Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  Boranova said, "Yuri, don't be needlessly insulting. Albert is a fellow crew member and a guest. He is not to be treated as a spy."

  Konev said, "If you say so, Natalya. Nevertheless, if Shapirov is curious, so intensely curious that Natalya gets that message, it can be only about the quantum-relativity connection. If we can get some details about that, any details at all, we'll have a starting point and can continue."

  "And you think we'll get those details in the axon?"

  "Yes, I'm sure of it." Konev clenched both fists as though preparing to get a stranglehold on the facts.

  Morrison looked away. He was not sure of it. Increasingly, it was beginning to look to him as though matters were moving in another direction altogether and that that was just as well-

  He tried not to show it, but he was as excited as Konev was.

  61.

  Dim objects to either side loomed up ahead, drifted to one side, left or right, and fell behind. Ribosomes? Golgi apparatus? Fibrils of one sort or another? Morrison could not tell. From the vantage point of small molecule size, nothing, not even the sharpest, most familiar intracellular object, would look familiar, let alone recognizable.

  They were racing through a strange land of indefiniteness and Morrison could not, no matter how he tried, picture his surroundings as those with which he was familiar from electron micrography.

  He wondered if, somewhere beyond where the light of the ship's beam extended, there would be the endless volume of the cell's nucleus. Imagine being within submicroscopic distance of it and yet never seeing it.

  He concentrated on the immediate surroundings. It seemed to him, once again, that he ought to make out the water molecules that made up 98 percent of all the molecules in the cell, that huge percentage being the direct consequence of the fact that they were just about the smallest molecules there.

  He could not be sure. Focus his eyes though he did and as tightly as he could, what he saw was only a faint glitter - a photon, perhaps, bouncing off such a molecule and flashing back toward his eye. At best, he would only see one or two from any given water molecule.

  He was suddenly aware of Kaliinin's head, bending toward his. Her hair brushed his face and he noticed, as he had once or twice before, the fresh scent of her shampoo.

  She said, "This is terrible, Albert."

  Her breath was a little strong and Morrison flinched before he could stop himself.

  She noticed, for her fingers came up sharply, covering her mouth, and she mumbled, "I'm sorry."

  Morrison shook his head slightly, "My own breath isn't exactly a bed of roses. - Tension, nothing much to eat. A drink of water might help, Natalya."

  One drink set off everybody, of course, in a chain reaction.

  Kaliinin fingered a small white pellet. "Peppermint drop?"

  Morrison held out his hand and smiled. "Is it permitted?"

  Kaliinin's eye flickered back toward Boranova and she gave a Who-cares shrug. Having passed the drop to Morrison, Sophia popped another in her mouth.

  Then she said again, "This is terrible, Albert."

  "What is, Sophia?"

  "How can we pass through this cell without examining it in detail?"

  "We have a specific mission."

  "Yes, but no one may be back within a brain cell for many years. Perhaps, never. When, in the future, someone will read that this ship and this crew merely raced through, looking neither to right or left, what barbarians they will think we must have been."

  She was whispering very softly and their heads were bent close together. Morrison found himself rather enjoying it.

  Had he grown so calloused to the threat of the situation - the constant skirting along the edge of the abyss of spontaneous deminiaturization, the possibility of split-second death at any moment - that he could take joy from the trivial fact that his lips were so close to the pretty face of a woman?

  Well, why quarrel with that? Let the nearness anesthetize him, so that he might for a moment forget.

  Morrison remembered the sharp image he had had so brief a time before of a happy, smiling, beautiful girl. He had not recognized the thought as his own, so unexpectedly had it come out of nowhere, and it didn't return, even now, but he remembered it distinctly and the memory squeezed at his heart with a warm feeling.

  He had the momentary impulse to kiss her lightly, just a touch upon the cheekbone with his lips - and fought it down. If she decided to take it amiss, he would feel like an incredible fool.

  Morrison said gently, "The people of the future will know we have a mission. They will understand."

