Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  Dezhnev laughed. "Your waste your time, my clever intriguer. You have too romantic a notion of our government. Conceivably, they may be willing to let you go someday but, regardless of possible embarrassment, not before you have been miniaturized and -"

  "I don't believe anyone in authority knows you kidnapped me. They cannot approve once they find out."

  "Maybe they don't know and maybe they will grind their teeth when they find out - but what can they do? The government has invested too much money in the project to let you go before you have had your chance to make it practical, so that it will repay all that has been spent - and more in addition. Well? Doesn't that seem logical to you?"

  "No. Because I won't help you." Morrison felt his heart harden once again. "I will not allow myself to be miniaturized."

  "That will be up to Natasha. She will be furious with you, you know, and will have no pity. You realize that you callously attempted to have everyone in the project thrown into the government's bad graces, have some of us retired - or worse. And this, after we had treated you with perfect consideration and kindness."

  "You kidnapped me."

  "Even that was done with perfect consideration and kindness. Were you hurt in any way? Mistreated? Yet you have tried to harm us. Natasha will repay you for that."

  "How? Force? Torture? Drugs?"

  Dezhnev turned his eyes up to the ceiling. "How little you know our Natasha. She doesn't do such things. I might, but she wouldn't. She's as much a gentle chicken-heart as you are, my wicked Albert - in her own way. But she will force you to go along with us."

  "Well? How?"

  "I don't know. I can never quite make out how she does it. But she manages. You will see." His smile developed a wolfish edge. And when Morrison saw that smile, he finally realized there was no escape.

  26.

  The next morning Morrison and Dezhnev returned to the Grotto. They entered a large windowless ceiling-lit office, which Morrison had not seen before. It was clearly not Boranova's and it was very impressive, as anything with an ostentatious waste of space is bound to be.

  Boranova sat behind a bulky desk and on the wall behind her was a portrait of the Soviet Executive, looking grave. In the corner to her left was a water cooler and in the one on the right a microfilm cabinet. On the desk was a small word processor. That was all. The room was empty otherwise.

  Dezhnev said, "I have brought him, you see. The mischievous fellow tried to use the charming Paleron to effect an escape by intriguing with the govemment behind our back."

  "I have received the report," said Boranova quietly. "Please leave, Arkady. I wish to be alone with Professor Albert Morrison."

  "Is that safe, Natasha?"

  "I think so. Albert is not, in my opinion, a man of violence. - Will I be safe, Albert?"

  Morrison spoke for virtually the first time that day. "Let's not play games," he said. "What is it you want, Natalya?"

  Boranova gestured with her hand peremptorily and Dezhnev left. When the door closed behind him, she said, "Why have you done this? Why have you tried to intrigue with someone you thought was an intelligence agent watching us? Have we treated you so badly?"

  "Yes," said Morrison angrily, "you have. Why can't any of you get it through your head that hijacking me to the Soviet Union is not something I am likely to appreciate? Why do you expect gratitude of me? Because you didn't break my head in the process? You probably would have - if my head, unbroken, hadn't been valuable to you."

  "If your head, unbroken, hadn't been valuable to us, we would have left you in peace. You know that and you know the necessity that drove us. We have explained it carefully. If you were simply trying to get away, I would understand, but your method of attempted escape might have destroyed our project and perhaps us as well - if you had succeeded. You hoped our government would disapprove of our actions and be appalled. If that were so, what do you think would have happened to us?"

  Morrison's lips tightened and he looked sullen. "I could think of no other way of escaping. You speak of driving necessities. My needs drive me, too."

  "Albert, we have tried every reasonable way to persuade you to help us. There has been no force, no threats of force, no unpleasantness of any kind after you had arrived there. Isn't that true?"

  "I suppose so."

  "You suppose so? It is true. But it has all failed. You still refuse to help us, I think."

  "I still refuse and I shall continue to refuse."

  "Then I am forced, very much against my will, to take the next step."

  A bit of fear stirred within Morrison and he felt his heart skip a beat, but he tried desperately to sound defiant, "Which is?"

  "You want to get home, to go back to America. Very well, if all our persuasiveness fails, you shall return."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Are you surprised?"

  "Yes, I'm surprised, but I accept. I take you at your word. When will I leave?"

  "The very moment we settle upon the story we're going to tell."

  "Where's the problem? Tell the truth."

  "That would be a little difficult, Albert. It would embarrass my government, which would have to deny having given permission for my action. I would be in serious trouble. It would be unreasonable for you to expect me to do that."

  "What can you say instead?"

  "That you came here at your own request, in order to help us with our projects."

  Morrison shook his head vehemently. "That would be at least as difficult for me as admitting the kidnapping would be for you. These may be the good new days, but old habits die hard and the American public would be more than a little suspicious of an American scientist who went to the Soviet Union to help them with their projects. Old competitions remain and I have my reputation to think of."

  "Yes, there is that difficulty," admitted Boranova, "but from my point of view, I would rather you had the difficulty than that I did."

  "But I won't allow it. Do you suppose I will hesitate to tell the truth in full detail?"

