Early results were as disappointing as the concept was audacious. It took seven years for the first artificial hand merely to clench its fingers on command from the brain and feed back a signal to the brain that resistance was encountered as the fingers met. The problems were legion: materials to duplicate the flexibility of muscle, skin, and connective tissue (a synthetic collagen analogue alone cost University of Texas researchers six years and Forte thirteen million dollars to formulate); a miniaturized power source to animate the “muscles” made of carbon filament, nylon, and other materials-eventually solved with microminiaturized nuclear-energy packets; a control system that began with crude transistors and evolved into enough microcircuitry to navigate a man to the moon; and the exceedingly difficult task of interfacing the natural nerve endings to a stainless-steel coupling. That alone required more than a dozen painstaking operations for each limb so equipped.
By 1991, it seemed to Gwillam Forte that they could go no further. Each new-year model was only a marginal refinement of its predecessor in terms of strength, durability, appearance, and dexterity. He was impressed when, fitted for a new right foot and calf in 1992, he had discovered that the tactility was so precise that he could thread a needle with his toes, but what was the use of that when he didn’t even have to sew a button on a shirt? Already he could dart back and forth on the squash court with a nimbleness that many a younger opponent envied, detect a three-hour chin stubble with his fingertips, play half-forgotten jazz tunes on his trumpet. What more could his scientist have up his sleeve?
Dr. Robert Reeves’s hearty greeting as Forte entered the room told him that whatever it was, it must be something special.
“How nice to see you, Mr. Forte,” Dr. Reeves said, steering him by the elbow directly into the main laboratory where the white-jacketed staff was congregated around a concert grand piano. “How do you feel these days?”
“I’m-”
“You look fine. Never looked better. Have a seat,” he said, indicating the quilted leather stool in front of the piano.
Gwillam Forte sat, wondering whether the researchers were under the impression that because he could finger the three valves of the trumpet, he should also be able to manipulate eighty-eight keys.
Dr. Reeves rolled up a small table covered with a white sheet. On it was a black box. He opened it. Inside was a prosthetic right hand and forearm that exactly matched Forte’s own, down to hair and freckles.
Forte shucked his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and pushed firmly with his left forefinger on the latch that disconnected the prosthesis he was wearing. It dropped to the table lifelessly.
With ether, Dr. Reeves wiped the stainless steel annulus that ringed the stump, inserted the new prosthesis in its grooves, and locked it in place.
“Voila,” Reeves said. “I christen thee Gwillam Van Cliburn. Play, maestro!”
Gwillam Forte felt like a fool. Surrounded by thirty-odd scientists, who struck him as ‘thirty odd scientists’ at that moment, as they seemed intent on embarrassing him, he swung around on the stool to play the one tune he could pick out on the piano-Star Dust.
But something funny happened on the way to the keyboard. The moment his right hand approached the keys, it seemed to be endowed with a life of its own. All by itself it began to play. The first chord, to be sure, was from Star Dust, but the next was a change of key that transposed Hoagy Carmichael to Johann Sebastian Bach. He watched, fascinated, as his right hand raced up and down the keyboard in a flawless performance of music he recognized as a Bach sonata. His real left hand lay limp in his lap, as useless and uninvolved as Forte himself felt, in contrast to his private enterprising right hand.
A chorus of applause greeted the last notes of the first movement of the sonata, which ended just as abruptly as it began. Personal control returned to the hand. Gwillam Forte, his initial annoyance submerged by the wonder of it all and the obvious pride of the men and women who surrounded him, grinned and stood up to take a little bow.
“Pretty slick, Bob. I must say, I never knew I had it in me.”
“You didn’t.” Dr. Reeves parted the crowd around the piano and lifted its lid. Inside, in a plastic box between the strings and the sounding board, was a cassette player. He removed it and held it up for inspection.
“Still pretty crude, Mr. Forte,” he explained, “but what we have here is a device that transmits instructions to the nerve cells implanted in the artificial hand to trigger certain muscle movements in programmed sequence. The whole thing’s in the conceptual stage so far, but we’ve got a perfected model two or three years down the road.”
“What’ll it do-put all the concert artists out of work?”
