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far side of the room, and they nodded to them as they
entered.
DeFore had her left elbow propped on a folded
sheaf of graph paper. With her right hand she poured
a cup of coffee. One of the few advantages of being
an exile in Cerberus was unrestricted access to gen-
uine coffee, not the bitter synthetic gruel that had
become the common, sub-par substitute since Sky-
dark. Literally tons of freeze-dried packets of the real
article were cached in the redoubt's storage areas.
There was enough coffee to last the exiles several
lifetimes.
DeFore glanced up at their approach, and if she
was nettled by the presence of Grant, Lakesh and
Brigid, she didn't show it. More than likely she had
expected them. Grant fetched cups at a serving table,
and when all of them were seated, DeFore declared,
"My training in brain anatomy and function is lim-
ited, largely self-taught since I came here. Cerebral
activity is very complex, encompassing organic and
electrical processes. So, it's possible-but not prob-
able-I didn't perform the EEG correctly. Or I mis-
interpreted some of the data."
Kane took a careful sip of coffee to cover his sur-
prise that DeFore, even in a backhanded fashion, was
admitting her medical knowledge might be flawed.
. "What did you find?" Lakesh inquired.
Stretching out a strip of graph paper, DeFore
pointed to the rows of squiggly, jagged lines in-
scribed by the recording pen. "We've got the ex-
pected large magnitude alpha waves occurring at a
frequency of eight to twelve cycles per second. Fairly
normal."
She pointed to another line, which dipped dramat-
ically and jumped and dipped again. "Here we have
the spiking associated with epileptic seizures."
She indicated another line that appeared identical
to the first. "Alpha waves again. Below that, we have
the spikes again. The entire EEG alternates those
wave forms."
Grant frowned at her. "And?"
"And the EEG wave fonDS shouldn't change very
much during different kinds of sehsory input or stim-
uli. But they did-almost as if the machine read sev-
eral neural patterns produced by ~e 's brain... all
occurring simultaneously."
She gazed at the people around the tableexpec-
tantly, waiting for a response. When none was forth-
coming, she announced a bit acidly, "I guess I'll
have to spell it out for you-I recorded at least three
types of brain activity when there should have only
been one. It was as if Kane were at rest, performing
a verbal or spatial task, and undergoing a synaptic
seizure, all at the same time."
Brigid's eyes widened, then narrowed. "Verbal
and spatial tasks are controlled by different hemi-
spheres of the brain, right?' ,
"Right" DeFore sounded slightly relieved that
someone finally understood the reason for her con-
fusion. "However, toward the end of the test, the
electrophysical signs of differences in activity be-
tween the hemispheres tapered off, almost as if they
were integrating."
Putting down his cup, Kane gazed at the wo-1
levelly. "What does that mean?" ,'c
Folding her arms over her ample chest DeFore an-
swered dogmatically, "I have no idea. You're either
suffering the most extreme case of multiple-per-
sonality disorder on record-and the record goes
back hundreds of years-or you're a mutie. But at
least I know why you had such a severe headache.
With readings like that, I'm a little surprised you
didn't have a stroke."
Kane resisted the impulse to add, "And probably
a little disappointed, too." Instead, he turned to La-
kesh.
"Theories? Hypotheses? Speculation? My market
is open."
Lakesh chuckled uneasily. "Very well, but keep
in mind, you did ask. When you were caught in the
altered quincunx effect, like the time you used the
interphaser to jump from England to here, the am-
plified electromagnetic energy of your mind broke
free of the synaptic organic structure of the brain. It
breached the barrier between dimensions, and you
were drawn to three parallel casements and three par-
allel versions of yourself. A kind of simultaneous
sideways movement.
"You, the physical you sitting in that chair, were
not there. Your molecular pattern was caught in the
quincunx effect, trapped in a pocket of nonexistence
while your mind melded with those of your extradi-
mensional doppelgangers."
Lakesh paused to draw in a breath, not meeting
DeFore's incredulous stare. He continued in a rush.
"In a time period so short it could never be mea-
sured, you knew what they knew, saw through their
eyes, had access to their memories. If the meld had
lasted longer, perhaps your own personality and
,thought patterns would have fully integrated with
theirs. As it was, when the gateway materialization
cycled to completion, you returned with hyperdimen-
sional echoes of your alternate selves. Just traces of
them-of you, rather. That's why your memories of
what you witnessed are fading."
"Why wasn't he solid until 1 grabbed him?" Grant
demanded, his dark face a hard mask of disbelief.
"Your question is its own answer," Lakesh re-
torted. "Kane was hovering at the interphase junc-
ture, the hyperdimensional crossroads between the
relativistic here and there. When you touched him,
you provided a three-dimensional channel for his pat-
tern to follow from the interphase point."
Grant rolled his eyes ceilingward. ' 'You really
don't know any more than the rest of us. You can
just spout the jargon and make this bullshit sound
reasonable.' ,
Lakesh regarded him resentfully. "I can do more
than that, friend Grant. I can realign the gateway's
autosequencers and phase-transition coils and pro-
long the quincunx effect and duplicate what hap-
pened accidentally.. . as long as the pieces of the
Trapezohedron are used as transitional-tap conduits."
"Rocks as conduits?" Grant growled.
"Remember what Balam called them? Conductors.
Obviously, he meant conductors of quan~ energy
flows. Therefore-"
"Why would you want to duplicate this?" DeFore
interrupted in surprise. She was more than a little at
sea about the topic, but it was obvious she hadn't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]