|
Copyright © 2005 by Shane
Tourtellotte
First published in Analog Science
Fiction and Fact, March 2005
"You want us to do what to your brain?"
Doctor Lucinda Peale hadn't intended to exclaim, but her visitor's request had been a shock. The woman sitting in her office flinched. "I'm sorry, Ms. Carson,"
Lucinda said. "I want to be sure I understood you."
Darjeane Carson recovered her poise smoothly. Everything about her was a bit too perfect. She was slender, save for a full bust and backside. Her eyes were a
bright green that wasn't quite natural; her hair was a dark blond that shone a little more than hair should. Lucinda was perhaps an inch taller, but there were
plenty of short leading men in Hollywood, so Darjeane probably had the edge there, too.
"It's all pretty straightforward," Darjeane said. "I want you to perform one of your brain overlay procedures on me, one that'll give me a political mindset
that blends in better in Hollywood. You know," she added, finally looking slightly unsettled, "more ... progressive."
This time, Lucinda said nothing. For four years, their university research team had performed tightly controlled neural impressions on volunteer convicts and
mental patients, overwriting violent, addictive, and deranged behaviors with patterns copied from sections of other brains. For most of that time, Lucinda had had
nightmares about the procedure's potential misuses.
She had never expected them to come true exactly this way.
"Why?" she asked, holding down her feelings.
"It's a career move," Darjeane said briskly. "My beliefs have made me a misfit, held me back. You can try to downplay or suppress them, but it's never perfect.
People know. I can't lie well enough about them to fool people, either. Maybe that's a strike against me as an actress," she said, shrugging. "It's tough to
understand that kind of peer pressure, if you've never experienced it."
Lucinda had an idea. She had tried to stay politically invisible at the university, a famously activist one. The nature of her work had made that hopeless, but
keeping her mouth shut outside of the lab had minimized the damage.
"Ms. Carson, what you're asking isn't practical. Our state oversight has never approved non-correctional use of overlay procedures on humans." That stretched
definitions in a few cases, but it was mainly true. "Also, we've never done research on the consolidation of political ideas within the brain. We would have no
idea how to do what you want."
"But I've heard that you transfer politics all the time. It's common knowledge."
Peale grimaced, almost shutting her eyes. "It's a common myth. There's no documentary evidence that it happens. If it does, we don't know the mechanisms by
which it happens, and it isn't what we intend." Maybe not all of us, she admitted to herself.
Darjeane grew intent. "It sounds like you haven't wanted to look at it," she said, stinging Peale. "Now you have a reason." Her ingenue's smile came flashing
back. "I'll be over in San Francisco for three weeks or so. Location shooting for a movie. If your team works on it, can you have something ready by the time
they're done with me?"
Lucinda was taken off guard. "Ms. Carson, the procedure you suggest may be impossible. In any case, it would take far longer than three weeks to prepare for
it. We spent two years performing experimental surgeries on animals before we attempted overlay on a human."
"I assume you've gotten more experienced since then, able to work faster."
"Yes, but--"
"Because I don't have very much time." She opened her crossed arms, presenting herself. "I'm twenty-seven years old, Dr. Peale. That's almost middle-aged in
Hollywood these days, at least for women. If I'm going to break out of sixth or eighth billing, to become a star--and last as a star, not just be a one-hit
wonder--I have to do it soon.
"I've directed my whole life toward this goal. I've made sacrifices." A hand hovered near her breasts. "I've remade myself, physically, to provide what the
business demands. Now ... I have to remake myself mentally. It's the price I have to pay. I'm ready." The slight slump in her posture disappeared. "And it's my
life, isn't it? My choice?"
Lucinda wanted to shout "No!" She wanted to tell her to hold onto her principles, her identity. She wanted to say that some sacrifices were too great. She
wanted to say there was no chance this would be approved. She wanted to stop this nightmare cold, before it truly began.
By the time Lucinda had gathered what she wanted to say, Darjeane had rolled her chair closer. "I heard about you, Doctor, while doing my homework about this.
People say that you're very good with patients, that you empathize with them. I need that empathy. That's why I came to you. I trust you to take this seriously
... and to keep this confidential." She leaned in closer. "Hollywood likes controversy, but probably not this kind. Neural impression isn't really popular
there."
"I know," Lucinda said. The first paranoid thriller about "mind-wiping" had come out late last year--and had Darjeane had a role in that film?
"I knew you'd understand. That's also why I'd need the through-the-skull stimulation technique, not the open-brain one. That kind of surgery would be tough to
hide--not to mention losing this." She flipped at a tress of her hair. "It doesn't grow back fast, and like I said, I don't have all the time in the world."
Lucinda felt paralyzed, all her arguments chained down. She barely managed to say, "Transcranial magnetic stimulation isn't perfected yet. We've only used it a
couple times."
"I'm not worried. I trust you, and your colleagues." She leaned back in her chair, with another shrug. "I have to, don't I?"
"Come in."
Lucinda entered Doctor Urowsky's office. The neurosurgeon had an image of a brain scan on the holographic platform on his desk, with the hypothalamus and parts
of the orbito-frontal cortex highlighted. "Yes, Luci," Urowsky said, putting down his light pen, "what did you want?"
Lucinda decided to match his relaxed informality. "Leonard, I think it would be good to bring a psychologist onto our staff. We need someone who can evaluate
our volunteers, weed out people who might be unsuitable to have the overlay. It might help in getting baselines, too."
Urowsky's brow grew deeper furrows. "Really? You've always done very well with that. Kate, too. Why would you change that?"
"I'm not trained in that area. It's something I did because I was available on a short staff early on. Now that the program's larger, maybe it's time for us to
trade up."
Urowsky looked at her for a minute. "You wouldn't look so edgy if it were only that. What else is it? Are you thinking of leaving the program?"
"No. I--I--"
"All right. Sit down and let me hear it."
Lucinda's resistance vanished. She related what had transpired during her appointment with Darjeane Carson, including her vague promise to pursue the matter
with the research team. She was ashamed of that failure of nerve, of leaving all her principled arguments unsaid. She had slunk away, to torpedo Carson's aim in
secret. Maybe it was the habit of lying low, avoiding controversy and confrontation, that had led her to it.
Urowsky put a hand to his chin. "You're right, Lucinda. This is a troubling case, not just morally questionable, but politically hazardous. I take it you
hoped that a team psychologist would evaluate and reject Ms. Carson."
Lucinda nodded. "I couldn't bear to do it with her in my office, saying how she depended on me. I wanted that cup to pass from me. It won't. It shouldn't."
She stood. "I'll call her now, do what I should have before."
"Wait."
Lucinda stopped. Was Urowsky going to take the burden from her? He was the unspoken team leader through his age and experience, even though he hadn't been with
them originally. It was why she had come to him. Maybe she had wished for something like this.
Urowsky surprised her. "Something like this should go before the full team. We have an afternoon meeting scheduled, but I'll see if I can move it up to the
morning." He must have seen her surprise. "It concerns us all, Dr. Peale. It probably won't be the last time someone makes such a request, either. We should
have an official policy."
"I ... understand, sir."
"Besides, we're not this woman's only recourse. Other universities are advancing in their studies. If we brush her off, she could go elsewhere. If we give her
a united answer, though, she might accept it as definitive. The ethical dilemma would be contained."
Lucinda sighed and nodded. "All right, then." It was the most she could expect, and it would probably work out right. With Pavel in the mix, though, she
wasn't nearly as sure of that as she wanted to be.
"I don't see why we shouldn't look at it." Pavel Petrusky cast a wide glance, taking in the whole table. "It's a perfect opportunity to expand our work, to do
a little more good--" He looked right at Peale. "--and to put a few fears to rest."
Lucinda began rising to the challenge, but Urowsky stepped in. "Those are fears many people have had from the start, Pavel, including in government. The state
oversight board is likely to take a dim view of this expansion of our work."
"Not if it's presented to them the right way. I can contact the committee chair, and set up a remote hearing within a week."
"With you to represent us, no doubt," Lucinda said.
"He is our liaison, Luci," Kate Barber said to her side. "It's his department."
Pavel had always had a sixth sense about politics. It made him the logical choice to be their link to the oversight board—and its practical application within
the team had made it certain that he would be picked.
