"Stephen Kraus - White Walls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kraus Stephen)

“Ah,” said Jacobson. “Whose project?”

“Kirkendahl’s.”

The woman reached the second checkpoint. A burly technician brushed her
clothes, then directed her to step into a pair of white booties. She passed through a
sighing airlock and ended up in a room with lockers along one wall. Another
technician checked her ID card, pointed to a set of gleaming tiled showers and
pantomimed changing into fresh white coveralls. He didn’t say a word. Outer fringe
staff avoided speaking to inbound personnel. Jacobson had never really understood
why. Perhaps they didn’t want to shout over the restless howl of the air
recirculators. Or perhaps they assumed those coming inside were incapable of
speech, confusing them with the robots they designed.

Julia removed her government-issue coveralls, glancing over at the technician
before unsealing each seam. She needn’t have bothered. He had his back to her.
Fringe staff never looked inward. But the security robot’s camera-eye stared
relentlessly at her slim, small-breasted body. It seemed asexual in the blue-white glare
and rising steam. Even naked, she moved with a precise, fluid grace.

In the next room another technician scrubbed her suit down and fitted her with
a hood and a filter mask that covered her mouth.

“What’s happening?” she asked. Her voice was deeper than Jacobson
expected, with a tense, vulnerable edge. The mask added a slight rasp. “Is there
some kind of contamination?”

The technician shook his head, friendlier than the others. Inside staff. “From
here on in it’s a class 100 clean room environment. You’re the contaminant.”

She stepped through another airlock, seemed disoriented for a second, then
leaned forward into a roaring wind that stripped particles from her skin.

“Where is she going?” Jacobson asked. Some quality in her posture, in her
eyes drew his attention, something rare and terribly fragile. It made him feel
protective.

“She has an interview with the director,” the system replied. Jacobson robbed
his nose, wondering why.
 The template waited in clear fluid, silicon carved to atomic precision. Bases
drifted by, guanine, cytosine, adenine. Then thymine, the right one at last. It tumbled
above the polished surface, gyrated, twisted, and finally dropped into an L-shaped
depression on the template. Molecular locks clicked shut.

A stocky, fortyish woman nodded, and moved her hand across a touch-panel.
“That was the last one.”

Jacobson paced between white walls, booties scuffing clean tiles. “Okay,
Alice. Detach it.” He felt restless, distracted. His thoughts keep returning to the thin