Five Great Novels Part 7

Fred, the Suit, stared at him.

"Well?" Hank said impa.s.sively, ballpoint pen ready.

"I have no opinion. One way on another." Fred rose from his chair to leave.

"You're not splitting yet," Hank said, motioning him to reseat himself. He fished among the papers on his desk. "I have a memo here--"

"You always have memos," Fred said. "For everybody."

"This memo," Hank said, "instructs me to send you over to Room 203 before you leave today."

"If it's about that anti-drug speech I gave at the Lions Club, I've already had my a.s.s chewed about it."

"No, this isn't that." Hank tossed him the fluttery note. "This is something different. I'm finished with you, so why don't you head right over there now and get it done with."

He found himself confronting an all-white room with steel fixtures and steel chains and steel desk, all bolted down, a hospital-like room, purified and sterile and cold, with the light too bright. In fact, to the right stood a weighing scale with a sign HAVE TECHNICIAN ONLY ADJUST. Two deputies regarded him, both in full uniform of the Orange County Sheriff's Office, but with medical stripes.

"You are Officer Fred?" one of them, with a handle-bar mustache, said.

"Yes, sir," Fred said. He felt scared.

"All right, Fred, first let me state that, as you undoubtedly are aware, your briefings and debriefings are monitored and later played back for study, in case anything was missed at the original sessions. This is SOP, of course, and applies to all officers reporting in orally, not you alone."

The other medical deputy said, "Plus all other contacts you maintain with the department, such as phone contacts, and additional activities, such as your recent public speech in Anaheim to the Rotary Club boys."

"Lions," Fred said.

"Do you take Substance D?" the left-hand medical deputy said.

"That question," the other said, "is moot because it's taken for granted that in your work you're compelled to. So don't answer. Not that it's incriminating, but it's simply moot." He indicated a table on which a bunch of blocks and other riff-raff colorful plastic objects lay, plus peculiar items that Officer Fred could not identify. "Step over here and be seated, Officer Fred. We are going to administer, briefly, several easy tests. This won't consume much of your time, and there will be no physical discomfort involved."

"About that speech I gave--" Fred said.

"What this is about," the left-hand medical deputy said, as he seated himself and produced a pen and some forms, "stems from a recent departmental survey showing that several undercover agents working in this area have been admitted to Neural Aphasia Clinics during the past month."

"You're conscious of the high factor of addictiveness of Substance D?" the other deputy said to Fred.

"Sure," Fred said. "Of course I am."

"We're going to give you these tests now," the seated deputy said, "in this order, starting with what we call the BG or--"

"You think I'm an addict?" Fred said.

"Whether you are an addict on not isn't a prime issue, since a blocking agent is expected from the Army Chemical Warfare Division sometime within the next five years."

"These tests do not pertain to the addictive properties of Substance D but to-- Well, let me give you this Set-Ground Test first, which determines your ability readily to distinguish set from ground. See this geometric diagram?" He laid a drawn-on card before Fred, on the table. "Within the apparently meaningless lines is a familiar object that we would all recognize. You are to tell me what the . . Item. In July 1969, Joseph E. Bogen published his revolutionary article "The Other Side of the Brain: An Appositional Mind." In this article he quoted an obscure Dr. A. L. Wigan, who in 1844 wrote: The mind is essentially dual, like the organs by which it is exercised. This idea has presented itself to me, and I have dwelt on it for more than a quarter of a century, without being able to find a single valid or even plausible objection. I believe myself then able to prove--(1) That each cerebrum is a distinct and perfect whole as an organ of thought. (2) That a separate and distinct process of thinking or ratioci- nation may be carried on in each cerebrum simul- taneously.

In his article, Bogen concluded: "I believe [with Wigan] that each of us has two minds in one person. There is a host of detail to be marshaled in this case. But we must eventually confront directly the princ.i.p.al resistance to the Wigan view: that is, the subjective feeling possessed by each of us that we are One. This inner conviction of Oneness is a most cherished opinion of Western Man. . . ."

