“We give the orders here, pal.”
An older, more sedate policeman stepped in through the small entranceway. He had a notebook in one hand. “Put the gun away, Kelke, and call for backup.”
The young cop’s teeth chattered like a cat looking in a bird cage. But he holstered his pistol and picking up the telephone. “I suppose that’s the weapon?” The older cop pointed the end of his pencil at Dobie, still taking shallow breaths.
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”
The young cop set the telephone down and looked at the man on the floor. “He’s dying.”
“Let me die on the next ambulance. Get a stretcher under my”—Blaise finally settled for saying lamely—“friend and get her to a hospital.”
“Everything in good time. Stay here.” The cop nodded to his partner and then went into the computer room.
“You’d better get a stretcher. The woman in there isn’t going to survive if you don’t move it.”
“This one isn’t going to make it either, boyo, unless you stop scratching your butt and hop to.” The attendant holding the man on the floor together seemed amused by the young cop’s indecision. He’d rigged a plasma bag and a yellow line ran down a plastic tube to the bleeding man’s arm. The bag hung from a safety pin in the chair back.
The young cop couldn’t make up his mind. He was being pushed into doing something and he knew it. But his partner gave him no support. Like it was his mistake.
The ambulance attendant with Helen made up his mind for him. “For Christ’s sake, shithead, get in here!”
“Try never to lose a homeowner, Kelke,” the older cop said with compassion. “They pay our salaries.”
Kelke turned to the attendant, who shrugged. “Man, I take my finger off this artery, he’s dead before I can switch hands!”
The black attendant seemed amused by the young cop’s plight.
Blaise walked beside the stretcher and held Helen’s hand as she was carried out. Her fingers were weak.
“Not you,” the heavyset cop said conversationally. He seemed inured to the blood, the dead man in the hall, the other on the floor. The ambulance took off with its siren wailing. A man in a gray suit with a black bag walked through the open door.
“Who are you?” the cop asked.
“Dr. Valstead. Somebody called for a veterinarian.”
“Me. There’s the dog.” Blaise pointed to Dobie, motionless on the white carpet.
“You threatened my receptionist.”
“I asked for a veterinarian—not a runaround!”
“She said—”
The cop waved his hand. “Who knows what he said? Mr—” He looked at Blaise.
“Dr. Cunningham.”
“Dr. Cunningham was upset.”
“The dog, Doctor.” Blaise pointed.
Opening his bag, the vet started examining Dobie. “I’ll have to take him to the clinic . . .”
“No!”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I don’t think Dobie will survive the trip.”
Valstead shrugged. “You could be right.”
“Do the surgery here.”
Valstead looked at the cop who kept his face blank.
“I won’t sue. How would it look good in the papers: Nobel Prize winner sues veterinarian?” Blaise concluded from the abrupt shift in attitude that his Prize was still good for a little mileage.
Valstead’s face was unhappy. The cop shrugged.
“I’ll have to probe for the bullet.”
“Kitchen table.”
Blaise and the vet carried Dobie into the kitchenette and laid him on the tabletop. Valstead unpacked his instruments.
“Okay, Dr. Cunningham, now you tell me,” the cop said. He watched Valstead begin working on Dobie with the jaded interest of a man who has seen everything.
“Blaise Cunningham. B-L-A-I-S-E. Ph.D. in computer science. Professor at UCSD.”
“Torrey Pines?”
“Yes.”
After the fill-in questions the cop said, “What happened?”
“The door was open and I found exactly what you found. Dobie is Helen’s guard dog. Doberman pinscher, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.” The cop studied Blaise, pencil and notebook in hand. “Is your car the limo or the VW?”
“The VW.”
“You park funny, doc.”
“I wasn’t going to stay long. Just pick Helen up.”
“All right.” The veterinarian held the slug in a pair of forceps. “Here’s what you want.”
Dropping the slug in an envelope that he sealed, the cop said, “Put your initials on it, will you, Doc?”
