Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain
Chapter 19. Turnaround
In the true triumph, however, there are no losers.
86.
Morrison sat in the hotel room that he had, for some fifteen minutes, thought he would never see again. He was close to despair - closer, it seemed to him, than he had been even when he was alone and lost in the cellular stream of the neuron.
What was the use? Over and over again, he thought this, as though the phrase were reverberating in an echo chamber. He was a loser. He had always been a loser.
For a day or so, he had thought that Sophia Kaliinin had been attracted to him, but, of course, she hadn't. He had been nothing more than her weapon against Konev and when Konev had called to her - beckoned to her - she had returned to him and had then no further use for her weapons, either for Morrison or for her stunner.
He looked at them dully. They were standing together in the sunlight streaming through the window - they in the sunlight, he in the shadow, as it must always be.
They were whispering together, so lost in each other that Kaliinin seemed unaware that she was still holding the stunner. For a moment, her knees bent as though she was going to get rid of its weight by dropping it on the bed, but then Konev said something and she was all attention and again unaware of the stunner's existence.
Morrison called out hoarsely, "Your government will not endure this. You have orders to release me."
Konev looked up, his eyes brightening slightly, as though he were being persuaded, with difficulty, to pay attention to his captive. It was not, after all, as though he had to watch Morrison in any physical sense. The waitress, Valeri Paleron, was doing that most efficiently. She stood a meter from Morrison and her eyes (somehow amused - as though she enjoyed the job) never left him.
Konev said, "My government need not concern you, Albert. It will change its mind soon enough."
Kaliinin raised her left hand as though to object, but Konev enclosed it in his.
"Do not be concerned, Sophia," he said. "Information at my disposal has been forwarded to Moscow. It will make them think. They will get back to me on my personal wavelength before long and when I tell them we have safely secured Morrison, they will take action. I am sure they will have the persuasive power to make the Old Man see reason. I promise you that."
Kaliinin said in a troubled voice, "Albert!"
Morrison said, "Are you getting ready to tell me that you are sorry, Sophia, that you crossed me out of existence at one word from the man you seemed to have hated?"
Kaliinin reddened. "You are not crossed out of existence, Albert. You will be well-treated. You will work here as you would have worked in your own country, except that here you will be truly appreciated."
"Thank you," said Morrison, finding some small reservoir of the sardonic inside himself. "If you feel happy for me, of what importance is my feeling for myself?"
Paleron intervened impatiently, "Comrade American, you talk too much. Why do you not sit down? - Sit down. " (She pushed him into a chair.) "You may as well wait quietly, since there is nothing else you can do."
She then turned to Kaliinin, around whose shoulders Konev's right arm was protectively placed. "And you, little Tsaritsa," she said, "are you still planning to place this fine lover of yours out of action that you hold this stunner so menacingly in your hand? You will be able to embrace him the more tightly if both arms are free."
Paleron reached for the stunner Kaliinin was holding and Kaliinin gave it up without a word.
"Actually," said Paleron, looking curiously at the stunner, "I am relieved at having it. In the paroxysm of your newfound love, I feared you might shoot in all directions. It would not be safe in your hands, my little one."
She moved back to the vicinity of Morrison, still studying the stunner and turning it in various ways.
Morrison stirred uneasily. "Don't point it in my direction, woman. It may go off."
Paleron looked at him haughtily. "It will not go off if I don't want it to, Comrade American. I know how to use it."
She smiled in the direction of Konev and Kaliinin. Relieved of the weapon, Kaliinin now had both arms around Konev's neck and was kissing him with quick, gentle touches of her lips against his. Paleron said in their direction, but not really to them, for they weren't listening, "I know how to use it. Like this! And like this!"
And first Konev, then Kaliinin crumpled.
Paleron turned toward Morrison. "Now help me, you idiot, we must work quickly."
She said it in English.
87.
Morrison had difficulty understanding. He simply stared at her.
Paleron pushed his shoulder as though she were trying to awaken him from a deep sleep. "Come on. You grab the feet."
Morrison obeyed mechanically. First Konev and then Kaliinin were lifted onto the bed, from which Paleron had stripped the thin blanket. She stretched both of them out along the narrow confines of the single mattress, then searched Kaliinen in a quick, practiced way.
"Ah," she said, staring at a sheet of folded paper, whose close-set print marked it indelibly as something written in governmentese. She flipped it into the pocket of her white jacket and continued the search. Other items came to light - a pair of small keys, for instance. Quickly she went over Konev, plucking a small metallic disc from the inner surface of his lapel.
"His personal wavelength," she said and placed that, too, into her pocket.
Finally she retrieved a black rectangular object and said, "This is yours, isn't it?"
Morrison grunted. It was his computer program. He had been so far gone he had not been aware that Konev had taken it from him. He clutched at it frantically now.
Paleron turned Kaliinin and Konev toward each other, propping them so that they would not fall apart. She then placed Konev's arm around Kaliinin and covered the two with the blanket, tucking it in under each to help keep them in place.
"Don't stare at me like that, Morrison," she said when she was done. "Come on." She seized his upper arm in a firm grip.
He resisted. "Where are we going? What's happening?"
"I'll tell you later. Not a word now. There is no time to lose. Not a minute. Not a second. Come." She ended with soft fierceness and Morrison followed her.
Out of the room they went, down the stairs as softly as she could manage (he following and imitating), along the carpeted corridor, and out to the limousine.
Paleron opened the front door on the passenger side with one of the keys she had obtained from Kaliinin's pocket and said brusquely, "Get in."
"Where are we going?"
"Get in." She virtually hurled him into the limo.
She settled quickly behind the wheel and Morrison resisted the impulse to ask her if she knew how to drive. It had finally gotten through to his stunned mind that Paleron wasn't simply a waitress.
That she had played the part of one, however, was made plain by the faint odor of onions still clinging to her and mixing rather infelicitously with the richer and pleasanter odor of the limo's interior.
Paleron started the engine, looked around the parking area, which was deserted except for a cat going about some business of its own, and moved out over a sandy patch to the path that led to the nearby road.
Slowly the limo picked up speed and when it finally reached the ninety-five kilometer-per-hour mark, it was moving along a two-lane highway on which, occasionally, an automobile, moving in the other direction, passed them. Morrison found himself capable of thinking normally again.
He glanced back earnestly through the rear window. A car, far behind them, was turning off at an intersection they had passed some moments before. No one appeared to be following them.
Morrison then turned to watch Paleron's profile. She seemed competent but grim. It was clear to him now that she was not only no waitress by true profession but was very likely no Soviet citizen. Her English had a strong urban accent that no European would learn in school or could pick up in a way that would be true enough to fool Morrison's ear.
He said, "You were waiting there outside the hotel, reading a book, so that you would see Sophia and myself when we came."
"You got it," said Paleron.
"You're an American agent, aren't you?"
"Shrewder and shrewder."
"Where are we going?"
"To the designated airport where the Swedish plane will pick you up. I had to get the details on that from Kaliinin."
"And you know how to get there?"
"Yes, indeed. I've been in Malenkigrad for considerably longer a period than your Kaliinin has been here. - But tell me, why did you tell her this man, Konev, was in love with her? She was just waiting to hear that from a third person. She wanted it confirmed and you did that for her. In that way, you handed over the whole game to Konev. Why did you do it?"
"For one thing," said Morrison mildly, "it was the truth."
"The truth?" Paleron, looking bemused, shook her head. "You don't belong in the real world. You sure don't. I'm surprised no one knocked you on the head and buried you long ago - just for your own good. Besides, how do you know it's the truth?"
Morrison said, "I know. - But I was sorry for her. She saved my life yesterday. She saved all our lives yesterday. For that matter, Konev saved my life, too."
"You all saved each other's life, I suppose."
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"But that was yesterday. Today you started fresh and you shouldn't have let yesterday influence you. She would never have taken up with him again if it weren't for your dumb remark. He could have sworn himself purple about loving her and all the rest of that rubbish and she wouldn't have believed him. She dared not. Be made a fool of again? Never! She would have stunned him to the ground in another minute and then you told her, 'Why, yes, kid, that there guy loves you,' and that's all she needed. I tell you, Morrison, you shouldn't be out without your keeper."
Morrison stirred uneasily, "How do you know all this?"
"I was on the floor in the back seat of this car, ready to go with you and Kaliinin and to make sure she took you there. And then you pulled your dumb trick. What was there to do but grab you and keep you from being stunned down, then get you back to the room where we could have some privacy, and after that get hold of the stunner somehow?"
