The Terminal Man

Friday, March 12, 1971: Breakdown

The seventh (Special Surgical) floor was quiet; there were two nurses at the station. One was making progress notes in a patient's chart; the other was eating a candy bar and reading a movie magazine. Neither paid much attention to Ross as she went to the chart shelf, opened Benson's record, and checked it.

She wanted to be certain that Benson had received all his medications, and to her astonishment she found that he had not. "Why hasn't Benson gotten his thorazine?" she demanded.

The nurses looked up in surprise. "Benson?"

"The patient in seven-ten." She glanced at her watch; it was after midnight. "He was supposed to be started on thorazine at noon. Twelve hours ago."

"I'm sorry… may I?" One of the nurses reached for the chart. Ross handed it to her and watched while she turned to the page of nursing orders. McPherson's order for thorazine was circled in red by a nurse, with the cryptic notation

"Call."

Ross was thinking that without heavy doses of thorazine Benson's psychotic thinking would be unchecked, and could be dangerous.

"Oh, yes," the nurse said. "I remember now. Dr. Morris told us that only medication orders from him or from Dr. Ross were to be followed. We don't know this Dr. McPhee, so we waited to call him to confirm the therapy. It- "

"Dr. McPherson," Ross said heavily, "is the chief of the NPS."

The nurse frowned at the signature. "Well, how are we supposed to know that? You can't read the name. Here." She handed back the chart. "We thought it looked like McPhee, and the only McPhee in the hospital directory is a gynecologist and that didn't seem logical, but sometimes doctors will put a note in the wrong chart by mistake, so we- "

"All right," Ross said, waving her hand. "All right. Just get him his thorazine now, will you?"

"Right away, Doctor," the nurse said. She gave her a dirty look and went to the medicine locker. Ross went down the hall to Room 710.

The cop sat outside Benson's room with his chair tipped back against the wall. He was reading Secret Romances with more interest than Janet would have thought likely. She knew without asking where he had gotten the magazine; he had been bored, one of the nurses had given it to him. He was also smoking a cigarette, flicking the ashes in the general direction of an ashtray on the floor.

He looked up as she came down the hall. "Good evening, Doctor."

"Good evening." She stifled an impulse to lecture him on his sloppy demeanor. But the cops weren't under her jurisdiction, and besides, she was just irritated with the nurses. "Everything quiet?" she asked.

"Pretty quiet."

Inside 710 she could hear television, a talk show with laughter. Someone said, "And what did you do then?" There was more laughter. She opened the door.

The room lights were off; the only light came from the glow of the television. Benson had apparently fallen asleep; his body was turned away from the door, and the sheets were pulled up over his shoulder. She clicked the television off and crossed the room to the bed. Gently, she touched his leg.

"Harry," she said softly. "Harry- "

She stopped.

The leg beneath her hand was soft and formless. She pressed down; the "leg" bulged oddly. She reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on, flooding the room with light. Then she pulled back the sheets.

Benson was gone. In his place were three plastic bags of the kind the hospital used to line wastebaskets. Each had been inflated and then knotted shut tightly. Benson's head was represented by a wadded towel; his arm by another.

"Officer," she said, in a low voice, "you'd better get your ass in here."

The cop came bounding into the room, his hand reaching for his gun. Ross gestured to the bed.

"Holy shit," the cop said. "What happened?"

"I was going to ask you."

The cop didn't reply. He went immediately to the bathroom and checked there; it was empty. He looked in the closet.

"His clothes are still here- "

"When was the last time you looked into this room?"

" -but his shoes are gone," the cop said, still looking in the closet. "His shoes are missing." He turned and looked at Ross with a kind of desperation. "Where is he?"

"When was the last time you looked into this room?" Ross repeated. She pressed the bedside buzzer to call the night nurse.

"About twenty minutes ago."

Ross walked to the window and looked out. The window was open, but there was a sheer drop of seven stories to the parking lot below. "How long were you away from the door?"

"Look, Doc, it was only a few minutes- "

"How long?"

"I ran out of cigarettes. The hospital doesn't have any machines. I had to go to that coffee shop across the street. I was gone about three minutes. That was around eleven-thirty. The nurses said they'd keep an eye on things."

"Great," Ross said. She checked the bedside table and saw that Benson's shaving equipment was there, his wallet, his car keys… all there.

The nurse stuck her head in the door, answering the call.

"What is it now?"

"We seem to be missing a patient," Ross said.

"I beg your pardon?"

Ross gestured to the plastic bags in the bed. The nurse reacted slowly, and then turned quite pale.

"Call Dr. Ellis," Ross said, "and Dr. McPherson and Dr. Morris. They'll be at home; have the switchboard put you through. Say it's an emergency. Tell them Benson is gone. Then call hospital security. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Doctor," the nurse said, and hurried from the room. Ross sat down on the edge of Benson's bed and turned her attention to the cop.

"Where did he get those bags?" the cop said.

She had already figured that out. "One from the bedside wastebasket," she said. "One from the wastebasket by the door. One from the bathroom wastebasket. Two towels from the bathroom."

"Clever," the cop said. He pointed to the closet. "But he can't get far. He left his clothes."

"Took his shoes."

"A man with bandages and a bathrobe can't get far, even if he has shoes." He shook his head. "I better call this in."

"Did Benson make any calls?"

"Tonight?"

"No, last month."

"Look, lady, I don't need any of your lip right now."

She saw then that he was really quite young, in his early twenties, and she saw that he was afraid. He had screwed up, and he didn't know what would happen. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Yes, tonight."

"He made one call," the cop said. "About eleven."

"Did you listen to it?"

"No." He shrugged. "I never thought…" His voice trailed off. "You know."

"So he made one call at eleven, and left at eleven-thirty." She walked outside to the hallway and looked down the corridor to the nurses' station. There was always somebody on duty there, and he would have to pass the nurses' station to reach the elevator. He'd never make it.

What else could he have done? She looked toward the other end of the hall. There was a stairway at the far end. He could walk down. But seven flights of stairs? Benson was too weak for that. And when he got to the ground-floor lobby, there he'd be, in his bathrobe with his head bandaged. The reception desk would stop him.

"I don't get it," the cop said, coming out into the hallway. "Where could he go?"

"He's a very bright man," Ross said. It was a fact that they all tended to forget. To the cops, Benson was a criminal charged with assault, one of the hundreds of querulous types they saw each day. To the hospital staff, he was a diseased man, unhappy, dangerous, borderline psychotic. Everyone tended to forget that Benson was also brilliant. His computer work was outstanding in a field where many intelligent men worked. On the initial psychological testing at the NPS, his abbreviated WAIS I.Q. test had scored 144. He was fully capable of planning to leave, then listening at the door, hearing the cop and the nurse discuss going for cigarettes - and then making his escape in a matter of minutes. But how?

Benson must have known that he could never get out of the hospital in his bathrobe. He had left his street clothes in his room - he probably couldn't get out wearing those, either. Not at midnight. The lobby desk would have stopped him. Visiting hours had ended three hours before.

What the hell would he do?

The cop went up to the nurses' station to phone in a report. Ross followed along behind him, looking at the doors. Room 709 was a burns patient; she opened the door and looked inside, making sure only the patient was there. Room 708 was empty; a kidney-transplant patient had been discharged that afternoon. She checked that room, too.

The next door was marked SUPPLIES. It was a standard room on surgical floors. Bandages, suture kits, and linen supplies were stored there. She opened the door and went inside. She passed row after row of bottled intravenous solutions; then trays of different kits. Then sterile masks, smocks, spare uniforms for nurses and orderlies-

She stopped. She was staring at a blue bathrobe, hastily wadded into a corner on a shelf. The rest of the shelf contained neatly folded piles of white trousers, shirts, and jackets worn by hospital orderlies.

She called for the nurse.

"It's impossible," Ellis said, pacing up and down in the nurses' station. "Absolutely impossible. He's two days - a day and a half - post-op. He couldn't possibly leave."

"He did," Janet Ross said. "And he did it the only way he could, by changing into an orderly's uniform. Then he probably walked downstairs to the sixth floor and took an elevator to the lobby. Nobody would have noticed him; orderlies come and go at all hours."

Ellis wore a dinner jacket and a white frilly shirt; his bow tie was loosened and he was smoking a cigarette. She had never seen him smoke before. "I still don't buy it," he said.

"He was tranked out of his skull with thorazine, and- "

"Never got it," Ross said.

"Never got it?"

"What's thorazine?" the cop said, taking notes.

"The nurses had a question on the order and didn't administer it. He had no sedatives and no tranquilizers since midnight last night."

"Christ," Ellis said. He looked at the nurses as if he could kill them. Then he paused. "But what about his head? It was covered with bandages. Someone would notice that."

Morris, who had been sitting silently in a corner, said,

"He had a wig."

"You're kidding."

"I saw it," Morris said.

"What was the color of the wig in question?" the cop said.

"Black," Morris said.

"Oh Christ," Ellis said.

Ross said, "How did he get this wig?"

"A friend brought it to him. The day of admission."

"Listen," Ellis said, "even with a wig, he can't have gotten anywhere. He left his wallet and his money. There are no taxis at this hour."

She looked at Ellis, marveling at his ability to deny reality. He just didn't want to believe that Benson had left; he was fighting the evidence, fighting hard.

"He called a friend," Ross said, "about eleven." She looked at Morris. "You remember who brought the wig?"

"A pretty girl," Morris said.

"Do you remember her name?" Ross said, with a sarcastic edge.

"Angela Black," Morris said promptly.

"See if you can find her in the phone book," Ross said.

Morris began to check; the phone rang, and Ellis answered it. He listened, then without comment handed the phone to Ross.

"Yes," Ross said.

"I've done the computer projection," Gerhard said. "It just came through. You were right. Benson is on a learning cycle with his implanted computer. His stimulation points conform to the projected curve exactly."

"That's wonderful," Ross said. As she listened, she glanced at Ellis, Morris, and the cop. They watched her expectantly.

"It's exactly what you said," Gerhard said. "Benson apparently likes the shocks. He's starting seizures more and more often. The curve is going up sharply."

"When will he tip over?"

"Not long," Gerhard said. "Assuming that he doesn't break the cycle - and I doubt that he will - then he'll be getting almost continuous stimulations at six-four a.m."

"You have a confirmed projection on that?" she asked, frowning. She glanced at her watch. It was already 12:30.

"That's right," Gerhard said. "Continuous stimulations starting at six-four this morning."

"Okay," Ross said, and hung up. She looked at the others.

"Benson has gone into a learning progression with his computer. He's projected for tipover at six a.m. today."

"Christ," Ellis said, looking at the wall clock. "Less than six hours from now."

Across the room, Morris had put aside the phone books and was talking to Information. "Then try West Los Angeles," he said, and after a pause, "What about new listings?"

The cop stopped taking notes, and looked confused. "Is something going to happen at six o'clock?"

"We think so," Ross said.

Ellis puffed on his cigarette. "Two years," he said, "and I'm back on them." He stubbed it out carefully. "Has McPherson been notified?"

"He's been called."

"Check unlisted numbers," Morris said. He listened for a moment. "This is Dr. Morris at University Hospital," he said,

"and it's an emergency. We have to locate Angela Black. Now, if- " Angrily, he slammed down the phone. "Bitch," he said.

"Any luck?"

He shook his head.

"We don't even know if Benson called this girl," Ellis said. "He could have called someone else."

"Whoever he called may be in a lot of trouble in a few hours," Ross said. She flipped open Benson's chart. "It looks like a long night. We'd better get busy."

The freeway was crowded. The freeway was always crowded, even at 1 a.m. on a Friday morning. She stared ahead at the pattern of red tail-lights, stretching ahead like an angry snake for miles. So many people. Where were they going at this hour?

Janet Ross usually took pleasure in the freeways. There had been times when she had driven home from the hospital at night, with the big green signs flashing past overhead, and the intricate web of overpasses and underpasses, and the exhilarating anonymous speed, and she had felt wonderful, expansive, free. She had been raised in California, and as a child she remembered the first of the freeways. The system had grown up as she had grown, and she did not see it as a menace or an evil. It was part of the landscape; it was fast; it was fun.

The automobile was important to Los Angeles, a city more technology-dependent than any in the world. Los Angeles could not survive without the automobile, as it could not survive without water piped in from hundreds of miles away, and as it could not survive without certain building technologies. This was a fact of the city's existence, and had been true since early in the century.

But in recent years Ross had begun to recognize the subtle psychological effects of living your life inside an automobile. Los Angeles had no sidewalk cafes, because no one walked; the sidewalk cafe, where you could stare at passing people, was not stationary but mobile. It changed with each traffic light, where people stopped, stared briefly at each other, then drove on. But there was something inhuman about living inside a cocoon of tinted glass and stainless steel, air-conditioned, carpeted, stereophonic tape-decked, power-optioned, isolated. It thwarted some deep human need to congregate, to be together, to see and be seen.

