Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov [48]
“If you don’t mind, Dr. Semic.”
Semic’s age-yellowed face was serious. Electroencephalography was a science of his old age of which he knew little; an upstart that he faintly resented. He knew that he was old and that his wave-pattern would show it. The wrinkles on his face showed it, the stoop in his walk, the shaking of his hand—but they spoke only of his body. The brainwave patterns might show that his mind was old, too. An embarrassing and unwarranted invasion of a man’s last protecting stronghold, his own mind.
The electrodes were adjusted. The process did not hurt, of course, from beginning to end. There was just that tiny tingle, far below the threshold of sensation.
And then came Turbor, who sat quietly and unemotionally through the fifteen-minute process, and Munn, who jerked at the first touch of the electrodes and then spent the session rolling his eyes as though he wished he could turn them backwards and watch through a hole in his occiput.
“And now—” said Darell, when all was done.
“And now,” said Anthor, apologetically, “there is one more person in the house.”
Darell, frowning, said: “My daughter?”
“Yes. I suggested that she stay home tonight, if you’ll remember.”
“For encephalographical analysis? What in the Galaxy for?”
“I cannot proceed without it.”
Darell shrugged and climbed the stairs. Arcadia, amply warned, had the sound-receiver off when he entered; then followed him down with mild obedience. It was the first time in her life—except for the taking of her basic mind pattern as an infant, for identification and registration purposes—that she found herself under the electrodes.
“May I see?” she asked, when it was over, holding out her hand.
Dr. Darell said, “You would not understand, Arcadia. Isn’t it time for you to go to bed?”
“Yes, father,” she said, demurely. “Good night, all.”
She ran up the stairs and plumped into bed with a minimum of basic preparation. With Olynthus’ sound-receiver propped beside her pillow, she felt like a character out of a book-film, and hugged every moment of it close to her chest in an ecstasy of “spystuff.”
The first words she heard were Anthor’s and they were: “The analyses, gentlemen, are all satisfactory. The child’s as well.”
Child, she thought disgustedly, and bristled at Anthor in the darkness.
Anthor had opened his briefcase now, and out of it, he took several dozen brainwave records. They were not originals. Nor had the briefcase been fitted with an ordinary lock. Had the key been held in any hand other than his own, the contents thereof would have silently and instantly oxidized to an indecipherable ash. Once removed from the briefcase, the records did so anyway after half an hour.
But during their short lifetime, Anthor spoke quickly. “I have the records here of several minor government officials, at Anacreon. This is a psychologist at Locris University; this an industrialist at Siwenna. The rest are as you see.”
They crowded closely. To all but Darell, they were so many quivers on parchment. To Darell, they shouted with a million tongues.
Anthor pointed lightly, “I call your attention, Dr. Darell, to the plateau region among the secondary Tauian waves in the frontal lobe, which is what all these records have in common. Would you use my Analytical Rule, sir, to check my statement?”
The Analytical Rule might be considered a distant relation—as a skyscraper is to a shack—of that kindergarten toy, the logarithmic Slide Rule. Darell used it with the wrist flip of long practice. He made freehand drawings of the result and, as Anthor stated, there were featureless plateaus in frontal lobe regions where strong swings should have been expected.
“How would you interpret that, Dr. Darell?” asked Anthor.
“I’m not sure. Offhand, I don’t see how it’s possible. Even in cases of amnesia, there is suppression, but not removal. Drastic brain surgery, perhaps?”
“Oh, something’s been cut out,” cried Anthor, impatiently, “yes! Not in the physical sense, however. You know, the Mule could have done just that. He could have suppressed completely all capacity