The Terminal Man

The Terminal Man Page 9

Perhaps that was a bit strong, he thought. He pressed the button and said, "Harriet, type that last paragraph but I want to look at it, okay? Roman numeral four. Summary and Conclusions."

IV. Summary and Conclusions.

He paused again, and turned up the sound on Benson. Benson was saying, "... hate them, particularly the prostitutes. Airplane mechanics, dancers, translators, gas-station attendants, the people who are machines, or who service machines. The prostitutes. I hate them all."

As he spoke, Benson continued to stab with his cigarette.

4

"And how did you feel?" Dr. Ramos said.

"Angry," Janet Ross said. "Angry as hell. I mean, that nurse was standing there, watching it all. She pretended she didn't understand what was happening, but she did."

"You felt angry about..." Dr. Ramos let his voice trail off.

"About the operation. About Benson. They went ahead and did it. I told them from the beginning - from the goddamned very beginning - that it was a bad idea, but Ellis and Morris and McPherson all wanted to do it. They're so cocky. Particularly Morris. When I saw him in the recovery room, gloating over Benson - who was all taped up and pale as a ghost - I just got mad."

"Why is that?"

"Because he was so pale, because he, uh- "

She stopped. She fumbled for an answer, but couldn't think of a logical response.

"I gather the operation was successful," Dr. Ramos said.

"And most people are pale after surgery. What got you mad?"

She said nothing. Finally, she said, "I don't know."

She heard Dr. Ramos shift in his chair. She could not see him; she was lying on the couch, and Dr. Ramos was behind her head. There was a long silence while she stared at the ceiling and tried to think what to say. Her thoughts seemed to be churning, not making any sense. Finally Dr. Ramos said,

"The presence of the nurse seems important to you."

"It does?"

"Well, you mentioned it."

"I wasn't aware I had."

"You said the nurse was there and knew what was going on.

... What, exactly, was going on?"

"I was mad."

"But you don't know why?..."

"Yes, I do," she said. "It was Morris. He's so cocky."

"Cocky," Dr. Ramos repeated.

"Overly self-assured."

"You said cocky."

"Look, I didn't mean anything by that; it was just a word-

" She broke off. She was very angry. She could hear it in her voice.

"You are angry now," Dr. Ramos said.

"Very."

"Why?"

After a long pause, she sad, "They didn't listen to me."

"Who didn't listen to you?"

"Any of them. Not McPherson, not Ellis, not Morris. Nobody listened to me."

"Did you tell Dr. Ellis or Dr. McPherson you were angry?"

"No."

"But you vented your anger on Dr. Morris."

"Yes." He was leading her someplace and she couldn't see where. Normally at this point she could jump ahead and understand. But this time-

"How old is Dr. Morris?"

"I don't know. About my age. Thirty, thirtyone - something in there."

"About your age."

That pissed her off, his way of repeating things. "Yes, God damn it, about my age."

"And a surgeon."

"Yes..."

"Is it easier to express anger toward someone you regard as a contemporary?"

"I never thought about it."

"Your father was also a surgeon, but he wasn't your contemporary."

"You don't have to draw me a picture," she said.

"You're still angry."

She sighed. "Let's change the subject."

"All right," he said, in that easy voice that she sometimes liked, and sometimes hated.

5

Morris hated to do Initial Interviews. The Initial Interview staff consisted mostly of clinical psychologists; the work was lengthy and boring. A recent tabulation had shown that only one in forty new patients to the NPS received further work; and only one in eighty-three was accepted as having some variety of organic brain disease with behavioral manifestations. That meant most Initial Interviews were a waste of time.

And it was particularly true of off-the-street patients. A year ago McPherson had decided, for political reasons, that anyone who heard of the NPS and presented himself directly would be seen. Most patients were still referrals, of course, but McPherson felt the image of the Unit depended upon prompt treatment of self-referrals as well.

