Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  "Natalya," he said, "I must take Albert to my office. It is necessary that we discuss tomorrow's task and prepare for it."

  Boranova said, "You will remember, please, that we must all have a good night's sleep. I don't wish you to forget the passage of time. Do you want Arkady to go with you?"

  "I don't need him," said Konev haughtily.

  "Nevertheless," said Boranova, "there will be two guards at your office door and you will call out if you need them."

  Konev turned from her impatiently and said, "I won't need them, Natalya, I'm sure. Come with me, Albert."

  Morrison, who had been watching them both from under lowered eyebrows, rose and said, "Is this going to be a long trip? I'm tired of being shuttled from point to point in the Grotto."

  Morrison knew well he was being ungracious, but it didn't seem to bother Konev, who responded just as ungraciously, "I should think a professor would be used to plunging back and forth across a university campus."

  Morrison followed Konev out the door and together they tramped along the corridor in silence. Morrison was aware that at a certain point two guards fell in behind them. He heard additional footsteps keeping time with his own. He looked back, but Konev did not.

  Morrison said impatiently, "Much longer, Yuri?"

  "That is a foolish question, Albert. I have no intention of walking you past our destination. When we get there, we will be there. If we are still walking, it is because we are not there yet."

  "I should think, with all this walking, you might arrange golf carts or something of the sort for the corridors."

  "Anything to allow the muscles to atrophy, Albert? Come, you are not so old that you cannot walk or so young that you must be carried."

  Morrison thought, If I were that poor woman with his child, I would shoot off fireworks to celebrate his denial of fatherhood.

  They reached Konev's office at last. At least Morrison assumed it was his office when Konev barked the word "Open" and the door slid smoothly open in response to his voiceprint. Konev strode through first.

  "What if someone imitates your voice?" asked Morrison curiously. "You don't have a very distinctive voice, you know."

  Konev said, "It also scans my face. It will not respond to either separately."

  "And if you have a cold?"

  "One time when I had a bad one, I could not get into my office for three days and I finally had to have the door opened mechanically. If my face were bruised or scarred by accident, I might also have trouble. Still, that is the price of security."

  "But are the people here so - inquisitive - that they would invade your privacy?"

  "People are people and it is not wise to overtempt even the best of them. I have things here unique to myself and they may be viewed only when I decide to allow it. This, for instance." His slim hand (very well cared-for and manicured, Morrison noticed - he might neglect other things for his work, but not himself) rested on an extraordinarily large and thick volume, which, in turn, rested on a stand that had been clearly designed for it.

  "What is that?" asked Morrison.

  "That," said Konev, "is Academician Shapirov - or at least the essence of him." He opened the book and flipped the pages. Page after page (all of them, perhaps) were filled with symbols arranged in diagrammatic fashion.

  Konev said, "I have it on microfilm, of course, but there are certain conveniences to having it in a printed volume." He patted the pages almost lovingly.

  "I still don't understand," said Morrison.

  "This is the basic structure of Shapirov's brain, translated into a symbolism of my own devising. Fed into the appropriate software, it can reconstitute a three-dimensional map of the brain in intimate detail on a computer screen."

  "Astonishing," said Morrison, "if you are serious."

  "I am serious," said Konev. "I have spent my entire career on this task: translating brain structure into symbols and symbols into brain structure. I have invented and advanced this science of cerebrography."

  "And you used Shapirov as your subject."

  "By incredible good fortune, I did. Or perhaps it was not good fortune, but merely inevitable. We all have our small vanities and it seemed to Shapirov that his brain was worth preserving in detail. Once I began working on this field under his direction - for there was the feeling that we might someday want to explore animal brains at least - he insisted on having his own brain analyzed cerebrographically."

  Morrison said with a sudden excitement, "Can you get his theories out of the recorded cerebral structure of his brain?"

  "Of course not. These symbols record a cerebral scanning that was carried through three years ago. That was before he had evolved his recent notions and, in any case, what I have preserved here is, unfortunately, only the physical structure and not the thoughts. Still, the cerebrograph will be invaluable to us in tomorrow's voyage."

  "I should think so - but I have never heard of this."

  "I'm not surprised. I have published papers on this, but only in the Grotto's own publication - and these remain highly classified. No one outside the Grotto, not even here in the Soviet Union, knows of them."

  "That is bad policy. You will be overtaken by someone else who will publish and who will be granted priority."

  Konev shook his head. "At the first sign that significant advances in this direction are being made elsewhere, enough of my early work will be published to establish priority. I have cerebrographs of canine brains that I can publish, for instance. But never mind that. The point is that we have a map of Shapirov's brain to guide us, which is a matter of incredible good fortune. It was made without the knowledge that we might need it someday to guide us through that very cerebral jungle."

  Konev turned to a computer and, with practiced flips of his wrist, inserted five large discs.

  "Each one of these," he said, "can hold all the information in the Central Moscow Library without crowding. It is all devoted to Shapirov's brain."

  "Are you trying to tell me," said Morrison indignantly, "that you could transfer all that information, all of Shapirov's brain, into that book you have here?"

