Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

"As long as we don't discover fatal aspects," muttered Morrison. "Are you afraid of nothing, Yuri?"

"I'm afraid of not being able to complete my work. That would be true if I died tomorrow or if I refused to undergo miniaturization. Being stopped by death, however, is only a small possibility, but if I refuse to undergo miniaturization, then I am stopped certainly. That is why I much prefer to risk the former than take the latter way out."

"Does it bother you that Sophia will be undergoing miniaturization with you?"

Konev frowned. "What?"

"If you don't remember her first name, it may help if I refer to her as Kaliinin."

"She is part of the group and will be on the ship. Yes."

"And you don't mind?"

"Why should I?"

"After all, she feels you have betrayed her."

Konev frowned darkly and a dull flush rose to his face. "Has her madness gone so far as to force her to confide her incoherencies to strangers? If she weren't needed on this project -"

"I'm sorry. She didn't sound incoherent to me."

Morrison didn't know why he was pushing the matter. Perhaps he felt diminished at fearing a task the other so ardently welcomed and he therefore wished to dirninish in turn. "Were you never her - friend?"

"Friend?" Konev's face mirrored his contempt. "What is friendship? When I joined the project, I found her here; she had joined a month earlier. We worked together, we were new and untried together. Of course, there was what one might call friendship, a physical need for intimacy. What of it? We were young and unsure of ourselves. It was a passing phase."

"But it left something behind. A child."

"That was not my doing." And his mouth closed with a snap.

"She says -"

"I have no doubt she would like to saddle me with the responsibility, but it won't work."

"Have you considered genetic analysis?"

"No! The child is adequately cared for, I imagine, and even if genetic analysis seemed to indicate I might be the parent, I would refuse all efforts to tie me to the child emotionally, so what would the woman have to gain?"

"Are you so coldhearted?"

"Coldhearted! What do you imagine I have done - corrupted a young, innocent virgin? She took the initiative in everything. In the sad story that I suppose she told you, did she happen to mention that she'd been pregnant before, that she had had an abortion some years before I met her? I don't know who the father was then or who it is now. Perhaps neither does she - either time."

"You are being unkind to her."

"I am not. She is being unkind to herself. I have a mistress. I have a love. It is this project. It is the human brain in the abstract, its study, its analysis, and all that that might lead to. The woman was, at best, a distraction - at worst, a destruction. This little talk we are having - that I did not ask for - that she goaded you into undertaking, no doubt -"

"She did not," intedected Morrison.

"Goads are not necessarily noticed. This discussion may cost me a night's sleep and make me that much less sharp tomorrow when I will need all my sharpness. Is that your intention?"

"No, of course not," Morrison said quietly.

"Then it is surely hers. You have no idea in how many different ways she has attempted interference and how often she has succeeded. I don't look at her, I don't speak to her, yet she will not leave me alone. Her imaginary wrongs seem as fresh in her mind as they were when I first broke away. Yes, I do mind her being on the ship with me and I have said so to Boranova, but she says that both of us are needed. Are you satisfied?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you so."

"What did you mean? Simply to have a quiet conversation? 'Say, what about all those betrayals and dirty tricks you have committed?' Just a friendly talk?"

Morrison remained silent, bowing his head slightly against the other's rage. Three out of five on the ship - himself and the two ex-lovers - would be laboring under a sense of unbearable wrong. He wondered if, on careful questioning, Dezhnev and Boranova would prove similarly disabled.

Konev said harshly, "You had better go. I brought you here to bury your fear of the project by providing you with a blaze of enthusiasm. Obviously, I have failed. You are more interested in prurient gossip. Go, the guards outside this door will take you to the quarters assigned you. You will need to sleep."

Morrison sighed. Sleep?

Yet on this, his third night in the Soviet Union, Morrison slept.

Dezhnev had been waiting outside Konev's room with the guards, his broad face grinning and his large ears all but flapping with merriment. After the shadowed intensity of Konev's personality, Morrison found himself welcoming Dezhnev's chatter on all subjects but the morrow's miniaturization.

Dezhnev urged a drink on him. "It is not vodka, not alcohol," he had said, "It is milk and a little sugar and flavoring. I stole it from the commissary where it is used, I think, for animals, because all those officials find human beings more easily replaceable than the animals. It is the curse of overpopulation. As my father used to say, 'To get a human being takes a moment of pleasure, but to get a horse costs money.' But drink. It will settle the stomach. I promise you."

The drink was in a can which Morrison punctured. He poured it into a cup that Dezhnev proffered and it tasted fairly good. He thanked Dezhnev almost cheerily.

When they got to Morrison's room, Dezhnev said, "Now the important thing for you to do is to sleep. Sleep well. Let me show you where everything is." And as he did so, he rather resembled a large and slightly unkempt mother hen. With a hearty "Good night. Be sure to get plenty of sleep," Dezhnev left the room.

And Morrison slept. Almost as soon as he worked himself into his favorite position - stomach down, left leg bent, knee outward - he began to feel sleepy. Of course, he had little sleep the last two nights, but he suddenly guessed that there had been a mild sedative in the cup into which he had poured the drink. Then came the thought that perhaps Konev should take such a sedative. Then - nothing.

When he woke, he could not even remember having had any dreams.

Nor did he wake of his own accord. Dezhnev was shaking him, as cheerful as he had been the evening before, as wide awake, and even as spruced up as it was possible for that animated haystack to be.

He said, "Awake, Comrade American, for it is time. You must shave and wash. There are fresh towels, combs, deodorants, tissues, and soap in the bathroom. I know because I have delivered them myself. Also a new electric razor. And on top of that, new cotton clothes for you to wear with a reinforcement in the crotch so you will not feel so exposed. They actually have them, the rotten bureaucrats, if you know how to ask - with a fist." And he raised his fist while twisting his face into a look of ferocity.

Morrison stirred and sat up on the bed. It took him a moment to place himself and to weather the shock of realization that it was Thursday morning and that miniaturization was just ahead.

Half an hour or so later, when Morrison stepped out of the bathroom again - satisfactorily bathed, dried, deodorized, shaved, combed, and reaching for his two-piece cotton uniform and his slippers - Dezhnev said, "Satisfactory elimination, my lad? No constipation?"

"Quite satisfactory," said Morrison.

"Good! I don't ask out of idle curiosity, of course. I am not fascinated by excrement. It is just that the ship is not ideally suited for such things. Better we all go in empty. I didn't trust to nature, myself. I took a bit of a laxative."

"How long will we stay miniaturized?" asked Morrison.

"Perhaps not long. An hour if we are very lucky, perhaps twelve if we're not."