McPherson also felt that everyone on the staff should do some Initial Interviews from time to time. Morris worked two days a month in the little interview rooms with the one-way glass mirrors. This was one of his days, but he didn't want to be here; he was still exhilarated from the morning's operation, and he resented returning to this kind of mundane routine.

He looked up unhappily as the next patient came into the room. He was a young man in his twenties, wearing dungarees and a sweatshirt. He had long hair. Morris stood to greet him.

"I'm Dr. Morris."

"Craig Beckerman." The handshake was soft and tentative.

"Please sit down." He waved Beckerman to a chair which faced Morris's desk, and the one-way mirror behind. "What brings you to us?"

"I, uh... I'm curious. I read about you," Beckerman said, "in a magazine. You do brain surgery here."

"That's true."

"Well, I uh... I was curious about it."

"In what sense?"

"Well, this magazine article- Can I smoke here?"

"Of course," Morris said. He pushed an ashtray across the desk to Beckerman. Beckerman brought out a pack of Camels, tapped one on the desk, then lit it.

"The magazine article..."

"Right. The magazine article said that you put wires in the brain. Is that true?"

"Yes, we sometimes perform that kind of surgery."

Beckerman nodded. He smoked the cigarette. "Yeah, well, is it true that you can put wires in so that you feel pleasure? Intense pleasure?"

"Yes," Morris said. He tried to say it blandly.

"That's really true?"

"It's really true," Morris said. And then he shook his pen, indicating that it was out of ink. He opened the desk drawer to take out another pen, and as he reached into the drawer, he pressed a sequence on the buttons hidden inside.

Immediately his telephone rang.

"Dr. Morris."

At the other end, the secretary said, "You rang?"

"Yes. Would you hold all calls, please, and transfer them to Development section?"

"Right away," the secretary said.

"Thank you." Morris hung up. He knew that the Development people would arrive soon, to watch on the other side of the one-way mirror. "I'm sorry for the interruption. You were sayg..."

"About the wires in the brain."

"Yes. We do that operation, Mr. Beckerman, under special circumstances, but it's still pretty experimental."

"That's all right," Beckerman said. He puffed on his cigarette. "That's fine with me."

"If you want information, we can arrange for you to have some reprints and magazine tear sheets explaining our work here."

Beckerman smiled and shook his head. "No, no," he said. "I don't want information. I want the operation. I'm volunteering."

Morris pretended to be surprised. He paused a moment and said, "I see."

"Listen," Beckerman said, "in the article it said that one jolt of electricity was like a dozen orgasms. It sounded really terrific."

"And you want this operation performed on you?"

"Yeah," Beckerman said, nodding vigorously. "Right."

"Why?"

"Are you kidding? Wouldn't everybody want it? Pleasure like that?"

"Perhaps," Morris said, "but you're the first person to ask for it."

"What's the matter?" Beckerman said. "Is it really expensive or something?"

"No. But we don't perform brain surgery for trivial reasons."

"Oh, wow," Beckerman said. "So that's where you are. Jesus."

And he got up and left the room, shaking his head.

The three Development guys looked stupefied. They sat in the adjoining room and stared through the one-way glass. Beckerman had long since departed.

"Fascinating," Morris said.

The Development guys didn't reply. Finally one of them cleared his throat and said, "To say the least."

Morris knew what was going through their heads. For years, they had been doing feasibility studies, potential application studies, ramification studies, industrial operations studies, input-output studies. They were geared to think in the future - and now they were suddenly confronted with the present.

"That man is an elad," one of them said. And sighed.

The elad concept had caused a lot of interest and some detached academic concern. The notion of an electrical addict - a man who needed his jolts of electricity just as some men needed doses of drugs - had seemed almost fancifully speculative. But now they had a patient who was clearly a potential addict.

"Electricity is the biggest kick of all," one of them said, and laughed. But the laugh was nervous, edged with tension.

Morris wondered what McPherson would say. Probably something philosophical. McPherson was mostly interested in philosophy these days.

