Chapter 9 Chapter 9 Abnormal Heartbeat

Through the porthole, 5,000 feet below, the Siberian snow field can be seen at a glance. The setting sun in December is casting the warmth of winter to this vast land.It can be felt that the supersonic airliner is slowing down, and Vladivostok and the Japanese archipelago are ahead. Nicole yawned and only slept for 3 hours. He would definitely be very sleepy today, but he had to cheer up.When I arrived in Osaka, it should be 10:00 am local time. In France, my daughter was sleeping soundly at home in Beauvais in the Louhuel Valley not far from Tours!There are still 4 hours before the alarm clock will wake her up.

On the back of the chair in front of her, the TV screen automatically turned on, and a lovely Japanese lady reminded Nicole that the plane was about to land at Kanei Transportation Center in 15 minutes, and asked her to book the transportation and hotel room after getting off the plane. Nicole pressed a button on the seat, and a rectangular communicator with a keyboard and a small screen stretched out in front of her. In less than a minute, she paid with her world credit card and booked the train to Kyoto. Seat tickets and city trams. After confirming her identity, with a "snap", a timetable printed with time and train numbers popped out from the keyboard (she arrived at the hotel at 11:14).

As the plane prepares to land, Nicole thinks about his trip across a third of the world. Twenty-four hours ago, at home, she suddenly decided to come to Japan.At first I thought I could have a good vacation, but first, I had to deal with that stupid "Night in Rome", and then the boss asked her to submit a report to "LEO-3" on January 8, making her vacation a whole I was disturbed. The day before yesterday, while studying a routine medical report in her home office, she noticed that Richard Walkerfield's heart rate and blood pressure varied greatly.Before the examination, Richard had just returned from training with Dr. Gao An.So Nicole compared the doctor's physical examination report with Richard's, and the result surprised her. The Japanese professor's heartbeat was extremely irregular, which might be a sign of illness.

But why didn't the micrometer alarm?Did she discover something wrong with this monitoring system? Nicole spent an hour studying all the circumstances carefully again.During the training period, Dr. Gao An experienced intermittent irregular heartbeats during the four training sessions, sometimes lasting for a long time, and sometimes with intervals as long as 38 hours. When he touched his heart, what happened to his heart valve. In any case, it is definitely not normal for the same situation to occur four times at different times. To Nicole's surprise, such obvious pathological data did not trigger the alarm system of the micrometer.She looked through Gao An's medical records, paying special attention to his heart examination report, but found no such medical history in him.So she thought it was probably a malfunction of the micrometer.

"If the micrometer is working properly," she speculates, "if the data is out of range, it will trigger an alarm. In fact, there is no alarm. It didn't start, it didn't, and the self-test passed. Why didn't the micrometer self-test Found something unusual?" Nicole first wanted to call his assistant in the Life Science Office of the International Space Agency to discuss it. Later, remembering that it was a vacation, he changed his mind and called Dr. Hamamatsu in Japan.After listening to the doctor's words, she was really a little puzzled. The doctor said bluntly that this strange situation cannot be caused by a malfunction of the equipment, and the problem must be caused by people.

"Then why didn't the micrometer alarm?" she asked the Japanese electronics designer. "Because it didn't exceed the predetermined value." He replied affirmatively, "For some reason, this team member entered a large tolerance value. Have you read his medical record?" Nicole told him that from the medical records of his compatriot and fellow villager, it was impossible to explain the string of suspicious data output by the micrometer.After a moment of contemplation, this experienced and prudent Japanese engineer called out loudly: "Good guy, I know what's the reason! I'll find out what's wrong right away. I'll immediately contact Takagishi-kun who is at Kyoto University and tell you the result."

Three hours later, Dr. Takagishi's serious face appeared on Nicole's screen: "Mrs. You talked about my body data, can you tell me in detail?" Nicole told him all she had found, and said she suspected the micrometer was malfunctioning. There was a long silence.Finally, the Japanese scientist spoke with a heavy tone: "Mr. Hamamatsu came to see me at the school just now, and checked the micrometer in my body. He said that there is no problem with his micrometer." He hesitated for a moment, as if I was thinking about something, "Mrs. de Jardin, I would like to ask for your help, which is extremely important to me. Could you please take the time to come to Japan? You talk about something, maybe it has to do with the data."