"Thank you."
"That's all right. - And I made them look like a loving couple, too. Anyone coming in will be bound to say, 'Excuse me,' and leave quickly - and that will give us more time."
"How long will it be before they're conscious again?"
"I don't know. It depends on how accurately I placed the radiation and what each state of mind was and who knows what else. But when they do come back, it will take them some time to remember what happened. I'm hoping that in their position, the first thing they'll remember is that they're in love. That would preoccupy them for a while. Then when they do get around to remembering you and what it was that was being done with Moscow, it will be too late."
"Are they going to be permanently damaged?"
Paleron cast a quick look at Morrison's concerned face. "You're worried about them, aren't you? Why? What are they to you?"
"Well... shipmates."
Paleron made an inelegant sound. "I guess they'll recover okay. They might be better off if some of that supersensitive edge is ground off. They can get together and make a nice family then."
"And what's going to happen to you? You'd better get on the plane with me."
"Don't be a jackass. The Swedes wouldn't take me. They've got orders to take one guy and they'll test you to make sure you're the right one. They'll have records of your fingerprints and your retina pattern, right out of the files of the Population Board. If they take the wrong person or an additional person, that'll be a new incident and the Swedes are too smart for that."
"But then what will happen to you?"
"Well, for starters, I'll say you got hold of the stunner and rayed them both, then held the stunner on me and made me take you to the airport because you didn't know its location. You ordered me to stop outside the gates, then stunned me down and tossed the stunner into the car. Early tomorrow, I'll make my way back to Malenkigrad, like I was coming out of a stunning."
"But Konev and Kaliinin will deny your story."
"They weren't looking at me when they were stunned and almost no one remembers the actual moment of stunning, anyway. Besides, the Soviet Government knows that they ordered you returned and if you are returned, then anything Konev will tell them about you will do him no good. The government will accept the fait accompli. It's rubles to kopeks or, better, dollars to kopeks that they'll prefer to forget the whole thing - and I'll just go back to waitressing."
"There's bound to be some suspicion clinging to you."
"Then we'll see," she said. "Nichevo! What will be, will be." She smiled faintly.
They continued to travel along the highway and Morrison finally said with a touch of diffidence, "Shouldn't we to speed it up a little?"
"Not even by a kilometer per hour," said Paleron firmly. "We're going at just under the speed limit and the Soviets have every centimeter of the highway radarized. They have no sense of humor about the speed limit and I don't intend to spend hours trying to get out of a police station because I wanted to save fifteen minutes reaching the plane."
It was past noon now and Morrison was beginning to feel the mild, premonitory pinches of hunger. He said, "What was it that Konev told Moscow about me, do you suppose?"
Paleron shook her head. "Don't know. Whatever it was, he got a response on his personal wavelength. It signaled about twenty minutes ago. You didn't hear?"
"No."
"You wouldn't last long in my business. - Naturally, they got no answer, so whoever Konev was talking to in Moscow will try to find out why. Someone will find them and then they'll figure you're on the way to the airport and someone will chase out after us to see if you can be headed off. Like Pharaoh's chariots."
"We don't have Moses to part the Red Sea for us," muttered Morrison.
"If we get to the airport, we'll have the Swedes. They won't give you up to anybody."
"What can they do against the Soviet military?"
"It won't be the Soviet military. It will be some functionary, working for an extremist splinter group, who will try to bluff the Swedes. But we have official papers giving you up to them and they won't be bluffed. We just have to get there first."
"And you don't think we should go faster?"
Paleron shook her head firmly.
Half an hour later, Paleron pointed and said, "There we are and we have the breaks. The Swedish plane is in early and has landed."
She stopped the car, pressed a button, and the door flew open on his side. "You go on alone. I don't want to be seen, but listen -" She leaned toward him. "My name is Ashby. When you get to Washington, tell them that if they think it's time for me to get out - I'm ready. Got it?"
"I've got it."
Morrison got out of the car, blinking in the sunlight. In the distance, a man in uniform - not a Soviet uniform, as nearly as he could tell - waved him forward.
Morrison broke into a run. There were no speed limits on running and though he could see no one in pursuit he would not have been surprised to see someone rise out of the ground to stop him.
He turned, waved a last time in the direction of the car, thought he saw an answering wave, and continued to run.
The man who had gestured to him advanced, first at a walk, then at a run, and caught him as he all but fell forward. Morrison could see now that he was wearing a European Federation uniform.
"May I please have your name?" said the man in English. His accent, to Morrison's infinite relief, was Swedish.
"Albert Jonas Morrison," he said and together they walked toward the plane and the small group waiting to check his identity.
88.
Morrison sat at the plane window, tense and exhausted, staring downward at the land fleeing east. A lunch, consisting largely of herring and boiled potatoes, had soothed the inner man but scarcely the inner mind.
Had the miniaturized trip through the bloodstream and brain yesterday (only yesterday?) twisted him forever into a mental attitude of apprehension of imminent disaster? Would he never again be able to accept the Universe as friendly? Would he never walk through it in serene consciousness that no one and no thing wished him harm?
Or had there merely been insufficient time for him to recover?
Of course, common sense told him that there was reason not to feel completely safe yet. That was still Soviet earth under the plane.
Was there still time for Konev's ally in Moscow, whoever he might be, to send out planes after the Swedes? Was he powerful enough to do so? Would Pharaoh's chariots take to the air and continue the pursuit?
For a moment, his heart failed him when he actually saw a plane in the distance - then another.
He turned to the stewardess, who sat across the aisle from him. He did not have to ask the question. She apparently read his anxious expression accurately.
"Federation planes," she said, "as escort. We've left Soviet territory. The planes are Swedish-crewed."
Then, when they passed over the English Channel, American planes joined the escort. Morrison was safe from the chariots, at any rate.
His mind did not let him rest, however. Missiles? Would someone actually commit an act of war? He tried to calm himself. Surely no man in the Soviet Union, not even the Soviet Executive himself, could make such a move without consultation and no consultation would take less than hours or perhaps days.
It couldn't be.
Still, it wasn't until the plane had landed on the outskirts of Washington that Morrison could allow himself to feel that it was over and that he was safely in his own country.
89.
It was Saturday morning and Morrison was recovering. He had attended to his creature needs. He had had breakfast and had washed. He was even partly dressed.
Now he lay in bed on his back, arms behind his head. It was cloudy outside and he had only half-clarified the window because he wanted a sense of privacy. In the hours after he had disembarked from the plane and had been rushed to his present place of concealment, there had been enough official crowding around him to make him wonder a bit if he was any better off in the United States than he had been in the Soviet Union.
The doctors had finally finished their probing, the initial questions had been asked and answered, even during dinner, and they had finally left him to his sleep in a room that was, in turn, inside something that resembled a fortress for the depth of its security.
Well, at least he didn't have to face miniaturization. There was always that thought to comfort him.
The door signal flashed and Morrison reached over his head, feeling the bedboard for the button that would clarify the one-way patch on the door. He recognized the face that appeared and pushed another contact that allowed the door to be opened from the outside.
Two men entered. The one whose familiar face had been at the one-way patch said, "You remember me, I hope."
Morrison made no move to get out of bed. He was the center now around which all revolved, at least temporarily, and he would take advantage of that. He simply raised his arm in casual greeting and said, "You're the agent who wanted me to go to the Soviet Union. Rodano, isn't it?"
"Francis Rodano, yes. And this is Professor Robert G. Friar. I imagine you know him."
Morrison hesitated and then courtesy swung his feet off the bed and lifted him to his feet. "Hello, Professor. I know of you, of course, and have seen you on holovision often enough. I'm pleased to make your personal acquaintance."
Friar, one of the "visible scientists" whose photographs and HV appearances had made him familiar to most of the world, smiled tightly. He had a round face, pale blue eyes, an apparently permanent vertical crease between his eyebrows, ruddy cheeks, a sturdy body of average height, and a way of looking around him restlessly.
He said, "You, I take it, are Albert Jonas Morrison."
"That's right," said Morrison easily. "Mr. Rodano will vouch for me. Please sit down, both of you, and forgive me if I continue to relax on the bed. I have about a year's relaxation to catch up on."