The idea of an electrical addict was predicated on an astonishing discovery made by James Olds in the 1950s. Olds found that there were areas in the brain where electrical stimulation produced intense pleasure - strips of brain tissue he called "rivers of reward." If an electrode was placed in such an area, a rat would press a self-stimulation lever to receive a shock as often as five thousand times an hour. In its quest for pleasure, it would ignore food and water. It would stop pressing the lever only when it was prostrate with exhaustion.

This remarkable experiment had been repeated with goldfish, guinea pigs, dolphins, cats, and goats. There was no longer any question that the pleasure terminals in the brain were a universal phenomenon. They had also been located in humans.

Out of these considerations had come the notion of the electrical addict, the man who needed pleasurable shocks. At first glance, it seemed impossible for a person to become an addict. But it actually wasn't.

For instance, the technological hardware was now expensive, but it needn't be. One could envision clever Japanese firms manufacturing electrodes for as little as two or three dollars and exporting them.

Nor was the idea of an illegal operation so farfetched. At one time a million American women underwent illegal abortions each year. The implantation brain surgery was somewhat more complex, but not forbiddingly so. And the surgical techniques would become more standardized in the future. It was easy to imagine clinics springing up in Mexico and the Bahamas.

Nor was there a problem finding surgeons to do the job. A single busy, well-organized neurosurgeon could perform ten or fifteen operations a day. He could certainly charge a thousand dollars for each - and with that kind of incentive, unscrupulous surgeons could be found. A hundred thousand dollars a week in cash was a strong inducement to break the law - if indeed a law were ever passed.

That did not seem very likely. A year before, the hospital had organized a seminar with legal scholars on "Biomedical Technology and the Law." Elads were among the subjects discussed, but the lawyers were not responsive. The elad concept did not fit neatly into the already existing pattern of laws governing drug addiction. All those laws recognized that a person could become a drug addict innocently or involuntarily - quite a different proposition from a person coldly seeking a surgical procedure that would make him an addict. Most of the lawyers felt that the public would not seek such an operation; there would be no legal problem because there would be no public demand. Now Beckerman had provided evidence for such a demand.

"I'll be goddamned," another of the Development people said.

Morris found that comment hardly adequate. He himself felt something he had felt once or twice before since joining the NPS. It was the sensation that things were moving too fast, without enough caution and control, and that it could all get out of control, suddenly, and without warng.

6

At 6 p.m., Roger McPherson, head of the Neuropsychiatric

Research Unit, went up to the seventh floor to check on his patient. At least, that was how he thought of Benson - as his patient. A proprietary feeling, but not entirely incorrect. Without McPherson, there would be no NPS, and without an NPS, there would be no surgery, no Benson. That was how he thought of it.

Room 710 was quiet and bathed in reddish light from the setting sun. Benson appeared to be asleep, but his eyes opened when McPherson closed the door.

"How are you feeling?" McPherson asked, moving close to the bed.

Benson smiled. "Everyone wants to know that," he said.

McPherson smiled back. "It's a natural question."

"I'm tired, that's all. Very tired... Sometimes I think I'm a ticking time bomb, and you're wondering when I'll explode."

"Is that what you think?" McPherson asked. Automatically, he adjusted Benson's covers so he could look at the I.V. line. It was flowing nicely.

"Ticktick," Benson said, closing his eyes again.

"Ticktick."

McPherson frowned. He was accustomed to mechanical metaphors from Benson - the man was preoccupied, after all, with the idea of men as machines. But to have them appear so soon after operation...

"Any pain?"

"None. A little ache behind my ears, like I'd fallen. That's all."

Chapter 7

That, McPherson knew, was the bone pain from the drilling.

"Fallen?"

"I'm a fallen man," Benson said. "I've succumbed."

"To what?"

"To the process of being turned into a machine." He opened his eyes and smiled again. "Or a time bomb."