Frank Herbert: The Eyes of Heisenberg

They would schedule a rain for this morning, Dr. Thei Svengaard thought. Rain always makes the parents uneasy… not to mention what it does to the doctors.

A gust of winter wetness rattled against the window behind his desk. He stood, thought of muting the windows, but the Durants—this morning’s parents—might be even more alarmed by the unnatural silence on such a day.

Dr. Svengaard stepped to the window, looked down at the thronging foot traffic—day shifts going to their jobs in the megalopolis, night shifts headed toward their tumbled rest. There was a sense of power and movement in the comings and goings of the people in spite of their troglodyte existence. Most of them, he knew, were childless Sterries… sterile, sterile. They came and they went, numbered, but numberless.

He had left the intercom open to his reception room and he could hear his nurse, Mrs. Washington, distracting the Durants with questions and forms.

Routine.

That was the watchword. This must all appear normal, casual routine. The Durants and all the others fortunate enough to be chosen and to become parents must never suspect the truth.

Dr. Svengaard steered his mind away from such thoughts, reminding himself that guilt was not a permissible emotion for a member of the medical profession. Guilt led inevitably to betrayal… and betrayal brought messy consequences. The Optimen were exceedingly touchy where the breeding program was concerned.

Such a thought with its hint of criticism filled Svengaard with a momentary disquiet. He swallowed, allowed his mind to dwell on the Folk response to the Optimen, They are the power that loves us and cares for us.

With a sigh, he turned away from the window, slotted the desk and went through the door that led via the ready room to the lab. In the ready room, he paused to check his appearance in the mirror: gray hair, dark brown eyes, strong chin, high forehead and rather grim lips beneath an aquiline nose. He’d always been rather proud of the remote dignity in his appearance-cut and had come to terms with the need of adjusting the remoteness. Now, he softened the set of his mouth, practiced a look of compassionate interest.

Yes, that would do for the Durants—granting the accuracy of their emotional profiles.

Nurse Washington was just ushering the Durants into the lab as Dr. Svengaard entered through his private door. The skylights above them drummed and hissed with the rain. Such weather suddenly seemed to fit the room’s mood: washed glass, steel, plasmeld and tile… all impersonal. It rained on everyone… and all humans had to pass through a room such as this… even the Optimen.

Dr. Svengaard took an instant dislike to the parents. Harvey Durant was a lithe six-footer with curly blond hair, light blue eyes. The face was wide with an apparent innocence and youth. Lizbeth, his wife, stood almost the same height, equally blonde, equally blue-eyed and young. Her figure suggested Valkyrie robustness. On a silver cord around her neck she wore one of the omnipresent Folk talismans, a brass figure of the female Optiman, Calapine. The breeder cult nonsense and religious overtones of the figure did not escape Dr. Svengaard. He suppressed a sneer.

The Durants were parents, however, and robust—living testimony to the skill of the surgeon who had cut them. Dr. Svengaard allowed himself a moment of pride in his profession. Not many people could enter the tight little group of subcellular engineers who kept human variety within bounds.

Nurse Washington paused in the door behind the Durants, said, “Dr. Svengaard, Harvey and Lizbeth Durant.” She left without waiting for acknowledgments. Nurse Washington’s timing and discretion always were exquisitely correct.

“The Durants, how nice,” Dr. Svengaard said. “I hope my nurse didn’t bore you with all those forms and questions. But I guess you knew you were letting yourselves in for all that routine when you asked to watch.”

“We understand,” Harvey Durant said. And he thought, Asked to watch, indeed! Does this old fake think he can pull his little tricks on us?

Dr. Svengaard noted the rich, compelling baritone of the man’s voice. It bothered him, added to his dislike.

“We don’t want to take any more of your time than absolutely necessary,” Lizbeth Durant said. She clasped her husband’s hand and through their secret code of finger pressures said: “ Do you read him? He doesn’t like us.”

Harvey’s fingers responded, “ He’s a Sterrie prig, so full of pride in his position that he’s half blind.”

The woman’s no-nonsense tone annoyed Dr. Svengaard. She already was staring around the lab, quick, searching looks. I must keep control here, he thought. He crossed to them, shook hands. Their palms were sweaty.

Nervous. Good, Dr. Svengaard thought.

The sound of a viapump at his left seemed reassuringly loud to him then. You could count on the pump to make parents nervous. That was why the pumps were loud. Dr. Svengaard turned toward the sound, indicated a sealed crystal vat on a force-field stand near the lab’s center. The pump sound came from the vat.

“Here we are,” Dr. Svengaard said.

Lizbeth stared at the vat’s milky translucent surface. She wet her lips with her tongue. “In there?”

“And as safe as can be,” Dr. Svengaard said.

He cherished the small hope then that the Durants might yet leave, go home and await the outcome.

Harvey took his wife’s hand, patted it. He, too, stared at the vat. “We understand you’ve called in this specialist,” he said.

“Dr. Potter,” Svengaard said. “From Central.” He glanced at the nervous movements of the Durants’ hands, noting the omnipresent tattooed index fingers—gene type and station. They could add the coveted “V” for viable now, he thought, and he suppressed a momentary jealousy.

“Dr. Potter, yes,” Harvey said. Through their hands, he signaled Lizbeth, “ Notice how he said Central?”

“How could I miss it?” she responded.

Central, she thought. The place conjured pictures of the lordly Optimen, but this made her think of the Cyborgs who secretly opposed the Optimen, and the whole thing filled her with profound disquiet. She could afford to think of nothing but her son now.

“We know Potter’s the best there is,” she said, “and we don’t want you to think we’re just being emotional and fearful…”

“… but we’re going to watch,” Harvey said. And he thought, This stiff-necked surgeon had better realize we know our legal rights.

“I see,” Dr. Svengaard said. Damn these fools! he thought. But he held his voice to a soothing monotone and said, “Your concern is a matter of record. I admire it. However, the consequences…”

He left the words hanging there, reminding them that he had legal rights, too, could make the cut with or without their permission, and couldn’t be held responsible for any upset to the parents. Public Law 10927 was clear and direct. Parents might invoke it for the right to watch, but the cut would be made at the surgeon’s discretion. The human race had a planned future which excluded genetic monsters and wild deviants.

Harvey nodded, a quick and emphatic motion. He gripped his wife’s hand tightly. Bits of Folk horror stories and official myths trickled through his mind. He saw Svengaard partly through this confusion of stories and partly through the clandestine forbidden literature grudgingly provided by the Cyborgs to the Parents Underground—through Stedman and Merck, through Shakespeare and Huxley. His youth had fed on such a limited past that he knew superstition could not help but remain.