Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  And there began a period of disjointed phrases out of which, in Morrison's opinion, it was impossible to make sense.

  One surprise came when Kaliinin said suddenly, "'Nobel Prize!'"

  Konev looked up sharply and almost responded - then, as though realizing who had said it, he subsided.

  Morrison said, trying not to sound mocking, "Did you get that, too, Yuri?"

  Konev nodded. "At almost the same time."

  "That's the first crossover between a man and woman," said Morrison. "I suppose Shapirov had his mind on it in connection with his extension of miniaturization theory."

  "Undoubtedly. But his Nobel Prize was sure for what he had already done in miniaturization."

  "Which is classified and therefore unknown."

  "Yes. But once we perfect the process, it will no longer be unknown."

  "Let's hope so," said Morrison sardonically.

  Konev snapped, "We are no more secretive than you Americans."

  "All right. I'm not arguing," but Morrison grinned broadly at Konev, who was peering over his shoulder at him, and that seemed to irritate the younger man even further.

  At one point, Dezhnev said, "'Hawking.'"

  Morrison's eyebrows lifted in surprise. He had not expected this.

  Boranova said, looking displeased, "What is this, Arkady?"

  "I said, 'Hawking,'" said Dezhnev defensively. "Out of nowhere it popped into my mind. You told me to tell you anything that did."

  "It is an English word," said Boranova, "that means 'spitting.'

  "Or 'selling,'" said Morrison cheerfully.

  Dezhnev said, "I don't know enough English to know that word. I thought it was someone's name."

  "So it was," said Konev uncomfortably. "Stephen Hawking. He was a great English theoretical physicist of over a century ago. I was thinking of him, too, but I thought it was my own thought."

  Morrison said, "Good, Arkady. That might be useful."

  Dezhnev's face split with a grin. "I'm not altogether useless, then. As my father used to say: 'If the words of a wise man are few, they are nevertheless worth listening to.'"

  An interminable half hour later, Morrison said gently, "Are we getting anywhere at all? It seems to me that most of the phrases and images tell us nothing. 'Nobel Prize' tells us, reasonably enough, that Shapirov thought of winning one, but we know that. 'Hawking' tells us that that physicist's work was significant, perhaps, in connection with the extension of miniaturization, but it doesn't tell us why."

  It was not Konev who rose to the defense, as Morrison would have expected, but Boranova. Konev, who might have been readying himself for a response, seemed willing, on this occasion, to let the captain bear the weight.

  Boranova said, "We are dealing with an enormous cryptogram, Albert. Shapirov is a man in a coma and his brain is not thinking in a disciplined or orderly fashion. It is sparking wildly, those parts of it that remain whole, perhaps randomly. We collect everything without distinction and it will all be studied by those of us with a deep understanding of miniaturization theory. They may see meaning where you see none. And a bit of meaning, in one corner of the field, may be the start of an illumination that will spread to all parts of it. What we are doing makes sense and it is the proper thing to do."

  Konev then said, "Besides, Albert, there is something else we can try. We are approaching a synapse. This axon will end eventually and split up into many fibers, each of which will approach but not join with the dendrite of a neighboring neuron."

  "I know that," said Morrison impatiently.

  "The nerve impulse, including the skeptic waves, will have to jump the tiny gap of the synapse and, in doing so, the dominant thoughts will be less attenuated than the others. In short, if we jump the synapse, too, we will reach a region where we may, for a while at least, detect what we want to hear with less interference from trivial noise."

  "Really?" asked Morrison archly. "This notion of differential attenuation is new to me."

  "It's the result of painstaking Soviet work in the area."

  "Ah!"

  Konev fired up at once, "What do you mean, 'Ah!'? Is that a dismissal of the value of the work?"

  "No no."

  "Of course it is. If it's Soviet work, it means nothing."

  "I just mean that I haven't read or heard anything about it," Morrison said in defense."

  "The work was done by Madame Nastiaspenskaya. I presume you've heard of her."

