The Terminal Man Read online

Page 12

 

  "Seven seems to be. "

  "Strong?"

  "Pretty strong. When we stimulated him, he said he liked it, and he began to act sexually aroused toward Jan. "

  "Is it too strong? Will it tip him over?"

  Gerhard shook his head. "No," he said. "Not unless he were to receive multiple stimulations over a short time course. There was that Norwegian. . . "

  "I dont think we have to worry about that," McPherson said. "Weve got Benson in the hospital for the next few days. If anything seems to be going wrong, we can switch to other electrodes. Well just keep track of him for a while. What about nine?"

  "Very weak. Equivocal, really. "

  "How did he respond?"

  "There was a subtle increase in spontaneity, more tendency to smile, to tell happy and positive anecdotes. "

  McPherson seemed unimpressed. "And thirtyone?"

  "Clear tranquilizing effect. Calmness, relaxation, happiness. "

  McPherson rubbed his hands together. "I guess we can get on with it," he said. He looked once through the glass at Benson, and said, "Interface the patient with seven and thirty-one. "

  McPherson was clearly feeling a sense of high drama and medical history. But Gerhard wasnt; he got off his stool in a straightforward, almost bored way and walked to a corner of the room where there was a computer console mounted beneath a TV screen. He began to touch the buttons. The TV screen glowed to life. After a moment, letters appeared on it.

  BENSON, H. F.

  INTERFACING PROCEDURE

  POSSIBLE ELECTRODES: 40, designated serially

  POSSIBLE VOLTAGES: continuous POSSIBLE DURATIONS: continuous POSSIBLE WAVE FORMS: pulse only

  Gerhard pressed a button and the screen went blank. Then a series of questions appeared, to which Gerhard typed out the answers on the console.

  INTERFACE PROCEDURES BENSON, H. F.

  1. WHICH ELECTRODES WILL BE ACTIVATED?

  7, 31 only

  2. WHAT VOLTAGE WILL BE APPLIED TO ELECTRODE SEVEN?

  5 mv

  3. WHAT DURATION WILL BE APPLIED TO ELECTRODE SEVEN?

  5 sec

  There was a pause, and the questions continued for electrode 31. Gerhard typed in the answers. Watching him,

  McPherson said to Morris, "This is amusing, in a way. Were telling the tiny computer how to work. The little computer gets its instructions from the big computer, which gets its instructions from Gerhard, who has a bigger computer than any of them. "

  "Maybe," Gerhard said, and laughed.

  The screen glowed:

  INTERFACING PARAMETERS STORED. READY TO PROGRAM AUXILIARY UNIT.

  Morris sighed. He hoped that he would never reach the point in his life when he was referred to by a computer as an "auxiliary unit. " Gerhard typed quietly, a soft clicking sound. On the other TV screens, they could see the inner circuitry of the small computer. It glowed intermittently as the wiring locked in.

  BENSON HF HAS BEEN INTERFACED.

  IMPLANTED DEVICE NOW READING

  EEG DATA AND DELIVERING APPROPRIATE

  FEEDBACK.

  That was all there was to it. Somehow Morris was disappointed; he knew it would be this way, but he had expected - or needed - something more dramatic. Gerhard ran a systems check which came back negative. The screen went blank and then came through with a final message:

  UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL SYSTEM 360

  COMPUTER THANKS YOU FOR REFERRING THIS INTERESTING PATIENT FOR THERAPY.

  Gerhard smiled. In the next room, Benson was still talking quietly with Ross. Neither of them seemed to have noticed anything different at all.

  3

  Janet Ross finished the stimulation series profoundly depressed. She stood in the corridor watching as Benson was wheeled away. She had a last glimpse of the white bandages around his neck as the nurse turned the corner; then he was gone.

  She walked down the hallway in the other direction, through the multicolored NPS doors. For some reason, she found herself thinking about Arthurs yellow Ferrari. It was so marvelous and elegant and irrelevant to anything. The perfect toy. She wished she were in Monte Carlo, stepping out of Arthurs Ferrari wearing her Balenciaga gown, going up the stairs to the casino to gamble with nothing more important than money.

  She looked at her watch. Christ, it was only 12:15. She had half the day ahead of her. What was it like to be a pediatrician? Probably fun. Tickling babies and giving shots and advising mothers on toilet training. Not a bad way to live.

  She thought again of the bandages on Bensons shoulder, and went into Telecomp. She had hoped to speak to Gerhard alone, but instead everyone was in the room - McPherson, Morris, Ellis, everyone. They were all jubilant, toasting each other with coffee in Styrofoam cups.

