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

All in order.
It had to be. The Durant embryo, that beautiful thing with its wondrous potential, was
now resistant - a genetic unknown... if Potter could succeed where others had failed.
Two

DR VYASLAV POTTER stopped at the Records Desk on his way into the hospital. He was
faintly tired after the long tube-shunt from Central to Seatac Megalopolis, still he told an off-
color joke about primitive reproduction to the gray-haired duty nurse. She chuckled as she
hunted up Svengaard's latest report on the Durant embryo. She put the report on the
counter and stared at Potter. He glanced at the folder's cover and looked up to meet the
nurse's eyes.
Is it possible? he wondered. But... no: she's too old. She wouldn't even make a good
playmate. Anyway, the big-dome's wouldn't grant us a breeding permit. And he reminded
himself:
I'm a Zeek... a Flis'K.. The Zeek gene-shaping had gone through a brief popularity in the
region of Timbuctu Megalopolis during the early nineties. It produced curly black hair, a skin
one shade lighter than milk chocolate, soft brown eyes and a roly-poly face of utmost
benignity, all on a tall, strong body. A Zeek. A Vyaslav Potter.
It had yet to produce an Optiman, male or female, and never a viable gamete match.
Potter had long since given up. He was one of those who'd voted to discontinue the Zeek.
He thought of the Optimen with whom he dealt and sneered at himself. There but for the
brown eyes... But the sneer no longer gave him a twinge of bitterness.
'You know,' he said, smiling at the nurse, 'these Durants whose emb I have this morning
- I cut them both. Maybe I've been in this business too long.'
'Oh, go on with you. Doctor,' she said with an arch turn of her head. 'You're not even
middle-aged. You don't look a day over a hundred.'
He glanced at the folder. 'But here are these kids bringing me their emb to cut and I...'He
shrugged.
'Are you going to tell them?' she asked. 'I mean that you had them, too.'
'I probably won't even see them,' he said. 'You know how it is. Anyway, sometimes
people aren't happy with their cut... sometimes they wish they'd a little more of this, less of
that. They tend to blame the surgeon. They don't understand, can't understand the
problems we have in the cutting room.'
'But the Durants seem like a very successful cut,' she said. 'Normal, happy... perhaps a
little over-worried about their son, but...'
'Their genotype is one of the most successful,' he said. He tapped the record folder with a
forefinger. 'Here's the proof: they had a viable with potential.' He lifted a thumb in the time-
honored gesture for Optiman.
'You should be very proud of them,' she said. 'My family's had only fifteen viables in a
hundred and eighty-proof: they had a viable with potential.' He lifted a thumb gesture.
He pursed his lips into a moue of commiseration, wondering how he let himself get drawn
into these conversations with women, especially with nurses. It was that little seed of hope
that never died, he suspected. It was cut from the same stuff that produced the wild
rumors, the quack 'breeder doctors' and the black market in 'true breed' nostrums. It was
the thing that sold the little figurines of Optiman-Calapine because of the unfounded rumor
that she had produced a viable. It was the thing that wore out the big toes of fertility idols
from the kisses of the hopeful.
His moue of commiseration became a cynical sneer. Hopeful! If they only knew. 'Were
you aware the Durants are going to watch?' the nurse asked.
His head jerked up and he glared at her.