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

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.
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 FllllS'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.
'It's all over the hospital,' she said. 'Security's been alerted. The Durants have been scanned and they're in Lounge Five with closed circuit to the cutting room.'
Anger blazed through him. 'Damn it to hell! Can't they do anything right in this stupid place?'
'Now, Doctor,' she said, stiffening into the prime departmental dictator. 'There's no call to lose your temper. The Durants quoted the law. That ties our hands and you know it.'
'Stupid damn' law,' Potter muttered, but his anger had subsided. The law! he thought. More of the damn' masquerade. He had to admit, though, that they needed the law. Without Public Law 10927, people might ask the wrong kinds of questions. And no doubt Svengaard had done his bumbling best to try to dissuade the Durants.
Potter assumed a rueful grin, said, 'Sorry I snapped like that. I've had a bad week.' He sighed. 'They just don't understand.'
'Is there any other record you wish. Doctor?' she asked.
Rapport was gone. Potter saw. 'No thanks,' he said. He took the Durant folder, headed for Svengaard's office. Just his luck: a pair of watchers. It meant plenty of extra work. Naturally!
The Durants couldn't be content with seeing the tape after the cut. Oh, no. They had to be on the scene. That meant the Durants weren't as innocent as they might appear - no matter what this hospital's Security staff said. The public just did not insist anymore. That was supposed to have been cut out of them.
The statistical few who defied their genetic shaping now required special attention.
And Potter reminded himself, I did the original cut on this pair. There was no mistake.
He ran into Svengaard outside the latter's office, heard the man's quick resume. Svengaard then began babbling about his Security arrangements.
'I don't give a damn what your Security people say,' Potter barked. 'We've new instructions. Central Emergency's to be called in every case of this kind.'
They went into Svengaard's office. It pretended to wood paneling - a comer room with a view of flowered roof gardens and terraces built of the omnipresent three-phase regenerative plasmeld, the 'plasty' of the Folk patios. Nothing must age or degenerate in this best of all Optiman worlds. Nothing except people.
'Central Emergency?' Svengaard asked.