Princeton Memorial Hospital, New Jersey, 1955

Only minutes old, the infant screamed, piercing the air with incredible lungs, its thin little red legs kicking hard against the white operating table. The child's starfish hands clawed at the oppressive, unfamiliar openness of his new environment, as if trying desperately to catch hold of something--anything--in the unresponsive world. At the same time his button eyes squinted in torture and filled with glistening tears. Over him loomed two bright lights, a cold and annoying sight. The baby's lips puckered, his face pinched and he bawled in anguish, flailing and kicking at this terrifying, too-white place.

The doctors in the room talked among themselves, ignoring the infant except as a point of reference in the procedure to be used. Everyone had read the documents. But one tall, thin Oriental doctor stepped away from his five colleagues and went to the child. For a moment he allowed himself a compassionate glance at the face covered with red blotches and fright, but he quickly turned to the monitor, which registered a sharp decrease in the child's breathing and heartbeat.

The monitor was easier to watch than the anguished infant, and the doctor could congratulate himself on how well the anesthetic had taken hold. The little life was succumbing to sleep. With practiced assurance the Oriental snatched a thin tube from the child's arm, noting that the arm was hardly larger than the tube itself. In seconds the doctor had gotten hold of himself but somehow he felt the infant's eyes fixed on him. Remarkable, clear, thoughtful, questioning and mysterious eyes not unlike the doctor's own. The eyes of an Einstein or a lunatic--the doctor wondered which it was to be when they had done with the child. He knew what he wanted for the boy, what they all wanted for themselves and for--he wanted to say mankind but he knew it was more for himself than anyone, including the helpless child.

He would cut into the infant's brain with his scalpel today while nearby a second team of neurosurgeons carefully took out Albert Einstein's brain for posterity, for science. Einstein's death had, in a strange and mysterious way, brought Dr. Samuel Oriani to the forefront of neurosurgery and would forever affect the nameless child that now lay with its eyes closed before him.

Only a drowsy whimper escaped the child's pursed lips. One of the other doctors quickly and precisely drew thick, red lines across the child's yellowish white cranium, the child's body trembling slightly under the pressure. A second doctor affixed a tiny, white cloth partition, making a magician's separation of head and body.

"You're remarkable, Sam," said one of the doctors to Oriani. "Where in God's name did you find the baby?"

"Do not be disturbed over it in the least," replied the young Oriental firmly.

"He has a Chinese look to him," said another, "around the eyes and in the color of his skin."

"The child's nationality and parentage has nothing to do with our work here, gentlemen!" Oriani had become angry, his face flushed. He visibly stiffened and calmed himself. "Now, we can begin?" Oriani looked around and the others nodded silently.

Everyone was in place when Oriani shouted, "Scalpel!"

The instrument was slapped into his open palm and for an instant perspiration beaded his forehead as he grasped the shining object. He hesitated over the child's cranium.

"Sam?" asked one of the others. "What is it?"

"You've prepared for this moment, Doctor," said another. "Your whole life has been a preparation for it."

Oriani thought of the ancient tale of the centipede who walked perfectly well until one day someone asked how he could manipulate so many legs.

"Do you need another look at Einstein's brain?" asked a third doctor in the room.

"No, of course not," he replied and set to work as if nothing had occurred.

Young Dr. Oriani forgot the child's eyes, the yellow tincture of his skin and helplessness of his condition with the first incision. An incision done well and with confidence always caught the doctor's whole attention and now it was intensely directed at the small skull.

"The first incision, gentlemen, is to be made at the precise angle you see here, the second intersecting here," he said as he worked.

With complete and whole admiration the other doctors watched Oriani's skillful, large hands. Still soft, the base of the skull and the flimsy bone gave way easily under the neurosurgeon's knife. The conclusion came quickly and anticlimactically but with smiles all around the room as Oriani pointed with his scalpel and said, "There it is, gentlemen!"

The others inched closer to see the living brain exposed, so fragile and at once so miraculous in its compact home. Blood vessels, arteries and gray matter looked more vivid, more alarming and fascinating than any chart in any textbook. To the men present it was this--working with the living, human organ called the brain--which they'd spent their lives wanting. None of them cared how the young Oriental genius had managed to find a donor child for the experiment because Sam had made this moment possible.

"1955 will be an historic year," said one of the doctors.

"Forceps!" ordered Oriani. "Observe, gentlemen! With one stroke." Oriani swiped at the brain, seemingly as casual as a pirate with a dagger in his hand, cutting neatly through the tissue. Blood vessels burst and a crimson flood dyed both the doctor's hands and the child's gray matter.

Oriani lifted a section of the child's brain the size of a man's thumbnail between his forceps and stood staring at it for some time in genuine curiosity.

Around him the others were talking.

"With one small stroke, one simple procedure, we set right the error of evolution."

"We sever man from his primordial beginnings!"

Someone slapped Oriani on the back and he shot out of the room, ordering, "Close for me!" With him he carried the portion of the child's brain he'd cut away.