Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain fv-2

by Isaac Asimov

  "As your people poke their noses into ours -" said Morrison with some indignation.

  "Undoubtedly," said Boranova with a negligent wave of her hand. "Of course, you will be able to tell them of our success, but we don't really object to their knowing. To this day, Americans insist on believing that Soviet science and technology is second-class. It will do us good to teach them a lesson in this. One thing, though -"

  "Ah," said Morrison.

  "Not a large thing, but a lie. You must not say we brought you here by force. In any public mention of this matter, you must state - if the question arises - that you came here voluntarily, in order to test your theories under conditions not available to you elsewhere in the world. It is a totally likely thing. Who would disbelieve you?"

  "My government knows otherwise."

  "Yes, but they will themselves urge you to tell the lie. They are as little eager as we are to plunge the world into a crisis over this. Aside from the fact that crises between the United States and the Soviet Union would instantly antagonize the rest of the world against both of us in these so-called good new days, the United States will no more wish to admit they had let you be taken than we would to admit we had taken you. Come, Albert, it is a small thing."

  Morrison sighed. "If you return me now, as you say you will do, I will keep quiet about this small matter of kidnapping."

  "You use the conditional. You say 'if.'" Boranova was grim. "You clearly find it troublesome to believe me to be a person of honor. Why? Because I am a Soviet. Two generations of peace, two generations of getting along, and your old habits persist. Is there to be no hope for humanity?"

  "Good new days or not, we still don't like your system of government."

  "Who gives you the right to judge us? We don't like yours, either. - But never mind. If we begin to quarrel, that will spoil what should be a happy day for you - and what is a happy day for me."

  "Very well. We will not quarrel."

  "Then let us say good-bye now, Albert, and someday we will meet again under more normal circumstances I am sure." She held out her hand to him and he took it. She went on, "I have asked Sophia to escort you back to the hotel and to make the arrangements for your leaving. You will not object to that, I'm sure."

  Morrison pressed her hand strongly. "No. I rather like Sophia."

  Boranova smiled. "I had sensed that somehow."

  80.

  It was a happy day for Boranova and her exhaustion did not prevent her from enjoying it.

  Exhaustion! How many days of rest, how many nights of sleep, how long a stretch at home with Nikolai and Aleksandr would it take to cure that?

  But she was alone now and for a period of time there would be nothing to do. Seize the moment!

  Boranova stretched out luxuriously on the couch in her office and gave herself over to a curious jumble of thought - now a commendation from Moscow, with a promotion, all mixed up with days on the beach at Crimea with her husband and son. It became almost real as she slept and dreamed that she was pursuing little Aleksandr as he marched firmly into the cold waters of the Black Sea in heedless lack of concern over the possibility of drowning himself. She was carrying a drum that she was beating wildly in order to attract the attention he stubbornly refused to give her.

  And the vision broke apart and faded and the drumbeat was a hammering at the door.

  She rose with a confused effort, smoothed the blouse she was wearing, and strode to the door in hasty concern. This turned to fury when she threw it open and found Konev frowning darkly, his fist raised to renew his assault.

  "What is this, Yuri?" she said indignantly. "Is this your way of announcing yourself? There are signals."

  "Which no one answered, though I knew you to be within."

  Boranova motioned him in with a quick gesture of her head. She was not anxious to see him and he was not a pleasant sight.

  She said, "Haven't you slept at all? You look awful."

  "I haven't had time. I've been working."

  "At what?"

  "At what do you suppose, Natalya? At the data we obtained yesterday in the brain."

  Boranova felt her anger seep away. After all, it was Konev whose dream this had been. The success of survival was sweet for everyone but Konev. Only he felt the failure.

  She said, "Sit down, Yuri. Try to face it. The thought analysis didn't work - and it couldn't. Shapirov was too far gone. Even as we went in, he was on the point of death."

  Konev looked at Boranova blankly, as though totally disregarding her words. "Where is Albert Morrison?"

