Robert Heinlein - Lost Legacy

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Robert A. Heinlein

Lost Legacy

Chapter One

"Ye Have Eyes to See With!"

"HI-YAH, BUTCHER!" Doctor Philip Huxley put down the dice cup he had been fiddling

with as he spoke, and shoved out a chair with his foot. "Sit down."

The man addressed ostentatiously ignored the salutation while handing a yellow slicker and

soggy felt hat to the Faculty Clubroom attendant, but accepted the chair. His first words were to

the negro attendant.

"Did you hear that, Pete? A witch doctor, passing himself off as a psychologist, has the

effrontery to refer to me—to me, a licensed physician and surgeon, as a butcher." His voice was

filled with gentle reproach.

"Don't let him kid you, Pete. If Doctor Coburn ever got you into an operating theatre, he'd

open up your head just to see what makes you tick. He'd use your skull to make an ashtray."

The man grinned as he wiped the table, but said nothing.

Coburn clucked and shook his head. "That from a witch doctor. Still looking for the Little

Man Who Wasn't There, Phil?"

"If you mean parapsychology, yes."

"How's the racket coming?"

"Pretty good. I've got one less lecture this semester, which is just as well—I get awfully tired

of explaining to the wide-eyed innocents how little we really know about what goes on inside

their think-tanks. I'd rather do research."

"Who wouldn't? Struck any pay dirt lately?"

"Some. I'm having a lot of fun with a law student just now, chap named Valdez."

Coburn lifted his brows. "So? E.S.P.?"

"Kinda. He's sort of a clairvoyant; if he can see one side of an object, he can see the other

side, too."

"Nuts!"

" 'If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?' I've tried him out under carefully controlled

conditions, and he can do it—see around comers."

"Hmmmm—well, as my Grandfather Stonebender used to say, 'God has more aces up his

sleeve than were ever dealt in the game.' He would be a menace at stud poker."

"Matter of fact, he made his stake for law school as a professional gambler."

"Found out how he does it?"

"No, damn it." Huxley drummed on the table top, a worried look on his face. "If I just had a

little money for research I might get enough data to make this sort of thing significant. Look at

what Rhine accomplished at Duke."

"Well, why don't you holler? Go before the Board and bite 'em in the ear for it. Tell 'em how

you're going to make Western University famous."

Huxley looked still more morose. "Fat chance. I talked with my dean and he wouldn't even

let me take it up with the President. Scared that the old fathead will clamp down on the

department even more than he has. You see, officially, we are supposed to be behaviorists. Any

suggestion that there might be something to consciousness that can't be explained in terms of

physiology and mechanics is about as welcome as a Saint Bernard in a telephone booth."

The telephone signal glowed red back of the attendant's counter. He switched off the

newscast and answered the call. "Hello . . . Yes, ma'am, he is. I'll call him. Telephone for you,

Doctuh Coburn."

"Switch it over here." Coburn turned the telephone panel at the table around so that it faced

him; as he did so it lighted up with the face of a young woman. He picked up the handset.

"What is it? . . . What's that? How long ago did it happen? . . . Who made the diagnosis? . . .

Read that over again . . . Let me see the chart." He inspected its image reflected in the panel,

then added, "Very well. I'll be right over. Prepare the patient for operating." He switched off

the instrument and turned to Huxley. "Got to go, Phil—emergency."

"What sort?"

"It'll interest you. Trephining. Maybe some cerebral excision. Car accident. Come along

and watch it, if you have time." He was putting on his slicker as he spoke. He turned and swung

out the west door with a long, loose-limbed stride. Huxley grabbed his own raincoat and hurried

to catch up with him.

"How come," he asked as he came abreast, "they had to search for you?"

"Left my pocketphone in my other suit," Coburn returned briefly. "On purpose—I wanted a

little peace and quiet. No luck."

They worked north and west through the arcades and passages that connected the Union with

the Science group, ignoring the moving walkways as being too slow. But when they came to the

conveyor subway under Third Avenue opposite the Pottenger Medical School, they found it

flooded, its machinery stalled, and were forced to detour west to the Fairfax Avenue conveyor.

