Title: How deep the grooves
Author: Farmer, Philip José
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "How deep the grooves" ***


                         HOW DEEP THE GROOVES

                         By PHILIP JOSE FARMER

                         Illustrated by ADKINS

         _Until James Carroad performed his experiment, there
        was one voice inside of each of us that always told the
           truth. But after Cervus III, there were suddenly
        two voices. And only one was the voice of conscience._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Amazing Stories February 1963.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Always in control of himself, Doctor James Carroad lowered his voice.

He said, "You will submit to this test. We must impress the Secretary.
The fact that we're willing to use our own unborn baby in the
experiment will make that impression a deeper one."

Doctor Jane Carroad, his wife, looked up from the chair in which she
sat. Her gaze swept over the tall lean figure in the white scientist's
uniform and the two rows of resplendent ribbons and medals on his left
chest. She glared into the eyes of her husband.

Scornfully, she said, "You did not want this baby. I did, though now I
wonder why. Perhaps, because I wanted to be a mother, no matter what
the price. Not to give the State another citizen. But, now we're going
to have it, you want to exploit it even before it's born, just as...."

Harshly, he said, "Don't you know what such talk can lead to?"

"Don't worry! I won't tell anyone you didn't desire to add to the
State. Nor will I tell anybody how I induced you to have it!"

His face became red, and he said, "You will never again mention that to
me! Never again! Understand?"

Jane's neck muscles trembled, but her face was composed. She said,
"I'll speak of that, to you, whenever I feel like it. Though, God
knows, I'm thoroughly ashamed of it. But I do get a certain sour
satisfaction out of knowing that, once in my life, I managed to break
down that rigid self-control. I made you act like a normal man, one
able to forget himself in his passion for a woman. Doctor Carroad, the
great scientist of the State, really forgot himself then."

She gave a short brittle laugh and then settled back in the chair as if
she would no longer discuss the matter.

But he would not, could not, let her have the last word. He said, "I
only wanted to see how it felt to throw off all restraints. That was
all--an experiment. I didn't care for it; it was disgusting. It'll
never happen again."

He looked at his wristwatch and said, "Let's go. We must not make the
Secretary wait."

She rose slowly, as if the eight months' burden was at last beginning
to drain her strength.

"All right. But I'm submitting our baby to this experiment only under
protest. If anything happens to it, a potential citizen...."

He spun around. "A written protest?"

"I've already sent it in."

"You little fool! Do you want to wreck everything I've worked for?"

Tears filled her eyes.

"James! Does the possible harm to our baby mean nothing to you? Only
the medals, the promotions, the power?"

"Nonsense! There's no danger! If there were, wouldn't I know it? Come
along now!"

But she did not follow him through the door. Instead, she stood with
her face against the wall, her shoulders shaking.

       *       *       *       *       *

A moment later, Jason Cramer entered. The young man closed the door
behind him and put his arm around her. Without protest, she turned and
buried her face in his chest. For a while, she could not talk but could
only weep.

Finally, she released herself from his embrace and said, "Why is it,
Jason, that every time I need a man to cry against, James is not with
me but you are?"

"Because he is the one who makes you cry," he said. "And I love you."

"And James," she said, "loves only himself."

"You didn't give me the proper response, Jane. I said I loved you."

She kissed him, though lightly, and murmured, "I think I love you. But
I'm not allowed to. Please forget what I said. I mean it."

She walked away from him. Jason Cramer, after making sure that he had
no lipstick on his face or uniform, followed her.

Entering the laboratory, Jane Carroad ignored her husband's glare
and sat down in the chair in the middle of the room. Immediately
thereafter, the Secretary of Science and two Security bodyguards
entered.

The Secretary was a stocky dark man of about fifty. He had very thick
black eyebrows that looked like pieces of fur pasted above his eyes.
He radiated the assurance that he was master, in control of all in the
room. Yet, he did not, as was nervously expected by James Carroad and
Jason Cramer, take offense because Jane did not rise from the chair to
greet him. He gave her a smile, patted her hand, and said, "Is it true
you will bear a male baby?"

"That is what the tests indicate," she said.

"Good. Another valuable citizen. A scientist, perhaps. With its genetic
background...."