  "Yes, I have."

  "But you don't read her papers, is that it?"

  "Yuri, I can't keep up with the English-language literature, let alone with -"

  "Well, when this is over, I'll see that you get a collection of her papers and you may educate yourself."

  "Thank you, but may I say that on the face of it I think the finding is an unlikely one. If some types of mental activity survive a synapse better than others, then, considering that there are many hundreds of billions of synapses in the brain, all constantly in use, the final result would be that only a tiny proportion of thoughts would survive at all."

  "It's not as simple as that," said Konev. "The trivial thoughts are not wiped out. They continue at a lower level of intensity and don't decline indefinitely. It's just that, in the immediate neighborhood of a synapse, the important thoughts are, for a time, relatively strengthened."

  "Is there evidence for this? Or is it only a suggestion?"

  "There's evidence of a subtle nature. Eventually, with miniaturization experiments, that evidence will be hardened, I'm sure. There are some people among whom this synapse effect is much stronger than average. Why else can creative individuals concentrate so hard and so long, if they are not less distracted by trivia? And why, on the contrary, are brilliant scholars traditionally absentminded?"

  "Very well. If we find something, I won't quarrel with the rationale."

  Dezhnev said, "But what happens when we come to the end of the axon? The stream of fluid we're riding will just make a U-turn at that point and carry us back again against the opposite wall of the axon. Do I force my way through the membrane?"

  "No," said Konev. "Of course not. We'd damage the cell. We'll have to take on the electric charge pattern of acetylcholine. That carries the nerve impulse pattern across the synapse."

  Boranova said, "Sophia, you can give the ship an acetylcholine pattern, can't you?"

  "I can," said Kaliinin, "but aren't the acetylcholine molecules active on the outside of the cell?"

  "Nevertheless, the cell may have a mechanism for ejecting them. We'll try."

  And the trip along the seemingly endless axon continued.

  64.

  Suddenly the end of the axon was in sight. There was no hint, no warning. Konev noticed it first. He was watching and he knew what he was watching for, but Morrison gave him full credit. He himself was watching, too, and knew what he was watching for, and yet did not see it when it came.

  To be sure, Konev was in the front seat, while Morrison had to stare past Konev's head. That was not much of an excuse either.

  In the curiously ineffective light of the ship's beacon, it was clear that there was a hollow ahead and yet the current was beginning to veer away from it.

  The axon was beginning to break off into branches, into dendrites like those at the other end of the neuron, at the end where the nucleated cell body was. The axonian dendrites at the far end of the cell were fewer and thinner, but they were there. Undoubtedly, a portion of the cellular stream flowed into it, but the ship was in the main stream that curved away and they could take no chances.

  They would have to push into the first dendrite encountered - if it could be done.

  "There, Arkady, there," cried Konev, pointing, and it was only then that all the rest realized they were reaching the end of the axon. "Use your motors, Arkady, and push over."

  Morrison could make out the soft throbbing of the motors as they edged the ship toward the side of the stream. The dendrite toward which they aimed was a tube th
at was slipping sideways, a huge tube at their size scale, so huge they could only see a small arc of its circumference.

  They continued to edge closer to it and Morrison found himself leaning toward the dendrite, as though adding body English could improve matters.

  But it was not a matter of reaching the tube itself, merely moving over an eddying section of fluid, a rushing of water molecules that quieted into gentle circles and then slipped beyond into another stream that was curving off in another direction.

  The ship made the transition and was suddenly plunging forward into the tube opening.

  "Turn off the motors," said Konev excitedly.

  "Not yet," grumbled Dezhnev. "We may be too near the countercurrent emerging from this thing. Let me slip over a bit closer to the wall."

  He did so, but that did not take long. They were now essentially moving with the current, not against it. And when Dezhnev did finally shut off the engine and pushed back his damp, graying hair, he heaved a great breath and said, "Everything we do consumes a ton of energy. There's a limit, Yuri, there's a limit."