Coburn cursed impartially the engineers and the planning commission for the fact that spring

brings torrential rains to Southern California, Chamber of Commerce or no.

They got rid of their wet clothes in the Physicians' Room and moved on to the gowning room

for surgery. An orderly helped Huxley into white trousers and cotton shoe covers, and they

moved to the next room to scrub. Coburn invited Huxley to scrub also in order that he might

watch the operation close up. For three minutes by the little sand glass they scrubbed away with

strong green soap, then stepped through a door and were gowned and gloved by silent, efficient

nurses. Huxley felt rather silly to be helped on with his clothes by a nurse who had to stand on

tip-toe to get the sleeves high enough. They were ushered through the glass door into Surgery

III, rubber-covered hands held out, as if holding a skein of yarn.

The patient was already in place on the table, head raised up and skull clamped immobile.

Someone snapped a switch and a merciless circle of blue-white lights beat down on the only

portion of him that was exposed, the right side of his skull. Coburn glanced quickly around the

room, Huxley following his glance—light green walls, two operating nurses, gowned, masked,

and hooded into sexlessness, a 'dirty' nurse, busy with something in the corner, the anesthetist,

the instruments that told Coburn the state of the patient's heart action and respiration.

A nurse held the chart for the surgeon to read. At a word from Coburn, the anesthetist

uncovered the patient's face for a moment. Lean brown face, acquiline nose, closed sunken eyes.

Huxley repressed an exclamation. Coburn raised his eyebrows at Huxley.

"What's the trouble?"

"It's Juan Valdez!"

"Who's he?"

"The one I was telling you about—the law student with the trick eyes."

"Hmm—Well, his trick eyes didn't see around enough corners this time. He's lucky to be

alive. You'll see better, Phil, if you stand over there."

Coburn changed to impersonal efficiency, ignored Huxley's presence and concentrated the

whole of his able intellect on the damaged flesh before him. The skull had been crushed, or

punched, apparently by coming into violent contact with some hard object with moderately sharp

edges. The wound lay above the right ear, and was, superficially, two inches, or more, across. It

was impossible, before exploration, to tell just how much damage had been suffered by the bony

structure and the grey matter behind.

Undoubtedly there was some damage to the brain itself. The wound had been cleaned up on

the surface and the area around it shaved and painted. The trauma showed up as a definite hole

in the cranium. It was bleeding slightly and was partly filled with a curiously nauseating

conglomerate of clotted purple blood, white tissue, grey tissue, pale yellow tissue.

The surgeon's lean slender fingers, unhuman in their pale orange coverings, moved gently,

deftly in the wound, as if imbued with a separate life and intelligence of their own. Destroyed

tissue, too freshly dead for the component cells to realize it, was cleared away—chipped

fragments of bone, lacerated mater dura, the grey cortical tissue of the cerebrum itself.

Huxley became fascinated by the minuscule drama, lost track of time, and of the sequence of

events. He remembered terse orders for assistance, "Clamp!" "Retractor!" "Sponge!" The sound

of the tiny saw, a muffled whine, then the toothtingling grind it made in cutting through solid

living bone. Gently a spatulate instrument was used to straighten out the tortured convolutions.

Incredible and unreal, he watched a scalpel whittle at the door of the mind, shave the thin wall of

reason.

Three times a nurse wiped sweat from the surgeon's face.

Wax performed its function. Vitallium alloy replaced bone, dressing shut out infection.

Huxley had watched uncounted operations, but felt again that almost insupportable sense of

relief and triumph that comes when the surgeon turns away, and begins stripping off his gloves

as he heads for the gowning room.

When Huxley joined Coburn, the surgeon had doused his mask and cap, and was feeling

under his gown for cigarets. He looked entirely human again. He grinned at Huxley and

inquired,

"Well, how did you like it?"

"Swell. It was the first time I was able to watch that type of thing so closely. You can't see so

well from behind the glass, you know. Is he going to be all right?"