  "I wonder," Sophia said, then paused and sent a quick and almost fearful look in the direction of Konev, who as always sat stiff and detached at ally sign of speech or even motion from Kaliinin.

  She turned to her computer, switched it to the word-processor mode, and tapped out in rapid Russian: YURI IS A FANATIC WHO SACRIFICES EVERYTHING TO HIS MANIA. THERE IS NO CHANCE OF READING THOUGHTS, BUT HE PERSUADES EVERYONE. She blanked it, then tapped out: WE ARE HIS VICTIMS and blanked it at once.

  For "we," read "I," thought Morrison sadly. He looked at his own instrument hesitantly. It seemed to him that the thought waves, which he had dimmed to low, were growing more intense. Morrison looked out as though he might be able to tell just how near the axon they now were, but, of course, there was no way of knowing.

  He blanked the radiation, switched to word-processing, and printed out in Roman-lettered Russian: HE, TOO, IS HIS VICTIM.

  Kaliinin at once printed savagely: NO. I DON'T BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE THEIR OWN VICTIMS.

  Morrison thought sadly of his one-time wife, his two children, his own inability to present his theory persuasively, or, alternatively, to walk away from it, and tapped out: I BELIEVE WE ARE EACH OF US MORE A VICTIM OF OURSELVES THAN OF ANYONE ELSE and returned it quickly to the thoughtwave mode.

  He sucked in his breath sharply. The waves on his screen had risen high in intensity despite the fact that the device was still at low.

  Morrison opened his mouth to comment on the fact, but Dezhnev made that unnecessary. "Yuri," he said, "the cell membrane is curving in and we're curving in with it."

  That would account for it, thought Morrison. The cell was narrowing in toward the axon and the skeptic waves were being enormously concentrated. His device, having filtered out everything else, would radiate the wave function of the skeptic waves throughout the interior of the ship. And with what results?

  Konev said with delight, "We'll see what happens now. Albert, keep your machine working at top intensity."

  Boranova said, "I hope that whatever happens gives us our answer or at least a start to our answer. I have grown tired waiting."

  "I don't blame you," said Dezhnev. "As my father used to say: 'The longer it takes to get to a point, the blunter it turns out to be.'"

  It seemed to Morrison that every line of Konev's stiff body now betokened excitement and expectant triumph - but Morrison did not join in that expectation.

  62.

  Morrison stared outward. They were well into the axon now and being carried along it by the fluid stream within the cell.

  In the real world, the axon was an excessively thin fiber, but in the microminiaturized world of the ship, it might be the equivalent of a hundred kilometers across. As for its length, it was much, much longer than the cell itself. Going from one end to the other of the axon might very well be the equivalent of a trip from the Earth to the moon and back a couple of dozen times over. On the other hand, their apparent speed on the microminiaturized scale must seem, to themselves, to be a respectable faction of the speed of light.

  There was no indication of that incredibly rapid speed, however. The ship was moving with the current and there was far less in the way of macromolecules or organelles in the axon than there had been in the cell body. If there were structural fibers withstanding the current and remaining motionless with respect to the cell membrane, the current swept them past those too rapidly for them
to be visible, even if a sizable number of photons were reflected from them - which, of course, they were not.

  So he gave up. There was nothing to look at outside.

  He ought, in any case, to be looking at his screen. The skeptic waves were becoming even more intense, he could see. It had grown difficult to wipe out the nonskeptic material. It was so strong that it flooded the computer's receiving capacity.

  What's more, the tight, elaborate vibration of the skeptic waves had become a series of irregular spikes. Even at full expansion, it was clear he wasn't getting all the detail that existed. Morrison had a clear vision of the necessity of a laser printout clear enough to be placed under a microscope.

  Konev had unclasped himself and had half-lifted himself over the back of his seat so that he might stare at the screen.

  He said, "I haven't seen it like that before."

  Morrison replied, "Nor have I and I have been studying skeptic waves for nearly twenty years. Nothing like this."

  "I was right, then, about the axon?"

