He hung up. He had a habit of shutting people out when they were getting abusive. It saved him
from a lot of unnecessary anguish. Particularly since they were often correct.
***
In two weeks he was no longer a pariah, no longer unemployed. Congress had approved the creation
of a research office to solve the somec problem. And George Rines was in charge of it., "Your type
of science we need more of," the senator told George. "Courageous. Thinking the new angles."
Raking up the muck, George silently filled in. But he accepted the job and went ahead. It meant
a move to California, because Waite and all the equipment were at Berkeley. Aggie and the girls
raised hell about it.
"Diane has only another year in high school!" Aggie complained.
"Then stay here," George finally exploded. "It's not as if I needed you out there! I can get
twice as much done if I don't have to move the whole family."
He regretted saying it. He apologized. It made no difference. Aggie and Diane and Anita stayed
behind, and he had beeen in Berkeley only a week when the notice of their legal separation reached
him. He tried to call. He even flew back. But they had moved, too, and left no address except the
post office box where he'd better send money every month or find himself in court for abandonment,
as the lawyer so carefully put it.
For the entire flight back George was distraught. His world was falling apart. He and Aggie had
meant everything to each other for years.
Then he got to Berkeley and never thought about his family except when he got to the motel, and
later to the apartment, and realized that there was no one there. Damn them anyway, he thought.
Who needs baggage? I'm accomplishing things of lasting value. I'm taking a dangerous drug and
making it fulfil its potential for good. And if that doesn't matter as much as the stinking last
year in a stupid high school...
***
The government money poured in and the research quickly took over an entire building in the new
research complex. One department carefully verified the extent of somec damage: when chimps, too,
reverted to the behavior of newborn infants despite tremendous amounts of previously learned
behavior. The memory loss was total.
Another department continuously played with the braintaping techniques and equipment. One branch
of research tried to separate certain kinds of knowledge and memory from others-- it met repeated
failures and no success at all. Another branch simplified the method of taping brain patterns and
imposing them on another subject. It got to the point where even complex chimpanzee behavior could
be taught in three minutes with a taper. The trouble was, the chimpanzees were hopelessly insane
within fifteen minutes.
It was the third department that George supervised personally. There somec was mixed with
braintaping technology. And there they found the first hopes of success.
The somec story had been front-page news. Now, however, the story was buried; each new success
seemed to be timed perfectly to coincide with world events that filled the airwaves and the
newspapers.
For example, when George first verified that if a trained rat was braintaped before being
drugged with somec, and then the tape was reimpinged on the same, rat's brain after it woke up,
the rat immediately regained all its former training, with no measurable impairment at all. And
for six weeks afterward there was no sign of insanity. The results were encouraging enough to call
a news conference. The reporters came.
But the same day, the president announced that aerial photographs proved that while the missiles
had been taken out of Quebec, large concentrations of Russian troops were unloading from the
trawlers that were making ridiculously heavy traffic between Leningrad and Montreal. There was