  Someone thrust a cup into her hands, and McPherson put his arm around her in a fatherly way. "I gather we turned Benson on to you today. "

  "Yes, you did," she said, managing to smile.

  "Well, I guess youre used to that. "

  "Not exactly," she said.

  The room got quieter, the festive feeling slid away. She felt bad about that, but not really. There was nothing amusing about shocking a person into sexual arousal. It was physiologically interesting, was frightening and pathetic, but not funny. Why did they all find it so goddamned funny?

  Ellis produced a hip flask and poured clear liquid into her coffee. "Makes it Irish," he said, with a wink. "Much better. "

  She nodded, and glanced across the room at Gerhard.

  "Drink up, drink up," Ellis said.

  Gerhard was talking to Morris about something. It seemed a very intent conversation; then she heard Morris say, ". . . you please pass the pussy?" Gerhard laughed; Morris laughed. It was some kind of joke.

  "Not bad, considering," Ellis said. "What do you think?"

  "Very good," she said, taking a small sip. She managed to get away from Ellis and McPherson and went over to Gerhard. He was momentarily alone; Morris had gone off to refill his cup.

  "Listen," she said, "can I talk to you for a second?"

  "Sure," Gerhard said. He bent his head closer to hers.

  "What is it?"

  "I want to know something. Is it possible for you to monitor Benson here, on the main computer?"

  "You mean monitor the implanted unit?"

  "Yes. "

  Gerhard shrugged. "I guess so, but why bother? We know the implanted unit is working- "

  "I know," she said. "I know. But will you do it anyway, as a precaution?"

  Gerhard said nothing. His eyes said: Precaution against what?

  "Please?"

  "Okay," he said. "Ill punch in a monitoring subroutine as soon as they leave. " He nodded to the group. "Ill have the computer check on him twice an hour. "

  She frowned.

  "Four times an hour?"

  "How about every ten minutes?" she said.

  "Okay," he said. "Every ten minutes. "

  "Thanks," she said. Then she drained her coffee, feeling the warmth hit her stomach, and she left the room.

  Chapter 9

  4

  Ellis sat in a corner of Room 710 and watched the half-dozen technicians maneuvering around the bed. There were two people from the rad lab doing a radiation check; there was one girl drawing blood for the chem lab, to check steroid levels; there was an EEG technician resetting the monitors; and there were Gerhard and Richards, taking a final look at the interface wiring.

  Throughout it all, Benson lay motionless, breathing easily, staring up at the ceiling. He did not seem to notice the people touching him, moving an arm here, shifting a sheet there. He stared straight up at the ceiling.

  One of the rad-lab men had hairy hands protruding from the cuffs of his white lab coat. For a moment, the man rested his hairy dark hand on Bensons bandages. Ellis thought about the monkeys he had operated on. There was nothing to that except technical expertise, because you always knew - no matter how hard you prete
nded - that it was a monkey and not a human being, and if you slipped and cut the monkey from ear to ear, it didnt matter at all. There would be no questions, no relatives, no lawyers, no press, no nothing - not even a nasty note from Requisitions asking what was happening to all those eighty-dollar monkeys. Nobody gave a damn. And neither did he. He wasnt interested in helping monkeys. He was interested in helping human beings.

  Benson stirred. "Im tired," he said. He glanced over at Ellis.

  Ellis said, "About ready to wrap it up, boys?"

  One by one, the technicians stepped back from the bed, nodding, collected their instruments and their data, and left the room. Gerhard and Richards were the last to go. Finally. Ellis was alone with Benson.

  "You feel like sleeping?" Ellis said.

  "I feel like a goddamned machine. I feel like an automobile in a complicated service station. I feel like Im being repaired. "

  Benson was getting angry. Ellis could feel his own tension building. He was tempted to call for nurses and orderlies to restrain Benson when the attack came. But he remained seated.

  "Thats a lot of crap," Ellis said.

  Benson glared at him, breathing deeply.

  Ellis looked at the monitors over the bed. The brain waves were going irregular, moving into an attack configuration.

  Benson wrinkled his nose and sniffed. "Whats that smell?" he said. "That awful- "

  Above the bed, a red monitor light blinked STIMULATION.

  The brain waves spun in a distorted tangle of white lines for five seconds. Simultaneously, Bensons pupils dilated. Then the lines were smooth again; the pupils returned to normal size.

  Benson turned away, staring out the window at the afternoon sun. "You know," he said, "its really a very nice day, isnt it?"

