Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

Morrison's lips tightened. "I have had this complaint from neurophysicists in the United States."

"Now, why should this be? Academician Shapirov is greatly intrigued by your theories and maintains that you are probably correct, at least in part."

"Ah, but Shapirov isn't a neurophysicist, is he?"

"No, he's not, but he has an extraordinary feel for what is correct. I have never known him to say, 'It seems to me that this must be right,' in which whatever he is discussing hasn't proved to be right - at least in part. He says you are probably on the road to establishing an interesting relay station."

"A relay station? I don't know what he means by that."

"It's what he said once in my hearing. Some private thought of his own, no doubt." He cast a penetrating glance at Morrison, as though waiting for an explanation of the remark.

Morrison simply shrugged it away. "What I have done," he said, "is to establish a new kind of analysis of the cephalic waves originating in the brain and to have narrowed the search for a specific network within the brain devoted to creative thought."

"There you may be a little overoptimistic, Albert. I have not satisfied myself that this network of yours really exists."

"My results mark it out quite clearly."

"In dogs and monkeys. It is uncertain how far we can extrapolate such information to the much more complex structure of the human brain."

"I admit I haven't worked with the human brain anatomically, but I have analyzed human brain waves carefully and those results are at least consistent with my creative structure hypothesis."

"This is what I haven't been able to duplicate and what American researchers may not have been able to duplicate, either."

Again Morrison shrugged. "Adequate brain wave analysis is, at best, a monumentally difficult thing at the quintenary level and no one else has given the years to the problem that I have."

"Or possesses the particular computerized equipment. You have designed your own program for the purpose of brain wave analysis, haven't you?"

"Yes, I have."

"And described it in the literature?"

"Certainly. If I achieved results with an undescribed program, they would be worth nothing. Who could confirm my results, lacking an equivalent computer program?"

"Yet I have heard, at the International Neurophysical Conference in Brussels last year, that you are continually modifying your program and complaining that the lack of confirmation stems from the use of insufficiently complex programming incapable of Fourier analysis to the proper degree of sensitivity."

"No, Yuri, that is false. Entirely false. I have modified my program from time to time, but I have carefully described each modification in Computer Technology. I have tried to publish the data in The American Journal of Neurophysics, but they haven't accepted my papers these last few years. If others confine their reading to the AJN and don't keep up with relevant literature elsewhere, that is not my fault."

"And yet -" Konev paused and frowned in what seemed to be uncertain thought. "I don't know if I ought to say this because it may be something else that will antagonize you."

"Go ahead. I have, in these last few years, learned to accept all kinds of remarks-hostile, sarcastic, and - worst of all - pitying. I am quite hardened to it. - This is good chicken Kiev, by the way."

"This is a guest meal," murmured Kaliinin, almost under her breath. "Too buttery - bad for the figure."

"Hah," said Dezhnev loudly. "Bad for the figure. That is an American remark that makes no sense in Russian. My father always said, 'The body knows what it needs. That's why some things taste good.'"

Kaliinin closed her eyes in quite obvious distaste. "A recipe for suicide," she said.

Morrison noticed that Konev did not look at the young woman during this bit of byplay. Not at all.

He said, "You were saying, Yuri? About something that might antagonize me, you thought?"

Konev said, "Well, then, is it true, Albert, or not true that you actually gave your program to a colleague and that, using it in your computer, he was still unable to duplicate your results?"

"That's true," said Morrison. "At least my colleague, an able enough man, said he could not duplicate my results."

"Do you suspect he was lying?"

"No. Not really. It's just that the observations are so delicate that to attempt them while certain of failure may well lead, it seems to me, to failure."

"Might one not argue the other way around, Albert, and say that your certainty of success leads you to imagine success?"

"Possibly," said Morrison. "That has been pointed out to me several times in the past. But I don't think so."

"One more rumor," said Konev. "This I truly hate to repeat, but it seems so important. Is it true that you have claimed that in your analysis of brain waves you have occasionally sensed actual thoughts?"

Morrison shook his head vigorously. "I have never made such a claim in print. I have said to a colleague, once or twice, that in concentrating on the brain wave analysis there are occasionally times when I seem to find thoughts invading my mind. I have no way of telling whether the thoughts are entirely mine or whether my own brain waves resonate to those of the subject."

"Is such a resonance conceivable?"

"I suppose so. The brain waves produce tiny fluctuating electromagnetic fields."

"Ah! It is this, I suppose, that made Academician Shapirov make that remark about a relay station. Brain waves are always producing fluctuating electromagnetic fields - with or without analysis. You don't resonate - if resonance is what it is - to the thoughts of someone in your presence, no matter how intensely he may be thinking. The resonance takes place only when you are busily studying the brain waves with your programmed computer. It presumably acts as a relay station, magnifying or intensifying the brain waves of the subject and projecting them into your mind."

"I have no evidence for that except for an occasional fugitive impression. That's not enough."

"It might be. The human brain is far more complex than any other equivalent piece of matter we know of."

"What about dolphins?" said Dezhnev, his mouth full.

"An exploded view," said Konev at once. "They're intelligent, but their brains are devoted too entirely to the minutiae of swimming to allow enough room for abstract thought on the human scale."

"I have never studied dolphins," said Morrison indifferently.

"Ignore the dolphins," said Konev impatiently. "Just concentrate on the fact that your computer, properly programmed, may act as a relay station, passing thoughts from the mind of the subject you are studying to your own mind. If that is so, Albert, we need you and no other person in the world."

Morrison said, frowning and pushing his chair away from the table, "Even if I can pick up thoughts by way of my computer - a claim I have never made and which, in fact, I deny - what can that possibly have to do with miniaturization?"

Boranova rose and looked at her watch. "It is time," she said. "Let us go and see Shapirov now."

Morrison said, "What he says will make no difference to me."

"You will find," said Boranova with a hint of steel in her voice, "that he will say nothing - but will be utterly convincing just the same."

Morrison had kept his temper well so far. The Soviets were, after all, treating him as a guest and if he could overlook the small matter of his being carried off by force, he had little of which to complain.

But what were they getting at? One by one, Boranova had introduced him to others - first Dezhnev, then Kaliinin, then Konev - for reasons he had not penetrated. Over and over, Boranova had hinted of his usefulness without actually saying what it might be. Now Konev talked of it and was equally uncommunicative.