"Fine," said Lucinda. One balled hand began tapping the tabletop. "But I will want my objection on the record. To experiment on humans this way, to such an
end--"
She froze in mid-sentence. Pavel was laughing. "You cannot be serious. We've experimented on humans with overlay before. Curing my stutter was untested
before it was done on me. So was working on the violently insane, including twice on your Muntz fellow."
Lucinda suppressed an eruption "I resent the suggestion that Joshua Muntz is uniquely my case. He's ours."
Urowsky was glaring. "Doctor Petrusky, personal comments like that have no--"
"Okay," Pavel said, holding up his hands. "I withdraw that statement--but I don't withdraw my point. We've done plenty of work that couldn't be tested on
animals first."
"Fine. Granted." Lucinda had to collect her thoughts: Pavel had her completely rattled. "Let's not dance around the issue. Rewiring someone's political
beliefs is destructive, not constructive. It attacks the integrity of the personality on a fundamental level, for no therapeutic reason. That makes it medically
unethical."
"Even for someone who wants it, Lucinda?" Pavel asked. "For someone who's volunteering?"
"Consent isn't the issue." She heard her voice rising, and reined it in. "We've had that for all our subjects: Muntz, you, all the way back to Burt Zliceski.
But our subjects have had something else in common. They all had something wrong with them."
Pavel sat back, a curious half-smile forming on his bearded face. "Well, maybe your visitor does, too."
There were uncertain murmurs. Nancy LaPierre, a fellow neurosurgeon, spoke up first. "You mean she has some mental ailment making her request this procedure?"
Lucinda shook her head at LaPierre. "That's not what he's saying."
"Look," Pavel said, "she admits that her behavior is maladaptive. She's trying to adjust it, to suit community norms."
Sam Jeong chortled. "Hollywood, normal?" Urowsky stared him down.
"It's a community that's exerting undue pressure on her to conform," Lucinda said.
"Who says it's undue? Her? We don't know her standards, or how extreme her views may be. Her request could spring from a false sense of persecution, of a
piece with her maladaption."
Protestations were louder this time, but Lucinda got on top of them. "Now we get to it: conservatism as pathology. A paper from this very university got that
notion started, as I recall. It was rubbish then; it's rubbish now."
"Rubbish defined as something too painful for you to believe?" Pavel shot back.
"Enough!" Urowsky quieted the whole room with that word. His glare glanced off Lucinda before falling on Pavel. "Doctor Patrusky, if that is your attitude
toward--"
"It's a hypothesis, Doctor. We're supposed to make those."
"You are not supposed to cast aspersions on the mental state of prospective subjects whom you've not even met."
"Hypotheses aren't aspersions--but fine, fine. I'll withdraw that statement, too, at least until I have a chance to interview this Jane Doe myself." He looked
hard at Lucinda. "Will I be allowed that privilege?"
"Ms. Doe specifically asked for confidentiality," said Lucinda. "Unless we decide to work with her, I'd feel uncomfortable divulging her identity."
"So you keep her all to yourself?" Pavel asked archly.
Lucinda replied with mildness. "She did come to me."
"All right. Can we at least agree to start assembling some data before the oversight board meets? It would just be compiling what other researchers have come
up with."
"We haven't agreed that this is going before the committee," Lucinda said.
"Is this meeting going to be one long argument?" LaPierre said pointedly.
Lucinda looked to Urowsky, but his attention was on Pavel. "This would only be compilation, Doctor Petrusky," he said. "With that understanding, I'm inclined
to allow it."
"Suits me fine, Doctor Urowsky."
Lucinda deflated. The ensuing vote was an anticlimax. Sam, the most junior member of the team, voted with her. The rest went along with Pavel.
It was probably what he intended all along. Give way on other points, so it would seem more reasonable to grant the one he wanted; make people weary of
conflict, so they'd be ready to compromise to avoid it. If she hadn't been so flustered, she might have seen the plan before it was too late.
Maybe getting her flustered had been part of the plan, too.
Lucinda already had plenty of work. The team was deep into studying the neurological roots of pedophilia, intending to make that the next condition they
conquered. Lucinda was also pushing examination of profound depression, trying to build on experience from the Muntz case.
Still, she volunteered to shoulder part of the new load. Part of it was the teamwork ethic, doing the work even if she disagreed with it. Mostly, though, she
wanted to have some handle on what happened, in case Pavel tried to run away with it.
The information on politics they had on file was thin. Most of it was collected anecdotal reports, from patients who reported having new political opinions
after receiving overlays. Nobody there had followed them up. They had dismissed the stories, not believing them, or not wanting to believe.
Lucinda was surprised at the numbers: a little over half their patients had made claims. The trouble was, rumors about excess transfers had been rife for
years. Most of these subjects could have heard them, and imagined or invented similar symptoms. Even "her" Muntz fellow.
Other university research teams had better data. Her team's practical work meant less time for the theoretical, the in-depth study of neural structure and
function. They borrowed from these other teams all the time. The requests Lucinda sent to them for the most recent data on this particular new subject wouldn't
seem too far out of place.
She expected to receive uploaded files and e-mail notes. Instead, her first response came by video call from UCLA, from someone she hadn't thought about in some
time.
Frances Roselli hadn't aged well in the four years since she left the Berkeley team. Her black hair had gone almost totally gray, and her face had deep lines.
They made her seem fierce as she looked out of Lucinda's monitor.
"I worried from the first that things would slide down this slope," she said. "I had hoped you wouldn't be pushing them down."
Lucinda absorbed the shot stoically. "This is the team, Frances, not me."
"You don't have to go along with the team, Lucinda. I showed you that." She didn't give Lucinda time to muster a reply. "Was she the one who started
this?"
Lucinda started. "Who?"
"A prospective volunteer. I won't name names, but she's young, ambitious, and a little more bright and shiny than nature would allow."
"I ... I couldn't--"
Frances saw through Lucinda. "Thought so. She came to me a while back, asking whether we could make political alterations to her here, or at least refer her to
people who could. I turned her away cold. It seems you didn't."
Lucinda flushed. "I'm sorry I couldn't be as brusque as you," she said, more harshly than she felt.
Frances's frown softened. "Maybe you are. You looked conflicted back in '19--even if you didn't admit it--when you brought those legislators into the program."
"You know what my intentions were, Frances." The Assembly had been ready to stifle their program in its infancy. Many legislators thought neural impressions
the equivalent of brainwashing. When, in desperation, Lucinda offered them the chance to provide their own brain pattern templates to the pool, though, enough
changed their minds. She was using their misapprehensions in her favor, even if she worried from the start how false their impressions were.
Frances shook her head. "It was a ghastly risk to take. Even if you were right, I knew what would come of letting people think that brainwashing by inches was
acceptable. So I left Berkeley." She sighed. "But I didn't leave the problem behind."
She looked at her hand, hovering over her keyboard. "I have a group of files I'm supposed to send you. If it were just me, I wouldn't. It's not my decision,
though, and if I don't ..."
"I know what that's like."
Frances gave her a burning look, and whispered something sulfurous under her breath. Her finger hit a key, and the picture went choppy for a moment as the files
came through the line.
"I wish we'd never gathered that data. I wish I hadn't ... well, you've got what you wanted. I have to go. I have ... thinking to do."
"Goodbye," Lucinda said softly.
Frances stopped short of cutting the connection. "Oh, and next time you talk to our mutual acquaintance, ask her why she isn't looking to get an impression of
better acting chops." The picture winked out.
"My acting skills are fine, Doctor Peale. I have scrapbooks full of good reviews, if you want to see them."
Darjeane had taken a couple of days to return Lucinda's call, catching the doctor at lunch with just an audio-only phone. Lucinda had called to inform her that
matters were proceeding to the ethics board, but she had to add that nagging question.
"I'm not trying to be insulting. I've just never followed your career closely before."
"I'm good," Darjeane said. "I could've gotten an Oscar nomination last year for Three Pairs. The studio had to campaign for Miss Jones instead--in her
contract--so neither of us got Best Supporting. That's what happens when you've got no clout, when you're not a star. Anyway, what does this have to do with my
... request?"
