Lee opened his eyes to reassure himself that something was the matter with his ears.
There was the green line on the screen. It danced. It danced like a telegraph key under the fingers of a skilled operator. It had a very definite rhythm. And the rhythm spelled the selfsame words which continued to flow into the phones: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39...."
"God Almighty," Lee murmured and it seemed a magic word. The green dancer stopped its capers; now it merely ran back and forth across the stage in a series of pirouettes. Likewise there was only an angry buzzing in the microphones. For a moment Lee was able to catch his breath. But only for a moment and then the rasping, unearthly sounds started on a new rhythm, trying to form speech again. This time the rhythm was familiar too, but it was preserved in a much deeper layer of Lee's memory.
"I think—therefore—I am. I think—therefore—I am."
Those would be Aristotle's famous words. Almost twenty years ago Lee had heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What strange tricks a fellow's memory could play....
But then: it couldn't be memory.... Never before had Lee's memory expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the intonation in every possible way. Over and over it came:
"I think—therefore I am."
And then: "I think—therefore I am."
And then: "I think, therefore I am."
There was triumph, there was jubilance in that inhuman, that ghostly voice as of a deaf mute who by some miracle of medicine has just recovered speech. Behind that voice was a feeling, a swelling of the heart, a filling of the lungs such as Christopher Columbus might have experienced as he heard from the masthead of the Santa Maria the cry of victory: "Land, Land!" and knew that he had found his—India....