The two visitors sat down on a large couch and leaned toward Morrison. Rodano smiled a bit tentatively. "I can't promise you much relaxation, Dr. Morrison. At least for a while. Incidentally, we have just received word from Ashby. Do you remember her?"
"The waitress who turned the tables? Yes, indeed. Without her -"
"We know the essentials of the story, Morrison. She wants you to know that your two friends have recovered and are apparently fond of each other still."
"And Ashby, herself? She told me she was ready to leave if Washington thought it best. I reported that last night."
"Yes, we'll get her out one way or another. - And now I'm afraid we must bother you again."
Morrison frowned. "How long will this keep up?"
"I don't know. You must take it as it comes. - Professor Friar, won't you take over?"
Friar nodded. "Dr. Morrison, do you mind if I take notes. - No, let me rephrase that. I am going to take notes, Morrison."
He plucked a small computer keyboard of advanced design out of his briefcase.
Rodano said mildly, "Where will these notes go, Professor?"
"To my recording device, Mr. Rodano."
"Which is where, Professor?"
"In my office at Defense, Mr. Rodano," Then, with some irritation under the other's continuing stare, "Into my safe in my office at Defense and both the safe and the recording device are well-coded. Does that satisfy you?"
"Proceed, Professor."
Friar turned to Morrison and said, "Is it true that you were miniaturized, Morrison. You, personally?"
"I was. At my smallest, I was the size of an atom while part of a ship the size of a glucose molecule. I spent better than half a day inside a living human body, first in the bloodstream, then in the brain."
"And this is true? No chance of an illusion or trickery?"
"Please, Professor Friar. If I were tricked or hypnotized, my testimony now would be worthless. We can't proceed unless you recognize the fact that I am in my right mind and can be relied on to report events that correspond reasonably well with reality."
Friar's lips pressed together and then he said, "You are right. We must make assumptions to begin with and I will assume you are sane and reliable - without prejudice to further reconsideration of such assumptions."
"Of course," said Morrison.
"In that case" - and Friar turned to Rodano - "we begin with one great and important observation. Miniaturization is possible and the Soviets do indeed have it and make use of it and can miniaturize even living human beings without apparent harm to them."
He turned back to Morrison. "Presumably, the Soviets claim to miniaturize by reducing the size of Planck's constant."
"Yes, they do."
"Of course they do. There's no other conceivable way of doing it. Did they explain the procedure by which that was done?"
"Certainly not. You might as well make the assumption that the Soviets scientists I dealt with are as sane as we are. They wouldn't carelessly give away anything they don't want us to know."
"Very well, then. Assumption made. Now tell us exactly what happened to you in the Soviet Union. Do not tell it as an adventure story, but only as the observations of a professional physicist."
Morrison began to talk. He was not entirely sorry to do so. He wanted to exorcise it and he didn't want the responsibility of being the only American to know what he knew. He told the story in detail and it took hours. He did not finish until they were sitting at a lunch delivered by room service.
Over dessert, Friar said, "Let me summarize, then, as best I can from memory. To begin with, miniaturization does not affect time flow, nor the quantum interactions - that is, the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. The gravitational interaction is affected, however, and decreases in proportion to mass, as it naturally would. Is that so?"
Morrison nodded.
Friar went on. "Light - and electromagnetic radiation, generally - can cross into and out of the miniaturization field, but sound cannot. Normal matter is weakly repelled by the miniaturization field but, under pressure, normal matter can be made to enter it and be itself miniaturized, at the expense of the energy of the field."
Morrison nodded again.
Friar said, "The more miniaturized an object becomes, the less energy is required to miniaturize it further. Do you know if the energy requirement decreases in proportion to the mass remaining at any particular stage of miniaturization?"
"That would certainly seem logical," said Morrison, "but I don't recall anyone mentioning the quantitative nature of that phenomenon."
"To go on, then. The more miniaturized an object, the greater the chance of its spontaneous deminiaturization - and that refers to the entire mass within the field, rather than to any component part. You, as a separated individual, were more likely to deminiaturize spontaneously than you would as part of the ship. Is that right?"
"That was my understanding."
"And your Soviet companions admitted that it was impossible to maximize and to make things more massive than they are in nature."
"Again, that was my understanding. You must realize, Professor Friar, that I can only repeat what I was told. They might have deliberately misled me or they may have been wrong because they had insufficient knowledge themselves."
"Yes yes, I understand. Do you have any reason to believe they were deliberately misleading you?"
"No. It seemed to me they were being honest."
"Well, perhaps. Now, the most interesting thing to me is that Brownian motion was in balance with miniaturization oscillation and that the greater the degree of miniaturization, the greater the shift in balance toward oscillation and away from ordinary Brownian motion."
"That is an actual observation of my own, Professor, and doesn't rest merely on what I was told."
"And that shift of balance has something to do with the rate of spontaneous deminiaturization."
"That is my own thought. I cannot state it as fact."
"Hmm." Friar sipped thoughtfully at his cofFee and said, "The trouble is that all this is superficial. It tells us about the behavior of the miniaturization field, but nothing about how the field is produced. - And in decreasing the value of Planck's constant, they leave the speed of light untouched, you say?"
"Yes, but that, as I emphasized, means that maintaining the miniaturization field costs enormously in energy. If they can couple Planck's constant with the speed of light, increasing the latter as they decrease the former - But they don't have that yet."
"So they say. It was in Shapirov's mind, supposedly, but you were unable to get it out."
"That's right."
Friar remained lost in thought for a few minutes, then shook his head. "We'll go over everything you've said and deduce what we can from it, but I fear it won't help."
"Why not?" asked Rodano.
"Because none of it goes to the heart. If someone who had never seen a robot or heard anything about any of its component parts were to report a robot in operation, he could describe how the head and limbs moved, how the voice sounded, how it obeyed orders, and so on. Nothing he could observe would tell him how a positronic brainpath works or what a molecular valve is. He would not even have an inkling that either exists, nor would those scientists who would work from his observations have any.
"The Soviets have some technique to produce the field and we know nothing about it, nor does anything Morrison can tell us help us there. They might have published material that led up to it, not aware that something crucial was in the making - that was what happened in the mid-twentieth century, when early work on nuclear fission was published before it was understood that it ought to be kept secret. The Soviets didn't make that mistake with miniaturization, however. Nor have we succeeded in retrieving information concerning the matter through espionage or by the luck of having some key personnel on the other side defect and come to us.
"I will consult with my colleagues on the Board, but on the whole, Dr. Morrison, I'm afraid that your adventure in the Soviet Union, however daring and praiseworthy has - except for your confirmation that miniaturization does exist - been useless. I'm sorry, Mr. Rodano, but it might as well not have happened."
90.
Morrison's expression did not change as Friar advanced his conclusion. He poured himself a little more coffee, added cream judiciously, and drank it without haste.
Then he said, "You're quite wrong, you know, Friar."
Friar looked up and said, "Are you trying to say that you know something about the production of the miniaturization field? You had said that -"
"What I'm going to say, Friar, has nothing at all to do with miniaturization. It has everything to do with my own work. The Soviets took me to Malenkigrad and the Grotto in order that I might use my computer program to read Shapirov's mind. It failed at that, which is perhaps not surprising, considering that Shapirov was in a coma and near death. On the other hand, Shapirov, who had a remarkably penetrating mind, referred to my program as a 'relay station' after he had read some of my papers. That's what it turned out to be."
"A relay station?" Friar's face took on a look of puzzled distaste. "What does that mean?"
"Instead of tapping Shapirov's thought, my programmed computer, once inside one of Shapirov's neurons, was acting as a relay, passing thought from one of us to another."
Friar's expression became one of indignation. "You mean it was a telepathic device."
"Exactly. I first experienced that when I was aware of an intense emotion of love and sexual desire for a young woman who was on the miniaturized ship with me. Naturally, I assumed it was my own feeling, for she was a very attractive woman. Nevertheless, I was not aware of any conscious feeling of that sort. It was not until several other instances of the sort that I realized I was receiving the thoughts of a young man on board ship. He and the young lady were estranged, but the passion between them existed, nevertheless."
Friar smiled tolerantly. "Are you sure you were in condition, on board the ship, to interpret these thoughts properly? After all, you were under tension. Did you also receive similar thoughts from the young lady?"