  "There's no use in hounding him, Yuri. He did what he could, but Shapirov's was a dying brain. - Listen to me. It was a dying brain."

  Again that blank look. "What are you talking about, Natalya?"

  "The data we got. The supposed data that you're struggling with. Let it go. The voyage has been a marvelous success even without it."

  Konev shook his head. "A marvelous success without it? You don't know what you're saying. Where is Morrison?"

  "He's gone, Yuri. It's finished. He's on his way back to the United States. As we promised."

  Konev's eyes opened wide. "But that's impossible. He can't go. He mustn't go."

  "Well, now," said Boranova calmly. "What are you talking about?"

  Konev rose to his feet. "I went over the data, you stupid woman, and it's all plain. We must keep Morrison. At all costs, we must keep him."

  Boranova's face reddened. "How dare you insult me, Yuri? Explain yourself at once or I will have you suspended from this project. What is this new mad fixation of yours on Albert?"

  Konev lifted his hands halfway upward, as though impelled by an overwhelming desire to strike out at something, with nothing present to strike at.

  He gasped, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I withdraw the adjective. But you must understand. All through our stay in the brain - all the time we were trying to tap Shapirov's thoughts - Albert Morrison was lying to us. He knew what was happening. He must have known and he carefully led us in the wrong direction. We must have him, Natalya, and we must have his device. We can never let him go."

  Chapter 18. Return

  The trouble with triumph is that you may be on the other side.

  — Dezhnev Senior

  81.

  Morrison was doing his best to keep his feelings under control. There was a natural elation. He was going to go home. He was going to be free. He was going to be safe. Much more than that, he would -

  But he dared not think of that climactic bit as yet. Yuri Konev was fearfully intelligent and already suspicious. Morrison's thoughts, if Konev concentrated on them, might give themselves away in his facial expressions somehow.

  — Or were they just playing with him? That was the other side of the coin.

  Were they planning to break his spirit and turn him to their own uses? It was an old trick, to raise hopes and then dash them - far worse than having no hope at all at any time.

  Would Natalya Boranova do such a thing? She had not hesitated to take him forcibly when he would not come willingly. She had not hesitated to threaten to destroy his reputation forever to get him on the ship. How much farther would she go? Would she stop at nothing?

  His heart bounded with a marked relief when Sophia Kaliinin appeared. Surely she would not be party to such a deception.

  He believed that even more firmly when she smiled at him, looking happier than he had ever seen her. She took his hand and tucked it under her arm.

  "You'll be going home now. I'm so glad for you," she said and Morrison could not make himself believe that those words - their intonation, her expression - were all part of a careful lie.

  Nevertheless, he said cautiously, "I hope I'm going home."

  And she said, "You are. - Have you ever been on a skimmer?"

  For a moment, Morrison stumbled on the Russian word, then used a translated English phrase. "Do you mean an SPF - a solar-powered flyer?"

  "This is a Soviet design. Much better. It has ligh
t engines. You can't always trust the sun."

  "But why a skimmer, then?" They were moving briskly toward the passageway that would lead them out of the Grotto.

  "Why not? We'll be at Malenkigrad in fifteen minutes and since you've never been in a Soviet skimmer, you'll love it. It will be one more way of celebrating your return."

  "I'm a little nervous of heights. Will it be safe?"

  "Absolutely. Besides, I couldn't resist. We're in a wonderful situation now and I don't know how much longer it will last. Whatever we want we getfor the moment. I said, 'A skimmer is what we will want,' and they smiled all over their faces and said, 'Why, certainly, Dr. Kaliinin. It will be waiting for you.' Day before yesterday, I would have had to fill out a proof-of-need form for a plate of borscht. Today I am a hero of the Soviet Union - unofficially, as yet. We all are. You, too, Albert."

  "I hope I won't be expected to stay for the official ceremonies," said Morrison, still cautious.