Coburn's expression changed. "He is a friend of yours, isn't he? That had slipped my mind

for the moment. Sorry. He'll be all right, I'm pretty sure. He's young and strong, and he came

through the operation very nicely. You can come see for yourself in a couple of days."

"You excised quite a lot of the speech center, didn't you? Will he be able to talk when he gets

well? Isn't he likely to have aphasia, or some other speech disorder?"

"Speech center? Why, I wasn't even close to the speech centers."

"Huh?"

"Put a rock in your right hand, Phil, so you'll know it next time. You're turned around a

hundred and eighty degrees. I was working in the right cerebral lobe, not the left lobe."

Huxley looked puzzled, spread both hands out in front of him, glanced from one to the other,

then his face cleared and he laughed. "You're right. You know, I have the damndest time with

that. I never can remember which way to deal in a bridge game. But wait a minute—I had it so

firmly fixed in my mind that you were on the left side in the speech centers that I am confused.

What do you think the result will be on his neurophysiology?"

"Nothing—if past experience is any criterion. What I took away he'll never miss. I was

working in terra incognito, pal—No Man's Land. If that portion of the brain that I was in has any

function, the best physiologists haven't been able to prove it."

Chapter Two

Three Blind Mice

BRRRNNG!

Joan Freeman reached out blindly with one hand and shut off the alarm clock, her eyes

jammed shut in the vain belief that she could remain asleep if she did. Her mind wondered.

Sunday. Don't have to get up early on Sunday. Then why had she set the alarm? She

remembered suddenly and rolled out of bed, warm feet on a floor cold in the morning air. Her

pajamas landed on that floor as she landed in the shower, yelled, turned the shower to warm, then

back to cold again.

The last item from the refrigerator had gone into a basket, and a thermos jug was filled by the

time she beard the sound of a car on the hill outside, the crunch of tires on granite in the

driveway. She hurriedly pulled on short boots, snapped the loops of her jodphurs under them,

and looked at herself in the mirror. Not bad, she thought. Not Miss America, but she wouldn't

frighten any children.

A banging at the door was echoed by the doorbell, and a baritone voice, "Joan! Are you

decent?"

"Practically. Come on in, Phil."

Huxley, in slacks and polo shirt, was followed by another figure. He turned to him. "Joan,

this is Ben Coburn, Doctor Ben Coburn. Doctor Coburn, Miss Freeman."

"Awfully nice of you to let me come, Miss Freeman."

"Not at all, Doctor. Phil had told me so much about you that I have been anxious to meet

you." The conventionalities flowed with the ease of all long-established tribal taboo.

"Call him Ben, Joan. It's good for his ego."

While Joan and Phil loaded the car Coburn looked over the young woman's studio house. A

single large room, panelled in knotty pine and dominated by a friendly field-stone fireplace set

about with untidy bookcases, gave evidence of her personality. He had stepped through open

french doors into a tiny patio, paved with mossy bricks and fitted with a barbecue pit and a little

fishpond, brilliant in the morning sunlight, when he heard himself called.

"Doc! Stir your stumps! Time's awastin'!"

He glanced again around the patio, and rejoined the others at the car. "I like your house. Miss

Freeman. Why should we bother to leave Beachwood Drive when Griffith Park can't be any

pleasanter?"

"That's easy. If you stay at home, it's not a picnic—it's just breakfast. My name's Joan."

"May I put in a request for 'just breakfast' here some morning—Joan?"

"Lay off o' that mug, Joan," advised Phil in a stage whisper. "His intentions ain't honorable."

Joan straightened up the remains of what had recently been a proper-sized meal. She chucked

into the fire three well-picked bones to which thick sirloin steaks were no longer attached, added

some discarded wrapping paper and one lonely roll. She shook the thermos jug. It gurgled

slightly. "Anybody want some more grapefruit juice?" she called.

"Any more coffee?" asked Coburn, then continued to Huxley, "His special talents are gone

completely?"

"Plenty," Joan replied. "Serve yourselves."