  "Absolutely, Yuri. The waves have concentrated themselves beautifully."

  "And the meaning, then?"

  Morrison spread out his hands helplessly. "There you have me. Since I have never seen anything like this, I obviously can't interpret it."

  "No no," said Konev impatiently. "You keep concentrating on the screen and I keep thinking about induction. Our own minds are the true receptors - by way of your machine. What do you receive? Images? Words?"

  "Nothing," said Morrison.

  "That's impossible."

  "Are you getting anything?"

  "It's your machine. Adjusted to you."

  "You've had images before, Yuri."

  Dezhnev's voice broke in dryly, "My father used to say: 'If you want to hear, you must begin by listening.'"

  Boranova said, "Dezhnev Senior is correct. We can receive nothing if we fill our minds with contention and shouts."

  Konev drew a deep breath and said with a softness that was most uncharacteristic of him, "Very well, then, let us concentrate."

  An unnatural quiet fell over the ship's crew.

  Then Kaliinin said, breaking the silence rather timidly, "There is no time."

  "No time for what, Sophia," said Boranova.

  "I mean that's the phrase I sensed: 'There is no time.'"

  Morrison said, "Are you saying that you received it from Shapirov's skeptic waves?"

  "I don't know. Is that possible?"

  Boranova said, "A moment before I had the same thought. It occurred to me that a better way of tackling the problem might be to study the recorded skeptic waves on the screen and to wait for sudden changes. It might be the change of pattern rather than the pattern itself that would produce an image. But then I thought that the waiting might be an enormously long drawn-out affair and for that we lacked the time."

  "In other words," said Morrison, "you thought, 'There is no time.'

  "Yes," said Boranova, "but it was my own thought."

  "How can you know, Natalya?" said Morrison.

  "I know my own thoughts."

  "You also know your own dreams, but sometimes dreams arise out of external stimuli. Suppose you receive the thought 'There is no time.' Because you are not accustomed to receiving thoughts, you quickly build up a line of free association that makes it reasonable for you to feel that you have had the thought yourself."

  "That may be so, but how does one tell, Albert?"

  "I'm not sure, but Sophia apparently sensed the same phrase and we might ask if she were thinking something independently that would give rise to the phrase as a matter of course."

  "No, I was not," said Kaliinin. "I was trying to keep my mind empty. It just came in."

  "I didn't sense anything," said Morrison. "How about you, Yuri?"

  Konev shook his head, frowning ferociously at his failure. "No, I didn't."

  "In any case," said Morrison thoughtfully, "it needn't mean anything. Natalya felt it might be an idle thought that arose out of a series of previous thoughts in a natural way and with none but the most superficial meaning. Even if the thought had arisen in Shapirov's mind, it might be equally superficial there."

  "Perhaps," said Konev, "but perhaps not. His whole life and mind were bound up in the problems of miniaturization. He would be thinking of nothing else."

  "You keep saying that," said Morrison, "but, actually, that is romantic nonsense. No one thinks of nothing else. The most lovesick Romeo in history could not concentrate on his Juliet forever. A twinge of colic, a distant sound, and he would be distracted at once."

  "Nevertheless, we must take anything Shapirov says as possibly significant."

  "Possibly," said Morrison. "But what if he were trying to work out the extension of the miniaturization theory and decided to moan he had no time, that there was insufficient time to complete his work?"

  Konev shook his head, more, it seemed, to brush off distraction than in a clear negative. He said, "How about this? What if it seemed to Shapirov that any miniaturization that involved an increase in the speed of light proportional to the decrease in Planck's constant would involve a change that was instantaneous, that took no time. And, of course, as the speed of light increased vastly, so would the inevitable speed of a massless - or nearly massless - object. He would, in effect, abolish time and could say to himself proudly, 'There is no time.'"

  Boranova said, "Very farfetched."

  "Of course," said Konev, "but worth thinking about. We must record every impression we get, however dim, however apparently meaningless."

  "I plan to do precisely that, Yuri," said Boranova.

