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little like a monkey. A juvenile rhesus: he had the same blocky lower jaw and the same bright-eyed alertness.
    The PR man’s name was Ralph. Ellis didn’t know the last name. No PR man ever gave his last name. Of course, at the hospital he wasn’t referred to as a PR man; he was the Hospital Information Officer or News Officer or some damned thing.
    He did look like a monkey. Ellis found himself staring at the area of the skull behind the ear, where the electrodes would be implanted.
    “We don’t know much about the causes of violence,” McPherson said. “And there’s a lot of bad theory floating around, written by sociologists and paid for by good taxpayer money. But we do know that one particular brain disease, called ADL syndrome, may lead to violence.”
    “ADL syndrome,” Ralph repeated.
    “Yes. Acute Disinhibitory Lesion syndrome is causedby an injury or lesion to the brain. At the NPS, we think these lesions may be extremely common among those people who engage in repetitive violent acts—like certain policemen, gangsters, rioters, Hell’s Angels. Nobody ever thinks of these people as
physically
ill. We just accept the idea that there are a lot of men in the world with bad tempers. We think that’s normal. Perhaps it isn’t.”
    “I see,” Ralph said. And he did, indeed, seem to be seeing. McPherson should have been a grade school teacher, Ellis thought. His great gift was teaching. Certainly he’d never been much of a researcher.
    “So far,” McPherson said, brushing his hand through his white hair, “we have no idea exactly how common ADL syndrome is. But our guess is that as much as one or two percent of the population may suffer from it. That’s two to four million Americans.”
    “Gosh,” Ralph said.
    Ellis sipped his coffee. Gosh, he thought. Good Christ. Gosh …
    “For some reason,” McPherson said, nodding to the waiter as the cognacs were brought, “ADL patients are predisposed to violent, aggressive behavior during their attacks. We don’t know why, but it’s true. The other things that go along with the syndrome are hypersexuality and pathological intoxication.”
    Ralph began to look unusually interested.
    “We had the case of one woman with this disease,” McPherson said, “who during a seizure state would have intercourse with twelve men a night and still be unsatisfied.”
    Ralph swallowed his cognac. Ellis noticed that Ralph wore a wide tie in a fashionable psychedelic pattern. Ahip forty-year-old public-relations man gulping cognac at the thought of this woman.
    “Pathological intoxication refers to the phenomenon of excessive, violent drunkenness brought on by minuscule amounts of liquor—just a sip or two. That much liquor will unleash a seizure.”
    Ellis thought of his first stage three. Benson: pudgy little Benson, the mild-mannered computer programmer who got drunk and beat up people—men, women, whoever happened to be present. The very idea of curing that with wires stuck in the brain seemed absurd.
    Ralph seemed to think so, too. “And this operation will cure the violence?”
    “Yes,” McPherson said. “We believe so. But the operation has never been done before on a human subject. It will be done at the hospital tomorrow morning.”
    “I
see,
” Ralph said, as if he suddenly understood the reason for the dinner.
    “It’s very sensitive, in terms of the press,” McPherson said.
    “Oh, yes, I can see that.…”
    There was a short pause. Finally, Ralph said, “Who’s going to do the operation?”
    “I am,” Ellis said.
    “Well,” Ralph said, “I’ll have to check our files. I want to make sure I have a recent picture of you, and a good bio for the releases.” He frowned, thinking of the work ahead of him.
    Ellis was astonished at the man’s reaction. Was that all he thought? That he might need a recent photo? But McPherson took it smoothly in stride. “We’ll get youwhatever you need,” he said, and the meeting broke up.

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