The vet looked at him, then initialed the envelope. “Thanks.”
“Can I go?” the vet asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ll send a bill. Keep the dog quiet. Bring him in if he makes it.” Valstead closed his bag and left after looking Blaise over as if making sure he could pick him out in a lineup.
A pair of ambulance attendants came in and began taking the man on the floor away. “How is he?” Blaise asked.
The attendant who held the artery closed flexed his stiff hand. “The vet should have worked on him.”
Blaise walked into the kitchenette and petted Dobie. The bandage on his side rose and fell. “What now?”
“You’ll have to say it all again to a homicide team.” The cop stretched. He wasn’t like the kid, Kelke. The most exciting thing he looked forward to was retirement.
When investigators started filling the room a familiar figure came in with them. “Dr. Cunningham,” Sergeant Miller said. “How nice to see you again.” He faced Blaise with a happy grin. “Do you know, Inspector Fennelli still hasn’t found that girl’s killer. You know, what’s her name?”
“Esther Tazy.”
“I knew you could refresh my memory, Dr. Cunningham. The dean told me you had an eidetic memory—is that the word—and that you never forget?”
“Almost never, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Miller seemed to not even notice the photographer with his camera and the other men making notes in notebooks or tape recorders. All his attention was direction toward Blaise. “Do you remember everything when you’re drunk, Doctor?”
“I don’t know, Sergeant. There’s a lot of mumbo jumbo about altered states. But my recall of unwarranted slights and insults is eternal.”
The sergeant sighed and felt around in his brown suit for a notebook. “Well, that’s another case, isn’t it, and we’ve got this one now.” He looked at Blaise and his expression seemed to say one plus one equals two. Every time!
Looking at examples of machine intelligence, the outlook for improvement may be dismal or heartening, depending on the viewer’s inclinations. Either a physical change in the human species to allow the refinements of greater brain bulk, or the installation of genetically transmitted brilliance which allows the processing of specific functions such as mathematics without the necessity of understanding seems the most likely future.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 16
After the police left, anger could no longer sustain Blaise alone in an empty house full of bloodstains and an overgrown puppy on the dinette table breathing so delicately that its chest barely moved. Later, when the doctors finished working on Helen, he’d go to the hospital. For the moment time had stopped.
Helen’s house was terminally quiet. He went into the bedroom that they had converted into a workroom. In the stillness a syncopated clicking waltzed repeatedly.
Automatically, he stepped around stains on the carpet, already dark and nasty like snot from a nose bleed. He sat at the terminal keyboard and told Alfie to take care of the noise.
The clicking stopped. Blaise became suddenly aware of the gentle wind that filled the room too subtly to be heard. It was the hole in the wind made by the silent disk drive that he felt. His fingers found a life of their own as he told Alfie
what had happened. Blaise felt like an observer, watching the letters and words form on the monitor, growing there without conscious effort on his part. He typed until the wet splash of tears on his fingers stopped him.
Like sparks up a chimney, binary code streamed upscreen too fast to read as Alfie thought out loud, "I’M SORRY, PROFESSOR"
“Do you have a heart?” Blaise typed.
The question strained Alfie’s bubble memory. There was a whir as drives accessed, "I DON’T THINK SO, PROFESSOR. IF SO, I CANNOT DIND IT" Almost invisible sounds of Alfie’s activity filled the room, muted clicks as drives turned on and off, the flow of code upscreen too fast even for Blaise to read.
“Neither do I.” Blaise typed.
"HIGHLY IMPROBABLE, PROFESSOR"
“Biologically speaking?”
"YES, BIOLOGICALLY SPEAKING" Alfie hummed to itself.
"I LIKE MISS MCINTYRE, PROFESSOR. BRING HER BACK. PLEASE"
“I will if I can.” Blaise tapped X for exit. He felt shaky, as if he had dreamed the message from Alfie, that he was going mad. Alfie couldn’t like anybody. He was a machine, capable of literal truth and no more. It had to be a dream.