". . . object is and point to it in the total field."

I'm being Mutt-and-Jeffed, Fred thought. "What is all this?" he said, gazing at the deputy and not the diagram. "I'll bet it's the Lions Club speech," he said. He was positive. The seated deputy said, "In many of those taking Substance D, a split between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere of the brain occurs. There is a loss of proper gestalting, which is a defect within both the percept and cognitive systems, although _apparently_ the cognitive system continues to function normally. But what is now received from the percept system is contaminated by being split, so it too, therefore, fails gradually to function, progressively deterioriating. Have you located the familiar object in this line drawing? Can you find it for me?"

Fred said, "You're not talking about heavy metals trace deposits in the neuronecepton sites, are you? Irreversible--"

"No," the standing deputy said. "This is not brain damage but a form of toxicity, brain toxicity. It's a toxic brain psychosis affecting the percept system by splitting it. What you have before you, this BG test, measures the accuracy of your percept system to act as a unified whole. Can you see the form here? It should jump right out at you."

"I see a c.o.ke bottle," Fred said.

"A soda pop bottle is correct," the seated deputy said, and whipped the drawing away, replacing it with another.

"Have you noticed anything," Fred said, "in studying my briefings and like that? Anything slushed?" It's the speech, he thought. "What about the speech I gave?" he said. "Did I show bilateral dysfunction there? Is that why I've been hauled in here for these tests?" He had read about these split-brain tests, given by the department from time to time.

"No, this is routine," the seated deputy said. "We realize, Officer Fred, that undercover agents must of necessity take drugs in the line of duty; those who've had to go into federal--"

"Permanently?" Fred asked.

"Not many permanently. Again, this is percept contamination that could in the course of time rectify itself as---"

"Murky," Fred said. "It munks over everything."

"Are you getting any cross-chatter?" one of the deputies asked him suddenly.

"What?" he said uncertainly.

"Between hemispheres. If there's damage to the left hemisphere, where the linguistic skills are normally located, then sometimes the right hemisphere will fill in to the best of its ability."

"I don't know," he said. "Not that I'm aware of."

"Thoughts not your own. As if another person on mind were thinking. But different from the way you would think. Even foreign words that you don't know. That it's learned from peripheral perception sometime during your lifetime."

"Nothing like that. I'd notice that."

"You probably would. From people with left-hemisphere damage who've reported it, evidently it's a pretty shattering experience."

"Well, I guess I'd notice that."

"It used to be believed the right hemisphere had no linguistic faculties at all, but that was before so many people had screwed up their left hemispheres with drugs and gave it--the right--a chance to come on. To fill the vacuum."

"I'll certainly keep my eyes open for that," Fred said, and heard the mere mechanical quality of his voice, like that of a dutiful child in school. Agreeing to obey whatever dull order was imposed on him by those in authority. Those taller than he was, and in a position to impose their strength and will on him, whether it was reasonable on not. Just agree, he thought. And do what you're told.

"What do you see in this second picture?"

"A sheep," Fred said.

"Show me the sheep." The seated deputy leaned forward and rotated the picture. "An impairment in set-background discrimination gets you into a heap of trouble--instead of perceiving no forms you perceive faulty forms."

Like dog s.h.i.+t, Fred thought. Dog s.h.i.+t certainly would be considered a faulty form. By any standard. He . . .

The data indicate that the mute, minor hemisphere is specialized for Gestalt perception, being primarily a synthesist in dealing with information input. The speaking, major hemisphere, in contrast, seems to operate in a more logical, a.n.a.lytic, computerlike fas.h.i.+on and the findings suggest that a possible reason for cerebral lateralization in man is basic incompat- ibility of language functions on the one hand and synthetic perceptual functions on the other.

. . . felt ill and depressed, almost as much as he had during his Lions Club speech. "There's no sheep there, is there?" he said. "But was I close?"

