The first week at Pearse was devoted practically in its entirety to batteries of psychological tests, and a series of brain scans and physiological measurements to look for irregularities in neural functioning. Two of the original twenty volunteers were found unsuitable and returned to their units.
The second week consisted of protracted interviews held individually with the remainder, by Major Gleavey, Dr. Nordens, and several other civilians. The style of the inter-views was free and rambling, ranging across a whole gamut of topics that covered hobbies, sports, personal lives, home backgrounds, ambitions and aspirations, and the men's views on everything from sex and religion to the political implications of the Western consolidation, the nature of the FER, and the future of the Offworld expansion. Guessing the purpose of this was a continual subject of discussion and speculation back in the billet block during the evenings. The general consensus was that the range of subjects had been made wide and confusing deliberately, to obscure whatever it was that the program designers were really interested in.
Lowe dismissed the whole thing as a market-research exercise to find ways of increasing the appeal of service life, because the Europeans were allegedly losing a lot of defec-tors to the FER. Parker, a small, wiry tank man from Arizona, thought it might be a prelude to some kind of mood-altering-drug testing, aimed at restoring old-fashioned standards of discipline and dedication in an age when old-fashioned methods wouldn't work. Demiro didn't expound any theory. But there was one thing he'd noticed whenever the talk drifted into politics, which it tended to do more often than he'd have thought normal for a typical barracks-room mix: an underlying attitude, varying from vague -disquiet to open cynicism toward the existing system, was something they all seemed to share.
Four of the group were rejected as unsuitable in this phase, and a further two as security risks, reducing the original twenty to a dozen. At the end of the second week, they assembled in the briefing room again, where Colonel Wylvern, Major Gleavey, and Dr. Nordens were waiting.
Nordens walked over to a metal shelf with a button panel underneath that hinged out from the wall on one side of the room to serve as a podium. The lights dimmed, and the screen facing the audience from behind him came to life. As usual, Nordens wasn't wasting any time on preliminaries. There was a shuffling and muttering of interest. After two weeks of interminable testing and talking, this was more like it.
The screen showed a chimpanzee squatting on one side of a barrier consisting of metal bars, like the side of a cage. The chimp was fiddling with some wooden rods, pushing them together end to end, watching them fall apart again, fingering its chin in growing exasperation, screeching, then trying again. Some distance away beyond the barrier was a bunch of bananas.
Nordens half turned to watch, commenting at the same time, "The rods are too short to reach the reward, but they can be joined together to form a single length that will. However, the ends are fitted with specially shaped key-pieces that will mate only with the correct counterpart. Hence the rods must be assembled in the correct order, with the large hook—you can see it there—at the far end to retrieve the prize. This animal has not been trained to perform the task, but she has been allowed to observe others that have.
The chimp tried once again with several rods in turn, one at a time, got nowhere, and vented its frustration in a burst of screeching and whooping. Then it began vainly trying to join them together again. Nordens resumed, "As you can see, she hasn't a clue. She knows that the task is possible, but she has no idea of the detailed procedure necessary to accomplish it." This was confirmed a few moments later, when the chimp gave up, smashed all the rods in a rage, and proceeded to dance up and down on the pieces.
"Now, gentlemen, observe this," Nordens said.
The scene now was of a chimp lying apparently asleep strapped to a couch with its head in the center of a complicated machine, surrounded by elaborate equipment. "The process you are observing is in no way harmful or uncomfortable," Nordens remarked, anticipating the unvoiced question of many of the audience. "Sedation is necessary simply because chimpanzees are not very good at following instructions. This is the same female as you saw -before. Now let's see her again, shortly after this was taken."
Next they were back at the setup for the problem with the rods. But this time the chimp assembled the pieces deftly and unerringly, hooked the bananas, and settled down contentedly to enjoy the feast. Some murmurs of surprise and a whistle of appreciation came up from the watchers.
"I must stress that the recording was not doctored," Nordens went on. "The subject underwent no form of training whatsoever between the previous attempt that you saw, and the time we are observing here. Yet as you can see, she is now able to solve the problem easily." Nordens cut the screen, brought the lights up again, nodded curtly to Major Gleavey, and sat down.
Gleavey turned in the center of the room in front of the screen, his arms extended like a ringmaster announcing the star act. "When you input something to a computer, the electronic codes inside the computer are changed, right? The changes reflect the new information. Well, the same kind of thing holds true inside your head. When you learn something, something somewhere has to change. Something that's there after has to be different from what it was before." He looked around to check that they were all following, as if he were presenting quantum physics to ten-year-olds—not slow, but naturally new to this—and nodded. "Well, what you've just seen is that it's possible not only to identify what that 'something' is, but to extract it as a pattern, and transfer it into another brain."
A murmur of interest ran around the room. Lowe's voice came through above it, telling the man next to him, "And tomorrow somebody'll find it causes cancer."