"No. The young man and I exchanged thoughts, involuntarily, on several occasions. When I thought of my wife and children, he thought of a woman and two youngsters. When I was lost in the bloodstream, it was he who picked up my sensations of panic. He assumed he had detected Shapirov's miseries by way of my machine - which remained in my possession when I was adrift - but those were my feelings, not Shapirov's. I did not exchange thoughts with either woman on board, but they exchanged thoughts with each other. When they tried to catch Shapirov's thoughts, they detected similar words and feelings - from each other, of course - which the young man and myself did not."
"A sexual difference?" said Friar skeptically.
"Not really. The pilot of the ship, a male, received nothing at all, either from the women or from the other men, though on one occasion, he did seem to get a thought. I couldn't say from whom. My own feeling is that there are brain types, as there are blood types - probably only a few - and that telepathic communication can be most easily established among those of the same brain type."
Rodano interposed softly, "Even if all this is so, Dr. Morrison. What of it?"
Morrison said, "Let me explain that. For years I've worked to identify the regions and patterns of abstract thought within the human brain with some unremarkable success. Occasionally, I would catch an image, but I never interpreted that properly. I thought it was coming from the animal on whose brain I was working, but I now suspect that they came when I was fairly close to some human being who was in the grip of strong emotion or deep thought. I never noticed that. My fault.
"Nevertheless, having been stung by the general indifference and downright disbelief and ridicule of my colleagues, I never published the matter of catching images, but modified my program in an attempt to intensify it. Some of those modifications were never published, either. Thus, I entered Shapirov's bloodstream with a device that could more nearly serve as a telepathic relay than anything I had ever had before. And now that, at last, my thick head has absorbed exactly what it is that I have, I know what to do to improve the program. I am sure of that."
Friar said, "Let me get this straight, Morrison. You are telling me that, as a result of your fantastic voyage into Shapirov's body, you are now certain you can so modify your device as to make telepathy practical?"
"Practical to an extent. Yes."
"That would be an enormous thing - if you could demonstrate it." The skepticism in Friar's voice did not disappear.
"More enormous than you perhaps think," said Morrison with some asperity. "You know, of course, that telescopes, whether optical or radio, can be built in parts over a wide area and, if they are coordinated by computer, can achieve the function of a single large telescope, one much larger than can practically be built in a single piece."
"Yes. But what of that?"
"I mention it as an analogy. I am convinced that I can demonstrate something of the same sort in connection with the brain. If we were to have six men united telepathically, the six brains would, for the time, act as one large brain and, in fact, be beyond human in intelligence and in the capacity for insight. Think of the advances in science and technology that could be made, advances in other fields of human endeavor as well. We would, without going through the tedium of physical evolution or the danger of genetic engineering, create a mental superman."
"Interesting, if true," said Friar, obviously intrigued and as obviously unconvinced.
"There is a catch, though," said Morrison. "I performed all my experiments on animals, placing leads from my computer into the brain. That was - and as I see now, must be - not at all precise. No matter how we refine it, we will have only a crude telepathic system at best. What we need is to invade a brain and place a miniaturized and property programmed computer in a neuron, where it can act as a relay. The telepathic process will then be sharpened enormously."
"And the poor person on whom you inflict this damage," said Friar, "will eventually explode when the device deminiaturizes."
"An animal brain is much inferior to the human brain," said Morrison earnestly, "because of the fact that the animal brain has fewer neurons, less intricately ordered. The individual neuron in a rabbit's brain may, however, not be significantly inferior to a human neuron. A robot could be used as a relay."
Rodano said, "American brains working in tandem could, then, work out the secret of miniaturization and perhaps even beat the Soviets at the task of coupling Planck's constant to the speed of light."
"Yes," said Morrison enthusiastically, "and one Soviet scientist, Yuri Konev, who was the shipmate who shared thoughts with me, caught on to this, as I did. It was for that reason that he tried to hold on to me and to my program in defiance of his own government. Without me and my program, I doubt that he can duplicate my work for a long time, perhaps not for many years. This is not really his field."
"Continue," said Rodano. "I'm beginning to get a feeling for this."
Morrison said, "This is the situation, then. Right now, we've got a kind of crude telepathy. Even without miniaturization, it may help us forge ahead of the Soviets, but it may not. Without miniaturization - and without the establishment of a properly programmed computer in an animal neuron as a relay - we can't be sure of accomplishing anything.
"The Soviets, on the other hand, have a crude form of miniaturization. They may, in the ordinary course of investigation, find a way of linking quantum theory and relativity theory to make a truly efficient miniaturization device, but that might take a very long time.
"So if we have telepathy but not miniaturization, and if they have miniaturization but not telepathy, it may be that we may win after a long period of time - or they may win. The nation that wins has, in a sense, an unlimited speed of travel and the Universe will belong to it. That nation that loses will wither - or at least its institutions will wither. It would be good for us if we win the race, but it is they who may win and the process of racing may force the breakdown of two generations of an uneasy peace and lead to an alldestructive war.
"On the other hand, if we and the Soviets are willing to work together and, both of us, to use telepathy as refined and strengthened by a miniaturized relay station in a living neuron, we may achieve, in combination and in a very short time, what amounts to antigravity and infinite speed. The Universe will belong to both the United States and the Soviet Union; indeed, to the whole globe, to Earth, to humanity.
"Why not, gentlemen? No one would lose. Everyone would gain."
Friar and Rodano stared at him in wonder. Friar finally said, swallowing hard, "You make it sound good, if indeed you have telepathy."
"Do you have the time to listen to my explanation?"
"I have all the time you want," said Friar.
It took some hours for Morrison to explain his theory in detail. Then he leaned back and said, "It's almost dinnertime. Now I know that you - and others as well - will be wanting to interview me and that you will all want me to set up a system which will demonstrate the practicality of telepathy and that that will keep me busy for - well, for the rest of my life, for all I know, but I must have one thing now."
"What's that?" asked Rodano.
"Some time off to begin with. Please. I've gone through enough. Give me twenty-four hours - from now until dinnertime tomorrow. Let me read, eat, think, rest, and sleep. Just one day, if you don't mind, and thereafter I will be at your service."
"Fair enough," said Rodano, rising. "I will arrange that if I can and I suspect I can. The twenty-four hours is yours. Make the most of it. I agree that you'll have precious little time to yourself thereafter. And from now on, for quite a while, resign yourself to being the most strictly guarded person in America, not excluding the President."
"Good," said Morrison. "I'll call for a dinner for one."
91.
Rodano and Friar had finished their own dinner. It had been an unusually silent meal in an isolated and guarded room.
Once it was over, Rodano said, "Tell me, Dr. Friar, do you think Morrison is right in this matter of telepathy?"
Friar sighed and said cautiously, "I will have to consult with some of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable concerning the brain than I am, but I feel he is right. He is very convincing. - And now I have a question for you?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think Morrison was correct as to the necessity of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in this matter?"
There was a lengthy pause and finally Rodano said, "Yes, I think he's right there, too. Of course, there'll be howls from every direction, but we can't risk the Soviets getting there first. Everyone will see that. They'll have to."
"And the Soviets? Will they see it, too?"
"They'll have to, also. They can't risk us getting there first. Besides, the rest of the world will undoubtedly get wind of what is going on and they will clamor for a piece of the action and demand that no new cold war be started. It may take some years, but in the end we will cooperate."
Rodano then shook his head and said, "But do you know what really strikes me as peculiar, Professor Friar?"
Friar said, "What in this whole course of events can possibly strike you as not peculiar?"
"Nothing, I suppose, but what strikes me as most peculiar is this. I met Morrison last Sunday afternoon to urge him to go to the Soviet Union. At the time, my heart sank. He struck me as a man without guts, as a zero, as a wimp, as someone who wasn't even bright except in an academic sense. I didn't think he could be relied on to accomplish anything. I was simply sending him to his death. So I thought - and so I said to a colleague the next day - and, so help me, so I still think. He's nothing and it's simply a miracle that he survived and that's only thanks to others. And yet -"
"And yet?"
"And yet he returned, having made an incredible scientific discovery and having set in motion a process whereby the United States and the Soviet Union will both be forced, against their separate wills, to cooperate. And, to top it off, he has made himself the most important and, once we publicize these events, the most famous scientist in the world - possibly of all time.
"He has, in a sense, destroyed the political system of the world and built a new one - or at least initiated the process of building a new one - and he has done it all between the afternoon of last Sunday and the afternoon of today, Saturday. He has done it in six days. Somehow that's a frightening thought."
Friar leaned back and laughed aloud. "It's more frightening than you think. He plans to rest on the seventh day."
