Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  Morrison looked up. Boranova was standing there, her eyes hard and angry. She uttered a harsh monosyllable that Morrison didn't recognize but that he could have sworn was an epithet and not a very polite one, either.

  The serving woman flushed dully. Boranova made a small gesture with her hand and the woman turned and left.

  Morrison noticed that a man stood behind Boranova - short, thick-necked, with narrowed eyes, large ears, and a broad-shouldered, muscular body. His hair was black, longer than usual for a Russian, and it was in wild disarray, as though he clutched at it a great deal.

  Boranova made no move to introduce him. She said, "Was that woman talking to you?"

  "Yes," said Morrison.

  "She recognized you to be an American?"

  "She said my accent made it obvious."

  "And she said she wants to visit the United States?"

  "Yes, she did."

  "What did you say? Did you offer to help her go there?"

  "I advised her to apply for a passport if she wanted to go."

  "Nothing more?"

  "Nothing more."

  Boranova said with discontent, "You must pay no attention to her. She is an ignorant and uncultured woman. - Let me introduce to you my friend, Arkady Vissarionovich Dezhnev. This is Dr. Albert Jonas Morrison, Arkady."

  Dezhnev managed a clumsy bow and said, "I have heard of you, Dr. Morrison. Academician Shapirov has spoken of you often."

  Morrison said coldly, "I am flattered. - But tell me, Dr. Boranova, if that serving woman annoys you so much, it should be an easy task to have her replaced or transferred."

  Dezhnev laughed harshly. "Not a chance, Comrade American - which I expect is what she called you -"

  "Not actually."

  "Then she would have sooner or later, had we not interrupted you. That woman, I suspect, may be an intelligence operator and is one of those who keeps a close eye on us.

  "But why -?"

  "Because with an operation like this, no one can be trusted entirely. When you Americans are engaged in breakthrough science, are you not kept under close observation?"

  "I don't know," said Morrison stiffly. "I have never been engaged in any breakthrough science that my government has been in the least interested in. - But what I was going to ask is, why does that woman act as she does if she is an intelligence agent?"

  "To be a provocateur, obviously. To say outrageous things and to see what she can trip someone else into saying."

  Morrison nodded. "Well, it's your worry, not mine."

  "As you say," said Dezhnev. He turned to Boranova. "Natasha, have you told him yet?"

  "Please, Arkady-"

  "Now come, Natasha. As my father used to say, 'If you must pull a tooth, it is mistaken kindness to pull it slowly.' Let's tell him."

  "I have told him we're involved in miniaturization."

  "Is that all?" said Dezhnev. He sat down, pulled his chair next to that of Morrison, and leaned toward him. Morrison, with his personal space invaded, automatically withdrew. Dezhnev came closer still and said, "Comrade American, my friend Natasha is a romantic and she is convinced that you will want to help us for love of science. She feels that we can persuade you to do gladly what must be done. She is wrong. You will not be persuaded any more than you were persuaded to come here voluntarily."

  "Arkady, you are being boorish," snapped Boranova.

  "No, Natasha, I am being honest - which is sometimes the same thing. Dr. Morrison - or Albert, to avoid formality, which I hate" - he shuddered dramatically - "since you won't be persuaded and since we have no time, you will do what we want by force, as you were brought here by force."

  Boranova said, "Arkady, you promised you wouldn't -"

  "I do not care. I have thought since I promised and I have decided that the American must know what he faces. It will be easier for us - and it will be easier for him, too."

  Morrison looked from one to another and his throat tightened so that it grew difficult to breathe. Whatever it was they planned for him, he knew he would be given no choice.

  14.

  Morrison continued to be silent while Dezhnev, unconcerned, proceeded to eat his own breakfast with relish.

  The dining room had more or less emptied out and the serving woman, Valeri Paleron, was carrying off the remains and was wiping down the chairs and tables.

  Dezhnev caught her eye, beckoned to her, and indicated that the table was to be cleared.

  Morrison said, "So I have no choice. No choice in what?"