Gleavey went on, "That's right. You can transfer it." He raised a warning finger. "Now, it's not quite the same as happens in a computer, but the principle's the same." He gestured briefly at the screen. "That's what the machine you saw does. First the monkey"—to one side, Nordens flinched visibly at the choice of word—"couldn't figure out how to get the bananas. Then the machine transferred into its head the patterns that it got from another monkey that had been taught how to do it. And then it could do it, no problem . . . without having to have any kind of regular training itself."
He held up a hand to stop anyone interrupting him there and breaking the flow. "Okay, well, I won't beat about the bush. This is what you're all here for. The next step is to take this to the human level. It has all kinds of potential benefits in all kinds of areas, and we—the Army, that is—have been asked to carry out the first tests. And it's something that the Army could be very interested in for its own reasons too. For instance, the modern Army is becoming increasingly labor and skills intensive. That means that compared to how things used to be, more and more time and effort and money goes into training soldiers to do their jobs. At one time it was good enough just to know how to shoot and strip a rifle, which part of the grenade you throw and which part you hold in your teeth, and the right way to clean your boots. Now you have to know all about battlefield computers, lasers, satellite grids, air coordination, as well as a hundred different kinds of ammunition and a different Barbie doll outfit for every kind of combat environment from chemical attack, to choppers, to digging in on glaciers. . . . Hell, you guys all know what I'm talking about.
"So . . . think what a difference it could make if what you saw with the monkey could be adapted for military training. For any skill that you need lots of people to have, you take just one person, one who's a natural, anyway, then trained until he's the best there is, and then what he can do gets copied into everyone else." Gleavey pointed randomly at several of the men one after another. "So suppose you're the best shot in the outfit—or the brigade, the division, or even the whole Army—you're a top radio man, you're an auto mechanic. . . ." An appealing gesture to the whole room. "Get the idea? We can combine all of that into every single person in a few sessions on the machine, without everyone having to spend hundreds of hours out on the range, going through communications school, or taking the same motors apart over and over, and still getting average grades. And think what that means if you extend it to the whole Army. . . . We're talking who-knows-how-many millions of man-hours every year—plus top performance all around."
He stood and waited, indicating that they were now free to respond. The pitch had had an effect. A buzz of -excited muttering came up from the room. The men were -impressed. In the back row of chairs, Demiro sat back and rubbed his chin. Yes, he was impressed too, he decided.
At the front, Gleavey raised his hands. "Well, that's what it's all about. Anyone who wants to opt out can do so now. But before anyone who might be thinking that way decides, let me suggest that you consider the benefits. During the program you'll learn a lot of good stuff the easy way, things that you maybe thought you'd never do because you're not made the right way to learn them, or things that you'd have to spend all your money and half your life finding out about at college. Well, you get to keep it all. And there's no charge. How could anyone turn down a deal like that?" He looked around. Nobody seemed about to drop out. "Questions?" he invited.
For a moment there was a confused exchange of mut-terings and looks. Then Parker, the small, wiry tank man from Arizona, spoke up. "Yeah, I got one. You're talkin' 'bout switchin' what some other guy's learned, like bein' a crack shot, maybe?" Gleavey nodded. "Well, what happens if I don't happen to have the same good eye as he's got? Are you sayin' it'll still work just as good for me? If so, I can't see how."
"Good question," somebody else said. Gleavey looked to Nordens.
"That's one of the aspects that we intend to explore," Nordens answered.
"Next?" Gleavey said.
Lowe followed. "Just how safe is all this? I mean, that machine there looked pretty terrifying to me. Not sure I'd want to stick my head in that thing."
Again a look from Gleavey to Nordens. "Extensive -animal tests give complete assurance that there are no adverse effects whatsoever," Nordens said.
"How long is this program scheduled to take?" someone else wanted to know.
Gleavey took that one himself. "We don't have a fixed limit on that as of this point in time. Our policy is to take things slowly, keep it careful, and get it right. So I'd be lying to you if I said it wasn't going to be a while."
Demiro stuck up a hand and got Gleavey's nod. "So what kind of leave allowances can we expect?" he asked.
"None for the first month at least. After that a weekend every two or three weeks, maybe more later." That didn't go down so well. Gleavey explained, "We don't want you attracting attention out there by showing off your new abilities until we've a better idea of what to expect. But I can tell you that the pay will be better than was indicated." That seemed to mollify them some.
"It sounds pretty great all around," Lowe said. "So why so much secrecy?"
"Prudence," Gleavey replied. "It sounds pretty weird, doesn't it? Imagine the version you'd get after the papers and the TV got ahold of it. There's enough objectors and protesters out there already, causing trouble for anything you can name. We just want to be left alone to concentrate on the work."
Lowe nodded that he was satisfied and looked back at Demiro. "Sounds to me like it could be fun. I'm sold. How about you?"
"You've got it," Demiro said.