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He said, "Your unhappiness is not my business, Sophia, as you've said - but I have been told about Yuri."
Her eyes flashed. "Arkady! I know it was he. He is a - a -" She shook her head. "With all his education and all his genius, he remains a peasant. I always think of him as a bearded serf with a vodka bottle."
"I think he's concerned about you in his own way, even if he doesn't express himself poetically. Everyone must be concerned."
Kaliinin stared at Morrison fiercely, as if holding her words back.
He prodded her gently, saying, "Why don't you tell me about it? I think it will help and I am a logical choice, being the outsider of the party - I assure you I am trustworthy."
Kaliinin looked at him again, this time almost gratefully.
"Yuri!" she spat. "Everyone may be concerned, except Yuri. He has no feelings."
"He must have been in love with you at one time."
"Must he? I don't believe it. He has a - a -" - she looked up and spread her hands, which were shaking, as though groping for a word and having to settle for something inferior - "vision."
"We're not always masters of our own emotions and affections, Sophia. If he has found another woman and dreams of her -"
"There's no other woman," said Kaliinin, frowning. "None! He uses that as an excuse to hide behind! He loved me, if at all, only absently, because I was convenient at hand, because I satisfied a vague physical need, and because I was also involved in the project, so that he didn't have to lose much time dallying with me. As long as he had this project firmly in hand, he didn't mind having me - quietly, unobtrusively - at odd moments."
"A man's work -"
"Need not fill every moment of time. I told you he has a vision. He plans to be the new Newton, the new Einstein. He wants to make discoveries so fundamental, so great, that he will leave nothing for the future. He will take Shapirov's speculations and turn them into hard science. Yuri Konev will become the whole of the natural law and everyone else will be commentary!"
"Might that not be considered an admirable ambition?"
"Not when it makes him sacrifice everything and everyone else, when it makes him deny his own child. I? What do I matter? I can be neglected, denied. I am an adult. I can take care of myself. But a baby? A child? To deny her a father? To refuse her? To reject her? She would distract him from his work, she would make demands on him, she would consume a few moments of time here and there - so he insists he is not the father."
"A genetic analysis -"
"No. Would I drag him to court and force a legal decision upon him? Consider what his denial implies? The child is not a virgin birth. Someone must be the father. He implies - no, he states - that I am promiscuous. He has not hesitated to give it as his opinion that I do not know the father of my child since I am lost among the numerous possibilities. Shall I labor to make a man as low as he is the legally proved father of my child against his will? No, let him come to me and admit he is the father and apologize for what he has done - and I may allow him a glance, now and then, at the child."
"Yet I have a feeling you still love him."
"If I do, that is my curse," said Kaliinin bitterly. "It shall not be my child's."
"Is that why you have had to be persuaded to undertake this miniaturization?"
"And work with him? Yes, that is why. But they tell me I ca
"Besides?"
"Besides, if I abandon the project, I lose my status as a Soviet scientist. I lose many privileges and perquisites, which do not matter, and so does my daughter - which matters a great deal."
"Did Yuri have to be persuaded, too, to work with you?"
"He? Of course not. The project is all he knows and sees. He does not look at me. He does not see me. And if he dies in the course of this attempt -" She held out her hand in appeal to him. "Please understand that I do not for a moment believe that this will happen. It is just a stupidly romantic notion that I torture myself with for the love of pain, I suppose. If he should die, he would not even be aware that I would die with him."
Morrison felt himself tremble. "Don't talk like that," he said. "And what would happen to your daughter in that case? Did Natalya tell you that?"
"She did not have to. I know that without her. My daughter would be reared by the state, as the child of a Soviet martyr to science. She might be better off so." Sophia paused and looked around. "But it's begi
Morrison shrugged.
"You will have to spend much of the rest of the day being medically and psychologically examined, Albert. So will I. It will be very boring, but it has to be done. How do you feel?"
"I'd feel better," said Morrison in a burst of honesty, "if you hadn't talked about dying. - Listen! Tomorrow, when we make the trip into Shapirov's body, how far will we be miniaturized?"
"That will be Natalya's decision. To cellular dimensions at the very least, obviously. Perhaps to molecular dimensions."
"Has anyone ever done that?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"Rabbits? Inanimate objects?"
Kaliinin shook her head and said again, "Not to my knowledge."
"How, then, does anyone know that miniaturization to such an extent is possible? Or that, if it is, any of us can surivive?"
"The theory says it is and that we can. So far, every bit of experimentation has fit in with the theory."
"Yes, but there are always boundaries. Wouldn't it be better if ultraminiaturization were tested on a simple bar of plastic, then on a rabbit, then on a -"
"Yes, of course. But persuading the Central Coordinating Committee to allow the energy expenditure would be an enormous task and such experiments would have to be dribbled out over months and years. We have no time! We must get into Shapirov immediately."
"But we're going to be doing something unprecedented, crossing into an untested region, with only the maybes of theory to -"
"Exactly, exactly. Come, the light is flashing and we must emerge and accompany the waiting physicians."
But for Morrison the marginal euphoria of a safe deminiaturization was seeping away. What he had experienced today was in no way indicative of what he must face the next day.
The terror was returning.
Chapter 8. Preliminaries
The greatest difficulty comes at the start. It's called "getting ready."
Later that evening, after a long - and tedious - medical exam, he joined the four Soviet researchers for di
Sitting down, he burst out, "No one told me the results of my examination!" He turned to Kaliinin. "Did they examine you, Sophia?"
"Yes, indeed, Albert."
"Did they tell you the results?"
"I'm afraid not. Since it is not we who pay them, I suppose they don't feel they owe us anything."
"It doesn't matter," said Dezhnev jovially. "My old father used to say, 'Bad news has the wings of an eagle, good news the legs of a sloth.' If they said nothing, it was because they had nothing bad to report."
"Even the bad news," said Boranova, "would have been reported to me - and only to me. I am the one who must decide who will accompany us."
"What did they tell you about me?" asked Morrison.
"That there is nothing important wrong with you. You will be coming with us and in twelve hours the adventure will begin."