  "Well, no," said Konev, glancing at the book. "In comparison with the total code, that book is only a small pamphlet. However, it does hold the basic skeleton, so to speak, of Shapirov's neuronic structure and I was able to use it as a guide by which to direct a computer program that mapped it out in greater detail. It took months for the best and most advanced computer we have to do the job.

  "And even so, Albert, all we have reaches merely to the cellular level. If we were to map the brain down to the molecular level and try to record all the permutations and combinations - all the conceivable thoughts that might arise from a particular human brain like Shapirov's; all the creativity, actual and potential - I suppose it would take a computer the size of the Universe working for a much longer time than the Universe has existed. What I have, however, may be enough for our task."

  Morrison, entranced, asked, "Can you show me how it works, Yuri?"

  Konev studied the computer - which was turned on, as one could tell by the soft whisper of its cooling mechanism - then pushed the necessary keys. On the screen there appeared the side view of a human brain.

  Konev said, "This can be viewed at any cross-section." He pressed a key and the brain began to peel as though it were being continually sliced by an ultrathin microtome some thousands of slices per second. "At this rate," he said, "it would take an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the task, but I could stop it at any chosen point. I could also cut off thicker slices or cut off one thick calculated slice to bring me at once to any wanted cross-section."

  As he spoke, he demonstrated. "Or I could orient it in another direction or rotate it along any axis. Or I can magnify it to any extent down to the cellular level, either slowly or, as you see, quickly." As he said this, the material of the brain spread outward in all directions from a central point - dizzyingly - so that Morrison was forced to blink his eyes and then look away.


  Konev said, "This is now at the cellular level. Those small objects are individual neurons and if I expanded the image still further, you would see the axons and dendrites. If one wishes, we could follow a single axon through the cell into a dendrite and across a synapse to another neuron and so on, traveling, by computer, through a brain three-dimensionally. Nor is the matter of three demensions just a manner of speaking. The computer is outfitted for holographic imaging and it can present a three-dimensional appearance quite literally."

  Morrison said challengingly, "Then why do you need miniaturization? Why do you need to send ships into the brain?"

  Konev briefly allowed a look of contempt to cross his face. "That is a foolish question, Albert, and I suppose it is inspired only by your fear of miniaturization. You are groping for any excuse to eliminate it. What you see here on the screen is a three-dimensional mapping of the brain, but only three-dimensional. It has caught it at what is, essentially, an instant of time. In effect, we see unchanging material - dead material. What we want to be able to detect is the living activity of the neurons, the changing activity with time. We want a four-dimensional view of the electric potentials that rise and fall, the microcurrents that travel along the cells and cell fibers, and we want to interpret them into thoughts. That's your task, Albert. Arkady Dezhnev will manipulate the ship along the routes I have chosen and you will give us the thoughts."

  "On what basis have you chosen the routes?"

  "On the basis of your own papers, Albert. I have chosen the regions you had decided must represent the neuronic network for creative thought and, using this book, with its coded representation of Shapirov's brain as my initial guide, I calculated centers where more or less direct pathways could be found to several portions of the network. I then located them more accurately on the computer and it is to one or more of those centers that we will penetrate tomorrow."

  Morrison shook his head. "I'm afraid I can't guarantee that we will be able to determine actual thoughts, even if we find the centers in which thinking takes place. It's as though we might reach a place where we can hear people's voices, but if we don't know the language, we are still left in ignorance of what they are saying."

  "We can't know that in advance. The varying electric potentials in Sbapirov's mind must resemble those in ours and we may simply be aware of his thoughts without knowing how we are aware. In any case, we can't tell unless we go in and try."

  "In that case, you will have to be ready for possible disappointment."

  "Never," said Konev with the utmost seriousness. "I intend to be the person to whom the human brain will finally yield its secrets. I will solve, completely, the ultimate physiological mystery of humanity, perhaps of the Universe - if we are the most advanced thinking devices that exist anywhere. So we will work together, you and I, tomorrow. I want you to be ready for it, to help guide me by studying carefully the brain waves we encounter. I want you to interpret Shapirov's thoughts and, most particularly, his thoughts on combining quantum theory and relativity so that trips such as ours tomorrow can become routine and we can begin the study of the brain in all earnestness."

  He stopped and stared at Morrison intently, then said, "Well?"

  "Well, what?"

  "Does none of this impress you?"

  "Of course it impresses me, but… I have a question. Today when I watched the rabbit being miniaturized, there was a pronounced whine during the process - and a rumble when it was deminiaturized. There was nothing of the sort when I was subjected to it - or I would have known what was happening."

  Konev raised a finger, "Ah. The noise is apparent when you are in real space, but not when you are in miniaturized space. I was the first to realize that was so when I was miniaturized and I reported it. We still don't know why the miniaturization field seems to stop sound waves when it doesn't stop light waves, but then we expect to learn new aspects of the process as we go on."

  "As long as we don't discover fatal aspects," muttered Morrison. "Are you afraid of nothing, Yuri?"