He stood in the kitchenette rubbing the dog’s head. “How are you, Dobie?”
Dobie gave a hint of whimper but seemed pleased.
Blaise wrested a can from a six-pack in the refrigerator. Helen didn’t like beer. She only stocked it for him. When he pulled the tab foam gushed over his fingers. He sipped but the flavor was wrong. Today everything would be curdled. Maybe from now on—The front door thudded and Blaise heard hesitant footsteps on thick carpet.
“What happened?”
Dismay filled Linda’s voice. Her face appeared so pale that the tight cap of curly red hair seemed venous in the spectral light of Helen’s white living room.
“Some men came for Dobie.” He explained.
“But . . . this? Over a dog?”
Blaise held the cold beer can to his forehead. “I told her not to let anybody take him. Helen did her best.” He stared into Linda’s eyes trying to drown his guilt. Her eyes were cool green.
“What could you have done?”
“Gotten here sooner. Though. Acted. Dobie did.”
“That’s insane. You’re overwrought.” Linda’s voice soothed him, her eyes calm in the midst of turmoil. “You’re not a Neanderthal, Blaise. You’re one of us.”
“Who are we, Linda?”
“Intellectuals. People who contribute.”
“Drunks?”
“Sometimes.” Linda pressed against him. “Anyone can have a disease. You’ll cure yourself if you really want to.” Linda’s perfume enveloped them. “I suppose you’re right.” He spoke without conviction.
“Blaise, you’re important. You must always remember that.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Linda smiled. She hadn’t taken it seriously. Not as seriously as he had, anyhow. He said nothing more about Helen and Linda didn’t ask.
Catching her lower lip between her teeth Linda closed her eyes. Uncertainty dropped away. “We’ll go to San Francisco.”
“No.”
“We have to! You’ll be safe with Uncle Milo.”
“Safe from what?”
Linda didn’t answer.
“Helen, Dobie, Alfie—they aren’t safe.” When he tried to smile his face reflected in the black glass oven front. Even to Blaise it looked out of kilter.
“Is a dog more important than your life?”
“Possibly.” Blaise changed his mind. “Probably.” Linda’s eyes filled with sudden tears. “I’m going,” she said. “Blaise, Uncle Milo will help. We can all help. I want to help you. I love you.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“You have a soft mouth.”
“That’s something people say about retrievers. Come with me! We can take the dog and the computer. Helen will be all right in the hospital.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I’ve got to go.” Promise filled her voice.
Blaise fondled Dobie’s docked ears. “Later.”
He watched the redhaired girl leave, body trim and springy, showing nothing it had not been trained to show by birth and breeding. The door clicked, and she came into view through white curtains over the front window, getting into a sports car with a practiced motion.
“Well, Dobie, we didn’t talk about her husband, did we?” Dobie continued breathing in silence.
White walls and severe lighting lent the hospital that illusion of asepsis as important to modern medicine as feathers and rattles to earlier practitioners. For Blaise every scrubbed and waxed surface echoed a negation of the life force. He talked with the doctor, who actually began assembling an OR team while Blaise was still filling out paperwork and signing himself responsible for the bill.
Dr. MacReedy was small and dark, with black hair and caterpillar eyebrows on a sharp face. He was relieved, Blaise thought, to tell Blaise first what he was going to have to tell Helen later. .
The room was airy. Windows faced southwest, admitting layers of afternoon sun between slats in the blinds. Helen lay with the top of her head neatly encased in a bandage skullcap. She opened her eyes and said, “Hi, Blaise.” Her voice quavered.
Her irises were startingly blue and dominated the pallor of normally fair skin. Dark circles around her lids were puffy and swollen.
“I’m sorry, Helen.” Blaise took her hand, feeling her fingers wrap around his. “I didn’t know . . .”
“It’s all right, Blaise. Really.” Her eyes slipped out of focus. After a moment intelligence returned. She smiled.