"Just that if you want critical success, there are less extreme methods of getting it. You could try Broadway plays, television, Net series--"
"That's not what I want. I don't want to be in a box, or on a stage. I want that huge screen. I want people watching that screen because of me. I--" Her
tone changed. If the phone had a screen, Lucinda knew Darjeane would be flashing her best ingratiating smile. "You must understand ambition, dedication, to have
built up a career as a scientist."
"Dedication, yes," Lucinda said. She had never, though, been so intensely devoted to anything. Not to study, not to work, not even to her husband. Of course,
Keith had left her life twelve long years ago. How much worse could that have been, if she had been obsessed over him?
"Good. It's probably your hard-earned professionalism making you test me. I understand. It means you'll be that much more deeply convinced, and more
persuasive to others."
Lucinda sighed. "Ms. Carson, honestly, you aren't persuading me."
"I've noticed," Darjeane said, "but you're being pleasant about it. I'd thought about taking this to your Doctor Petrusky--the one who gets on the news--but he
always felt too hard-edged for me."
Lucinda accepted the flattery, calculated as it was. She didn't want Darjeane to know how much more agreeable to her cause she would find Pavel.
Lucinda spent a half-day at the lab on Saturday, then returned home. She changed into sweats, and covered her short hair with a white cap. It was the proper
outfit for the company she expected.
She answered the knock at the front door. Joshua Muntz stood outside, looking less like thirty-six than like a gawky teen in a T-shirt, scuffed jeans, and a
faded A's cap. He held two brushes and a roller, and had a dropcloth under his arm. "Hi. Didn't know if you had enough supplies, so ..."
"We'll be fine. Come on in, Josh."
Josh took a few steps inside, then froze. A Rottweiler was loping up toward him, giving him a curious look. "Uh ..."
"Don't worry. Ben's completely harmless. You can put your stuff in there." She pointed to the living room, already partly emptied and covered. "We'll do this
today, the kitchen and dining room next weekend, and upstairs afterward."
Hiring Josh was part help for him, part expiation for her. The overlay that had cured his violent schizophrenia also left him profoundly depressed, from guilt
over the attacks his sick self had committed. A second overlay, the new non-surgical variety, had alleviated that, but Lucinda still felt she owed him. Especially
since there were other problems they hadn't touched.
She fetched the paint cans in the kitchen. When she came back, Josh was kneeling next to Ben, being sniffed. Ben apparently approved. When Josh patted the
dog's coat, Ben came closer, rubbing himself against Josh's other arm.
"Hey, you like that, don't you?" He rubbed harder. Ben's eyes got big, as if he'd known and trusted Josh for years. Josh grinned.
Lucinda felt a pang. She was pretty sure she had never seen Josh smile before.
Josh's pats migrated to Ben's head. Ben suddenly whined and flinched away. "Sorry, pal. I just—" He felt gently along the side of Ben's head, and shuddered.
"Doc," he said, raising a hand to his cap, "he's got ... my scars."
Lucinda nodded. "He was one of our test animals, five years ago. Illegally bred for attacking. We cured him, and when we were done, I adopted him."
Josh stood and took a step back, looking at Ben. His silence went on too long for Lucinda. "And he's got to stay in the backyard while we're working. Sorry,
boy. C'mon," she said, beckoning. Ben trotted after her, looking back once at Josh.
Soon the living room had their attentions. Once their work fell into a rhythm, they exchanged small talk. Josh complained about Oakland's baseball woes, and
Lucinda managed to keep up. He was less lively talking about his search for vocational schools, mentioning several possibilities without much enthusiasm.
He was even less voluble talking about his parents. They fought almost constantly now. The emotional stability they were supposed to provide during his
integration into society was just the opposite. Talking about it was the only thing that made his work pace slacken.
"I'm sorry I brought them up," Lucinda said.
"No, it's okay," said Josh, as he soaked his roller for another pass. "I know you're checking on how I'm doing. That's probably why I'm here: to see if I'm
functional."
"No, Josh, I--"
"Don't worry, I don't resent it. Besides, it's probably lighter conversation than me asking about your work."
That was an understatement. It got her thinking, for the span of half a wall. She finally decided to chance it, since he was already expecting such things.
"Do ... stray thoughts still bother you, Josh?"
Josh stopped with one foot on the stepladder. "Sometimes. I've gotta work to get on top of them sometimes, when I get sudden phobias about genemod foods, or
certain faces on TV. No, actually, it's the voices. They can really set me off, even if I want to listen to what they're saying."
"Are the intrusions bad?"
"Not always." He grimaced, and turned back to his painting. "But yeah, kinda bad."
Lucinda girded herself. "Bad enough that you'd go through neural impression again to get rid of them?"
"Sure. Overlays were never that bad, especially the last one. It'd be lots easier to—" He turned around abruptly. "You're saying you can do that now?"
Lucinda shook her head. "No, we can't."
"Then you wouldn't have been asking about it. Doc, if you can--"
"No!" she said, freezing him before he could clamber down. "Josh, I swear, we don't have that kind of procedure. We don't even know how we'd try to go about
doing it. I was just ... curious about how you were coping."
Her avowal of concern barely lifted Josh's forlorn look. "I'm sorry, Josh. If we ever do develop that ability, I promise I'll tell you."
Josh nodded weakly. He went back to painting, noting with dull interest the paint dribbles on his arm from his inattention the moment before.
Lucinda turned back to her own work, speaking just loudly enough to hear herself. "I will."
Pavel swiveled in his chair as Lucinda entered his office. "The oversight board convenes tomorrow morning at ten. When will you have the information ready for
me to see?"
"It's ready now," Lucinda said. "I can upload all the data to you when I'm back in my office. Will they really need all the research data for that meeting?"
"I'll need it all. I have to figure out the finer points of my presentation: what we know, what's left to learn, what we can do with our knowledge. The board
appreciates having things spelled out clearly."
The oversight committee had received their mandate some months before, after the legislature grew tired of the controversy of overlays, and of the frequency of
requests to expand their scope. Maybe they'd gotten tired of Pavel too, Lucinda thought. He had thrown himself into the role as spokesman after his stuttering
cure. He was effective--and pretty insistent sometimes.
Lucinda took a breath. "Would it make a better impression if we had two volunteers?"
"Yes, but--" He turned a questioning look on her.
"Joshua Muntz," she said.
His look turned sour. "You told him? I question the ethics of soliciting a volunteer, Luci."
"I didn't tell him—and we started this project by soliciting prisoner volunteers, so don't give me that." Her sharp response made him twitch. "Joshua told me
himself, he'd like to have restored what we changed. The part that wasn't unwell, I mean."
"That part wasn't changed," Pavel said, turning back to his computer. "The evidence, quote unquote, is all anecdotal."
He started tearing into his work, fingers flying across his keyboard. Before his operation, Pavel's work had been methodical, when it wasn't outright slow. His
office back then had also been a bit of a mess, not spotless and organized as it was today. Didn't he have to notice, Lucinda wondered.
"I've told myself that," Lucinda said. "I told Josh, too. But I was wrong. I've seen too many of the anecdotes we've collected not to see the forest those
trees make up, Pavel. We are doing something to our subjects that we don't intend. We have an obligation to understand what that is, to stop it. And for people
like Josh, we have an obligation to undo it if we can, to make him whole, the way we worked on the depression we reinforced when treating his schizophrenia."
"We're not obliged, Lucinda. For one, Mister Muntz may not be competent to judge his own case. And don't get defensive," he said before Lucinda could react.
"You know what he's been through. Besides, giving him two overlays inside a year was unprecedented enough. I wouldn't want to chance three."
"You think you're going to have a practical procedure that soon?" Lucinda said. "I don't see it."
Pavel cocked an eyebrow. "You mean you don't want it."
"It is possible for both to be true." Then again, if it were only for Josh's sake ...
"We are going to pursue this, Luci," Pavel said while typing away. "I hope you'll be with us."
"The way you say it, it sounds like I'm not part of "us" any more."
Pavel gave her a glance. "Are you?"