Local psychiatrists recognized an indigenous depersonalization syndrome. Los Angeles was a town of recent emigrants and therefore strangers; cars kept them strangers, and there were few institutions that served to bring them together. Practically no one went to church, and work groups were not entirely satisfactory. People became lonely; they complained of being cut off, without friends, far from families and old homes. Often they became suicidal - and a common method of suicide was the automobile. The police referred to it euphemistically as "single unit fatalities." You picked your overpass, and hit it at eighty or ninety, foot flat to the floor. Sometimes it took hours to cut the body out of the wreckage…

Moving at sixty-five miles an hour, she shifted across five lanes of traffic and pulled off the freeway at Sunset, heading up into the Hollywood Hills, through an area known locally as the Swish Alps because of the many homosexuals who lived there. People with problems seemed drawn to Los

Angeles. The city offered freedom; its price was lack of supports.

She came to Laurel Canyon and took the curves fast, tires squealing, headlamps swinging through the darkness. There was little traffic here; she would reach Benson's house in a few minutes.

In theory, she and the rest of the NPS staff had a simple problem: get Benson back before six o'clock. If they could get him back into the hospital, they could uncouple his implanted computer and stop the progression series. Then they could sedate him and wait a few days before relinking him to a new set of terminals. They'd obviously chosen the wrong electrodes the first time around; that was a risk they accepted in advance. It was an acceptable risk because they expected to have a chance to correct any error. But that opportunity was no longer there.

They had to get him back. A simple problem, with a relatively simple solution - check Benson's known haunts. After reviewing his chart, they'd all set out to different places. Ross was going to his house on Laurel. Ellis was going to a strip joint called the Jackrabbit Club, where Benson often went. Morris was going to Autotronics, Inc., in Santa Monica, where Benson was employed; Morris had called the president of the firm, who was coming to the offices to open them up for him.

They would check back in an hour or so to compare notes and progress. A simple plan, and one she thought unlikely to work. But there wasn't much else to do.

She parked her car in front of Benson's house and walked up the slate path to the front door. It was ajar; from inside she could hear the sound of laughter and giggles. She knocked and pushed it open.

"Hello?"

No one seemed to hear. The giggles came from somewhere at the back of the house. She stepped into the front hallway. She had never seen Benson's house, and she wondered what it was like. Looking around, she realized she should have known. From the outside, the house was an ordinary wood-frame structure, a ranch-style house as unobtrusive in its appearance as Benson himself. But the inside looked like the drawing rooms of Louis XVI - graceful antique chairs and couches, tapestries on the walls, bare hardwood floors.

"Anybody home?" she called. Her voice echoed through the house. There was no answer, but the laughter continued. She followed the sound toward the rear. She came into the kitchen - antique gas stove, no oven, no dishwasher, no electric blender, no toaster. No machines, she thought. Benson had built himself a world without any sort of modern machine in it.

The kitchen window looked out onto the back of the house. There was a small patch of lawn and a swimming pool, all perfectly ordinary and modern, Benson's ordinary exterior again. The back yard was bathed in greenish light from the underwater pool lights. In the pool, two girls were laughing and splashing. She went outside.

The girls were oblivious to her arrival. They continued to splash and shriek happily; they wrestled with each other in the water. She stood on the pool deck and said, "Anybody home?"

They noticed her then, and moved apart from each other.

"Looking for Harry?" one of them said.

"Yes."

"You a cop?"

"I'm a doctor."

One of the girls got out of the pool lithely and began toweling off. She wore a brief red bikini. "You just missed him," the girl said. "But we weren't supposed to tell the cops. That's what he said." She put one leg on a chair to dry it with the towel. Ross realized the move was calculated, seductive, and demonstrative. These girls liked girls, she realized.

"When did he leave?"

"Just a few minutes ago."

"How long have you been here?"

"About a week," the girl in the pool said. "Harry invited us to stay. He thought we were cute."

The other girl wrapped the towel around her shoulders and said, "We met him at the Jackrabbit. He comes there a lot."

Ross nodded.

"He's a lot of fun," the girl said. "A lot of laughs. You know what he was wearing tonight?"

"What?"

"A hospital uniform. All white." She shook her head. "What a riot."

"Did you talk to him?"

"Sure."

"What did he say?"

The girl in the red bikini started back inside the house. Ross followed her. "He said not to tell the cops. He said to have a good time."

"Why did he come here?"

"He had to pick up some stuff."

"What stuff?"

"Some stuff from his study."

"Where is the study?"

"I'll show you."

She led her back into the house, through the living room. Her wet feet left small pools on the bare hardwood floor.

"Isn't this place wild? Harry's really crazy. You ever heard him talk about things?"

"Yes."

"Then you know. He's really nutty." She gestured around the room. "All this old stuff. Why do you want to see him?"

"He's sick," Ross said.

"He must be," the girl said. "I saw those bandages. What was he, in an accident?"

"He had an operation."

"No kidding. In a hospital?"

"Yes."

"No kidding."

They went through the living room and down a corridor toward the bedrooms. The girl turned right into one room, which was a study - antique desk, antique lamps, overstuffed couches. "He came in here and got some stuff."

"Did you see what he got?"

"We didn't really pay much attention. But he took some big rolls of paper." She gestured with her hands. "Real big. They looked like blueprints or something."

"Blueprints?"

"Well, they were blue on the inside of the roll, and white on the outside, and they were big." She shrugged.

"Did he take anything else?"

"Yeah. A metal box."

"What kind of a metal box?" Ross was thinking of a lunchbox, or a small suitcase.

"It looked like a tool kit, maybe. I saw it open for a moment, before he closed it. It seemed to have tools and stuff inside."

"Did you notice anything in particular?"

The girl was silent then. She bit her lip. "Well, I didn't really see, but…"

"Yes?"

"It looked like he had a gun in there."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No."

"Did he give any clue?"

"No."

"Did he say he was coming back?"

"Well, that was funny," the girl said. "He kissed me, and he kissed Suzie, and he said to have a good time, and he said not to tell the cops. And he said he didn't think he'd be seeing us again." She shook her head. "It was funny. But you know how Harry is."

"Yes," Ross said. "I know how Harry is." She looked at her watch, it was 1:47. There were only four hours left.

The first thing that Ellis noticed was the smell: hot, damp, fetid - a dark warm animal smell. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. How could Benson tolerate a place like this?

He watched as the spotlight swung through the darkness and came to rest on a pair of long tapering thighs. There was an expectant rustling in the audience. It reminded Ellis of his days in the Navy, stationed in Baltimore. That was the last time he had been in a place like this, hot and sticky with fantasies and frustrations. That had been a long time ago. It was a shock to think how fast the time had passed.

"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the incredible, the lovely, Cynthia Sin-cere. A big hand for the lovely Cynthia!"

The spotlight widened onstage, to show a rather ugly but spectacularly constructed girl. The band began to play. When the spotlight was wide enough to hit Cynthia's eyes, she squinted and began an awkward dance. She paid no attention to the music, but nobody seemed to mind. Ellis looked at the audience. There were a lot of men here - and a lot of very tough-looking girls with short hair.

"Harry Benson?" the manager said, at his elbow. "Yeah, he comes in a lot."

"Have you seen him lately?"

"I don't know about lately," the manager said. He coughed. Ellis smelled sweet alcoholic breath. "But I tell you," the manager said, "I wish he wouldn't hang around, you know? I think he's a little nuts. And always bothering the girls. You know how hard it is to keep the girls? Fucking murder, that's what it is."

Ellis nodded, and scanned the audience. Benson had probably changed clothes; certainly he wouldn't be wearing an orderly's uniform any more. Ellis looked at the backs of the heads, at the area between hairline and shirt collar. He looked for a white bandage. He saw none.

"But you haven't seen him lately?"

"No," the manager said, shaking his head. "Not for a week or so." A waitress went by wearing a rabbitlike white fur bikini. "Sal, you seen Harry lately?"

"He's usually around," she said vaguely, and wandered off with a tray of drinks.

"I wish he wouldn't hang around, bothering the girls," the manager said, and coughed again, sweetly.

Ellis moved deeper into the club. The spotlight swung through smoky air over his head, following the movements of the girl on stage. She was having trouble unhooking her bra. She did a sort of two-step shuffle, hands behind her back, eyes looking vacantly out at the audience. Ellis understood, watching her, why Benson thought of strippers as machines. They were mechanical, no question about it. And artificial - when the bra came off, he could see the U-shaped surgical incision beneath each breast, where the plastic had been inserted.

Jaglon would love this, he thought. It would fit right into his theories about machine sex. Jaglon was one of the Development boys and he was preoccupied with the idea of artificial intelligence merging with human intelligence. He argued that, on the one hand, cosmetic surgery and implanted machinery were making man more mechanical, while on the other hand robot developments were making machines more human. It was only a matter of time before people began having sex with humanoid robots.

Perhaps it's already happening, Ellis thought, looking at the stripper. He looked back at the audience, satisfying himself that Benson was not there. Then he checked a phone booth in the back, and the men's room.

The men's room was small and reeked of vomit. He grimaced again, and stared at himself in the cracked mirror over the washbasin. Whatever else was true about the Jackrabbit Club, it produced an olfactory assault. He wondered if that mattered to Benson.

He went back into the club itself and made his way toward the door. "Find him?" the manager asked.

Ellis shook his head and left. Once outside, he breathed the cool night air, and got into his car. The notion of smells intrigued him. It was a problem he had considered before, but never really resolved in his own mind.

His operation on Benson was directed toward a specific part of the brain, the limbic system. It was a very old part of the brain, in terms of evolution. Its original purpose had been the control of smell. In fact, the old term for it was rhinencephalon - the "smelling brain."

The rhinencephalon had developed 150 million years ago, when reptiles ruled the earth. It controlled the most primitive behavior - anger and fear, lust and hunger, attack and withdrawal. Reptiles like crocodiles had little else to direct their behavior. Man, on the other hand, had a cerebral cortex.

But the cerebral cortex was a recent addition. Its modern development had begun only two million years ago; in its present state, the cerebral cortex of man was only 100,000 years old. In terms of evolutionary time scales, that was nothing. The cortex had grown up around the limbic brain, which remained unchanged, embedded deep inside the new cortex. That cortex, which could feel love, and worry about ethical conduct, and write poetry, had to make an uneasy peace with the crocodile brain at its core. Sometimes, as in the case of Benson, the peace broke down, and the crocodile brain took over intermittently.

What was the relationship of smell to all this? Ellis was not sure. Of course, attacks often began with the sensation of strange smells. But was there anything else? Any other effect?

He didn't know, and as he drove he reflected that it didn't much matter. The only problem was to find Benson before his crocodile brain took over. Ellis had seen that happen once, in the NPS. Ellis had watched it through the one-way glass. Benson had been quite normal - and suddenly he had lashed out against the wall, striking it viciously, picking up his chair, smashing it against the wall. The attack had begun without warning, and had been carried out with utter, total, unthinking viciousness.

Six a.m., he thought. There wasn't much time.

"What is it, some kind of emergency?" Farley asked, unlocking the door to Autotronics.

"You could say so," Morris said, standing outside, shivering. It was a cold night, and he had been waiting half an hour. Waiting for Farley to show up.

Farley was a tall, slender man with a slow manner. Or perhaps he was just sleepy. He seemed to take forever to unlock the offices and let Morris inside. He turned on the lights in a rather plain lobby-reception area. Then he went back toward the rear of the building.

The rear of Autotronics was a single cavernous room. Desks were scattered here and there around several pieces of enormous, glittering machinery. Morris frowned slightly.

"I know what you're thinking," Farley said. "You're thinking it's a mess."

"No, I- "

"Well, it is. But we get the job done, I can tell you that." He pointed across the room. "That's Harry's desk, next to Hap."

"Hap?"

Farley gestured to a large, spidery metal construction across the room. "Hap," he said, "is short for Hopelessly Automatic Ping-pong Player." He grinned. "Not really," he said. "But we have our little jokes here."

Morris walked over to the machine, circled around it, staring. "It plays ping-pong?"

"Not well," Farley admitted. "But we're working on that. It's a DOD - Department of Defense- grant, and the terms of the grant were to devise a ping-pong-playing robot. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it isn't an important project."

Morris shrugged. He didn't like being told what he was thinking all the time.

Farley smiled. "God knows what they want it for," he said.

"Of course, the capability would be striking. Imagine - a computer that could recognize a sphere moving rapidly through three-dimensional space, with the ability to contact the sphere and knock it back according to certain rules. Must land between the white lines, not off the table, and so on. I doubt," he said, "that they'll use it for ping-pong tournaments."