The Doctor filled his own cup and Huxley's. Phil answered, "Gone entirely, I'm reasonably

certain. I thought it might be hysterical shock from the operation, but I tried him under hypnosis,

and the results were still negative—completely. Joan, you're some cook. Will you adopt me?"

"You're over twenty-one."

"I could easily have him certified as incompetent," volunteered Coburn.

"Single women aren't favored for adoption."

"Marry me, and it will be all right—we can both adopt him and you can cook for all of us."

"Well, I won't say that I won't and I won't say that I will, but I will say that it's the best offer

I've had today. What were you guys talking about?"

"Make him put it in writing, Joan. We were talking about Valdez."

"Oh! You were going to run those last tests yesterday, weren't you? How did you come out?"

"Absolutely negative insofar as his special clairvoyance was concerned. It's gone."

"Hmm—How about the control tests?"

"The Humm-Wadsworth Temperament Test showed exactly the same profile as before the

accident, within the inherent limits of accuracy of the technique. His intelligence quotient came

within the technique limit, too. Association tests didn't show anything either. By all the

accepted standards of neuropsychology he is the same individual, except in two respects; he's

minus a chunk of his cortex, and he is no longer able to see around corners. Oh, yes, and he's

annoyed at losing that ability."

After a pause she answered, "That's pretty conclusive, isn't it?"

Huxley turned to Coburn. "What do you think, Ben?"

"Well, I don't know. You are trying to get me to admit that that piece of grey matter I cut out

of his head gave him the ability to see in a fashion not possible to normal sense organs and not

accounted for by orthodox medical theory, aren't you?"

"I'm not trying to make you admit anything. I'm trying to find out something."

"Well, since you put it that way, I would say if we stipulate that all your primary data were

obtained with care under properly controlled conditions—"

"They were."

"—and that you have exercised even greater care in obtaining your negative secondary data."

"I have. Damn it, I tried for three weeks under all conceivable conditions."

"Then we have the inescapable conclusions, first—" He ticked them off on his fingers. "that

this subject could see without the intervention of physical sense organs; and second, that this

unusual, to put it mildly, ability was in some way related to a portion of his cerebrum in the

dexter lobe."

"Bravo!" This was Joan's contribution.

"Thanks, Ben," acknowledged Phil. "I had reached the same conclusions, of course, but it's

very encouraging to have someone else agree with me."

"Well, now that you are there, where are you?"

"I don't know exactly. Let me put it this way; I got into psychology for the same reason a

person joins a church—because he feels an overpowering need to understand himself and the

world around him. When I was a young student, I thought modern psychology could tell me the

answers, but I soon found out that the best psychologists didn't know a damn thing about the real

core of the matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly needed

and has been very useful in its way. None of 'em know what life is, what thought is, whether

free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last question means anything. The best of 'em

admit their ignorance; the worst of them make dogmatic assertions that are obvious absurdities—

for example some of the mechanistic behaviorists that think just because Pavlov could condition

a dog to drool at the sound of a bell that, therefore, they knew all about how Paderewski made

music!"

Joan, who had been lying quietly in the shade of the big liveoaks and listening, spoke up.

"Ben, you are a brain surgeon, aren't you?"

"One of the best," certified Phil.

"You've seen a lot of brains, furthermore you've seen 'em while they were alive, which is

more than most psychologists have. What do you believe thought is? What do you think makes

us tick?"

He grinned at her. "You've got me, kid. I don't pretend to know. It's not my business; I'm

just a tinker."

She sat up. "Give me a cigaret, Phil. I've arrived just where Phil is, but by a different road.

My father wanted me to study law. I soon found out that I was more interested in the principles

behind law and I changed over to the School of Philosophy. But philosophy wasn't the answer.

There really isn't anything to philosophy. Did you ever eat that cotton-candy they sell at fairs?

Well, philosophy is like that—it looks as if it were really something, and it's awfully pretty, and

it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it you can't get your teeth into it, and when you try to

swallow, there isn't anything there. Philosophy is word-chasing, as significant as a puppy

chasing its tail."

