Isaac Asimov - Fantastic Voyage II - Destination Brain

"Exactly," snapped Konev, "so please stop, especially since we are now approaching the capillary that we should be entering. Albert, lean over and study the cerebrograph. Do you agree?"

Kaliinin, carefully addressing Boranova, said, "Albert is in no condition to be badgered with cerebrographs."

"Let me try," said Morrison, struggling with his seat belt.

"No," said Boranova with authority. "Yuri can make this decision his own responsibility."

"Then I so make it," said Konev, looking sullen. "Arkady, can you get near the wall on our right and catch the current that turns into the capillary?"

Arkady said, "I've been racing the red corpuscles and I have caught one that is drifting toward the right wall. It will push us - or the small eddy that is pushing it will also push us. - Ah, you see, it is taking place, just as it did in the previous cases where we had to branch off. Each time I managed to use the natural current correctly." A broad grin creased his happy face as he said, "Applause, everybody. Say, 'Well-done, Arkady.'"

Morrison obligingly said, "Well-done, Arkady," and into the capillary the ship went.

Morrison had recovered sufficiently to be tired of invalidism. Outside the transparent hull of the ship, the wall of the capillary was strongly tiled and seemed fairly close on all sides. It looked very much like the other capillary, the one in which he had turned the ship around.

He said, "I want to see the cerebrograph."

He flung open his seat belt, the first really decisive movement he had made since returning to the ship, and stared rebelliously at the perturbed Kaliinin as he did so.

He pushed himself gently upward into a float, holding himself in position to look over Konev's shoulders by repeated corrections - first up, then down. He said, "How do you know you are in the right one, Yuri?"

Konev looked up and said, "Counting and dead reckoning. See here. If we cut down the scale of the cerebrograph, this is the arteriole we've been following off the carotid. We took this branch and that one, and then it's a matter of counting the capillaries as they branch off on the right.

"We had our run-in with the white cell right here and in the time the white cell had at its disposal, this capillary was the only one it could reasonably have reached. Once we were turned around and got back to the arteriole, we followed its narrowing structure and matched what we saw against the cerebrograpb. The pattern of branch points outside matched almost exactly the pattern described by the cerebrograph and that alone assures me we were following the right path. Now we have gone into this capillary."

Morrison's left hand slipped off the smooth texture of the back of Konev's seat and his attempt to make up for that twisted him into a comic handstand on the outspread fingers of his right hand. He labored to right himself even as he thought, savagely, that another improvement that must be introduced in later versions of the ship would be handholds on the seats and in other strategic areas.

He said, panting, "And where will this capillary take us?"

Konev said, "Directly to one of the centers which you believe to be a crossroad for the processes of abstract thought. - Let's cut down the scale of the cerebrograph again. Right here."

Morrison nodded. "Please remember that I've located them in human beings only indirectly, judging from my findings in animal brains. Still, if I'm correct, that should be the superior external skeptic node."

Konev said, "According to you, there should be eight such nodes, four on each side. This one, however, is the largest and most intricate on the left side and therefore stands the best chance of giving us the data we need. Am I right?"

"I think so," said Morrison cautiously, "but please remember that my reasoning has not been accepted by the scientific community."

"And do you begin to doubt it now, too, Albert?"

"Caution is a reasonable scientific attitude, Yuri. My concept of the skeptic node makes sense in the light of my observations, but I have never been able to test the matter directly - that's all - and I do not wish it said later that I misled you."

Dezhnev snickered. "Skeptic node! No wonder your countrymen are skeptical of the whole notion, Albert. My father used to say: 'People are ready enough to laugh at you. Don't make funny faces in order to encourage them.' - Why didn't you call it 'thought node' in simple Russian? It would have sounded much better."

"Or 'thought node' in simple English," said Morrison patiently. "But science is international and one uses Greek or Latin when possible. The Greek word for 'thought' is 'skeptis.' It has given us 'skeptical' both in English and in Russian to indicate a habitual doubting attitude. That's because the very act of doubt implies thought. Surely you all know that the most efficient way of accepting the foolish dogmas foisted on us by social orthodoxy is to refrain from thinking."

There was an uncomfortable silence at that, whereupon Morrison (having left it there for just long enough, out of a faint malice - he owed them that much) said, "As human beings in all nations know."

The atmosphere lightened perceptibly at once and Dezhnev said, "In that case, we will see how skeptical we need be of the skeptic node, when we reach it."

"I hope," said Konev with a scowl, "that you don't think this is something to joke about, you clown. That node is where we can hope to detect Pyotr Shapirov's thoughts. Without that, this venture will come to nothing."

Dezhnev said, "To each his own job. I will take you there, with my expert handling of the ship. Once there, you will get the thoughts - or Albert will, if you cannot. And if you do as well with the thoughts as I do with the ship, you will have nothing to be unhappy about. My father used to say -"

"Your father is better off where he is," said Konev. "Don't dig him up again."

"Yuri," said Boranova sharply, "that was an unbearably rude remark to make. You must apologize."

"That's all right," said Dezhnev. "My father used to say: 'The time for offense is when a man, once he has cooled down, repeats an insult he has offered in his rage.' I am not sure that I can always follow that advice, but in honor of my father, I will pass over Yuri's stupid remark this time." He bent over his controls, his face grim.

Morrison had listened to the altercation (just Konev being nasty - obviously because he was under a great strain) with only half an ear. His mind slipped back to something else, to Dezhnev's carefree chatter and Boranova's warning hand.

He lowered himself into his seat, clasping himself in for stability, and turned his head toward Boranova. "Natalya! A question!"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Those miniaturized particles released into the normal, unminiaturized Universe -"

"Yes, Albert?"

"Eventually, they deminiaturize."

Boranova hesitated. "As Arkady told you, they do."

"When?"

She shrugged. "Unpredictably. Like the radioactive breakdown of a single atom."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's so."

"I mean, what experiments have been conducted? Nothing has ever been miniaturized to the extent that we are now miniaturized, so surely you can't know what happens to such miniaturized particles by direct observation."

Boranova said, "We've observed events at miniaturizations we have reached and in that way determined what seem to be the laws of behavior of miniaturized objects. We extrapolate -"

"Extrapolations aren't always trustworthy when they go well outside the realm of direct study."

"Granted."

"You compared spontaneous deminiaturization to radioactive breakdown. Is there a half-life of deminiaturization? Even if you can't tell when a particular miniaturized particle will deminiaturize, can you tell when half of a particular large quantity of them will?"