  "But, Albert," said Boranova quietly, "do you suppose anyone would believe you?"

  "Of course. The American government knows that you asked me to come to the Soviet Union and that I refused. I would have had to be kidnapped to get here."

  "I'm afraid your American government won't want to admit that, Albert. Would they want to say that Soviet agents had plucked an American out of his comfortable hotel room and carried him off by land, sea, and air without the forces of American law being aware of this? Considering modern American high-tech, of which your people are all so proud, that would argue either incompetence or a little inside treason on the part of your intelligence. I think your government would prefer to have the world believe you went to the Soviet Union voluntarily. - Besides, they wanted you to go to the Soviet Union voluntarily, didn't they?"

  Morrison was silent.

  Boranova said, "Of course they did. They wanted you to find out as much about miniaturization as possible. You're going to have to tell them you refused to be miniaturized. All you'll be able to report will be that you watched a rabbit undergo miniaturization, which they will consider to have been a bit of flim-flam on our part. They will consider that we carefully hoodwinked you and you will have failed them badly. They will not feel bound to support you."

  Morrison revolved the matter in his mind. He said, "Do you really intend to leave me in the position of being considered a spy and a traitor by my people? Is that what you're going to try to do?"

  "No, indeed, Albert. We will tell all the truth we can. In fact, we would like to protect you, even though you showed no signs of wanting to protect us. We would explain that our great scientist Pyotr Shapirov is in a coma, that he had spoken highly of your neurophysical theories shortly before this tragedy had befallen him. We therefore called on you and asked you to use your theories and your expertise to see if you could bring him out of his coma. You can't object to that. It would hold you up to the world as a great humanitarian. Your g
overnment might well support this view. It would certainly protect them against possible embarrassment - and our government as well. And it is all almost true."

  "What about the miniaturization?"

  "That is the one place where we must avoid the truth. We can't mention that."

  "But what would keep me from mentioning it?"

  "The fact that no one would believe you. Did you accept the existence of miniaturization until you saw it with your own eyes? Nor would your government want to spread the feeling that the Soviet Union has attained miniaturization. They would not want to frighten the American public until such time as they were certain the Soviet Union had the process and, better yet, that they had the process as well. - But there you are, Albert. We will send you home with an innocuous story that doesn't mention miniaturization, doesn't embarrass either my country or yours, and relieves you of any suspicion of being a traitor. Are you satisfied?"

  Morrison stared at Boranova uncertainly and rubbed his thin sandy hair till it stood Lip in vague tufts. "But why will you say you are sending me back? That has to be explained, too. You can't very well say that Shapirov recovered with my help unless he actually recovers so that you can produce him. Nor can you say that he died before I could get to him unless he actually does die soon, as otherwise you would have to explain why he is still in a coma or why, perhaps, he has come back to life. You can't hide the situation forever."

  "That is a problem that worries us, Albert, and it is clever of you to see it. After all, we are sending you back within a few days of your arrival - and why? The only logical reason, I'm afraid, is that we have found you to be a charlatan. We brought you here in high hopes for our poor Shapirov, but in no time at all it turned out that your views were incoherent nonsense and, with bitter disappointment, we sent you back. That will do you no harm, Albert. Being a charlatan is not the same as being a spy."

  "Don't play the innocent, Natalya. You can't do that." He had turned white with anger.

  "But it makes sense, doesn't it? Your own peers don't take you seriously. They laugh at your views. They would agree with us that your neurophysical suggestions are incoherent nonsense. We'd be a little embarrassed for having been so credulous as to take you seriously, but it was really Shapirov who thought highly of you and he was, unbeknown to us, on the edge of a stroke and total mental breakdown, so that one could scarcely blame him for his mad admiration of you."

  Morrison's lips trembled. "But you can't make a clown out of me. You can't ruin my reputation so."

  "But what reputation are you talking about, Albert? Your wife has left you and some people think it was because having your career founder on your mad ideas was the last straw for her. We have heard that your appointment is not to be renewed and that you have not managed to find another place. You are finished as a scientist in any case and this story of ours would merely conflrm what already exists. Perhaps you can find some other way of making a living - outside of science. You would probably have had to do that anyway, even if we had never touched you. There's that consolation."

  "But you're lying and you know you're lying, Natalya. Have you no code of ethics? Can a respectable scientist do this to an honorable brother scientist?"

  "You were unmoved by abstractions yesterday, Albert, and I am unmoved by them today in consequence."

  "Someday scientists will discover I was right. How will you look then?"

  "We may all be dead by then. Besides, you know that that is not the way it works. Franz Anton Mesmer, though he discovered hypnotism, was considered a fraud and a charlatan. When James Braid rediscovered hypnotism, he got the credit and Mesmer was still considered a fraud and charlatan. Besides-are we truly lying when we call you a charlatan?"

  "Of course you are!"

  "Let's reason it out. Why do you refuse to venture into an experiment of miniaturization which may enable you to establish your theories and which is likely to increase your knowledge of the brain by whole orders of magnitude? Such refusal can only arise through your own certain knowledge that your theories are wrong, that you are either a fool or a fraud or both, and that you don't want this established beyond a doubt, as it would be if you subjected yourself to miniaturization."