  "The official ceremonies will be confined to the Grotto, of course, and won't be elaborate at all. Your scroll will undoubtedly be forwarded to you. Perhaps our ambassador can give it to you in a quiet Washington ceremony."

  "Not necessary," said Morrison. "I would appreciate the honor, but getting it in the mail is all I really want."

  They had turned down a corridor that Morrison had not taken before and then walked long enough to make him wonder uneasily where they might be going. No need to have worried, Morrison thought as they emerged into a small airfield.

  There was no mistaking the skimmer. It had long wings, glittering with a layer of photovoltaic cells along their entire upper surface, very much as American SPFs had. The American planes, however, relied on the solar panels entirely. The skimmer he saw had small rotors - gasoline-powered, no doubt - as assists. Kaliinin might present that as a Soviet improvement but Morrison suspected that the Soviet photovoltaic cells were not as efficient as the American ones.

  A mechanic was standing near the skimmer and Kaliinin approached him with long, confident strides. "How does it test out?"

  "Sweet as a dream," said the mechanic.

  She smiled and nodded, but as he stepped away she muttered to Morrison, "I'll check it out anyway, of course. I've seen dreams that turned into nightmares."

  Morrison studied the skimmer with a mixture of interest and apprehension. It looked like the skeleton of a plane, with everything somehow thinner and longer than it should be. The cockpit was tiny, like a soap bubble under the huge flap of wings and the long backward extension of a thin skeletal structure.

  Kaliinin had to bend herself nearly double to climb in. Morrison watched her as she fiddled with the controls. Then, after what seemed a considerable lapse of time, she taxied it down the field, turned it, and came back. She raised the rotos and let them turn slowly and eventually everything was shut down and she got out.

  "It's working nicely," she said. "The fuel supply is adequate and the sun is shining brilliantly. One couldn't ask for more."

  Morrison nodded and looked around. "One could ask for the pilot. Where is he?"

  Kaliinin froze at once. "Where is he? Is there some sexual requirement for the task? I pilot my own skimmer."

  "You?" exclaimed Morrison quite automatically.

  "Yes, I! Why not? I have my license and I qualify as a master pilot. Get in!"

  "I'm sorry," stammered Morrison. "I - I rarely fly and piloting anything through the air is almost a mystical thing to me. I just assumed that a pilot didn't do anything but piloting and that if someone did anything else, he couldn't be a pilot. Do you know what I mean?"

  "I'm not even going to try to figure it out, Albert. Get in."

  Morrison climbed in, following her directions and doing his best not to damage his head on any portion of the skimmer - or, perhaps, damaging the skimmer.

  He sat in his seat, staring in horror at the skimmer's open side to his right. "Isn't there a door to close?"

  "Why do you want a closed door? It would spoil the wonderful feeling of flight. Strap yourself in and you'll be perfectly safe. - Here, I'll show you how. - Are you ready now?" She was in the seat beside him, looking quite confident and pleased with herself. They were crowded into contact and that much at least Morrison found rather soothing.

  "I'm resigned," he said. "That's as close as I can get to ready."

  "Don't be silly. You're going to love this. We'll use the motors to rise."

  There was a high-pitched throb of the small engine and a rhythmic slap as the rotors began to spin. Slowly the skimmer rose and - as slowly - it turned. It canted to one side while turning and Morrison found himself leaning out over the open side and straining precariously against the strap that held him. He barely managed to fight off the strong impulse to throw his arms around Kaliinin for nothing more than utterly nonerotic security.

  The skimmer straightened and Kaliinin said, "Now, listen," as she turned off the engine and threw in a switch labeled, in Cyrillic, SOLAR. The throb ceased and the rotors slackened as the forward propeller began to turn. The skimmer moved slowly and almost silently forward.

  "Listen to the quiet," whispered Kaliinin. "It's like drifting on nothing."

  Morrison looked down uneasily.

