The Terminal Man

"Yes…"

"And that interaction will be a learning pattern of some kind. It’s just like a kid with a cookie jar. If you slap the kid’s hand every time he reaches for the cookies, pretty soon he won’t reach so often. Look." She drew a quick sketch.

"Now," she said, "that’s negative reinforcement. The kid reaches, but he gets hurt. So he stops reaching. Eventually he’ll quit altogether. Okay?"

"Sure," Gerhard said, "but- "

"Let me finish. If the kid is normal, it works that way. But if the kid is a masochist, it will be very different." She drew another curve.

"Here the kid is reaching more often for the cookies, because he likes getting hit. It should be negative reinforcement, but it’s really positive reinforcement. Do you remember Cecil?"

"No," Gerhard said.

On the computer console, a new report appeared:

11:22 STIMULATION

"Oh shit," she said. "It’s happening."

"What’s happening?"

"Benson is going into a positive progression cycle."

"I don’t understand."

"It’s just like Cecil. Cecil was the first monkey to be wired with electrodes to a computer. That was back in ’65. The computer wasn’t miniaturized then; it was a big clunky computer, and the monkey was wired up by actual wires. Okay. Cecil had epilepsy. The computer detected the start of a seizure, and delivered a counter-shock to stop it. Okay. Now the seizures should have come less and less frequently, like the hand reaching for the cookies less and less often. But instead the reverse happened. Cecil liked the shocks. And he began to initiate seizures in order to experience the pleasurable shocks."

"And that’s what Benson is doing?"

"I think so."

Gerhard shook his head. "Listen, Jan, that’s all interesting. But a person can’t start and stop epileptic seizures at will. They can’t control it. The seizures are- "

"Involuntary," she said. "That’s right. You have no more control over them than you do over heart rate and blood pressure and sweating and all the other involuntary acts."

There was a long pause. Gerhard said, "You’re going to tell me I’m wrong."

On the screen, the computer blinked:

11:32 – – – – – – –

"I’m going to tell you," she said, "that you’ve cut too many conferences. You know about autonomic learning?"

After a guilty pause: "No."

"It was a big mystery for a long time. Classically, it was believed that you could learn to control only voluntary acts. You could learn to drive a car, but you couldn’t learn to lower your blood pressure. Of course, there were those yogis who supposedly could reduce oxygen requirements of their body and slow their heartbeats to near death. They could reverse intestinal peristalsis and drink liquids through the anus.

But that was all unproven – and theoretically impossible."

Gerhard nodded cautiously.

"Well, it turns out to be perfectly possible. You can teach a rat to blush in only one ear. Right ear or left ear, take your pick. You can teach it to lower or raise blood pressure or heartbeat. And you can do the same thing with people. It’s not impossible. It can be done."

"How?" He asked the question with unabashed curiosity. Whatever embarrassment he had felt before was gone.

"Well, with people who have high blood pressure, for instance, all you do is put them in a room with a blood-pressure cuff on their arm. Whenever the blood pressure goes down, a bell rings. You tell the person to try to make the bell ring as often as possible. They work for that reward – a bell ringing. At first it happens by accident. Then pretty soon they learn how to make it happen more often. The bell rings more frequently. After a few hours, it’s ringing a lot."

Gerhard scratched his head. "And you think Benson is producing more seizures to be rewarded with shocks?"

"Yes."

"Well, what’s the difference? He still can’t have any seizures. The computer always prevents them from happening."

"Not true," she said. "A couple of years ago, a Norwegian schizophrenic was wired up and allowed to stimulate a pleasure terminal as often as he wanted. He pushed himself into a convulsion by overstimulating himself."

Gerhard winced.

Richards, who had been watching the computer console, suddenly said, "Something’s wrong."

"What is it?"

"We’re not getting readings any more."

On the screen, they saw:

11:32 – – – – – – –

11:42 – – – – – – –

Ross looked and sighed. "See if you can get a computer extrapolation of that curve," she said. "See if he’s really going into a learning cycle, and how fast." She started for the door. "I’m going to see what’s happened to Benson."

The door slammed shut. Gerhard turned back to the computer.

Friday, March 12, 1971: Breakdown

1

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- "

Chapter 10

"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.