The Terminal Man - Crichton Michael. Страница 38

"I didn't do nothin'."

"There's a man down here we have to find," Ross said.

"Just wait until it's over."

"Stay in the kitchen," Anders said.

The man nodded, brushed himself off, and walked away. He looked back once, shaking his head. She and Anders continued along the corridor, turned a corner, and came to the records section. A large sign sticking out from the wall said: PATIENT RECORDS.

Anders looked at her questioningly. She nodded. They went inside.

Records was a giant space, filled with floor-toceiling shelves of patient records. It was like an enormous library. Anders paused in surprise.

"Lot of bookkeeping," she said.

"Is this every patient the hospital ever had?"

"No," she said. "Every patient seen in the last five years. The others are stored in a warehouse."

"Christ."

They moved down the parallel stacks of shelves quietly, Anders leading with his gun. Occasionally he would pause to look through a gap in the shelves to another corridor. They saw no one at all.

"Anybody on duty here?"

"Should be."

She scanned the rows of charts. The record room always impressed her. As a practicing doctor she had an image of medical practice that involved large numbers of patients. She had treated hundreds, seen thousands for a single hour or a few weeks. Yet the hospital records ran into the millions - and that was just one hospital, in one city, in one country. Millions and millions of patients.

"We have a thing like this, too," Anders said. "You lose records often?"

"All the time."

He sighed. "So do we."

At that moment, a young girl no more than fifteen or sixteen came around the corner. She carried a stack of records in her arms. Anders had his gun up in an instant. The girl looked, dropped the records, and started to scream.

"Quiet," Anders hissed.

The scream was cut off abruptly, to a kind of gurgle. The girl's eyes were wide.

"I'm a policeman," Anders said. He flicked out his shoulder wallet to show the badge. "Have you seen anyone here?"

"Anyone…"

"This man."' He showed her the picture.

She looked at it, and shook her head.

"You're sure?"

"Yes… I mean, no… I mean…"

Ross said, "I think we should go on to the computer." In some way, she was embarrassed at frightening the girl. The hospital hired high school and college students part-time to do the clerical work in records; they weren't paid much.

Ross herself remembered when she had been frightened at about the same age. She had been walking in the woods with a boy. They had seen a snake. The boy told her it was a rattlesnake, and she was terrified. Much later she learned he had been teasing her. The snake was harmless. She had resented-

"All right," Anders said. "The computer. Which way?"

Ross led the way out. Anders turned back once to the girl, who was picking up the charts she had dropped. "Listen," he said. "If you do see this man, don't talk to him. Don't do anything except shout your bloody head off. You understand?"

She nodded.

And then Ross realized that the rattlesnake was real, this time. It was all real.

They came out into the corridor again, and continued down it toward the computer section. The computer section was the only refinished part of the basement. The bare concrete floor changed abruptly to blue carpeting; one corridor wall had been knocked out to install large glass windows that looked in, from the corridor, to the room that housed the main banks of the computer. Ross remembered when the computer was being installed; it seemed to her that the windows were an unnecessary expense, and she had mentioned it to McPherson.

"Better let the people see what's coming," McPherson had replied.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that the computer is just a machine. Bigger and more expensive than most, but still just a machine. We want people to get used to it. We don't want them to fear or worship it. We want them to see it as part of the environment."

Yet every time she passed the computer section, she had the opposite feelings: the special treatment, the hallway carpeting, and the expensive surroundings served to make the computer special, unusual, unique. She thought it significant that the only other place in the hospital where the floor was carpeted was outside the small nondenominational chapel on the first floor. She had the same sense here: a shrine to the computer.

Did the computer care if there were carpets on the floor?

In any case, the employees of the hospital had provided their own reaction to the spectacle inside the glass windows. A handwritten sign had been taped to the glass: DO NOT FEED OR MOLEST THE COMPUTER.

She and Anders crouched down below the level of the window. Anders peered over cautiously.

"What do you see?" she said.

"I think I see him."

She looked, too. She was aware that her heart was suddenly pounding; her body was tense and expectant.

Inside the room there were six magnetic tape units, a broad L-shaped console for the central processor, a printer, a card-punch reader, and two disc drive units. The equipment was shiny, sharp-edged, gleaming. It sat quiet under even, fluorescent lighting. She saw no one - just the equipment, isolated, alone. It reminded her of Stonehenge, the vertical stone columns.

