Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [64]
A few more of Doctor Kenny's patients came up on the screen, but neither of them were paying attention.
"There have to be some problems," Tia said, finally. "I mean, nothing is perfect."
"We don't have full duplication of sensory input. In Lila's case, we have it in the entire foot and the ankle and knee-joints, and we've pretty much ignored the stretches of leg in between. Weight is the other problem. The more sensory nerves we duplicate, the higher the weight. A ten-kilo hand is going to give someone a lot of trouble, for instance." Kenny shifted a little in his chair. "But all of this is coming straight out of what's going on in the Lab Schools, Tia! And most of it is from the brainship program—the same thing that gives you sensory input from the ships' systems are what became the sensory linkups for those artificial limbs."
"That's wonderful!" Tia said, very pleased for him. "You're quite something, Doctor Kennet!"
"Oh, there's a lot more to be done," he said modestly. "I haven't heard any of Lila's fellow dancers clamoring to have double-amputations and new legs installed. She has her problems, and there's some pain involved, even after healing is completed. In a way, it's a good thing for us that our first leg-installation was for a dancer, because Lila was used to living with pain—all dancers are. And it's very expensive; she was lucky, because the insurance company involved judged that compensating her for a lost—very lucrative—career was more expensive than an artificial limb. Although—given the life expectancy of you shellpersons, and compare it to those of us still in our designed-by-genetics containers—well, I can foresee a day when we'll all have our brains tucked into minishells when the old envelope starts to decay, and instead of deciding what clothes we want to wear, we have to decide what body to put on."
"Oh, I don't think it'll come to that, really," Tia said decisively. "For one thing, if it's expensive for one limb, a whole body would be impossible."
"It is that," Kenny agreed. "But to tell you the truth, right now the problem besides expense isn't technical—we could put the fully-functioning body together—and do it today. It's actually easier to do that than just one limb. Oh, by that, I mean one with full sensory inputs."
He didn't say anything, but he winked, and grinned wickedly. "And by 'full sensory input,' I mean exactly what you're thinking, you naughty young lady."
"Me?" she said, with completely feigned indignation. "I have no idea what you're talking about! I am as innocent as—as—"
"As I am," Kenny said. "You were the one who was asking about me and Anna."
She remained silent, pretending dignity. He continued to grin, and she knew he wasn't fooled in the least.
"Well, anyway, the problem is having a life-support system for a naked brain." He shrugged. "Can't quite manage that—putting a whole body into a life-support shell is still the only way to deal with trauma like yours. And we can't fit that into a human-sized body."
"Oh, you could make us great big bodies and create a whole race of giants," she joked. "That should actually be easier, from what you've told me."
He cast his eyes upwards, surprising her somewhat with his sudden flare of exasperation. "Believe it or not, there's a fellow who wants to do something like that, for the holos. He wants to create giant full-sensory bodies of—oh, dinosaurs, monsters, whatever—hire a shellperson actor,