Frank Herbert - The Eyes of Heisenberg

But Central insisted on the socializing with parents. The Optimen must have good reason, Svengaard felt. Most things they did made wonderful sense. Sometimes, Svengaard knew, he fell into a feeling of orphanage, a creature without past. All it took to shake him from the emotional morass, though, was a moment’s contemplation: “ They are the power that loves us and cares for us.” They had the world firmly in their grip, the future planned—a place for every man and every man in his place. Some of the old dreams—space travel, the questing philosophies, farming of the seas—had been shelved temporarily, put aside for more important things. The day would come, though, once they solved the unknowns behind submolecular engineering.

Meanwhile, there was work for the willing—maintaining the population of workers, suppressing deviants, husbanding the generic pool from which even the Optimen sprang.

Svengaard swung the meson microscope over the Durant vat, adjusted for low amplification to minimize Heisenberg interference. One more look wouldn’t hurt, just on the chance he might locate the pilot-cell and reduce Potter’s problem. Even as he bent to the scope, Svengaard knew he was rationalizing. He couldn’t resist another search into this morula which had the potential, might be shaped into an Optiman. The wondrous things were so rare. He flicked the switch, focused.

A sigh escaped him, “Ahhhhh…”

So passive the morula at low amplification; no pulsing as it lay within the stasis—yet so beautiful in its semi-dormancy… so little to hint that it was the arena of ancient battles.

Svengaard put a hand to the amplification controls, hesitated. High amplification posed its dangers, but Potter could readjust minor marks of meson interference. And the big look was very tempting.

He doubled amplification.

Again.

Enlargement always reduced the appearance of stasis. Things moved here, and in the unfocused distances there were flashes like the darlings of fish. Up out of the swarming arena came the triple spiral of nucleotides that had led him to call Potter. Almost Optiman. Almost that beautiful perfection of form and mind that could accept the indefinite balancing of Life 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… someday.

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 mitochondrial structure. He followed out the invaginated unit-membrane 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 poly-peptide 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 b 5 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 reduction 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.

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—wouldn’t even make a good playmate. Anyway, the big-domes wouldn’t grant us a breeding permit. And he reminded himself: I’m a Zeek… a J 411118 ZK. 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.”