He went to the back of the room and opened a refrigerator which had a big orange RADIATION sign on it, and beneath, AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He removed two jars. "Want some coffee?"

Morris was staring at the signs.

"That's just to discourage the secretaries," Farley said, and laughed again. His jovial mood bothered Morris. He watched as Farley made intant coffee.

Morris went over to Benson's desk and began checking the drawers.

"What is it about Harry, anyway?"

"How do you mean?" Morris asked. The top drawer contained supplies - paper, pencils, slide rule, scribbled notes and calculations. The second drawer was a file drawer; it seemed to hold mostly letters.

"Well, he was in the hospital, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He had an operation, and left. We're trying to find him now."

"He's certainly gotten strange," Farley said.

"Uh-huh," Morris said. He was thumbing through the files. Business letters, business letters, requisition forms…

"I remember when it began," Farley said. "It was during

Watershed Week."

Morris looked up from the letters. "During what?"

"Watershed Week," Farley said. "How do you take your coffee?"

"Black."

Farley gave him a cup, stirred artificial cream into his own. "Watershed Week," he said, "was a week in July of 1969. You've probably never heard of it."

Morris shook his head.

"That wasn't an official title," Farley said, "but that was what we called it. Everybody in our business knew it was coming, you see."

"What was coming?"

"The Watershed. Computer scientists all over the world knew it was coming, and they watched for it. It happened in July of 1969. The information-handling capacity of all the computers in the world exceeded the information-handling capacity of all the human brains in the world. Computers could receive and store more information than the 3.5 billion human brains in the world."

"That's the Watershed?"

"You bet it is," Farley said.

Morris sipped the coffee. It burned his tongue, but he woke up a little. "Is that a joke?"

"Hell, no," Farley said. "It's true. The Watershed was passed in 1969, and computers have been steadily pulling ahead since then. By 1975, they'll lead human beings by fifty to one in terms of capacity." He paused. "Harry was awfully upset about that."

"I can imagine," Morris said.

"And that was when it began for him. He got very strange, very secretive."

Morris looked around the room, at the large pieces of computer equipment standing in different areas. It was an odd sensation: the first time he could recall being in a room littered with computers. He realized that he had made some mistakes about Benson. He had assumed that Benson was pretty much like everyone else - but no one who worked in a place such as this was like everyone else. The experience must change you. He remembered that Ross had once said that it was a liberal myth that everybody was fundamentally the same.

Lots of people weren't. They weren't like everybody else.

Farley was different, too, he thought. In another situation, he would have dismissed Farley as a jovial clown. But he was obviously bright as hell. Where did that grinning, comic manner come from?

"You know how fast this is moving?" Farley said. "Damned fast. We've gone from milliseconds to nanoseconds in just a few years. When the computer ILLIAC I was built in 1952, it could do eleven thousand arithmetical operations a second.

Pretty fast, right? Well, they're almost finished with ILLIAC IV now. It will do two hundred million operations a second. It's the fourth generation. Of course, it couldn't have been built without the help of other computers. They used two other computers full time for two years, designing the new ILLIAC."

Morris drank his coffee. Perhaps it was his fatigue, perhaps the spookiness of the room, but he was beginning to feel some kinship with Benson. Computers to design computers - maybe they were taking over, after all. What would Ross say about that? A shared delusion?

"Find anything interesting in his desk?"

"No," Morris said. He sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked around the room. He was trying to act like

Benson, to think like Benson, to be Benson.

"How did he spend his time?"

"I don't know," Farley said, sitting on another desk across the room. "He got pretty distant and withdrawn the last few months. I know he had some trouble with the law. And I knew he was going into the hospital. I knew that. He didn't like your hospital much."

"How is that?" Morris asked, not very interested. It wasn't surprising that Benson was hostile to the hospital. Farley didn't answer. Instead, he went over to a bulletin board, where clippings and photos had been tacked up. He removed one yellowing newspaper item and gave it to Morris.

It was from the Los Angeles Times, dated July 17, 1969.

The headline read: UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL GETS NEW COMPUTER. The story outlined the acquisition of the IBM System 360 computer which was being installed in the hospital basement, and would be used for research, assistance in operations, and a variety of other functions.

"You notice the date?" Farley said. "Watershed Week."

Morris stared at it and frowned.

"I am trying to be logical, Dr. Ross."

"I understand, Harry."

"I think it's important to be logical and rational when we discuss these things, don't you?"

"Yes, I do."

She sat in the room and watched the reels of the tape recorder spin. Across from her, Ellis sat back in a chair, eyes closed, cigarette burning in his fingers. Morris drank another cup of coffee as he listened. She was making a list of what they knew, trying to decide what their next step should be.

The tape spun on.

"I classify things according to what I call trends to be opposed," Benson said. "There are four important trends to be opposed. Do you want to hear them?"

"Yes, of course."

"Do you really?"

"Yes, really."

"Well, trend number one is the generality of the computer. The computer is a machine but it's not like any machine in human history. Other machines have a specific function - like cars, or refrigerators, or dishwashers. We expect machines to have specific functions. But computers don't. They can do all sorts of things."

"Surely computers are- "

"Please let me finish. Trend number two is the autonomy of the computer. In the old days, computers weren't autonomous. They were like adding machines; you had to be there all the time, punching buttons, to make them work. Like cars: cars won't drive without drivers. But now things are different.

Computers are becoming autonomous. You can build in all sorts of instructions about what to do next - and you can walk away and let the computer handle things."

"Harry, I- "

"Please don't interrupt me. This is very serious. Trend number three is miniaturization. You know all about that. A computer that took up a whole room in 1950 is now about the size of a carton of cigarettes. Pretty soon it'll be smaller than that."

There was a pause on the tape.

"Trend number four- " Benson began, and she clicked the tape off. She looked at Ellis and Morris. "This isn't getting us anywhere," she said.

They didn't reply, just stared with a kind of blank fatigue. She looked at her list of information.

Benson home at 12:30. Picked up? blueprints,? gun, and tool kit.

Benson not seen in Jackrabbit Club recently.

Benson upset by UH computer, installed 7/69.

"Suggest anything to you?" Ellis asked.

"No," Ross said. "But I think one of us should talk to McPherson." She looked at Ellis, who nodded without energy. Morris shrugged slightly. "All right," she said. "I'll do it."

It was 4:30 a.m.

"The fact is," Ross said, "we've exhausted all our options. Time is running out."

McPherson stared at her across his desk. His eyes were dark and tired. "What do you expect me to do?" he said.

"Notify the police."

"The police are already notified. They've been notified from the beginning by one of their own people. I understand the seventh floor is swarming with cops now."

"The police don't know about the operation."

"For Christ's sake, the police brought him here for the operation. Of course they know about it."

"But they don't really know what it involves."

"They haven't asked."

"And they don't know about the computer projection for 6 a.m."

"What about it?" he said.

She was becoming angry with him. He was so damned stubborn. He knew perfectly well what she was saying.

"I think their attitude might be different if they knew that Benson was going to have a seizure at six a.m."

"I think you're right," McPherson said. He shifted his weight heavily in his chair. "I think they might stop thinking about him as an escaped man wanted on a charge of assault. And they would begin thinking of him as a crazy murderer with wires in his brain." He sighed. "Right now, their objective is to apprehend him. If we tell them more, they'll try to kill him."

"But innocent lives may be involved. If the projection- "

"The projection," McPherson said, "is just that. A computer projection. It is only as good as its input and that input consists of three timed stimulations. You can draw a lot of curves through three graph points. You can extrapolate it a lot of ways. We have no positive reason to believe he'll tip over at six a.m. In actual fact, he may not tip over at all."

She glanced around the room, at the charts on his walls. McPherson plotted the future of the NPS in this room, and he kept a record of it on his walls, in the form of elaborate, multicolored charts. She knew what those charts meant to him; she knew what the NPS meant to him; she knew what Benson meant to him. But even so, his position was unreasonable and irresponsible.

Now how was she going to say that?

"Look, Jan," McPherson said, "you began by saying that we've exhausted all our options. I disagree. I think we have the option of waiting. I think there is a possibility he will return to the hospital, return to our care. And as long as that is possible, I prefer to wait."

"You're not going to tell the police?"

"No."

"If he doesn't come back," she said, "and if he attacks someone during a seizure, do you really want that on your head?"

"It's already on my head," McPherson said, and smiled sadly.

It was 5 a.m.

They were all tired, but none of them could sleep. They stayed in Telecomp, watching the computer projections as they inched up the plotted line toward a seizure state. The time was 5:30, and then 5:45.

Ellis smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, and then left to get another. Morris stared at a journal in his lap but never turned the page; from time to time, he glanced up at the wall clock.

Ross paced, and looked at the sunrise, the sky turning pink over the thin brown haze of smog to the east.

Ellis came back with more cigarettes.

Gerhard stopped working with the computers to make fresh coffee. Morris got up and stood watching Gerhard make it; not speaking, not helping, just watching.

Ross became aware of the ticking of the wall clock. It was strange that she had never noticed it before, because in fact it ticked quite loudly. And once a minute there was a mechanical click as the minute hand moved another notch. The sound disturbed her. She began to fix on it, waiting for that single click on top of the quieter ticking. Mildly obsessive, she thought. And then she thought of all the other psychological derangements she had experienced in the past. Deja vu, the feeling that she had been somewhere before; depersonalization, the feeling that she was watching herself from across the room at some social gathering; clang associations, delusions, phobias. There was no sharp line between health and disease, sanity and insanity. It was a spectrum, and everybody fitted somewhere on the spectrum. Wherever you were on that spectrum, other people looked strange to you. Benson was strange to them; without question, they were strange to Benson.

At 6 a.m., they all stood and stretched, glancing up at the clock. Nothing happened.

"Maybe it's six-four exactly," Gerhard said.

They waited.

The clock showed 6:04. Still nothing happened. No telephones rang, no messengers arrived. Nothing.

Ellis slipped the cellophane wrapper off his cigarettes and crumpled it. The sound made Ross want to scream. He began to play with the cellophane, crumpling it, smoothing it out, crumpling it again. She gritted her teeth.

The clock showed 6:10, then 6:15. McPherson came into the room. "So far, so good," he said, smiled bleakly, and left. The others stared at each other.

Five more minutes passed.

"I don't know," Gerhard said, staring at the computer console. "Maybe the projection was wrong after all. We only had three plotting points. Maybe we should run another curve through."

He sat down at the console and punched buttons. The screen glowed with alternative curves, streaking white across the green background. Finally, he stopped. "No," he said. "The computer sticks with the original curve. That should be the one."

"Well, obviously the computer is wrong," Morris said.

"It's almost six-thirty. The cafeteria will be opening. Anybody want to have breakfast?"

"Sounds good to me," Ellis said. He got out of his chair.

"Jan?"

She shook her head. "I'll wait here awhile."

"I don't think it's going to happen," Morris said. "You better get some breakfast."

"I'll wait here." The words came out almost before she realized it.

"Okay, okay," Morris said, raising his hands. He shot a glance at Ellis, and the two men left. She remained in the room with Gerhard.

"Do you have confidence limits on that curve?" she said.

"I did," Gerhard said. "But I don't know any more. We've passed the confidence limits already. They were about plus or minus two minutes for ninety-nine percent."

"You mean the seizure would have occurred between six-two and six-six?"

"Yeah, roughly." He shrugged. "But it obviously didn't happen."

"It might take time before it was discovered."

"It might," Gerhard nodded. He didn't seem convinced. She returned to the window. The sun was up now, shining with a pale reddish light. Why did sunrises always seem weaker, less brilliant, than sunsets? They should be the same.

Behind her she heard a single electronic beep.

"Oh-oh," Gerhard said.

She turned. "What is it?"

He pointed across the room to a small mechanical box on a shelf in the corner. The box was attached to a telephone. A green light glowed on the box.

"What is it?" she repeated.

"That's the special line," he said. "The twenty-four-hour recording for the dog tag."

She went over and picked up the telephone from its cradle. She listened and heard a measured, resonant voice saying, ".

.. should be advised that the body must not be cremated or damaged in any way until the implanted atomic material has been removed. Failure to remove the material presents a risk of radioactive contamination. For detailed information- "

She turned to Gerhard. "How do you turn it off?"

He pressed a button on the box. The recording stopped.

"Hello?" she said.

There was a pause. Then a male voice said, "Whom am I speaking to?"

"This is Dr. Ross."

"Are you affiliated with the" - a short pause - "the

Neuropsychiatric Research Unit?"

"Yes, I am."

"Get a pencil and paper. I want you to take an address down. This is Captain Anders of the Los Angeles police."