86.
Morrison sat in the hotel room that he had, for some fifteen minutes, thought he would never see again. He was close to despair - closer, it seemed to him, than he had been even when he was alone and lost in the cellular stream of the neuron.
What was the use? Over and over again, he thought this, as though the phrase were reverberating in an echo chamber. He was a loser. He had always been a loser.
For a day or so, he had thought that Sophia Kaliinin had been attracted to him, but, of course, she hadn't. He had been nothing more than her weapon against Konev and when Konev had called to her - beckoned to her - she had returned to him and had then no further use for her weapons, either for Morrison or for her stunner.
He looked at them dully. They were standing together in the sunlight streaming through the window - they in the sunlight, he in the shadow, as it must always be.
They were whispering together, so lost in each other that Kaliinin seemed unaware that she was still holding the stunner. For a moment, her knees bent as though she was going to get rid of its weight by dropping it on the bed, but then Konev said something and she was all attention and again unaware of the stunner's existence.
Morrison called out hoarsely, "Your government will not endure this. You have orders to release me."
Konev looked up, his eyes brightening slightly, as though he were being persuaded, with difficulty, to pay attention to his captive. It was not, after all, as though he had to watch Morrison in any physical sense. The waitress, Valeri Paleron, was doing that most efficiently. She stood a meter from Morrison and her eyes (somehow amused - as though she enjoyed the job) never left him.
Konev said, "My government need not concern you, Albert. It will change its mind soon enough."
Kaliinin raised her left hand as though to object, but Konev enclosed it in his.
"Do not be concerned, Sophia," he said. "Information at my disposal has been forwarded to Moscow. It will make them think. They will get back to me on my personal wavelength before long and when I tell them we have safely secured Morrison, they will take action. I am sure they will have the persuasive power to make the Old Man see reason. I promise you that."
Kaliinin said in a troubled voice, "Albert!"
Morrison said, "Are you getting ready to tell me that you are sorry, Sophia, that you crossed me out of existence at one word from the man you seemed to have hated?"
Kaliinin reddened. "You are not crossed out of existence, Albert. You will be well-treated. You will work here as you would have worked in your own country, except that here you will be truly appreciated."
"Thank you," said Morrison, finding some small reservoir of the sardonic inside himself. "If you feel happy for me, of what importance is my feeling for myself?"
Paleron intervened impatiently, "Comrade American, you talk too much. Why do you not sit down? - Sit down. " (She pushed him into a chair.) "You may as well wait quietly, since there is nothing else you can do."
She then turned to Kaliinin, around whose shoulders Konev's right arm was protectively placed. "And you, little Tsaritsa," she said, "are you still planning to place this fine lover of yours out of action that you hold this stunner so menacingly in your hand? You will be able to embrace him the more tightly if both arms are free."
Paleron reached for the stunner Kaliinin was holding and Kaliinin gave it up without a word.
"Actually," said Paleron, looking curiously at the stunner, "I am relieved at having it. In the paroxysm of your newfound love, I feared you might shoot in all directions. It would not be safe in your hands, my little one."
She moved back to the vicinity of Morrison, still studying the stunner and turning it in various ways.
Morrison stirred uneasily. "Don't point it in my direction, woman. It may go off."
Paleron looked at him haughtily. "It will not go off if I don't want it to, Comrade American. I know how to use it."
She smiled in the direction of Konev and Kaliinin. Relieved of the weapon, Kaliinin now had both arms around Konev's neck and was kissing him with quick, gentle touches of her lips against his. Paleron said in their direction, but not really to them, for they weren't listening, "I know how to use it. Like this! And like this!"
And first Konev, then Kaliinin crumpled.
Paleron turned toward Morrison. "Now help me, you idiot, we must work quickly."
She said it in English.
87.
Morrison had difficulty understanding. He simply stared at her.
Paleron pushed his shoulder as though she were trying to awaken him from a deep sleep. "Come on. You grab the feet."
Morrison obeyed mechanically. First Konev and then Kaliinin were lifted onto the bed, from which Paleron had stripped the thin blanket. She stretched both of them out along the narrow confines of the single mattress, then searched Kaliinen in a quick, practiced way.
"Ah," she said, staring at a sheet of folded paper, whose close-set print marked it indelibly as something written in governmentese. She flipped it into the pocket of her white jacket and continued the search. Other items came to light - a pair of small keys, for instance. Quickly she went over Konev, plucking a small metallic disc from the inner surface of his lapel.
"His personal wavelength," she said and placed that, too, into her pocket.
Finally she retrieved a black rectangular object and said, "This is yours, isn't it?"
Morrison grunted. It was his computer program. He had been so far gone he had not been aware that Konev had taken it from him. He clutched at it frantically now.
Paleron turned Kaliinin and Konev toward each other, propping them so that they would not fall apart. She then placed Konev's arm around Kaliinin and covered the two with the blanket, tucking it in under each to help keep them in place.
"Don't stare at me like that, Morrison," she said when she was done. "Come on." She seized his upper arm in a firm grip.
He resisted. "Where are we going? What's happening?"
"I'll tell you later. Not a word now. There is no time to lose. Not a minute. Not a second. Come." She ended with soft fierceness and Morrison followed her.
Out of the room they went, down the stairs as softly as she could manage (he following and imitating), along the carpeted corridor, and out to the limousine.
Paleron opened the front door on the passenger side with one of the keys she had obtained from Kaliinin's pocket and said brusquely, "Get in."
"Where are we going?"
"Get in." She virtually hurled him into the limo.
She settled quickly behind the wheel and Morrison resisted the impulse to ask her if she knew how to drive. It had finally gotten through to his stunned mind that Paleron wasn't simply a waitress.
That she had played the part of one, however, was made plain by the faint odor of onions still clinging to her and mixing rather infelicitously with the richer and pleasanter odor of the limo's interior.
Paleron started the engine, looked around the parking area, which was deserted except for a cat going about some business of its own, and moved out over a sandy patch to the path that led to the nearby road.
Slowly the limo picked up speed and when it finally reached the ninety-five kilometer-per-hour mark, it was moving along a two-lane highway on which, occasionally, an automobile, moving in the other direction, passed them. Morrison found himself capable of thinking normally again.
He glanced back earnestly through the rear window. A car, far behind them, was turning off at an intersection they had passed some moments before. No one appeared to be following them.
Morrison then turned to watch Paleron's profile. She seemed competent but grim. It was clear to him now that she was not only no waitress by true profession but was very likely no Soviet citizen. Her English had a strong urban accent that no European would learn in school or could pick up in a way that would be true enough to fool Morrison's ear.
He said, "You were waiting there outside the hotel, reading a book, so that you would see Sophia and myself when we came."
"You got it," said Paleron.
"You're an American agent, aren't you?"
"Shrewder and shrewder."
"Where are we going?"
"To the designated airport where the Swedish plane will pick you up. I had to get the details on that from Kaliinin."
"And you know how to get there?"
"Yes, indeed. I've been in Malenkigrad for considerably longer a period than your Kaliinin has been here. - But tell me, why did you tell her this man, Konev, was in love with her? She was just waiting to hear that from a third person. She wanted it confirmed and you did that for her. In that way, you handed over the whole game to Konev. Why did you do it?"
"For one thing," said Morrison mildly, "it was the truth."
"The truth?" Paleron, looking bemused, shook her head. "You don't belong in the real world. You sure don't. I'm surprised no one knocked you on the head and buried you long ago - just for your own good. Besides, how do you know it's the truth?"
Morrison said, "I know. - But I was sorry for her. She saved my life yesterday. She saved all our lives yesterday. For that matter, Konev saved my life, too."
"You all saved each other's life, I suppose."
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"But that was yesterday. Today you started fresh and you shouldn't have let yesterday influence you. She would never have taken up with him again if it weren't for your dumb remark. He could have sworn himself purple about loving her and all the rest of that rubbish and she wouldn't have believed him. She dared not. Be made a fool of again? Never! She would have stunned him to the ground in another minute and then you told her, 'Why, yes, kid, that there guy loves you,' and that's all she needed. I tell you, Morrison, you shouldn't be out without your keeper."
Morrison stirred uneasily, "How do you know all this?"
"I was on the floor in the back seat of this car, ready to go with you and Kaliinin and to make sure she took you there. And then you pulled your dumb trick. What was there to do but grab you and keep you from being stunned down, then get you back to the room where we could have some privacy, and after that get hold of the stunner somehow?"
