The Eyes of Heisenberg Read online

  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 semidormancy … 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 re-adjust 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 dartings of fish. Up cut 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 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 b5 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.

  2

  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 … J4111182K. 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 are happy with their cut … sometimes they wish they’d had 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-nine years, and never an …” She repeated Potter’s 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 prim 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 corner 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.

  “No exceptions,” Potter said. He sat in Svengaard’s chair, put his feet on Svengaard’s desk, and brought the little ivory-colored phone box to his stomach with its screen only inches from his face. He punched in Security’s number and his own code identification.

  Svengaard sat on a corner of the desk across from him, appearing both angry and cowed. “They were scanned, I tell you,” he said. “They were carrying no unusual devices. There’s nothing unusual about them.”

  “Except they insist on watching,” Potter said. He jiggled the phone key. “What’s keeping those ignoramuses?”

  Svengaard said, “But the law—”

  “Damn the law!” Potter said. “You know as well as I do that we could route the view signal from the cutting room through an editing computer and show the parents anything we want. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why we don’t do just that?”

  “Why … they … ahh …” Svengaard shook his head. The question had caught him off balance. Why wasn’t that done? The statistics showed a certain number of parents would insist on watching and …

  “It was tried,” Potter said. “Somehow, the parents detected the computer’s hand in the tape.”

  “How?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Weren’t the parents questioned and …”

  “They killed themselves.”

  “Killed them—How?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Svengaard tried to swallow in a dry throat. He began to get a picture of intense excitement just under Security’s surface. He said, “What about the statistical ratio of—”

  “Statistical, my ass!” Potter said.

  A heavy masculine voice came from the phone: “Who’re you talking to?”

  Potter focused on the screen, said, “I was talking to Sven. This viable he called me on—”

  “It is a viable?”

  “Yes! It’s a viable with the full potential, but the parents insist on watching the—”

  “I’ll have a full crew on the way by tube in ten minutes,” said the voice on the phone. “They’re at Friscopolis. Shouldn’t take ’em more than a few minutes.”

  Svengaard rubbed wet palms against the sides of his working smock. He couldn’t see that face on the phone, but the voice sounded like Max Allgood, T Security’s boss.

  “We’ll delay the cut until your people get here,” Potter said. “The records are being faxed to you and should be on your desk in a few minutes. There’s another—”

  “Is that embryo everything we were told?” asked the man on the phone. “Any flaws?”

  “A latent myxedema, a projective faulty heart valve, but the—”

  “Okay, I’ll call you after I’ve seen the—”

  “Damn it to hell!” Potter erupted. “Will you let me get ten words out of my mouth without interrupting?” He glared into the screen. “There’s something here more important than flaw and the parents.” Potter glanced up at Svengaard, back to the screen. “Sven reports he saw an outside adjustment of the arginine deficiency.”

  A low whistle came from the phone, then, “Reliable?”

  “Depend on it.”

  “Did it follow the pattern of the other eight?”

  Potter glanced up at Svengaard, who nodded.

  “Sven says yes.”

  “They won’t like that.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Did Sven see enough to get any … new ideas on it?”

  Svengaard shook his head.

  “No,” Potter said.

  “There’s a strong possibility it isn’t significant,” the man on the phone said. “In a system of increasing determinism—”

  “Oh, yes,” Potter sneered. “In a system of increasing determinism you get more and more indeterminism. You might as well say in a foofram of increasing haggersmaggle—”

  “Well, it’s what they believe.”

  “So they say. I believe Nature doesn’t like being meddled with.”

  Potter stared into the screen. For some reason, he recalled his youth, the beginning of his medical studies and the day he’d learned how very close his genotype had been to the Optiman. He found that the old core of hatred had become mildly amused tolerance and cynicism.

  “I don’t see why they put up with you,” the man on the phone said.

  “Because I was very close,” Potter whispered. He wondered then how close the Durant embryo would be. I’ll do my best, he thought.

  The man on the phone cleared his throat, said, “Yes, well I’ll depend on you to handle things at your end. The embryo ought to provide some verification of the outside inter—”

  “Don’t be a total ass!” Potter snapped. “The emb will bear out Sven’s report to the last enzyme. You tend to your job; we’ll do ours.” He slapped the cut-off, pushed the phone back onto the desk and sat staring at it. “Pompous damned … no—he’s what he is because he’s what he is. Comes from living too close to them. Comes from the original cut. Maybe I’d be an ass too if that’s what I had to be.”

  Svengaard tried to swallow in a dry throat. He’d never before heard such an argument or such frank talk from the men who operated out of Central.

  “Shocked you, eh, Sven?” Potter asked. He dropped his feet to the floor.

  Svengaard shrugged. He felt ill-at-ease.

  Potter studied the man. Svengaard was good within his limits, but he lacked creative imagination. A brilliant surgeon, but without that special quality he was often a dull tool.

  “You’r
e a good man, Sven,” Potter said. “Dependable. That’s what your record says, you know. Dependable. You’ll never be anything else. Weren’t meant to be. In your particular niche, though, you’re it.”

  Svengaard heard only the praise, said, “It’s good to be appreciated, of course, but—”

  “But we have work to do.”

  “It will be difficult,” Svengaard said. “Now.”

  “Do you think that outside adjustment was an accidental thing?” Potter asked.

  “I—I’d like to believe that”—Svengaard wet his lips with his tongue—“it wasn’t determined, that no agency …”

  “You’d like to lay it to uncertainty, to Heisenberg,” Potter said. “The principle of uncertainty, some result of our own meddling—everything an accident in the capricious universe.”

  Svengaard felt stung by a quality of harshness in Potter’s voice, said, “Not precisely. I meant only that I hoped no super causal agency had a hand in—”

  “God? You don’t really mean you’re afraid this is the action of a deity?”

  Svengaard looked away. “I remember in school,” he said. “You were lecturing. You said we always have to be ready to face the fact that the reality we see will be shockingly different from anything our theories led us to suspect.”

  “Did I say that? Did I really say that?”

  “You did.”

  “Something’s out there, eh? Something beyond our instruments. It’s never heard of Heisenberg. It isn’t uncertain at all. It moves.” His voice lowered. “It moves directly. It adjusts things.” He cocked his head to one side. “Ah-hah! The ghost of Heisenberg is confounded!”

  Svengaard glared at Potter. The man was mocking him. He spoke stiffly, “Heisenberg did point out that we have our limits.”

  “You’re right,” Potter said. “There’s a caprice in our universe. He taught us that. There’s always something we can’t interpret or understand … or measure. He set us up for this present dilemma, eh?” Potter glanced at his finger watch, back to Svengaard. “We tend to interpret everything around us by screening it through that system which is native to us. Our civilization sees indeterminately through the eyes of Heisenberg. If he taught us truly, how can we tell whether the unknown’s an accident or the deliberate intent of God? What’s the use of even asking?”