  Kaliinin said, "We won't fall. Even if a cloud passed over the sun or if a circuit failure put the photovoltaic cells out of action, there is enough power in the storage components to bring us across kilometers, if necessary, to a safe landing. And if we ran out of power, the skimmer is more than half a glider and it would still settle down to a safe landing. I don't think I could force the craft into a crash even if I tried. The only real danger is a strong wind and there's none of that now."

  Morrison swallowed and said, "It's a gentle motion."

  "Of course. We're not going much faster than an automobile would go and the sensation is much pleasanter. I love it. Try to relax and look at the sky. There's nothing as peaceful as a skimmer."

  He said, "How long have you been doing this?"

  "When I was twenty-four, I got my master's license. So did Yu- so did he. Many a peaceful summer afternoon we spent in the air in a skimmer like this. Once we each had a racing skimmer and marked out lover's knots in the air." Her face twisted slightly as she said that and it occurred to Morrison that she had obtained a skimmer for the short hop to Malenkigrad only for the sake of a momentary reliving of memories and for no other reason.

  "That must have been dangerous," he said.

  "Not really - if you know what you're doing. Once we skimmed along the foothills of the Caucasus and that might have been dangerous. A wind squall can easily smash you into a hillside and that wouldn't be fun at all, but we were young and carefree. - Though I might have been better off if that had happened."

  Her voice trailed away and for a moment her face darkened, but then an inner thought seemed to illuminate her into a smile.

  Morrison felt his distrust mounting again. Why did the thought of Konev make her so happy, when she could not bear to look at him when they were together in the miniaturized ship?

  Morrison said, "You don't seem to mind talking about him, Sophia." Then, deliberately, he used the forbidden word, "About Yuri, I mean. It even seems to make you happy. Why is that?"

  And Kaliinin said between her teeth, "It's not sentimental memories that makes me happy, I assure you, Albert. Anger and frustration and - and heartbreak can make a person vicious. I want revenge and I am mean-spirited enough - well, human enough - to enjoy it when it comes."

  "Revenge? I don't understand."

  "It's simple enough, Albert. He deprived me of love and my daughter of a father when I had no way of striking back. That did not bother him as long as he had his dream of bringing miniaturization to practical low-energy fruition so that he might become, at a bound, the most famous scientist in the world - or in history."

  "But he failed at that. We didn't get the necessary information from Shapirov's brain. You know we didn't."

  "Ah, but you don't kn
ow him. He never gives up; he's driven by the Furies. I've seen him, fleetingly, looking at you, after the voyage through Shapirov's body was done. I know his looks, Albert. I can tell his thoughts even from the droop of an eyelid. He thinks you have the answer."

  "Of what was in Shapirov's brain? I don't. How could I?"

  "It doesn't matter whether you do or not, Albert. He thinks you do and he wants you and your device with a greater yearning than he ever wanted anything in his life; certainly more than he wanted me or his child. And I'm taking you away from him, Albert. With my own hands I am taking you out of the Grotto and will watch you leave for your own country. And I will see him sicken to death of frustrated ambition."

  Morrison stared at her in astonishment as the skimmer moved along in response to her rock-steady hand at the controls. He had not thought that Kaliinin was capable of wearing an expression of such consuming and malignant joy.

  82.

  Boranova had listened to Konev's emotional and breathless account and felt herself carried along by the wave of his utter conviction. That had happened before, when he had been convinced that Shapirov's dying mind could be tapped and that Morrison, the American neurophysicist, was the key to doing that. She had been swept along then and she tried to resist it now.

  She said finally, "That sounds quite mad."

  Konev said, "What's the difference what it sounds like if it's true?"

  "Ah, but is it true?"

  "I am certain."

  Boranova muttered, "We need Arkady here to tell us that his father assured him that vehemence was no guarantee of truth."

  "Neither is it a guarantee of the reverse. If you accept what I say, you must also see that we can't let him go. Certainly not now and possibly not ever."

  Boranova shook her head violently. "It's too late. There's nothing to be done. The United States wants him back and the government has agreed to let him go. The government can't very well backtrack now without bringing about a world crisis."