Terminal Man by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online Page A

this for Harry.” She lifted a small blue overnight bag. “He asked me to bring it.”
    “All right.” He took the bag from her. “I’ll see that he gets it.”
    She hesitated, then said, “Can I see him?”
    “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Benson would have been shaved by now; pre-op patients who had been shaved often didn’t want to see people.
    “Just for a few minutes?”
    “He’s heavily sedated,” he said.
    She was clearly disappointed. “Then would you give him a message?”
    “Sure.”
    “Tell him I’m back in my old apartment. He’ll understand.”
    “All right.”
    “You won’t forget?”
    “No. I’ll tell him.”
    “Thank you.” She smiled. It was a rather nice smile, despite the long false eyelashes and the heavy make-up. Why did young girls do that to their faces? “I guess I’ll be going now.” And she walked off, short skirt and very long legs, a briskly determined walk. He watched her go, then hefted the bag, which seemed heavy.
    The cop sitting outside the door to 710 said, “How’s it going?”
    “Fine,” Morris said.
    The cop glanced at the overnight bag but said nothing as Morris took it inside the room.
    Harry Benson was watching a Western on television. Morris turned down the sound. “A very pretty girl brought you this.”
    “Angela?” Benson smiled. “Yes, she has a nice exterior. Not a very complicated internal mechanism, but a nice exterior.” He extended his hand; Morris gave him the bag. “Did she bring everything?”
    Morris watched as Benson opened it, placing the contents on the bed. There were a pair of pajamas, an electric razor, some after-shave lotion, a paperback novel.
    Then Benson brought out a black wig.
    “What’s that?” Morris asked.
    Benson shrugged. “I knew I’d need it sooner or later,” he said. Then he laughed. “You
are
letting me out of here, aren’t you? Sooner or later?”
    Morris laughed with him. Benson dropped the wig back into the bag, and removed a plastic packet. With a metallic clink, he unfolded it, and Morris saw it was a set of screwdrivers of various sizes, stored in a plastic package with pockets for each size.
    “What’s that for?” Morris asked.
    Benson looked puzzled for a moment. Then he said, “I don’t know if you’ll understand.…”
    “Yes?”
    “I always have them with me. For protection.”
    Benson placed the screwdrivers back into the overnighter. He handled them carefully, almost reverently. Morris knew that patients frequently brought odd things into the hospital, particularly if they were seriously ill. There was a kind of totemic feeling about these objects, as if they might have magical preservative powers. They were often connected with some hobby or favorite activity. He remembered a yachtsman with a metastatic brain tumor who had brought a kit to repair sails, and a woman with advanced heartdisease who had brought a can of tennis balls. That kind of thing.
    “I understand,” Morris said.
    Benson smiled.

6
    T ELECOMP WAS EMPTY WHEN SHE CAME INTO the room; the consoles and teleprinters stood silently, the screens blinking up random sequences of numbers. She went to the corner and poured herself a cup of coffee, then fed the test card from Benson’s latest psychodex into the computer.
    The NPS had developed the psychodex test, along with several other computer-analyzed psychological tests. It was all part of what McPherson called “double-edged thinking.” In this case, he meant that the idea of a brain being like a computer worked two ways, in two different directions. On the one hand, you could utilize the computer to probe the brain, to help you analyze its workings. At the same time, you could use your increased knowledge of the brain to help design better and more efficient computers. As McPherson said, “The brain is as much a model for the computer as the computer is a model for the brain.”
    At the NPS, computer scientists and neurobiologistshad worked together for