"I was about to get my Ph.D. in the School of Philosophy, when I chucked it and came to the

science division and started taking courses in psychology. I thought that if I was a good little girl

and patient, all would be revealed to me. Well, Phil has told us what that leads to. I began to

think about studying medicine, or biology. You just gave the show away on that. Maybe it was

a mistake to teach women to read and write."

Ben laughed. "This seems to be experience meeting at the village church; I might as well

make my confession. I guess most medical men start out with a desire to know all about man

and what makes him tick, but it's a big field, the final answers are elusive and there is always so

much work that needs to be done right now, that we quit worrying about the final problems. I'm

as interested as I ever was in knowing what life, and thought, and so forth, really are, but I have

to have an attack of insomnia to find time to worry about them. Phil, are you seriously proposing

to tackle such things?"

"In a way, yes. I've been gathering data on all sorts of phenomena that run contrary to

orthodox psychological theory—all the junk that goes under the general name of metapsychics—

telepathy, clairvoyance, so-called psychic manifestations, clair-audience, levitation, yoga stuff,

stigmata, anything of that sort I can find."

"Don't you find that most of that stuff can be explained in an ordinary fashion?"

"Quite a lot of it, sure. Then you can strain orthodox theory all out of shape and ignore the

statistical laws of probability to account for most of the rest. Then by attributing anything that is

left over to charlatanism, credulity, and self-hypnosis, and refuse to investigate it, you can go

peacefully back to sleep."

"Occam's razor," murmured Joan.

"Huh?"

"William of Occam's Razor. It's a name for a principle in logic; whenever two hypotheses

both cover the facts, use the simpler of the two. When a conventional scientist has to strain his

orthodox theories all out of shape, 'til they resemble something thought up by Rube Goldberg, to

account for unorthodox phenomena, he's ignoring the principle of Occam's Razor. It's simpler to

draw up a new hypothesis to cover all the facts than to strain an old one that was never intended

to cover the non-conforming data. But scientists are more attached to their theories than they are

to their wives and families."

"My," said Phil admiringly, "to think that that came out from under a permanent wave."

"If you'll hold him, Ben, I'll beat him with this here thermos jug."

"I apologize. You're absolutely right, darling. I decided to forget about theories, to treat these

outcast phenomena like any ordinary data, and to see where it landed me."

"What sort of stuff," put in Ben, "have you dug up, Phil?"

"Quite a variety, some verified, some mere rumor, a little of it carefully checked under

laboratory conditions, like Valdez. Of course, you've heard of all the stunts attributed to Yoga.

Very little of it has been duplicated in the Western Hemisphere, which counts against it,

nevertheless a lot of odd stuff in India has been reported by competent, cool-minded observers—

telepathy, accurate soothsaying, clairvoyance, fire walking, and so forth."

"Why do you include fire walking in metapsychics?"

"On the chance that the mind can control the body and other material objects in some esoteric

fashion."

"Hmm."

"Is the idea any more marvelous than the fact that you can cause your hand to scratch your

head? We haven't any more idea of the actual workings of volition on matter in one case than in

the other. Take the Tierra del Fuegans. They slept on the ground, naked, even in zero weather.

Now the body can't make any such adjustment in its economy. It hasn't the machinery; any

physiologist will tell you so. A naked human being caught outdoors in zero weather must

exercise, or die. But the Tierra del Fuegans didn't know about metabolic rates and such. They

just slept—nice, and warm, and cozy."

"So far you haven't mentioned anything close to home. If you are going to allow that much

latitude, my Grandfather Stonebender had much more wonderful experiences."

"I'm coming to them. Don't forget Valdez."

"What's this about Ben's grandfather?" asked Joan.

"Joan, don't ever boast about anything in Ben's presence. You'll find that his Grandfather

Stonebender did it faster, easier, and better."

A look of more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger shone out of Coburn's pale blue eyes. "Why, Phil,

I'm surprised at you. If I weren't a Stonebender myself, and tolerant, I'd be inclined to resent that

remark. But your apology is accepted."

