Yuri Konev was the first to rise from the dinner table. For a moment he remained standing, leaning forward over the table, a slight frown on his intense, youthful face.
"Natalya," he said, "I must take Albert to my office. It is necessary that we discuss tomorrow's task and prepare for it."
Boranova said, "You will remember, please, that we must all have a good night's sleep. I don't wish you to forget the passage of time. Do you want Arkady to go with you?"
"I don't need him," said Konev haughtily.
"Nevertheless," said Boranova, "there will be two guards at your office door and you will call out if you need them."
Konev turned from her impatiently and said, "I won't need them, Natalya, I'm sure. Come with me, Albert."
Morrison, who had been watching them both from under lowered eyebrows, rose and said, "Is this going to be a long trip? I'm tired of being shuttled from point to point in the Grotto."
Morrison knew well he was being ungracious, but it didn't seem to bother Konev, who responded just as ungraciously, "I should think a professor would be used to plunging back and forth across a university campus."
Morrison followed Konev out the door and together they tramped along the corridor in silence. Morrison was aware that at a certain point two guards fell in behind them. He heard additional footsteps keeping time with his own. He looked back, but Konev did not.
Morrison said impatiently, "Much longer, Yuri?"
"That is a foolish question, Albert. I have no intention of walking you past our destination. When we get there, we will be there. If we are still walking, it is because we are not there yet."
"I should think, with all this walking, you might arrange golf carts or something of the sort for the corridors."
"Anything to allow the muscles to atrophy, Albert? Come, you are not so old that you cannot walk or so young that you must be carried."
Morrison thought, If I were that poor woman with his child, I would shoot off fireworks to celebrate his denial of fatherhood.
They reached Konev's office at last. At least Morrison assumed it was his office when Konev barked the word "Open" and the door slid smoothly open in response to his voiceprint. Konev strode through first.
"What if someone imitates your voice?" asked Morrison curiously. "You don't have a very distinctive voice, you know."
Konev said, "It also scans my face. It will not respond to either separately."
"And if you have a cold?"
"One time when I had a bad one, I could not get into my office for three days and I finally had to have the door opened mechanically. If my face were bruised or scarred by accident, I might also have trouble. Still, that is the price of security."
"But are the people here so - inquisitive - that they would invade your privacy?"
"People are people and it is not wise to overtempt even the best of them. I have things here unique to myself and they may be viewed only when I decide to allow it. This, for instance." His slim hand (very well cared-for and manicured, Morrison noticed - he might neglect other things for his work, but not himself) rested on an extraordinarily large and thick volume, which, in turn, rested on a stand that had been clearly designed for it.
"What is that?" asked Morrison.
"That," said Konev, "is Academician Shapirov - or at least the essence of him." He opened the book and flipped the pages. Page after page (all of them, perhaps) were filled with symbols arranged in diagrammatic fashion.
Konev said, "I have it on microfilm, of course, but there are certain conveniences to having it in a printed volume." He patted the pages almost lovingly.
"I still don't understand," said Morrison.
"This is the basic structure of Shapirov's brain, translated into a symbolism of my own devising. Fed into the appropriate software, it can reconstitute a three-dimensional map of the brain in intimate detail on a computer screen."
"Astonishing," said Morrison, "if you are serious."
"I am serious," said Konev. "I have spent my entire career on this task: translating brain structure into symbols and symbols into brain structure. I have invented and advanced this science of cerebrography."
"And you used Shapirov as your subject."
"By incredible good fortune, I did. Or perhaps it was not good fortune, but merely inevitable. We all have our small vanities and it seemed to Shapirov that his brain was worth preserving in detail. Once I began working on this field under his direction - for there was the feeling that we might someday want to explore animal brains at least - he insisted on having his own brain analyzed cerebrographically."
Morrison said with a sudden excitement, "Can you get his theories out of the recorded cerebral structure of his brain?"
"Of course not. These symbols record a cerebral scanning that was carried through three years ago. That was before he had evolved his recent notions and, in any case, what I have preserved here is, unfortunately, only the physical structure and not the thoughts. Still, the cerebrograph will be invaluable to us in tomorrow's voyage."
"I should think so - but I have never heard of this."
"I'm not surprised. I have published papers on this, but only in the Grotto's own publication - and these remain highly classified. No one outside the Grotto, not even here in the Soviet Union, knows of them."
"That is bad policy. You will be overtaken by someone else who will publish and who will be granted priority."
Konev shook his head. "At the first sign that significant advances in this direction are being made elsewhere, enough of my early work will be published to establish priority. I have cerebrographs of canine brains that I can publish, for instance. But never mind that. The point is that we have a map of Shapirov's brain to guide us, which is a matter of incredible good fortune. It was made without the knowledge that we might need it someday to guide us through that very cerebral jungle."
Konev turned to a computer and, with practiced flips of his wrist, inserted five large discs.
"Each one of these," he said, "can hold all the information in the Central Moscow Library without crowding. It is all devoted to Shapirov's brain."
"Are you trying to tell me," said Morrison indignantly, "that you could transfer all that information, all of Shapirov's brain, into that book you have here?"
"Well, no," said Konev, glancing at the book. "In comparison with the total code, that book is only a small pamphlet. However, it does hold the basic skeleton, so to speak, of Shapirov's neuronic structure and I was able to use it as a guide by which to direct a computer program that mapped it out in greater detail. It took months for the best and most advanced computer we have to do the job.
"And even so, Albert, all we have reaches merely to the cellular level. If we were to map the brain down to the molecular level and try to record all the permutations and combinations - all the conceivable thoughts that might arise from a particular human brain like Shapirov's; all the creativity, actual and potential - I suppose it would take a computer the size of the Universe working for a much longer time than the Universe has existed. What I have, however, may be enough for our task."
Morrison, entranced, asked, "Can you show me how it works, Yuri?"
Konev studied the computer - which was turned on, as one could tell by the soft whisper of its cooling mechanism - then pushed the necessary keys. On the screen there appeared the side view of a human brain.
Konev said, "This can be viewed at any cross-section." He pressed a key and the brain began to peel as though it were being continually sliced by an ultrathin microtome some thousands of slices per second. "At this rate," he said, "it would take an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the task, but I could stop it at any chosen point. I could also cut off thicker slices or cut off one thick calculated slice to bring me at once to any wanted cross-section."