  "Hah! Has Natasha not even told you that?" replied Dezhnev.

  "She told me on several occasions that I was to be involved in miniaturization problems. But I know - and you know - that there is no miniaturization problem except that of trying to turn an impossibility into fact - and I certainly can't help you in that. What I want to know is what you really have for me to do."

  Dezhnev looked amused. "Why do you think miniaturization is impossible?"

  "Because it is."

  "And if I tell you that we have it?"

  "Then I say show me!"

  Dezhnev turned to Boranova, who drew a deep breath and nodded.

  Dezhnev rose. He said, "Come. We will take you to the Grotto."

  Morrison bit his lip in vexation. Small frustrations loomed large. "I do not know that Russian word you've used."

  Boranova said, "We have an underground laboratory here. We call it the Grotto. It is one of our poetic words, not used in ordinary conversation. The Grotto is the site of our miniaturization project."

  15.

  Outside an air-jet awaited them. Morrison blinked, adjusting his eyes to the sunlight. He regarded the jet curiously. It lacked the elaboration of American models and seemed little more than a sled with small seats and with a complex engine in front. It would be absolutely useless in cold or wet weather and he wondered whether the Soviets had an enclosed version for those times. Perhaps this was just a summer runabout.

  Dezhnev took the controls and Boranova directed Morrison into the seat behind Dezhnev, while she took the one to his right side. She turned to the guards and said, "Go back to the hotel and wait for us there. We will take full responsibility from this point." She handed them a printed slip of paper on which she scrawled her signature, the date, and, after consulting her wristwatch, the time.

  When they arrived at Malenkigrad, Morrison discovered that it was a small town in fact, as well as in name. There were rows of houses - each two stories high - with a deadly sameness about them. The town had clearly been built for those who worked on the project - whatever it was that they masked with the fairy tale of miniaturization - and it had been built without undue expense. Each house had its own vegetable garden and the streets, although paved, had an unfinished look about them.

  The little craft, riding on the jets of air pushing against the ground, blew up a small cloud of dust, which was, for the most part, left behind as they progressed smoothly forward. Morrison could see that it was not comfortable for the pedestrians they passed who, one and all, took evasive action as it approached.

  Morrison felt the discomfort in full when they passed an air-jet moving in the other direction and was inundated in the dust.

  Boranova looked amused. She coughed and said, "Do not be concerned. We will be vacuumed soon."

  "Vacuumed?" asked Morrison, coughing also.

  "Yes. Not so much for us, for we can live with a little dust, but the Grotto must be reasonably dust-free."

  "So must my lungs. Wouldn't it be better to have these air-jets enclosed?"

  "They promise us shipments of more elaborate models and perhaps someday they will arrive. Meanwhile, this is a new town and it is built in the steppes, where the climate is arid. That has its advantages - and its disadvantages, too. The settlers grow vegetables, as you saw, and they have some animals, too, but large-scale agriculture must wait until the community is larger and there are irrigation facilities. For now, it doesn't matter. It is miniaturization that concer
ns us."

  Morrison shook his head. "You speak of miniaturization so often and with such a straight face, you might almost trick me into believing it."

  "Believe it. You will have the demonstration Dezhnev arranged."

  Dezhnev said from his seat at the controls, "And I had trouble doing so. Once again I had to speak to the Central Coordinating Committee - may what is left of their gray hairs fall out. As my father used to say, 'Apes were invented because politicians were needed.' How it is possible to sit two thousand kilometers away and make policy -"

  The air-jet glided smoothly forward to the rather sharp ending of the town and to the broad, low rocky massif that suddenly loomed before them.

  "The Grotto," said Boranova, "is located inside that. It gives us all the room we want, frees us from the vagaries of weather, and is impenetrable from aerial surveillance, even from spy satellites."

  "Spy satellites are illegal," said Morrison indignantly.

  "It is merely illegal to call them spy satellites," shot back Dezhnev.