"This is not a Rorschach test," the seated deputy said, "where a muddled blot can be interpreted many ways by many subjects. In this, one specific object, as such, has been delineated and one only. In this case it's a dog."

"A what?" Fred said.

"A dog."

"How can you tell it's a dog?" He saw no dog. "Show me." The deputy . . .

This conclusion finds its experimental proof in the split-brain animal whose two hemispheres can be trained to perceive, consider, and act independently. In the human, where propositional thought is typi- cally lateralized in one hemisphere, the other hemi- sphere evidently specializes in a different mode of thought, which may be called _appositional_. The rules or methods by which propositional thought is elab- orated on "this" side of the brain (the side which speaks, reads, and writes) have been subjected to a.n.a.lyses of syntax, semantics, mathematical logic, etc. for many years. The rules by which appositional thought is elaborated on the other side of the brain will need study for many years to come.

. . . turned the card over; on the back the formal stark simple outline of a DOG had been inscribed, and now Fred recognized it as the shape drawn within the lines on the front side. In fact it was a specific type of dog: a greyhound, with drawn-in gut.

"What's that mean," he said, "that I saw a sheep instead?"

"Probably just a psychological block," the standing deputy said, s.h.i.+fting his weight about. "Only when the whole set of cards is nun, and then we have the several other tests--"

"Why this is a superior test to the Ronschach," the seated deputy interrupted, producing the next drawing, "is that it is not interpretive; there are as many wrongs as you can think up, _but only one right_. The right object that the U.S. Department of Psych-Graphics drew into it and certified for it, for each card; that's what's right, because it is handed down from Was.h.i.+ngton. You either get it on you don't, and if you show a _run_ of not getting it, then we have a fix on a functional impairment in perception and we dry you out for a while, until you test okay later on."

"A federal clinic?" Fred said.

"Yes. Now, what do you see in this drawing, among these particular black and white lines?"

Death City, Fred thought as he studied the drawing. That is what I see: death in pluriform, not in just the one correct form but throughout. Little three-foot-high contract men on carts.

"Just tell me," Fred said, "was it the Lions Club speech that alerted you?"

The two medical deputies exchanged glances.

"No," the standing one said finally. "It had to do with an exchange that was--actually--off the cuff, in fact, just bulls.h.i.+tting between you and Hank. About two weeks ago . . . you realize, there's a technological lag in processing all this garbage, all this raw information that flows in. They haven't gotten to your speech yet. They won't in fact for another couple of days."

"What was this bulls.h.i.+tting?"

"Something about a stolen bicycle," the other deputy said. "A so-called seven-speed bicycle. You'd been trying to figure out where the missing three speeds had gone, was that it?" Again they glanced at each other, the two medical deputies. "You felt they had been left on the floor of the garage it was stolen from?"

"h.e.l.l," Fred protested. "That was Charles Freck's fault, not mine; he got everybody's a.s.s in an uproar talking about it. I just thought it was funny."

BARRIS: (_Standing in the middle of the living room with a great big new s.h.i.+ny bike, very pleased_) Look what I got for twenty dollars. FRECK: What is it? BARRIS: A bike, a ten-speed racing bike, virtually brand new. I saw it in the neighbor's yard and asked about it and they had four of them so I made an offer of twenty dollars cash and they sold it to me. Colored people. They even hoisted it over the fence for me. LUCKMAN: I didn't know you could get a ten-speed nearly new for twenty dollars. It's amazing what you can get for twenty dollars. DONNA: It resembles the one the chick across the street from me had that got ripped off about a month ago. They probably ripped it off, those black guys. ARCTOR: Sure they did, if they've got four. And selling it that cheap. DONNA: You ought to give it back to the chick across the street from me, if it's hers. Anyhow you should let her look at it to see if it's hers. BARRIS: It's a man's bike. So it can't be. FRECK: Why do you say it's ten speeds when it's only got seven gears? BARRIS: (_Astonished_) What? FRECK: (_Going over to bike and pointing_) Look, five gears here, two gears here at the other end of the chain. Five and two . . .