She gestured to Gerhard for something to write with.

"What's the problem, Captain?"

"We have a murder here," Anders said, "and we've got some questions for your people."

Three patrol cars were pulled up in front of the apartment building off Sunset. The flashing red lights had already drawn a crowd, despite the early hour and the morning chill. She parked her car down the street and walked back to the lobby. A young patrolman stopped her.

"You a tenant?"

"I'm Dr. Ross. Captain Anders called me."

He nodded toward the elevator. "Third floor, turn left," he said, and let her through. The crowd watched curiously as she crossed the lobby and waited for the elevator. They were standing outside, looking in, peering over each other's shoulders, whispering among themselves. She wondered what they thought of her. The flashing lights from the patrol cars bathed the lobby intermittently with a red glow. Then the elevator came, and the doors closed.

The interior of the elevator was tacky: plastic paneling made to look like wood, worn green carpeting stained by innumerable pets. She waited impatiently for it to creak up to the third floor. She knew what these buildings were like - full of hookers, full of fags, full of drugs and transients. You could rent an apartment without a long lease, just month to month. It was that kind of place.

She stepped off at the third floor and walked down to a cluster of cops outside an apartment. Another policeman blocked her way; she repeated that she was here to see Captain Anders, and he let her through with the admonition not to touch anything.

It was a one-bedroom apartment furnished in pseudo-Spanish style. Or at least she thought it was. Twenty men were crowded inside, dusting, photographing, measuring, collecting. It was impossible to visualize how it had looked before the onslaught of police personnel.

Anders came over to her. He was young, in his middle thirties, wearing a conservative dark suit. His hair was long enough to hang over the back of his collar and he wore horn-rimmed glasses. The effect was almost professorial, and quite unexpected. It was strange how you built up prejudices. When he spoke, his voice was soft: "Are you Dr. Ross?"

"Yes."

"Captain Anders." He shook hands quickly and firmly.

"Thank you for coming. The body is in the bedroom. The coroner's man is in there, too."

He led the way into the bedroom. The deceased was a girl in her twenties, sprawled nude across the bed. Her head was crushed and she had been stabbed repeatedly. The bed was soaked with blood, and the room had the sickly sweet odor of blood.

The rest of the room was in disarray - a chair by the dressing table knocked over, cosmetics and lotions smeared on the rug, a bedside lamp broken. Six men were working in the room, one of them a doctor from the medical examiner's office. He was filling out the death report.

"This is Dr. Ross," Anders said. "Tell her about it."

The doctor shrugged toward the body. "Brutal methodology, as you can see. Strong blow to the left temporal region, producing cranial depression and immediate unconsciousness. The weapon was that lamp over there. Blood of her type and some of her hair are affixed to it."

Ross glanced over at the lamp, then back to the body. "The stab wounds?"

"They're later, almost certainly post-mortem. She was killed by the blow to the head."

Ross looked at the head. It was squashed in on one side, like a deflated football, distorting the features of what had once been a conventionally pretty face.

"You'll notice," the doctor said, moving closer to the girl, "that she's put on half her make-up. As we reconstruct it, she's sitting at the dressing table, over there, making up. The blow comes from above and from the side, knocking her over in the chair, spilling the lotions and crap. Then she's lifted up" - the doctor raised his arms and frowned in mock effort, lifting an invisible body - "from the chair and placed on the bed."

"Somebody pretty strong?"

"Oh, yes. A man for sure."

"How do you know that?"

"Pubic hair in the shower drain. We've found two varieties. One matches hers, the other is male. Male pubic hair as you know is more circular, less elliptical in cross section than female hair."

"No," Ross said. "I didn't know that."

"I can give you a reference on it, if you want," the doctor said. "It's also clear that her killer had intercourse with her before the murder. We've got a blood type on the seminal fluid and it's AO. The man apparently takes a shower after intercourse, and then comes out and kills her."

Ross nodded.

"Following delivery of the blow to the head, she's lifted up and placed on the bed. At this time, she's not bleeding much. No blood to speak of on the dressing table or rug. But now her killer picks up some instrument and stabs her in the stomach several times. You'll notice that the deepest wounds are all in the lower abdomen, which may have some sexual connotations for the killer. But that's just guessing on our part."

Ross nodded but said nothing. She had decided the coroner's man was a creep; she wasn't going to tell him more than she had to. She moved closer to the body to examine the stab wounds. They were all small, puncture-like in appearance, with a good deal of skin tearing around the wounds.

"You find a weapon?"

"No," the doctor said.

"What do you think it was?"

"I'm not sure. Nothing very sharp, but something strong - it took a lot of force to penetrate this way with a relatively blunt instrument."

"Another argument that it's a man," Anders said.

"Yes. I'd guess it was something metal, like a blunt letter opener, or a metal ruler, or a screwdriver. Something like that. But what's really interesting," the doctor went on, "is this phenomenon here." He pointed to the girl's left arm, which was outstretched on the bed and mutilated badly by stab wounds. "You see, he stabbed her in the stomach, and then stabbed her arm, moving out in a regular way, a succession of stabbings. Now, notice: when he's past the arm, he continues to stab. You can see the tears in the sheet and blanket. They continue out in a straight line."

He pointed to the tears.

"Now," the doctor said, "in my book that's perseveration. Automatic continuation of pointless movement. Like he was some kind of machine that just kept going and going…"

"That's correct," Ross said.

"We assume," the doctor said, "that it represents some kind of trance state. But we don't know if it was organic or functional, natural or artificially induced. Since the girl let him into the apartment freely, this trance-like state developed only later."

Ross realized that the coroner's man was showing off, and it irritated her. This was the wrong time to be playing Sherlock Holmes.

Anders handed her the metal dog tag. "We were proceeding routinely with the investigation," he said, "when we found this."

Ross turned the tag over in her hand.

I HAVE AN IMPLANTED ATOMIC PACEMAKER. DIRECT PHYSICAL INJURY OR FIRE MAY RUPTURE THE CAPSULE AND RELEASE TOXIC MATERIALS. IN THE EVENT OF INJURY OR DEATH CALL NPS, (213) 652-1134.

"That was when we called you," Anders said. He watched her carefully. "We've leveled with you," he said. "Now it's your turn."

"His name is Harry Benson," she said. "He's thirty-four and he has psychomotor epilepsy."

The doctor snapped his fingers. "I'll be damned."

"What's psychomotor epilepsy?" Anders said.

At that moment, a plainclothesman came in from the living room. "We got a trace on the prints," he said. "They're listed in the Defense data banks, of all places. This guy had classified clearance from 1968 to the present. His name's Harry Benson, lives in L.A."

"Clearance for what?" Anders said.

"Computer work, probably," Ross said.

"That's right," the plainclothesman said. "Last three years, classified computer research."

Anders was making notes. "They have a blood type on him?"

"Yeah. Type AO is what's listed."

Ross turned to the doctor. "What do you have on the girl?"

"Name's Doris Blankfurt, stage name Angela Black. Twenty-six years old, been in the building six weeks."

"What does she do?"

"Dancer."

Ross nodded.

Anders said, "Does that have some special meaning?"

"He has a thing about dancers."

"He's attracted to them?"

"Attracted and repelled," she said. "It's rather complicated."

He looked at her curiously. Did he think she was putting him on?

"And he has some kind of epilepsy?"

"Yes. Psychomotor epilepsy."

Anders made notes. "I'm going to need some explanations," he said.

"Of course."

"And a description, pictures- "

"I can get you all that."

" -as soon as possible."

She nodded. All her earlier impulses to resist the police, to refuse to cooperate with them, had vanished. She kept staring at the girl's caved-in head. She could imagine the suddenness, the viciousness of the attack.

She glanced at her watch. "It's seven-thirty now," she said. "I'm going back to the hospital, but I'm stopping at home to clean up and change. You can meet me there or at the hospital."

"I'll meet you there," Anders said. "I'll be finished here in about twenty minutes."

"Okay," she said, and gave him the address.

The shower felt good, the hot water like stinging needles against her bare skin. She relaxed, breathed the steam, and closed her eyes. She had always liked showers, even though she knew it was the masculine pattern. Men took showers, women took baths. Dr. Ramos had mentioned that once. She thought it was bullshit. Patterns were made to be broken. She was an individual.

Then she'd discovered that showers were used to treat schizophrenics. They were sometimes calmed by alternating hot and cold spray.

"So now you think you're schizophrenic?" Dr. Ramos had said, and laughed heartily. He didn't often laugh. Sometimes she tried to make him laugh, usually without success.

She turned off the shower and climbed out, pulling a towel around her. She wiped the steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at her reflection. "You look like hell," she said, and nodded. Her reflection nodded back. The shower had washed away her eye make-up, the only make-up she wore. Her eyes seemed small now, and weak with fatigue. What time was her hour with Dr. Ramos today? Was it today?

What day was it, anyway? It took her a moment to remember that it was Friday. She hadn't slept for at least twenty-four hours, and she was having all the sleepless symptoms she'd remembered as an intern. An acid gnawing in her stomach. A dull ache in her body. A kind of slow confusion of the mind. It was a terrible way to feel.

She knew how it would progress. In another four or five hours, she would begin to daydream about sleeping. She would imagine a bed, and the softness of the mattress as she lay on it. She would begin to dwell on the wonderful sensations that would accompany falling asleep.

She hoped they found Benson before long. The mirror had steamed over again. She opened the bathroom door to let cool air in, and wiped a clean space with her hand again. She was starting to apply fresh make-up when she heard the doorbell.

That would be Anders. She had left the front door unlocked. "It's open," she shouted, and then returned to her make-up. She did one eye, then paused before the second. "If you want coffee, just boil water in the kitchen," she said.

She did her other eye, pulled the towel tighter around her, and leaned out toward the hallway. "Find everything you need?" she called.

Harry Benson was standing in the hallway. "Good morning, Dr. Ross," he said. His voice was pleasant. "I hope I haven't come at an inconvenient time."

It was odd how frightened she felt. He held out his hand and she shook it, hardly conscious of the action. She was preoccupied with her own fear. Why was she afraid? She knew this man well; she had been alone with him many times before, and had never been afraid.

The surprise was part of it, the shock of finding him here. And the unprofessional setting: she was acutely aware of the towel, her still-damp bare legs.

"Excuse me a minute," she said, "and I'll get some clothes on."

He nodded politely and went back to the living room. She closed the bedroom door and sat down on the bed. She was breathing hard, as if she had run a great distance. Anxiety, she thought, but the label didn't really help. She remembered a patient who had finally shouted at her in frustration,

"Don't tell me I'm depressed. I feel terrible!"

She went to the closet and pulled on a dress, hardly noticing which one it was. Then she went back into the bathroom to check her appearance. Stalling, she thought. This is not the time to stall.

She took a deep breath and went outside to talk with him.

He was standing in the middle of the living room, looking uncomfortable and confused. She saw the room freshly, through his eyes: a modern, sterile, hostile apartment. Modern furniture, black leather and chrome, hard lines; modern paintings on the walls; modern, glistening, machinelike, efficient, a totally hostile environment.

"I never would have thought this of you," he said.

"We're not threatened by the same things, Harry." She kept her voice light. "Do you want some coffee?"

"No, thanks."

He was neatly dressed, in a jacket and tie, but his wig, the black wig, threw her off. Also his eyes: they were tired, distant - the eyes of a man near the breaking point of fatigue. She remembered how the rats had collapsed from excessive pleasurable stimulation. Eventually they lay spread-eagled on the floor of the cage, panting, too weak to crawl forward and press the shock lever one more time.

"Are you alone here?" he said.

"Yes, I am."

There was a small bruise on his left cheek, just below the eye. She looked at his bandages. They just barely showed, a bit of white between the bottom of his wig and the top of his collar.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No, nothing."

"You seem tense." His voice sounded genuinely concerned. Probably he'd just had a stimulation. She remembered how he had become sexually interested in her after the test stimulations, just before he was interfaced.

"No… I'm not tense." She smiled.

"You have a very nice smile," he said.

She glanced at his clothes, looking for blood. The girl had been soaked; Benson must have been covered with blood, yet there was none on his clothes. Perhaps he'd dressed after taking a second shower. After killing her.

"Well," she said, "I'm going to have some coffee." She went into the kitchen with a kind of relief. It was somehow easier to breathe in the kitchen, away from him. She put the kettle on the burner, turned on the gas, and stayed there a moment. She had to get control of herself. She had to get control of the situation.

The odd thing was that while she had been shocked to see him suddenly in her apartment, she was not really surprised that he had come. Some psychomotor epileptics feared their own violence.

But why hadn't he returned to the hospital?