Judging from the sincere expression on his face, it was obvious that Takagishi was begging her, and Nicole immediately agreed to go to Kyoto without asking any more questions.A few minutes later, she booked a night supersonic flight from Paris to Osaka. "During World War II, this city was never bombed by the US military." Takagishi said, waving his arms. From here, you can have a panoramic view of Kyoto. "In 2141, it was occupied by a group of refugees for seven months, and it did not cause any major damage. I admit, I have a little preference," he said with a smile, "To me, Kyoto is the most beautiful city in the world." beautiful city."

"Many of my countrymen say the same about Paris," replied Nicole, wrapping up her coat vigorously.It was cold and the air was so humid that it felt like snow could fall at any moment. She suspected that the Japanese colleague might not be planning to get down to business.She also admitted that it is indeed beautiful and spectacular to have a bird's-eye view of Kyoto from this Buddhist temple built against the mountain and surrounded by green trees.But she had flown 5,000 miles, not for sightseeing. "Let's drink tea." Gao An said, and took her to the tea room next to the main hall of the ancient temple.

Nicole thought to herself, "Now, he's going to tell me what's going on!" She suppressed a yawn.When she first arrived at the hotel, Gao An also came and suggested that she take a nap after lunch, and he would come back in the afternoon.At three o'clock, he brought her to the temple. Takagishi poured two cups of strong Japanese tea for Nicole to taste.She felt a bit bitter, but when she swallowed it into her throat, it was like a warm current soaking into her lungs, very pleasant. "Ma'am," Gao An finally began, "you must be wondering why I want you to come all the way here at once, it's really incomprehensible." Try to control your surging emotions.