When the optic chiasm of a cat or a monkey is divided sagittally, the input into the right eye goes only into the right hemisphere and similarly the left eye in- forms only the left hemisphere. If an animal with this operation is trained to choose between two symbols while using only one eye, later tests show that it can make the proper choice with the other eye. But if the commissures, especially the corpus callosum, have been severed before training, the initially cov- ered eye and its ipsilateral hemisphere must be trained from the beginning. That is, the training does not transfer from one hemisphere to the other if the commissures have been cut. This is the fundamental split-brain experiment of Myers and Sperry (1953; Sperry, 1961; Myers, 1965; Sperry, 1967).

. . . makes seven. So it's only a seven-speed bike. LUCKMAN: Yeah, but even a seven-speed racing bike is worth twenty dollars. He still got a good buy. BARRIS: (_Nettled_) Those colored people told me it was ten speeds. It's a rip-off. (_Everyone gathers to examine bike. They count the gears again and again_.) FRECK: Now I count eight. Six in front, two in back. That makes eight. ARCTOR: (_Logically_) But it should be ten. There are no seven- on eight-speed bikes. Not that I ever heard of. What do you suppose happened to the missing gears? BARRIS: Those colored guys must have been working on it, taking it apart with improper tools and no technical knowledge, and when they rea.s.sembled it they left three gears lying on the floor of their garage. They're probably still lying there. LUCKMAN: Then we should go ask for the missing gears back. BARRIS: (_Pondering angrily_) But that's where the rip-off is: they'll probably offer to sell them to me, not give them to me as they should. I wonder what else they've damaged. (_Inspects entire bike_) LUCKMAN: If we all go together they'll give them to us; you can bet on it, man. We'll all go, right? (_Looks around for agreement_) DONNA: Are you positive thene're only seven gears? FRECK: Eight. DONNA: Seven, eight. Anyhow, I mean, before you go over there, ask somebody. I mean, it doesn't look to me like they've done anything to it like taking it apart. Before you go over there and lay heavy s.h.i.+t on them, find out. Can you dig it? ARCTOR: She's right. LUCKMAN: Who should we ask? Who do we know that's an authority on racing bikes? FRECK: Let's ask the first person we see. Let's wheel it out the door and when some freak comes along we'll ask him. That way we'll get a disheartened viewpoint. (_They collectively wheel bike out front, right off encounter young black man parking his car. They point to the seven-- eight?--gears questioningly and ask how many there are, although they can see--except for Charles Freck--that there are only seven: five at one end of the chain, two at the other. Five and two add up to seven. They can ascertain it with their own eyes. What's going on?_) YOUNG BLACK MAN: (_Calmly_) What you have to do is multiply the number of gears in front by the number in the near. It is not an adding but a multiplying, because, you see, the chain leaps across from gear to gear, and in terms of gear ratios you obtain five (_He indicates the five gears_.) times one of the two in front (_He points to that_.), which give you one times five, which is five, and then when you s.h.i.+ft with this lever on the handle-bar (_He demonstrates_.) the chain jumps to the other one of the two in front and interacts with the same five in the back all over again, which is an additional five. The addition involved is five plus five, which is ten. Do you see how that works? You see, gear ratios are always derived by-- (_They thank him and silently wheel the bike back inside the house. The young black man, whom they have never seen before and who is no more than seventeen and driving an incredibly beat-up old transportation-type car, goes on locking up, and they close the front door of the house and just stand there_.) LUCKMAN: Anybody got any dope? "Where there's dope there's hope." (_No one_ . . .

All the evidence indicates that separation of the hemispheres creates two independent spheres of con- sciousness within a single cranium, that is to say, within a single organism. This conclusion is disturb- ing to some people who view consciousness as an indivisible property of the human brain. It seems premature to others, who insist that the capacities revealed thus far for the right hemisphere are at the level of an automaton. There is, to be sure, hemi- spheric inequality in the present cases, but it may well be a characteristic on the individuals we have studied. It is entirely possible that if a human brain were divided in a very young person, both hemi- spheres could as a result separately and indepen- dently develop mental functions of a high order at the level attained only in the left hemisphere of nor- mal individuals.

