"Frank Herbert - The Eyes of Heisenberg" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

through the delicately adjusted enzyme prescriptions.
A sense of loss pervaded Svengaard. His own prescription, while it kept him alive, was
slowly killing him. It was the fate of all men. They might live two hundred years, sometimes
even more... but in the end the balancing act failed for all except the Optimen. They were
perfect, limited only by their physical sterility, but that was the fate of many humans and it
subtracted nothing from endless life.
His own childless state gave Svengaard a sense of communion with the Optimen. They'd
solve that, too... some day.
He concentrated on the morula. A sulfur-containing amino acid dependency showed faint
motion at this amplification. With a feeling of shock, Svengaard recognized it - isovalthine, a
genetic marker for latent myxedema. a warning of potential thyroid deficiency. It was a
disquieting flaw in the otherwise near-perfection. Potter would have to be alerted.
Svengaard backed off amplification to study the mito-chondrial structure. He followed out
the invaginated unit-membrance to the flattened, sac-like cristae, returned along the
external second membrane, focused on the hydrophilic outer compartment. Yes... the
isovalthine was susceptible to adjustment. Perfection might yet be for this morula.
Flickering movement appeared at the edge of the microscope's field.
Svengaard stiffened, thought. Dear God, no!
He stood frozen at the viewer as a thing seen only eight previous times in the history of
gene-shaping took place within his field of vision.
A thin line like a distant contrail reached into the cellular structure from the left. It wound
through a coiled-coil of alpha helices, found the folded ends of the polypeptide chains in a
myosin molecule, twisted and dissolved.
Where the trail had been now lay a new structure about four Angstroms in diameter and a
thousand Angstroms long - sperm protamine rich in arginine. All around it the protein
factories of the cytoplasm were undergoing change, fighting the stasis, realigning.
Svengaard recognized what was happening from the descriptions of the eight previous
occurrences. The ADP-ATP exchange system was becoming more complex - 'resistant.' The
surgeon's job had been made infinitely more complex.
Potter will be furious, Svengaard thought.
Svengaard turned off the microscope, straightened. He wiped perspiration from his
hands, glanced at the lab clock. Less than two minutes had passed. The Durants weren't
even in their lounge yet. But in those two minutes, some force... some energy from outside
had made a seemingly purposeful adjustment within the embryo.
Could this be what's stirred up Security... and the Optimen? Svengaard wondered.
He had heard this thing described, read the reports... but actually to have seen it himself!
To have seen it... so sure and purposeful...
He shook his head. No! It was not purposeful! It was merely an accident, chance, nothing
more.
But the vision wouldn't leave him.
Compared to that, he thought, how clumsy my efforts are. And I'll have to report it to
Potter. He'll have to shape that twisted chain.. if he can now that it's resistant.
Full of disquiet, not at all satisfied that he had seen an accident, Svengaard began making
the final checks of the lab's preparations. He inspected the enzyme racks and their linkage
to the computer dosage-control - plenty of cytochrome 65 and P-450 hemoprotein, a good
reserve store of ubiquinone and sulfhydryl, arsenate, azide and oligomycin, sufficient
protein-bound phosphohistidine. He moved down the line - acylating agents, a store of (2,4-
dinitrophenol) and the isoxazolidon-3 groups with reducing NADH.
He turned to the physical equipment, checked the meson scalpel's micromechanism, read
the life-system gauges on the vat and the print-out of the stasis mechanism.