She went out to the living room. Benson was standing by the large windows, looking out over the city, which stretched away for miles in every direction.

"Are you angry with me?" he said.

"Angry? Why?"

"Because I ran away."

"Why did you run away, Harry?" As she spoke, she felt her strength coming back, her control. She could handle this man. It was her job. She'd been alone with men more dangerous than this. She remembered a six-month period at Cameron State Hospital, where she had worked with psychopaths and multiple murderers - charming, engaging, chilling men.

"Why? Because." He smiled, and sat down in a chair. He wriggled around in it, then stood up, sitting down again on the sofa. "All your furniture is so uncomfortable. How can you live in such an uncomfortable place?"

"I like it."

"But it's uncomfortable." He stared at her, a faint challenge in the look. She wished again that they were not meeting here. This environment was too threatening, and Benson reacted to threats with attack.

"How did you find me, Harry?"

"You're surprised I knew where you lived?"

"Yes, a little."

"I was careful," he said. "Before I went into the hospital, I found out where you lived, where Ellis lived, where McPherson lived. I found out where everybody lived."

"Why?"

"Just in case."

"What were you expecting?"

He didn't reply. Instead, he got up and walked to the windows, looked out over the city. "They're searching for me out there," he said. "Aren't they?"

"Yes."

"But they'll never find me. The city is too big."

From the kitchen, her kettle began to whistle. She excused herself and went in to make coffee. Her eyes scanned the counter, searching for something heavy. Perhaps she could hit him over the head. Ellis would never forgive her, but-

"You have a picture on your wall," Benson called. "A lot of numbers. Who did that?"

"A man named Johns."

"Why would a man draw numbers? Numbers are for machines." She stirred the instant coffee, poured in milk, went back out and sat down.

"Harry…"

"No, I mean it. And look at this. What is this supposed to mean?" He tapped another picture with his knuckles.

"Harry, come and sit down."

He stared at her for a moment, then came over and sat on the couch opposite her. He seemed tense, but a moment later smiled in a relaxed way. For an instant, his pupils dilated. Another stimulation, she thought.

What the hell was she going to do?

"Harry," she said, "what happened?"

"I don't know," he said, still relaxed.

"You left the hospital…"

"Yes, I left the hospital wearing one of those white suits. I figured it all out. Angela picked me up."

"And then?"

"And then we went to my house. I was quite tense."

"Why were you tense?"

"Well, you see, I know how this is all going to end."

She wasn't sure what he was referring to. "How is it going to end?"

"And after we left my house, we went to her apartment, and we had some drinks, and we made love, and then I told her how it was going to end. That was when she got scared. She wanted to call the hospital, to tell them where I was…" He stared off into space, momentarily confused. She didn't want to press the point. He had had a seizure and he would not remember killing the girl. His amnesia would be total and genuine.

But she wanted to keep him talking. "Why did you leave the hospital, Harry?"

"It was in the afternoon," he said, turning to look at her. "I was lying in bed in the afternoon, and I suddenly realized that everybody was taking care of me, taking care, servicing me, like a machine. I was afraid of that all along."

In some distant, detached, and academic corner of her mind, she felt that a suspicion was confirmed. Benson's paranoia about machines was, at bottom, a fear of dependency, of losing self-reliance. He was quite literally telling the truth when he said he was afraid of being taken care of. And people usually hated what they feared.

But then Benson was dependent on her. And how would he react to that?

"You people lied to me," he said suddenly.

"Nobody lied to you, Harry."

He began to get angry. "Yes, you did, you- " He broke off and smiled again. The pupils were briefly larger: another stimulation. They were very close now. He'd tip over again soon.

"You know something? That's the most wonderful feeling in the world," he said.

"What feeling?"

"That buzz."

"Is that how it feels?"

"As soon as things start to get black - buzz! - and I'm happy again," Benson said. "Beautifully warm and happy."

"The stimulations," she said.

She resisted the impulse to look at her watch. What did it matter? Anders had said he would be coming in twenty minutes, but anything could delay him. And even if he came, she wondered if he could handle Benson. A psychomotor epileptic out of control was an awesome thing. Anders would probably end up shooting Benson, or trying to. And she didn't want that.

"But you know what else?" Benson said. "The buzz is only nice occasionally. When it gets too heavy, it's… suffocating."

"Is it getting heavy now?"

"Yes," he said. And he smiled.

In that moment when he smiled, she was stunned into the full realization of her own helplessness. Everything she had been taught about controlling patients, everything about directing the flow of thought, about watching the speech patterns, was useless here. Verbal maneuvers would not work, would not help her - any more than they would help control a rabies victim, or a person with a brain tumor. Benson had a physical problem. He was in the grip of a machine that was inexorably, flawlessly pushing him toward a seizure. Talk couldn't turn off the implanted computer.

There was only one thing she could do, and that was get him to the hospital. How? She tried an appeal to his intellectual functions. "Do you understand what's happening, Harry? The stimulations are overloading you, pushing you into seizures."

"The feeling is nice."

"But you said yourself it's not always nice."

"No, not always."

"Well, don't you want to have that corrected?"

He paused a moment. "Corrected?"

"Fixed. Changed so that you don't have seizures any more." She had to choose her words carefully.

"You think I need to be fixed?" His words reminded her of

Ellis: the surgeon's pet phrase.

"Harry, we can make you feel better."

"I feel fine, Dr. Ross."

"But, Harry, when you went to Angela's- "

"I don't remember anything about that."

"You went there after you left the hospital."

"I don't remember anything. Memory tapes are all erased. Nothing but static. You can put it on audio if you want, and listen to it yourself." He opened his mouth, and made a hissing sound. "See? Just static."

"You're not a machine, Harry," she said softly.

"Not yet."

Her stomach churned. She was physically sick with tension. Again that detached part of her mind noted the interesting physical manifestation of an emotional state. She was grateful for the detachment, even for a few instants of it.

But she was also angry at the thought of Ellis and McPherson, and all those conferences when she had argued that implanting machinery into Benson would exaggerate his pre-existing delusional state. They hadn't paid any attention.

She wished they were here now.

"You're trying to make me into a machine," he said. "You all are. I'm fighting you."

"Harry- "

"Let me finish." His face was taut; abruptly, it loosened into a smile.

Another stimulation. They were coming only minutes apart now. Where was Anders? Where was anybody? Should she run out into the hall screaming? Should she try to call the hospital? The police?

"It feels so good," Benson said, still smiling. "That feeling, it feels so good. Nothing feels as good as that. I could just swim in that feeling forever and ever."

"Harry. I want you to try and relax."

"I'm relaxed. But that's not what you really want, is it?"

"What do I want?"

"You want me to be a good machine. You want me to obey my masters, to follow instructions. Isn't that what you want?"

"You're not a machine, Harry."

"And I never will be." His smile faded. "Never. Ever."

She took a deep breath. "Harry," she said, "I want you to come back to the hospital."

"No."

"We can make you feel better."

"No."

"We care about you, Harry."

"You care about me." He laughed, a nasty hard sound. "You don't care about me. You care about your experimental preparation. You care about your scientific protocol. You care about your follow-up. You don't care about me."

He was becoming excited and angry. "It won't look so good in the medical journals if you have to report so many patients observed for so many years, and one died because he went nuts and the cops killed him. That will reflect badly."

"Harry- "

"I know," Benson said. He held out his hands. "I was sick an hour ago. Then, when I woke up, I saw blood under my fingernails. Blood. I know." He stared at his hands, curling them to look at the nails. Then he touched his bandages. "The operation was supposed to work," he said. "But it isn't working."

And then, quite abruptly, he began to cry. His face was bland, but the tears rolled down his cheeks. "It isn't working," he said. "I don't understand, it isn't working… ."

Equally abruptly, he smiled. Another stimulation. This one had come less than a minute after the one previously. She knew that he'd tip over in the next few seconds.

"I don't want to hurt anyone," he said, smiling cheerfully.

She felt sympathy for him, and sadness for what had happened. "I understand," she said. "Let's go back to the hospital."

"No, no…"

"I'll go with you. I'll stay with you all the time. It will be all right."

"Don't argue with me!" He snapped to his feet, fists clenched, and glared down at her. "I will not listen- " He broke off, but did not smile.

Instead, he began to sniff the air.

"What is that smell?" he said. "I hate that smell. What is it? I hate it, do you hear me, I hate it!"

He moved toward her, sniffing. He reached his hands out toward her.

"Harry…"

"I hate this feeling," he said.

She got up off the couch, moving away. He followed her clumsily, his hands still outstretched. "I don't want this feeling, I don't want it," he said. He was no longer sniffing. He was fully in a trance state, coming toward her.

"Harry…"

His face was blank, an automaton mask. His arms were still extended toward her. He almost seemed to be sleep-walking as he advanced on her. His movements were slow and she was able to back away from him, maintaining distance.

Then, suddenly, he picked up a heavy glass ashtray and flung it at her. She dodged; it struck one of the large windows, shattering the glass.

He leaped for her and threw his arms around her, holding her in a clumsy bear hug. He squeezed her with incredible strength. "Harry," she gasped, "Harry." She looked up at his face and saw it was still blank.

She kneed him in the groin.

He grunted and released her, bending at the waist, coughing. She moved away from him and picked up the phone. She dialed the operator. Benson was still bent over, still coughing.

"Operator."

"Operator, give me the police."

"Do you want the Beverly Hills police, or the Los Angeles police?"

"I don't care!"

"Well, which do you- "

She dropped the phone. Benson was stalking her again. She heard the tiny voice of the operator saying, "Hello, hello. .."

Benson tore the phone away and flung it behind him across the room. He picked up a floor lamp and held it base outward. He began to swing it in large hissing arcs. She ducked it once and felt the gush of air in the wake of the heavy metal base. If it hit her, it would kill her. It would kill her. The realization pushed her to action.

She ran to the kitchen. Benson dropped the lamp and followed her. She tore open drawers, looking for a knife. She found only a small paring knife. Where the hell were her big knives?

Benson was in the kitchen. She threw a pot at him blindly. It clattered against his knees. He moved forward.

The detached and academic part of her mind was still operating, telling her that she was making a big mistake, that there was something in the kitchen she could use. But what?

Benson's hands closed around her neck. The grip was terrifying. She grabbed his wrists and tried to pull them away. She kicked up with her leg, but he twisted his body away from her, then pressed her back against the counter, pinning her down.

She could not move, she could not breathe. She began to see blue spots dancing before her eyes. Her lungs burned for air.

Her fingers scratched along the counter, feeling for something, anything, to strike him with. She touched nothing.

The kitchen…

She flung her hands around wildly. She felt the handle of the dishwasher, the handle to the oven, the machines in her kitchen.

Her vision was greenish. The blue spots were larger. They swam sickeningly before her. She was going to die in the kitchen.

The kitchen, the kitchen, dangers of the kitchen. It came to her in a flash, just as she was losing consciousness.

Microwaves.

She no longer had any vision; the world was dull gray, but she could still feel. Her fingers touched the metal of the oven, the glass of the oven door, then up… up to the controls… she twisted the dial…

Benson screamed.

The pressure around her neck was gone. She slumped to the floor. Benson was screaming, horrible agonized sounds. Her vision came back to her slowly and she saw him, standing over her, clutching his head in his hands. Screaming.

He paid no attention to her as she lay on the floor, gasping for breath. He twisted and writhed, holding his head and howling like a wounded animal. Then he rushed from the room, still screaming.

And she slid smoothly and easily into unconsciousness.

The bruises were already forming - long, purplish welts on both sides of her neck. She touched them gently as she looked into the mirror.

"When did he leave?" Anders said. He stood in the doorway to the bathroom, watching her.

"I don't know. Around the time I passed out."

He looked back toward the living room. "Quite a mess out there."

"I imagine so."

"Why did he attack you?"

"He had a seizure."

"But you're his doctor-

"That doesn't matter," she said. "When he has a seizure, he's out of control. Totally. He'd kill his own child during a seizure. People have been known to do that."

Anders frowned uncertainly. She could imagine the trouble he was having with the idea. Unless you had seen a psychomotor seizure, you could not comprehend the unreasonable, brutal violence of an attack. It was completely beyond any normal life experience. Nothing else was like it, analogous to it, similar to it.

"Umm," Anders said finally. "But he didn't kill you."

Not quite, she thought, still touching the bruises. The bruises would get much worse in the next few hours. What could she do about it? Make-up? She didn't have any. A high-necked sweater?

"No," she said, "he didn't kill me. But he would have."

"What happened?"

"I turned on the oven."

Anders looked puzzled. "Is that a cure for epilepsy?"

"Hardly. But it affected Benson's electronic machinery. I have a microwave oven. Microwave radiation screws up pacemaking machinery. It's a big problem for cardiac pacemakers now. Dangers of the kitchen. There have been a lot of recent articles."

