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 Flis'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.
'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... ah...' 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 haggers-maggle- '
'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're 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. 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?'
Svengaard spoke defensively, 'We appear to manage somehow.'
Potter startled him by laughing, head tipped back, body shaking with enjoyment. The laughter subsided and presently Potter said, 'Sven, you are a gem. I mean that. If it weren't for the ones like you, we'd still be back in the muck and mire, running from glaciers and saber-tooth tigers.'
Svengaard fought to keep anger from his voice, said, 'What do they think this arginine adjustment is?' Potter stared at him, measuring, then, 'Damned if I haven't underestimated you, Sven. Apologies, eh?'
Svengaard shrugged. Potter was acting oddly today -astonishing reactions, strange eruptions of emotion. 'Do you know what they say about this?' he asked.
'You heard Max on the phone,' Potter said.
So that was Allgood, Svengaard thought.
'Certainly, I know,' Potter growled. 'Max has it all wrong. They say gene-shaping inflicts itself on nature - on a nature that can never be reduced to mechanical systems and, therefore, to stationary matter. You can't stop the movement, see? It's an extended system phenomenon, energy seeking a level that's- '
'Extending system?' Svengaard asked.
Potter looked up at the man's scowling face. The question focused Potter's attention abruptly on the differences in thought patterns between those who lived close to Central and those who touched the Optiman world only through reports and second-hand associations.
We are so different. Potter thought. Just as the Optimen are different from us and Sven here is different from the Sterries and breeders. We're cut off from each other... and none of us has a past. Only the Optimen have a past. But each has an individual past... selfishly personal... and ancient.
'Extended system,' Potter said. 'From the microcosmos to the macrocosmos, they say all is order and systems. The idea of matter is insubstantial. AU is collisions of energy - some appearing large, swift and spectacular... some small, gentle and slow. But this too is relative. The aspects of energy are infinite. Everything depends on the viewpoint of the observer. For each change of viewpoint, the energy rules change. There exist an infinite number of energy rules, each set dependent on the twin aspects of viewpoint and background. In an extended system, this thing from outside assumed the aspect of a node appearing on a standing wave. That's what they say.'
Svengaard slipped off the desk, stood in a rapture of awe. He felt that he'd had a fleeting glimpse, a wisp of understanding that penetrated every question he might ask about the universe.
Could that be what it's like to work out of Central? he wondered.
'That's a great summation, isn't it?' Potter demanded. He stood up. 'A truly great idea!' A chuckle shook him. 'You know, a guy named Diderot had that idea. It was around 1750 or thereabout. They spoon-feed it to us now. Great wisdom!'
'Maybe Diderot was... one of them' Svengaard ventured.