"Can I help you?" he shouted.
"I'm looking for William Michaels," yelled Philips.
"He's not here yet." The man put down his tools and worked his way up toward Philips. "Would you like to leave a message?"
"Just tell Mr. Michaels to give Dr. Philips a call."
"You're Dr. Philips. Nice to meet you. I'm Carl Rudman, one of Mr. Michaels' graduate students." Rudman stuck his hand out through the railing. Philips grasped it, looking out over the impressive equipment.
"Quite a setup you have down here." Martin had never visited the computer lab before and had not imagined that it was so extensive. "It gives me a strange feeling to be in this room," he admitted. "I went to med school here and back in sixty-one, I took microbiology in this amphitheater."
"Well," said Rudman. "At least we're putting it to good use. We probably wouldn't have gotten any space if they hadn't run out of money for the med-school renovation. And this place is perfect for computer work because there's never any people."
"Are the microbiology labs still intact behind the amphitheater?"
"They sure are. In fact, we're using them for our memory research. The isolation is perfect. I'll bet you don't realize how much spying goes on in the computer world."
"You're right," said Philips as his beeper began its insistent sound. He switched it off and asked, "Do you know anything about the skull-reading program?"
"Of course. That's our prototype artificial intelligence program. All of us know a great deal about it."
"Well, maybe you can answer my question. I wanted to ask Michaels if the subroutine dealing with densities can be separately printed."
"Sure can. Just ask the computer. That thing will do just about everything but polish your shoes."
By eight-fifteen Pathology was in full swing. The long counter top with its line of microscopes was packed with residents. Frozen sections had begun arriving fifteen minutes earlier from surgery. Martin found Reynolds in his small office in front of an elaborate microscope fitted with a thirty-five-millimeter camera on the top so he could photograph whatever he was looking at.
"You got a minute?" asked Philips.
"Sure. In fact I already looked at those sections you brought up last night. Benjamin Barnes brought them in to me this morning."
"He's a pleasant fellow," said Martin sarcastically.
"He is cantankerous, but an excellent pathology resident. Besides, I like having him around. He makes me feel skinny."
"What did you find on the slides?"
"Very interesting. I want someone from Neuropath to look at them because I don't know what it is. Focal nerve cells have either dropped out or are in bad shape with dark, disintegrating nuclei. There's little or no inflammation. But the most curious thing is that the nerve-cell destruction is in narrow columns perpendicular to the surface of the brain. I've never seen anything like it."
"How about the various stains. What did they show?"
"Nothing. No calcium or heavy metals if that's what you mean."
"Then there's nothing that you could see that would show up on an X ray?" asked Philips.
"Absolutely not," answered Reynolds. "Certainly not the microscopic columns of cell death. Barnes said you mentioned multiple sclerosis. Not a chance. There were no myelin changes."
"If you had to hazard a diagnosis, what would you say?"
"That would be tough. Virus, I guess. But I wouldn't feel confident. This stuff looks bizarre."
When Philips got to his office Helen was waiting with a virtual ambush. She jumped up and tried to bar entrance with a handful of telephone messages and correspondence. But Philips faked left and went around her to the right, grinning the whole time. The night with Denise had changed his whole outlook.
"Where have you been? It's almost nine o'clock." Helen began to give him his calls as he rummaged around on his desk for Lisa Marino's skull film. It was under the hospital charts, which were under the master skull-film list. With the X ray under his arm, Philips walked over to the small computer and turned it on. To Helen's annoyance he began keying in the information on the input typewriter. He instructed the machine to display the density subroutine.
"Dr. Goldblatt's secretary called twice," said Helen, "and you're supposed to call the instant you arrive."
The output unit activated and asked Martin if he wanted a digital and/or analog display. Philips didn't know so he asked for both. The printout told him to insert the film.
"Also," droned Helen, "Dr. Clinton Clark, Chief of Gynecology called, not his secretary, the doctor himself. And he sounded very angry. He wants you to call. And Mr. Drake wants a call too."
The printout leaped into action and began spewing out page after page of paper filled with numbers. Philips watched with mounting confusion. It was as if the little machine had had some sort of nervous breakdown.
Helen elevated her voice to compete with the rapid staccato typing. "William Michaels called and said he was sorry he wasn't in when you paid your surprise visit to the computer lab. He wants you to phone. The people from Houston called about your chairing the Neuroradiology section at the national meeting. They said they have to know by today. Let's see what else."
While Helen shuffled through her messages, Philips was lifting up the incomprehensible sheets of computer paper covered with thousands of digits. The printer finally stopped producing the numbers and then drew a schematic of the lateral skull where the various areas were letter-coded. Philips realized that by finding the proper letter code he could find the sheet corresponding to the areas he was interested in. But still the printout did not stop. It then produced a schematic of the various areas of the skull and the density values were printed in shades of gray. That was the analog printout and it was easier to look at.
"Oh yeah," said Helen. "The second angioroom is going to be out all day today while they install a new film loader."
At that point Philips was not listening to Helen at all. Comparing areas in the analog printout, Martin saw that the abnormal areas had an overall density less than the surrounding normal areas. This came as a surprise because even though the changes were subtle, he'd had the mistaken impression the density was greater. Looking at the digital readout, Philips understood why. In the digital form it was apparent that there were wide jumps between the values of neighboring digits, which was why on the X rays he had thought there might have been little flecks of calcium or some other dense material. But the machine was telling him that the abnormal areas were overall less dense or more lucid than the normal tissue, meaning the X rays could pass through more easily. Philips thought about the nerve-cell death he'd seen in Pathology, but clearly that wasn't enough to affect X-ray absorption. It was a mystery that Philips could not explain.
"Look at this," he said, showing the digital readout to Helen. Helen nodded and pretended to understand.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"I don't know, unless…" Martin stopped in mid-sentence.
"Unless what?" asked Helen.
"Get me a knife. Any kind of knife." Philips sounded excited.
Helen got the one from the peanut butter jar by the coffee urn, marveling at her weird boss. When she returned to his office she gagged, unprepared for what she saw. Philips was lifting a human brain out of a formaldehyde jar, and putting it on a newspaper, its familiar convolutions glistening in the light from the X-ray viewer. Fighting off a wave of nausea, Helen watched as Philips proceeded to cut a ragged slice from the back of the specimen. After returning the brain to the formaldehyde he headed for the door, carrying the slice of brain on the newspaper.