She reddened. "Don't worry. I'll do my work ... but you might want to turn that terrific political brain of yours to the future. This is dangerous ground
we're on, with immense potential for abuses. It needs serious ethical oversight. Something more formal in our team, for one. Maybe something better than the
state board, for another."
"You want to hand it back to the legislature and the governor to play with?"
"For something this powerful, it ought to be in their hands. At least they're accountable to the voters." She edged closer, trying to get into Pavel's angle of
vision. "But it doesn't stop in California. The study program at Johns Hopkins is starting to branch out. Penn State's gearing up, too, even with their lie-
detecting scans mired in the courts. Congress has to start looking at this."
Pavel finally looked up. "And what will they do about Europe? Or Asia, or the rest of the world? National borders won't impede this technology any more than
state borders will. Are you ready to take on the world, Lucinda?"
She took a step back. "Not yet. Not by myself. That's why it's so crucial that we start on the right foot, set a proper example. We need to remember that
everything we discover will make it easier for the unscrupulous to exploit this technology later."
Pavel stopped typing. "Are you saying suppress our knowledge?" he hissed.
"It's not suppression if we haven't discovered it yet."
"That's sophistry. Repressing the search for knowledge would be just as bad."
Lucinda wasn't sure of that, but she was sure she wouldn't persuade Pavel otherwise. "Then you'd better have a firm grip on what's being done with that
knowledge."
Pavel smirked at her. "Having an Oppenheimer moment, Luci? "I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds?"" He chuckled. "For all his worries, nobody's used a
nuclear weapon in over seventy-five years."
"It's one thing to use an invention to kill a hundred thousand people," Lucinda said. "If you're altering their minds, one by one, the moral threshold is a lot
lower."
"Granted," Pavel said. "But you know what Oppenheimer's solution was, don't you? Keep the scientists in control. Well, we are still in control, and I'm sure
not going to give it up easily."
Lucinda said nothing, withdrawing quietly as Pavel beavered away at his work. She was not at all reassured by his last words.
There was no surprise from the ethics board. Pavel emerged with official permission to study how the human brain absorbed and organized political ideas and
beliefs. The new call for volunteers began with posted flyers that evening, and in the leading student paper the next morning.
Kate and Lucinda began screening applicants in private consultations. After signing preliminary confidentiality agreements, the volunteers learned what
information would be gathered from them, and the probable timeframe. Pavel wanted it started almost immediately, compressing their current work or postponing it.
Many applicants changed their minds. Some just slunk out of the office, muttering excuses or saying nothing. Some left in anger or worse, lashing Lucinda with
epithets like "fascist," "Nazi," or, in the loudest and bitterest cases, "Republican." Somehow worse were the few who just looked at her reproachfully as they
left, as if she had betrayed them.
Those who stayed in got a sheet of general questions on politics, and a pocket-comp on which to record their answers. Their answers to the survey would provide
rough baselines for the scans to come.
Interviews wrapped up the next day. Lucinda took a few hours to compile her data and Kate's, and reported to a full staff meeting late that afternoon.
"We had a higher than usual rejection rate this time, mostly self-selected. The remaining volunteers will still easily be enough to proceed. Through baseline
data, and personal observation during the interviews, some interesting facts are already emerging."
Attention picked up around the table. Urowsky in particular eyed her, but said nothing.
"There's a strong tendency within the remaining pool toward political awareness and activism. I suspect many of our departures were by the politically
apathetic, or people reluctant to insert themselves into political controversy."
"You're right, Luci," Pavel said. "This is personal observation. Anecdotal, no more."
"Granted," Lucinda said, "but it tallies with other anecdotal evidence from previous calls for volunteers. Those pools appeared to tilt toward activism versus
apathy, especially in later drafts, as certain rumors about the effects of neural impression spread." Pavel didn't blink. "There was also always a substantial
leftward tilt to the volunteers, to be expected on this campus. My impression is that both those trends were strengthened in this group."
"No." Pavel shook his head. "This is sheer supposition. We have no political data on previous groups. No evidence at all."
"That's not entirely true," Kate Barber said. "Some of our current volunteers are repeats, over ten percent. Whatever opinions they hold, they're already in
the template files."
"And depending on what we learn from this study," Lucinda added, "we may be able to get glimpses of the ideas and philosophies of past volunteers from their
templates."
"Are we allowed to do that?" Sam Jeong asked.
"As long as confidentiality remains in place, yes,'" Urowsky said.
"I'd insist on it," said Lucinda. "It would give us a chance to put hard data behind our anecdotal evidence." Pavel might have flinched that time. "Now, while
our volunteer pool is adequate, I hope we could supplement it, with an eye to balancing it in terms of political interest and ideology. I note that we placed an ad
in the lead campus paper, but not the conservative alternative."
"They publish weekly," Pavel noted tartly, "in both senses."
Either Kate or Doctor LaPierre chuckled at the jibe: Lucinda didn't look to see whom. "An ad there, along with notices in a couple other targeted places, would
diversify the pool."
"Irrelevant," Pavel said. "We don't need a broad pool. We're studying mechanisms for now, not ideologies or pathologies ... or intersections thereof."
"Are we back to that again?" Sam said, sparing Lucinda from having to challenge Pavel.
"We are not," Urowsky said, quelling Pavel with a glance. "I'm inclined to expand our appeals, Dr. Peale, within reason. What do you have in mind?"
She named the paper, a couple of dormitories, and a website passed over by the initial call. The team agreed without dissent, though Pavel abstained.
His handling of politics wasn't perfect after all, Lucinda saw, not when he got bound up in it personally. He didn't always get his way. That nudged her to
act. "I have one last way to expand the pool slightly, with a specific volunteer: myself."
Heads snapped up. "Now you're injecting your politics into this," Kate said.
"No. I'm injecting my ethics. You all know I've resisted this turn in our work, and why. I'll continue to participate, but I think this added involvement will
act as a safeguard, a tripwire. I'm hoping you will be less inclined to be morally ... adventurous when a colleague is involved." She cocked her head. "And if my
template makes the pool more diverse and moderate, all the better."
Urowsky and LaPierre held identical poses of uneasy thought. "It's an unusual request," LaPierre said. "Perhaps--"
"I'll back her," Pavel said, to Lucinda's surprise. "In fact, I'll volunteer, too."
"Now, Pavel--" Urowsky began.
"I'll be an even better subject: you already have my template on file." He looked coolly at Lucinda. "And I'll add balance."
Lucinda met his gaze calmly. It wasn't what she had expected, but she could live with it.
The team had previous surveys to finish before starting their new one. Lucinda intended to give the surveys proper, unrushed attention--even though she didn't
want to spend a minute in the presence of the subjects.
Hers was a common reaction. Pedophiles were loathed even among the dregs of prison populations. It explained the high volunteer rate among them for overlay
research, higher than any group before. They sought to escape their lot, permanently by being cured, or just for a few hours away from their tormentors in prison.
Kate and Sam were as distressed around them as Lucinda. They all took turns in the examination room, talking the prisoners through their crimes so the
magnetoencephalograph could record their brain activities. Lucinda had mostly mastered her sensations of dread around violent offenders, but these men, these acts,
gave her moments of panic she hadn't felt in years.
Her times in the observation booth, concentrating on analysis, were much easier. There, they almost seemed like normal violent prisoners. Most had the familiar
low activity in the frontal lobe, especially in the orbito-frontal cortex, the seat of inhibitions.
That wasn't quite true, though. That area fired rather normally during indirect questions. When recalling specific instances of abuse--methods of luring or
procuring, the actual abuses--it damped down. There were also odd activity patterns in the medial preoptic area of the hypothalamus. Were those patterns the shape
of pedophilia?
Some traits, like the small hippocampus and the active amygdala, became familiar. She had seen those before: they were signs of trauma in early life. Many of
these men had been sexually abused themselves, the patterns imprinted early, then reinforced when they repeated the past as the perpetrators.
Lucinda saw the pattern in one man whose dossier made no mention of abuse suffered. She attached a note to the file, saying he probably had been abused, but
never admitted it.
These sessions of observation settled her. She needed to see the madness broken down, made comprehensible. It might make being around them tolerable in time.
That thought disturbed her all over again.