Annoyed because his wife had occupied the center of the stage for
too long, Doctor James Carroad loudly cleared his throat. He said,
"Citizens, honored Secretary, I've asked you here for a demonstration
because I believe that what I have to show you is of utmost importance
to the State's future. I have here the secret of what constitutes a
good, or bad, citizen of the State."

He paused for effect, which he was getting, and then continued, "As
you know, I--and my associates, of course--have perfected an infallible
and swift method whereby an enemy spy or deviationist citizen may be
unmasked. This method has been in use for three years. During that
time, it has exposed many thousands as espionage agents, as traitors,
as potential traitors."

The Secretary looked interested. He also looked at his wristwatch.
Doctor Carroad refused to notice; he talked on at the same pace. He
could justify any amount of time he took, and he intended to use as
much as possible.

       *       *       *       *       *

"My Department of Electroencephalographic Research first produced the
devices delicate enough to detect the so-called rho waves emanated by
the human brain. The rho or semantic waves. After ten years of hard
work, I correlated the action of the rho waves in a particular human
brain with the action of the individual's voice mechanisms. That meant,
of course, that we had a device which mankind has long dreamed of.
A--pardon the term--mind-reading machine."

Carroad purposely avoided scientific terminology. The Secretary did
have a Ph.D. in political science, but he knew very little of any
biological science.

Jason Cramer, at a snap of the fingers by Carroad, wheeled a large
round shining machine to a spot about two feet in front of Jane.
It resembled a weird metallic antelope, for it had a long flexible
neck at the end of which was an oval and eyeless head with two
prongs like horns. These pointed at Jane's skull. On the side of the
machine--Cervus III--was a round glass tube. The oscilloscope.

Carroad said, "We no longer have to attach electrodes to the subject's
head. We've made that method obsolete. Cervus' prongs pick up rho
waves without direct contact. It is also able to cut out 99.99% of the
'noise' that had hampered us in previous research."

Yes, thought Jane, and why don't you tell them that it was Jason Cramer
who made that possible, instead of allowing them to think it was you?

At that moment, she reached the peak of her hate for him. She wished
that the swelling sleeper within her was not Carroad's but Cramer's.
And, wishing that, she knew that she must be falling in love with
Cramer.

Carroad's voice slashed into her thoughts.

"And so, using the detected rho waves, which can be matched against
definite objective words, we get a verbal picture of what is going in
the subject's mind at the conscious level."

He gave an order to Cramer, and Cramer twisted a dial on the small
control board on the side of Cervus.

"The machine is now set for semantic relations," Carroad said.

"Jane!" he added so sharply that she was startled. "Repeat this
sentence after me! Silently!"

He then gave her a much-quoted phrase from one of the speeches of
the Secretary himself. She repressed her scorn of him because of his
flattery and dutifully concentrated on thinking the phrase. At the same
time, she was aware that her tongue was moving in a noiseless lock-step
with the thoughts.

The round tube on the side of Cervus glowed and then began flashing
with many twisting threads of light.

"The trained eye," said Carroad, "can interpret those waveforms. But we
have a surprise for you to whom the patterns are meaningless. We have
perfected a means whereby a technician with a minimum of training may
operate Cervus."

       *       *       *       *       *

He snapped his fingers. Cramer shot him a look; his face was
expressionless, but Jane knew that Cramer resented Carroad's arrogance.

Nevertheless, Cramer obeyed; he adjusted a dial, pushed down on a
toggle switch, rotated another dial.

A voice, tonelessly and tinnily mechanical, issued from a loudspeaker
beneath the tube. It repeated the phrase that Carroad had given and
that Jane was thinking. It continued the repetition until Cramer, at
another fingersnap from Carroad, flicked the toggle switch upward.

"As you have just heard," said Carroad triumphantly, "we have converted
the waveforms into audible representations of what the subject is
thinking."

The Secretary's brows rose like two caterpillars facing each other, and
he said, "Very impressive."

But he managed to give the impression that he was thinking, Is that all?

Carroad smiled. He said, "I have much more. Something that, I'm
sure, will please you very much. Now, as you know, this machine--my
Cervus--is exposing hundreds of deviationists and enemy agents every
year.

"Yet, this is _nothing_!"

He stared fiercely at them, but he had a slight smile on the corners
of his lips. Jane, knowing him so well, could feel the radiance of his
pride at the fact that the Secretary was leaning forward and his mouth
was open.

