The Mind of Mr Soames Read Free

doubtfully. ‘I wonder who’s paying the fee.’
    ‘Strangely enough, it’s for free,’ McCabe said. ‘I gather that Takaito’s genuinely interested. No doubt a human being makes a change from dogs, especially Japanese dogs. Anyway, he’s merely breaking his journey from Tokyo to New York long enough to perform the operation.’
    ‘New York to Tokyo via London. That’s doing it the hard way.’
    ‘Why should Takaito care? The BMA are chipping in on the additional expenses involved—all in the interests of psycho-neural research.’
    Conway considered for a moment. ‘Supposing Takaito achieves a break-through, and John Soames becomes conscious for the first time in his life. What then?’
    McCabe grinned maliciously. ‘That’s when the fun begins, Dave. The instant he opens his eyes and begins to take an interest in the outside world he becomes the responsibility of the psychiatric department, and so far as I’m concerned you’re welcome to him.’ He paused reflectively. ‘Actually, it shouldn’t be too difficult—a spot of high-pressure education and rehabilitation and he might even become an MP.’
    ‘Just plain habilitation without the “re”,’ Conway pointed out. ‘Don’t forget that Soames has never lived at all yet, in effect.’
    ‘I can tell you the chances of success,’ McCabe said brightly. ‘One in twenty, according to Bennett.’
    ‘Last time it was one in fifty, so the odds are decreasing.’
    ‘That’s a good sign,’ McCabe remarked, with a speculative gleam in his eye. ‘You know what I’m going to do right now, Dave?’
    ‘Start taking bets?’
    ‘No. As a matter of fact I’m going to turn myself into a human being again. I’m going to have a wash and a shave and then I’ve got an interesting proposition to put to that fascinating bitch in the EEG room. I’ll be back later.’
    He rubbed his bristly chin with a ruminative air and went off in a hurry, leaving Conway faintly irritated. Echoes of Morry, with the same slightly salacious, opportunist attitude of mind, but then only a Morry or a McCabe could think of Ann Henderson as a fascinating bitch. At least, he decided, they’re still on the outside looking in, and they don’t really know the girl. McCabe’s wasting his time, just as Morry did, only Morry never knew when to stop.
    He dismissed the unpleasant train of thought before it got under way and moved across to the other side of the theatre. One of the nurses was removing Soames’s thick black hair with electric clippers preparatory to shaving the scalp in readiness for the inevitable trepanning. Beyond them, by the opposite wall, three men in grey overalls were erecting a scaffolding of dural tubing. This mysterious activity explained itself when the double door of the theatre swung open abruptly to admit two more men carrying equipment of decidedly electronic aspect, among which was a gadget strongly resembling a small industrial-type television camera. He remembered then something of the elaborate arrangements which had been made to secure the maximum possible professional participation in Dr Takaito’s experimental operation: closed-circuit colour television for the benefit of more than two hundred doctors and brain specialists who would be watching video monitors in the lecture hall, and 16-millimetre cine cameras making a permanent record on colour film of the Japanese specialist’s technique and procedure. In addition, it was hoped to obtain a tape-recorded running commentary on the operation by Takaito himself, detailing (even if in Japanese) the purpose of his every move.
    Conway found himself wondering what John Soames would think about it all—that is, if he were able to think. To be the focal point of so much expert attention and applied genius; to find consciousness and, in effect, life itself in the centre of the medical profession’s shrewdest and most capable brains... One could hardly ask for more. To be born, as it were, at the age of