She managed to get through the roster with no serious panic attacks. She returned to the scanning room, as the guard re-shackled his prisoner and escorted him
out. Lucinda followed them, at a distance. She had one more patient today, but not part of that group.
She entered the spartan waiting room just as the prisoner was shuffling out. Josh Muntz stood from his chair, watching over his shoulder as the door closed. He
yielded to a shudder. "I'm sorry I came early," he told Lucinda. "I was institutionalized with some nasty characters, but he--"
"I know, Josh." She led him into the scanning room. "Will you be able to make it at two tomorrow?" she asked, hoping to give him a distraction.
"Count on it. I'll even bring a little toy for Ben, to make up for his exile."
As she adjusted the MEG, Pavel came into the room. He looked Josh up and down with a hard eye. "It's his monthly check," Lucinda said. "I didn't think we
should reschedule him."
"I know," Pavel said, flashing the screen of his pocket-comp. "Kate had to leave for her doctor's exam. I'll be working with Sam in the booth. You can sit
right down, Mr. Muntz."
Pavel drew her over for a moment's consultation on a trivial matter. She noticed Josh stayed standing, giving Pavel a long, dark look. Once she was finished,
she went to settle Josh into his chair, so he could go under the headset of the MEG.
"Figures," Josh muttered. "I hoped he wouldn't be here, putting his spin on my scans."
Pavel, not quite to the door, turned. "What was that?"
"Nothing, Pavel," Lucinda said quickly.
"It's not nothing." Josh stood up and looked right across the room. "I know you don't believe my first overlay gave me more than I bargained for. Maybe you
should let someone more open-minded do the monitoring."
"Josh—" Lucinda began, but Pavel was faster.
"There is nothing wrong with my open-mindedness, Mr. Muntz," said Pavel, striding over. "I believe what the evidence shows."
"If you know how to read it." He stepped around Lucinda, who was trying to interpose herself between the men. "Maybe you don't like the implication that the
great re-molder of brains might not be perfect. I'll tell you, I like it a lot less."
Pavel scowled. "You, of anyone, are in no position to judge my competence."
"Enough!" Lucinda finally got between them. "Not another word, Josh. Get into the chair. I'll be right back."
She steered Pavel toward the door to the booth, saying nothing until she had some distance from Josh. "I will not have you abusing my patients," she hissed.
"Any more, and I will report you to Doctor Urowsky."
Pavel gave her an incredulous look. "My abuse? How protective we are." His face fell into a sneer. "Cut the strings, Luci. You already have one pet."
He was through the door in an instant, leaving Lucinda dazed in his wake. She went back to tend to Josh, wondering how she'd calm him enough to get a decent
baseline scan of his brain. Her own frame of mind, she managed to ignore.
Lucinda spent a long night organizing the data, and got an early start on her Saturday half-day. She wanted things in order before she could relax--if an
afternoon breathing paint fumes was relaxation.
Their study of pedophiles was going to bear fruit. Common patterns of brain activity were coming into focus. The surgeons would soon have a treatment program
to impress new potentiations onto selected networks of their neurons, to overwrite destructive patterns with healthy ones. They could be set right.
But the team needed to go further. The victims of molestation had to be treated, not merely out of mercy, but to interrupt the generational cycles of abuse. It
would be tough to convince the ethics board, or the Legislature, to allow them to work on adolescents, on children. Worse, though, would be waiting to treat them
until they had to come in chains.
Pavel surely would back the proposal all the way. It fit his mindset that favored therapy absolutely, and scorned any hint of the punitive in what they did.
She wasn't perfectly comfortable having him lead the way, but her qualms were milder than usual.
An icon flashed on her screen. Well, think of the devil. Pavel usually liked to talk to her in person, but after yesterday, she was fine with the distance of a
call right now.
He popped onto the screen. The room behind him wasn't his office: he must be calling from home. "Morning," he said. "I guessed I'd find you there."
"Not much guesswork needed," Lucinda said with a nod. "I want to run an idea about--"
"Actually, I wanted to k-keep this short." Lucinda noticed the stutter that almost never returned, and his hesitation. "I ... have been thinking about your
proposals last week."
"Umm ... which ones?"
"About having our own ethics committee, for one. I'll back you on that with the rest of the team. I'll also support bringing aboard a psychologist, if you
really want one."
"I said I did," Lucinda said carefully. "I still do."
"Okay. Just be careful. With the new transcranial overlay method, actual bone-cutting neurosurgeons like me could be expendable pretty soon. I'm thinking
that, with a psychologist on the team, your good manner with patients might not be needed so much, either. Fair warning," he said, half-grinning.
"I'll take my chances, Pavel." Speaking of which, she decided to take another. She didn't know whether Doctor Dreher would come over from Oak Shade, but she
would try to get her. The fact that she had worked with Josh Muntz might raise Pavel's hackles, but she'd chance it. "I have someone in mind for the position--"
"Good. I'm sure it'll go smoothly. I'll let you get back to work now. Bye."
Just like that, he was gone. Lucinda wondered at his change of mood from yesterday. Was this another of his calculations, politics on the smallest scale?
She decided not to question it too closely. She'd take what he gave, and be glad.
The new set of MEG scans began on Monday, but the trouble began before the first volunteer arrived.
Lucinda saw the demonstration outside the lab building, and promptly turned her car toward a different garage. She went into the building next door, the one
with a connecting tunnel in the sub-basement. Either none of the protestors had thought of that, or they had been cleared away.
So it was out. The only question was, who told?
The daily campus paper in the mailbox outside her office gave her the answer. The "exposé" of their new study was on the front page: it almost was
the front page. The writers didn't reveal who gave them the story, indeed reveling in refusing to name their informants.
Lucinda folded up the paper, and checked her messages. The e-mail filter had screened out several notes, which she made herself inspect. All were abusive, but
none actually threatening, so she deleted them. She did the same with the hate calls on her voice mail.
The surveys went on nearly as usual. Two subjects called to postpone their sessions, and one cancelled outright. The other sessions went on as though nothing
had happened. The scientists didn't raise the matter in the volunteers' presence, and barely spoke of it among themselves, at least not in Lucinda's presence.
By the time Lucinda left her office that evening, she thought the furor had burned itself out, a quick fizzle for this campus. Even the freshly printed
polemical flyer on her windshield didn't bother her, until she spied "This means YOU, Peale!" scrawled at the bottom. She stuffed it into her bag, thinking vaguely
about preserving evidence.
She was out of the garage, almost home free, when something cracked near her head. She turned to see the remnants of egg and something brown smearing down the
window. The next instant, she heard and felt something thud against the back of the car. She looked back, but couldn't see anybody. She began to slow, then hit
the gas, and got away before anything more happened.
"If it wasn't one of us," Doctor Urowsky said, "then it was one of our applicants, or more than one. They're probably people who left without joining, but we
can't be certain."
Urowsky looked dark under his eyes, as though he had slept badly. LaPierre's shoulders hung lower than usual. The rest of the team looked little worse, but the
way some glanced at Lucinda, she assumed she was showing some effects.
"They signed confidentiality agreements," Jeong said. "That means they breached them, and we can take action."
"Against whom?" Barber said. "We have no names."
"So we go to the editors of that paper, explain that our rights have been violated, and ask them to tell us who--" Jeong was stopped short by Pavel's laughter.
"I don't see the joke," Jeong flared. "They'd roast us if we broke that agreement. Why protect someone else who broke it?"
Pavel kept laughing. Lucinda gave Jeong a sad shake of her head. He seethed, but said no more.
"So we may have moles in our study group," LaPierre said, "who could keep committing acts of sabotage like this. Do we cancel the study?"
Lucinda would almost have been glad. It would mean no more worrying whether someone would find her unlisted home number, or street address. It also meant
giving a victory to whoever pelted her car and made her sneak into her own lab. Never mind that she might sympathize with their cause, for once ...
"No!" boomed Pavel. "They don't affect the data. We go forward."
"I agree," Urowsky said. "There's a principle at stake now, and I won't yield it." Lucinda said nothing, content to let them have their way.
"Then maybe we can find the moles ourselves," said Jeong. "We can ask them, under the MEG. We'll be able to spot any lies by the Penn State method."
"So you want to treat our volunteers like criminals?" Pavel said.