"Thank you."
"That's all right. - And I made them look like a loving couple, too. Anyone coming in will be bound to say, 'Excuse me,' and leave quickly - and that will give us more time."
"How long will it be before they're conscious again?"
"I don't know. It depends on how accurately I placed the radiation and what each state of mind was and who knows what else. But when they do come back, it will take them some time to remember what happened. I'm hoping that in their position, the first thing they'll remember is that they're in love. That would preoccupy them for a while. Then when they do get around to remembering you and what it was that was being done with Moscow, it will be too late."
"Are they going to be permanently damaged?"
Paleron cast a quick look at Morrison's concerned face. "You're worried about them, aren't you? Why? What are they to you?"
"Well... shipmates."
Paleron made an inelegant sound. "I guess they'll recover okay. They might be better off if some of that supersensitive edge is ground off. They can get together and make a nice family then."
"And what's going to happen to you? You'd better get on the plane with me."
"Don't be a jackass. The Swedes wouldn't take me. They've got orders to take one guy and they'll test you to make sure you're the right one. They'll have records of your fingerprints and your retina pattern, right out of the files of the Population Board. If they take the wrong person or an additional person, that'll be a new incident and the Swedes are too smart for that."
"But then what will happen to you?"
"Well, for starters, I'll say you got hold of the stunner and rayed them both, then held the stunner on me and made me take you to the airport because you didn't know its location. You ordered me to stop outside the gates, then stunned me down and tossed the stunner into the car. Early tomorrow, I'll make my way back to Malenkigrad, like I was coming out of a stunning."
"But Konev and Kaliinin will deny your story."
"They weren't looking at me when they were stunned and almost no one remembers the actual moment of stunning, anyway. Besides, the Soviet Government knows that they ordered you returned and if you are returned, then anything Konev will tell them about you will do him no good. The government will accept the fait accompli. It's rubles to kopeks or, better, dollars to kopeks that they'll prefer to forget the whole thing - and I'll just go back to waitressing."
"There's bound to be some suspicion clinging to you."
"Then we'll see," she said. "Nichevo! What will be, will be." She smiled faintly.
They continued to travel along the highway and Morrison finally said with a touch of diffidence, "Shouldn't we to speed it up a little?"
"Not even by a kilometer per hour," said Paleron firmly. "We're going at just under the speed limit and the Soviets have every centimeter of the highway radarized. They have no sense of humor about the speed limit and I don't intend to spend hours trying to get out of a police station because I wanted to save fifteen minutes reaching the plane."
It was past noon now and Morrison was beginning to feel the mild, premonitory pinches of hunger. He said, "What was it that Konev told Moscow about me, do you suppose?"
Paleron shook her head. "Don't know. Whatever it was, he got a response on his personal wavelength. It signaled about twenty minutes ago. You didn't hear?"
"No."
"You wouldn't last long in my business. - Naturally, they got no answer, so whoever Konev was talking to in Moscow will try to find out why. Someone will find them and then they'll figure you're on the way to the airport and someone will chase out after us to see if you can be headed off. Like Pharaoh's chariots."
"We don't have Moses to part the Red Sea for us," muttered Morrison.
"If we get to the airport, we'll have the Swedes. They won't give you up to anybody."
"What can they do against the Soviet military?"
"It won't be the Soviet military. It will be some functionary, working for an extremist splinter group, who will try to bluff the Swedes. But we have official papers giving you up to them and they won't be bluffed. We just have to get there first."
"And you don't think we should go faster?"
Paleron shook her head firmly.
Half an hour later, Paleron pointed and said, "There we are and we have the breaks. The Swedish plane is in early and has landed."
She stopped the car, pressed a button, and the door flew open on his side. "You go on alone. I don't want to be seen, but listen -" She leaned toward him. "My name is Ashby. When you get to Washington, tell them that if they think it's time for me to get out - I'm ready. Got it?"
"I've got it."
Morrison got out of the car, blinking in the sunlight. In the distance, a man in uniform - not a Soviet uniform, as nearly as he could tell - waved him forward.
Morrison broke into a run. There were no speed limits on running and though he could see no one in pursuit he would not have been surprised to see someone rise out of the ground to stop him.
He turned, waved a last time in the direction of the car, thought he saw an answering wave, and continued to run.
The man who had gestured to him advanced, first at a walk, then at a run, and caught him as he all but fell forward. Morrison could see now that he was wearing a European Federation uniform.
"May I please have your name?" said the man in English. His accent, to Morrison's infinite relief, was Swedish.
"Albert Jonas Morrison," he said and together they walked toward the plane and the small group waiting to check his identity.
88.
Morrison sat at the plane window, tense and exhausted, staring downward at the land fleeing east. A lunch, consisting largely of herring and boiled potatoes, had soothed the inner man but scarcely the inner mind.
Had the miniaturized trip through the bloodstream and brain yesterday (only yesterday?) twisted him forever into a mental attitude of apprehension of imminent disaster? Would he never again be able to accept the Universe as friendly? Would he never walk through it in serene consciousness that no one and no thing wished him harm?
Or had there merely been insufficient time for him to recover?
Of course, common sense told him that there was reason not to feel completely safe yet. That was still Soviet earth under the plane.
Was there still time for Konev's ally in Moscow, whoever he might be, to send out planes after the Swedes? Was he powerful enough to do so? Would Pharaoh's chariots take to the air and continue the pursuit?
For a moment, his heart failed him when he actually saw a plane in the distance - then another.
He turned to the stewardess, who sat across the aisle from him. He did not have to ask the question. She apparently read his anxious expression accurately.
"Federation planes," she said, "as escort. We've left Soviet territory. The planes are Swedish-crewed."
Then, when they passed over the English Channel, American planes joined the escort. Morrison was safe from the chariots, at any rate.
His mind did not let him rest, however. Missiles? Would someone actually commit an act of war? He tried to calm himself. Surely no man in the Soviet Union, not even the Soviet Executive himself, could make such a move without consultation and no consultation would take less than hours or perhaps days.
It couldn't be.
Still, it wasn't until the plane had landed on the outskirts of Washington that Morrison could allow himself to feel that it was over and that he was safely in his own country.
89.
It was Saturday morning and Morrison was recovering. He had attended to his creature needs. He had had breakfast and had washed. He was even partly dressed.
Now he lay in bed on his back, arms behind his head. It was cloudy outside and he had only half-clarified the window because he wanted a sense of privacy. In the hours after he had disembarked from the plane and had been rushed to his present place of concealment, there had been enough official crowding around him to make him wonder a bit if he was any better off in the United States than he had been in the Soviet Union.
The doctors had finally finished their probing, the initial questions had been asked and answered, even during dinner, and they had finally left him to his sleep in a room that was, in turn, inside something that resembled a fortress for the depth of its security.
Well, at least he didn't have to face miniaturization. There was always that thought to comfort him.
The door signal flashed and Morrison reached over his head, feeling the bedboard for the button that would clarify the one-way patch on the door. He recognized the face that appeared and pushed another contact that allowed the door to be opened from the outside.
Two men entered. The one whose familiar face had been at the one-way patch said, "You remember me, I hope."
Morrison made no move to get out of bed. He was the center now around which all revolved, at least temporarily, and he would take advantage of that. He simply raised his arm in casual greeting and said, "You're the agent who wanted me to go to the Soviet Union. Rodano, isn't it?"
"Francis Rodano, yes. And this is Professor Robert G. Friar. I imagine you know him."
Morrison hesitated and then courtesy swung his feet off the bed and lifted him to his feet. "Hello, Professor. I know of you, of course, and have seen you on holovision often enough. I'm pleased to make your personal acquaintance."
Friar, one of the "visible scientists" whose photographs and HV appearances had made him familiar to most of the world, smiled tightly. He had a round face, pale blue eyes, an apparently permanent vertical crease between his eyebrows, ruddy cheeks, a sturdy body of average height, and a way of looking around him restlessly.
He said, "You, I take it, are Albert Jonas Morrison."
"That's right," said Morrison easily. "Mr. Rodano will vouch for me. Please sit down, both of you, and forgive me if I continue to relax on the bed. I have about a year's relaxation to catch up on."
The two visitors sat down on a large couch and leaned toward Morrison. Rodano smiled a bit tentatively. "I can't promise you much relaxation, Dr. Morrison. At least for a while. Incidentally, we have just received word from Ashby. Do you remember her?"