"I say this is nothing! Catching traitors after they have become
deviationist is locking the garage after the car has been stolen. What
if we had a system of control whereby our citizens would be _unable_ to
be anything but unquestioningly loyal to the State?"

The Secretary said, "Aah!"

"I knew you would be far from indifferent," said Carroad.

       *       *       *       *       *

Carroad pointed a finger downwards. Cramer, slowly, his jaws set,
twisted the flexible neck of Cervus so that the pronged head pointed
directly at Jane's distended stomach. He adjusted controls on the
board. Immediately the oscilloscope danced with many intricate figures
that were so different from the previous forms that even the untutored
eyes of the Secretary could perceive the change.

"Citizens," said Carroad, "for some time after we'd discovered the
rho waves in the adult and infant, we searched for their presence in
the brain of the unborn child. We had no success for a long time. But
that was not because the rho waves did not exist in the embryo. No,
it was because we did not have delicate enough instruments. However,
a few weeks ago, we succeeded in building one. I experimented upon
my unborn child, and I detected weak traces of the rho waves. Thus,
I demonstrated that the ability to form words is present, though in
undeveloped form, even in the eight-month embryo.

"You're probably wondering what this means. This knowledge does not
enable us to make the infant or the unborn speak any sooner. True. But
what it does allow us to do is...."

Jane, who had been getting more tense with every word, became rigid.
Would he allow this to be done to his own son, his own flesh and blood?
Would he permit his child to become a half-robot, an obedient slave to
the State, incapable in certain fields of wielding the power of free
will? The factor that most marked men from the beasts and the machine?

Numbly, she knew he would.

"... to probe well-defined areas in the undeveloped mind and there
to stamp into it certain inhibitory paths. These inhibitions,
preconditioned reflexes, as it were, will not, of course, take effect
until the child has learned a language. And developed the concepts of
citizen and State.

"But, once that is done, the correlation between the semantic waves and
the inhibitions is such that the subject is unable to harbor any doubts
about the teachings of the State. Or those who interpret the will of
the State for its citizens.

"It is not necessary to perform any direct or physical surgery upon
the unborn. The reflexes will be installed by Cervus III within a few
minutes. As you see, Cervus cannot only receive; it can also transmit.
Place a recording inside that receptacle beneath the 'speaker, actuate
it, and, in a short time, you have traced in the grooves of the
brain--if you will pardon an unscientific comparison--the voice of the
State."

There was a silence. Jane and Cramer were unsuccessful in hiding their
repulsion, but the others did not notice them. The Secretary and his
bodyguards were staring at Carroad.

       *       *       *       *       *

After several minutes, the Secretary broke the silence.

"Doctor Carroad, are you sure that this treatment will not harm the
creative abilities of the child? After all, we might make a first-class
citizen, in the political sense, out of your child. Yet, we might wreck
his potentialities as a first-class scientist. If we do that to our
children, we lose out in the technological race. Not to mention the
military. We need great generals, too."

"Absolutely not!" replied Carroad, so loudly and flatly that the
Secretary was taken aback. "My computations, rechecked at least a dozen
times, show there is no danger whatsoever. The only part of the brain
affected, a very small area, has nothing to do with the creative
functions. To convince you, I am going to perform the first operation
upon my own son. Surely, I could do nothing more persuasive than that."

"Yes," said the Secretary, stroking his massive chin. "By the way, can
this be done also to the adult?"

"Unfortunately, no," said Carroad.

"Then, we will have to wait a number of years to determine if your
theory is correct. And, if we go ahead on the assumption that the
theory is correct, and treat every unborn child in the country, we
will have spent a tremendous amount of money and time. If you are not
correct...."

"I can't be wrong!" said Carroad. His face began to flush, and he
shook. Then, suddenly, his face was its normal color, and he was
smiling.

_Always in control_, thought Jane. _Of himself and, if circumstances
would allow, of everybody._

"We don't have to build any extra machines," said Carroad. "A certain
amount will be built, anyway, to detect traitors and enemies. These
can be used in hospitals, when not in use elsewhere, to condition the
unborn. Wait. I will show you how simple, inexpensive, and swift the
operation is."

He gestured to Cramer. Cramer, the muscles twitching at the corners
of his mouth, looked at Jane. His eyes tried desperately to tell her
that he had to obey Carroad's orders. But, if he did, would he be
understood, would he be forgiven?

