The Terminal Man - Crichton Michael - Страница 37

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As for Benson, he had had more than twenty-four hours of intense stimulation by his implanted computer. That stimulation had affected his brain by providing new experiences and new expectations. A new environment was being incorporated. Pretty soon, it would be impossible to predict how the brain would react. Because it wasn't Benson's old brain any more - it was a new brain, the product of new experiences.

Anders came into the room. "We're ready," he said.

"I can see."

"We've got two men for every basement access, two for the front door, two for the emergency ward, and two for each of the three elevators. I've kept men away from the patient-care floors. We don't want to start trouble in those areas."

Considerate of you, she thought, but said nothing.

Anders glanced at his watch. "Twelve-forty," he said. "I think somebody should show me the main computer."

"It's in the basement," she said, nodding toward the main building. "Over there."

"Will you show me?"

"Sure," she said. She didn't really care. She no longer maintained any illusions about her ability to affect the outcome of events. She realized that she was in the grip of an inexorable process involving many people and many past decisions. What would happen would happen.

She walked down the corridor with Anders, and found herself thinking about Mrs. Crail. It was odd; she hadn't thought of Mrs. Crail in years. Emily Crail had been her first patient as a psychiatric resident, years ago. The woman was fifty, her children grown, her husband bored with her.

She was suicidally depressed. Janet Ross had taken the case with a sense of personal responsibility; she was young and eager, and she fought Mrs. Crail's impulses like a general fighting a war - marshaling resources, planning strategies, revising and updating battle plans. She nursed Mrs. Crail through two unsuccessful suicide attempts.

And then she began to realize that there were limits to her own energy, skills, and knowledge. Mrs. Crail was not improving; her suicidal attempts became more crafty; eventually she succeeded in killing herself. But by that time, Ross had - fortunately - detached herself from the patient.

As she was detached from Benson now.

They had reached the far end of the corridor when behind them, from Telecomp, they heard Gerhard shout, "Janet! Janet, are you still here?"

She returned to Telecomp, with Anders following along curiously. Inside the computer room, the console lights were flickering unsteadily.

"Look at this," Gerhard said, pointing to one print-out console.

"The main computer is going to a new program," Gerhard said.

"So what?"

"We didn't instruct that."

"What's the new program?"

"I don't know," Gerhard said. "We didn't instruct any change."

Ross and Anders watched the console.

Then there was nothing. No further letters appeared on the screen. Anders said, "What does it mean?"

"I don't know," Gerhard said. "Maybe another time-sharing terminal is overriding us, but that shouldn't be possible. We locked in priority for our terminal for the last twelve hours. Ours should be the only terminal that can initiate program changes."

The console flashed up new letters.

NEW PROGRAM READS AS MACHINE MALFUNCTION ALL PROGRAMMING TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED TERMINATED

"What?" Gerhard said. He started to punch buttons on the console, then quit. "It isn't accepting any new instructions."

"Why not?"

"Something must be wrong with the main computer in the basement."

Ross looked at Anders. "You better show me that computer," he said.

Then, as they watched, one of the consoles went completely dead. All its lights blinked off; the TV screen shrank to a single fading white dot. A second console went off, then a third. The teleprinter stopped printing.

"The computer has shut itself down," Gerhard said.

"It probably had help," Anders said.

He went with Ross to the elevators.

It was a damp evening, and cold as they hurried across the parking lot toward the main building. Anders was checking his gun, turning it sideways to catch the light from the parking-lot lamps.

"I think you should know one thing," she said. "It's no good threatening him with that. He won't respond rationally to it."

Anders smiled. "Because he's a machine?"

"He just won't respond. If he has a seizure, he won't see it, won't recognize it, won't react appropriately to it."

They entered the hospital through the brightly lit main entrance, and walked back to the central elevator banks. Anders said, "Where's the atomic pack located?"

"Beneath the skin of his right shoulder."

"Where, exactly?"

"Here," she said, pointing to her own shoulder, tracing a rectangle.

"That size?"

