“These conclusions were, of course, revolutionary. For it meant that a rat’s memory is capable of recording impressions of remarkable complexity — impressions too complex for the rat itself to understand. And that, moreover, Meiklejohn in his waking state was unable to grasp these complex impressions. He had to be totally relaxed and on the edge of sleep.
“Now Meiklejohn realized that he had made a discovery of tremendous importance, and that it would probably win him the Nobel Prize. So he decided to keep his discovery a secret until he had conducted some further experiments. And this proved to be a mistake. One morning, he was found wandering around the university building wearing nothing but his shirt, and in a state of psychotic anxiety. Attendants from a local mental hospital had to put him in a straitjacket. Under heavy sedation he eventually recovered, and told them what had happened. He had made recordings from the memory circuits of a stray dog. And the dog had belonged to an alcoholic who had treated it with extreme cruelty before he went insane. In a state of deep relaxation — Meiklejohn had been using the peace machine — he had played back the dog’s memory circuits, and had been so shocked that he had an instant nervous breakdown.
“The story has a happy ending. Meiklejohn married Annette Larsen, and made a complete recovery; he also received the Nobel Prize. And he went on to invent a device for recording and amplifying memories which he called the psychoscope — a kind of telescope for looking into the mind. It became known to the general public as the internalizer. And the psychoscope led him to an even more important discovery: that he was able to study his own memories, and observe all kinds of complex impressions that he was not even aware of having received. For example, he discovered that Annette was pregnant at a time when neither of them had even thought of the possibility.
“Cheap forms of the internalizer became immensely popular toward the end of the twenty-first century — people love to play with their own minds. But it caused so many nervous breakdowns, and so many cases of violent crime, that governments finally banned its sale, and made private possession of internalizers illegal.”
Niall said: “But how could it tell me anything about Skorbo’s killer? I only saw him alive for about half a minute.”
“Your minds came into contact. That is enough. But before you try exploring these memory impressions, I would advise you to experiment with a few simple pictures.”
Niall found it hard to conceal his excitement. What he had just heard seemed to open up almost unimaginable vistas of possibility. There was nothing to prevent him from exploring his own past like a picture gallery, from reliving the brightest moments of his childhood, or the excitement of his first visit to the underground city of Dira. His heart was beating almost painfully as he stood up and went to the peace machine.
“Where is this internalizer?”
“There is one already built into the peace machine.”
Niall climbed onto the bed, and lay down under the frosted glass; the yielding velvet surface was as soft as eiderdown. A light came on behind the frosted glass, and there was a faint humming sound. The relaxation that instantly pervaded his body was so deep that he felt as though he was expelling the aches and fatigues of a lifetime. He had not even realized that he felt so tired, or that the encounter with Skorbo’s killer had so drained his energies. Wave after wave of delight flowed from the soles of his feet up to his head, then seemed to retreat back again like the tide flowing back down a beach. In spite of his efforts to remain conscious, one of these waves picked him up and carried him into oblivion.
As soon as Niall opened his eyes, he remembered where he was. He sat up hastily. “How long have I been asleep?”
“About two hours.”
The thought filled him with guilt. “I must get back to the palace.”
“Why? You are the ruler. You can do what you like.”
This, of course, was true. Moreover, the Council meeting was over for the day. He allowed himself to relax again, adjusting the pillow under his head. Now he noticed the device that was lying beside him on the couch; it was made of half a dozen curved strips of metal in the shape of a cap. A wire ran from it to a socket in the side of the couch.
“Place that on your head and adjust it until it is comfortable.” On the inside of each metal strip there were a number of felt pads; when Niall touched one of these with his fingertip he discovered that it was damp. He adjusted the cap on his head, with the front strip across his forehead, the rear one at the back of his skull. There was a faint electrical tingling where the pads touched his bare skin.
Behind the frosted glass screen, the light came on again; this time he was already relaxed, so it merely induced a warm glow of pleasure.
“Now, close your eyes and try to make your mind a blank.”
Niall tried to imagine total darkness, and was surprised at his success. It was as if he was suspended in endless space. Then, with a suddenness that startled him, he heard his mother’s voice.
“It has to be grated and pounded, then cooked for at least two hours. Otherwise it is a deadly poison.”
He was so surprised that he opened his eyes to make sure that she was not in the room. Even with his eyes open he could hear her voice saying: “My grandmother used it to make a kind of wine.”
The voice of his grandfather, Jomar, said: “She is right. It can also be ground into flour for making bread.”
The old man asked: “What can you hear?”
“It’s my mother talking to my grandfather.”
And even as Niall answered, the conversation continued. Suddenly, Niall could recall exactly when it had taken place. He was about seven years old, and the family had only just moved into the burrow, the lair of the tiger beetle on the edge of the desert. Before that, they had lived in a cave at the foot of the great inland plateau; but it had been hot, uncomfortable, and unsafe. By comparison, the burrow was cool and secure. When they first moved in, it had smelled of the acrid smoke of the burnt creosote bushes that had been used to drive out the tiger beetles. Now, as Niall listened to his mother and grandfather discussing how to cook the roots of the cassava plant, he could also smell the burnt creosote wood. There was another smell which he found more difficult to place; then it came back: the poultice made from the crushed root of the devil plant, which had been used to dress the wound in his grandfather’s thigh — a wound made by the mandibles of a dying tiger beetle.
As Niall lay there, he experienced many conflicting emotions and sensations. A part of him had become a seven-year-old boy, with all the feelings and thoughts of a seven-year-old. Yet he was also aware of his older self lying there on the couch of the peace machine, conscious of the presence of the child inside him. It seemed incredible that his memory had preserved this section of his childhood with such precision and exactitude, with every single word spoken by his mother and grandfather, and later by his cousin Hrolf, and Hrolf’s mother Ingeld. And this recognition of the reality of his own past induced a feeling of elation, of sheer joy in being alive, together with a certainty that all the problems of human life are trivial, and that human beings only take them seriously because they are stupid and short-sighted. All these insights were so powerful that they seemed self-evident, as if he had known them all his life.
The old man’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Can you see where you are?”
“No.”
“Very well. I want you to keep your eyes tightly closed, but imagine opening them.”
At first it was difficult to follow this instruction. When he tried to imagine opening his eyes, he felt his eyelids twitch, and caught a glimpse of the glass panel above him. Then he tried placing his hands over his eyes, so that it was impossible to open them, and envisaged lying on his bed of rushes in the burrow, with his mother only a few feet away. Quite suddenly, the cave was there, and he could see the face of his grandfather, illuminated by the single oil lamp. It seemed incredible that his father’s father, who had been dead for more than three years, should be sitting there in all his living reality, talking to Niall’s mother Siris, who sat with her back toward him. With a sudden total depth of conviction, Niall reflected that time is an illusion.