Brain Drain Read online

  “The ceiling is freshly painted too,” said Smith.

  “Five sides,” said Chiun.

  “I could get men here to dismantle it,” said Smith.

  “How do you know they would not set it off? Just get well. When the time comes for you to leave your room I shall show you how.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Hopefully save you by doing what we do best, oh, gracious Emperor,” said Chiun.

  “Speedy recovery, Smitty,” said Remo. “Don’t let it worry you that you’re sleeping in the middle of a bomb.”

  And Chiun noted that if they had left for the riches of Persia, Smith might not have found himself in the center of a boom boom.

  “That’s a bomb,” said Remo.

  “And you would have walked into it,” said Chiun.

  “How did I know we were dealing with Mr. Gordons?” Remo said. “I was hoping he was in a junkyard someplace, after the last time.” And going down the steps, not knowing even what to look for, Remo felt an old, forgotten sensation. He was afraid.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  DR. ROBERT CALDWELL WAS not an alcoholic. Could an alcoholic walk away from a half–filled glass of scotch down at Mitro’s? Could an alcoholic go on the wagon three or four days in a row? Could an alcoholic have gone through medical school?

  Could an alcoholic have prepared the four brains in trays with labels the way Dr. Caldwell had? He was not an alcoholic. The hospital administration had been against him. It would drive anyone to drink.

  If he were an alcoholic he wouldn’t have been able to close a deal for a full year’s income just to explain certain things to that man. And that man had come to him. Had heard about him. Dr. Robert Caldwell was still a better neurosurgeon dead drunk than most of the knife pushers were sober. The dictum against surgeons drinking had been set up when America was still in the Victorian age. Many times Dr. Caldwell had operated better with a couple of settling drinks in him than he did shaky sober. But how could you tell that to a teetotalling hospital administration? They were hypocrites. And his own colleagues had turned on him, that young intern pushing him out of the operating room. Physically.

  Dr. Caldwell entered the loft building just off Houston Street in New York City. It wasn’t a hospital, but it didn’t have to be. The man was buying his wisdom. His experience. His insight. He wasn’t buying an operation.

  If he were getting an operation, that would be different. But for this, the loft would do. It didn’t have to be sanitary. The four brains certainly weren’t going to mind a little dust. They had been torn out of their skulls so roughly you couldn’t tell the frontal cerebro–corticopontal tract from the sensory tract. They were almost mush anyhow. So he had put them in trays and covered them with bags. He had meant to store them in the refrigerator. But it wouldn’t have mattered. So he forgot to store them exactly as he had planned. So what? They were mush anyhow, and when he saw the first light coming through the dusty loft windows he realized he had—well, anyone could have done it—slept on them. But he got them into the refrigerator right then.… Laymen didn’t know how indestructible a brain could be. He just wouldn’t tell the man. That’s all.

  Dr. Caldwell was grateful he had a couple of drinks in him. Going up the steps was such a burden. If he hadn’t had a couple of drinks, he might not have bothered at all. But here he was, at the top of the steps, at the door in one long run. And feeling good. He searched for the key, and while doing so, leaned against the door. It was open.

  He turned on the light switch by pulling the string beside the door, and three unshaded bulbs hanging from the ceiling cast an eyeblinking yellow light throughout the loft. There were the refrigerator, the display table and the textbooks. It was all set for tonight. He shut the door behind him and went to the refrigerator. There were four trays. Filling each was a gray whitish mass, like a deflated beach ball with knurls. Each glistened under the harsh yellow light from above as he carried each tray to a table by the wall. The client had labeled each one, and Dr. Caldwell would have to replace the labels with his own. Not that it mattered. What difference was there between a singer’s brain and a painter’s brain and a sculptor’s brain and a dancer’s brain?

  He would do it after he had a drink. After all, hadn’t he left a half–glass of scotch down at Mitro’s? In the small room with the toilet were three cardboard cases of rye whiskey.

