Dolphin Island - Arthur C. Clarke [42]
"No one's going to hurt you, old girl," he said reassuringly. "It'll all be over in a minute, and you can start swimming around again."
Then, to Mick's alarm, one of the technicians approached Snowy with an object that looked like a cross between a hypodermic needle and an electric drill. With great care, he selected a spot on the back of the whale's head, placed the device against it, and pressed a button. There was a faint, high-pitched whine, and the needle sank deep into Snowy's brain, going through the thick bone of the skull as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.
The operation upset Mick much more than it did Snowy, who seemed scarcely aware of the pinprick. This would not have surprised anyone with a knowledge of physiology, but Mick, like most people, did not know the curious fact that the brain has no sense of feeling. It can be cut or pierced without any discomfort to its owner.
Altogether, ten probes were sunk into Snowy's brain. Wires were connected to them and taken to a flat, streamlined box that was clamped to the top of the whale's head. The whole operation took less than an hour. When it was over, the pool was flooded again and Snowy, puffing and blowing, started to swim lazily back and forth. She was obviously none the worse for her experience, though it seemed to Mick that she looked at him with the hurt expression of a person who had been let down by a trusted friend.
The next day, Dr. Saha arrived from New Delhi. As a member of the Institute's Advisory Committee, he was an old friend of Professor Kazan's. He was also a world authority on that most complex of all organs, the human brain.
"The last time I used this equipment," said the physiologist, as he watched Snowy swimming back and forth in the pool, "it was on an elephant. Before I'd finished, I could control his trunk accurately enough to type with it."
"We don't need that sort of virtuosity here," Professor Kazan answered. "All I want to do is to control Snowy's movements and to teach her not to eat dolphins."
"If my men have put the electrodes in the right area, I think I can promise that. But not immediately; I'll have to do some brain-mapping first."
This "brain-mapping" was slow, delicate work, requiring great patience and skill, and Saha sat for hours at his instrument panel, observing Snowy's behavior as she dived, basked in the sun, swam lazily around the pool, or took the fish that Mick offered her.
All the time her brain was broadcasting like a satellite in orbit, through the radio transmitter attached to it. The impulses picked up by the probes were recorded on tape, so that Dr. Saha could see the pattern of electrical activity corresponding to any particular action.
At last he was ready for the first step. Instead of receiving impulses from Snowy's brain, he began to feed electric currents into it.
The result was both fascinating and uncanny—more like magic than science. By turning a knob or closing a switch, Dr. Saha could make the great animal swim to right or left, describe circles or figure eights, float motionless in the center of the pool, or carry out any other movement he wished. Johnny's efforts to control Sputnik and Susie with the communicator, which had once seemed so impressive, now appeared almost childish.
But Johnny did not mind, Susie and Sputnik were his friends, and he preferred to leave them freedom of choice. If they did not wish to obey him—as was often the case— that was their privilege. Snowy had no alternative; the electric currents fed into her brain had turned her into a living robot, with no will of her own, compelled to carry out the orders Dr. Saha gave her.
The more that Johnny thought about this, the more uncomfortable he became. Could the same control be applied to me? When he made inquiries, he found that this had indeed been done, many times, in laboratory experiments. Here was a scientific tool that might be as dangerous as atomic energy if used for evil instead of good.
There was