  Konev said, "Then quiet again. Let's see if we can get anything more."

  Morrison concentrated fiercely, his eyes half-buried under jutting eyebrows, but those same eyes were fixed on Konev, who sighed and said in a whisper, "I get something over and over - 'nu times c equals m sub s.'"

  Morrison said, "I got that, too, but I thought it was 'm times c square.'

  "No," said Konev tightly. "Try again."

  Morrison concentrated, then, quite abashed, said, "You're right. I get it, too: 'nu times c equals m sub s.' What does it mean?"

  "Who can say at first glance? However, if this is in Shapirov's mind, it means something. We can assume that nu is radiational frequency, c the speed of light, and m sub s is the standard mass - that is, the mass at rest under ordinary conditions. In the light of -"

  Boranova's arms lifted with an admonitory forefinger upraised. Konev stopped short and said uncomfortably, "But that is neither here nor there."

  Morrison grinned, "Classified material, eh, Yuri?"

  And then Dezhnev's voice sounded with an unaccustorned petulance to it. "How is it," he said, "that you are hearing all these things about time and standard mass and whatnot and I sense nothing? Is it that I am not a scientist?"

  Morrison said, "I doubt that that has anything to do with it. Brains are different. Maybe they come in different types the way blood does. Blood is blood but you can't always transfuse one person's blood into another. Your brain may be sufficiently different from Shapirov's so that there is no sensory crossover."

  "Only mine?"

  "Not only yours. There may be billions of minds that can pick up nothing from Shapirov. You'll notice that Sophia and Natalya can pick up the same things, which Yuri and I cannot - and vice versa."

  "Two men and two women," grumped Dezhnev, "and I am what?"

  Konev said impatiently, "You are wasting our time, Arkady. Let's not endlessly discuss every tiny thing we pick up. We have more to hear and little time to do it in. If you concentrate a little harder, Arkady, you, too, may sense something."

  Silence!

  It was broken occasionally by a soft murrnur from one or another who reported sensing an image or a scrap of words. Dezhnev contributed only one thing: "I sense a feeling of hunger, but it may be my own."

  "Undoubtedly," said Boranova dryly. "Console yourself with the thought,
Arkady, that when we get out of here, you will be allowed seconds and thirds of every dish and unlimited vodka."

  Dezhnev grinned almost lasciviously at the thought.

  Morrison said, "We don't seem to come across anything mathematical or even out of the ordinary. I insist that even Shapirov must have the great majority of his thoughts concerned with trivia."

  "Nevertheless," grunted Konev under his breath, "we listen."

  "For how long, Yuri?"

  "Till the end of the axon. Right down to the end."

  Morrison said, "Do you then intend to run into the synapses or will you double back?"

  "We will go as close to the synapses as possible. That will bring us into the immediate neighborhood of the adjoining nerve cell and the skeptic waves may be even more easily sensed at that crucial point of transfer than anywhere else."

  Dezhnev said, "Yes, Yuri, but you are not the captain. - Natasha, little flower, is that what you wish, too?"

  Boranova said, "Why not? Yuri is right. The synapse is a unique spot and we know nothing about it."

  "I ask only because half our power supply has now been consumed. How long dare we continue to remain within the body?"

  "Long enough," said Boranova, "to reach the synapse, certainly."

  And silence fell once more.

  63.

  The ship continued to move along the enormous length of the axon and Konev dictated the actions of the others more and more.

  "Whatever you get, report. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not, whether it's one word or a paragraph. If it's an image, describe it. Even if you think it's your own thought, report it if there's the slightest doubt."

  "You'll have meaningless chatter," said Dezhnev, apparently still annoyed at his nonreceiving brain.

  "Of course, but two or three meaningful hints will pay all. And we won't know what's meaningful until we examine everything."

  Dezhnev said, "If I sense something I think isn't mine, do I throw it in, too?"

  "You, especially," said Konev. "If you're as insensitive as you seem to think, anything you do get may be particularly important. Now, please, no more talk. Every second of conversation may mean we miss something."