"No, like suspects, because they are."
Urowsky shook his head. "That's going too far, Sam. We won't do it."
"What if we don't ask them directly?" Kate suggested. "I'm sure I can craft a few questions about the story and the protests, and make it seem like we're taking
advantage of events to get readings on current controversies. They wouldn't have to know we were looking for informers. We could even get useful data out of it."
Pavel sneered. "So, violate their rights in secret. Yeah, that's much better."
The argument flowed back and forth, but Lucinda stayed aloof. Pavel's side won in the end. Lucinda felt like she had let someone down with her silence, but she
didn't know whom.
A few applications of campus police presence finally broke up the demonstrations, with cries of repression from the accustomed radical sources. Then most of the
weekly alternative paper's run was stolen before it could be distributed, and cries of violated rights rose from the conservatives. The controversy began spinning
away from the lab into a conventional campus political dogfight.
One residual outcome was a wavelet of new volunteers, coming from the few weekly papers that reached the public. Their numbers more than compensated for the
several dropouts, and they would eventually prove to offer the balance Lucinda had sought.
Lucinda didn't interview the new applicants. The schedule holes created by dropouts needed filling, and Friday was her turn to fill one.
It was strange, after so long watching other people be scanned, to undergo it herself. The chair felt stiff as she settled into it. The pads bracing her head
were uncomfortably cool, but she grew accustomed to the pressures. The scanning apparatus looming over and around her felt like a weight ready to drop on her. She
might have a few suggestions for future procedures once she was done.
Kate sat beside her, and after a few minutes of soft music to set a baseline, started asking questions. Lucinda knew most of them already, but still felt
unprepared as she gave her opinions, her reactions, her rationales.
She felt exposed, talking about things she kept to herself or a few scattered friends. She couldn't help wondering whether Pavel was in the booth, watching the
layers being peeled away, finding fresh seeds for arguments or fulcrums for leverage. She resolved not to watch his scan when his turn came. It would feel
indecent.
Lucinda felt little better when she began studying and organizing the neural profiles. Peering into their intimate thoughts felt disturbing, even though they
had volunteered. Strange that she had never felt this way before, looking into the minds of violent offenders, or drug addicts ... or Josh.
But these traits before her, she told herself, were rational, well-adjusted--in most cases. They were thoughts she wouldn't be ashamed to call human. Her
argument, though, didn't settle her qualms.
So she started by dissecting her own brain patterns. She examined which areas of the frontal lobe activated for certain topics, and which ones also tickled
other lobes or deeper recesses of the brain. She noted how specific areas always lit up when she heard specific buzzwords for controversial topics: "abortion,"
"polyamory," "genemod," "intergenerational intimacy." Her brain seriously spiked on the last one, impulses shooting through the orbito-frontal cortex, across the
cerebrum, and even into the limbic system.
Not many subjects from the early scans held the same opinions she did, so obviously they didn't have the same patterns. What soon became clear was that they
weren't similar to each other. Most activity was still in the cortex, but it wasn't pinned down to specific structures within lobes, or always within the same
lobes. Sex questions came the closest, but still showed wide variations in location.
The new scans that came in over the next week strengthened the evidence. The political, the intellectual, the truly complex thoughts seemed to work differently.
The further one got from the inner, primitive brain, the more unique thought patterns became.
Did this explain all the anecdotes? Did political ideas, not moored to any specific area, just get accidentally swept up and imprinted into new brains? It was
a mere hypothesis, and raised plenty of questions itself, but it was a start.
The results heartened Lucinda, and not just in seeing ethical dilemmas forestalled or a murky question becoming clearer. Her years on the project had shown her
mounting evidence that the brain was as Pavel envisaged it, a purely mechanistic, deterministic organ. It was good to see brains as individual, as capable of free
action, again. The evidence was modest, but she welcomed it.
She felt a few touches of sorrow: for Darjeane, who was counting on her; for Josh and the others, who could be restored, truly helped, by what they sought. At
heart, though, she was glad the quest now seemed impossible.
"It's going to be tough," Pavel said, gazing intently at his monitor. "Tough, but not impossible. No," he repeated softly, "not impossible."
He had called Lucinda in to confer, but was treating her like a mild distraction. He was studying a dozen scan images, all of slightly different areas of
frontal lobes. He overlaid some of them, and made notes on a pocket-comp.
"We could always try the brute force method," Pavel said. "Gather enough templates so that eventually, by law of averages, we get a contrary opinion using the
same neural pathways."
"What if the numbers are against you? These patterns may be as unique as fingerprints, or DNA. You may never find an exact match."
"We don't need an exact match, Luci. We've performed dozens of overlays without exact matches."
"Yes," Lucinda said, "when much of the work was done outside the cortex. And those patients were gravely dysfunctional. Fixing those dysfunctions was
paramount, even at the cost of causing alterations in their personalities, their politics."
"No. No, it's not a show-stopper, just a trade-off."
Lucinda was surprised. Any other time, Pavel would have risen to deny the old anecdotes. Had he seen some firmer evidence in those scans, enough that his
half-hearted protestations didn't seem to convince even himself?
"A concentrated aversion therapy could do it," he said. "Get the right neurotransmitters flowing in the orbito-frontal when they hear things we want them to
disbelieve, and they'll disbelieve them. Same with forming affinities. They'd be awake during the trans-cranial procedure, so--"
"So they'd build aversions and affinities for what else, Pavel? Anything they saw during the operation, like the color of the walls? Doctors? Do you want
groupies that badly--or people deathly afraid of you?"
"They could keep their eyes shut ... but okay, that wouldn't stop hearing, or even random thoughts that could get caught up in the changes. But if we put them
under ..." He said nothing for a few minutes, though his lips moved and his fingers gestured.
"All right, there's cross-mapping," he said, apparently discarding the aversion idea. "Find similar structures performing related tasks in different areas. For
that to work ..." He trailed off again. A moment later, he shook his head with a groan.
"It's all right, Pavel," Lucinda said. "There's no point in exhausting yourself if the problem is intractable."
He looked up sharply. "It isn't a matter of if, Luci. Nature always yields its secrets." Lucinda didn't want a tiff over quantum mechanics, especially in
connection with the brain, so she held her peace.
"But nature doesn't have to make it easy," he admitted. "If I had an uninterrupted year with this problem, with more templates to study--a lot more--I could
crack it. Probably."
"Is there any chance you'll have it cracked by tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow? Oh God, that's right. Her." He shook his head, defeated. "Sorry, but your mystery petitioner is going to have to be patient. Maybe very
patient."
"This is all you can give me?" Darjeane Carson said, hefting the legal-sized pocket-comp. "Something, maybe, in a year or two?"
Lucinda nodded gently. "Barring sudden breakthroughs, yes. Pavel would say up-front if he had better prospects." Pavel had written most of the report Darjeane
was reading, with snippets from Lucinda and Urowsky. "I'm sorry I couldn't send you back south with better news."
Darjeane re-crossed her bare legs, and studied the pocket-comp for a long time. "Maybe you can," she said. Her eyes wavered, not quite locking on Lucinda's.
"Could you do this more easily if it were one specific thing, not a whole array of them?"
Lucinda thought. "It would simplify matters, but there'd still be the need to figure out the methodology to transfer any particular ... thing."
"But you could concentrate your work on that one thing, move faster than if your efforts were spread out, right?"
Lucinda edged forward in her chair. "Ms. Carson, exactly what do you have in mind?"
Darjeane hesitated on the edge of speech. If this was acting, Lucinda though, it was excellent.
"I'm saying this only because I trust in your understanding, and discretion. If this were publicly connected to me ... well, aside from everything else, there
are still box office realities. It would limit my star potential to be so openly ... oriented."
Before Lucinda could say anything, the words began cascading out of Darjeane. "You see, every star needs a breakout role. There's a project under development
now that's got that role for me. It's perfect. I read the book, I empathize totally with the character, and the script hasn't changed her out of recognition, so
I'll be able to play the part right. I've given readings; I've gotten callbacks. It's all working out.
"Except ... there's this producer who controls the property. She's sat in on all my readings. She's taken me aside, told me how good I'd be in the role--but
she's also told me, more than once, that I'm not doing everything I could to get the part."