"Oh," Anders said.

He left the room to make some calls, while she dressed.

She chose a black turtleneck sweater and a gray skirt, and stepped back to look at herself in the mirror. The bruises were hidden. Then she noticed the colors, black and gray. That wasn't like her. Too somber, too dead and cold. She considered changing, but didn't.

She heard Anders talking on the phone in the living room.

She went out to the kitchen to make herself a drink - no more coffee; she wanted Scotch on the rocks - and as she poured it, she saw the long scratches in the wooden counter that her fingernails had left. She looked at her fingernails. Three of them were broken; she hadn't noticed before.

She made the drink and went out to sit in the living room.

"Yes," Anders was saying into the phone. "Yes, I understand. No… no idea. Well, we're trying." There was a long pause.

She went to the broken window and looked out at the city. The sun was up, lighting a dark band of brown air that hung above the buildings. It was really a lethal place to live, she thought. She should move to the beach where the air was better.

"Well, listen," Anders said angrily, "none of this would have happened if you'd kept that fucking guard at his door in the hospital. I think you better keep that in mind."

She heard the phone slam down, and turned.

"Shit," he said. "Politics."

"Even in the police department?"

"Especially in the police department," he said. "Anything goes wrong, and suddenly there's a scramble to see who can get stuck with it."

"They're trying to stick you?"

"They're trying me on for size."

She nodded, and wondered what was happening back at the hospital. Probably the same thing. The hospital had to maintain its image in the community; the chiefs of service would be in a sweat; the director would be worrying about fund-raising. Somebody at the hospital would get stuck. McPherson was too big; she and Morris were too small. It would probably be Ellis - he was an assistant professor. If you fired an assistant professor it had connotations of firing a temporary appointment who had proven himself too aggressive, too reckless, too ambitious. Much better than firing a full professor, which was very messy and reflected badly on the earlier decision that had given him tenure.

It would probably be Ellis. She wondered if he knew. He had just recently bought a new house in Brentwood. He was very proud of it; he had invited everyone in the NPS to a housewarming party next week. She stared out the window, through the shattered glass.

Anders said, "Listen, what does epilepsy have to do with cardiac pacemakers?"

"Nothing," she said, "except that Benson has a brain pacemaker, very similar to a cardiac pacemaker."

Anders flipped open his notebook. "You better start from the beginning," he said, "and go slowly."

"All right." She set down her drink. "Let me make one call first."

Anders nodded, sat back, and waited while she called McPherson. Then, as calmly as she could, she explained everything she knew to the policeman.

McPherson hung up the telephone and stared out his office window at the morning sun. It was no longer pale and cold; there was the full warmth of morning. "That was Ross," he said.

Morris nodded from the corner. "And?"

"Benson came to her apartment. She lost him."

Morris sighed.

"It doesn't seem to be our day," McPherson said. He shook his head, not taking his eyes off the sun. "I don't believe in luck," he said. He turned to Morris. "Do you?"

Morris was tired; he hadn't really been listening. "Do I what?"

"Believe in luck."

"Sure. All surgeons believe in luck."

"I don't believe in luck," McPherson repeated, "Never did.

I always believed in planning." He gestured to the charts on his wall, then lapsed, staring at them.

The charts were large things, four feet across, and intricately done in many colors. They were really glorified flow charts with timetables for technical advances. He had always been proud of them. For instance, in 1967 he had examined the state of three areas - diagnostic conceptualization, surgical technology, and microelectronics - and concluded that they would all come together to allow an operation for psychomotor epilepsy in July of 1971. They had beaten his estimate by four months, but it was still damned accurate.

"Damned accurate," he said.

"What?" Morris said.

McPherson shook his head. "Are you tired?"

"Yes."

"I guess we're all tired. Where's Ellis?"

"Making coffee."

McPherson nodded. Coffee would be good. He rubbed his eyes, wondering when he would be able to sleep. Not for a while - not until they had Benson back. And that could take many hours more, perhaps another day.

He looked again at the charts. Everything had been going so well. Electrode implantation four months ahead of schedule. Computer simulation of behavior almost nine months ahead - but that, too, was having problems. George and Martha programs were behaving erratically. And Form Q?

He shook his head. Form Q might never get off the ground now, although it was his favorite project, and had always been. Form Q on the flow chart for 1979, with human application beginning in 1986. In 1986 he would be seventy-five years old - if he was still alive - but he didn't worry about that. It was the idea, the simple idea, that intrigued him.

Form Q was the logical outgrowth of all the work at the NPS. It began as a project called Form Quixoticus, because it seemed so impossible. But McPherson felt certain that it would happen because it was so necessary. For one thing, it was a question of size; for another, a question of expense.

A modern electronic computer - say, a third-generation IBM digital computer - would cost several million dollars. It drew an enormous amount of power. It consumed space voraciously. Yet the largest computer still had the same number of circuits as the brain of an ant. To make a computer with the capacity of a human brain would require a huge skyscraper. Its energy demands would be the equivalent of a city of half a million.

Obviously, nobody would ever try to build such a computer using current technology. New methods would have to be found - and there wasn't much doubt in McPherson's mind what the methods would be.

Living tissues.

The theory was simple enough. A computer, like a human brain, was composed of functioning units - little flip-flop cells of one kind or another. The size of those units had shrunk considerably over the years. They would continue to shrink as large-scale integration and other microelectronic techniques improved. Power requirements would also decrease. But the individual units would never become as small as a nerve cell, a neuron. You could pack a billion nerve cells into one cubic inch. No human miniaturization method would ever achieve that economy of space. Nor would any human method ever produce a unit that operated on so little power as a nerve cell.

Therefore, make your computers from living nerve cells. It was already possible to grow isolated nerve cells in tissue culture. It was possible to alter them artificially in different ways. In the future, it would be possible to grow them to specification, to make them link up in specified ways.

Once you could do that, you could make a computer that was, say, six cubic feet in volume, but contained thousands of billions of nerve cells. Its energy requirements would not be excessive; its heat production and waste products would be manageable. Yet it would be the most intelligent entity on the planet, by far.

Form Q.

Preliminary work was already being done in a number of laboratories and government research units around the country. Advances were being made.

But for McPherson the most exciting prospect was not a superintelligent organic computer. That was just a side product. What was really interesting was the idea of an organic prosthesis for the human brain.

Because once you developed an organic computer - a computer composed of living cells, and deriving energy from oxygenated, nutrified blood - then you could transplant it into a human being. And you would have a man with two brains.

What would that be like? McPherson could hardly imagine it. There were endless problems, of course. Problems of interconnection, problems of location, speculative problems about competition between the old brain and the new transplant. But there was plenty of time to solve that before 1986. After all, in 1950 most people still laughed at the idea of going to the moon.

Form Q. It was only a vision now, but with funding it would happen. And he had been convinced that it would happen, until Benson left the hospital. That changed everything.

Ellis stuck his head in the office door. "Anybody want coffee?"

"Yes," McPherson said. He looked over at Mor.

"No," Morris said. He got up out of his chair. "I think

I'll replay some of Benson's interview tapes."

"Good idea," McPherson said, though he did not really think so. He realized that Morris had to keep busy - had to do something, anything, just to remain active.

Morris left, Ellis left, and McPherson was alone with his multicolored charts, and his thoughts.

It was noon when Ross finished with Anders, and she was tired. The Scotch had calmed her, but it had intensified her fatigue. Toward the end she had found herself stumbling over words, losing track of her thoughts, making statements and then amending them because they were not exactly what she had intended to say. She had never felt so tired, so drugged with fatigue, in her life.

Anders, on the other hand, was maddeningly alert. He said,

"Where do you suppose Benson is now? Where would he be likely to go?"

She shook her head. "It's impossible to know. He's in a post-seizure state - post-ictal, we call it - and that's not predictable."

"You're his psychiatrist," Anders said. "You must know a lot about him. Isn't there any way to predict how he'll act?"

"No," she said. God, she was tired. Why couldn't he understand? "Benson is in an abnormal state. He's nearly psychotic, he's confused, he's receiving stimulations frequently, he's having seizures frequently. He could do anything."

"If he's confused…" Anders let his voice trail off.

"What would he do if he was confused? How would he behave?"

"Look," she said, "it's no good. It's no damned good, working that way. He could do anything."

"Okay," Anders said. He glanced at her briefly, and sipped his coffee.

Why couldn't he just let it go, for Christ's sake? His desire to psych out Benson and track him down was ludicrously unrealistic. Besides, everybody knew how this was going to turn out. Somebody would spot Benson and shoot him, and that would be the end of it. Even Benson had said-

She paused, frowning. What had he said? Something about how it would all end. What were his exact words? She tried to remember, but couldn't. She had been too frightened to pay close attention.

"These are the impossible ones," Anders said, getting up and walking to the window. "In another city, you might have a chance, but not in Los Angeles. Not in five hundred square miles of city. It's bigger than New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia put together. Did you know that?"

"No," she said, hardly listening.

"Too many places to hide," he said. "Too many ways to escape - too many roads, too many airports, too many marinas. If he's smart, he's left already. Gone to Mexico or to Canada."

"He won't do that," she said.

"What will he do?"

"He'll come back to the hospital."

There was a pause. "I thought you couldn't predict his behavior," Anders said.

"It's just a feeling," she said, "that's all."

"We'd better go to the hospital," he said.

The NPS looked like the planning room for a war. All patient visits had been canceled until Monday; no one but staff and police were admitted to the fourth floor. But for some reason, all the Development people were there, and they were running around with horrified looks on their faces, obviously worried that their grants and their jobs were in jeopardy. Phones rang constantly; reporters were calling in; McPherson was locked in his office with hospital administrators; Ellis was swearing at anyone who came within ten yards of him; Morris was off somewhere and couldn't be found; Gerhard and Richards were trying to free some telephone lines so they could run a projection program using another computer, but all the lines were in use.

Physically, the NPS was a shambles - ashtrays heaped with cigarette butts, coffee cups crumpled on the floor, half-eaten hamburgers and tacos everywhere, jackets and uniforms thrown across the backs of chairs. And the telephones never stopped ringing: as soon as anyone hung up on a call, the phone rang again instantly.

Ross sat with Anders in her office and went over the Miscellaneous Crime Report, checking the description of Benson. The description was computerized, but it read out fairly accurately: male Caucasian black hair brown eyes 5'8" 140# 34 years old. Personal oddities: 312/3 wig, and 319/1 bandages on neck. Thought to be armed with: 40/11 revolver. Trademarks: 23/60 abnormal act (other) - perseveration.

Reason for crime: 23/86 suspect insane.

Ross sighed. "He doesn't really fit your computer categories."

"Nobody does," Anders said. "All we can hope is that it's accurate enough to allow somebody to identify him. We're also circulating his picture. Several hundred photos are being run off now, and distributed around the city. That'll help."

"What happens now?" Ross said.

"We wait," he said. "Unless you can think of a hiding place he'd use."

She shook her head.

"Then we wait," he said.

It was a broad, low-ceilinged, white-tiled room, lit brightly by overhead fluorescent lights. Six stainless-steel tables were set out in a row, each emptying into a sink at one end of the room. Five of the tables were empty; the body of Angela Black lay on the sixth. Two police pathologists and Morris were bent over the body as the autopsy proceeded. Morris had seen a lot of autopsies in his day, but the autopsies he attended as a surgeon were usually different. In this one, the pathologists spent nearly half an hour examining the exterior appearance of the body and taking photographs before they made the initial incision. They paid a lot of attention to the external appearance of the stab wounds, and what they called a "stretch laceration" appearance to the wounds.

One of the pathologists explained that this means the wounds were caused by a blunt object. It didn't cut the skin; it pulled it and caused a split in the taut portion. Then the instrument went in, but the initial split was always slightly ahead of the deeper penetration track. They also pointed out that skin hair had been forced down into the wounds in several places - further evidence of a blunt object producing the cuts.

"What kind of blunt object?" Morris had asked.

They shook their heads. "No way to know yet. We'll have to take a look at the penetration."

Penetration meant the depth that the weapon had entered the body. Determining penetration was difficult; skin was elastic and tended to snap back into shape; underlying tissues moved around before and after death. It was a slow business. Morris was tired. His eyes hurt. After a time, he left the autopsy room and went next door to the police lab, where the girl's purse contents were spread out on a large table.

Three men went through it: one identifying the objects, one recording them, and the third tagging them. Morris watched in silence. Most of the objects seemed commonplace: lipstick, compact, car keys, wallet, Kleenex, chewing gum, birth control pills, address book, ball-point pen, eye shadow, hair clip. And two packs of matches.

