Michael Crichton - The Terminal Man

Richards's background was similar. He had finished high school and gone to college for six months before being drafted by the Army. He was about to be sent to Vietnam when he began to suggest improvements in the Army's electronic scanning devices. The improvements worked, and Richards never got closer to combat than a laboratory in Santa Monica. When he was discharged, he also joined the NPS.

The wizard twins: Ross smiled.

"Hi, Jan," Gerhard said.

"How's it going, Jan?" Richards said.

They were both offhand. They were the only people on the Staff who dared refer to McPherson as "Rog." And McPherson put up with it.

"Okay," she said. "We've got our stage three through grand rounds. I'm going to see him now."

"We're just finishing a check on the computer," Gerhard said. "It looks fine." He pointed to a table with a microscope surrounded by a tangle of electronic meters and dials.

"Where is it?"

"Under the stage."

She looked closer. A clear plastic packet the size of a postage stamp lay under the microscope lens. Through the plastic she could see a dense jumble of micro-miniaturized electronic components. Forty contact points protruded from the plastic. With the help of the microscope, the twins were testing the points sequentially, using fine probes.

"The logic circuits are the last to be checked," Richards said. "And we have a backup unit, just in case."

Janet went over to the file-card storage shelves and began looking through the test cards. After a moment, she said, "Haven't you got any more psychodex cards?"

"They're over here," Gerhard said. "You want five-space or n-space?"

"N-space," she said.

Gerhard opened a drawer and took out a cardboard sheet. He also took out a flat plastic clipboard. Attached to the clipboard by a metal chain was a pointed metal probe, something like a pencil.

"This isn't for the stage three, is it?"

"Yes," she said.

"But'you've run so many psychodexes on him before- "

"Just one more, for the records."

Gerhard handed her the card and clipboard. "Does your stage three know what's going on?"

"He knows most of it," she said.

Gerhard shook his head. "He must be out of his mind.

"He is," she said. "That's the problem."

At the seventh floor, she stopped at the nurses' station to ask for Benson's chart. A new nurse was there, who said,

"I'm sorry but relatives aren't allowed to look at medical records."

"I'm Dr. Ross."

The nurse was flustered. "I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't see a name tag. Your patient is in seven-ohfour."

"What patient?"

"Little Jerry Peters."

Dr. Ross looked blank.

"Aren't you a pediatrician?" the nurse asked, finally.

"No," she said. "I'm a psychiatrist at the NPS." She heard the stridency in her own voice, and it upset her. But all those years growing up with people who said, "You don't really want to be a doctor, you want to be a nurse," or,

"Well, for a woman, pediatrics is best, I mean, the most natural thing…"

"Oh," the nurse said. "Then you want Mr. Benson in seven-ten. He's been prepped."

"Thank you," she said. She took the chart and walked down the hall to Benson's room. She knocked on Benson's door and heard gunshots. She opened the door and saw that the lights were dimmed, except for a small bedside lamp, but the room was bathed in an electric-blue glow from a TV. On the screen, a man was saying, "… dead before he hit the ground. Two bullets right through the heart."

"Hello?" she said, and swung the door wider.

Benson looked over. He smiled and pressed a button beside the bed, turning off the TV. His head was wrapped in a towel.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, coming into the room. She sat on a chair beside the bed.

"Naked," he said, and touched the towel. "It's funny. You don't realize how much hair you have until somebody cuts it all off." He touched the towel again. "It must be worse for a woman." Then he looked at her and became embarrassed.

"It's not much fun for anybody," she said.

"I guess not." He lay back against the pillow. "After they did it, I looked in the wastebasket, and I was amazed. So much hair. And my head was cold. It was the funniest thing, a cold head. They put a towel around it. I said I wanted to look at my head - see what I looked like bald - but they said it wasn't a good idea. So I waited until after they left, and then I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. But when I got there…"

"Yes?"

"I didn't take the towel off." He laughed. "I couldn't do it. What does that mean?"

"I don't know. What do you think it means?"

He laughed again. "Why is it that psychiatrists never give you a straight answer?" He lit a cigarette and looked at her defiantly. "They told me I shouldn't smoke, but I'm doing it anyway."

"I doubt that it matters," she said. She was watching him closely. He seemed in good spirits, and she didn't want to take that away from him. But on the other hand, it wasn't entirely appropriate to be jovial on the eve of brain surgery.

"Ellis was here a few minutes ago," he said, puffing on the cigarette. "He put some marks on me. Can you see?" He lifted up the right side of his towel slightly. exposing white pale flesh over the skull. Two blue "X" marks were positioned behind the ear. "How do I look?" he asked, grinning.

"You look fine," she said. "How do you feel?"

"Fine. I feel fine."

"Any worries?"

"No. I mean, what is there to worry about? Nothing I can do. For the next few hours, I'm in your hands, and Ellis's hands…"

"I think most people would be a little worried before an operation."

"There you go again, being a reasonable psychiatrist." He smiled, and then frowned. He bit his lip. "Of course I'm worried."

"What worries you?"

"Everything," he said. He sucked on the cigarette.

"Everything. I worry about how I'll sleep. How I'll feel tomorrow. How I'll be when it's all over. What if somebody makes a mistake? What if I get turned into a vegetable? What if it hurts? What if I…"

"Die?"

"Sure. That, too."

"It's really a minor procedure. It's hardly more complicated than an appendectomy."

"I bet you tell that to all your brain-surgery patients."

"No, really. It's a short, simple procedure. It'll take about an hour and a half."

He nodded vaguely. She couldn't tell if she had reassured him. "You know," he said, "I don't really think it will happen. I keep thinking tomorrow morning at the last minute they'll come in and say 'You're cured, Benson, you can go home now.' "

"We hope you'll be cured by the operation." She felt a twinge of guilt saying that, but it came out smoothly enough.

"You're so goddamned reasonable," he said. "There are times when I can't stand it."

"Like now?"

He touched the towel around his head again. "I mean, for Christ's sake, they're going to drill holes in my head, and stick wires in- "

"You've known about that for a long time."

"Sure," he said. "Sure. But this is the night before."

"Do you feel angry now?"

"No. Just scared."

"It's all right to be scared, it's perfectly normal. But don't let it make you angry."

He stubbed out the cigarette, and lit another immediately. Changing the subject, he pointed to the clipboard she carried under her arm. "What's that?"

"Another psychodex test. I want you to go through it."

"Now?"

"Yes. It's just for the record."

He shrugged indifferently. He had taken the psychodex several times before. She handed him the clipboard and he arranged the question card on the board, then began to answer the questions. He read them aloud:

"Would you rather be an elephant or a baboon? Baboon. Elephants live too long."

With the metal probe, he punched out the chosen answer on the card.