  If Dr. Caldwell were an alcoholic, he wouldn’t have left these bottles and gone to Mitro’s. He just would have stayed here in the loft with the booze and drunk himself into a stupor. But he had gone to Mitro’s and drunk at the bar like any other serious drinker and had left a half–glass there.

  He got a glass from the refrigerator and washed it out in the giant tubs right near the refrigerator. An alcoholic would have drunk right from the bottle. He was feeling rather good when his client arrived. The client had a nurse’s uniform folded under his arm. Dr. Caldwell offered him a drink, but the client refused. He was a stiff sort of man in his early thirties, with very blue eyes and incredibly neat brown hair.

  “Well, glad you could make it, Mr. Gordons,” said Dr. Caldwell. “You know there’s a famous gin named after you. Heh, heh.”

  “Incorrect,” said Mr. Gordons. “I was named after the gin. We all were. But my system worked.”

  “Well, some parents do irreparable damage.”

  “You are all my parents. All the science of man is my parents.”

  “A noble sentiment,” said Dr. Caldwell. “Would you care for a drink?”

  “No. I want what I paid you for.”

  “And paid well, too,” said Caldwell, hoisting his glass. “Paid well. A toast to your generosity, sir. To Mr. Gordons.”

  “Have you done it?”

  “Basically, I’ve got the total orientation, but I could use some specific parameters.”

  “In what direction?”

  “Exactly what it is you want from the brains.”

  “I told you the last time,” said Mr. Gordons.

  “But you also said, and I remember well, that this might not be necessary. I remember that,” said Dr. Caldwell. He freshened his drink a bit. If there was one thing he hated it was people who changed their minds. Hated. You needed a drink to deal with those kind of people.

  “What I said was that I was going to do something that would make your services less crucial if what I was going to do succeeded, juicehead. It did not succeed. It failed.”

  “Jesus. Have a drink. I know what you mean. This will take the bite out of it.”

  “No, thank you. Have you done it?”

  “I don’t think you were all that clear last time,” said Dr. Caldwell. He was getting tired of standing. Didn’t Mr. Gordons ever get tired? Dr. Caldwell sat down on the edge of the table and leaned on his left hand. Whoops. One of the brains. It was all right. No damage. He assured Mr. Gordons that brains were a lot tougher than laymen thought. Sticky things though, weren’t they?

  “I gave you four brains, severed at the medulla. The occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the front lobes were all undamaged.”

  “Right,” said Dr. Caldwell. He needed a medical lecture from this clown like he needed an asphalt enema.

  “I was especially careful of the occipital lobe, which we do know is the area of elaboration of thought.”

  “Good,” said Dr. Caldwell. “Very good. You pronounce medical terms very well. Sure you didn’t study medicine?”

  “Medicine was fed into me.”

  “Intravenously?”

  “No, medical knowledge. Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “Heh, heh, you sound like a computer.”

  “In a way. But not as viable as I should like.”

  “Don’t we all feel that way?” said Dr. Caldwell. He drank to that.

  “Now, have you isolated that area of the brain which has the greatest creativity? What we will do once we isolate this area is transform the weak electro–chemical signals of the body to ele
ctronic signals that I can use. We would need living people for that.”

  “Brilliant,” said Dr. Caldwell. “I toast your genius.”

  “Have you done it?”

  “No,” said Dr. Caldwell.

  “Why not?”

  “I think we’re approaching this unscientifically.”

  “I am open to your suggestions.”

  “Let’s discuss it over a drink at Mitro’s.”

  “I need no drink, and you have one.”

  “All right. I’ll be frank. I took this case hoping I would be able to help you. But you haven’t helped me.”

  “In what way?” asked Mr. Gordons.

  “I need more information. You haven’t been honest with me.”

  “I am incapable of being dishonest under normal circumstances.”

  “On that, sir, I will say you need a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist. It is humanly impossible to be honest all the time. Impossible. Thank you for coming, but I think your case is hopeless, and frankly, I need a good drink now more than I need an incurable patient. I always get the hopeless ones. When they’re terminal, give ’em to old Caldwell. No wonder I have to drink. Do you know how many people I’ve had to tell that their loved ones did not survive operations?”