Then she saw him: a man moving between two tape units. White orderly's coat, black hair.

"It's him," she said.

"Where's the door?" Anders asked. For no good reason, he was checking his gun again. He snapped the revolver chamber closed with a loud click.

"Down there." She pointed down the corridor to the door, perhaps ten feet away.

"Any other entrances or exits?"

"No."

Her heart was still pounding. She looked from Anders to the gun and back to Anders.

"Okay. You stay down." Anders pressed her down to the floor as he spoke. Then he crawled forward to the door. He paused, got to his knees, and looked back at her once. She was surprised to see that he was frightened. His face was taut, his body hunched tensely. He held the gun stiffly forward by his straight arm.

We're all afraid, she thought.

Then, with a loud slam, Anders knocked the door open and flung himself on his belly into the room. She heard him shout, "Benson!" And then almost immediately there was a gunshot. This was followed by a second shot, and a third. She could not tell who was firing. She saw Anders's feet sticking out of the door as he lay on the carpeting. Gray smoke billowed out through the open door and rose lazily in the corridor.

There were two more shots and a loud scream of pain. She closed her eyes and pressed her cheek to the carpet. Anders shouted: "Benson! Give it up, Benson!"

It won't do any good, she thought. Didn't Anders understand?

Still more shots, in rapid succession. Suddenly, the glass window above her shattered, and large slabs of glass fell over her shoulders, onto her hair. She shook it off. And then to her astonishment Benson landed on the corridor floor beside her. He had thrown himself through the glass window and landed quite close to her. His body was just a few feet from her. She saw that one leg was bloody, red seeping onto the white trouser leg.

"Harry- "

Her voice cracked strangely. She was terrified. She knew she should not be afraid of this man - that was a disservice to him, a betrayal of her profession, and a loss of some important trust - but she was afraid nonetheless.

Benson looked at her, eyes blank and unseeing. He ran off down the basement corridor.

"Harry, wait- "

"Never mind," Anders said, coming out of the computer room, sprinting after Benson, holding his gun stiffly in his hand. The policeman's posture was absurd; she wanted to laugh. She heard Benson's running footsteps echoing faintly down the tunnel. Then Anders turned a corner, continuing after him. The footsteps blended in staccato echoes.

And then she was alone. She got to her feet, dazed, feeling sick. She knew what was going to happen now, Benson, like a trapped animal, would head for one of the emergency exits. As soon as he appeared outside - where it was safe to shoot - the waiting policemen would gun him down. All the exits were covered. There was no possible escape. She didn't want to be there to see it.

Instead, she went into the computer room and looked around. The main computer was demolished. Two magnetic tape banks were knocked over; the main control panel was riddled with fine round punctures, and sparks sputtered and dripped from the panel toward the floor. She ought to control that, she thought. It might start a fire. She looked around for a fire extinguisher and saw Benson's axe lying on the carpet in a corner. And then she saw the gun.

Curious, she picked it up. It was surprisingly heavy, much heavier than she expected. It felt big and greasy and cold in her hand. She knew Anders had his gun; therefore this must be Benson's. Benson's gun. She stared at it oddly, as if it might tell her something about him.

From somewhere in the basement, there were four gunshots in rapid succession. They echoed through the labyrinthine hospital tunnels. She walked to the broken windows and looked out at the tunnels. She saw nothing, heard nothing.

It must be finished, she thought. The sputtering, hissing sound of sparks behind her made her turn. There was also a slapping sound, repetitive and monotonous. She saw that one of the magnetic tape reels had spun out, and the edge of the tape was slapping against the hardware spindle.

She went back to the reel and turned it off. She glanced up at one of the display consoles, which was now printing

"ERMINA" over and over. "ERMINA, ERMINA." Then there were two more gunshots, not so distant as the others, and she realized that somehow Benson was still alive, still going. She stood in a corner of the demolished computer room and waited.

Another gunshot, very close now.

She ducked down behind one of the magnetic tape banks as she heard approaching footsteps. She was aware of the irony: Benson had been hiding behind the computers, and now she was hiding, cowering behind the metal columns, as if they could protect her in some way.

She heard someone gasping for breath; the footsteps paused; the door to the computer room opened, then closed with a slam. She was still hidden behind the tape bank, and could not see what was happening.