"Well, to bring matters closer home, besides Valdez, there was a man in my home town,

Springfield, Missouri, who had a clock in his head."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he knew the exact time without looking at a clock. If your watch disagreed with him,

your watch was wrong. Besides that, he was a lightning calculator—knew the answer instantly

to the most complicated problems in arithmetic you cared to put to him. In other ways he was

feeble-minded."

Ben nodded. "It's a common phenomenon—idiots savant."

"But giving it a name doesn't explain it. Besides which, while a number of the people with

erratic talents are feeble-minded, not all of them are. I believe that by far the greater per cent of

them are not, but that we rarely hear of them because the intelligent ones are smart enough to

know that they would be annoyed by the crowd, possibly persecuted, if they let the rest of us

suspect that they were different."

Ben nodded again. "You got something there, Phil. Go ahead."

"There have been a lot of these people with impossible talents who were not subnormal in

other ways and who were right close to home. Boris Sidis, for example—"

"He was that child prodigy, wasn't he? I thought he played out?"

"Maybe. Personally, I think he grew cagy and decided not to let the other monkeys know that

he was different. In any case he had a lot of remarkable talents, in intensity, if not in kind. He

must have been able to read a page of print just by glancing at it, and he undoubtedly had

complete memory. Speaking of complete memory, how about Blind Tom, the negro pianist who

could play any piece of music he had ever heard once? Nearer home, there was this boy right

here in Los Angeles County not so very many years ago who could play ping-pong blindfolded,

or anything else, for which normal people require eyes. I checked him myself, and he could do

it. And there was the Instantaneous Echo."

"You never told me about him, Phil," commented Joan. "What could he do?"

"He could talk along with you, using your words and intonations, in any language whether he

knew the language or not. And he would keep pace with you so accurately that anyone listening

wouldn't be able to tell the two of you apart. He could imitate your speech and words as

immediately, as accurately, and as effortlessly as your shadow follows the movements of your

body."

"Pretty fancy, what? And rather difficult to explain by behaviorist theory. Ever run across

any cases of levitation, Phil?"

"Not of human beings. However I have seen a local medium—a nice kid, non-professional,

used to live next door to me—make articles of furniture in my own house rise up off the floor

and float. I was cold sober. It either happened or I was hypnotized; have it your own way.

Speaking of levitating, you know the story they tell about Nijinsky?"

"Which one?"

"About him floating. There are thousands of people here and in Europe (unless they died in

the Collapse) who testify that in Le Spectre de la Rose he used to leap up into the air, pause for a

while, then come down when he got ready. Call it mass hallucination—I didn't see it."

"Occam's Razor again," said Joan.

"So?"

"Mass hallucination is harder to explain than one man floating in the air for a few seconds.

Mass hallucination not proved—mustn't infer it to get rid of a troublesome fact. It's comparable

to the 'There aint no sech animal' of the yokel who saw the rhinoceros for the first time."

"'Maybe so. Any other sort of trick stuff you want to hear about, Ben? I got a million of'em."

"How about forerunners, and telepathy?"

"Well, telepathy is positively proved, though still unexplained, by Dr. Rhine's experiments.

Of course a lot of people had observed it before then, with such frequency as to make

questioning it unreasonable. Mark Twain, for example. He wrote about it fifty years before

Rhine, with documentation and circumstantial detail. He wasn't a scientist, but he had hard

common sense and shouldn't have been ignored. Upton Sinclair, too. Forerunners are a little

harder. Every one has heard dozens of stories of hunches that came true, but they are hard to

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RobertA.HeinleinLostLegacyChapterOne"YeHaveEyestoSeeWith!""HI-YAH,BUTCHER!"DoctorPhilipHuxleyputdownthedicecuphehadbeenfiddlingwithashespoke,andshovedoutachairwithhisfoot."Sitdown."ThemanaddressedostentatiouslyignoredthesalutationwhilehandingayellowslickerandsoggyfelthattotheFacultyClubroomattendant...

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Robert Heinlein - Lost Legacy

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