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

'Let's walk to the cross-town shuttle tube,' Harvey said.
'Through the park?' she asked.
'Yes,' Harvey said. 'Just think - ten months.'
'And we can take our son home,' she said. 'We're very lucky.'
'It seems like a long time - ten months,' Harvey said.
Lizbeth answered as they crossed the street and entered the park. 'Yes, but we can come see him every week when they shift him to the big vat - and that's only three months away.'
'You're right,' Harvey said. 'It'll be over before we know it. And thank the powers he's not a specialist or anything else. We can raise him at home. Our work time'll be reduced.'
'That Doctor Potter's wonderful,' she said.
As they talked, their clasped hands moved with the subtle pressures and finger shifts of the secret conversation - the No-Spoken-Word hand code that classified them as couriers of the Parents Underground.
'They're still watching us,' Harvey signaled.
'I know.'
'Svengaard is out - a slave of the power structure.'
'Obviously. You know, I had no idea the computer nurse was one of us.'
'You saw that, too?'
'Potter was looking at her when she tripped the switch,'
'Do you think the Security people saw her?
'Not a chance. They were all concentrated on us.'
'Maybe she's not one of us,' Harvey signaled. And he spoke aloud, 'Isn't it a beautiful day. Let's take the floral path.'
Lizbeth's finger pressures answered. 'You think that nurse is an accidental?'
'Could be. Perhaps she saw what Potter'd accomplished and knew there was only one way to save the embryo.'
'Someone will have to contact her immediately then.'
'Cautiously. She might be unstable, emotional - a breeder neurotic.'
'What about Potter?'
'We'll have to get people to him right away. We'll need his help getting the embryo out of there.'
'That'll give us nine of Central's surgeons,' she said.
'If he goes along,' Harvey signaled.
She looked at him with a smile that completely masked her sudden worry. 'You have doubts?'
'It's only that I think he was reading me at the same time I read him.'
'Oh, he was,' she said. 'But he was slow and lame about it compared to us.'
'That's how I read him. He was like a first reader, an amateur stumbling along, gaining confidence as he went.'
'He's untrained,' she said. 'That's obvious. I was worried. you'd read something in him that escaped me.'
'I guess you're right.'
Across the park, dust had shattered the sunlight into countless pillars that stood up through an arboretum. Lizbeth stared at the scene as she answered, Wo doubt of it, darling. He's a natural, someone who's stumbled onto the talent accidentally. They do occur, you know - have to. Nothing can keep us from communicating.'
'But they certainly try.'
'Yes,' she signaled. 'They were very intent on it there today, probing and scanning us in that lounge. But people who think mechanically will never guess - I mean that our weapons are people and not things.'
'It's their fatal blind spot,' he agreed. 'Central's carved out the genetic ruts with logic - and logic keeps digging the ruts deeper and deeper. They're so deep now they can't see over the edges to the outside.' 'And that wide, wide universe out there calling to us,' she signaled.

five
MAX ALLGOOD, Central's chief of Tachy-Security, climbed Administration's plasmeld steps slightly ahead of his two surgeon companions as befitted the director of the Optimen's swift and terrible hand of power.
The morning sun behind the trio sent their shadows darting across the white building's angles and planes.
They were admitted to the silver shadows of the entrance portico where a barrier dropped for the inevitable delay. Quarantine scanners searched and probed them for inimical microbes.
Allgood turned with the patience of long experience in this procedure, studied his companions - Boumour and Igan. It amused him that they must drop their titles here. No doctors were admitted to these precints. Here they must be pharmacists. The title 'doctor' carried overtones which spread unrest among the Optimen. They knew about doctors, but only as ministers to the mere humans. A doctor became a euphemism in here, just as no one said death or kill or implied that a machine or structure would wear out. Only new Optimen in their acolyte apprenticeship, or meres of young appearance served in Central, although some of the meres had been preserved by their masters for remarkable lengths of time.
Boumour and Igan both passed the test of youthfulness, although Boumour's face was of that pinched-up elfin type which tended to suggest age before its time. He was a big man with heavy shoulders, powerful. Igan looked lean and fragile beside him, a beaked face with long jaw and tight little mouth. The eyes of both men were Optimen color - blue and penetrating. They were probably near-Opts, both of them. Most Central surgeon-pharmacists were.
The pair moved restlessly under Allgood's gaze, avoiding his eyes. Boumour began talking in a low voice to Igan with one hand on the man's shoulder moving nervously, kneading. The movement of Boumour's hand on Igan's shoulder carried an odd familiarity, a suggestion to Allgood that he had seen something like this somewhere before. He couldn't place where.
The quarantine probing-scanning continued. It seemed to Allgood that it was lasting longer than usual. He turned his attention to the scene across from the building. It was strangely peaceful, at odds with the mood of Central as Allgood knew it.
Allgood realized that his access to secret records and even to old books gave him an uncommon knowledge about Central. The Optiman demesne reached across leagues of what had once been the political entities of Canada and northern United States. It occupied a rough circle some seven hundred kilometers in diameter and with two hundred levels below ground. It was a region of multitudinous controls - weather control, gene control, bacterial control, enzyme control... human control...
In this little comer, the heart of Administration, the ground had been shaped into an Italian chiaroscuro landscape - blacks and grays with touches of pastels. The Optimen were people who could barber a mountain at a whim: 'A little off the top and leave the sideburns.' Throughout Central, nature had been smoothed over, robbed of her dangerous sharpness. Even when the Optimen staged some natural display, it lacked an element of drama which was a general lack in their lives.
Allgood often wondered at this. He had seen pre-Optiman films and recognized the differences. Central's manicured niceties seemed to him all tied up with the omnipresent red triangles indicating pharmacy outlets where the Optimen might check their enzyme prescriptions.
'Are they taking a long time about it or it is just me?' Boumour asked. His voice carrying a rumbling quality.
'Patience,' Igan said. A mellow tenor there.