  “No.”

  “Plenty. I figured out that I, more than any doctor in the hospital, had to inform more families of the deaths of their loved ones than anyone else. Any other doctor. Even those cancer freaks. You know why?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’ll tell you why. I got the shit patients. I’d get tumors that weren’t quite what they looked like on X–rays. I’d get brain structure that, while it looked normal, wasn’t really all that normal, and all the while, with these really fucked–up brains, nurses betraying me with vicious little lies about drunkenness. Vicious. That was all I needed to top off the worst patient list in the hospital. Send the disasters to Caldwell. And now I’ve got another one. You.”

  “I said I was incapable under most circumstances of being dishonest. In my case this is not a mental illness but a scientific fact. It takes creativity to be a truly good liar. I seek creativity.”

  “You want to be creative,” said Dr. Caldwell, filling his glass angrily. Who wouldn’t drink, with these dumbdumbs all around? “You want to be creative, you go to Hollywood. You want the best brain surgeon ever held a scalpel, you come to me. Now what the fuck do you want from me?”

  “I thought you would isolate that area of the brain that provides creativity.”

  “It’s in the occipital lobe. And no, you can’t transform creative waves. Just impulses which aren’t creativity.” Dr. Caldwell weaved from the table, with the rye bottle firmly in his left hand, the glass in his right.

  “You want brilliant brain surgery? Here I am. But don’t come to me with creativity nonsense. I’m a brain surgeon.” There was something slippery on the floor, and Dr. Caldwell lost his balance. Very close to the wooden floor now, he searched for what he had slipped on. Couldn’t find it. He got to his feet again, rather easily. He was being helped up by Mr. Gordons. Strong sonuvabitch, but weren’t the insane always strong?

  Why was it he always got the weirdos? This one even started on the story of his life. Mr. Gordons was born two years ago. Two years ago? Right. Okay. I’ll drink to that. A two–year–old who looked like he was in his mid–thirties and hoisted brilliant brain surgeons around as if they were feathers.

  Wasn’t born exactly. Well, that was nice. Maybe he was immaculately conceived? No, he wasn’t. Not in that sense although his first environment was incredibly free of dust and germs. He was one of a generation of space products. Vehicles created to survive in outer space.

  Mr. Gordons was an android. He was the best of the space machines. His inventor was a brilliant scientist but she found herself unable to design a truly creative machine, one that could think for itself in unforeseen situations. She did the best she could. She invented Mr. Gordons who was a survival machine. While he could not be creative, he could find ways to survive. He could change his appearance, his functions. Anything to survive.

  His inventor had had a drinking problem also. She named all her space inventions for brands of alcohol. Hence Mr. Gordons. Sometimes he used Mr. Regal. But that was unimportant. At one point, it became a verified fact that to stay at the laboratory where he had been created would mean destruction, and so he left. He had no great problems except for two humans who would ultimately destroy him, if he did not destroy them. For this, Mr. Gordons needed access to creativity. Did Dr. Caldwell understand?

  “What do you mean ‘drinking problem also’?”

  “You are an alcoholic.”

  “What do you know? You’re a machine anyhow. Hey, don’t bother me. You want some Hollywood agent. Not me.”

  And then something peculiar happened. Along with the brains, Dr. Caldwell found himself shut inside the refrigerator. And it was cold. But he didn’t mind. He had his bottle, and besides, he felt sleepy.

  Very sleepy.

  CHAPTER SIX

  REMO STRETCHED HIS ARMS SLOWLY, reaching farther and farther. He pushed his heels out farther and farther. He let the air come into his lungs more and more, and then, when he was at the fullest capacity, he held, suspended like a white light in an eternity of darkness. He felt beyond the mat on which he lay face downward, beyond the motel room in Burwell, Nebraska. He was one with the original light, light of life, force in voice, one.