“No, it won’t do that. The rapport between the audience and the performer will never be possible to duplicate by electronic circuitry, but it will provide a source of pleasure for thousands of amputees who would like to make music, yet are too young, old, or infirm to endure the grind that distinguishes a top musician. Don’t look at it as electronic gimmickry or musical reproduction-we’ve developed this strictly as spiritual therapy.”
“Seems promising, judging by what you’ve done so far.”
“We’ve only just begun, Mr. Forte. On our drawing boards is a hand that will be able to play up to two hundred concert selections, from sonatas to concertos. All the memories will be contained in the hand itself, and to initiate the recall the performer has only to play the first four notes or chords; the mechanism takes over from there.”
Gwillam Forte thought about his real, but useless, left hand lying quiescently in his lap while his artificial one handled Bach. It didn’t take much imagination, nor would it take much additional engineering, to coordinate the efforts of two artificial hands to play two-part music. For those unfortunates with two prosthetic hands, it was a long step forward.
“But where does that leave guys like me, with only one artificial hand?” he asked. “How do we play music written for two hands?”
It was Reeves’s turn to be embarrassed.
“Yes, we’ve been working on that. So far we’ve pretty well mapped out the neural pathways from each hand to the corresponding lobe of the brain that processes the electrical impulses controlling the respective muscles. But until we understand better how the two lobes of the brain communicate with each other, sort out their individual responsibilities and capabilities in solving the various aspects of the problem the consciousness perceives as originating from a single modality, we can only surmise-”
“And so forth and so on,” Gwillam Forte interrupted dryly. “After I dig my way out of that avalanche of double-talk, I suspect I’ll discover that the English translation is ‘more money.’ Correct me if I’m mistaken, Doctor.”
Dr. Reeves coughed apologetically.
“How much?” Forte persisted.
“Well, a team of five neurologists and neurosurgeons, along with the requisite laboratory equipment, and of course the-”
“In dollars.”
“Not less than four million over the next five years,” Reeves said quickly.
“Will it be worth the expense?”
Dr. Reeves shook his head. “Probably not.”
Gwillam Forte, slipping back into his old familiar right hand, looked up sharply.
Reeves was smiling impishly. “Unless you happen to love Bach.”
Forte didn’t return the smile. “I don’t like Bach.”
Reeves’s smile vanished.
“But I do like money. There’s a commercial future for this hand of yours, Bob, so I’m going to finance the research.”
Dr. Reeves licked his lips. He wasn’t any more dishonest than most doctors, but he couldn’t afford to give Forte any false impressions.
“I’m afraid there isn’t much of a-”
“Just think how we could clean up by programming this thing to strangle mothers-in-law.”
14 MAY 1994: 3:30 P.M.
Dr. Wilkie Phillips caught up with Gwillam Forte just as he was leaving the hospital. “Do you have time for a word, Mr. Forte?”
Forte looked at his watch. At four-fifteen he was scheduled to chair a meeting of Stenco, a Sunshine Industries subsidiary that was slowly expiring despite intensive care. He didn’t want to miss it, but he would if he paused for a word with Dr. Phillips: the good doctor’s words had a way of eating up an afternoon.
“Can it wait until next week?” said Forte.
“Sure, it can wait. Another week probably won’t kill them.
“Kill who?”
“The twenty-three men on the danger list.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“That’s what I wanted a word with you about.”
Forte surrendered. He always did, for he felt an overwhelming responsibility for the patients at the Houston veterans hospital. In his time of need they had kept him alive and, eventually, hopeful for better days; he could do no less for them. In fact, he did considerably more. To these men, whom he considered family, he gave everything. One of his first large real-estate acquisitions in Houston was El Caballejo, a horse-breeding ranch then on the outskirts of the city, now hemmed in by refineries and factories. There he held open house for his hospital shipmates-even those he had never known, even those who had fought in wars he had been spared. El Caballejo was a spacious, comfortable spread. The disabled veterans could drop in unannounced and stay for a day, a week, even a month, if they liked. There were plenty of inducements to do so: they had the use of his pleasure craft on the channel for boating and fishing, the swimming pool, the bowling alley, the pistol and skeet ranges, library, sauna, solarium, and stables. Most guests ended the day at the bar, where drinks were on the house, and the dark-eyed barmaids weren’t quite so hard to get as they looked. On festive occasions, nearly the entire ambulatory population of the hospital could be found at El Caballejo, soaking up the sun, steam, and scotch and lying to one another about ancient battles they had fought.