Her breath came in a gasp. "She's done this before. I know five or six actresses who have gone to bed with her for roles. Names you'd know, Doctor Peale,
whose careers have benefited. I want, I need that same boost--but I can't make myself do what I have to.
"I guess it's how I was raised, just another of those beliefs that have made me fit in so badly in Hollywood. I'm not sure I would have done it for a man,
either, or maybe I never noticed the hints they were dropping. But I have to deal with what I've been handed. I have to be able to do this, whether it's just the
one time, or whether the change is more ... permanent."
Her smile, already sad, turned miserable. "Please don't look so shocked. I've been shocked enough for two people, I promise you. But I made my decision, and
now that I can't hide it as part of an overall modification any longer, I'm sticking with it."
She reached over to touch Lucinda's hand, and it was all Lucinda could do to suppress a shiver.
"I want you to make me a lesbian, Doctor."
Urowsky and Dreher came into the staff room together. "Luci, what's happened?" Urowsky demanded. "Why have you called this meeting?"
"Not yet, Steven. Not until everyone is here." She gave Dreher an apologetic look. "Sorry this is how we're bringing you into the team, Vera."
A moment later, Pavel came roaring in. "Luci, what is going on? I just got a video mail from your mystery actress, calling you every name in the book, saying
you--"
"I can guess what she's saying, Pavel. If you'll sit down, I can tell you all what happened."
She told them in a few short sentences what Darjeane had revealed. She elided over her futile attempts to dissuade her, that had just made Darjeane
disillusioned and then incensed at her lack of compassion. Instead, she just said, "I took the liberty of saying for all of us that we can't and won't perform such
a procedure."
"And you had no right!"
Lucinda looked over at Pavel. "That's not all I did. I notified an old colleague at UCLA. Together we've warned every research team working on overlay about a
person wanting a change of sexuality under duress, and urged them not to accommodate that person. I'm pretty sure UCLA will agree. We'll see about the rest."
She waited to see who would break the stunned silence. Thankfully, it wasn't Pavel. "Doctor Peale," LaPierre said, "you have gone far beyond your authority as
part of this team. You and this secret colleague—"
"It's no secret. She's Frances Roselli. She's before your time here, Doctor, but some of the others remember her."
"In any event, the two of you presumed to speak for us all."
"We spoke for ourselves, Doctor LaPierre."
"Wrong." Pavel had finally regained his voice. "You spoke in all our names, especially to Ms. Carson—and you lied!"
"About what?"
""Can't and won't," you said. Both of those are wrong. We can do a sexual preference overlay."
"I wasn't aware the team had worked in that area," LaPierre said.
"We haven't," said Urowsky.
"It's not that difficult," Pavel insisted, fingertips touching his temples. "I can see it. It's mostly hypothalamic work. I'd have to damp activity in the
ventromedial nucleus, probably raise it in the INAH3 nucleus, stimulate production of endorphin receptors in the right places. I can get details on the fine
structures from scans we have on file. We have a couple of lesbians in the current pool: they said so in their political surveys."
Each sentence chilled Lucinda more. "Pavel," she said, "you're not going to do this."
Pavel looked at her. The intensity in his eyes almost knocked her over. "What's to stop us? Not our technology; not our expertise. Only reactionary fears,
naked homophobia."
Lucinda shuddered. "Were you listening to what I said about Carson?"
"Absolutely. It was a real shock hearing you, worse than your scans suggested. You're blinded to the facts. Sexuality is hard-wired in the womb. The neural
patterns are inherent. If you're too prejudiced to accept scientific reality, you don't belong here."
"Now wait--" Dreher's objection was stilled by a gesture from a resigned Urowsky.
Lucinda leaned in. "You've been studying neurobiology too long to be that simplistic, Doctor Patrusky. The path goes both ways. Actions create and reinforce
neural architecture, the same as brain patterns producing actions. We're not just made by our minds, we make them."
Pavel rolled his eyes. "Free will again. Fine. If you believe that, you should have respected Ms. Carson's desire to create her own mindset. You should have
permitted her to choose homosexuality, instead of repressing her rights."
Lucinda shook her head. "You haven't listened to me. She's being exploited, coerced into abusive sex--and don't twist my words. You wouldn't tolerate
this if a man were demanding she sleep with him to get a role. God knows the casting couch has been around in Hollywood long before this, probably before talking
pictures. Now that there's a new wrinkle in the abuse, do you really--really--think that's progress?"
She sagged, her arms on the table barely holding her up. "I thought we were working to prevent abuse, not perpetuate it."
Pavel's jaw trembled. "It wasn't your call to make."
She straightened with an effort. "You're the one who said scientists should be in control. Well, now they are: all of them, not just our little group. I gave
them the facts, and I have to trust they'll do the right thing with them."
"You didn't trust me."
Lucinda turned toward Dreher. "Pardon?"
"I thought you brought me onto the team to evaluate people in situations like this," Dreher said. "Instead, you took it upon yourself. I wasn't much in
control, was I?"
Lucinda's heart fell. "Oh. Vera, I wasn't even thinking about you. I'm so--"
"Wrong," Pavel said, softly but sharply. "Every assumption you've made, wrong."
"I assumed this team wouldn't assent to what Ms. Carson requested. Is that wrong?" She looked at everyone at the table. "Is there any question this is
unethical? Would any of you, knowing what you do, really have agreed to this?"
Pavel put up his hand. Sam shook his head hard. Everyone else hesitated. Lucinda saw fractional head shakes from Barber and Dreher, but nothing full-blooded.
"Doctor Urowsky," she said, arms wide in appeal.
"My misgivings are not the issue, Doctor Peale. You acted without our consent, without even informing us, regardless of what you believed we would decide."
Lucinda took a moment to reply. "You're right. A few hours' delay to consult with you probably would not have affected anything. I acted too precipitously,
and for that I apologize."
"Apologizing isn't enough," Pavel said. "We have to reverse your actions. You and Roselli have to rescind all the messages you sent out. You personally have
to tell Carson you're reconsidering, and then we have to actually reconsider, once passions have cooled. That'll be a start."
"No," Lucinda said. "I'm sorry for my haste, not my convictions. What you're proposing is an implicit reversal of policy, and approval of sexuality rewrite.
It would be the start of the gross misuse of neural overlay, the gateway to abuses I don't even want to contemplate. We need to take a stand on ethics, and this is
the time."
I shouldn't have even let it come this far, she thought. I've tried to avoid controversy. Now I have to embrace it. Let's see how well I can play
Pavel's game.
"If you decide to reverse me," she said, "it moves us in an ethical direction I cannot follow. I won't be able to work on this team any longer if that happens."
There were frowns across the table, one deeper than the rest. "That's blackmail," Pavel said, "threatening to leave if we don't approve your unilateral action."
"Really? Remember when you threatened to leave if Doctor Urowsky wouldn't operate to clear your stutter?" From the corner of her eye, she saw Dreher looking
from one person to another, as if wondering what she had gotten into.
"That was just me," Pavel said. "It didn't leave this room. What you've done has already spread across the country. Our reputation's at stake."
"I couldn't agree more," said Lucinda. "Holding this ethical line is more important than what it could cost me. If to feel justified in retaining this stance,
you have to discipline me--or dismiss me--that's a price I accept."
Her legs wobbled a little. The suddenness of it all had left her dizzy, but she didn't feel any regret over what she had just said.
Urowsky leaned his chin onto his hand. "We need to discuss this matter, Doctor Peale. I have to ask you to step outside."
"Of course. When you need me again, I'll be in my office." She turned, feeling steadier on her feet, and left the room.
Lucinda had one of the pedophiles' brain scans on her monitor, next to a potential donor template. She traced pathways between the hypothalamus and cortex with
a light pen, the paths lighting up in both brains. Overlay this, interrupt that sexual ideation, and a monster regained control over himself.
It was a fairly routine analysis these days, but Lucinda drew solace from it. This was work she could do without dread.
She heard a knock, and looked up to see Pavel at her door. "I'll be right in," she said.
"The meeting's over," said Pavel, his mouth turned down.
