The Complete Stories_ Volume 1 - Isaac Asimov [98]
The doctor had his back to him. From one of the instruments a strip of paper unwound and was covered with a thin, wavy purple line. The doctor tore off pieces and put them into a slot in another machine. He did it over and over again. Each time a little piece of film came out, which the doctor looked at. Finally, he turned toward George with a queer frown between his eyes.
The buzzing stopped.
George said breathlessly, “Is it over?”
The doctor said, “Yes,” but he was still frowning.
“Can I read now?” asked George. He felt no different.
The doctor said, “What?” then smiled very suddenly and briefly. He said, “It works fine, George. You’ll be reading in fifteen minutes. Now we’re going to use another machine this time and it will take longer. I’m going to cover your whole head, and when I turn it on you won’t be able to see or hear anything for a while, but it won’t hurt. Just to make sure I’m going to give you a little switch to hold in your hand. If anything hurts, you press the little button and everything shuts off. All right?”
In later years, George was told that the little switch was strictly a dummy; that it was introduced solely for confidence. He never did know for sure, however, since he never pushed the button.
A large smoothly curved helmet with a rubbery inner lining was placed over his head and left there. Three or four little knobs seemed to grab at him and bite into his skull, but there was only a little pressure that faded. No pain.
The doctor’s voice sounded dimly. “Everything all right, George?”
And then, with no real warning, a layer of thick felt closed down all about him. He was disembodied, there was no sensation, no universe, only himself and a distant murmur at the very ends of nothingness telling him something—telling him—telling him— He strained to hear and understand but there was all that thick felt between.
Then the helmet was taken off his head, and the light was so bright that it hurt his eyes while the doctor’s voice drummed at his ears.
The doctor said, “Here’s your card, George. What does it say?”
George looked at his card again and gave out a strangled shout. The marks weren’t just marks at all. They made up words. They were words just as clearly as though something were whispering them in his ears. He could hear them being whispered as he looked at them.
“What does it say, George?”
“It says—it says—’Platen, George. Born 13 February 6492 of Peter and Amy Platen in. . .‘ “He broke off.
“You can read, George,” said the doctor. “It’s all over.”
“For good? I won’t forget how?”
“Of course not.” The doctor leaned over to shake hands gravely. “You will be taken home now.”
It was days before George got over this new and great talent of his. He read for his father with such facility that Platen, Senior, wept and called relatives to tell the good news.
George walked about town, reading every scrap of printing he could find and wondering how it was that none of it had ever made sense to him before.
He tried to remember how it was not to be able to read and he couldn’t. As far as his feeling about it was concerned, he had always been able to read. Always.
At eighteen, George was rather dark, of medium height, but thin enough to look taller. Trevelyan, who was scarcely an inch shorter, had a stockiness of build that made “Stubby” more than ever appropriate, but in this last year he had grown self-conscious. The nickname could no longer be used without reprisal. And since Trevelyan disapproved of his proper first name even more strongly, he was called Trevelyan or any decent variant of that. As though to prove his manhood further, he had most persistently grown a pair of sideburns and a bristly mustache.
He was sweating and nervous now, and George, who had himself grown out of “Jaw-jee” and into the curt monosyllabic gutterality of “George,” was rather amused by that.
They were in the same large hall they had been in ten years before (and not since). It was as if a vague dream of the past had come to sudden reality. In the first few minutes George had been distinctly