James Forrest Carroll was very careful in the days that followed. With
meticulous care he watched those about him in the asylum, always wary
of showing either too much interest or too much neglect. The other
inmates did not bother him particularly nor did they irritate him. Not
even the fact that he was committed to an insane asylum caused him to
lose heart.
Carroll cared little for his immediate surroundings for he knew that
once he made his point and carried it to the awakened Solar System, not
only would all of the past suspicion be forgotten but he would receive
an even greater reward for having suffered to carry on.
Then, as the flush of newness wore away, the guards and attendants let
him alone more. All of them were trained in handling the insane and
they treated each new inmate with considerable suspicion until the
exact nature of the patient's instability was known.
Carroll's main and only argumentative period came when he was not
permitted to work as he pleased. And so long as no one mentioned the
word 'alien' in any way he was silent--lost in his thoughts and his
plans.
As soon as they furnished him with working space, Carroll knew that his
incarceration was a godsend. For--barring the chance that one of the
guards might be alien--if he could not get out they could not get in.
This was security.
The one off-chance worried Carroll. It would be hard enough to
segregate the few humanoid aliens from the mass of humanity. But with
the aliens occupying human bodies it was impossible. Just how it was
done Carroll could not say but he considered the problem and arrived at
a solution from sheer deductive reasoning.
It was pathologically impossible to consider surgery--the gross
transplantation of a brain. For one thing--among many--there is the
matter of blood supply. Incorrect blood matching causes death in a
transfusion. This is not because of the mismatch in the blood stream
per se, it is because the metabolism of the entire human body is not
matched to the different type of blood.
To transplant a brain would require that something be done about the
blood supply--if changed to match the brain the body would die, if not
the brain would die. And there was no remote possibility that any alien
brain would match human blood.
It is even difficult in many cases to graft skin from one part of a
human's body to another, let alone grafting skin from one to another
body--and the possibility of cross-grafting across the line of
demarcation between Terran species was unthinkable.
Just with common skin.
The brain?
Impossible!
There was, however, the whole matrix of mental gadgets, hypnotic beams,
educators and other gewgaws of the alien culture. The old thought
patterns could easily be erased and replaced by a new system. That
would--despite theological arguments to the contrary--result in a new
person. For all beings are what their experiences and their training
makes them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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