"The waitress who turned the tables? Yes, indeed. Without her -"
"We know the essentials of the story, Morrison. She wants you to know that your two friends have recovered and are apparently fond of each other still."
"And Ashby, herself? She told me she was ready to leave if Washington thought it best. I reported that last night."
"Yes, we'll get her out one way or another. - And now I'm afraid we must bother you again."
Morrison frowned. "How long will this keep up?"
"I don't know. You must take it as it comes. - Professor Friar, won't you take over?"
Friar nodded. "Dr. Morrison, do you mind if I take notes. - No, let me rephrase that. I am going to take notes, Morrison."
He plucked a small computer keyboard of advanced design out of his briefcase.
Rodano said mildly, "Where will these notes go, Professor?"
"To my recording device, Mr. Rodano."
"Which is where, Professor?"
"In my office at Defense, Mr. Rodano," Then, with some irritation under the other's continuing stare, "Into my safe in my office at Defense and both the safe and the recording device are well-coded. Does that satisfy you?"
"Proceed, Professor."
Friar turned to Morrison and said, "Is it true that you were miniaturized, Morrison. You, personally?"
"I was. At my smallest, I was the size of an atom while part of a ship the size of a glucose molecule. I spent better than half a day inside a living human body, first in the bloodstream, then in the brain."
"And this is true? No chance of an illusion or trickery?"
"Please, Professor Friar. If I were tricked or hypnotized, my testimony now would be worthless. We can't proceed unless you recognize the fact that I am in my right mind and can be relied on to report events that correspond reasonably well with reality."
Friar's lips pressed together and then he said, "You are right. We must make assumptions to begin with and I will assume you are sane and reliable - without prejudice to further reconsideration of such assumptions."
"Of course," said Morrison.
"In that case" - and Friar turned to Rodano - "we begin with one great and important observation. Miniaturization is possible and the Soviets do indeed have it and make use of it and can miniaturize even living human beings without apparent harm to them."
He turned back to Morrison. "Presumably, the Soviets claim to miniaturize by reducing the size of Planck's constant."
"Yes, they do."
"Of course they do. There's no other conceivable way of doing it. Did they explain the procedure by which that was done?"
"Certainly not. You might as well make the assumption that the Soviets scientists I dealt with are as sane as we are. They wouldn't carelessly give away anything they don't want us to know."
"Very well, then. Assumption made. Now tell us exactly what happened to you in the Soviet Union. Do not tell it as an adventure story, but only as the observations of a professional physicist."
Morrison began to talk. He was not entirely sorry to do so. He wanted to exorcise it and he didn't want the responsibility of being the only American to know what he knew. He told the story in detail and it took hours. He did not finish until they were sitting at a lunch delivered by room service.
Over dessert, Friar said, "Let me summarize, then, as best I can from memory. To begin with, miniaturization does not affect time flow, nor the quantum interactions - that is, the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions. The gravitational interaction is affected, however, and decreases in proportion to mass, as it naturally would. Is that so?"
Morrison nodded.
Friar went on. "Light - and electromagnetic radiation, generally - can cross into and out of the miniaturization field, but sound cannot. Normal matter is weakly repelled by the miniaturization field but, under pressure, normal matter can be made to enter it and be itself miniaturized, at the expense of the energy of the field."
Morrison nodded again.
Friar said, "The more miniaturized an object becomes, the less energy is required to miniaturize it further. Do you know if the energy requirement decreases in proportion to the mass remaining at any particular stage of miniaturization?"
"That would certainly seem logical," said Morrison, "but I don't recall anyone mentioning the quantitative nature of that phenomenon."
"To go on, then. The more miniaturized an object, the greater the chance of its spontaneous deminiaturization - and that refers to the entire mass within the field, rather than to any component part. You, as a separated individual, were more likely to deminiaturize spontaneously than you would as part of the ship. Is that right?"
"That was my understanding."
"And your Soviet companions admitted that it was impossible to maximize and to make things more massive than they are in nature."
"Again, that was my understanding. You must realize, Professor Friar, that I can only repeat what I was told. They might have deliberately misled me or they may have been wrong because they had insufficient knowledge themselves."
"Yes yes, I understand. Do you have any reason to believe they were deliberately misleading you?"
"No. It seemed to me they were being honest."
"Well, perhaps. Now, the most interesting thing to me is that Brownian motion was in balance with miniaturization oscillation and that the greater the degree of miniaturization, the greater the shift in balance toward oscillation and away from ordinary Brownian motion."
"That is an actual observation of my own, Professor, and doesn't rest merely on what I was told."
"And that shift of balance has something to do with the rate of spontaneous deminiaturization."
"That is my own thought. I cannot state it as fact."
"Hmm." Friar sipped thoughtfully at his cofFee and said, "The trouble is that all this is superficial. It tells us about the behavior of the miniaturization field, but nothing about how the field is produced. - And in decreasing the value of Planck's constant, they leave the speed of light untouched, you say?"
"Yes, but that, as I emphasized, means that maintaining the miniaturization field costs enormously in energy. If they can couple Planck's constant with the speed of light, increasing the latter as they decrease the former - But they don't have that yet."
"So they say. It was in Shapirov's mind, supposedly, but you were unable to get it out."
"That's right."
Friar remained lost in thought for a few minutes, then shook his head. "We'll go over everything you've said and deduce what we can from it, but I fear it won't help."
"Why not?" asked Rodano.
"Because none of it goes to the heart. If someone who had never seen a robot or heard anything about any of its component parts were to report a robot in operation, he could describe how the head and limbs moved, how the voice sounded, how it obeyed orders, and so on. Nothing he could observe would tell him how a positronic brainpath works or what a molecular valve is. He would not even have an inkling that either exists, nor would those scientists who would work from his observations have any.
"The Soviets have some technique to produce the field and we know nothing about it, nor does anything Morrison can tell us help us there. They might have published material that led up to it, not aware that something crucial was in the making - that was what happened in the mid-twentieth century, when early work on nuclear fission was published before it was understood that it ought to be kept secret. The Soviets didn't make that mistake with miniaturization, however. Nor have we succeeded in retrieving information concerning the matter through espionage or by the luck of having some key personnel on the other side defect and come to us.
"I will consult with my colleagues on the Board, but on the whole, Dr. Morrison, I'm afraid that your adventure in the Soviet Union, however daring and praiseworthy has - except for your confirmation that miniaturization does exist - been useless. I'm sorry, Mr. Rodano, but it might as well not have happened."
90.
Morrison's expression did not change as Friar advanced his conclusion. He poured himself a little more coffee, added cream judiciously, and drank it without haste.
Then he said, "You're quite wrong, you know, Friar."
Friar looked up and said, "Are you trying to say that you know something about the production of the miniaturization field? You had said that -"
"What I'm going to say, Friar, has nothing at all to do with miniaturization. It has everything to do with my own work. The Soviets took me to Malenkigrad and the Grotto in order that I might use my computer program to read Shapirov's mind. It failed at that, which is perhaps not surprising, considering that Shapirov was in a coma and near death. On the other hand, Shapirov, who had a remarkably penetrating mind, referred to my program as a 'relay station' after he had read some of my papers. That's what it turned out to be."
"A relay station?" Friar's face took on a look of puzzled distaste. "What does that mean?"
"Instead of tapping Shapirov's thought, my programmed computer, once inside one of Shapirov's neurons, was acting as a relay, passing thought from one of us to another."
Friar's expression became one of indignation. "You mean it was a telepathic device."
"Exactly. I first experienced that when I was aware of an intense emotion of love and sexual desire for a young woman who was on the miniaturized ship with me. Naturally, I assumed it was my own feeling, for she was a very attractive woman. Nevertheless, I was not aware of any conscious feeling of that sort. It was not until several other instances of the sort that I realized I was receiving the thoughts of a young man on board ship. He and the young lady were estranged, but the passion between them existed, nevertheless."
Friar smiled tolerantly. "Are you sure you were in condition, on board the ship, to interpret these thoughts properly? After all, you were under tension. Did you also receive similar thoughts from the young lady?"
"No. The young man and I exchanged thoughts, involuntarily, on several occasions. When I thought of my wife and children, he thought of a woman and two youngsters. When I was lost in the bloodstream, it was he who picked up my sensations of panic. He assumed he had detected Shapirov's miseries by way of my machine - which remained in my possession when I was adrift - but those were my feelings, not Shapirov's. I did not exchange thoughts with either woman on board, but they exchanged thoughts with each other. When they tried to catch Shapirov's thoughts, they detected similar words and feelings - from each other, of course - which the young man and myself did not."