  "We'll worry about that later," said Konev impatiently.

  "Will we?" said Dezhnev. "My father always said: 'Later is usually too late.' - Natalya, don't leave all this to Yuri. I don't trust his attitude toward our energy supply."

  "Calm yourself, Arkady. I will take care to override Yuri if it becomes necessary. - Yuri, the dendrite is not very long, is it?"

  "We will come to the ending in short order, Natalya."

  "In that case, Sophia, please see to it that we are ready to adopt the acetylcholine pattern at a moment's notice."

  "You'll give me the signal, then?" said Kaliinin.

  "I will not have to, Sophia. I'm sure that Yuri will whoop like a Cossack when the end is in sight. Shift the pattern to acetylcholine at that moment."

  They continued sliding along the final tubular remnant of the neuron they had entered a considerable time before. It seemed to Morrison that, as the dendrite continued to narrow, he could see the wall arc above him, but that was illusion. Common sense told him that even at its narrowest, the tube would appear to be a few kilometers across at their present molecular size.

  And, as Boranova had foreseen, Konev lifted his voice in a great cry, probably quite unaware that he was doing so. "The end is ahead. Quick. Acetylcholine before we're swept around and back."

  Kaliinin's fingers flickered over the keyboard. There was no indication from inside the ship that anything about it had changed, but somewhere up ahead was an acetylcholine receptor - or, more likely, hundreds of them - and the patterns meshed, positive to negative and negative to positive, so that the attraction between ship and receptor was sharp and great.

  They were pulled out of the stream and melted into and through the wall of the dendrite. For a few minutes they continued to be pulled through the intercellular medium between the dendrite of the neuron they had just left and the dendrite of the neighbor neuron.

  Morrison saw almost nothing. The ship, he felt, was sliding along - or through - a complex protein molecule and then he noticed the formation of a concavity, as when the ship had first entered the first neuron.

  Konev had unclasped himself so that he could stand up. (Quite obviously, he was too excited to feel this was something he could do sitting down.)

  He said, almost stuttering, "Now, according to the Nastiaspenskaya hypothesis, the filtering out of the important thoughts is most evident immediately after the synapse. Once the cell body is approached, the difference fades. So once we are in the neighboring dendrite, open your minds. Be ready for anything. Say whatever you hear out loud. Describe any images. I'll record everything. You, too, Arkady. Albert, you, too. - We're in now. Begin!"

  Chapter 15. Alone!

  Good company robs even death of some of its terrors.

  — Dezhnev Senior

  65.

  Morrison watched what followed with a certain detachment. He did not intend to participate actively. If something forced itself into his mind, he would respond and report it. It would be unscientific not to.

  Kaliinin, at his left, looked grim and her fingers were idle. He leaned toward her and whispered, "Have you got us back as L-glucose?"

  She nodded.

  He said, "Are you aware of this Nastiaspenskaya hypothesis?"

  She said, "It's not in my field. I've never heard of it."

  "Do you believe it?"

  But Kaliinin was not to be trapped. She said, "I'm not qualified either to believe or disbelieve, but he believes it. - Because he wants to."

  "Do you sense anything?"

  "Nothing more than before."

  Dezhnev was, of course, silent. Boranova occasionally produced a crisp word or two, which, however, seemed to Morrison's ears to lack conviction.

  Only Konev seemed to maintain enthusiasm. At one point, he cried out, "Did anyone get that? Anyone? 'Circular rhythm.' 'Circular rhythm.'"

  There was no direct answer and, after a while, Morrison said, "What does that mean, Yuri?"

  Konev did not answer. - And even he grew quiet after a while and was reduced to staring blankly ahead as the ship moved onward in the fluid stream.

  Boranova asked, "Well, Yuri?"

  Konev said rather hoarsely, "I do not understand it."

  Dezhnev said, "Yuri, little son, it may be this is a bad neuron and isn't doing much thinking. We'll have to try another and maybe another. The first one may have been simply beginner's luck."