  If a passerby could have looked into the motel room, he would have seen a man lying on a mat on the floor with his arms and legs outstretched, not even stretched beyond normal. He would have seen the figure lying very still. And he would have passed on and missed the uniqueness of the exercise.

  For Remo was this way nearly half an hour, and his heartbeat had slowed close to death. Even his blood pumped more lightly, the heart at the very shallow edge of stopping.

  The light filled and was him. And then he let it go. Slowly. First from his fingers, then from his toes, up his limbs, the light returning quietly to the universe, and then it left his shoulders and his head and his heart. With a snapping motion, the flat form was on its feet, and Remo was breathing normally.

  Chiun was catching up on his daytime dramas. A taping device which had been provided by CURE picked up those shows which ran simultaneously so that Chiun could watch the soap operas for six hours straight, though lately he complained about their filth and violence. He was now seeing the taped reruns of the shows he had missed on the day they had gone to Folcroft. He began at dawn, and at 11 A.M. he would switch to the current shows.

  “Disgusting,” said Chiun as Varna Haltington made a lewd suggestion to Dr. Bruce Andrews, whom she knew to be married to Alice Freemantle, her own niece, who had been raped by Damien Plester, an ex–minister of the Universal Realism Church, and who was now contemplating an abortion. According to Remo’s recollection, Alice had been contemplating this abortion since the previous March, and the kid should have been born by now, a normal fourteen–month full–term infant, weighing somewhere between forty and fifty pounds.

  “Vice. Disgusting. Degeneracy,” said Chiun as yesterday’s commercials came on.

  “Then why don’t you stop watching them, Little Father?”

  “Because I trusted you a long time ago when you promised to keep such filth out of my daytime dramas and I continue to wait, without real hope, for you to live up to your promise.”

  “Hold on. I never… ” But Remo stopped. He had exactly forty–four seconds to speak to Chiun, and he preferred to discuss the collapse of the organization, Smith’s trap, whether Remo and Chiun had any chance, and what they should do about it.

  “Why are we in Burwell, Nebraska?” Remo asked.

  “We are attacking that thing.”

  “How are we attacking in Burwell, Nebraska? Is he here?”

  “Of course not. That is why we are here.”

  “Don’t you think we should go where he is?”

 
“Where is he?” asked Chiun.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then how can we go there?” asked Chiun.

  Varna Haltington returned to the screen, asking two things from Dr. Andrews. His body and the emotional condition of his wife, Alice, and would she have an abortion? They discussed Alice’s abortion sympathetically until Varna put her hands on Dr. Andrews’ shoulders signifying sex and the end of the episode.

  “So how are we attacking?” Remo asked.

  “Were you not at the hospital? Did you not hear?”

  “Yeah, I heard. We called him dirty names and he called us dirty names.”

  “You are given maps and you see nothing,” said Chiun. “It is he who fears time, not us. He must attack.”

  “That gives him the initiative.”

  “No, it does not,” Chiun said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he does not know where we are.”

  “So?” asked Remo.

  “So he must find us.”

  “I don’t think he can definitely do that.”

  “Exactly. So he must do things to attract us. And that will let us know where he is.”

  “And then we walk into another one of his traps,” said Remo and waited through another soap opera. This time Katherine made a lewd suggestion to Dr. Drake Marlen, whom she knew to be married to Nancy Whitcomb, who had not been raped but was thinking about an abortion anyway, because she was in love with her psychiatrist.

  “Why,” said Remo when the commercial came on, “should he fear time and not us? I mean, metal and transistors outlast flesh.”

  “If you had been listening in the hospital, you would have heard me put the thought into his mind which he accepted because it was true.”

  “I didn’t hear any thought,” said Remo.

  “Man outlasts everything he makes.”

  “That’s not true. Just look at tombstones,” said Remo.

  “Look at them,” Chiun said. “Show me the tombstones of the Scythians, the ancient markers of the Celtic tribes. All are gone, and yet the Persians survive and the Irish live fresh as a newborn baby’s smile.”