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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 i
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 i
"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?"
"Of course you are!"
"Let's reason it out. Why do you refuse to venture into an experiment of miniaturization which may enable you to establish your theories and which is likely to increase your knowledge of the brain by whole orders of magnitude? Such refusal can only arise through your own certain knowledge that your theories are wrong, that you are either a fool or a fraud or both, and that you don't want this established beyond a doubt, as it would be if you subjected yourself to miniaturization."
"That is not so."
"Do you expect us to believe that you refuse miniaturization simply because you are frightened? That you turn down a chance at knowledge, glory, fame, victory, vindication after years of scorn - all because you are scared? Come, we can't think so little of you, Albert. It makes much more sense to believe you are a fraud and so we will have no hesitation in saying you are."
"Americans won't believe a Soviet libel against an American scientist."
"Oh, Albert, of course they will. When we release you, with our explanation, it will be in all your American newspapers at once. They will be full of it. They are the most enterprising in the world and the freest, as you are all so fond of saying, meaning they are a law unto themselves. They pride themselves on it and never tire of flaunting that in the eyes of our own more sedate press. This will be such a lovely story for them: 'American Faker Fools Stupid Soviets.' I can see the headlines now. In fact, Albert, you may make a great deal of money on your American lecture circuit. You know: 'How I Made Jerks of the Soviets.' Then you can tell them all the ridiculous things you persuaded us to believe before we caught on to you and the audiences will laugh themselves into hysterics."
Morrison said in a whisper, "Natalya, why do you do this to me?"
"I? I am doing nothing. You are doing it. You want to go home and since we've failed to get you to accept miniaturization, we have no choice but to agree. Once, though, we agree to send you home, then, step by step, everything else must logically follow."
"But in that case, I can't go home. I can't have my life destroyed beyond repair."
"But who would care, Albert? Your estranged wife? Your children, who no longer know you and can always change their names anyway? Your university, which is firing you? Your colleagues, who laugh at you? Your government, which has abandoned you? Take heart. No one would care. An initial raucous laugh across the whole country and then you would be forgotten forever. You'll die without an obituary notice eventually, except for those papers who might not object to the tastelessness of bringing back that old joke for one more spurt of laughter to follow you to your grave."
Morrison shook his head in despair. "I can't go home."
"But you must. Unless you are willing to help us, which you're not, you can't stay here."
"But I can't go home on your terms."
"But what is the alternative?"
Morrison stared at the woman, who was looking at him with such mild concern. He whispered, "I accept the alternative."
Boranova looked at him for a long minute. "I do not wish to be mistaken, Albert. Put your agreement into clear language."