  Konev looked at him angrily. "We don't work with single cells. We're in a group of cells - a million of them or more - that are a center of creative thought by Albert's theory. What one of them thinks, they all think - with minor variations."

  Morrison said, "That's what I believe I have shown."

  Dezhnev said, "Then we don't go looking from cell to cell?"

  "It would be no use," said Morrison.

  "Good," said Dezhnev heavily, "because we don't have the time and we don't have the energy. So what do we do now?"

  In the silence that followed, Konev said again, "I do not understand it. Nastiaspenskaya could not be wrong."

  And now Kaliinin, with great deliberation, unclasped herself and stood up.

  She said, "I want to say something and I don't want to be interrupted. Natalya, listen to me. We have gone far enough. This is an experiment that perhaps had to be done, even though, in my opinion, it was sure to fail. Well, it has failed."

  She pointed a slim finger briefly at Konev, without looking at him. "Some people want to alter the Universe to their liking. Whatever is not so, they would make so by sheer force of will - except that the Universe is beyond any person's will, squeeze he ever so hard.

  "I don't know if Nastiaspenskaya is correct or not. I don't know if Albert's theories are correct or not. But this I know-what they think, and what any neuroscientist thinks about the brain generally, must be about a reasonably normal brain. Academician Shapirov's brain is not reasonably normal. Twenty percent of it is nonfunctioning-dead. The rest must be distorted in consequence and the fact that he has been in a coma for weeks shows that.

  "Any reasonable human being would realize that Shapirov cannot be thinking in normal fashion. His brain is an army in - in disarray. It is a factory in which all the equipment has been jarred loose. It is sparking randomly, emitting broken thoughts, scattered pieces, splinters of memory. Some men" - she pointed again - "won't admit it because they believe that if they only insist loudly enough and strongly enough, the obvious will retreat and the impossible will somehow come into being."

  Konev had now also unclasped and was also standing. He turned slowly and looked at Kaliinin. (Morrison was astonished. Konev was actually looking at her. And on his face there was no visible sign of anger or hatred or contempt. It was a hangdog look, with a touch of self-contempt in it. Morrison felt sure of this.)

  Yet Konev's voice was steady and hard as he looked away from Kaliinin and turned to Boranova, addressing her.

&
nbsp; "Natalya, was this point made before we embarked on this voyage?"

  "If you mean, Yuri, did Sophia say all this to me before this moment? She did not."

  "Is there any reason we should be plagued with crew members who have no faith in our work? Why should such a person have agreed to come on this voyage?"

  "Because I am a scientist," shot back Kaliinin and she, too, addressed Boranova. "Because I wanted to test the effect of artificial electrical patterns on biochemical interaction. That has been done, so that for me the voyage was a success, and for Arkady, since the ship has handled as it should, and for Albert, since the evidence for his theories is stronger now, I gather, than it was before we came here, and for you, Natalya, since you brought us down here and, presumably, will bring us back safely again. But for one" - pointing at Konev - "it has been a failure and the mental stability of he who has failed would be greatly helped by the frank admission of that failure."

  (She's getting back at him with a vengeance, thought Morrison.)

  But Konev did not crumple under Kaliinin's forceful attack. He remained surprisingly calm and he said, still to Boranova, "That is not so. That is the reverse of what is true. It was clear from the start that we could not expect Shapirov to think as he did when he was in full health. It was entirely likely we would get bits and pieces of meaning intermingled with meaninglessness and trivialities. That we did. I was hoping to get a higher percentage of meaning in this new neuron immediately past the synapse. There we failed. That makes the task before us more difficult, but not impossible.

  "We've got well over a hundred phrases and images we've salvaged from Shapirov's thinking. Don't forget 'nu times c equals m sub s,' which must be significant. There's no possible reason to think of that simply as a triviality."

  Boranova said, "Have you thought, Yuri, that it is possible that that fragment of a mathematical expression represents something Shapirov tried and found wanting?"