  The air-jet banked as it made a turn, then landed in the shadow of a rocky cleft in the body of the massif.

  "All out," said Dezhnev.

  He moved forward, the other two following, and a door opened in the hillside. Morrison didn't see how it was done. It didn't look like a door; rather it seemed an integral part of the rocky wall. It opened just as the cavern of the Forty Thieves had with the utterance of the words "Open Sesame."

  Dezhnev stepped to one side and gestured for Morrison and Boranova to move inside. Morrison went out of the brilliant morning sunshine into a rather dimly lit chamber to which his eyes took half a minute to adapt. It was no thieves' cave but an elaborately detailed structure.

  Morrison felt as though he had stepped from the Earth onto the moon. He had never been on the moon, of course, but he was familiar, as was virtually everyone on Earth, with the appearance of the underground lunar settlements. This had precisely that other-worldly air about it somehow, except, of course, that gravity was Earth-normal.

  Chapter 4. Grotto

  Small can be beautiful: An eagle may at times go hungry; a pet canary, never.

  — Dezhnev Senior

  16.

  In a large and well-lit washroom, Boranova and Dezhnev began to remove their outer clothing. Morrison, alarmed at the prospect, hesitated.

  Boranova smiled. "You may keep your underclothing on, Dr. Morrison. Just toss everything else, except your shoes, into that bin. I presume there is nothing in your pockets. Place your shoes at the base of the bin. By the time we leave, it will all be cleaned and ready for use."

  Morrison did as he was told, trying not to observe that Boranova had a most opulent figure, concerning which she seemed totally unaware. Amazing, he thought, what clothes will obscure when not designed to reveal.

  They were washing now, with lavish application of soap - faces to the ears and arms to the elbows - then brushing savagely at their hair. Again Morrison hesitated and Boranova, reading his mind, said, "The brushes are cleaned after each use, Dr. Morrison. I don't know what you may have read of us, but some of us understand hygiene."

  Morrison said, "All this just to go into the Grotto? Do you go through this every time?"

  "Every time. That's why no one goes in just briefly. And even when staying within, there are frequent ablations. - You may find the next step unpleasant, Dr. Morrison. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and hold it if you can. It will take about a minute."

  Morrison followed orders and found himself strongly buffeted by a swirling wind. He staggered drunkenly and collided with one of the bins. He held on tightly. Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over.

  He opened his eyes. Dezhnev and Boranova looked as though they had put on fright wigs. He felt his own hair and knew he must look the same. He reached for his brush.

  "Don't bother," said Boranova, "There's more we'll have to go through."

  "What was that all about?" said Morrison. He found he had to clear his throat twice before he could speak.

  "I mentioned that we'd have the dust vacuumed away from us, but that's only the first stage of the cleaning process. - Through this door, please." She held it open for him.

  Morrison emerged into a narrow but well-lit corridor, the walls glowing photoluminescently. He lifted his eyebrows. "Very nice."

  "Saves energy," Dezhnev said, "and that's very important. - Or are you referring to the technological advancement? Americans seem to come to the Soviet Union expecting everything to be kerosene lamps." He chuckled and added, "I admit we haven't caught up with you in every respect. Our brothels are very primitive compared with yours."

  "You strike back without waiting to be struck," said Morrison. "That is a sure sign of an unclear conscience. If you were anxious to demonstrate advanced technology, I could point out that it would be very simple to pave the avenue going from Malenkigrad to the Grotto and to use closed air-jets. We would need less of this."

  Dezhnev's face darkened, but Boranova put in sharply, "Dr. Morrison is quite right, Arkady. I don't like your feeling that it is not possible to be honest without being rude. If you cannot be both honest and polite, keep your tongue on your own side of your teeth."

  Dezhnev grinned uneasily. "What have I said? Of course the American doctor is right, but is there anything we can do when decisions are made in Moscow by idiots who save small bits of money without counting the consequences? As my old father used to say, 'The trouble with economizing is that it can be very expensive.'"