Jane could only sit in the chair with a face as smooth and unmoving
as a robot's and allow him to decide for himself without one sign of
dissent or consent from her. What, after all, could either do unless
they wished to die?

Cramer adjusted the controls.

Even though Jane knew she would feel nothing, she trembled as if a fist
were poised to strike.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bright peaks and valleys danced on the face of the oscilloscope.
Carroad, watching them, gave orders to Cramer to move the prongs in
minute spirals. When he had located the area he wished, he told Cramer
to stop.

"We have just located the exact chain of neurones which are to be
altered. You will hear nothing from the speaker because the embryo,
of course, has no language. However, to show you some slight portion
of Cervus' capabilities, Cramer will stimulate the area responsible
for the rho waves before we begin the so-called inhibiting. Watch
the 'scope. You'll see the waves go from a regular pulse into a wild
dance."

The cyclopean eye of the oscilloscope became a field of crazed lines,
leaping like a horde of barefooted and wire-thin fakirs on a bed of hot
coals.

And a voice boomed out, "_Nu'sey! Nu'sey! Wanna d'ink!_"

Jane cried out, "God, what was that?"

The Secretary was startled; Cramer's face paled; Carroad was frozen.

But he recovered quickly, and he spoke sharply. "Cramer, you must have
shifted the prongs so they picked up Jane's thoughts."

"I--I never touched them."

"Those were not my thoughts," said Jane.

"Something's wrong," said Carroad, needlessly. "Here. I'll do the
adjusting."

He bent the prongs a fraction, checked the controls, and then turned
the power on again.

The mechanical voice of Cervus spoke again.

"_What do you mean? What're you saying? My father is not crazy! He's a
great scientist, a hero of the State. What do you mean? Not any more?_"

The Secretary leaped up from the chair and shouted above Cervus' voice,
"What is this?"

Carroad turned the machine off and said, "I--I don't know."

Jane had never seen him so shaken.

"Well, find out! That's your business!"

Carroad's hand shook; one eye began to twitch. But he bent again to the
adjustment of the dials. He directed the exceedingly narrow beam along
the area from which the semantic waves originated. Only a high-pitched
gabble emerged from the speaker, for Carroad had increased the speed.
It was as if he were afraid to hear the normal rate of speech.

Jane's eyes began to widen. A thought was dawning palely, but horribly,
on the horizon of her mind. If, by some intuition, she was just
beginning to see the truth.... But no, that could not be.

       *       *       *       *       *

But, as Carroad worked, as the beam moved, as the power was raised or
lowered, so did the voice, though always the same in tone and speed,
change in phrase. Carroad had slowed the speed of detection, and
individual words could be heard. And it was obvious that the age level
of the speaker was fluctuating. Yet, throughout the swiftly leaping
sentences, there was a sameness, an identity of personality. Sometimes,
it was a baby just learning the language. At other times, it was an
adolescent or young boy.

"Well, man, what is it?" bellowed the Secretary.

The mysterious voice had struck sparks off even his iron nerves.

Jane answered for her husband.

"I'll tell you what it is. It's the voice of my unborn son."

"Jane, you're insane!" said Carroad.

"No, I'm not, though I wish I were."

"_God, he's at the window!_" boomed the voice. "_And he has a knife!
What can I do? What can I do?_"

"Turn that off until I get through talking," said Jane. "Then, you can
listen again and see if what I'm saying isn't true."

Carroad stood like a statue, his hand extended towards the toggle
switch but not reaching it. Cramer reached past him and flicked the
switch.

"James," she said, speaking slowly and with difficulty. "You want
to make robots out of everyone. Except, of course, yourself and the
State's leaders. But what if I told you that you don't have to do
that? That Nature or God or whatever you care to call the Creator, has
anticipated you? And done so by several billion years?

"No, don't look at me that way. You'll see what I mean. Now, look. The
only one whose thoughts you could possible have tapped is our son.
Yet, it's impossible for an unborn baby to have a knowledge of speech.
Nevertheless, you heard thoughts, originated by a boy, seeming to run
from the first years of speech up to those of an adolescent. You have
to admit that, even if you don't know what it means.

"Well, I do."