"Two packs of matches," one of the cops intoned. "Both marked Airport Marina Hotel."

Morris sighed. They were going through this so slowly, so patiently. It was no better than the autopsy. Did they really think they'd find anything this way? He found the plodding routine intolerable. Janet Ross called that the surgeon's disease, this urge to take decisive action, the inability to wait patiently. Once in an early NPS conference where they were considering a stage-three candidate - a woman named Worley - Morris had argued strongly for taking her as a surgical candidate, even though she had several other problems. Ross had laughed; "poor impulse control," she had said. In that moment, he could cheerfully have killed her, and his murderous feelings were not relieved when Ellis then said, in a clinical, quiet tone, that he agreed that Mrs. Worley was an inappropriate surgical candidate. Morris felt let down in the worst way, even though McPherson said that he thought the candidate had some worth, and probably should be listed as a "possible" and held for a while.

Poor impulse control, he thought. The hell with her.

"Airport Marina, huh?" one of the cops said. "Isn't that where all the stewardesses stay?"

"I dunno," the other cop said.

Morris hardly listened. He rubbed his eyes and decided to get more coffee. He'd been awake for thirty-six hours straight, and he wasn't going to last much longer.

He left the room and went upstairs looking for a coffee machine. There must be coffee someplace in the building. Even cops drank coffee; everybody drank coffee. And then he stopped, shivering.

He knew something about the Airport Marina.

The Airport Marina was where Benson had first been arrested, on suspicion of beating up a mechanic. There was a bar in the hotel; it had happened there. Morris was sure of it.

He glanced at his watch and then went out to the parking lot. If he hurried, he'd beat rush-hour traffic to the airport.

A jet screamed overhead and descended toward the runway as Morris took the airport offramp from the freeway and drove down Airport Boulevard. He passed bars and motels and car-rental offices. On the radio, he heard the announcer drone: "And on the San Diego Freeway, there is an accident involving a truck blocking three northbound lanes. Computer projection of flow is twelve miles an hour. On the San Bernadino Freeway, a stalled car in the left lane south of the Exeter off-ramp. Computer projection of traffic flow is thirty-one miles an hour…"

Morris thought of Benson again. Perhaps computers really were taking over. He remembered a funny little Englishman who had lectured at the hospital and told the surgeons that soon operations would be done with the surgeon on another continent - he would work using robot hands, the signals being transmitted via satellite. The idea had seemed crazy, but his surgical colleagues had squirmed at the thought.

"On the Ventura Freeway west of Haskell, a two-car collision has slowed traffic. Computer projection is eighteen miles an hour."

He found himself listening to the traffic report intently. Computers or not, the traffic report was vital to anyone who lived in Los Angeles. You learned to pay attention to any traffic report automatically, the way people in other parts of the country automatically paid attention to weather reports.

Morris had come to California from Michigan. For the first few weeks after his arrival, he had asked people what the weather was going to be like later in the day, or on the following day. It seemed to him a natural question for a newcomer to ask, and a natural ice breaker. But he got very strange, puzzled looks from people. Later he realized that he had come to one of the few places in the world where the weather was of no interest to anyone - it was always more or less the same, and rarely discussed.

But automobiles! Now there was a subject of almost compulsive fascination. People were always interested in what kind of car you drove, how you liked it, whether it was reliable, what troubles you had had with it. In the same vein, driving experiences, bad traffic, short-cuts you had found, accidents you had experienced, were always welcome conversation topics. In Los Angeles, anything relating to cars was a serious matter, worthy of as much time and attention as you could devote to it.

He remembered, as a kind of final proof of the idiocy of it all, that an astronomer had once said that if Martians looked at Los Angeles, they would probably conclude that the automobile was the dominant life form of the area. And, in a sense, they would be right.

He parked in the lot of the Airport Marina Hotel and entered the lobby. The building was as incongruous as its name, with that California quality of bizarre mixtures - in this case, a sort of plastic-and-neon Japanese inn. He went directly to the bar, which was dark and nearly deserted at 5 p.m. There were two stewardesses in a far corner, talking over drinks; one or two businessmen seated at the bar; and the bartender himself, staring off vacantly into space.

Morris sat at the bar. When the bartender came over, he pushed Benson's picture across the counter. "You ever seen this man?"

"What'll it be?" the bartender said.

Morris tapped the picture.

"This is a bar. We serve liquor."

Morris was beginning to feel strange. It was the kind of feeling he sometimes had when he began an operation and felt like a surgeon in a movie. Something very theatrical. Now he was a private eye.

"His name is Benson," Morris said. "I'm his doctor. He's very ill."

"What's he got?"

Morris sighed. "Have you seen him before?"

"Sure, lots of times. Harry, right?"

"That's right. Harry Benson. When was the last time you saw him?"

"An hour ago." The man shrugged. "What's he got?"

"Epilepsy. It's important to find him. Do you know where he went?"

"Epilepsy? No shit." The bartender picked up the picture and examined it closely in the light of a glowing Schlitz sign behind the bar. "That's him, all right. But he dyed his hair black."

"Do you know where he went?"

"He didn't look sick to me. Are you sure you're- "

"Do you know where he went?"

There was a long silence. The bartender looked grim. Morris instantly regretted his tone. "You're no fucking doctor," the bartender said. "Now beat it."

"I need your help," Morris said. "Time is very important." As he spoke, he opened his wallet, took out his identification cards, credit cards, everything with an M.D. on it. He spread them across the counter.

The bartender didn't even glance at them.

"He is also wanted by the police," Morris said.

"I knew it," the bartender said. "I knew it."

"And I can get some policeman down here to help question you. You may be an accessory to murder." Morris thought that sounded good. At least it sounded dramatic.

The bartender picked up one of the cards, peered at it, dropped it. "I don't know nothing," he said. "He comes in sometimes, that's all."

"Where did he go today?"

"I don't know. He left with Joe."

"Who's Joe?"

"Mechanic. Works the late shift at United."

"United Air Lines?"

"That's right," the bartender said; "Listen, what about this- "

But Morris was already gone.

In the hotel lobby, he called the NPS and got through the switchboard to Captain Anders.

"Anders here."

"Listen, this is Morris. I'm at the airport. I have a lead on Benson. About an hour ago, he was seen in the bar of the Airport Marina Hotel. He left with a mechanic named Joe who works for United. Works the evening shift."

There was a moment of silence. Morris heard the scribbling sound of a pencil. "Got it," Anders said. "Anything else?"

"No."

"We'll get some cars out right away. You think he went to the United hangars?"

"Probably."

"We'll get some cars out right away."

"What about- "

Morris stopped, and stared at the receiver. It was dead in his hand. He took a deep breath and tried to decide what to do next. From now on, it was police business. Benson was dangerous. He should let the police handle it.

On the other hand, how long would it take them to get here? Where was the nearest police station? Inglewood? Culver City? In rush hour traffic, even with their sirens it might take twenty minutes. It might take half an hour.

That was too much time. Benson might leave in half an hour. Meanwhile, he ought to keep track of him. Just locate

Benson, and keep track of him.

Not interfere. But not let him get away, either.

The large sign said UNITED AIR LINES - MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY. There was a guardhouse beneath the sign.

Morris pulled up, leaned out of his car.

"I'm Dr. Morris. I'm looking for Joe."

Morris was prepared for a lengthy explanation. But the guard didn't seem to care. "Joe came on about ten minutes ago. Signed in to hangar seven."

Ahead of him, Morris saw three very large airplane hangars, with parking lots behind. "Which one is seven?"

"Far left," the guard said. "Don't know why he went there, except maybe the guest."

"What guest?"

"He signed in a guest…" The guard consulted his clipboard. "A Mr. Benson. Took him to seven."

"What's in seven?"

"A DC-10 that's in for major overhaul. Nothing doing there - they're waiting for a new engine. It'll be another week in there. Guess he wanted to show it to him."

"Thanks," Morris said. He drove past the gates, onto the parking lot, and parked close to hangar seven. He got out of the car, then paused. The fact was, he really didn't know whether Benson was in the hangar or not. He ought to check that. Otherwise, when the police arrived he might appear a fool. He might sit here in this parking lot while Benson escaped.

He thought he'd better check. He was not afraid. He was young and in good physical condition. He was also fully aware that Benson was dangerous. That foreknowledge would protect him. Benson was most dangerous to those who didn't recognize the lethal nature of his illness.

He decided to take a quick look inside the hangar to make sure Benson was inside. The hangar was an enormous structure but didn't seem to have any doors, except for the giant doors to admit the airplane. They were now closed. How did you get in?

He scanned the exterior of the building, which was mostly corrugated steel. Then he saw a normal-sized door to the far left. He got back in his car and drove up to it, parked, and entered the hangar.

It was pitch black inside. And totally silent. He stood by the door for a moment, then heard a low groan. He ran his hands along the walls, feeling for a light switch. He touched a steel box, felt it carefully. There were several large heavy-duty switches.

He threw them.

One by one, the overhead lights came on, very bright and very high. He saw in the center of the hangar a giant plane, glinting with reflections from the overhead bulbs. It was odd how much more enormous it seemed inside a building. He walked toward it, away from the door.

He heard another groan.

At first he could not determine where it was coming from. There was no one in sight; the floor was bare. But there was a ladder near the far wing. He walked beneath the high sleek tail assembly toward the ladder. The hangar smelled of gasoline and grease, sharp smells. It was warm.

Another groan.

He walked faster, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous hangar space. The groan seemed to be coming from somewhere inside the airplane. How did you get inside? It was an odd thought: he'd made dozens of airplane trips. You always got on by a ramp near the cockpit. But here, in the hangar… the plane was so damned enormous, how could you possibly get inside?

He passed the two jet engines of the near wing. They were giant cylinders, black turbine blades inside. Funny the engines had never seemed so big before. Probably never noticed.

There was still another groan.

He reached the ladder and climbed up. Six feet in the air, he came to the wing, a gleaming expanse of flat silver, nubbled with rivets. A sign said STEP HERE. There were drops of blood by the sign. He looked across the wing and saw a man covered with blood lying on his back. Morris moved closer and saw that the man's face was horribly mangled, and his arm was twisted back at a grotesquely unnatural angle.

He heard a noise behind him. He spun.

And then, suddenly, all the lights in the hangar went out.

Morris froze. He had a sense of total disorientation, of being suspended in air in vast and limitless blackness. He did not move. He held his breath. He waited.

The injured man groaned again. There was no other sound. Morris knelt down, not really knowing why. Somehow he felt safer being close to the metal surface of the wing. He was not conscious of being afraid, just badly confused.

Then he heard a soft laugh. And he began to be afraid.

"Benson?"

There was no reply.

"Benson, are you there?"

No reply. But footsteps, moving across the concrete floor. Steady, quietly echoing footsteps.

"Harry, it's Dr. Morris."

Morris blinked his eyes, trying to adjust to the darkness.

It was no good. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't see the edges of the wing; he couldn't see the outline of the fuselage. He couldn't see a fucking thing.

The footsteps came closer.

"Harry, I want to help you." His voice cracked as he spoke. That certainly conveyed his fear to Benson. He decided to shut up. His heart was pounding, and he was breathing hard, gasping for breath.

"Harry…"

No reply. But the footsteps stopped. Perhaps Benson was giving up. Perhaps he had had a stimulation. Perhaps he was changing his mind.

A new sound: a metallic creak. Quite close.

Another creak.

He was climbing the ladder.

Morris was drenched with cold sweat. He still could see nothing, nothing at all. He was so disoriented he no longer remembered where he was on the wing. Was the ladder in front of him or behind?

Another creak.

He tried to fix the sound. It was coming somewhere in front of him. That meant he was facing the tail, the rear of the wing. Facing the ladder.

Another creak.

How many steps were there? Roughly six feet, six steps. Benson would be standing on the wing soon. What could he use for a weapon? Morris patted his pockets. His clothes were soaked and clinging with sweat. He had a momentary thought that this was all ridiculous, that Benson was the patient and he was the doctor. Benson would listen to reason. Benson would do as he was told.

Another creak.

A shoe! Quickly, he slipped off his shoe, and cursed the fact that it had a rubber sole. But it was better than nothing. He gripped the shoe tightly, held it above his head, ready to swing. He had a mental image of the beaten mechanic, the disfigured, bloody face. And he suddenly realized that he was going to have to hit Benson very hard, with all the strength he had.

He was going to have to try to kill Benson.

There were no more creaking sounds, but he could hear breathing. And then, distant at first but growing rapidly louder, he heard sirens. The police were coming. Benson would hear them, too, and would give up.

Another creak.

Benson was going back down the ladder. Morris breathed a sigh of relief.

Then he heard a peculiar scratching sound and felt the wing beneath his feet shake. Benson had not climbed down. He had continued to climb up, and was now standing on the wing.

