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Halsted? Somethin' wrong with your hand? Don't wanna give me a handshake,
welcome me back? C'mon let's shake!"
The way Halsted squirmed around on the floor was so funny T had to pause and
give himself up to laughing.
"Listen, you people," he said when he got his breath. "My fine friends. The
machine says I'm still in charge, see? That little information I gave it
about Karlsen did the trick. Boom! Haw haw haw! So you better try to keep me
happy, 'cause the machine's still backing me a hunnerd per cent. You, Doc."
T's left hand began trembling uncontrollably, and he waved it. "You were
gonna change me, huh? You did somethin' nice to fix me up?"
Doc held his surgeon's hands behind him, as if he hoped to protect them. "I
couldn't have made a new pattern for your character if I had tried-unless I
went all the way, and turned you into a vegetable. That I might have done."
"Now you wish you had. But you were scared of what the machine would do to
you. Still, you tried somethin', huh?"
"Yes, to save your life." Doc stood up straight. "Your injury precipitated a
severe and almost continuous epileptoid seizure, which the removal of the
blood clot from your brain did not relieve. So, I divided the corpus
callosum."
T flicked his whip. "What's that mean?"
"You see-the right hemisphere of the brain chiefly controls the left side of
the body. While the left hemisphere, the dominant one in most people,
controls the right side, and handles most judgments involving symbols."
"I know. When you get a stroke, the clot is on the opposite side from the
paralysis."
"Correct." Doc raised his chin. "T, I split your brain, right side from left.
That's as simply as I can put it. It's an old but effective procedure for
treating severe epilepsy, and the best I could do for you here. I'll take an
oath on that, or a lie test-"
"Shuddup! I'll give you a lie test!" T strode shakily forward. "What's gonna
happen to me?"
"As a surgeon, I can say only that you may reasonably expect many years of
practically normal life."
"Normal!" T took another step, raising his whip. "Why'd you patch my good
eye, and start calling me Thaddeus?"
"That was my idea," interrupted the old man, in a quavery voice. "I
thought-in a man like yourself, there had to be someone, some component, like
Thad. With the psychological pressure we're under here, I thought Thad just
might come out, if we gave him a chance in your right hemisphere. It was my
idea. If it hurt you any, blame me."
"I will." But T seemed, for the moment, more interested than enraged. "Who is
this Thaddeus?"
"You are," said the doctor. "We couldn't put anyone else into your skull."
"Jude Thaddeus," said the old man, "was a contemporary of Judas Iscariot. A
similarity of names, but-" He shrugged.
T made a snorting sound, a single laugh. "You figured there was good in me,
huh? It just had to come out sometime? Why, I'd say you were crazy-but you're
not. Thaddeus was real. He was here in my head for a while. Maybe he's still
there, hiding. How do I get at him, huh?" T raised his right hand and jabbed
a finger gently at the corner of his right eye."Ow. I don't like to be hurt.
I got a delicate nervous system. Doc, how come his eye is on the right side
if everything crosses over? And if it's his eye, how come I feel what happens
to it?"
"His eye is on the right because I divided the optic chiasm, too. It's a
somewhat complicated-"
"Never mind. We'll show Thaddeus who's boss. He can watch with the rest of
you. Hey, Blacky, c'mere. We haven't played together for a while, have we?"
"No," the girl whispered. She hugged her arms around herself, nearly
fainting. But she walked toward T. Two months as his slaves had taught them
all that obedience was easiest.
"You like this punk Thad, huh?" T whispered, when she halted before him. "You
think his face is all right, do you? How about my face? Look at me!"
T saw his own left hand reach out and touch the girl's cheek, gently and
lovingly. He could see in her startled face that she felt Thaddeus in the
hand; never had her eyes looked this way at T before. T cried out and raised
his whip to strike her, and his left hand flew across his body to seize his
own right wrist, like a terrier clamping jaws on a snake.
T's right hand still gripped the whip, but he thought the bones of his wrist
were cracking. His legs tangled each other and he fell. He tried to shout for
help, and could utter only a roaring noise. His robots stood watching. It
seemed a long time before the doctor's face loomed over him, and a black
patch descended gently upon his left eye.
Now I understand more deeply, and I accept. At first I wanted the doctor to
remove my left eye, and the old man agreed, quoting some ancient Believers'
book to the effect that an offending eye should be plucked out. An eye would
be a small price to rid myself of T.
But after some thought, the doctor refused. "T is yourself," he said at last.
"I can't point to him with my scalpel and cut him out, although it seems I
helped to separate the two of you. Now you control both sides of the body;
once he did." The doctor smiled wearily. "Imagine a committee of three, a
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