  "That is not so."

  "Do you expect us to believe that you refuse miniaturization simply because you are frightened? That you turn down a chance at knowledge, glory, fame, victory, vindication after years of scorn - all because you are scared? Come, we can't think so little of you, Albert. It makes much more sense to believe you are a fraud and so we will have no hesitation in saying you are."

  "Americans won't believe a Soviet libel against an American scientist."

  "Oh, Albert, of course they will. When we release you, with our explanation, it will be in all your American newspapers at once. They will be full of it. They are the most enterprising in the world and the freest, as you are all so fond of saying, meaning they are a law unto themselves. They pride themselves on it and never tire of flaunting that in the eyes of our own more sedate press. This will be such a lovely story for them: 'American Faker Fools Stupid Soviets.' I can see the headlines now. In fact, Albert, you may make a great deal of money on your American lecture circuit. You know: 'How I Made Jerks of the Soviets.' Then you can tell them all the ridiculous things you persuaded us to believe before we caught on to you and the audiences will laugh themselves into hysterics."

  Morrison said in a whisper, "Natalya, why do you do this to me?"

  "I? I am doing nothing. You are doing it. You want to go home and since we've failed to get you to accept miniaturization, we have no choice but to agree. Once, though, we agree to send you home, then, step by step, everything else must logically follow."

  "But in that case, I can't go home. I can't have my life destroyed beyond repair."

  "But who would care, Albert? Your estranged wife? Your children, who no longer know you and can always change their names anyway? Your university, which is firing you? Your colleagues, who laugh at you? Your government, which has abandoned you? Take heart. No one would care. An initial raucous laugh across the whole country and then you would be forgotten forever. You'll die without an obituary notice eventually, except for those papers who might not object to the tastelessness of bringing back that old joke for one more spurt of laughter to follow you to your grave."

  Morrison shook his head in despair. "I can't go home."

  "But you must. Unless you are willing to help us, which you're not, you can't stay here."

  "But I can't go home on your terms."

  "But what is the alternative?"

  Morrison stared at the woman, who was looking at him with such mild concern. He whispered, "I accept the alternative."

  Boranova looked at him for a long minute. "I do not wish to be mistaken, Albert. Put your agreement into clear language."

  "It's either consent to be miniaturized or consent to be destroyed. Isn't that it?"

  Boranova thrust out her lips. "That's a harsh way of putting it. I prefer that you look at it this way. Either you agree to help us by noon or you will be on a plane to the United States by 2 p.m. What do you say? It is now nearly 11 a.m. You have over an hour to decide."

  "What's the use? An hour won't change anything. I'll be miniaturized."

  "We will be miniaturized. You will not be alone." Boranova reached out and touched a contact on her desk.

  Dezhnev entered. "Well, Albert. You stand there looking so sad, so crumpled, that it strikes me you have decided to help us."

  Boranova said, "You need make no sardonic remarks. Albert will help us and we will be grateful for his help. His decision was a voluntary one."

  "I'm sure it was," said Dezhnev. "How you squeezed it out this time, Natasha, I can't say, but I knew you would. - And I must contratulate you, too, Albert. It took her quite a bit longer than I thought it would."

  Morrison could only stare at the two vacantly. He felt as though he had swallowed an icicle whole - one that didn't melt but that, inst
ead, reduced the temperature of his abdomen to the freezing point.

  Certainly, he was shivering.

  Chapter 7. Ship

  No voyage is dangerous to the one who waves good-bye from the shore.

  — Dezhnev Senior

  27.

  Morrison felt numb all through lunch and yet in a way the pressure was off. There were no determined voices pressing on him, no intensity of explanations and persuasions, no smiles of intent, no heads closing in.

  Of course, they made it quite clear, in a cool businesslike way, that he would no longer leave the Grotto till the deed was done and that from the Grotto there was, of course, no escape.

  And then every once in a while a thought swirled into his mind. He had actually agreed to be miniaturized!

  They took him to a room of his own in the Grotto where he could view book-films through a viewer provided for his personal use - even English-language book-films if he wanted the inner familiarity of home to pass the next few hours. So he sat there with a book-film unreeling through the viewer strapped on his eyes and somehow it left his mind totally untouched.

  He had actually agreed to be miniaturized!

  He had been told that he could do as he pleased until someone came for him. He could do as he pleased, that is, provided he did not please to leave. There were guards everywhere.

  The feeling of terror had, Morrison was aware, much diminished. That was the use of numbness and, of course, the more one repeats a sentence in one's mind, the more it loses meaning. He had actually agreed to be miniaturized, The more it rang in his mind like the tolling of a bell, over and over, the more the horror of it faded. And left a mere vacuum of non-sensation in its place.

  He was distantly aware that the door of his room had opened. Someone, he presumed dully, had come for him. He removed his viewer, lifted his eyes languidly, and, for just a moment, felt a mild spark of interest.

  It was Sophia Kaliinin, looking beautiful even to his bleared senses. She said in English, "A good afternoon to you, gentleman."