones of the cerebral cortex—are very much affected. Perception speeds are way up; they measured that over in psych. You’ve noticed, I’m sure, how much faster you read. Reaction time to all stimuli is less.”

“I heard that from Jones,” nodded Helga coolly, “and checked up on traffic accident statistics for the past week. Definitely lower. If people react faster, naturally they’re better drivers.”

“Uh-huh,” said Lewis. “Till they start getting tired of poking along at sixty miles an hour and drive at a hundred. Then you may not have any more crack-ups, but those you do have—wham!”

“But if people are smarter,” began Sheila, “they’ll know enough to—”

“Sorry, no.” Mandelbaum shook his head. “Basic personality does not change, right? And intelligent people have always done some pretty stupid or evil things from time to time, just like everybody else. A man might be a brilliant scientist, let’s say, but that doesn’t stop him from neglecting his health or from driving recklessly or patronizing spiritualists or—”

“Or voting Democrat,” nodded Lewis, grinning. “That’s correct, Felix. Eventually, no doubt, increased intelligence would affect the total personality, but right now you’re not
removing anyone’s weaknesses, ignorances, prejudices, blind spots, or ambitions; you’re just giving him more power, of energy and intelligence, to indulge them—which is one reason why civilization is cracking up.”

His voice became dry and didactic: “Getting back to where we were, the most highly organized tissue in the world is, of course, the human cerebrum, the gray matter or seat of consciousness if you like. It feels the stimulus—or lack of inhibition, if Pete’s theory is right—more than anything else on Earth. Its functioning increases out of all proportion to the rest of the organism. Maybe you don’t know how complex a structure the human brain is. Believe me, it makes the sidereal universe look like a child’s building set. There are many times more possible interneuronic connections than there are atoms in the entire cosmos—the factor is something like ten to the power of several million. It’s not surprising that a slight change in electrochemistry—too slight to make any important difference to the body—will change the whole nature of the mind. Look what a little dope or alcohol will do, and then remember that this new factor works on the very basis of the cell’s existence. The really interesting question is whether so finely balanced a function can survive such a change at all.”

There was no fear in his tones, and the eyes behind their heavy lenses held a flash of impersonal excitement. To him this was sheer wonder; Corinth imagined him dying and taking clinical notes on himself as life faded.

“Well,” said the physicist grayly, “well know pretty soon.”

“How can you just sit there and talk about it that way?” cried Sheila. Horror shook her voice.

“My dear girl,” said Helga, “do you imagine we can, at this stage, do anything else?”

Selections from
The New York Times
, June 30:

CHANGE DECELERATING

Decline Noted, Effects
Apparently Irreversible

Rhayader Theory May
Hold Explanation

UNIFIED FIELD THEORY ANNOUNCED

Rhayader Announces Extension of Einstein
Theories—Interstellar Travel
a Theoretical Possibility

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MAY RESIGN FUNCTIONS

President Asks Local Authorities
to Exercise Discretion

N Y. Labor Authority Under Mandelbaum
Pledges Co-operation

REVOLUTION REPORTED IN
SOVIETIZED COUNTRIES

News Blackout Declared—Organized
Insurrection Spreading

Revolutionaries May Have Developed New
Weapons and Military Concepts

WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS WORSENING