It was the third department that George supervised personally. There somec was mixed with braintaping technology. And there they found the first hopes of success.

The somec story had been front-page news. Now, however, the story was buried; each new success seemed to be timed perfectly to coincide with world events that filled the airwaves and the newspapers.

For example, when George first verified that if a trained rat was braintaped before being drugged with somec, and then the tape was reimpinged on the same, rat's brain after it woke up, the rat immediately regained all its former training, with no measurable impairment at all. And for six weeks afterward there was no sign of insanity. The results were encouraging enough to call a news conference. The reporters came.

But the same day, the president announced that aerial photographs proved that while the missiles had been taken out of Quebec, large concentrations of Russian troops were unloading from the trawlers that were making ridiculously heavy traffic between Leningrad and Montreal. There was only one reason for Russian troops to be in Quebec. "Defense," said the Quebecois PM, during the first interview, before he knew the Russians were going to try to deny it. "Attack," said the U.S. President, and put the troops on alert. "Just try it," said the Russian General Secretary.

The U.S. President didn't, and the somec story was never noticed.

When George found that trained chimps could be taped and their tapes played into other chimps' brains without ill effect provided the receivers had been drugged with somec first, the story was worthy of note, certainly.