Part 16 (1/2)
”Mohinder Singh might be a baboon,” Mel concluded, ”named after some guy in India that Radhakrishnan doesn't like. But it's also possible that Mohinder Singh is a human being.”
”They keep talking about their facilities in India,” Mary Catherine said. ”It may be a person they are experimenting on out there. Working on, I should say.””Well, go on,” Mel said.
”From Seattle I went to New Mexico for a couple of days. Very nice facility there - the Coover Biotech Pavilion.”
Mel and Cozzano exchanged looks.
”Again, they obviously know what they're doing. I spent a long time going over detailed records of all of the baboons they've worked on. It's clear that they have learned a lot about this over the years. Their first subjects had rejection problems, or the biochips failed to take, et cetera. Over time they have solved those problems. Now they can do it almost routinely.
”Then I went to San Francisco and talked to some of the people working on the chips at Pacific Netware.
These guys are really good - the best in the business. They were the only ones willing to talk about the human element.”
”What do you mean by that?” Mel said.
”All of the biologist types are gun-shy about the idea of doing this with human beings. You can't get them to talk about it. It's clear that there are some potential ethical problems there that they have been trained to avoid. But the chipheads don't have any of those cultural inhibitions. They would probably volunteer to get these things implanted in their own heads.”
”Why? Are they brain damaged?”
”No more so than anyone who works on computers for a living. But to them, see, it's not a therapy so much as it is a way of improving the human mind. That's what gets these guys psyched about it.”
”You're joking,” Cozzano said.
”The biologists won't even allow themselves to think about trying this on people - even several brain- damaged volunteers. The computer people have already gone way beyond that point in their thinking. Half the guys I talked to firmly believed that in ten or twenty years they would be walking around with supercomputers stuck in their heads.”
”This is getting weird,” Mel said.
”I don't want to wash a duck,” Cozzano said. ”I just want to bring the trousers.”
”Understood,” Mary Catherine said, ”but I'm here to talk about the credibility of this process. And the point I'm making here is that it is extremely credible as far as the people at Pacific Netware are concerned.”
”Okay, we got that point,” Mel said. ”Tell me about the inst.i.tute.”
”Beautiful piece of real estate on the California coast. Very secluded. Has its own private airport. Lots of open s.p.a.ce for recreation.”
Once again, Mel Meyer and the Governor were exchanging significant looks. ”A guy - even a famous guy - could get in and out of the place without being noticed?”
”Mel, you could fly in, go down the road to this inst.i.tute, sun yourself in the courtyard, swim on the beach, and no one would ever see you.”
”Read me the blueprints,” Cozzano said.
”You want some information about the building?” Mary Catherine guessed.
”Yes.”
”The building is nice and new, like everything else. Some parts of it aren't even finished yet. There's an incredible operating theater, which looked like it was finished, but there's no way to tell that without actually going in and trying to do brain surgery there. And the actual rooms are luxurious. All private rooms. Big windows with balconies over the ocean. The patients hang out on the balconies, watch TV, listen to CDs, or whatever.”
”You actually saw patients there?” Mel said.
”Yes. But because of privacy considerations, I couldn't go to their rooms or talk to them. I saw one or two, from a distance, sitting out on the balconies in their wheelchairs, reading newspapers or just staring into the distance.”
”You saw patients there. Which means they have actually done operations on human beings,” Mel said.
”I guess that's the conclusion we are led to,” Mary Catherine said.
”Well put. Well put,” Mel said.”You think we are being led to a false conclusion?” Mary Catherine said incredulously.
”No way to know, is there?”
”There's a couple of small things,” she said, a little uncertain.
”Tell us everything,” Mel said. ”We'll decide what's small and what isn't.”
”I went to the bathroom at one point and washed my hands. And when I turned on the faucet, it sort of coughed.”
”Coughed?”
”Yeah. Sputtered for a few seconds. As if there was air trapped in the pipes. It used to happen here, whenever Dad worked on the plumbing.”
At first, Mel shook his head, not getting it. Then his eyes widened with astonishment. Then they narrowed in fascination. ”You were the first person ever to use the faucet in the ladies' room,” Mel said.
”G.o.dd.a.m.n it! I think you are wrong,” Cozzano said to Mel.
”Since parts of the building were still under construction, it's possible that they had to alter some of the pipes after that sink had been in use for a while,” Mary Catherine said, ”and that this caused air bubbles to be introduced.”
”Please continue,” Mel said. He was acting like a lawyer in a courtroom now, interviewing a neutral witness.
”I wandered around the grounds a little bit. It's a nice place for a stroll. And on the bluff, overlooking the sea, a few hundred yards away from the building, behind a little rise, I found the remains of a fire.
Someone had piled up a bunch of straw there and burned it.”
”Straw?” Mel said.
Cozzano nodded. ”It keeps the patio slippery.”
”When we used to pour concrete on the farm, we would cover it up with damp straw. You have to keep concrete damp for several days, preferably a week or two, while it cures,” Mary Catherine said. ”So it's not surprising that they would have a bunch of straw lying around a place where they were building a big reinforced-concrete building. There are a lot of ranches nearby and it's a natural thing for them to use.
When I walked back from the site of the fire to the building, I saw a lot of pieces of loose straw caught in the undergrowth, and many of them were stained white with concrete. Some of the straw was still damp.”
”So when they were finished, they got rid of the straw by dragging it to this place and burning it,” Mel said.
”Yeah. They burned it the night before,” Mary Catherine said.
”How do you know that?” Cozzano said.
Mary Catherine held up the little finger on her right hand. The tip was cherry red. ”I made the mistake of sticking my finger down into the bed of ashes.”
Mel said, ”They got rid of the straw right before you got there.”
”It was lying around somewhere after they finished the building,” Mary Catherine said. ”They knew that I was coming and they wanted the place to look tidy, so they burned it.”