Tears running down her cheeks, choking, she said, "Maybe I see the
truth where you don't because I'm closer to my baby. It's part of me.
Oh, I know you'll say I'm talking like a silly woman. Maybe. Anyway,
I think that what we've heard means that we--all of humanity without
exception--_are_ machines. Not steel and electrical robots, no, but
still machines of flesh, engines whose behavior, motives, and very
thoughts, conscious or unconscious, spring from the playing of protein
tapes in our brains."

"What the hell are you talking about?" said Carroad.

"If I'm right, we are in hell," she said. "Through no fault or choice
of ours. Listen to me before you shut your ears because you don't want
to hear, can't hear."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Memories are not recordings of what has happened in our past. Nor do
we act as we will. We speak and behave according to our 'memories,'
which are not recorded _after_ the fact. They're recorded _before_
the fact. Our actions are such because our memories tell us to do
such. Each of us is set like a clockwork doll. Oh, not independently,
but intermeshed, working together, synchronized as a masterclock or
masterplan decrees.

"And, all this time, we think we are creatures of free will and chance.
But we do not know there isn't such a thing as chance, that all is
plotted and foretold, and we are sliding over the world, through time,
in predetermined grooves. We, body and mind, are walking recordings.
Deep within our cells, a molecular needle follows the grooves, and we
follow the needle.

"Somehow, this experiment has ripped the cover from the machine, showed
us the tape, stimulated it into working long before it was supposed to."

Suddenly, she began laughing. And, between laughing and gasping, she
said, "What am I saying? It can't be an accident. If we have discovered
that we're puppets, it's because we're supposed to do so."

"Jane, Jane!" said Carroad. "You're wild, wild! Foolish woman's
intuition! You're supposed to be a scientist! Stop talking! Control
yourself!"

The Secretary bellowed for silence, and, after a minute, succeeded. He
said, "Mrs. Carroad, please continue. We'll get to the bottom of this."

He, too, was pale and wide-eyed. But he had not gotten to his position
by refusing to attack.

She ordered Cramer to run the beam again over the previous areas. He
was to speed up the process and slow down only when she so directed.

The result was a stream of unintelligibilities. Occasionally, when
Cramer slowed Cervus at a gesture from Jane, it broke into a rate of
speech they could understand. And, when it did, they trembled. They
could not deny that they were speeding over the life thoughts of a
growing male named James Carroad, Junior. Even at the velocity at which
they traveled and the great jumps in time that the machine had to make
in order to cover the track quickly, they could tell that.

       *       *       *       *       *

After an hour, Jane had Cramer cut off the voice. In the silence,
looking at the white and sweating men, she said, "We are getting close
to the end? Should we go on?"

Hoarsely, the Secretary shouted, "This is a hoax! I can prove it must
be! It's impossible! If we carry the seeds of predeterminism within us,
and yet, as now, we discover how to foresee what we shall do, why can't
we change the future?"

"I don't know, Mr. Secretary," said Jane. "We'll find out--in time. I
can tell you this. If anyone is preset to foretell the future, he'll do
so. If no one is, then the problem will go begging. It all depends on
Whoever wound us up."

"That's blasphemy!" howled the Secretary, a man noted for his
belligerent atheism. But he did not order the voice to stop after Jane
told Cramer to start the machine up again.

Cramer ran Cervus at full speed. The words became a staccato of
incomprehensibility; the oscilloscope, an almost solid blur. Flickers
of blackness told of broad jumps forward, and then the wild intertwined
lightning resumed.

Suddenly, the oscilloscope went blank, and the voice was silent.

Jane Carroad said, "Backtrack a little, Jason. And then run it forward
at normal speed."

James Carroad had been standing before her, rigid, a figure seemingly
made of white metal, his face almost as white as his uniform.
Abruptly, he broke into fluidity and lurched out of the laboratory. His
motions were broken; his shouts, broken also.

"Won't stay to listen ... rot ... mysticism ... believe this ... go
insane! Mean ... no control ... no control...."

And his voice was lost as the door closed behind him.

Jane said, "I don't want to hear this, Jason. But...."

Instantly, the voice boomed, "_God, he's at the window! And he has a
knife! What can I do? What can I do? Father, father, I'm your son! He
knows it, he knows it, yet he's going to kill me. The window! He's
breaking it! Oh, Lord, he's been locked up for nineteen years, ever
since he shot and killed my mother and all those men and I was born
a Caesarean and I didn't know he'd escape and still want to kill me,
though they told me that's all he talked about, raving mad, and...._"


                                THE END




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