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Tim. What happens to the energy?"
"There must be another effect somewhere in the system," Timberlake said.
"There has to be an unexplained flow of energy somewhere -- or a flow that's
been explained the wrong --"
"Synergy," Prudence said.
Flattery shot a surprised glance at her. The word had been on the tip of his
tongue.
"Synergy," Timberlake mused. "Any medical surprises in there?"
Prudence heard the question within the question. The life-systems engineer
had a working acquaintance with synergy, but he wanted to know if a medical
simplification might help him. Timberlake was sniffing down a hot trail.
"It's the effect produced by our spinal reflexes," she said. "Synergy acts
through the cerebellum, an extra effect. It's on the side of the . . . ahhh,
circuit that leads out from the cortex."
"We're looking for an integrating or balancing effect," Timberlake said.
"That's . . . possible," Flattery said.
This wasn't enough for Timberlake. "Simple synaptic integration is enough on
the side leading toward the cortex. Does synergy involve output from the
frontal lobes or the gyrus? Could it account for our missing energy?"
"Why the gyrus?" Flattery asked.
"I keep looking for secondary mediation areas. We don't dare overlook
anything. W e have to be right the first time or we go down the tube the same
way all the other ships did."
"You're going around in circles the same way Bickel does," Flattery objected.
"So you narrow down the mediating area to the frontal lobes. So what?"
Timberlake wouldn't be distracted. "Lot's of researchers think the frontal
lobes --"
"Fine!" Flattery interrupted. "No end of good people may've suggested that
the frontal lobes are the mysterious center of consciousness. But Prue may be
closer to it than you are. Motile, remember? There may be no seat of
consciousness."
Timberlake blinked. "What good does it do to know where it is if you don't
know what it is?"
Flattery pressed him. "Synergy may not be totally explained, but it's still
useful as a concept. However, if you're suggesting that synergy is
consciousness . . ."
"Dead end," Timberlake said. "But Bickel thinks we're after a
field-regulating sensor which deals with mental and emotional responses."
So that's what's bothering him! Prudence thought. She said aloud: "If we're
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going to reproduce this thing artificially, whatever we build has to have
sensory, mental, and emotional responses to regulate."
Flattery pressed himself back into his couch. "Ahhhhh. We can give Bickel's
Ox its sensory and mental responses -- but how do we give it emotions?"
"What about negative feedback?" Timberlake asked. "Emotions always involve a
goal. Negative feedback suggests a goal-seeking element in the system."
"Consciousness requires a goal?" Flattery asked.
He realized by the sudden silence greeting his question that they had lifted
themselves to a critical point of this analysis. They could all feel it.
Bickel's challenging ideas had goaded them to this effort and now all of them
were poised, sprinters waiting for the gun.
"A goal," Timberlake whispered. His voice grew louder. "An object on which
to focus." He looked at Flattery. "The field relationship?"
Close, but not quite it, Prudence thought.
Flattery said: "Not an entity or a thing or an area of the brain, but a
connecting link between such things or entities or areas."
Out of the corner of an eye, Flattery saw Prudence adjust a dial on the big
console. He sensed the waiting tensions in her movements.
"A bridge!" Timberlake shouted. "Of course! Of course! A bridge!"
"A bridge built out of language?" Prudence asked.
"But the symbols are loaded with errors, with weaknesses and flaws,"
Timberlake said. "That's it."
Flattery saw a new quickness and sureness enter Prudence's movements as she
digested this.
"Time spanning," she said. "With words . . . with symbols."
And Flattery thought: There is a gateway to the imagination you must enter
before you are conscious and the keys to the gate are symbols. You can carry
ideas through the gate from one time-place to another time-place, but you must
carry the ideas in symbols. Do you know, though, what you carry . . . and who
it is that carries?
"Every symbol has hidden premises behind it," Flattery said. "Every word
carries unspoken assumptions."
"And the most critical word in the whole problem is the word consciousness,"
Timberlake said.
"Which assumes," Prudence said, "that there is a self to be conscious."
"A bridge crosses from one place to another place," Timberlake went on. "If
it starts breaking down, the engineers get out the original blueprints, the
materials orders, and they go to the bridge and examine it. They study the
bridge under static conditions and under loads. Then they may replace parts,
put in new bracings --"
"Or tear the whole damn thing down and start over," said Prudence. "Didn't
either one of you hear me? Our word assumes there's a self to be conscious."
"We heard you," Flattery said. "But there are more important hidden
assumptions . . . than 'Know thyself.' "What about 'Know thy limits'?"
"Limits," Timberlake picked up the word. "At one end -- sleep or the sleep of
death; and at the other end -- waking."
"And the question of Western religion," Flattery said, "is: What lies beyond
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