  5

  For no particular reason, Janet Ross came back to the hospital at 11 p. m. She had gone to see a movie with a pathology resident who had been asking her for weeks; finally she had relented. They had seen a murder mystery, which the resident claimed was the only kind of movie he attended. This one featured five murders before she stopped counting them. In the darkness, she had glanced at the resident, and he was smiling. His reaction was so stereotyped - the pathologist drawn to violence and death - that she found herself thinking of the other stereotypes in medicine: the sadistic surgeons and the childish pediatricians and the woman-hating gynecologists. And the crazy psychiatrists.

  Afterward, he had driven her back to the hospital because she had left her car in the hospital parking lot. But instead of driving home she had gone up to the NPS. For no particular reason.

  The NPS was deserted, but she expected to find Gerhard and

  Richards at work, and they were, poring over computer print-outs in Telecomp. They hardly noticed when she came into the room and got herself some coffee. "Trouble?" she said.

  Gerhard scratched his head. "Now its Martha," he said.

  "First George refuses to be a saint. Now Martha is becoming nice. Everythings screwed up. "

  Richards smiled. "You have your patients, Jan," he said,

  "and we have ours. "

  "Speaking of my patient. . . "

  "Of course," Gerhard said, getting up and walking over to the computer console. "I was wondering why you came in. " He smiled. "Or was it just a bad date?"

  "Just a bad movie," she said.

  Gerhard punched buttons on the console. Letters and numbers began to print out. "Heres all the checks since I started it at one-twelve this afternoon. "

  01:12 NORMAL EEG 04:02 NORMAL EEG

  01:22 NORMAL EEG 04:12 NORMAL EEG

  01:32 SLEEP EEG 04:22 NORMAL EEG

  01:42 SLEEP EEG 04:32 SLEEP EEG

  01:52 NORMAL EEG 04:42 NORMAL EEG

  02:02 NORMAL EEG 04:52 NORMAL EEG

  02:12 NORMAL EEG 05:02 SLEEP EEG

  02:22 NORMAL EEG 05:12 NORMAL EEG

  02:32 SLEEP EEG 05:22 NORMAL EEG

  02:42 NORMAL EEG 05:32 SLEEP EEG

  02:52 NORMAL EEG 05:42 NORMAL EEG

  03:02 NORMAL EEG 05:52 NORMAL EEG

  03:12 SLEEP EEG 06:02 NORMAL EEG

  03:22 SLEEP EEG 06:12 NORMAL EEG

  03:32 STIMULATION 06:22 NORMAL EEG

  03:42 NORMAL EEG 06:32 NORMAL EEG

  03:52 SLEEP EEG 06:42 NORMAL EEG

  06:52 STIMULATION 09:02 STIMULATION

  07:02 NORMAL EEG 09:12 SLEEP EEG

  07:12 NORMAL EEG 09:22 NORMAL EEG

  07:22 SLEEP EEG 09:32 NORMAL EEG

  07:32 SLEEP EEG 09:42 NORMAL EEG

  07:42 SLEEP EEG 09:52 NORMAL EEG

  07:52 NORMAL EEG 10:02 NORMAL EEG

  08:02 NORMAL EEG 10:12 NORMAL EEG

  08:12 NORMAL EEG 10:22 NORMAL EEG

  08:22 SLEEP EEG 10:32 STIMULATION

  08:32 NORMAL EEG 10:42 SLEEP EEG

  08:42 NORMAL EEG 10:52 NORMAL EEG

  08:52 NORMAL EEG 11:02 NORMAL EEG

  "I cant make anything out of this," Ross said, frowning.

  "It looks like hes dozing on and off, and hes gotten a couple of stimulations, but. . . " She shook her head. "Isnt there another display mode?"

  As she spoke, the computer produced another report, adding it to the column of numbers:

  11:12 NORMAL EEG

  "People," Gerhard said, in mock irritation. "They just cant handle machine data. " It was true. Machines could handle column after column of numbers. People needed to see patterns. On the other hand, machines were very poor at recognizing patterns. The classic problem was trying to get a machine to differentiate between the letter "B" and the letter "D. " A child could do it; it was almost impossible for a machine to look at the two patterns and discern the difference.

  "Ill give you a graphic display," Gerhard said. He punched buttons, wiping the screen. After a moment, cross-hatching for a graph appeared, and the points began to blink on.

  "Damn," she said when she saw the graph.

  "Whats the matter?" Gerhard said.

  "Hes getting more frequent stimulations. He had none for a long time, and then he began to have them every couple of hours. Now it looks like one an hour. "

  "So?" Gerhard said.

  "What does that suggest to you?" she said.

  "Nothing in particular. "

  "It should suggest something quite specific," she said.

  "We know that Bensons brain will be interacting with the computer, right?"