"Read about it in Newsweek. What's that you're going to inject into me?"
"Just sugar."
More than just sugar, Alan knew. FDG—radioactive sugar that would show the most active and least active areas of his brain. He remembered a few articles he'd read in the journals had said that PET scans had demonstrated abnormalities in the brain metabolism of schizophrenics. Is that what Axford was after—proof that he was a grade-four tweety bird?
"Dr. Axford wants you to walk around for a while before you're scanned," she said as she withdrew the needle from his vein.
Evidently Axford wanted to see the overall activity of his brain.
And what if he found a schizophrenic pattern on the PET? What if everything Alan had seen and done lately had never happened? What if it were all part of an elaborate delusional system?
No, he wasn't going to fall into that trap. I'm NOT crazy, he thought, and then realized that they all say that, don't they?
The tests were finally finished and he was sitting in his bare little room on the seventh floor when there came a knock on the door.
It was Mr. K. Alan didn't recognize him at first—his color was so much better. A suitcase rested on the floor beside him.
"Just came to say good-bye," he said, thrusting out his hand.
Alan shook it. "Leaving?"
"Yep. Goin' out for a Saturday afternoon walk and I ain't coming back. Said they can't use me anymore 'cause I'm not sick anymore."
"Did they tell you how your cancer cleared up?" He was curious how Axford & Co. would explain that.
"Said it cleared up by itself. Nocturnal emission or something like that," he said with a grin and a wink. "But I know what it was and so do you."
"What?"
He poked a finger at Alan's chest. "It was you. You did it. I don't know how, but you did it. Only explanation I can think of is you're an angel or something sent down by God to give me another chance. Well, I'm taking it! I screwed up the first time around, but I ain't screwin' up again!"
There were suddenly tears in Mr. K's eyes. Obviously embarrassed, he pulled something from his pocket and thrust it into Alan's hand. It crinkled.
"Here. Take these. I won't be needing them."
Thinking it was money, Alan began to protest. Then he saw that it was a half-empty pack of Camels.
"Good-bye," said Mr. K, averting his face as he picked up his suitcase and hurried off.
Alan went to throw the cigarettes into the wastebasket, but stopped in midstride and stared at the crumpled pack. He decided to keep it. Every time he had his doubts about the reality of what he was experiencing, he'd take it out and use it as a reminder of Mr. K's "nocturnal emission."
___39.___
Charles
"This everything?"
Henly nodded as he placed the last print-out on Charles' desk. "Every last bit."
"You're sure?"
"We're paid to be thorough."
Charles had to admit that McCready's two goons were extremely thorough. They had dogged Bulmer's progress from department to department for the past two days, gathering up each scrap of data as it was produced and tucking it away for Charles' eyes only.
For two days now he had suppressed the gnawing desire to scan each test result as it came in, afraid that he would prejudice himself by forming a hasty diagnosis. He wanted to see the whole picture at once.
"You waiting for something?" he asked Henly and Rossi as they stood across the desk from him.
"Yeah," Rossi said. "We're waiting for you to put that stuff in the safe."
"I want to look at it."
"Everything's on the computer, Doc. Filed under your access code. We're not supposed to leave until all that stuffs locked away."
"Forget it," Charles said, his annoyance rising. "I like to see the originals."
"Give us a break, Doc," Henly said, agitatedly running a hand through his blond hair. "It's Saturday night and the women are waitin'. Lock up the safe and we're gone. What you do after that ain't our problem."
Charles sighed. "Anything to speed you on your way." He went to the wall safe, tapped in the code, and shoved all the papers inside. After slamming it shut and pressing the clear button, he turned to the two security men. "Happy?"
" 'Night, Doc," they said in unison, and they were gone.
Charles seated himself before his computer terminal and found a three-by-five index card taped to the screen. It read:
All data from Bulmer notes and cassettes entered into memory as "Hour of Power," your access only.
He stared at the dull, lifeless surface of the CRT, almost afraid to turn it on, afraid that he would find no explanation for the incredible phenomena Bulmer had left in his wake for the past few months.
But he had to start sometime, somewhere, and Bulmer's notes seemed as good a place as any. He flipped on the power and soon the square little cursor, blinking bright green in the blank darkness of the screen, made its appearance. He entered his access code, then had the computer list sequentially the data Alan had given him.
It was a mess. He scrolled through, noting that times would be recorded for three consecutive days, then a gap of two days with no data, then four days with times, then three without. He could see no pattern. It looked completely random, chaotic. He entered:
CORRELATE WITH ALL KNOWN HUMAN BIORHYTHMS
He watched the cursor stop blinking for a few seconds, then the answer flashed on the screen with a beep:
NO CORRELATION
Charles typed:
CORRELATE WITH MEMORY
That would initiate a search through the computer's entire memory bank, one of the most complete bioscience data bases in the world. It was a longer wait, but finally came the beep:
NO CORRELATION
This was looking like a dead end, but for the hell of it, Charles decided to let the computer search the memory banks of other computers all over the world:
CORRELATE RHYTHM WITH ALL OTHER ACCESSIBLE DATA BASES
PROCESSING flashed on the screen.
This search would take considerable time, so while that was going on, he cleared the screen and prepared to find out what there was to know about Dr. Alan Bulmer. He decided to start with the basics, so he cued up Bulmer's blood profile.
As expected, no abusable substances were floating around in his blood or urine.
So far so good. His cardiogram and chest X ray were normal, too. Next he cued up Bulmer's CT scan from Downstate and reviewed the series of radiographic slices of the brain at various levels with and without contrast: no infarcts or masses evident anywhere. The MRI studies done here were negative as well.
So Bulmer didn't have a brain tumor and hadn't had any previous strokes. No surprise. He moved on to see what his brainwaves looked like.
An edited version of Bulmer's twenty-four-hour EEG from yesterday scrolled horizontally across the screen. The computer presented a good sample of the six parallel zigzag lines that formed the basic electrical pattern of his brain, then edited that particular pattern out of the rest of the record, leaving only irregularities and significant variations for review.
Charles noticed immediately that the basic pattern was diffusely abnormal. Nothing terribly specific, but the background activity was disorganized, showing generalized slowing.
That puzzled Charles. This was not the type of EEG he would associate with an active professional pushing forty. It was a senile old man's EEG.