Man of Many Minds

by E. Everett Evans

He "drilled" the dogs, making them line up, walk left or right or back up, all in unison. He found that while his mind was divided and controlling different bodies, there was a thread of connecting thought between them all, so that he knew what each of the others was doing. Yet it was not a central command—each individual mind-portion could and did do its own deciding and commanding.

For hours Hanlon practiced with the dogs until he had worked out the procedure to the point where he knew he could make them perform—singly, as a group, or each doing a different thing—almost any task of which their body muscles were capable, whether they had previously known how to do it or not.

Bringing his mind-portions back from seven of the dogs into his own brain, after commanding them to sleep, he went over to the cage of the Airedale he was still controlling. Squatting down before the bars, he took a pencil-stub and piece of paper from his pocket. These he passed through the bars and laid at her feet.

Then, while he watched with his own mind through his own eyes, he used only the portion of his mind that was inside her brain, and made the Airedale pick up the pencil in her teeth, blunt end inside her mouth. Holding it thus, she attempted to write on the paper, which she held steady with her two front paws.

Anxious minutes passed while Hanlon sweatingly experimented. At last the dog managed to print, very roughly and clumsily, a few letters. They were large and very crude. It wasn't that he couldn't control her muscles—it was, simply that the muscles were not built to do such things without infinite training.

When it finally became so near "morning" that he knew he had to quit, Hanlon left the kennels and went to bed. He was still amazed, excited and thrilled about this strange and weird ability, but he was also well content with his studies. If a time came when he might wish or need to use animals in his work, he felt capable of managing them. Yet again he realized how much there was to learn; that he must continue practicing and studying at every opportunity.

Did cats or horses—or birds or insects—have brains that worked the same as the dogs? He would have to experiment to find that out, first chance he got.

But now there was another very serious problem demanding his attention. He had made a wonderful start at getting an "in" with Panek, the Simonidean thug. Now, how could he best turn that to his advantage?

It was some time before he fell asleep from sheer weariness, nor had he solved the problem before he did so.

The moment he awoke, late the next morning, he knew he had the answer. His sub-conscious must have solved it for him while he slept.