Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

"Thinking about it won't change my mind."

"Think about it until tomorrow morning, anyway. That's fifteen hours and it's all we can spare you. After all, balancing fears against hopes can keep one irresolute for a lifetime and we don't have a lifetime. Poor Shapirov might linger on in coma for a decade, but we don't know how long what is left of his brain will retain his ideas and we dare not wait very long at all."

"I can not and will not concern myself with your problems."

Boranova seemed to hear none of his denials and refusals. She said in her unfailingly gentle voice, "We will not attempt to persuade you further right now. You may have a leisurely dinner. You may watch our holovision programs if you wish, view our books, think, sleep. Arkady will accompany you back to the hotel and if you have any more questions, you need only ask him."

Morrison nodded.

"And, Albert, remember, tomorrow morning you must give us your decision."

"Take it now. It will not change."

"No. The decision must be that you will join us and help us. See to it that you come to that decision - for come to it you must - and it will be easier for all of us if you do so gladly and voluntarily."

It proved to be a quiet and thoughtful dinner for Morrison and not a very filling one - for he found he could only pick at his food. Dezhnev seemed quite unaffected by the other's lack of appetite and reaction. He ate vigorously and spoke incessantly, drawing on what was apparently a large stock of funny stories - in all of which his father played a key role - and was clearly delighted to try them out on a new audience.

Morrison smiled faintly at one or two, more because he recognized from the other's raised voice that a punch line had been advanced than because he heard them with any interest at all.

Valeri Paleron, the waitress who had served them at breakfast, was still there at dinner. A long day - but either that was reflected in her wages or it was required by her extracurricular duties. Either way, she glowered at Dezhnev each time she approached the table, perhaps (Morrison thought distantly) because she disapproved of his stories, which tended to be disrespectful of the Soviet regime.

Morrison did not particularly enjoy his own thoughts. Now that he was considering the distant possibility of getting away from the Grotto - from Malenkigrad - from the Soviet Union - he was beginning to feel a perverse disappointment at what he might be missing. He found himself daydreaming just a little on the matter of miniaturization, of using it to prove the worth of his theories, of triumphing over the smug fools who had dismissed him out of hand.

He recognized the fact that, of all the arguments presented by Boranova, only the personal one had shaken him. Any reference to the greater good of science, or of humanity, or of this nation or that was just idle rhetoric. His own place in science was something more. That seethed within him.

When the serving woman passed near the table, he stirred himself to say, "How long must you stay on, waitress?"

She looked at him without favor. "Until you two grand dukes can bring yourselves to stir out of here."

"There's no rush," said Dezhnev as he emptied his glass. His speech was already slurred and his face was flushed. "I am so fond of the comrade waitress, I could stay on for as long as the Volga flows, that I might gaze on her face."

"As long as I don't have to gaze at yours," muttered Paleron.

Morrison filled Dezhnev's glass and said, "What do you think of Madame Boranova?"

Dezhnev gazed at the glass owlishly and did not offer to lift it immediately. He said with an attempt at gravity, "Not a first-class scientist, I am told, but an excellent admin-ministrator. Keen, makes up her mind quickly, and absolutely incorr-corruptible. A pain in the neck, I should think. If an administrator is incorr- too infernally honest, it makes life hard in so many little ways. She is a worshipper of Shapirov, too, and she thinks him incorr- no, incompre- no, incontrovertible. That's it."

Morrison was not sure of the Russian word. "You mean she thinks he's always right."

"Exactly. If he hints that he knows how to make miniaturization cheap, she's sure he can. Yuri Konev is sure of it, too. He's another of the worshippers. But it's Bora- Boranova who'll send you into Shapirov's brain. One way or another, she'll send you there. She has her ways. - As for Yuri, that little shaver, he's the real scientist of the group. Very brilliant." Dezhnev nodded solemnly and sipped at his refilled drink gently.

"I'm interested in Yuri Konev," said Morrison, his eyes following the lifting of the glass, "and in the young woman, Sophia Kaliinin."

Dezhnev leered. "A fine young piece." Then sadly, shaking his head, "But she has no sense of humor."

"She's married, I take it."

Dezhnev shook his head more violently than the occasion seemed to require. "No."

"She said she had had a baby."

"Yes, a little girl, but it isn't the signing of the marriage book that makes one pregnant. It's the game of bed - married or not."

"Does the puritanical Soviet Government approve of this?"

"No, but its approval was never asked, I think." He burst into laughter.

"Besides, as a scientist at Malenkigrad, she has her special dispen-pensations. The government looks the other way."

"It strikes me," said Morrison, "that Sophia is much interested in Yuri Konev."

"You see that, do you? It takes little shrewdness. She is so interested that she has made it quite clear that her child was the result of Yuri's collaboration in that little game I spoke of."

"Oh?"

"But he denies it. And very vigorously, too. I think it is rather humorous, in a bitter way, that he remains compelled to work with her. Neither one can be spared from the project and all he can do is pretend she doesn't exist."

"I noticed that he never looks at her, but they must have been friendly once."

"Very friendly - if she is to be believed. If so, they were very discreet about it. But what's the difference? She doesn't need him to support the child. Her salary is a large one and the day-care center takes loving care of her daughter when she is at work. It is just a matter of emotion with her."

"What split them up, I wonder?"

"Who knows? Lovers take their disputes so seriously. I myself have never let myself fall in love - not poetically. If I like a girl, I play with her. If I get tired, I move on. It is my good fortune that the women I engage are as prag-pragmatic - isn't that a good word? - as I am and make little fuss. As my father used to say, 'A woman who doesn't fuss has no faults.' Sometimes, to be truthful, they grow tired before I do, but even then, so what? A girl who is tired of me is not much good to me and, after all, there are others."

"I suppose Yuri is much like that, too, isn't he?"

Dezhnev had emptied his glass again and he held out his hand when Morrison made a move to refill it. "Enough! Enough!"

"Never enough," said Morrison calmly. "You were telling me about Yuri."

"What is there to tell? Yuri is not a man to fly from woman to woman, but I have heard -" He stared blearily at Morrison. "You know how one hears - one tells another who tells another and who is to know whether what comes out of the funnel is anything like what went in. But I have heard that when Yuri was in the United States, being educated Western-style, he met an American girl. In went La Belle Americaine, they say, and out went poor little Soviet Sophia. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps he came back different and perhaps he still dreams of his lost love across the sea."

"And is that why Sophia is so ill-disposed to Americans?"

Dezhnev stared at the glass of vodka and sipped a little of it. "Our Sophia," he said, "has never liked Americans. This is not surprising." He leaned toward Morrison, his breath heavy with food and drink. "Americans are not a lovable people - if I may say so without offense."