. . . _laughs_.) "We know you were one of the people in that group," the seated medical deputy said. "It doesn't matter which one. None of you could look at the bike and perceive the simple mathematical operation involved in determining the number of its very small system of gear ratios." In the deputy's voice Fred heard a certain compa.s.sion, a measure of being kind. "An operation like that const.i.tutes a junior high school apt.i.tude test. Were you all stoned?"

"No," Fred said.

"They give apt.i.tude tests like that to children," the other medical deputy said.

"So what was wrong, Fred?" the first deputy asked.

"I forget," Fred said. He shut up now. And then he said, "It sounds to me like a cognitive f.u.c.kup, rather than perceptive. Isn't abstract thinking involved in a thing like that? Not--"

"You might imagine so," the seated deputy said. "But tests show that the cognitive system fails because it isn't receiving accurate data. In other words, the inputs are distorting in such a fas.h.i.+on that when you go to reason about what you see you reason wrongly because you don't--" The deputy gestured, trying to find a way to express it.

"But a ten-speed bike _has_ seven gears," Fred said. "What we saw was accurate. Two in front, five in back."

"But you didn't perceive, any of you, how they interact: five in back with _each_ of the two in front, as the black told you. Was he a highly educated man?"

"Probably not," Fred said.

"What the black saw," the standing deputy said, "was different from what all of you saw. He saw two separate connecting lines between the rear gear system and the front, two simultaneous different lines perceptible to him between the gears in front running to each of the five back ones in turn. . . . What you saw was _one_ connective to all back ones."

"But that would make six gears, then," Fred said. "Two front gears but one connective."

"Which is inaccurate perception. n.o.body taught that black boy that; what they taught him to do, if anyone taught him at all, was to figure out, cognitively, what the meaning of those two connectives were. You missed one of them entirely, all of you. What you did was that although you counted two front gears, you _perceived_ them as a h.o.m.ogeneity."

"I'll do better next time," Fred said.

"Next time what? When you buy a ripped-off ten-speed bike? Or abstracting all daily percept input?"

Fred remained silent.

"Let's continue the test," the seated deputy said. "What do you see in this one, Fred?"

"Plastic dog s.h.i.+t," Fred said. "Like they sell here in the Los Angeles area. Can I go now?" It was the Lions Club speech all over again. Both deputies, however, laughed.

"You know, Fred," the seated one said, "if you can keep your sense of humor like you do you'll perhaps make it."

"_Make it?_" Fred echoed. "Make what? The team? The chick? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms. The Latin for 'make' is _facere_, which always reminds me of _f.u.c.kere_, which is Latin for 'to f.u.c.k,' and I haven't . . .

The brain of the higher animals, including man, is a double organ, consisting of right and left hemispheres connected by an isthmus of nerve tissue called the corpus callosum. Some 15 years ago Ronald E. Myers and R. W. Sperry, then at the University of Chicago, made a surprising discovery: when this connection between the two halves of the cerebrum was cut, each hemisphere functioned independently as if it were a complete brain.

. . . been getting it on worth jack s.h.i.+t lately, plastic s.h.i.+t or otherwise, any kind of s.h.i.+t. If you boys are psychologist types and you've been listening to my endless debriefings with Hank, what the h.e.l.l is Donna's handle? How do I get next to her? I mean, how is it done? With that kind of sweet, unique, stubborn little chick?"

"Each girl is different," the seated deputy said.

"I mean approach her ethically," Fred said. "Not cram her with reds and booze and then stick it into her while she's lying on the living-room floor."

"Buy her flowers," the standing deputy said.

"What?" Fred said, his suit-filtered eyes opening wide.

"This time of year you can get little spring flowers. At the nursery departments of, say, Penney's on K Mart. Or an azalea."