  "That's true enough," said Boranova. "We could save a great deal of money, Dr. Morrison, by spending on a better road and better air-jets, but it is not always easy to persuade those who hold the purse strings. Surely you have the same trouble in America."

  She was motioning even as she talked and Morrison followed her into a small chamber. As the door closed behind them, Dezhnev held out a bracelet to Morrison. "Let me tie this around your right wrist. When we hold up our arms, you hold up yours."

  Morrison felt his weight lighten momentarily as the chamber floor dropped.

  "An elevator," he said.

  "Clever guess," said Dezhnev. Then he clapped a hand to his mouth and said in a muffled tone, "But I mustn't be rude."

  They stopped smoothly and the elevator door opened.

  "Identification!" came a peremptory voice.

  Dezhnev and Boranova raised their bands, at which Morrison did as well. Under the purplish light that suddenly suffused the elevator, the three bracelets glittered in patterns which were not, Morrison noted, exactly alike.

  They were ushered down another corridor and into a room which was both warm and damp.

  "We will have to have a final scrubdown, Dr. Morrison," said Boranova. "We are accustomed to this and stripping is routine for us. It is easier - and timesaving - to do it as a group."

  "If you can stand it," said Morrison grimly, "I can."

  "It is unimportant," said Dezhnev. "None of us are strangers to the sight."

  Dezhnev scrambled out of his underclothes, stepped over to a portion of the wall where a small red knob was glowing, and placed his right thumb immediately above it. A narrow panel in the wall slid open and revealed white garments hanging flaccidly to one side. He placed his underclothes at the bottom.

  He seemed utterly unabashed about being nude. His chest and shoulders were dark with hair and there was a long-healed scar on his right buttock. Morrison wondered idly how that might have come about.

  Boranova did the same as Dezhnev had done and said, "Pick a light that is on, Dr. Morrison. It will open to your thumbprint and then, when you touch it again, it will close. After that it will open only to your thumbprint, so please remember your locker number and you won't have to press every locker in order to find your own."

  Morrison did as he was told.

  Boranova said, "If you need to use the bathroom first, you can go there."

  "I'm all right," said Morrison.

  With that, the room
was aswirl with a damp mist of water droplets.

  "Close your eyes," called out Boranova, but it was unnecessary for her to say so. The initial sting of the water forced his eyes closed at once.

  There was soap in the water or, at any rate, something that stung his eyes, tasted bitter in his mouth, and irritated his nostrils.

  "Lift your arms," called out Dezhnev. "You needn't circle. It comes from all directions."

  Morrison lifted his arms. He knew it came from all directions. It came from the floor, too, as he could tell by the slightly uncomfortable pressure on his scrotum.

  "How long does this last?" he gasped.

  "Too long," said Dezhnev, "but it is necessary."

  Morrison counted to himself. At the count of 58, it seemed to him that the bitterness on his lips ceased. He squinted his eyes. Yes, the other two were still there. He continued to count and when he reached 126, the water stopped and he was bathed in uncomfortably hot and dry air.

  He was panting by the time that stopped too and he realized he had been holding his breath.

  "What was all that for?" he said, looking away uncomfortably at the sight of Boranova's large but firm breasts and finding little comfort in Dezhnev's hairy chest.

  "We are dry," said Boranova. "Let's get dressed."

  Morrison was eager but was almost immediately disappointed by the nature of the white clothes in the locker. They consisted of a blouse and pants of light cotton, the pants held by a cord. There was also a light cap to cover the hair and light sandals. Though the cotton was opaque, it seemed to Morrison that little or nothing was truly left to the imagination.

  He said, "Is this all we wear?"

  "Yes," said Boranova. "We work in a clean, quiet environment at even temperature and, with throwaway clothes, we can't expect much in the way of fashion or expense. Indeed, barring a certain understandable reluctance, we could easily work in the nude. But enough - come."

  And now at last they stepped into what Morrison recognized at once as the main body of the Grotto. It stretched away before him - between and beyond ornate pillars to a distance he couldn't make out.