Tales of the Unexpected

leaving me an ear as well?’
    ‘I’d rather not try an ear this time.’
    ‘I want an ear,’ I said. ‘I insist upon an ear.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I want to listen to Bach.’
    ‘You don’t understand how difficult it would be,’ Landy said gently. ‘The hearing apparatus – the cochlea, as it’s called – is a far more delicate mechanism than the eye. What’s more, it is encased in bone. So is a part of the auditory nerve that connects it with the brain. I couldn’t possibly chisel the whole thing out intact.’
    ‘Couldn’t you leave it encased in the bone and bring the bone to the basin?’
    ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘This thing is complicated enough already. And anyway, if the eye works, it doesn’t matter all that much about your hearing. We can always hold up messages for you to read. You really must leave me to decide what is possible and what isn’t.’
    ‘I haven’t yet said that I’m going to do it.’
    ‘I know, William, I know.’
    ‘I’m not sure I fancy the idea very much.’
    ‘Would you rather be dead, altogether?’
    ‘Perhaps I would. I don’t know yet. I wouldn’t be able to talk, would I?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Then how would I communicate with you? How would you know that I’m conscious?’
    ‘It would be easy for us to know whether or not you regain consciousness,’ Landy said. ‘The ordinary electro-encephalograph could tell us that. We’d attach the electrodes directly to the frontal lobes of your brain, there in the basin.’
    ‘And you could actually tell?’
    ‘Oh, definitely. Any hospital could do that part of it.’
    ‘But
I
couldn’t communicate with
you
.’
    ‘As a matter of fact,’ Landy said, ‘I believe you could. There’s a man up in London called Wertheimer who’s doing some interesting work on the subject of thought communication, and I’ve been in touch with him. You know, don’t you, that the thinking brain throws off electrical and chemical discharges? And that these discharges go out in the form of waves, rather like radio waves?’
    ‘I know a bit about it,’ I said.
    ‘Well, Wertheimer has constructed an apparatus somewhat similar to the encephalograph, though far more sensitive, and he maintains that within certain narrow limits it can help him to interpret the actual things that a brain is thinking. It produces a kind of graph which is apparently decipherable into words or thoughts. Would you like me to ask Wertheimer to come and see you?’
    ‘No,’ I said. Landy was already taking it for granted that I was going to go through with this business, and I resented his attitude. ‘Go away now and leave me alone,’ I told him. ‘You won’t get anywhere by trying to rush me.’
    He stood up at once and crossed to the door.
    ‘One question,’ I said.
    He paused with a hand on the doorknob. ‘Yes, William?’
    ‘Simply this. Do you yourself honestly believe that when my brain is in that basin, my mind will be able to function exactly as it is doing at present? Do you believe that I will be able to think and reason as I can now? And will the power of memory remain?’
    ‘I don’t see why not,’ he answered. ‘It’s the same brain. It’s alive. It’s undamaged. In fact, it’s completely untouched. We haven’t even opened the dura. The big difference, of course, would be that we’ve severed every single nerve that leads into it – except for the one optic nerve – and this means that your thinking would no longer be influenced by your senses. You’d be living in an extraordinarily pure and detached world. Nothing to bother you at all, not even pain. You couldn’t possibly feel pain because there wouldn’t be any nerves to feel it with. In a way, it would be an almost perfect situation. No worries or fears or pains or hunger or thirst. Not even any desires. Just your memories and your thoughts, and if the remaining eye happened to function, then you could read books as well. It all sounds rather pleasant to me.’
    ‘It does, does it?’
    ‘Yes, William, it does. And particularly for a Doctor of Philosophy. It would be a tremendous experience. You’d be able to reflect upon the ways of the world with a detachment and a serenity that no man had ever attained before. And who knows what might not happen then! Great thoughts and solutions might come to you, great ideas that could revolutionize our way of life! Try to imagine, if you can, the degree of concentration that you’d be able to achieve!’
    ‘And