"Yes. About the size of a pack of cigarettes."

"Okay," Anders said.

They took the elevator to the basement. There were two cops in the elevator car, and they were both tense, fidgety, hands touching their guns.

As they rode down, Anders nodded to his own gun. "You ever fire one of these?"

"No."

"Never at all?"

"No."

He didn't say anything after that. The elevator doors opened. They felt the coolness of the basement air and looked down the corridor ahead - bare concrete walls, unpainted; overhead pipes running along the ceiling, harsh electric lighting. They stepped out. The doors closed behind them.

They stood for a moment, listening. They heard nothing except the distant hum of power equipment. Anders whispered,

"Anybody usually in the basement at night?"

She nodded. "Maintenance people. Pathologists, if they're still going."

"The pathology labs are down here?"

"Yes."

"Where's the computer?"

"This way."

She led him down the corridor. Straight ahead was the laundry room. It was locked for the night, but huge carts with bundles of laundry were outside in the corridor. Anders eyed the bundles cautiously before they moved on to the central kitchens.

The kitchens were shut down, too, but the lights were on, burning in a vast expanse of white-tiled rooms, with stainless-steel steam tables in long rows. "This is a short cut," she said as they went through the kitchen. Their footsteps echoed on the tiles. Anders walked loosely, holding his gun slightly ahead, barrel pointed out to the side.

They passed through the kitchen and back into another hallway. It was almost identical to the one they had left. Anders glanced at her questioningly. She knew he was lost; she remembered the months it had taken her to learn her way through the basement. "Turn right," she said.

They passed a sign on the wall: EMPLOYEES REPORT ALL ACCIDENTS TO YOUR SUPERVISOR. It showed a man with a small cut on his finger. Further down was another sign: NEED A LOAN? SEE YOUR CREDIT UNION.

They turned right down another corridor, and approached a small section containing vending machines - hot coffee, doughnuts, sandwiches, candy bars. She remembered all the late nights when she had been a resident in the hospital and had come down to the vending machines for a snack. The old days, when being a doctor seemed like a good and hopeful thing to be. Great advances would be made during her lifetime; it would be exciting; she would be a part of it.

Anders peered into the vending area, then paused. He whispered: "Have a look at this."

She looked, astonished. Every machine had been smashed. There were candy bars and sandwiches wrapped in plastic strewn across the floor. Coffee was pouring in short, arterial spurts from the coffee vender onto the floor.

Anders stepped around the puddles of coffee and soda and touched the dents and tears in the metal of the machines.

"Looks like an axe," he said. "Where would he get an axe?"

"Fire-extinguisher stations have them."

"I don't see the axe here," he said, looking around the room. Then he glanced at her.

She didn't reply. They left the vending area and continued down the corridor. They came to a turn in the tunnels.

"Which way now?"

"Left," she said. And she added: "We're very close."

Ahead of them, the hall took another turn. Ross knew that hospital records was around the turn, and just beyond that, the computer. The planners had located the computer near the records room because they eventually hoped to computerize all the hospital records.

Suddenly Anders froze. She stopped and listened with him. They heard footsteps, and humming - somebody humming a tune.

Anders put his finger to his lips, and gestured to Ross to stay where she was. He moved forward, toward the turn in the corridor. The humming was louder. He paused at the turn and looked cautiously around the corner. Ross held her breath.

"Hey!" a male voice shouted, and suddenly Anders's arm flicked around the corner like a snake, and a man sprawled across the floor, skidding down the hall toward Ross. "Hey!" A bucket of water sloshed across the floor. Ross saw that it was an elderly maintenance man. She went over to him.

"What the- "

"Sh-h-h," she said, a finger to her lips. She helped the man back to his feet.

Anders came back. "Don't leave the basement," he said to the man. "Go to the kitchen and wait. Don't try to leave." His voice was an angry hiss.

Ross knew what he was saying. Anyone who tried to leave the basement now was likely to be shot by the waiting cops.

The man was nodding, frightened and confused.

"It's all right," Ross said to him.

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