"Oh." It sank in for a moment. Quite calmly, she pulled over a box in the corner, emptied it of the paper files it held, and started opening desk drawers.
"What are you doing, Luci?"
"I'm packing up my things, Doctor Patrusky." She didn't look at him. "If they sent you, I'm pretty sure I know what they decided. Congratulations."
"We're not doing the procedure," Pavel said through a tight throat. "And you're not out of the program ... not if you don't want to be."
Lucinda turned slowly Pavel's way. "What does that mean?"
"It means we're going to be keeping a very close watch on you. We'll be monitoring your outgoing e-mail and Net-phone use, so you don't go around us again.
We'll also be sifting through all the computer records you've handled, all the data, to see if there's anything you may have ... adjusted."
"What?" Lucinda's face burned. "If you distrust me enough to think I may have falsified data, how can you trust me enough to let me keep working here?"
"If the records are clean, that'll show we can trust you."
"I see. And what else?"
Pavel wore what could have been a grimace, or a smile. "You will make no more comments about Ms. Carson or the sexuality overlay to anyone, even people you've
already informed, even if they ask you directly. The whole team will be silent about it, at least until our ethics committee makes a long-term decision."
"That sounds about--" She stopped in mid-nod. ""Our" committee, you said?"
"Yes. That's a bit of good news for you: we're formally creating the ethics committee you wanted."
Lucinda read through him. "And I'm not on it. And you are."
Pavel nodded. "Myself, Doctor Urowsky, and Doctor Dreher."
"Dreher? On her first day?"
"Almost her last day. Urowsky and LaPierre had to work fast to keep her from quitting the team after your outburst."
Lucinda ignored the jab. "What about Kate? She and I interact the most with the subjects. We'd be ignoring that connection."
"That's Dreher's province. That's why you wanted a psychologist on the team, isn't it?"
She subsided at that, outmaneuvered again. "How many of these conditions were your ideas, Pavel, your ways to chastise me?"
Pavel went stony. "I won't discuss deliberations made behind closed doors. There was a reason we asked you to leave." He softened. "I do hope you will stay,
Luci."
"Do you really care?"
Her sharp words put him back on his heels for an instant. "It would hurt us t-to lose your talents. There's no reason you can't do your work here as well as
before, or better, if you can put aside your politics."
Lucinda arched her eyebrows. "In favor of yours?"
"You'd be better off--but no, I don't imagine you'll come my way. That's plain now." Pavel's face was stone again. "You have the weekend to decide whether
you'll accept our conditions for staying on, Doctor Peale. Please don't take any longer." He marched out without a backward glance, swinging the door shut with a
firm thud.
"I said, do you hear me, Doc?"
"Hm?" Lucinda lowered her roller and looked dully down from her ladder at Josh. Only when a drop of paint fell past the brim of her cap did she snap into full
awareness. "Sorry, Josh. What did you say?"
"I asked you what was wrong. You've been morose all day, and yesterday. More so than me, and that's saying something."
She had been dwelling on things, and Josh had just broken up one of the deeper spells. "It's ..." She started working on the ceiling again, to give herself a
moment. "I tried to do something at work, thinking I was protecting someone. I may have made matters worse."
She wasn't convinced, but she certainly felt like she had lost more by her precipitate actions than she had gained by taking a stand. Each day, she half-
expected to hear that Darjeane Carson had gone public, made an open controversy of it. She more strongly expected that Carson would quietly find some institution,
maybe in America, maybe in Europe, that wouldn't have the scruples she had exhorted, at such cost. She might have paid only for a short delay.
"Someone in the program, I assume," said Josh. "Someone you've already ...?"
Lucinda saw where he was going. "No, not one of our subjects," she said, meaning Not you. That satisfied him, and he went back to his edging work.
The irony was, her disgrace at work made it more certain that research on political overlays would go ahead, and that Josh might someday get those unwonted ideas
out of his head. Could she even begin to explain her qualms to him, why she would have sacrificed his benefit for something larger?
If he ever got the opportunity, though--if Pavel's panel judged his case worthy--she wouldn't try to stop Josh. She'd tell him what was possible, give him the
chance. Something good had to come of this, especially when the bad things seemed all but sure.
Those thoughts occupied her as they finished painting the main bedroom, the final room they had to do. Four weeks of disruption were finally over. Now, maybe,
Lucinda could have a place again where her life felt normal.
They moved the ladders and other equipment into the hall, and started folding the dropcloth between them. "Doc," said Josh, "I want to thank you again for
thinking of me. This job's been a real help."
"You've been a help, Josh, even if you keep calling me "Doc." That just doesn't sound right. Anyway, you deserved the opportunity."
"That's nice of you to say. This'll definitely help pay for that electronics course, and it doesn't hurt that it got me out of the house." The little he had
said about his parents' fights in the last few weeks made it sound like they wouldn't both be in that house much longer.
"But I still want to show my appreciation ... Lucinda." He took the corners of the thrice-folded dropcloth from her hands, to finish the folding himself. "Let
me take you out somewhere for dinner, to celebrate our completed project."
Lucinda gave a small gasp, trying not to make it sound like a laugh. "Josh, are you--"
Josh froze for a second, blinking, holding the dropcloth in front of his chest. "Uh, after we've cleaned up, of course." His eyes dropped to his spattered
clothes. "Oh, but my good stuff's at home, and I can't go out looking like ...."
A growling moan outside saved him. "Tell you what," he said, setting down the folded dropcloth. "You close off the room, and I'll let Ben in." He hurried into
the hall and down the stairs.
Lucinda took a breath. She was reading too much into this. Josh was just trying to re-socialize. He had been conscientious about reversing the passive,
isolated patterns of behavior from his years of schizophrenia.
He couldn't have other things in mind. Less than a year ago, he had asked her whether he could have his sex drive erased. No woman, he said, could understand
and forgive his past, could trust him not to be violent again.
No one, perhaps, except the woman before whom his mind had been laid bare, who knew all his most horrible secrets—and not only hadn't shunned him, but had shown
trust in him.
Suddenly, that confrontation Josh had with Pavel a couple of weeks ago made sense. Then things shifted, and it made sense in both directions. Of all things
never to suspect ...
She heard feet pattering downstairs. She moved anything that might be too messy into the bedroom and shut the door, just before Ben came trotting upstairs.
Josh was close behind him. "Yeah," he told the dog, "you'll have the whole house back soon, pal. You'll love that." He gave Lucinda a crooked smile. "Anyway,
uh ..."
"You're probably right," she said. "It's a bad day for it." She watched him sag and nod. "What time does your shift at the municipal building end?"
"Huh? Oh, tomorrow? Six in the evening. I'm finally on day shift."
"Good. I can get out of the lab at a decent hour, and pick you up for dinner. Oh, and I'll pay, Josh. Consider it a tip."
After a moment of bewilderment, Josh said, "Sure. Thanks again, I guess." His eyes moved off her fast, and found Ben. He knelt to give Ben a rub behind the
ears.
Lucinda watched them both. Pavel was wrong, she thought. You're not a pet, Josh. You're not a plaything. I will remember that.
She wished she could talk to Doctor Dreher, get an opinion from someone more objective, yet still connected. Vera surely wasn't in a mood for such a
conversation, though. She might even think it something for the ethics committee, if Lucinda had completely alienated her, if she had gone wholly into Pavel's
orbit. Lucinda was alone on this.
No, you aren't. Josh has his own mind, his own moral center. Our work has done him that much good.
It had done a lot, if she could consider even the possibility of getting closer to Josh. It had done as much for scores of people, many worse off than he.
It was that thought that made her decide to stick with the overlay team, if she could stand it. She had to do as much good as she could for their patients, and
to counter the attraction of dubious and dangerous ethics as long as she was able. Such fights wouldn't make her popular, but she had already crossed that line
from passivity and avoidance of conflict. She could go forward or retreat, and she chose forward.
There was some of that attitude she could apply to Josh, too. Try to do good for him, keep his best interests foremost in her mind, whatever they were, and she
couldn't go far wrong. That applied both professionally and personally.
He might appreciate the irony, Lucinda realized as she watched Josh and Ben playing in the hallway. After all the horrible deeds of his youth, he was going to
be her conscience.
|