"Dr. Morris?"

Morris almost answered, but didn't. He knew then that Benson couldn't really see, either. Benson needed a voice fix. Morris said nothing.

"Dr. Morris? I want you to help me."

The sirens were louder each moment. Morris had a momentary elation at the thought that Benson was going to be caught. This whole nightmare would soon be over.

"Please help me, Dr. Morris."

Perhaps he was sincere, Morris thought. Perhaps he really meant it. If that were so, then as his doctor he had a duty to help him.

"Please?"

Morris stood. "I'm over here, Harry," he said. "Now, just take it easy and- "

Something hissed in the air. He felt it coming before it hit. Then he felt agonizing pain in his mouth and jaw, and he was knocked backward, rolling across the wing. The pain was awful, worse than anything he had ever felt.

And then he fell into blackness. It was not far to fall from the wing to the ground. But it seemed to be taking a long time. It seemed to take forever.

Janet Ross stood outside the treatment room in the emergency ward, watching through the small glass window. There were six people in there taking care of Morris, all clustered around him. She couldn't see much. All she could really see were his feet. He had one shoe on; the other was off. There was a lot of blood; most of the EW people were spattered with it.

Standing outside with her, Anders said, "I don't have to tell you what I think of this."

"No," she said.

"The man is terribly dangerous. Dr. Morris should have waited for the police."

"But the police didn't catch him," she said, suddenly angry. Anders didn't understand anything. He didn't understand how you could feel responsible for a patient, how you could want to take care of somebody.

"Morris didn't catch him, either," Anders said.

"And why didn't the police get him?"

"Benson was gone when they got to the hangar. There are several exits from the hangar, and they couldn't all be covered. They found Morris under the wing and the mechanic on top of the wing, and they were both pretty badly hurt."

The treatment-room door opened. Ellis came out, looking haggard, unshaven, defeated.

"How is he?" Ross said.

"He's okay," Ellis said. "He won't have much to say for a few weeks, but he's okay. They're taking him to surgery now, to wire up his jaw and get all the teeth out." He turned to Anders. "Did they find the weapon?"

Anders nodded. "Two-foot section of lead pipe."

"He must have got it right in the mouth," Ellis said. "But at least he didn't inhale any of the loose teeth. The bronchi are clean on lung films." He put his arm around Janet.

"They'll fix him up."

"What about the other one?"

"The mechanic?" Ellis shook his head. "I wouldn't place bets. His nose was shattered and the nasal bones were driven up into the substance of the brain. He's leaking CSF through the nostrils. Lot of bleeding and a big problem with encephalitis."

Anders said, "How do you assess his chances?"

"He's on the critical list."

"All right," Anders said. He walked off.

Ross walked with Ellis out of the emergency ward toward the cafeteria. Ellis kept his arm around her shoulders. "This has turned into a horrible mess," he said.

"Will he really be all right?"

"Sure."

"He was kind of good-looking…"

"They'll get his jaw back together. He'll be fine."

She shuddered.

"Cold?"

"Cold," she said, "and tired. Very tired."

She had coffee with Ellis in the cafeteria. It was 6:30, and there were a lot of staff people eating. Ellis ate slowly, his movements showing fatigue. "It's funny," he said.

"What?"

"I had a call this afternoon from Minnesota. They have a professorship in neurosurgery to fill. Asked me if I was interested."

She didn't say anything.

"Isn't that funny?"

"No," she said.

"I told them I wasn't considering anything until I was fired here," he said.

"Are you sure that'll happen?"

"Aren't you?" he said. He stared across the cafeteria at all the nurses and interns and residents in white. "I wouldn't like Minnesota," he said. "It's too cold."

"But it's a good school."

"Oh, yes. A good school." He sighed. "A fine school."

She felt sorry for him, and then suppressed the emotion.

He had brought it on himself, and against her advice. For the last twenty-four hours, she had not allowed herself to say "I told you so" to anyone; she had not allowed herself to think it. For one thing, it wasn't necessary to say it. For another, it would not be useful in helping Benson, which was her chief concern.

But she didn't have much sympathy now for the brave surgeon. Brave surgeons risked other people's lives, not their own. The most a surgeon could lose was his reputation.

"Well," he said, "I better get back to the NPS. See how things are going. You know what?"

"What?"

"I hope they kill him," Ellis said. And he walked away toward the elevators.

The operation began at 7 p.m. She watched from the overhead glass viewing booth as Morris was wheeled into the OR, and the surgeons draped him. Bendixon and Curtiss were doing the procedure; they were both good plastic surgeons; they would fix him up as well as anybody possibly could.

But it was still a shock to watch as the sterile gauze packs were taken away from Morris's face and the flesh exposed, The upper part of his face was normal, though pale. The lower part was a red mash, like butcher's meat. It was impossible to find the mouth in all the redness.

Ellis had seen that in the emergency ward. It was shocking to her now, even at a distance. She could imagine the effect much closer.

She stayed to watch as the drapes were placed over the body, and around the head. The surgeons were gowned and gloved; the instrument tables set in position; the scrub nurses stood ready. The whole ritual of preparing for surgery was carried out smoothly and efficiently. It was a wonderful ritual, she thought, so rigid and so perfect that nobody would ever know - and the surgeons themselves probably didn't consider - that they were operating on a colleague. The ritual, the fixed procedure, was anaesthetic for the surgeon just as gas was anaesthetic for the patient.

She stayed a few moments longer, and then left the room.

As she approached the NPS, she saw that a cluster of reporters had cornered Ellis outside the building. He was answering their questions in clear bad humor; she heard the words "mind control" repeated several times.

Feeling slightly guilty, she cut around to the far entrance and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Mind control, she thought. The Sunday supplements were going to have a field day with mind control. And then there would be solemn editorials in the daily papers, and even more solemn editorials in the medical journals, about the hazards of uncontrolled and irresponsible research. She could see it coming.

Mind control. Christ.

The truth was that everybody's mind was controlled, and everybody was glad for it. The most powerful mind controllers in the world were parents, and they did the most damage. Theorists usually forgot that nobody was born prejudiced, neurotic, or hung-up; those traits required a helping hand. Of course, parents didn't intentionally damage their children. They merely inculcated attitudes that they felt would be important and useful to their children.

Newborn children were little computers waiting to be programmed. And they would learn whatever they were taught, from bad grammar to bad attitudes. Like computers, they were undiscriminating; they had no way to differentiate between good ideas and bad ones. The analogy was quite exact: many people had remarked on the childishness and the literalness of computers. For example, if you could instruct a computer to "Put on your shoes and socks," the computer would certainly reply that socks could not be fitted over shoes.

All the important programming was finished by the age of seven. Racial attitudes, sexual attitudes, ethical attitudes, religious attitudes, national attitudes. The gyroscope was set, and the children let loose to spin off on their predetermined courses.

Mind control.

What about something as simple as social conventions? What about shaking hands when you meet someone? Facing forward in elevators? Passing on the left? Having your wineglass on the right? Hundreds of little conventions that people needed in order to stereotype social interaction- take away any of them, and you produce unbearable anxiety.

People needed mind control. They were glad to have it. They were hopelessly lost without it.

But let a group of people try to solve the greatest problem in the world today - uncontrolled violence - and suddenly there are shouts from all sides: mind control, mind control!

Which was better, control or uncontrol?

She got off at the fourth floor, brushed past several policemen in the hallway, and went into her office. Anders was there, hanging up the telephone. And frowning.

"We just got our first break," he said.

"Oh?" Her irritation dissipated in a wave of expectancy.

"Yes," Anders said, "but I'll be damned if I know what it means."

"What happened?"

"Benson's description and his pictures are being circulated downtown, and somebody recognized him."

"Who?"

"A clerk in Building and Planning, in City Hall. He said Benson came in ten days ago. Building and Planning files specifications on all public structures erected within city limits, and they administer certain building codes."

Ross nodded.

"Well, Benson came in to check specs on a building. He wanted to review electrical blueprints. Said he was an electrical engineer, produced some identification."

Ross said, "The girls at his house said he'd come back for some blueprints."

"Well, apparently he got them from Building and Planning."

"What are they for?"

"University Hospital," Anders said. "He has the complete wiring system for the entire hospital. Now what do you make of that?"

They stared at each other.

By eight o'clock, she was almost asleep standing up. Her neck was hurting badly, and she had a headache. She realized that she didn't have a choice any more - either she got some sleep, or she'd pass out. "I'll be on the floor if you need me," she told Anders, and left. She walked down the corridor of the NPS, past several uniformed cops. She no longer noticed them; it seemed as if there had always been cops in the hallways for as long as she could remember.

She looked into McPherson's office. He was sitting behind his desk, head on his shoulder, sleeping. His breath came in short, ragged gasps. It sounded as if he were having nightmares. She closed the door quietly.

An orderly walked past her, carrying filled ashtrays and empty coffee cups. It was strange to see an orderly doing cleaning duties. The sight triggered a thought in her mind - something unusual, some question she couldn't quite formulate.

It nagged at her mind, but she finally gave up on it. She was tired; she couldn't think clearly. She came to one of the treatment rooms and saw that it was empty. She went in, closed the door, and lay down on the examination couch.

She was almost instantly asleep.

In the lounge, Ellis watched himself on the 11-o'clock news. It was partly vanity and partly morbid curiosity that made him do it. Gerhard was also there, and Richards, and the cop Anders.

On the screen, Ellis squinted slightly into the camera as he answered the questions of a group of reporters.

Microphones were jammed up toward his face, but he seemed to himself calm. That pleased him. And he found his answers reasonable.

The reporters asked him about the operation, and he explained it briefly but clearly. Then one asked, "Why was this operation done?"

"The patient," Ellis answered, "suffers from intermittent attacks of violent behavior. He has organic brain disease - his brain is damaged. We are trying to fix that. We are trying to prevent violence."

No one could argue with that, he thought. Even McPherson would be pleased with it as a polite answer.

"Is that common, brain damage associated with violence?"

"We don't know how common it is," Ellis said. "We don't even know how common brain damage alone is. But our best estimates are that ten million Americans have obvious brain damage, and five million more have subtle brain damage."

"Fifteen million?" one reporter said. "That's one person in thirteen."

Pretty quick, Ellis thought. He'd figured it out later as one in fourteen.

"Something like that," he replied on the screen. "There are two and a half million people with cerebral palsy. There are two million with convulsive disorders, including epilepsy. There are six million with mental retardation. There are probably two and a half million with hyperkinetic behavior disorders."

"And all of these people are violent?"

"No, certainly not. But an unusually high proportion of violent people, if you check them, have brain damage. Physical brain damage. Now, that shoots down a lot of theories about poverty and discrimination and social injustice and social disorganization. Those factors contribute to violence, of course. But physical brain damage is also a major factor. And you can't correct physical brain damage with social remedies."

There was a pause in the reporters' questions. Ellis remembered the pause, and remembered being elated by it. He was winning; he was running the show.

"When you say violence- "

"I mean," Ellis said, "attacks of unprovoked violence initiated by single individuals. It's the biggest problem in the world today, violence. And it's a huge problem in this country. In 1969, more Americans were killed or attacked in this country than have been killed or wounded in all the years of the Vietnam war. Specifically- "

The reporters were in awe.

"- we had 14,500 murders, 36,500 rapes, and 306,500 cases of aggravated assault. All together a third of a million cases of violence. That doesn't include automobile deaths, and a lot of violence is carried out with cars. We had 56,000 deaths in autos, and three million injuries."

"You always were good with figures," Gerhard droned, watching.

"It's working, isn't it?" Ellis said.

"Yeah. Flashy." Gerhard sighed. "But you have a squinty, untrustworthy look."

"That's my normal look."

Gerhard laughed.

On the screen, a reporter was saying, "And you think these figures reflect physical brain disease?"

"In large part," Ellis said. "In large part. One of the clues pointing to physical brain disease in a single individual is a history of repeated violence. There are some famous examples. Charles Whitman, who killed seventeen people in Texas, had a malignant brain tumor and told his psychiatrist for weeks before that he was having thoughts about climbing the tower and shooting people. Richard Speck engaged in several episodes of brutal violence before he killed eight nurses. Lee Harvey Oswald repeatedly attacked people, including his wife on many occasions. Those were famous cases. There are a third of a million cases every year that are not famous. We're trying to correct that violent behavior with surgery. I don't think that's a despicable thing. I think it's a noble goal and an important goal."

"But isn't that mind control?"

Ellis said, "What do you call compulsory education through high school?"

"Education," the reporter said.

And that ended the interview. Ellis got up angrily. "That makes me look like a fool," he said.

"No, it doesn't," Anders, the cop, said.