Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

Morrison's lips tightened and he looked sullen. "I could think of no other way of escaping. You speak of driving necessities. My needs drive me, too."

"Albert, we have tried every reasonable way to persuade you to help us. There has been no force, no threats of force, no unpleasantness of any kind after you had arrived there. Isn't that true?"

"I suppose so."

"You suppose so? It is true. But it has all failed. You still refuse to help us, I think."

"I still refuse and I shall continue to refuse."

"Then I am forced, very much against my will, to take the next step."

A bit of fear stirred within Morrison and he felt his heart skip a beat, but he tried desperately to sound defiant, "Which is?"

"You want to get home, to go back to America. Very well, if all our persuasiveness fails, you shall return."

"Are you serious?"

"Are you surprised?"

"Yes, I'm surprised, but I accept. I take you at your word. When will I leave?"

"The very moment we settle upon the story we're going to tell."

"Where's the problem? Tell the truth."

"That would be a little difficult, Albert. It would embarrass my government, which would have to deny having given permission for my action. I would be in serious trouble. It would be unreasonable for you to expect me to do that."

"What can you say instead?"

"That you came here at your own request, in order to help us with our projects."

Morrison shook his head vehemently. "That would be at least as difficult for me as admitting the kidnapping would be for you. These may be the good new days, but old habits die hard and the American public would be more than a little suspicious of an American scientist who went to the Soviet Union to help them with their projects. Old competitions remain and I have my reputation to think of."

"Yes, there is that difficulty," admitted Boranova, "but from my point of view, I would rather you had the difficulty than that I did."

"But I won't allow it. Do you suppose I will hesitate to tell the truth in full detail?"

"But, Albert," said Boranova quietly, "do you suppose anyone would believe you?"

"Of course. The American government knows that you asked me to come to the Soviet Union and that I refused. I would have had to be kidnapped to get here."

"I'm afraid your American government won't want to admit that, Albert. Would they want to say that Soviet agents had plucked an American out of his comfortable hotel room and carried him off by land, sea, and air without the forces of American law being aware of this? Considering modern American high-tech, of which your people are all so proud, that would argue either incompetence or a little inside treason on the part of your intelligence. I think your government would prefer to have the world believe you went to the Soviet Union voluntarily. - Besides, they wanted you to go to the Soviet Union voluntarily, didn't they?"

Morrison was silent.

Boranova said, "Of course they did. They wanted you to find out as much about miniaturization as possible. You're going to have to tell them you refused to be miniaturized. All you'll be able to report will be that you watched a rabbit undergo miniaturization, which they will consider to have been a bit of flim-flam on our part. They will consider that we carefully hoodwinked you and you will have failed them badly. They will not feel bound to support you."

Morrison revolved the matter in his mind. He said, "Do you really intend to leave me in the position of being considered a spy and a traitor by my people? Is that what you're going to try to do?"

"No, indeed, Albert. We will tell all the truth we can. In fact, we would like to protect you, even though you showed no signs of wanting to protect us. We would explain that our great scientist Pyotr Shapirov is in a coma, that he had spoken highly of your neurophysical theories shortly before this tragedy had befallen him. We therefore called on you and asked you to use your theories and your expertise to see if you could bring him out of his coma. You can't object to that. It would hold you up to the world as a great humanitarian. Your government might well support this view. It would certainly protect them against possible embarrassment - and our government as well. And it is all almost true."

"What about the miniaturization?"

"That is the one place where we must avoid the truth. We can't mention that."

"But what would keep me from mentioning it?"

"The fact that no one would believe you. Did you accept the existence of miniaturization until you saw it with your own eyes? Nor would your government want to spread the feeling that the Soviet Union has attained miniaturization. They would not want to frighten the American public until such time as they were certain the Soviet Union had the process and, better yet, that they had the process as well. - But there you are, Albert. We will send you home with an innocuous story that doesn't mention miniaturization, doesn't embarrass either my country or yours, and relieves you of any suspicion of being a traitor. Are you satisfied?"

Morrison stared at Boranova uncertainly and rubbed his thin sandy hair till it stood Lip in vague tufts. "But why will you say you are sending me back? That has to be explained, too. You can't very well say that Shapirov recovered with my help unless he actually recovers so that you can produce him. Nor can you say that he died before I could get to him unless he actually does die soon, as otherwise you would have to explain why he is still in a coma or why, perhaps, he has come back to life. You can't hide the situation forever."

"That is a problem that worries us, Albert, and it is clever of you to see it. After all, we are sending you back within a few days of your arrival - and why? The only logical reason, I'm afraid, is that we have found you to be a charlatan. We brought you here in high hopes for our poor Shapirov, but in no time at all it turned out that your views were incoherent nonsense and, with bitter disappointment, we sent you back. That will do you no harm, Albert. Being a charlatan is not the same as being a spy."

"Don't play the innocent, Natalya. You can't do that." He had turned white with anger.

"But it makes sense, doesn't it? Your own peers don't take you seriously. They laugh at your views. They would agree with us that your neurophysical suggestions are incoherent nonsense. We'd be a little embarrassed for having been so credulous as to take you seriously, but it was really Shapirov who thought highly of you and he was, unbeknown to us, on the edge of a stroke and total mental breakdown, so that one could scarcely blame him for his mad admiration of you."

Morrison's lips trembled. "But you can't make a clown out of me. You can't ruin my reputation so."

"But what reputation are you talking about, Albert? Your wife has left you and some people think it was because having your career founder on your mad ideas was the last straw for her. We have heard that your appointment is not to be renewed and that you have not managed to find another place. You are finished as a scientist in any case and this story of ours would merely conflrm what already exists. Perhaps you can find some other way of making a living - outside of science. You would probably have had to do that anyway, even if we had never touched you. There's that consolation."

"But you're lying and you know you're lying, Natalya. Have you no code of ethics? Can a respectable scientist do this to an honorable brother scientist?"

"You were unmoved by abstractions yesterday, Albert, and I am unmoved by them today in consequence."

"Someday scientists will discover I was right. How will you look then?"

"We may all be dead by then. Besides, you know that that is not the way it works. Franz Anton Mesmer, though he discovered hypnotism, was considered a fraud and a charlatan. When James Braid rediscovered hypnotism, he got the credit and Mesmer was still considered a fraud and charlatan. Besides-are we truly lying when we call you a charlatan?"