“You haven’t even asked me how I’m feeling.”
“How are you feeling?” He asked the question mechanically with closed eyes. His lids were all that held back the tears.
“Wonderful. Good food. Pretty nurses.”
He tried to grin. “I didn’t know you were that way about nurses.”
“Handsome doctors,” she added. “Nice visitors. What more can a girl ask for?”
“Bed rest?”
“They cut off my hair. Do you think bald women are sexy?”
“The Egyptians never complained.” Blaise almost put his hand on her face before remembering how battered she was.
“I’m scared, Blaise.”
“Don’t be silly, kitten. It’s a good hospital. I talked to your doctor. He sounds sharp enough to do a brain transplant.”
“Is that what I need?” Helen stared up into his face.
“Blaise, nobody wants to talk about the operation. Where’s the doctor? Downstairs popping uppers before he breaks the news?”
“Helen . . .”
“Don’t treat me like a baby. I keep going away. I’m here and then I’m not. What are all these wires?” She turned her arm and he saw taped-on electrodes and a mass of untamed spaghetti connected to machines outside the room. Somewhere a duty nurse would be monitoring Helen’s life.
“It’s just intensive care procedure after an operation.”
Helen stared at Blaise and he looked away.
“Tell me the truth.” Her fingers plucked nervously at the blanket.
Walking to the window, Blaise looked out through the slats.
“Surf’s up.”
The hospital was a huge sprawl of buildings in a community that respected earthquakes enough to settle for mostly one-and two-story structures. The distant beach shimmered in hot California air.
“You’ve had brain damage,” Blaise said.
When Helen didn’t answer he did not elaborate.
He turned. Helen stared at the ceiling. Her eyes did not move and he wondered if she had heard him. He took her hand.
“And?” Her lips barely moved.
Blaise squeezed her hand. “The prognosis is . . . poor.”
“I know stocks and bonds. Tell me what poor means.”
“It means complications.” The word lay like a porcupine in a steam bath. Too menacing to disturb, too
quiet to leave alone.
Helen’s skin was waxy. Abruptly her breathing changed. So did her face. Blaise’s hackles raised and for the first time he understood medieval man’s obsession with devils. MacReedy had warned him. But a warning was not the gut-wrenching reality of watching it happen. Then her breathing changed and she opened her eyes again.
“I couldn’t see you in the fog.”
Blaise struggled to smile with cheeks full of broken glass.
“Tell me the truth, Blaise. I have to know.”
He lowered his head and quoted MacReedy with eidetic recall, monotoning medical jargon about bruising and lacerations of the cerebral cortex, the consequences of uncontrolled hemotomas.
Tiny bloody seepings like squeezed millions of brain cells: little deaths that spread like a metastasized cancer. MacReedy would operate again: draw off the hemorrhaging blood; plug the leaks piecemeal with a laser.
“There’s a catch, isn’t there?” Helen’s voice was gentle as if she wanted to comfort him.
“Life is always one big catch.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
Her tone was controlled, but the grasp of her fingers on his was crushing, as if savoring the feel of life for the last time.
“Whatever he does, the doctor is going to cause damage. There’s a chance . . .” Blaise stopped. Confused. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“That the doctor is wrong?”
“No.” Blaise wished he could lie. “I’ve seen the scans.”
“Excuse me.” Dr. MacReedy walked in. He wore a white hospital coat over a white shirt and slacks, and a professionally cheerful face. “Do you mind if I parley with the patient for a few minutes?”
Blaise went into the corridor where he could stand and watch. The surgeon drew up a chair and sat by Helen’s side. He took her wrist and timed her pulse, talking and smiling, getting her to talk back. Their lips moved but no sound came through the glass.
Helen spoke. MacReedy answered and the smile fell from her face. MacReedy tried. But his professional cheer had evaporated by the time he came out of the intensive care room.
The Cunningham Equations Page 17