  "I'm afraid of not being able to complete my work. That would be true if I died tomorrow or if I refused to undergo miniaturization. Being stopped by death, however, is only a small possibility, but if I refuse to undergo miniaturization, then I am stopped certainly. That is why I much prefer to risk the former than take the latter way out."

  "Does it bother you that Sophia will be undergoing miniaturization with you?"

  Konev frowned. "What?"

  "If you don't remember her first name, it may help if I refer to her as Kaliinin."

  "She is part of the group and will be on the ship. Yes."

  "And you don't mind?"

  "Why should I?"

  "After all, she feels you have betrayed her."

  Konev frowned darkly and a dull flush rose to his face. "Has her madness gone so far as to force her to confide her incoherencies to strangers? If she weren't needed on this project -"

  "I'm sorry. She didn't sound incoherent to me."

  Morrison didn't know why he was pushing the matter. Perhaps he felt diminished at fearing a task the other so ardently welcomed and he therefore wished to dirninish in turn. "Were you never her - friend?"

  "Friend?" Konev's face mirrored his contempt. "What is friendship? When I joined the project, I found her here; she had joined a month earlier. We worked together, we were new and untried together. Of course, there was what one might call friendship, a physical need for intimacy. What of it? We were young and unsure of ourselves. It was a passing phase."

  "But it left something behind. A child."

  "That was not my doing." And his mouth closed with a snap.

  "She says -"

  "I have no doubt she would like to saddle me with the responsibility, but it won't work."

  "Have you considered genetic analysis?"

  "No! The child is adequately cared for, I imagine, and even if genetic analysis seemed to indicate I might be the parent, I would refuse all efforts to tie me to the child emotionally, so what would the woman have to gain?"

  "Are you so coldhearted?"

  "Coldhearted! What do you imagine I have done - corrupted a young, innocent virgin? She took the initiative in everything. In the sad story that I suppose she told you, did she happen to mention that she'd been pregnant before, that she had had an abortion some years before I met her? I don't know who the father was then or who it is now. Perhaps neither does she - either time."

  "You are being unkind to her."

  "I am not. She is being unkind to herself. I have a mistress. I have a love. It is this project. It is the human brain in the abstract, its study, its analysis, and all that that might lead to. The woman was, at best, a distraction - at worst, a destruction. This little talk we are having - that I did not ask for - that she goaded you into undertaking, no doubt -"

  "She did not," intedected Morrison.

  "Goads are not necessarily noticed. This discussion may cost me a night's sleep and make me that much less sharp tomorrow when I will need all my sharpness. Is that your intention?"

  "No, of course not," Morrison said quietly.

  "Then it is surely hers. You have no idea in how many different ways she has attempted interference and how often she has succeeded. I don't look at her, I don't speak to her, yet she will not leave me alone. Her imaginary wrongs seem as fresh in her mind as they were when I first broke away. Yes, I do mind her being on the ship with me and I have said so to Boranova, but she says that both of us are needed. Are you satisfied?"

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you so."

  "What did you mean? Simply to have a quiet conversation? 'Say, what about all those betrayals and dirty tricks you have committed?' Just a friendly talk?"

  Morrison remained silent, bowing his head slightly against the other's rage. Three out of five on the ship - himself and the two ex-lovers - would be laboring under a sense of unbearable wrong. He wondered if, on careful questioning, Dezhnev and Boranova would prove similarly disa
bled.

  Konev said harshly, "You had better go. I brought you here to bury your fear of the project by providing you with a blaze of enthusiasm. Obviously, I have failed. You are more interested in prurient gossip. Go, the guards outside this door will take you to the quarters assigned you. You will need to sleep."

  Morrison sighed. Sleep?

  33.

  Yet on this, his third night in the Soviet Union, Morrison slept.

  Dezhnev had been waiting outside Konev's room with the guards, his broad face grinning and his large ears all but flapping with merriment. After the shadowed intensity of Konev's personality, Morrison found himself welcoming Dezhnev's chatter on all subjects but the morrow's miniaturization.

  Dezhnev urged a drink on him. "It is not vodka, not alcohol," he had said, "It is milk and a little sugar and flavoring. I stole it from the commissary where it is used, I think, for animals, because all those officials find human beings more easily replaceable than the animals. It is the curse of overpopulation. As my father used to say, 'To get a human being takes a moment of pleasure, but to get a horse costs money.' But drink. It will settle the stomach. I promise you."

  The drink was in a can which Morrison punctured. He poured it into a cup that Dezhnev proffered and it tasted fairly good. He thanked Dezhnev almost cheerily.

  When they got to Morrison's room, Dezhnev said, "Now the important thing for you to do is to sleep. Sleep well. Let me show you where everything is." And as he did so, he rather resembled a large and slightly unkempt mother hen. With a hearty "Good night. Be sure to get plenty of sleep," Dezhnev left the room.

  And Morrison slept. Almost as soon as he worked himself into his favorite position - stomach down, left leg bent, knee outward - he began to feel sleepy. Of course, he had little sleep the last two nights, but he suddenly guessed that there had been a mild sedative in the cup into which he had poured the drink. Then came the thought that perhaps Konev should take such a sedative. Then - nothing.

  When he woke, he could not even remember having had any dreams.