"All my life, I've dreamed every moment that another Rama spaceship would fly by again while I was alive. I studied, researched and waited in college for the one and only thing -- Rama The arrival of the Marians. "On that March morning in 2197, when Alastair Moore called me and told me that the thing discovered by 'Excalibur' was indeed an extraterrestrial visitor, I couldn't help crying with joy. At that time, I immediately realized The International Space Agency will definitely send people to investigate, of course I must go.” The Japanese scientist took a sip of tea lightly, looked at the luxuriant and well-trimmed tea trees beside him, carefully considered his words, and his voice was so low that he could barely hear: "When I was a child, I used to go to the top of the mountain, look up at the clear night sky, and look for the home planet of the intelligent aliens who built such a magnificent spaceship. Once, I came here with my father, and the night wind It was blowing, it was very cold, we hugged and curled up together, looking at the shining stars. Dad told me about what happened in their village 12 years before I was born, during the days and nights when Rama came. thing. It was on this night that I suddenly believed—” He turned his head, his eyes burning with uncontrollable passion: "I still believe this, there must be some reason for Rama's visit. There must be something special about the appearance of this terrifying spaceship." purpose. I studied all the data brought back from Rama, hoping to find some clues to explain why it came here, but found nothing. I have proposed several theories on this issue, but I There is no evidence whatsoever to prove whether any of these theories are true." Gao An stopped again and took a sip of tea. Nicole was deeply moved and surprised by his emotional confession.She sat patiently, listening to him go on: "I know that I have a chance to be selected as a member of the exploration team, not only because of the books I have published on Rama, such as the famous atlas, etc., but also because Mr. Akita Hisunori, who has the closest relationship with me, happens to be The Japanese representative of the selection committee. When there were only 8 contenders left for the candidate Rama experts, Mr. Akita told me that it seemed that I was mainly competing with David Brown. You can recall that until then, No physical examination was performed." "That's right." Nicole remembered.At that time, there were 48 candidates. After that, all of them were called to Heidelberg for examination by German doctors.German doctors insisted that each candidate must pass every medical examination standard strictly.Astronauts who graduated from the Astronautics Academy failed the first physical examination, and a quarter of them failed, including Alan Bramont. "Your compatriot Bramont once flew more than a dozen important missions for the International Space Agency, but was eliminated because of a little heart murmur, and the selection committee even supported the doctors and rejected his plea. So , I am worried all day long," the proud Japanese scientist looked at Nicole at this time, his eyes were full of begging, "I am afraid that I will lose the most important opportunity in my career because of a small physical problem. Said To be honest, my body has never had any effect on work." He paused, and then said carefully: "I know that what I did was wrong and somewhat disgraceful, but I think this is an opportunity to solve the greatest mystery in human history, and it cannot be delayed by those rigid-minded doctors. They think physical fitness is the only selection criterion." Next, Gao An calmly and unabashedly told the story that happened later, with a flat tone, without the excitement and enthusiasm when he talked about Rama just now.His narration is lucid, if somewhat tedious.He told how he had coaxed his doctor into falsifying his medical records; how he had been given a new drug to temporarily control his heart rhythm during a two-day medical checkup in Heidelberg.Everything went smoothly according to the plan in advance. Although the drug has some toxicity and side effects, it doesn't matter.In the end, Gao An passed the physical examination, and together with Dr. Brown, as one of the two experts in Rama studies, became the official team member. It wasn't until three months ago when Nicole said that she might install Dr. Hamamatsu's micrometer on each team member to replace the scans that were done once a week before that he started to worry again, because he couldn't do it every day. Take this highly toxic drug to get away with it! "You know," Gao An explained, with worry lines all over his forehead, "During the old method of physical examination, I can deal with it by taking medicine once a week, and neither you nor other doctors can find out my secret; but the new The micrometer can't be fooled, and continuous medication is too dangerous." Nicole's immediate thought was: So, you somehow bribed Dr. Hamamatsu to input a large set of tolerance data into your micrometer to cover up the disease, and hope that no one will take all The data are all analyzed. Now she understood why he wanted her to come to Japan so badly: he wanted her to keep his secret. "Forget it," seeing his distressed appearance, Nicole turned to Japanese to express comfort and sympathy, "I know how painful this is for you, you don't need to talk about how to tamper with the micrometer details." She paused, noticing that his expression had begun to lighten. "But, if I understand correctly, you want me to be an accomplice in your deception. You must understand that unless I have the absolute Be sure, things are exactly as you said, your body is only a small problem, so it will not harm the whole operation, otherwise I will never consider keeping it a secret for you. If your body is really incompetent, I have to ..." "Mrs. de Jardin" Gao An interrupted her, "I respect your integrity and selflessness very much. I never, never thought of asking you to tamper with the data records of arrhythmia for me, unless of course you also end up I think it's really just a small problem that doesn't get in the way." He looked at her sincerely. "Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from Hamamatsu. At the beginning, I was going to hold a press conference to announce my resignation and withdraw from this operation. When I was thinking about how to explain to people at the meeting, the image of Dr. Brown suddenly jumped. into my brain. Yes, he's a brilliant man, a good Rama expert, but I think he's a bit too egotistical and thinks he's always right. The most likely candidate to replace me is Bonn Professor Wolfgang Heinrich, a famous Rama expert. He has written many good articles about Rama, but, like Brown, he also firmly believes that Rama's visits are just accidental events, with the relationship between the earth and human beings. Existence doesn't matter." The excited look returned to Gao An's eyes: "So, unless I lose this opportunity, I can't just sit idly by. Obviously, Brown and Heinrich may ignore some clues." Behind Gao An, a small path leads to the main hall of the temple's wooden structure. Three monks wore light gray and thin cassocks and wooden clogs on bare feet. They walked briskly in the cold wind without any timidity. Gao An proposed to go to his office together to study all his medical records from childhood to the present; if she wanted, she could copy a data block with all the data on his body and bring it back to France for research in her free time.Nicole had been listening to Gao An attentively for almost an hour, and she began to lose her mind, staring blankly at the three monks who climbed up the stairs resolutely and gradually went away. How serene their demeanor!She couldn't help but sigh.They stay out of the hustle and bustle of the world, cultivate their hearts to be good, and make everything simple and clear, without hindrance.At this time, she really envied their carefree lifestyle. She asked herself: If it were them instead, how would they deal with the difficult problem that Gao An put in front of her?From a certain point of view, maybe Gao An's idea is also right, the doctors are too picky, at least, they have no right to eliminate Alan.if…… "Okay!" she said, "Let's go see your doctor together. If I don't think there is any major problem, I will take all the materials back and use this vacation to study carefully." Gao An's eyes lit up.Nicole added: "But I warn you again, if I find out that there is anything wrong with your medical history, or if you hide even the slightest thing from me, I will immediately ask you to withdraw from the operation." "Thank you, thank you so much!" Dr. Gao An hurriedly stood up, and as he answered, he hurriedly bowed to his female colleague, "Thank you so much!" He repeated.