"A sexual difference?" said Friar skeptically.
"Not really. The pilot of the ship, a male, received nothing at all, either from the women or from the other men, though on one occasion, he did seem to get a thought. I couldn't say from whom. My own feeling is that there are brain types, as there are blood types - probably only a few - and that telepathic communication can be most easily established among those of the same brain type."
Rodano interposed softly, "Even if all this is so, Dr. Morrison. What of it?"
Morrison said, "Let me explain that. For years I've worked to identify the regions and patterns of abstract thought within the human brain with some unremarkable success. Occasionally, I would catch an image, but I never interpreted that properly. I thought it was coming from the animal on whose brain I was working, but I now suspect that they came when I was fairly close to some human being who was in the grip of strong emotion or deep thought. I never noticed that. My fault.
"Nevertheless, having been stung by the general indifference and downright disbelief and ridicule of my colleagues, I never published the matter of catching images, but modified my program in an attempt to intensify it. Some of those modifications were never published, either. Thus, I entered Shapirov's bloodstream with a device that could more nearly serve as a telepathic relay than anything I had ever had before. And now that, at last, my thick head has absorbed exactly what it is that I have, I know what to do to improve the program. I am sure of that."
Friar said, "Let me get this straight, Morrison. You are telling me that, as a result of your fantastic voyage into Shapirov's body, you are now certain you can so modify your device as to make telepathy practical?"
"Practical to an extent. Yes."
"That would be an enormous thing - if you could demonstrate it." The skepticism in Friar's voice did not disappear.
"More enormous than you perhaps think," said Morrison with some asperity. "You know, of course, that telescopes, whether optical or radio, can be built in parts over a wide area and, if they are coordinated by computer, can achieve the function of a single large telescope, one much larger than can practically be built in a single piece."
"Yes. But what of that?"
"I mention it as an analogy. I am convinced that I can demonstrate something of the same sort in connection with the brain. If we were to have six men united telepathically, the six brains would, for the time, act as one large brain and, in fact, be beyond human in intelligence and in the capacity for insight. Think of the advances in science and technology that could be made, advances in other fields of human endeavor as well. We would, without going through the tedium of physical evolution or the danger of genetic engineering, create a mental superman."
"Interesting, if true," said Friar, obviously intrigued and as obviously unconvinced.
"There is a catch, though," said Morrison. "I performed all my experiments on animals, placing leads from my computer into the brain. That was - and as I see now, must be - not at all precise. No matter how we refine it, we will have only a crude telepathic system at best. What we need is to invade a brain and place a miniaturized and property programmed computer in a neuron, where it can act as a relay. The telepathic process will then be sharpened enormously."
"And the poor person on whom you inflict this damage," said Friar, "will eventually explode when the device deminiaturizes."
"An animal brain is much inferior to the human brain," said Morrison earnestly, "because of the fact that the animal brain has fewer neurons, less intricately ordered. The individual neuron in a rabbit's brain may, however, not be significantly inferior to a human neuron. A robot could be used as a relay."
Rodano said, "American brains working in tandem could, then, work out the secret of miniaturization and perhaps even beat the Soviets at the task of coupling Planck's constant to the speed of light."
"Yes," said Morrison enthusiastically, "and one Soviet scientist, Yuri Konev, who was the shipmate who shared thoughts with me, caught on to this, as I did. It was for that reason that he tried to hold on to me and to my program in defiance of his own government. Without me and my program, I doubt that he can duplicate my work for a long time, perhaps not for many years. This is not really his field."
"Continue," said Rodano. "I'm beginning to get a feeling for this."
Morrison said, "This is the situation, then. Right now, we've got a kind of crude telepathy. Even without miniaturization, it may help us forge ahead of the Soviets, but it may not. Without miniaturization - and without the establishment of a properly programmed computer in an animal neuron as a relay - we can't be sure of accomplishing anything.
"The Soviets, on the other hand, have a crude form of miniaturization. They may, in the ordinary course of investigation, find a way of linking quantum theory and relativity theory to make a truly efficient miniaturization device, but that might take a very long time.
"So if we have telepathy but not miniaturization, and if they have miniaturization but not telepathy, it may be that we may win after a long period of time - or they may win. The nation that wins has, in a sense, an unlimited speed of travel and the Universe will belong to it. That nation that loses will wither - or at least its institutions will wither. It would be good for us if we win the race, but it is they who may win and the process of racing may force the breakdown of two generations of an uneasy peace and lead to an alldestructive war.
"On the other hand, if we and the Soviets are willing to work together and, both of us, to use telepathy as refined and strengthened by a miniaturized relay station in a living neuron, we may achieve, in combination and in a very short time, what amounts to antigravity and infinite speed. The Universe will belong to both the United States and the Soviet Union; indeed, to the whole globe, to Earth, to humanity.
"Why not, gentlemen? No one would lose. Everyone would gain."
Friar and Rodano stared at him in wonder. Friar finally said, swallowing hard, "You make it sound good, if indeed you have telepathy."
"Do you have the time to listen to my explanation?"
"I have all the time you want," said Friar.
It took some hours for Morrison to explain his theory in detail. Then he leaned back and said, "It's almost dinnertime. Now I know that you - and others as well - will be wanting to interview me and that you will all want me to set up a system which will demonstrate the practicality of telepathy and that that will keep me busy for - well, for the rest of my life, for all I know, but I must have one thing now."
"What's that?" asked Rodano.
"Some time off to begin with. Please. I've gone through enough. Give me twenty-four hours - from now until dinnertime tomorrow. Let me read, eat, think, rest, and sleep. Just one day, if you don't mind, and thereafter I will be at your service."
"Fair enough," said Rodano, rising. "I will arrange that if I can and I suspect I can. The twenty-four hours is yours. Make the most of it. I agree that you'll have precious little time to yourself thereafter. And from now on, for quite a while, resign yourself to being the most strictly guarded person in America, not excluding the President."
"Good," said Morrison. "I'll call for a dinner for one."
91.
Rodano and Friar had finished their own dinner. It had been an unusually silent meal in an isolated and guarded room.
Once it was over, Rodano said, "Tell me, Dr. Friar, do you think Morrison is right in this matter of telepathy?"
Friar sighed and said cautiously, "I will have to consult with some of my colleagues who are more knowledgeable concerning the brain than I am, but I feel he is right. He is very convincing. - And now I have a question for you?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think Morrison was correct as to the necessity of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union in this matter?"
There was a lengthy pause and finally Rodano said, "Yes, I think he's right there, too. Of course, there'll be howls from every direction, but we can't risk the Soviets getting there first. Everyone will see that. They'll have to."
"And the Soviets? Will they see it, too?"
"They'll have to, also. They can't risk us getting there first. Besides, the rest of the world will undoubtedly get wind of what is going on and they will clamor for a piece of the action and demand that no new cold war be started. It may take some years, but in the end we will cooperate."
Rodano then shook his head and said, "But do you know what really strikes me as peculiar, Professor Friar?"
Friar said, "What in this whole course of events can possibly strike you as not peculiar?"
"Nothing, I suppose, but what strikes me as most peculiar is this. I met Morrison last Sunday afternoon to urge him to go to the Soviet Union. At the time, my heart sank. He struck me as a man without guts, as a zero, as a wimp, as someone who wasn't even bright except in an academic sense. I didn't think he could be relied on to accomplish anything. I was simply sending him to his death. So I thought - and so I said to a colleague the next day - and, so help me, so I still think. He's nothing and it's simply a miracle that he survived and that's only thanks to others. And yet -"
"And yet?"
"And yet he returned, having made an incredible scientific discovery and having set in motion a process whereby the United States and the Soviet Union will both be forced, against their separate wills, to cooperate. And, to top it off, he has made himself the most important and, once we publicize these events, the most famous scientist in the world - possibly of all time.
"He has, in a sense, destroyed the political system of the world and built a new one - or at least initiated the process of building a new one - and he has done it all between the afternoon of last Sunday and the afternoon of today, Saturday. He has done it in six days. Somehow that's a frightening thought."
Friar leaned back and laughed aloud. "It's more frightening than you think. He plans to rest on the seventh day."
